Sucker Supreme [CD]

Sucker Supreme is the third album from Rosie Tucker, and first for Epitaph Records. It is a coming of age album that aches with self-discovery, self-definition, and self-redefinition. Sucker Supreme is also just the right follow-up to where their last album, 2019’s Never Not Never Not Never Not, left off: still playfully observed, still sneakily political, still indebted to folk singers of the past – but also much, much bigger, brighter, louder and noisier than anything Tucker has dared before. It delivers mightily on an ambitious M.O.: to be relentlessly catchy and muscular and noisy but also beautiful; be achingly sad and searching, but never too far away from funny, either; and to spotlight Tucker’s empathetic, yearning vocals on top of it all. It takes a unique group of people to make an album that leaps out of the speakers at you like this one. Sucker Supreme is the first record made by Tucker’s current touring band: drummer Jessy Reed, guitarist Jess Kallen, and bassist Wolfy, who also occupied the producer’s chair. It’s a group of people as eager to share their long-dead folk music heroes as they are to pay homage to their still-kicking pop-punk heartthrobs.