There’s a hipster within all of us, whether you believe that or not. I admittedly have mentioned like the wide-framed glasses-wearing wannabe I am that, “I was born in the wrong generation” on several different occasions. The aptly named Generationals have a knack for such inquiries of origin, frequently drawing inspiration through decades separated from their own. Purposefully lower production value with the percussion and piano sounding like they came from an old-school boom bap classic soul sample keyboard leads many first time listeners to believe that this song was actually an underrated hit from the late sixties/early seventies. The creation process that this New Orleans group went through resembles a systematic laying down of instrumental puzzle pieces, testing out each individual noise-making tool to see what meshes well enough to get the crowd off their feet and clapping their hands within seconds.

I thought Pitchfork.com really did the song justice in their spot-on exposition of “When They Fight They Fight”, saying,  “You’d have to be pretty cold-hearted not to raise some sort of a smile for those fun little bossa nova nods, big horns, and amateurish girl-group harmonies.” It’s a song that truly forces a grin out of me every time it’s played, enabling my classically primal instinct to replicate each instrument as if I was the entire band introducing this fun tune to the audience by myself. Some may argue that Generationals are putting too much effort into converting their naturally alternative mantra towards an overly trendy pop-centric approach, but the sporadically energetic youngster in me tends to disregard such pessimism in favor of dating my not-so-old self.