Right after the last election, people kept saying the same thing: “The punk music is going to be great.” If you subscribe to the theory that great art is born out of trauma, the United States sure has a lot of collective trauma to turn into art. That theory is bullshit, of course -- trauma is trauma, not a crucible for some romantic notion of artistic greatness -- but that line of thinking is an understandable impulse, a way to convince ourselves that at least we’ll have something to show for our pain. The thing is, punk music didn’t need a renaissance. It never went anywhere. As long as there are things in this world to be pissed off about, there will be pissed-off music trying to do something about it. And like it or not, there will always be things in this world to be pissed off about.