Ten relentless, slippery songs that cut and crowd in a way that will feel familiar to anyone who’s been alive these past few years. The elemental familiarity of brash guitars, highway-tempo drumming and penetrating vocals builds a mordant foundation for destabilization. Bursts of static, foggy synths, and percussive keyboard notes are set precisely. There’s a feeling of being leveraged, of being manipulated that mimics the everyday debasements of 21st century life, which doesn’t sound that compelling I guess but the record has a subversive ability to transform itself into a kind of resistance or rejection. The Maximum Rocknroll review of this record says “some people want music that’s awkward to access” which gets at the brilliance of this LP, the most concise and wrenching expression of our current conditions I can think of.
