This was truly an entrancing show. Ty is an incredibly talented artist and it was a treat to see him in such a unique environment. Similar to the show I saw before, A. Savage, Ty performed with only the accompaniment of a lone guitar. Different to Zebulon, however, The Barnsdall Gallery Theatre was a sit down venue that felt much more suited for performance art than it did live music. Plenty of live music is presented in similar environments, but it was still a notable outlier for me considering I primarily leave shows drenched in sweat. Yet, though I do prefer a standing show, The Barnsdall Gallery Theatre was the perfect venue for the show Ty gave us. It was a show wrapped up in a quiet, introspective air of intimacy; one that blanketed the audience with a sensation that felt paradoxically both isolating and communal. It was isolating in that there was a sense that Ty was playing to each of us individually. It was a subtle show in a dimly-lit room, and there was not much in the way of audience interaction with one another. Combined with the passion, emotion, and obvious comfort with which Ty played for us, the lowkey nature made the show all the more intensely riveting.
But, in the moments of rapturous applause that consistently exploded following each song, there was an instantaneous shift as we suddenly, all at once, were aware of each other and overjoyed to share the experience. In other words, there was a lot of mumbled “oh wow”s and “damn”s among us as we clapped. And I had a lovely time chatting with people before and after the show, including Ty himself, who hung around with his sound guy for a while as a few of us talked about the show, the Dodgers, and sound design. Ty is a cool dude. And he puts on a hell of a mesmerizing show.
This show really blew me away. I have been to a lot of great shows this year, but this one stood out to me in that I think it was the most intimate show I have ever had the pleasure to attend. A large part of this is because of the smallness of the venue. Zebulon is just a small bar with a room in the back that has a small stage and a few large blocks against one of the walls for stadium-like seating. Andrew performed just a few feet in front of me and the rest of the crowd. He made jokes, talked with us, and then, after the show, manned the little fold-out table loaded with merch we had all perused earlier. It was really neat to get a moment to talk to him and express my appreciation while buying a shirt.
Apart from the small size of the venue, the special nature of the show also came from the short run (just 8 shows, two nights each in 4 different cities) and the unique setlist he made for each one. He played a mix of songs from across both his discography and Parquet Courts’. And it was fucking awesome. I heard some songs that I never expected to hear live, such as “Instant Disassembly” and “Picture of Health.” With the latter being one of my all time favorite Parquet Courts songs, I was understandably stoked. Then he also played some of his solo songs I was really hoping for, like “Mountain Time,” so really I had an amazing night all around in terms of song selection.
Throughout it all, it was just Andrew and his acoustic guitar. And that just made it all the more special. Some of the songs are much more energetic in a studio setting, so it was quite special to see them stripped down to a lone acoustic guitar in a small bar in Silverlake. And it also meant that the audience was fantastic. It was small and just very friendly. I spent most of the concert at the front with this one girl Mish who was apparently there from Australia. She was a huge fan and not only did she see the second show he did the next night, but also already had tickets to see him two weeks after in Australia. We bought merch at the same time and she asked him who came up when he googled his name: himself or the Pearl Islands Season 7 Survivor Andrew Savage. Savage sighed and said “Survivor,” which legitimately has me wondering if he chose the stage name “A. Savage” to help get around that.
That question, of course, triggered Mish and I to start talking about Survivor ourselves, which then morphed into an hour and a half conversation at one of the tables outside. Mish is one of the coolest people I have met at a concert (and I meet a lot of cool strangers at these things) so it was really fun to just shoot the shit about our special interests right after sharing this amazing show together. When I finally left half past midnight, I saw Andrew still around. He was chilling at the bar as he nursed a beer and chatted with the neighboring seat. It was such a perfect final moment to sum up the cozy, down-to-earth vibe of the night. It really felt like he was just a friend coming out to play some tunes for us while we all hang at our fave local bar. Excellent show.
This may be one of the most fun shows I have ever seen. The vibes were immaculate. It must be said that any show is a fun show when it mostly features songs from an album that was in your top 5 last year. And it was surely a delight to just fucking dance to these songs that I have spun endlessly since their release—3D Country was my 3rd most listened to album last year with 1,546 scrobbles. Needless to say, I was so, so excited for this show. But even then, DAMN did it deliver even beyond my sky-high expectations.
Firstly, the venue was the perfect fit for this show. The El Rey Theater is a small, fairly intimate venue with a capacity of only 771. It was originally a single-screen movie theater built in 1936 and definitely feels like it. Just a small stage, big red curtains, and a floor size that hits the sweet spot of intimate, but not claustrophobic. Take the Palladium, for instance, where I sometimes get a scary sense of how packed the crowd is. It is noticeable especially during those shows with particular menace like Death Grips, IDLES, and JPEGMAFIA as there are frequent surges towards the front. Those three specifically certainly have some intense crowds who are there to get down, but it also has to do with the pure size and the frightening ease with which you can get swept up in the sea. At JPEGMAFIA, I felt like my feet spent a comparable amount of time off the ground as they did on. But the El Rey is just right and this show really was exemplary of that since the audience was maybe even more energetic than some Palladium crowds, but I still always felt like I would be seen and picked up instantly if I fell in the pit.
Now the comforting safety I felt moshing and crowd-surfing certainly had to do with the venue, but also with just how ridiculously nice the crowd was. Geese has an amazing fanbase and it was such a fucking pleasure to dance, sing, and have fun with them all. It was the most septums I have ever seen at a show apart from Mannequin Pussy and the general vibe just gave jubilant, queer cowboy. And it was an earnest crowd, I cannot emphasize enough. We rocked out so goddamn hard: the way the crowd would periodically explode in rapturous excitement was incredibly energizing. There is something so beautiful about the shared exuberance at a show like this one and at no point was it as electric as the start of 2122 when Winter belted out “GOD OF THE SUN I’M TAKING YOU DOWN ON THE INSIDE.” Just instant explosion as bodies flew into each other, each and every one of them sporting the biggest smile. It only got crazier when the band busted out a random interpolation of “American Idiot” in the middle.
To continue on this point about the crowd, I need to dedicate a whole passage to the utter elation that defined the mosh at this show. Wow. It was a joyous crowd to say the very least and it really showed in the moshing. There were frequent dap ups and moments of looking at each other with excitement in our eyes when a particular song started. The moshing was intense, respectful, raw, and communally invigorating. The closest mosh I’ve experienced to this one was at The Front Bottoms last year and here there was a similar consistency in that you were crashing into the same people frequently. The crowd basically consisted of a chiller back half with drinks and a single, constant sloshing of bodies in front. So those of us in that slurry at the front were basically only ever moving around a 10-foot or so diameter circle and spent most of the show together. And the constant kinetic energy we all fed off each other brought us together in a beautifully intimate way. There was a complete sense of communal abandon that was truly special. Everyone had fun and everyone wanted each other to have fun.
Nothing exemplified this collective exhilaration more than the pure enthusiasm people had to encourage crowd surfing. I crowd surfed twice and so did many other people. It was also a lot of sustained surfing specifically as people would yell out “Get them up!” and convey us often across half the crowd before finally letting us down to rush back into the pit. Hell, one girl crowd surfed for legitimately several minutes, the longest I’ve ever seen someone in the air. It was just an endless stream of the crowd lifting people up and cheering them on.
As much as the hammering energy of the crowd was certainly a highlight, this was also a really well spaced out show in terms of the setlist’s intensity. Most of the nearly hour and a half show was vigorous as it felt like we repeatedly drained our tanks to empty. But there were some much appreciated reprieves during slower moments like “I See Myself,” “4D Country,” and the unreleased “Taxes.” The ability for us to catch a collective breath ensured the longevity of the crowd’s vigor. It also allowed for some stirring moments, especially during “I See Myself” as we all would point at the stage and join Winter in belting out repeatedly “I see myself in you!”
Before I end this, I want to shout out a few of my favorite moments. The first was the start of the concert when they played the unreleased “Islands of Men.” It was a really great track, a really solid set opener, and just a really exciting taste of what they got coming next. The second was them playing “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” during the encore, which was particularly fun since a lot of the crowd was wearing their show-exclusive Beatles/Geese mashup shirts. And finally, I really loved when they brought out their guitar tech Liam to celebrate his 21st birthday. They even gave him a cute little birthday cupcake. All in all, it was a fantastic show. The merriment, the invigorating nature, the sense of uniqueness since it was the final show of their tour, it all came together to make it such a special night. And as much as I am a dedicated fan of Geese and know 3D Country by heart, the show was no less enjoyable for the casual listeners. I brought my roommate—whose only Geese exposure was via osmosis from my listening around the house—and he still had a blast. The band and crowd together just created one of the most welcoming environments I have had the pleasure to participate in at a show. I will definitely be thinking about this one for a while and highly recommend catching these guys live if you get a chance.
No one makes a song like Peggy. It just feels impossible. This is his 5th solo album and he continues to showcase a magical blend of exemplary production and an immensely idiosyncratic style. What is a Peggy song? To me, it is production that sounds as distorted as it does divine and at least one snippet or line that will worm its way into my head like I’m a Kennedy. I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU (or LIFE as I will refer to it from now on) follows this basic frame, but with unique enough results such that every song feels like its own special fever dream. It also has some of JPEGMAFIA’s most catchy songs yet and does so while featuring a refreshingly earnest infusion of rock into his usual sound. The combination of the two leads to some addictive moments that have had tik tok levels of airtime in my head since release.
Take the lead single of “don’t rely on other men” and its opening of rattling drums and an ingenious sample of Brian Cox from Succession—one of my favorite shows by the by. I would have expected Peggy to sample an iconic line when I found out he used a sample from Succession, but the song works all the better knowing he just used an essentially throw away line from the very first episode to make one of the best beats I have ever heard. The way he stretches “I hear you went down” to “down, down, down, down, down, down, etc.” and loops in this pulsating bass is beautiful. It feels as if he took Brian Cox, stretched him into Gumby-like goo, and built him into a massive frame that gives the illusion of stretching forever onward: Peggy then lovingly embeds little delicious sound bites within it and rides the subsequent wave for us to experience. Specifically, my brain constantly replays two samples: “need to stay in yo crib with your gamer pass” and “if the cops come around I’ll say que paso.” And everything else around it is just a shred of a song that you can’t help bopping your head along with. And that all was true just with the single: the album version ends with a glorious and heavenly transcendent flourish of instrumentals that feels like the perfect encapsulation of the infinite nature of the core sample as it ostensibly feels like it may just be stretched on forever. It is inherently a silly way to describe it, but that outro just so strongly resembles to me the stereotypical depiction of a character floating through space—think Bender in the Futurama episode where he becomes god.
LIFE is chock full of such scrumptious moments and another song that exemplifies it is “JPEGULTRA!” with Denzel Curry. From my very first listen, I was swiftly taken in with its triumphant trumpeting intro and Denzel’s booming in with a crisply articulated “Out the trenches for you flabbergasted, fat fucks.” He doesn’t let up for a second afterwards and continues to spit with the same bombastic swagger, all while the trumpets never stop their unvanquished bleating. And, without fail, my ears latch onto my favorite bar every time: “No matter which way you go, you’ll still be a square like a Rubik’s Cube.” It has no right to go that hard, but it does and Denzel delivers. Peggy follows Denzel up by coming in with a great feeling verse that just sounds like aural ambrosia with its stellar combination of Peggy’s catchiest spitting and some particularly soaring production. The song crests the wave of energy and crashes spectacularly around 2:15 when JPEG switches up his vocal delivery entirely and yells “This is my fight, I just woke up as a child of the light/ Jumped on the beat, had to tell it, ‘Goodnight’” as it sounds like he is fending off an unseen ambush. It just hits.
The album has many more wonderfully catchy moments, particularly on songs such as the delightfully musing “either on or off the drugs,” the rampaging “SIN MIEDO,” or the echoing brilliant light of “loop it and leave it.” The last one specifically is a moment of invigorating luminosity that is just a treat to listen to and an underrated gem on the album. Overall, a great listen that will likely be one of my top albums of the year if not my top. Last year Peggy was my #1 artist and so far I am enjoying this album I think as much as SCARING THE HOES.
Goddamn. I am writing this review two days after the concert and I am still in pain and still buzzing and still listening to I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU. Peggy is so good dude. I saw him in 2019 at Coachella and I remember it being great, but I couldn’t tell you any details about it except that it was during the heat of the day and he kept looking like he was going to get a heat stroke cause he was wearing a heavy vest. This time around, the crowd was way bigger and more energetic and Peggy’s discography is way bigger. Though I am quite happy we still got “1539 N. Calvert,” “Thug Tears,” and (my alarm every morning) “Baby I’m Bleeding.” All three went insanely hard and featured some of the most communal and charged moshing of my life. People were just out there having a fun time and it showed. It was electric in the crowd and it showed in the way we would all shoot up and freak out at the start of every song, a shared awareness of the imminent wall of noise and subsequent surge of the crowd. It was a sight to see the “BIG BOOTY HOES” sample fly out and light up the crowd like a torch to one of the three pig’s houses (the wood one). Instant blaze. And it was the same with the Logan Roy sample start of “don’t rely on other men” and the haunting clapping at the start of “SCARING THE HOES.” And really it was true of most of the setlist.
It was a concert for jumping up and down and letting the crowd be your public transportation. The amount of ground I covered that concert was ridiculous. I would get right up to the stage, just a few people back from Peggy, and then be crashing into people towards the back half: this rotation would rinse and repeat multiple times per song. There were some refreshing reprieves though, such as his acapella rendition of “Call Me Maybe” and “either on or off the drugs.” But most of the show was utter chaos and sweat and crowd and people and just raw reaction to music. It was fucking awesome. Within minutes of getting there I saw people crowd surfing and was able to join them after getting some tall guys to lift me. I surfed a few people towards the front before I got dropped, caught, then returned to the floor. And then I got right back into the mosh.
Also, when I say the mosh, I mean much more a constant swirl of bodies crashing into each other and moving as an amorphous blob of humanity that was more akin to a hurricane than an actual pit. Though some large pits did open up during the show, as well as a few small ones that popped up, which offered delightful little dance opportunities with an encouraging crowd. I really enjoyed getting in there and just grooving, at one point doing a pseudo-Dio pose and leaning back until my back was on the ground before getting back to my feet to the cheers of the people that had been knocking into me the last hour. It was beautiful.
To end off this review, I’ll recount two fun extra moments from the night: One was when this tall shirtless sweaty dude leaned in towards me and said to me “I’m going to lift you on my shoulders” and I was like “sure.” As he squatted down and I hopped on his shoulders. I feared I was going to break his neck or back or something cause he was struggling to stand and some guy nearby was like “dude don’t break him,” but the guy lifting me was insistent and was like “no help him up” and he did, to his credit, stand up and carry me on his shoulders for like 30 seconds before dropping me back to the ground. I would crash into this guy in the mosh several times more in the night, chill dude. Another was actually after the show when I was walking to Boardner’s for their Club Decades Brat Night that I was hitting up with some friends and I saw this guy walking away from the Palladium with the same shirt I bought (white long sleeve T that says the tour name). We exchanged the mandatory “cool shirt bro” and “wow that was sick” words of greeting and went on our ways. But we kept walking the same way and only changed directions when I turned down a street to hit up a 7/11. Lo and behold, I see the same guy later at the club and would see him like 3 or 4 more times throughout the night and then after when we were separately waiting for ubers outside the club. The Brat/JPEGMAFIA one night combo is great though—highly recommend—so honestly not surprised I was not the only one to do it.
What a concert to start the year off on. I only learned MSPAINT was playing near me last week, but I knew instantly I had to go. Their 2023 album Post-American was one of my top 10 albums of the year and the kind of album that I just knew would be good live. Their aggression, their brash sound, and the ridiculous catchiness of some of their lyrics all promised a rager. And damn did it deliver. From the first second the band roared to life, the audience just erupted into utter pandemonium. Bodies crashing into bodies as DeeDee yelled out “Information in its purest form/ Resembles chemical components of chloroform.” Throughout their entire 11 song set, the energy never left that fever pitch. If anything, it only rose.
A particularly spectacular high was “Hardwired,” the song I was most eagerly anticipating seeing live, which spawned some of the most vigorously energetic moshing I have seen in a long time. It was particularly notable because the Echo is a small venue of only 350 all shoved into a small room so it both made the moshing more cramped and also more personable because it was much the same people crashing into each other repeatedly. And with that personability arose a really heartwarming sense of catharsis and camaraderie with strangers that nothing can elicit quite like moshing to live music. Multiple times during calmer beats I would be high fiving and dapping up my fellow moshers, the energy palpable and electrifying.
It was also just a friendly crowd, both in terms of moshing etiquette (I saw many people fall and immediately get scooped up by everyone around them) and general affability; one guy told me my hair was very soft and asked what conditioner I used, others joined me and my friends to talk about LOTR and 100 gecs. This friendliness was made all the funnier when we were later crashing into each other while yelling at the top of our lungs “What purpose do cages serve” and “Burn all the flags and the symbols of man.” And those lines specifically are some of my favorite examples of why MSPAINT are such a good live act: their music sounds like a revolutionary call to action as well as a simultaneous demand for a sacrifice of sweat to be delivered via our bodily collisions. And people fucking delivered. It was perhaps some of the most sustained energy I have ever seen in a mosh pit with that few people. Certainly there have been larger pits I have seen at festivals and larger shows, but with one of this size that was comprised of max 15-20 people in the middle consistently, it was immensely impressive that there was never a dull moment. There was also a great amount of crowd surfing, which I always love, and I got to both surf and stage dive. Even managed to snag one of the set lists on my way out. All in all, I had high expectations and they were still shattered: incredible show, incredible band, and incredible performance. And it was particularly exciting that this was MSPAINT’s first sold out show, so I was ecstatic that we as a crowd got to share that with them and I hope to see them many more times.
Let me begin by praising the ridiculous audacity of Mr. Greep. To name his debut solo project The New Sound, particularly after leaving black midi in such a messy fashion (announcing it drunk on IG live), was a risky move to say the least. I was immensely disappointed to see black midi fracture as they were (and remain) one of my all time favorite bands. Furthermore, I was expecting decades more of material from these guys, so their sudden rupture was quite sad. But then, shortly after surprise announcing their breakup (to the shock of the rest of the band as well as their fanbase), Geordie announced a new solo project in the works as well as a first single in “Holy, Holy.” And, you know, holy shit, it was really good. I was still fairly crestfallen, but I was also tentatively excited.
In the end, we got a record that ended up as one of my favorites of the year. The New Sound was exactly that, a completely new sound. Full of much more jammy jazzy goodness than the more chaotic, dark energy that characterized black midi’s material, Greep’s debut completely blew me away: though, not on first listen. Upon first listen, I was still missing the special sauce of black midi, and was reconciling with the fact that we would never see its return. Upon more and more spins, however, my appreciation for The New Sound only continued to exponentially grow. Despite the vast differences, I came to recognize, as well as really appreciate, the core similarity that did exist between The New Sound and my favorite black midi material: rich narrative imagery through vivid storytelling.
Take Hellfire, my favorite black midi record and my favorite record of 2022: I find this album most compelling because of the skill with which the band draws us into the bizarre, and generally fucked up, worlds they concocted. They achieved this through spectacularly layered instrumentation, visceral lyricism, and Greep’s signature vocal delivery. I had the great pleasure to see black midi live in 2022, and it was simply otherworldly the way they filled the room with a ghostly air that seemed to transport us to multiple other planes of existence.
Returning to The New Sound, we see a very similar emphasis on storytelling. There are still dazzling layers of complicated instrumentation, as well as lyricism that is just as rich. Of course, it is all brought together through the magnetic force of Greep’s vocals. However, they are completely different records as well. The two albums are both certainly theatrical in nature, but Hellfire is infused with a drama that is far more externally apocalyptic, so to speak. Contrastingly, The New Sound is also exceedingly dramatic, even in what I would describe as a similarly apocalyptic nature, but one that is inwardly focused. Instead of the hellacious imagery of Hellfire (on full display on songs such as “Dangerous Liaisons,” which is about the literal devil tricking a poor farmhand into committing a murder), The New Sound comes across as a skeevy, disgusting, and, most notably, melodramatic series of vignettes showcasing an inexorably decaying masculine bravado.
To dig into this further, there is an implied continuous narrative presence that is recurringly seen on the tracks “Holy, Holy,” “As if Waltz,” and “The Magician.” Specifically, of a deeply lustful man that destroys his marriage in his pursuit of a sex worker, as well as the tumultuous struggle he grapples with in the conflicting junction between his desire for an emotionally deeper relationship with said sex worker, and his profound shame at his self-destructive behavior.
Before this struggle comes into focus on “As if Waltz,” and “The Magician,” the narrator is first displayed in all of their self-imagined glory on “Holy, Holy.” On this track, Greep paints a picture of what ostensibly appears to be the archetypal macho womanizer:
I could tell you were lonely From the moment you walked in From the way you had your makeup on From the way you’d done your hair From the way you sat down next to me From the way you ordered your drink From the moment you put your hand on my knee I knew I’d have you with ease Do you come here often? Do you know how this thing works? Do you go to bed with a different man every night? Don’t tell me I’m the first
Greep’s lurid descriptions of the narrator meeting a woman at a bar comes across as nigh satirical, particularly as the track transitions into a pre-chorus dripping with braggadocio:
You must have heard about me Everyone knows my name Everyone knows I’m holy
Yet, even here, we start to see the inevitable cracks in his masculine armor, what with the insistence that the woman at the bar surely must know him. It comes across as more desperate than strong: a distinction that seems increasingly accurate as the track progresses into the second verse:
You know my name? Of course, you know my name Everyone does, it’s true It’s true, it’s true, it’s true That I’m known around here The barmaids know my name I’ve had them all before You are new, I’ll have you too It’s time to give in From the shores of Havana To Moscow and Tokyo In French Guianese, in Cantonese Everyone knows my name
The facade is fully shattered by the time the track hits the bridge, my favorite part. It is then revealed that, rather than by chance, this encounter is instead occurring only due to the careful planning of the narrator, with assistance from a sex worker whom he hires to play the other role in his macho fantasy:
I’ll arrive at around 7 p.m. And I want you to get there no later than 10 I want you to be dressed like a sophisticated tart With too much makeup on, will that be alright? And I want you to sit down next to me, as if by chance I want it to seem like we’ve never met before How much will that cost? I want you to look unsure of yourself And I want you to look at me as if I’m attractive I want your eyes to say, “Take me” And I want your lips to be unimpressed And I want you to ask the waiter if I really am who I say I am And I want you to blush I want you to shoot a smug look at the other girls To make them jealous I chose you When I tell you your pussy is holy I want you to slap me and then kiss me Make sure everybody’s watching, kiss me and then walk away Walk to the bathroom, I’ll follow after Don’t worry, we won’t do anything, we’ll just loiter there fifteen minutes or so Then I’ll choose your new lipstick and we’ll walk back out And I want you to tell me I’m a perfect dancer And I want you to tell me I smell great I want you to make me look taller Could you kneel down the whole time? How much will that cost? I want you to put your hand on my knee Will that be alright? I want you to look at me as if you’re lost How much will that cost?
With the illusion broken, the song suddenly takes on a completely different meaning. This is not strong man, but one desperately trying to hold up the staggering weight of his own delusions. He has tied his masculinity inextricably to this elaborate character; consequently, he becomes more charlatan than man. One can only imagine how exhausting it is to maintain this pitiable front, which leads me to a throughline of the characters on this album: that no matter how repulsive they may come across, Greep intentionally presents them in all of their unvarnished patheticness with the goal of engendering some degree of sympathetic understanding in the listener. He says as much in an interview with Whiteboard Journal1:
“…I don’t think the song has to be relatable in terms of the actual situation or story of the song. But it should be relatable in the emotion of the song. That’s what I’ve tried to do here, where there is all this outlandish stuff going on, this kind of absurd, desperate, or funny situation going on, but the passion is palpable, and I’m actually feeling the emotion of the song. That’s relatable, I think. No matter how desperate or how disgusting these characters are in the songs, I hope at some point, people at least feel sorry for them or feel a similar feeling as them.”
Throughout The New Sound, Greep pulls his narrative inspiration from the tales told to him by men that he would meet drinking at various clubs. As farcical as this album comes across at times, there is an unnerving truth to the attitudes displayed within it. This is all the more the case in the wake of a continuing growth in the worst extremes of performative masculinity, especially those promoted by a growing subsection of exceptionally odious “influencers.” This problem is actually directly referenced on “Holy, Holy” in the chorus:
All the revolutionaries (Holy, holy) All the Jihadis too (Holy, holy) ‘Round the world, I’m holy (Holy, holy)
Regarding the “Jihadis” line specifically, Greep explains the origin during an interview with Stereogum2:
These days there’s a lot of this stuff reaching extremes and becoming very scary in some ways. These guys are more isolated than ever. Go on to Twitter and everything is so extreme now. Maybe that’s a Boomer thing to say. But it’s true. In the last five or 10 years there’s a lot of change in this men stuff. People like Andrew Tate. Even on “Holy, Holy,” this line about the Jihadis — I saw a video of Andrew Tate saying, “Even ISIS watches my videos, even ISIS thinks I’m cool.” Like, he was bragging. And I was like, “What the fuck.” That’s the weirdest quote I’ve ever heard. That’s just one thing, but it’s stuff like all the time. These insane guys, and it’s real to somebody.
The opening track of The New Sound, “Blues,” opens the album with a preposterous presentation of the early stages of such toxic masculinity. Composed of increasingly silly lines, such as “And you have a bigger dick than any man who’s ever lived/ And you can cum more than a hundred stallions,” this song is a look at a possible origin of characters such as the narrator from “Holy, Holy.” During an interview with The Rolling Stones3, Greep comments on the track:
I wanted to do a song where it’s like, “Oh, look at this wanker — then again, we’re all kind of wankers”…We’ve all been 18. I wanted to do a song about when you think you’re the shit, and you have this feeling when you’re walking down the street, and you can imagine it’s a movie. Like, what a wanker! It’s just a load of funny lines strung together, really, with the theme of like 18-year-old pretentiousness.
The end result is an exceedingly silly, and fun, opening song. With an unforgettably fast-paced intro, it is one of the most catchy highlights of the tracklist. Yet, there is a darker element within as we come to see this mentality only lead to personal ruin; the more one builds their identity around pretending, the less they have an identity at all. There is a clear throughway from the 18 year old bravado of “Blues,” to the cataclysmic mid-life crisis of “Holy, Holy.”
Throughout the The New Sound, Greep weaves these elaborative storylines of downcast men in denial with beautifully colorful instrumentation and richly intricate song structures. The end result is a fascinatingly strange contrast in sonic “jammyness” and contextual perversion: of light-hearted grooves and heavy-weighted gloom. Above all else, it is an intensely theatrical journey that plumbs the depths of toxic masculinity. It is also great fun to sing along to – particularly “The Magician,” which features such banger lines as “And what of the endless, heedless, ennui?” Check it out.
