One of the most interesting things about Shame is how they find new ways to re-examine themselves on each record. Drunk Tank Pink was about being forced into sometimes frightening introspection during the pandemic, and now Food for Worms has the band looking outward at the world and each other.
“You’re complaining a lot about the things that you got given,” sings frontman Charlie Steen on “Fingers of Steel” – a song about being straight-up with your friends, especially when they don’t want to hear it but need to hear it. You can’t control the results, of course, but at least you were honest. “Six Pack” is almost a story of madness brought on during pandemic lockdown. “You’re just a creature of bad habit. You got nothing and no one to live for,” Steen sings in the middle of the track, making you think he’s lost it, but then the whole band comes in with bonkers fury to bust him out of the (mental) room in which he’s trapped.
“Yankees” is one of the few (barely) subdued tracks on the album. The guitars drift in and out of the track like they’re walking back and forth through a bead curtain. It drifts nicely into “Alibis,” which sears across your speakers like a match thrown onto a trail of kerosene. “This time, I have no use for alibis,” Steen sings, letting us know that he has no intention of hiding his intentions.
“Adderall” is a tale from the perspective of someone dependent on medication just to manage everyday tasks (“It gets you through the day…”). Steen’s vocals take on a simple vulnerability and Sean Coyle-Smith‘s guitar floats back and forth from frantic to relaxed. The vocal vulnerability continues on “Orchid,” in which Steen takes on a bit of a crooner style, not unlike Protomartyr‘s Joe Casey singing sometimes heartbreaking lyrics like “We’re tourists in adolescence. We’re lovers in regression.”
Josh Finerty‘s bass on “The Fall of Paul” is vicious, almost like a growling bear staring at you from across a fire-lit campsite late one cold night. The drums on “Burning By Design” will instantly cause rampant dancing whenever it’s played live. They propel the song, and the whole band, like a foot stomped on an accelerator pedal, and yet Steen is already looking ahead to what new things the band can craft (“I don’t care about the songs that use these chords, I am sure there’s plenty more, but I know they’re not the same.”).
“Different Person” is about the ever-changing dynamics of friendships (a running theme through the album), and how some friendships you think will last forever don’t, and how others you never thought much about at first turn out to be the best ones in the end (“I guess you’re changing. It had to happen eventually.”). They remind us of this one last time on “All the People” with lyrics like “All the people that you’re gonna meet, don’t throw it all away, because you can’t love yourself.”
Hold onto your friends, and they’ll help you hold onto yourself before you, and they, become food for worms. Everything is impermanent, even friendships, but we can enjoy them while they last.
I love the American Southwest, particularly the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts. I once heard an Arizona writer, whose name has long since drifted from my memory, describe the energy of the desert as this: “The desert will reduce you.” I can’t put it any better than that. Detroit proto-punks Protomartyr, however, have summed up that growth-by-reduction philosophy well on their new album, Formal Growth in the Desert.
The album comes after a lot of changes for the band, particularly for lead singer and lyricist Joe Casey. His mother died after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease, leaving Casey in his Detroit family home alone for the first time in years. Then, repeated break-ins of his home made him reconsider the town he loved and if he should stay there. Personal safety and less stress won the debate, and he moved out of the home and dove into his journals for some of his most personal lyrics yet.
“Welcome to the haunted Earth,” he sings to open the album on “Make Way,” – a song about death and how it changes everything for everyone, even if they never knew the deceased. “For Tomorrow” is one of Protomartyr’s most straight-up post-punk tracks in a few years with Greg Ahee‘s guitar chords taking on weird angles and sharp edges throughout it.
The desert metaphor is in plain sight on “Elimination Dances,” in which Casey says, “In the desert, I was humbled.” Yep. It does that to you. So does the death of a loved one. The song creeps around you (largely due to Scott Davidson‘s excellent bass riffs on it) like grief always waiting at the edge of a room or in a quiet moment. Casey’s vocal delivery on “Fun in Hi Skool” (a song about how school pretty much sucks) is some of his fiercest on the whole record. “Let’s Tip the Creator” is the band sticking their fingers in the eyes of mega-corporations who continually screw over employees in pursuit of profits.
The album’s centerpiece is “Graft Vs. Host,” which was written in the early days following Casey’s mother’s death. He wonders what it will take to find happiness afterwards, almost if there’s some sort of procedure he can have to remove the grief. “She wouldn’t want to see me live this way,” he says. He’s right, but he knows that’s easier said than done. It’s a lovely track that will hit hard for you if you’ve lost someone close.
“3800 Tigers” references the Detroit Tigers playing over a century from now and how we’re also slowly killing all the remaining tigers on Earth. “Polacrilex Kid” has Casey wondering if he can be loved while hating himself. Alex Leonard‘s relentless drum beats on it reflect the pounding in Casey’s brain as he tries to figure out his self-imposed riddle. “Fulfillment Center” is a song about Amazon workers unionizing to get things as basic as restroom breaks, and “We Know the Rats” makes reference to the break-ins at Casey’s home (“Could’ve happened to anyone. They came through the back room.”). You can tell Casey still has some smoldering anger over it and how the wheels of justice often turn slow.
Casey is still wondering if he can find love on the roaring track “The Author,” and, delightfully, the recently engaged frontman finds it on “Rain Garden,” in which he sounds like he can relax and step into a new light (“My love…Make way for my love.”) over the next dune in his metaphorical desert.
I need to mention the thematic feel of the album. Greg Ahee has spoken about how he was scoring films and listening to a lot of Ennio Morricone while Formal Growth in the Desert was being crafted, and the album moves along like a film beginning with tragedy and ending with hope. It’s brilliant.
I was delighted to get an e-mail from Guillame (guitar) and Romauld (drums) of Birds of Nazca from Nantes, France wondering if I might like to hear their new stoner / doom / heavy psych EP Héliote. Um…Yeah!
After a brief intro, we’re smacked in the face with the rolling, rumbling, rocking “Inti Raymi” – which has you wondering how just two people can put out so much heavy sound. “Spheniscus” calms the guitars a bit, but it’s a bit of a feint as the track builds to a pulse-quickening space rock jam about two minutes into it. Soon, it’s like flying a spacecraft through the rings of Saturn like you’ve been doing it for years. The EP ends with “Gucumatz,” spanning over nine minutes and taking you beyond Saturn with its expansive guitar chords and low gravity drums.
This is all in just three songs. It makes you wonder what kind of cosmic power they could unleash in a full album. Let’s hope they do soon.
Keep your mind open.
[Fly over to the subscription box while you’re here.]
The inimitable King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard announce their first 2024 North American tour dates, all 3-hour marathon sets. Following the release of PetroDragonic Apocalypse — their latest album and “end times thrash metal concept album” (The Needle Drop) — as well as this year’s recently-wrapped sold-out residency tour, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s newly announced dates will bring their acclaimed marathon sets back to North America, including stops in New York, Chicago, Austin, TX and Quincy, WA at the legendary Gorge Amphitheatre (which, at a capacity of 21,600 tickets, will be the band’s largest headline show to date). General on sale begins today Friday, September 15th at 12pm ET. A full list of dates is below. Tickets will be available at kinggizzardandthelizardwizard.com
KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD TOUR DATES Sat. Aug. 17, 2024 – Forest Hills, NY @ Forest Hills Stadium Sun. Sept. 1, 2024 – Chicago, IL @ Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island Sat. Sept. 14, 2024 – Quincy, WA @ The Gorge Amphitheatre Fri. Nov. 15, 2024 – Austin, TX @ Germania Insurance Amphitheater
While you were busy doom scrolling, Lowell, Massachusetts rapper / DJ / MC / radio show host / actor / mack / all-around cool dude D-Tension taught himself how to play a guitar and made a rock record – Tales from the Pub. It’s an album entirely played and sung by him and made up of songs based on his life both as a teenager and as a grown man dealing with everything from existential ennui to calling out a possible murderer.
“No Name Song” is instantly relatable to everyone, as it’s about not being able to remember someone’s name within thirty seconds of meeting them. D’s guitar work is loud, sizzling, and echoes his frustration as he tries to remember the name of a hot girl. “Charlie” is the song about the aforementioned suspected murderer – a rich guy who seems above the law while women associated with him have been found in a local river. D, for one, isn’t standing for it any longer (“And when you see Charlie, tell him that I’m on my way. And when you see Charlie, tell him that I know where he lives.”).
D has mentioned in interviews how fellow east-coasters The Smithereens were an inspiration for some of the tracks on the album, and I can hear some of Pat DiNizio‘s vocal influence on “Alone.” “MAGAHAT” is a fun punk track about D discovering a girl he likes is a Trump supporter. Getting back to The Smithereens, Jim Babjak‘s guitar influence comes out on “Other Side of the Road” and in one of D’s best solos on the record.
“Ghost Me” covers one of D’s favorite songwriting subjects – girls who did him wrong. In this track, he professes that he still cares for a gal who ditched him and is willing to meet her again even after she’s been gone for ten years. His guitar work gets psychedelic on “Woodrose,” much to my delight. Crank that reverb!
“Tell me, how we gonna get that magic back?” D asks on “I Love You Anyway,” in which he ponders how to reignite the spark in his relationship but is willing to stick it out through the tough times. “(They Were) In Love” brings in some doo-wop for good measure for a funny song about how weird love is in modern times…yet it’s really as weird as it’s always been.
The White Stripes are another influence D-Tension has mentioned for Tales from the Pub, and that can be heard on “I Give In” with its jangly guitar riffs and simple, raw drum beats. The closer, “The Airport Song,” is one D wrote when we was fifteen-years-old. It’s a fun track about how the airport is a great place to meet girls from all over the world and all different sizes, shapes, races, and religions. It’s easy to picture a teenaged D-Tension standing wide-eyed in Boston airport as gorgeous women keep passing him.
It’s a fun look into D-Tension’s brain, and you can tell he had fun making this record. I’m sure he has more tales to tell, and I can’t wait to hear them.
Today, A. Savage, of the rock band Parquet Courts, announces his second solo album, Several Songs About Fire, out October 6th on Rough Trade Records. He also presents its lead single/video, “Elvis in the Army,” and expands his forthcoming tour. Produced by John Parish in Bristol, Several Songs About Fire is bolstered by the support of Jack Cooper (Modern Nature, Ultimate Painting) and Cate Le Bon, as well as members of Kamikaze Palm Tree & caroline. The end result is tantamount to psychic odyssey, with lead single “Elvis in the Army” placing us in asubterranean venue where the livid, ratifying cymbal raises the room’s blood pressure. “Elvis in the Army” follows the previously-shared “Thanksgiving Prayer” — “an intimate and intricate composition” (Consequence) — and is accompanied by a rousing music video shot in Paris and directed by Emile Moutaud.
Of the track, Savage adds: “We often describe ourselves in geographic terms. American, New Yorker — two terms that I’ve used to identify myself that have to do with being from or of a certain place. So ‘Elvis in the Army’ is a bit of an inventory of those labels. They have less to do with geography than we realize. Really we’re just talking about ourselves, then framing certain characteristics geographically. No matter where I live I’ll have an American psyche until the day I die, for better or for worse. I’ll always be of America. And I can’t imagine a time where New York doesn’t feel like home. But despite that, I’d rather not be associated with a place, at least for now.”
This fall, Savage will embark on a US tour, bringing his acclaimed live performance to a slew of cities, including Chicago, New York, Washington, DC and more, followed by a newly announced run of 2024 UK/EU dates, plus a string of West Coast dates next spring. A full list of dates is below, and tickets for newly announced dates are on sale Friday, August 25 @ 10am local time.
Novelist Kathleen Alcott on Several Songs About Fire ~ ~
“I imagine myself playing these songs in a small club that is slowly burning,” Savage says of his new record. After more than a decade in New York, Savage left the city and the United States, marking his exit with a masterpiece of maturity and a worthy corollary to his first solo venture, 2017’s Thawing Dawn. “Fire is something you have to escape from, and in a way this album is about escaping from something. This album is a burning building, and these songs are things I’d leave behind to save myself.”
In its recording, too, Several Songs about Fire became as urgent and intuitive as a response to disaster. Produced by Parish on a 1” 16-track, the album was partially sculpted in the bucolic, nocturnal hush of rural England, where Savage and Cooper worked deep into the night, trying not to wake Cooper’s sleeping daughter. The intimacy of these tracks are refracted by the presence of some of Savage’s closest friends — among them Cate Le Bon — who listened to Savage work on what would become the album during a US tour in 2022. Featuring additional contributions from saxophonist Euan Hinshelwood (Cate Le Bon’s band), drummer Dylan Hadley (Kamikaze Palm Tree, White Fence), and violinist Magdalena McLean (caroline), Several Songs about Fire is a devotional study in tradition — and something all Savage’s own. “It was really special to see them come into existence and to then be in the studio working on them with him,” explains Le Bon of working toward Savage’s vision, rather than within a band. “The beautiful friction of shoulder to shoulder was replaced by something else.”
The record’s singular irreverence is stitched together by Savage’s outsize gifts as a lyricist and observer, a quality Parish calls “anemotional openness guarded by a laconic wit.” Worrying questions of wealth and poverty, self and other, Savage displays the poet’s gift of knowing when to narrate and when to vanish, leaving the listener to their own emotional privacy rather than instructing them how to feel through vertiginous inversions of instrumentation and lyrics. Influenced by the disparate vantage points of Sybille Baier and Townes Van Zandt, Savage joins a canon of songwriters whose project is a constantly dilating aperture and perspective.
In rendering the signage of laundromats and threats of debt collectors as glistering and totemic as the scope of mountains, rivers, seas, and skies, Savage finds hopes and curses in equal measure — inviting thelistener to consider a life in which attention is a religion, and thebody is the divine text. Like the survivor of exodus, Savage says: “I don’t really remember the process of writing. I just see the evidence of it when I reopen a notebook.” Several Songs About Fire stands as an act of nearly libidinal rebellion against a moment when so much of life is the blue light of screens. This is an album whose topic is no less than the sublime: the moments in which a sensory experience becomes aholiness or possession of its own, and the self floats above it.
SEVERAL SONGS ABOUT FIRE TRACKLIST 1. Hurtin’ or Healed 2. Elvis in the Army 3. Le Grande Balloon 4. My my, My Dear 5. Riding Cobbles 6. Mountain Time 7. David’s Dead 8. Thanksgiving Prayer 9. My New Green Coat 10. Out Of Focus
A. SAVAGE TOUR DATES (NEW DATES IN BOLD) Sat. Sep. 30 – Newport, Essex, UK @ Murmuration Festival Fri. Oct. 20 – Portland, ME @ SPACE ^ Sat. Oct. 21 – Boston, MA @ Crystal Ballroom ^ Sun. Oct. 22 – Portsmouth, NH @ Press Room ^ Tue. Oct. 24 – Toronto, ON @ Velvet Underground ^ Wed. Oct. 25 – Kalamazoo, MI @ Eccentric Cafe ^ Fri. Oct. 27 – Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle ^ Sat. Oct. 28 – St. Paul, MN @ Turf Club * Sun. Oct. 29 – Milwaukee, WI @ Colectivo # Mon. Oct. 30 – St. Louis, MO @ Off Broadway % Wed. Nov. 1 – Columbus, OH @ Ace of Cups % Thu. Nov. 2 – Louisville, KY @ Whirling Tiger % Fri. Nov. 3 – Nashville, TN @ Third Man % Sat. Nov. 4 – Atlanta, GA @ The Earl % Sun. Nov. 5 – Asheville, NC @ Grey Eagle Tue. Nov. 7 – Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle % Thu. Nov. 9 – Washington, DC @ Black Cat % Fri. Nov. 10 – Philadelphia, PA @ First Unitarian % Sat. Nov. 11 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom % Thu. Feb 08, 2024 – Manchester, UK @ Pink Room Fri. Feb 09, 2024 – Dublin, Ireland @ Workmans Club Sun. Feb 11, 2024 – Glasgow, UK @ Broadcast Mon. Feb 12, 2024 – Bristol, UK @ Thekla Wed. Feb 14, 2024 – London, UK @ The Garage Thu. Feb 15, 2024 – Paris, France @ La Maroquinerie Fri. Feb 16, 2024 – Brussels, Belgium @ Botanique Rotonde Sun. Feb 18, 2024 – Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Paradiso Upstairs Mon. Feb 19, 2024 – Cologne, Germany @ MTC Club Wed. Feb 21, 2024 – Copenhagen, Denmark @ Ideal Bar – Vega Thu. Feb 22, 2024 – Berlin, Germany @ Privat Club Fri. Apr 05, 2024 – Austin, TX @ The Far Out Sun. Apr 07, 2024 – Santa Fe, NM @ Meow Wolf Tue. Apr 09, 2024 – Tucson, AZ @ Club Congress Wed. Apr 10, 2024 – Pioneertown, CA @ Pappy & Harriet’s Thu. Apr 11, 2024 – Santa Ana, CA @ Constellation Room Fri. Apr 12, 2024 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Teragram Ballroom Sat. Apr 13, 2024 – San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop Mon. Apr 15, 2024 – Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios Tue. Apr 16, 2024 – Seattle, WA @ Tractor Tavern
^ w/ Annie Hart * w/ Cha Cha # w/ Diet Lite % w/ Sluice
I had been trying to see The Beths for a couple years, but either I was always working when they were playing or their tour dates were nowhere near where I live, but lo and behold, they scheduled a date in Kalamazoo, Michigan, a mere one-and-half-hour drive from my house, at Bell’s Eccentric Café.
It turned out not only to be my first time seeing The Beths, but also the first show I saw at Bell’s beer garden stage. I’d been to multiple shows at Bell’s, but had never been in the garden and had no idea it was so spacious. I also didn’t realize that the town’s Metro train tracks ran behind the stage area, and neither did the band and a lot of other people, until two trains went past during The Beths’ set.
Not only was the size of the garden a delightful surprise, but so was the age range of the crowd. It was an all-ages show, and I saw people ranging from a boy who was barely thirteen to a man in his seventies there. A lot of people were sporting Beths t-shirts from previous tours, and the crowd clearly loved them and were happy they’d come all the way from New Zealand.
First up, however were Disq from Madison, Wisconsin. They played an energetic mix of noise rock, post punk, and no-wave and were having a great time. I didn’t get to see their whole set, thanks to road construction delaying me a bit, but what I saw and heard was loud and frantic.
Disq
The Beths came out in the dark, complete with a giant inflatable fish, and opened with the title track of their debut album Future Me Hates Me, and the crowd was instantly happy. The Beths are a fun band. Their love of playing, and their camaraderie, is immediately apparent, and that energy races through the audience.
They played a fun set, including fun hits like “Whatever” and “Dying to Believe,” secretly sad songs like “Expert in a Dying Field” and “Best Left,” and lovely love songs like “Your Side” and “When You Know You Know.”
“Whatever, yeah, whatever.”
“We love you!” was a common shout from the crowd, and The Beths returned the love for the whole set, and did a lot of shredding. It’s easy to focus on Elizabeth Stokes‘ lyrics and miss how well the whole band plays. They could easily cut a shoegaze album if they wanted – and I hope they do.
It was a fun night with nice late summer weather and good vibes all around thanks to The Beths bringing the love.
Cincinnati punks The Serfs, Trouble in Mind’s newest signing, announce their third album, Half Eaten By Dogs, out October 27th. It’s their best album yet, putting a decidedly Midwestern spin on the modernist twitch of future-forward bands like Total Control or Cold Beat, as well as the post-industrialist dance floor grime of Skinny Puppy, Dark Day, This Heat, and Factrix. Anyone paying attention can see that Cincinnati is a very real hotbed of musical creativity at the moment, and The Serfs – Dylan McCartney (vocals, percussion, guitar, bass, electronics), Dakota Carlyle (electronics, bass, guitar, vocals) and Andie Luman (vocals, synths) – are undeniably near the center of the city’s neu-underground scene. They are a deliberately nebulous and incidentally industrialist gang of dance-floor hymners – tranced-out troubadours whose sound and musical ideology seems to be a causal manifestation of their immediate environments.
Half Eaten By Dogs is a wide-eyed look through a scope into a heathenish vision, where ice-encrusted synth harmonies command oozing chemical rhythms and drilled-out elemental rock formations. There’s a psychedelic melancholy to it, in both the abstract lyrical sense, with doomed proclamations of natural and supernatural disasters, and the more tangible musical sense. It veers all over the map of tenebrous drum and synthesizers and stygian guitar, at times with a cautious paranoia and at times with tuneful defiance (and in some moments harmonica, saxophone or flute).
Today’s “Club Deuce” is a flat-out sexy floor filler. Its low-end sizzle is designed to make you move, and slither like a lurker at the threshold of the dance floor. “I thought of the idea for this song at first like a movie in my mind,” says Luman. “It was the story of a fated man and a modern day Venus with complete and unrelenting control. The set was a quiet corner in a thunderstruck city with endless commotion in the distance. The whole thing glowing like a neon sign. ‘Club Deuce’ churns unhurried until it billows all around you and you’re caught like a fly in the jaws of a venus fly trap.”
The Serfs, emerging like a missile from some surreptitious silo, were formed while McCartney and Carlyle were scraping the bottom of the barrel, tilling the soil for the baron (a.k.a. working the fryers at a pub) and generally wallowing in the puddles of despair. The two decided to express their grim outlook through self-hypnosis by way of drums and synthesizers. After a couple of bungled attempts to play live, Luman joined the band and the classic trio lineup was formed. Like their Ohio predecessors, The Serfs seem askew from the art that surrounds them, and they’re proud of it. Half Eaten By Dogs may be a step further down into the catacombs for the band, but if the principle of correspondence is correct, then they could be on their way to somewhere higher.
Today, Southern California-bred musician Zooey Celeste signs to ATO Records, announces his debut album, Restless Thoughts, out November 3rd, and presents the lead single/title track. Produced and recorded by acclaimed artist Nick Hakim at his Brooklyn studio, Restless Thoughts centers on Zooey’s hypnotic baritone vocals, often set against a strangely potent backdrop of sparse drum-machine beats and droney guitar tones. The result is a fully-realized soundscape, a darkly ethereal palette which Zooey classifies as astral-pop.
Restless Thoughts takes its title from a song inspired by a particularly dramatic scene in Zooey’s novel, a metaphysical thriller narrated by the character of Zooey Celeste. “It’s a scene where the father of the protagonist has destroyed his marriage and left his daughter behind, and he’s going to meet his mistress and driving in a very suicidal headspace,” he explains. “He gets into a car accident, and two-thirds of the way into the song he’s floating above his body and watching as they’re trying to resuscitate him.”
Like many of the album’s songs, the gorgeously chilling track took shape in the throes of the novel-writing process. “I’d write a chapter and pick up my guitar and start writing songs based off the scenes I’d just finished,” says Zooey. “It’s funny because it’s the first time I’ve ever allowed myself to write from the perspective of a character, but it’s also the most authentic thing I’ve ever made in my life.”
Restless Thoughts is the real-life manifestation of its creator’s alter ego — an astral shaman responsible for leading the newly departed into the great beyond. After dreaming up the character of Zooey Celeste in a feverishly written novel he refers to as “somewhere between Quentin Tarantino and the Bhagavad Gita,” Zooey began working with longtime friend Nick Hakim (whose production credits also include Lil Yachty and Lianne La Havas) to create this ideal soundtrack for nocturnal driving, an immediate conduit for lasting transcendence. Alongside Hakim, Zooey enlisted a wide array of guest musicians to flesh out the sound of Restless Thoughts, including Unknown Mortal OrchestrabassistJake Portrait, drummer Abe Rounds (Andrew Bird, Blake Mills, Devandra Banhart), and Columbian-Canadian singer/songwriter Tei Shi. Mastered by Heba Kadry (Ryuichi Sakamoto, Björk, Julianna Barwick), Restless Thoughts endlessly drifts between avant-punk and chamber-pop and lo-fi psychedelia, quickly drawing the listener into a sustained dream state.
Naming J.D. Salinger, Iggy Pop, and Tyler, the Creator among his inspirations, Zooey started writing songs at the age of eight after hearing The Beatles for the first time. Along with studying poetry and creative writing, he later took up guitar, piano, and harmonium and played in a series of indie-rock-leaning musical projects that ultimately proved unfulfilling. “We’d finish a show and it would be the best show we’d ever played, and I’d feel physically sick afterward,” he says. “People liking it made me feel bad, which is probably because I knew I wasn’t being my most authentic self.” After a seven-year stint in New York (where he first connected with Hakim), Zooey spent several years in Hawaii and devoted much of his time to surfing—an essential part of his life since early childhood. “I got addicted to surfing bigger waves at Sunset Beach on the North Shore and had a near-death experience where I went through a coral reef, and it changed my life in a lot of ways,” he says. “It took the air out of the wanderlust I’d felt for a long time, and brought me closer to the things I’d been running away from. Because of that, music went from being an escape to a base of reflection where I’m able to really sit with my emotions and process them and be totally honest with myself about what I want from life.”
With the release of Restless Thoughts, Zooey hopes to instill the audience with a similarly expanded sense of possibility. “Making this record showed me that if I’m not going beyond what the world has handed me as options, then I’m not being creative,” he says. “I went as far as I could with the process of self-exploration, and I felt fully supported in that—almost like everything was a little bit fated, or we were tapping into something in the ether. I’d love it if that inspired other people to go off and do whatever they feel compelled to do, and let themselves be completely entranced by it.”
Art Feynman — the eccentric alter ego of accomplished visual artist and producer Luke Temple — presents the new single, “Passed Over,” from his forthcoming album, Be Good The Crazy Boys, out November 10th on Western Vinyl. “Passed Over” explores struggling with FOMO — “I’m ok to be passed over // Let them have it // I don’t care” — a narrative that would be relatable if the song didn’t sound so completely unhinged. Across a vast psychedelic palette, “Passed Over” features a robotic instrumental breakdown and an out-of-this-world saxophone performance from Nicole McCabe. Following the “synth-pop jam” (FLOOD) “All I Can Do” and the “breezy” (Brooklyn Vegan) “Desperately Free” — “Passed Over” is another thrilling glimpse at the tropical contours of Be Good The Crazy Boys. “It can be refreshing to decide to eat last, it’s stressful if you’re always needing to be at the front of the line,” explains Feynman.
Until now, Art Feynman has strictly been a solo act, a way for Temple to explore surprising sonic landscapes without the burdens of identity. Slightly twisted takes on Kosmische musik, worldbeat, and art pop can all be found scattered across the Art Feynman discography, but with Be Good The Crazy Boys, Feynman fully immerses himself into pools of collective madness. Unlike the first two Art Feynman albums, Be Good The Crazy Boys was recorded live in-studio with a full band. The result captures a spirit of restless anxiety, and recalls the most frenetic work by Talking Heads, or Oingo Boingo at their darkest.
“To me,” Temple explains, “there was a lot of energy that needed to be released as the result of living in isolation for 6 years. It also seems to speak to a general anxiety we’re all holding, but it’s expressed in a cathartic way.” It’s this acknowledgement of general anxiety that separates Feynman from the other fictional personas that have been cropping up in the music world lately. Feynman doesn’t sound suave, confident, or even heartbroken in these songs; it sounds like he’s on the verge of a panic attack.
With Be Good The Crazy Boys, Art Feynman proves to be more than just a character. He represents the part of the modern, collective consciousness that’s struggling to maintain balance in a toxic, chaotic world. In less skilled hands, that concept could result in a very somber listen. Fortunately, when Art Feynman gets his hands on the chaos of the modern age, it simply makes you want to dance.
