Cheem – Fast Fashion | EP Review
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Lonely Ghost Records
A couple of years ago, I decided to make the journey from Los Angeles to Sacramento to stay with some friends, using a Coheed and Cambria show in Berkeley as the perfect excuse for a little cross-state adventure. In an attempt to keep travel expenses down and being the perpetually car-less wonder that I am, this trek was to be made via Greyhound bus. Traveling from LA to Sacramento on a public bus is just about the longest trip you could possibly imagine, which necessitated an equally long and engaging collection of songs to pass the time as I took in the great, wide nothingness of central California farmland.
It's no secret that I love making playlists, especially for travel, so before that trip, I decided to make a collaborative playlist and asked friends to add whatever they were jamming to at the time. Among the additions to this playlist, my friend Sierra of the New Jersey band With Sails Ahead added a song called “Pay2Play” by this band Cheem who had somehow completely slipped under my radar. If their name and bright, stylistic album cover weren’t enough to pique my interest, the music itself felt like dunking my brain in Liz Blizz flavor SoBe and impaling it like the Neversoft eyeball logo that pops up before the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater title screen.
Listening to Cheem for the first time was like nothing I had ever experienced before – a seamless marriage of early aughts pop-punk vocals, nu-metal rapping, and the tightest rhythm section I had heard in ages. I was immediately arrested by how the band effortlessly shifted from hip-hop to ska to punk and myriad other genres, not only between songs but within the songs themselves. I’ve always found myself drawn to music that plays with various genres and subverts expectations, unafraid to test boundaries, and the way Cheem was not tethered to any one specific style quickly cemented them as one of my all-time favorites in the DIY scene.
As the relationship between artist and listener has evolved in recent years with the advent and expansion of social media, the discussion of music classification rages on more fervently than ever before. Music fans have become so comfortable having instant access to the artists they listen to, and with that access comes the ability to make these artists aware of every conceivable opinion a listener could have on their music, unfortunately including this onslaught of hot genre takes. I consistently see this happening to the band pulses. and the endless list of genres they are told they are despite being very clear about how they classify themselves. Cheem is another one of these bands that is constantly testing the limits of genre classification.
The members of Cheem have clearly grown up with an appreciation for multiple genres of music, and you can hear that love incorporated in their songs. In the past, I’ve described them as “a jazz band disguised as a nu-metal band disguised as a pop band.” Funky bass grooves, sharp and textured drum shuffles, heavy riffs, and the smoothest execution of the two-singer style – rapping blended with dynamic vocals reminiscent of a few particular pop-punk vocalists of yesteryear. Even within their last LP, Guilty Pleasure, their sense of style and genre is broken down and rebuilt countless times across the record’s 22-minute runtime. Cheem are a fierce amalgamation of the countless artists who have inspired them, and their latest EP release, Fast Fashion, maintains this versatile approach to their creative process, expanding on it in a fresh, explosive way.
Immediately, listeners are thrown into this latest Cheem experience with a relentless, biting riff that is soon joined by the band’s rapper, Skye Holden, and it’s clear that “Bootleg” is nothing like the two singles that preceded the EP. Instead, it leans far more into the band’s heavy rock and hip-hop sensibilities, hitting me more like a song straight out of the Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island soundtrack. There’s a freedom in Cheem’s approach to style that allows for the most creative descriptors of their music that are never too far off the mark.
The groundwork laid in the intro track is juxtaposed by “Motorola Razr,” which perfectly encapsulates its name, boasting a distinct, mid-2000s sleekness. This track features the commanding and mesmerizing drumwork I’ve come to love from the band, frenzied pop vocals gliding over them, and irregular keyboard notes sending the listener back to a time when owning a flip phone was one’s coolest quality. Gabe Weitzman’s production on this EP amplifies each song’s most note-worthy aspects, particularly in how gorgeously every bass note and keyboard ping of “Motorola Razr” accents the main groove. The band packs their songs so neatly with various textures, and it's always a treat to hear tracks like this that let every single detail shine.
The star of Fast Fashion for me, from first listen to every revisit, remains “Jock Horror.” It simultaneously reflects everything I love about Cheem’s signature style while continuing to defy expectations, and what we’re left with is a dark, cynical, hardcore banger. The thick textures are all there, from subtle electronic effects to consistent record scratches, all anchored by sporadic, distorted chords. Lead vocalist Sam Nazaretian’s buttery vocals sail across the pop straight-aways to balance out Skye’s harmonies and rap breaks. Approaching the end of the track, when you think there couldn’t possibly be any more surprises, Sam slides in with the cleanest “oooh girl” vocal lines I’ve ever heard. Even calling them an “earworm” is doing them a disservice. They are operating on a level as a singer that I genuinely believe future generations will look back on with the same reverence as Patrick Stump. “Jock Horror” delivers hip-hop sensibilities, hints of nu-metal, gnarly breakdowns, and more – a stylistic modern masterpiece that could be plucked from several different eras of music and is exactly what makes Cheem such a memorable act in our current musical landscape. I do think “all good things must end” because, unfortunately, this song does.
This latest offering from Cheem acts as a powerful reminder that not only is genre usually an unnecessary way of defining music in our current climate, but in Cheem’s case, it makes absolutely no sense to confine them to any one specific box. As a writer who actively suppresses using the term “vibes” in her writing, I can’t help but describe this band as running purely on vibes alone. They don’t have time to concern themselves with inconsequential things like genre when they’re hard at work fabricating stylistic bangers straight from the Cheem pop factory. There is something in this EP for everyone, and contrary to what the title would suggest, Fast Fashion is a versatile and calculated collection of songs that will not be wearing out any time soon.
Ciara Rhiannon (she/her) is a pathological music lover writing out of a nebulous location somewhere in the Pacific Northwest within close proximity of her two cats. She consistently appears on most socials as @rhiannon_comma, and you can read more of her musical musings over at rhiannoncomma.substack.com.
