Self Defense Family – Try Me | Album Retrospective
/
Deathwish Inc.
“Children are gonna be pissed by this, but… yelling ‘all the dumb cunts they get what they want’ for a long time… it’s hard for me to even listen to.”
“It should thrill you!”
When people say “band X or album Y” changed their life, it’s easy to be skeptical. Not because it’s impossible to believe that a piece of music could do that, but it is a lofty claim that gets thrown around so much that it’s become its own meme. I’m sure the critical-yet-charismatic Patrick Kindlon would dislike me saying so, but Self Defense Family’s 2014 album Try Me is one of those life-changing albums for me. The album celebrated its tenth anniversary back in January, and it felt crucial for me to look back on it, given the indisputable impact it had on my 18-year-old brain.
A brief history: Self Defense Family was once called End Of A Year and first formed under that name in New York in 2003. That first iteration of the band released one demo, three albums, and a prolific amount of EPs and singles starting in 2004. In 2011, they briefly rebranded as the verbose “End Of A Year Self Defense Family” before finally landing on just Self Defense Family before the year was over. This change, alongside finding a new home at legendary punk label Deathwish Inc., re-established the band as a somewhat unclassifiable alternative outfit amongst a sea of emo and post-hardcore bands of the time. To me, they are the perfect kind of musical combo: their influences are heavily worn on their sleeves (Nick Cave, Lungfish, and Silkworm, to name a few), but they don’t sound exactly like any of them, nor any of their contemporaries. The same could be said for the doom-metallic-hardcore quintet Twitching Tongues or the ever-evolving, all-angles-of-punk rockers Ceremony.
Since becoming more “popular” (as popular as an intentionally anachronistic band can be), Self Defense has garnered a cultish, deeply devoted following, and it’s very easy to fall deep into that hole. Vocalist and lyricist Patrick Kindlon is the only constant member, joining up with a rotating cast of regulars and one-off players whenever they’re available. Because of this, the group is ripe with side projects and associated acts; Kindlon himself is perhaps even better known for Drug Church than he is for Self Defense these days, and other members have been a part of bands like Aficionado, Militarie Gun, and PONY.
My first exposure to Kindlon was at a Drug Church show in October 2013, opening for now-defunct New Jersey emo duo Dads. They played just four songs, and the other half of the set was filled with prolonged, involved stage banter from Kindlon. I was impressionable, on the verge of a melodramatic high school breakup, and desperately seeking something against the grain that spoke to my sensibilities. That Drug Church set delivered precisely what I needed, and after diving into their music throughout the following weeks, I discovered Self Defense. At this time, they were about four months shy from the release date of their full-length debut under their new name, and I couldn’t wait to hear it.
A wonderful surprise hit just before the turn of the year when Try Me began streaming early ahead of its physical street date. It’s one of a handful of times I remember exactly the experience of hearing an album for the first time. Alone over winter break, late at night in my bedroom at my mom’s old house, taking in a collection of songs that was absolutely unlike any I’d heard before. Everything about Try Me to someone who doesn’t know the roots sounds insane, from the lo-fi production to Kindlon’s signature bark-speak vocal delivery and the repetitive nature of both. It’s also a record that caused me to Google search unfamiliar lexicon, starting with album opener and catalog hit “Tithe Pig.” I was freshly eighteen and had no fucking idea what a “tithe pig” was, or what “tithe” was for that matter. Then, there’s the second track, “Nail House Music,” where Kindlon spins multiple variations of its core lyric: “I found you in the witch elm. Who put you in the witch elm? What man dares to put his hands to me?” Again, I go, what the fuck is “the witch elm?”
On a laundry list of things I didn’t know prior to hearing this album for the first time is the album’s conceptual star, Angelique Bernstein, known publicly as Jeanna Fine. Much of the lyrics on Try Me are inspired by interviews Kindlon conducted with the former adult film actress, which are included in two 20-minute segments on the album, simply titled “Angelique One” and “Angelique Two.” Depending on whether you have the CD, streaming, or vinyl version of Try Me, these interviews appear at different moments in the tracklisting. The digital versions have them interspersed, the first after the initial five songs and the second after the final four songs. The vinyl is a double album, with one disc worth of songs and one disc worth of interviews, each disc housed in die-cut sleeves featuring high-quality pin-up portraits of Fine.
Most of the time, I prefer the vinyl listening experience, but that’s only because nothing will match up to the very first time I listened to the album, having no idea what to expect with these pieces. I knew nothing about the album’s concept before listening, so when “Angelique One” began and I saw its runtime, I thought I was in for some post-progressive Mars Volta type shit (speaking of bands I spent a lot of time Google searching terms from). What I got was the first half of a captivating and emotional peek into a sordid life at the end of the 20th century, cutting and traumatic, bold and vulnerable.
A good time is often not the resonating feeling on a Self Defense release, whether Kindlon is singing about his own life or someone else’s. Try Me’s first single was “Turn The Fan On,” a dark lament that would probably be buried on the B-side for any other group. In a fan-filmed performance from Poland, Kindlon describes the song as simply “a bummer.” It’s an extremely tough song lyrically; the raw details are unclear, and the tone is truly unsettling: “A patch of grass outside the clinic. His wife’s at home, she’s gone ballistic. He places lips to palm, he starts crying. Finger to temple, he’s sobbing.” “Apport Birds” is about Kindlon’s dog dying, an unfortunate feeling many of us know, and he spares no grim notion about it. “It’s not like you to go without me. It must be lonely there without me. I understand the pull of religion when there’s a loss that won’t stop itching.” One song earlier, “Mistress Appears At Funeral,” which features lead vocals by frequent Self Defense collaborator Caroline Corrigan, reveals the details of an affair in humanity’s most inopportune setting. “Dressed in black, I’m ready for mourning. Show ample thigh to keep it sporty.” / “I kneel at my man, I take my time. Estate is theirs, but this is mine. Wife looks up, she finally sees unpleasant mirror, the miserable me.”
When Kindlon’s feelings aren’t masked in metaphors, they come directly and without interpretation. “Fear Of Poverty In Old Age” is the album’s prime example of this: “Feel dumb once, feel dumb again. Ring finger cut off your left hand. Ugly lisp, frustrated stammer. Wrong time again,” and the blunt chorus, “partnership is security, promise me.” The most “punk” that Try Me gets, a term Kindlon actively resents, is the 10-minute closer “Dingo Fence.” It’s a simple anthem: “Do you live nearby? Let’s go to your place now. All the dumb cocks, they get what they want. All the dumb cunts, they get what they want. All the dumb cops, they get what they want. If you’re happy, I’m happy.” Kindlon’s voice strains over the track’s duration by the end, where it culminates in a quiet coda. If basement krautrock was a subgenre, it’s Self Defense’s bag and only their bag to occupy.
The influence of Try Me on my life, my way of thinking, and my way of absorbing music cannot be overstated. It gave me a sense of identity when I had none to latch onto. It felt like Self Defense was my little secret band that only I understood after years of feeling alienated from my closest friends at the time. I actually convinced my high school journalism teacher to let me review it for the newspaper the month it was released. I went back to the same venue I saw Drug Church at just months before to see Self Defense perform with Pity Sex. I skipped my last day of Senior year to get in my friend’s band’s touring van to Bled Fest in Howell, Michigan, so I could see Self Defense again, and began the arduous process of collecting every piece of vinyl End Of A Year and Self Defense Family ever released (yes, I completed the mission). It was a fun challenge finding ways to explain to my family that “avant-garde spoken word hardcore” was my new favorite genre.
Self Defense’s band activity has been a bit less frequent since Drug Church’s popularity has risen, and admittedly, some of the newer, singles-based SDF material doesn’t strike the same chord with me as their mid-2010s output. But that will never change how Self Defense affected me in more ways than one, and revisiting Try Me ten years later, it still has the same chokehold on me. Even as I typed out lyrics here that I’ve had memorized for a decade, or gave a close re-relisten to the emotionally gripping interview segments, or played the record at home that I’ve heard across four different turntables in six different bedrooms, Try Me remains a one-of-a-kind album that should be essential listening for those yearning for something new in their musical rotation. In Kindlon’s own words, the final three of Try Me’s liner notes: “Enjoy or don’t.”
Logan Archer Mounts once almost got kicked out of Warped Tour for doing the Disturbed scream during a band’s acoustic set. He currently lives in Rolling Meadows, IL, but tells everyone he lives in Palatine.
