Tim Heidecker – High School | Album Review

Tim Heidecker, still attempting to balance his livelihood as a comedian and prove his reputation as a musician, recently released a new concept album. High School is a compilation of autobiographical songs that tell the tales of classic missteps and boredom fueled by 80s suburbia. While the album offers little to no resolution, we are introduced to the characters of Heidecker’s world; the bands he listened to, the people he left behind, and the internal relationships fostered between himself and his understandings of politics, religion, and privilege. While other projects in vintage and modern music approach this concept better, perhaps there is something quaint and accessible about Heidecker’s world. It is hard to resist well-worn nostalgia, especially when accompanied by a warm musical arrangement. 

High School’s opening track, “Buddy,” finds Heidecker lamenting over a burnout friend from high school that he’s since lost touch with. Heidecker describes the friend as “gone” because he was the resident stoner. There is a desperateness to Tim’s inactivity as a character in this song – longing for things to work out for his friend but ultimately seeing him as a lost cause. This narrative choice is interesting, considering Heidecker has mentioned how he took psychedelics in high school. This isn’t a judgment on their activities, but rather an observation of the unfairness for Tim to position himself as a more aware person than his friend as if they were not partaking in the same coming-of-age activities. Heidecker unintentionally brandishes a naivety about why he was able to “escape” this lifestyle while his friend didn’t – never connecting the dots between his friend’s home life (“we turned it up, so you didn’t have to hear the yelling downstairs”) and his own (“Mom and Dad to hear me sing / they seemed to love it, they said it was great”). There is a privilege in not only having the means to escape your hometown and rebuke your identity as a teenager, but also having the support of parental guidance and untouched optimism. 

The fifth track, “I’ve Been Losing,” is where Heidecker begins to find his footing. His voice is his own, no longer hiding behind the impulse to slip into his Springsteen and Dylan impressions that get him guaranteed laughs on his call-in podcast Office Hours Live. His tone is sweet and wistful yet enveloped in an unavoidable melancholy. “Working myself up to the fact that my best days are behind me,” he sings in the third verse. This sentiment is common, not just as a punch in the gut for a performer, but as a symptom of the human condition. There is a real resignation in feeling that your peak has come and gone and that there’s no way to reach it, that you can’t go home again. However, my appreciation for this song is diminished by the outro, in which Heidecker sings, “Oh, I’ve been talking / talking too much / maybe I should stop and listen.” This is an ironic point of view for Heidecker to foster, considering the only other endeavor at the forefront of his current career is his podcast. Office Hours Live is fully funded by fan support through Patreon, though it operates under a Howard Stern-esque format, complete with interviews, listener call-ins, and a “comedic” bitterness that is appealing to a demographic that I don’t hold. In short, I don’t believe Heidecker is as self-effacing as he tries to be in this song, and the existence of his podcast is proof that he is more intentioned in finding a viewer to berate than listening and learning, or whatever he is trying to say at the end of this song. 

This leads me to ask: If this album is built on framing Heidecker’s adolescence from the perspective of his current adult self (mentions of regret, embarrassment, and longing are scattered throughout each track), then why isn’t there any redemption? It is reductive to focus entirely on the past without also building a bridge to the present and, perhaps in more proactive terms, the future. The crux of catharsis is not just unloading shame from your past but also uncovering the specific desire within oneself to transform or metamorphosize into an entirely new being. For the listener, there is little fulfillment in hearing a stranger wax nostalgic about the one who got away simply because it’s a story that’s been told (and lived) so many times before. It also provides a sense of tunnel vision to the album, which can limit one’s ability to find and apply universality to the sentiments Heidecker is singing about. 

The album bounces back and forth between a 90s alt-rock sound and light 70s country psychedelia. It also explores a wannabe 80s novelty song sound in the track “Sirens of Titan.” In my previous article, The Slow Cancellation of the Future: 70s Cosplay in Modern Pop Music, I detailed my disdain for artists' reliance on the aesthetics of 70s music and skewed cultural ideas. In that piece, I also mentioned how Heidecker’s previous album Fear of Death fell under the umbrella of liberally borrowing from 70s rocker influences and how those instincts tarnished my relationship with the album and made me question Heidecker’s motive for wanting a music career. In High School, he continues this trend, focusing his energy on name-dropping bands and musicians he found solace in. These references feel somewhat natural, albeit a bit stilted. It’s clear that Heidecker was mesmerized by the 60s & 70s era of classic rock staples as a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s, but the references almost feel invasive, as if he is working very hard to cultivate a setting without describing anything at all. He is relying on the listener to use their own association and viewpoint of those bands to tap into their own nostalgia. This is a tool that can be implored intelligently, but it seems that Heidecker does it because he doesn’t have anything of depth to say or explore within his adolescence. 

In “Sirens of Titan,'' Heidecker reveals that he was a “little right-wing” and “fiscally conservative” until he “got that college degree.” As a long-time fan of his comedy, Heidecker declaring he became progressive or politically enlightened doesn’t feel honestly representative of his post-college work. In addition to this, I cannot recall an interview in which Heidecker has ever mentioned college as a useful experience either in terms of his filmmaking craft or his political awareness. I believe Heidecker’s insistence of his now-honed liberal politics is compensation for the insecurity of his childhood ignorance.

 However, in tracks like “Punch in The Gut,” it seems that Heidecker’s activism is still reserved to only pointing out what was wrong, rather than conjuring a hindsight that offers a revolutionary ardor. The song details Heidecker witnessing a schoolyard brawl that targeted “the kid with the different skin.” His point of action was to ask the priest to intervene, and when nothing was done, Heidecker resigned. This song, in particular, highlights the glaring issue with the pattern of lyrical content of this album – Tim doesn’t have any guts. He didn’t advocate for his burnt-out friend in “Buddy,” and he didn’t stand up or involve himself with the classmate who was being bullied to the point of physical harassment. To this day, Heidecker still possesses the same lack of conviction he had in his adolescence, which is why these songs often feel aimless. Speaking of listlessness, late album cut “What Did We Do With Our Time?” channels the height of suburbia angst with the lyrics “I’m a weed-wackin’, lawn-mowin’, leaf-blowin’, snow-shovelin’ boy.” Oh, the horrors of maintaining your environmentally damaging lawn!

I think the exploration of Heidecker’s adolescent cowardness wouldn’t be frustrating if he made any effort to disparage his past self or the environment that allowed him to operate with such passivity. Songs like these have a build-up that needs a release, but instead, Heidecker usually opts to repeat a verse or two until the runtime has reached a respectable length, slowly letting the fade take over. This style can be done; Lucy Dacus’ Home Video comes to mind, where in a few tracks, she invokes more of the timber in her voice and harshens her word choice while still keeping the ballad-like instrumentals. Lyrically, Conor Oberst’s “Next of Kin” manages to name-drop Lou Reed and Patti Smith without feeling shoehorned in. This is because Oberst uses the identities of those two performers to allude to a larger personal theme, stating that meeting them didn’t make him “feel different.” Oberst’s disillusionment with these transgressive icons of his youth correlates with a loss of innocence; his internalized anger didn’t serve his art or his character well. In this context, the output of “meeting” these figures acts as a coming of age moment that’s been prolonged or put off in some way, which is why it works as a binding point between Oberst’s allusions to the death of a relationship and the inability to perform on stage in the first half of the song. This is also why there’s an earned victory and a sense of finality that he found his ‘way back home’ in the closing verse. 

Bruce Springsteen’s “No Surrender” from Born in the U.S.A is a masterclass in tapping into the generational angst that Heidecker is chasing throughout the runtime of High School. The song’s second line, “we learned more from a three-minute record than we ever learned in school,” accomplishes what Heidecker’s trivia-esque namedrops attempt but with more emotional resonance. Springsteen does the work to communicate the impact he felt when listening to music, somehow being both vague and specific, which is done purposefully. He is evasive in the act of not naming the record or artist because he knows that won’t serve any value to the song; the descriptor would just serve as a personal easter egg, which can distract the audience from the focused message of the song. This snapshot is just a tool to drive Springsteen’s point further; it is intentional in his choice to describe the experience of listening to music while being young. To write that a record is more important and beneficial to him than school, we understand multiple things: his relationship to music, his relationship to school, and what he desired in his youth. Right away, listeners are able to place themselves in his shoes – it doesn’t matter if they necessarily find resonance in his ideals and objectives because he frames it as a story with himself as a key character. Throughout Born in the U.S.A, Springsteen muses about his youth, looking back and alternating between present and past tense. In “My Hometown,” he relays his disillusionment with what he was told when he was young (be proud of your hometown) to what he saw later (tensions between races in school and firearm-related incidents) and what he sees now as an adult (vacant stores, closed down textile mills). Not everything on the album is factual or speaks to Springsteen’s specific experiences, but its aim is to preserve and communicate the realities of feeling abandoned by youth. In contrast to this, Heidecker focuses on being confessional above all else. The interpretation of one’s own personal narratives can be a liberating act. However, in the context Heidecker presents, it is creatively stifling. His desire to remain honest in his experiences sacrifices the creative edits that could be made for the benefit of the song's story. Poetic license can and should be implemented if it functions better than the original encounter at illustrating the narrative hook or learned moral truth being communicated in the song. 

Elsewhere in the album, Heidecker alludes to the political turmoil within himself as a young person growing up towards the end of the Cold War era. This point in time was significant in that, to the conspiracist or critical-paranoid, everything was a sign. Pop culture was flooded with fear and fascination, but that didn’t prevent people from searching for answers in it. Culture was and is a tool that could influence the masses to conformity or a soft rebellion. My assumption of this is perhaps overly reliant on Pynchonian redux, but if Heidecker is willing to reference Vonnegut at the forefront of this album, even having merch that rips off the stylized 90s paperback covers of his books, perhaps it should’ve been the leeway for constructing the atmosphere of growing up in this portion of the Cold War era. Postmodern literature (a response to the dishonesty of the Cold War era) explores paranoia, which can be considered a close cousin to helplessness. I don’t know any other time I’ve felt more helpless than when I was in high school. And it is not only this, but also the idea that technology has its own itinerary. In the 80s and 90s, the idea of people becoming subservient to technology became relevant in the modern context – not just in literature, but in film, television, and music as well. I think this concept could’ve been easily implemented into Heidecker’s songs on High School, especially when his analysis of his youth intersects and overlaps with pop culture and the intrusion of media. He was using music and literature to find meaning because all he found in the real world was boredom. 

The album closer “Kern River” effectively achieves what Heidecker has struggled to do in previous tracks; it brought on veritable feelings of nostalgia and wistfulness. For whatever odd reason, whenever I am in a moment, I can sometimes feel myself yearning for the memory even though I am in it, creating it. I’ve always been plagued by a severe sense of sentimentality; I am someone who ruminates on the present as if it’s the past. This song is a snapshot of that experience. It is the culmination of the end of summer, especially if you live in a rural area where kayaking or tubing down a river is a common activity. As Tim sees it, the end of the river is the end of his childhood. Through these obscure, albeit trivial, landmarks, I can notice cracks appearing in the metaphorical shell of my adolescence. The ages of 14 through 18 are difficult because you experience everything with intensity. You have plenty of time and freedom to do what you want, while also noticing the days falling away with a quickness that is only fathomable to kids and to parents who have to watch their kids grow up. Every situation you face and every emotion you feel is magnified because it is the first time you are encountering them. It’s difficult, but somehow you still find yourself prioritizing your teenage years over the whole affair of adulthood. 

If “Kern River” is any indication of the heights that Heidecker is capable of reaching, then I am cautiously optimistic about his future endeavors in writing music. I can only hope that Heidecker forgoes the struggle of trying to legitimize himself as a musical performer and person of strong moral virtue and instead focuses on building fully-formed songs with complete emotional depth.

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Kaycie is a freshman at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, where she is majoring in English. You can find her on Instagram at @boyishblues. 

The Slow Cancellation of the Future: 70s Cosplay in Modern Pop Music

Despite only being two years into the decade, the music of the 2020s has already revealed a trend of artists relying on styles that other musicians have established long ago. In his book Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures, Mark Fisher described this phenomenon as “The feeling of belatedness, of living after the gold rush.” Our expectations have been lowered and we rely on a formal nostalgia, perhaps, as Fisher speculates, because there’s “an increasing sense that culture has lost the ability to grasp and articulate the present.” 

Before Fear of Death was released in 2020, comedian Tim Heidecker had to convince his audience that this was not an elaborate setup — his intention was for this studio album to be taken seriously. “I’m like Dylan,” Heidecker bites, responding to a viewer question during his podcast Office Hours Live. “My name ‘Tim Heidecker’ means Dylan,” he elaborates while his crew chuckle in the background. It’s clear that Tim is not in on the joke. The music video for the titular single on the record is intriguing. In the first 20 seconds, Tim is “showing” the band what cords to play. The camera is directly in his face, but he never acknowledges it. It’s a similar effect to the illusion in documentaries where subjects are aware they’re being filmed, but do their best to pretend to be un-spectated. Shot in 16mm, Tim Heidecker sees himself as a rockstar; one or all of his 70s musical idols at once, a strange showmanship emerges, and it’s a pattern you’ll see throughout the entire record. 

Heidecker has a public playlist on his Spotify titled “Fear of Death,” though it features no songs off his own album. Instead, you’ll find Paul Simon’s “Graceland,” Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You,” John Lennon’s “Mother,” Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up In Blue,” Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat,” and more. I want to praise Heidecker for wearing his inspirations on his sleeve, but sometimes when an artist says they’re “influenced by” something, what they really mean to say is that they have borrowed from it liberally. If you look up his songs on YouTube, the most popular comments consistently reference other artists. The top comment on “Nothing” compares Heidecker to Harry Nilsson, a prominent singer/songwriter from the 70s. A few comments on “Property” call the album Randy Newman-esque. Did I mention the record also has a cover of “Let It Be”? 

In a Washington Post article, Heidecker said he’s better at sounding like Dylan than himself. “My voice doesn’t have its own character,” he reasoned. Later, the article mentions how Heidecker felt his hair looked similar to “Wings-era McCartney.” In addition to this, reviewers and fans alike had no problem comparing Heidecker’s lyrical ability to that of Paul Simon or Stephen Stills. Is this not a tired precedent? Why are we placing these high accolades onto a comedian whose music career is a hobby, or at the very worst, an after-thought?

Fear of Death promises a pursuit of existential topics, but it has little to no emotional catharsis. Heidecker’s voice is loud, but what it projects is trite lyrics surrounded by equally loud but bland instrumentals. It’s an easy-listening album, but there are no elements that compel you to hear it out. Heidecker fears he lacks a distinct voice, and I believe he uses that as a shield from fully committing to a challenging artistic endeavor, instead settling for something that he can add to his resume, Wikipedia page, or whatever personal book of accomplishments he keeps for himself.

Elsewhere in the music industry, other even more established artists aren't immune to this kind of historical navel-gazing. The most recent albums from Bleachers and St. Vincent both struggle with the same problems. Bleachers lead singer Jack Antonoff also produced St. Vincent’s album, so it's safe to assume Antonoff was juggling both projects at once, and it shows. Both Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night and Daddy’s Home follow the same beats, right down to the album artwork and the costumes. Pop artists are chameleons, shapeshifting into new aesthetics to correlate with the sound of their album — it’s an extra step in branding that’s existed since the beginning of time. However, behind the Bruce Springsteen feature and rogue George Harrison worship, Antonoff reveals his agenda through the yelpy vocals and millennial pop beats. It’s a record tailor-made for alt-pop radio, but it hides behind these distinct influences, pretending to sound bigger than it is.

Antonoff performed some of these songs on Saturday Night Live earlier this year—dressed in cuffed jeans and a leather jacket, he feigns the rockstar aesthetic and sound, without any of the angst or true emotions that fill the songs he’s trying to replicate. There’s a desperation to it. The desire to stand out and be different. Young people don’t notice it because they aren’t familiar with the music it’s referencing. It’s akin to how tweens & teens listen to Lemon Demon and Jack Stauber before they find out who Oingo Boingo and Talking Heads are. Older people are waiting for something better to come along, and with their lowered expectations, they happily take St. Vincent in a Candy Darling wig riffing on a rejected Steely Dan instrumental over another Justin Bieber tune plaguing the radio. 

There’s an issue of class here as well. Both Antonoff and Heidecker come from upper-middle-class backgrounds, growing up in the suburbs of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, respectively. Juxtapose this to Bruce Springsteen (as he is an inspiration to both), who grew up poor in the 50s, which in itself led to a lot of traumas. However, Springsteen tapped into that troubled generational atmosphere as it was in the turbulent process of spiraling down. He earned the title of rockstar by performing with a fearless passion. He believed in what he was singing because he lived it, and the things he didn’t live he observed through the experiences of his peers and fans. He was a natural showman, charismatic, and in the business of projecting a big story. I don’t believe you necessarily have to go through intense hardships in order to write a good song, but in the case of Heidecker and Antonoff, their economic class and shallow life experiences lead to boring records. An isolated life leads to a limited perspective. 

I should also touch on Daddy’s Home a bit more. Annie Clark (St. Vincent) used her father's 12-year incarceration for his role in a $43 million stock manipulation scheme as the crux of this 70s pastiche album. She attempts to be educated about the faults of the prison system and how it affects the black community, but Clark exhibits a clear dissonance when she stumbles through a watered-down reference to Nina Simone and positions black backup singers to sulk about her white father who committed a white-collar crime. Clark, of course, kept this story hidden until journalists forced her hand. “People are flawed, but also are capable of change. We can’t just write somebody off,” Clark said in an interview. To cope, she dropped into a cobbled-together character based on stolen and reappropriated aesthetics. Clark went from a “white-haired, sadomasochist cult leader” to a “dominatrix at the mental institution” to a “Cassavetes heroine” in the span of three album cycles. She attributes this current phase as a tribute to the albums she grew up on, which is the case for all millennial / gen x musicians. There isn’t anything unique about listening to Joni Mitchell and wishing you could be her. 

Artists are perceiving the past as a mythical entity, which is contributing to the slow cancellation of the future. Focusing on aesthetics alone can lead to limited hindsight about an era and its ideals. Through appropriation, these artists are shrinking the possibility for an organic/original sound to emerge. This leads me to the next topic of discussion: Greta Van Fleet. 

Greta Van Fleet is a band from Michigan who is best known for being Led Zeppelin emulators. As this article states: “the music, the costumes, even the backlash against them — is crafted intentionally to appeal specifically to people who are too young to know that they’re derivative and people who are too old to care because they remind them of when they were young. They’re a band designed to be regurgitated by algorithms, worming their way onto “Recommended If You Like…” playlists and nabbing themselves the No. 1 rock album in the country without so much as an original thought. They themselves are still young — but old enough to know exactly what they’re doing.” Greta Van Fleet does not push the world of rock music forward; their art is stagnant and without any new or original ideas, concepts, and styles. There is no authenticity, experimentation, or excitement. They’re gliding into their rising popularity, and with the external increase of 70s cosplay within their peer group, there are no signs of it slowing down anytime soon. 

Whether they're creating rock, pop, or overly-earnest singer-songwriter fare, artists like Greta Van Fleet, Bleachers, and Heidecker take the aesthetics of the 70s and believe that is enough. However, the songwriters of that era implored a strong use of language and narrative. Randy Newman was known for his tongue-in-cheek satires, Harry Nilsson was known for his spontaneous imagination, Joni Mitchell was known for her equally heartfelt and intricate poetry. Excellent writing and a knowledge of how to use figurative language is the core of what makes a song compelling, memorable, and worthy of being passed down to a future generation.

Another hit album of 2021 was An Evening with Silk Sonic. Throughout this release, the duo comprised of Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak indulged in a faithful and committed tribute to the R&B genre. Though music videos and lyrical references throughout the album fetishize the 70s, it is clear that their revival of this sound is tongue-in-cheek; they’re aware of how well-worn this aesthetic is. The irony doesn’t absolve the album from fault, but is an indicator of how it was a passion project, never meant to be perceived as anything deeper. However, as Pitchfork mentioned: “any significant level of investment poses the question: When artists invoke music as beloved as Motown and Philly soul, how can anything they create measure up?” 

What is the purpose of 70s cosplay if not to invoke feelings of nostalgia? Even to those of us who were born way after that decade, the sounds and color palates still feel warm and inviting. It’s easier to accept false replications of the past than to conceive of something new. Why should you seek out new genres or singers when you can listen to an established artist that makes you think of being a kid, sitting in the back of your dad's car while he had the classic rock station on? 

What’s worst yet is that this 70s revival refuses to acknowledge the influences artists from the 70s borrowed. Bob Dylan thanks Jimmy Reed and Woody Guthrie for his career, Led Zeppelin wears the influence of Muddy Waters and Skip James on their sleeve, Joan Baez cites Pete Seeger and Odetta as an inspiration. It is true that no one is uniquely individual or without inspiration, but what's different about artists of the 1970s to the ones of the 2020s is that they elevated themselves with these influences while constantly reinventing, experimenting, and being brave enough to let their voice waiver without the clutch of reverb and electronic drum beats.

The culture of nostalgia has reached an evolved form with films, documentaries, and music celebrating pop auteurs. The past already happened. To recreate it is a futile attempt to capture a moment that was never really there. What glamor is there in recycled fashion looks or referenced bass lines? Is there no pride in swallowing your inspirations and channeling a new ambition from them?

It is in my humble opinion that inspiration can be found in idiosyncratic talent and artistic motives. It is more admirable to place recognition in the greatness of creatives before you and try to imbue their philosophy in the voice you project into the world rather than stand in as a cheap knock-off. You don’t have to dress like Marc Bolan and sound like Bowie to be alluring—you just have to possess a relentless passion for performing. Modern artists are so terrified to fail openly, and their music shows it. To do something that hasn’t been done before requires a certain bravery that groups like Bleachers and Greta Van Fleet don’t possess. 

None of these albums will make an impression. They will be forgotten in the same vein of how we remember The Beatles and not the hundreds of copycat bands that came to be as a result of them. These albums are the result of admiration — but it’s not a case of, as Brian Eno stated, "The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band" where the energy and attitudes were what was desired to replicate. Instead, this modern crop of albums represents the fetishization of aesthetic, recontextualization of the past in a contemporary lens, and carrying a pretense of leveling on the same heights as the artists they’re replicating. The lack of subtlety is tiring. These musicians assign themselves a self-importance because they are aware of the acclaimed arts of the past. The core issue with all of these projects is that they don’t understand the source material. They don’t understand the context in which the art they adore was made, and this self-indulgence prevents cohesion. What purpose does a referential album or gimmick serve in an age where all of history is accessible in three clicks? 

In the past, writers, musicians, and activists operated under a political sentiment of engagement. This is how counterculture was born. But as it stands today, we have no oppositional culture. We’ve surpassed the end of history in terms of chance for political upheaval or drastic societal change, and no one really knows what to do. Nostalgia, though well-worn and bittersweet, is a type of regression when liberally exerted. If artists keep dipping back into the honeypot, we may never witness the future. In order for the future to exist, we must participate in new thoughts and imagination and rid ourselves of styles we weren’t supposed to hold onto this long. 

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Kaycie is a high school senior and writer. You can find them on Instagram at @boyishblues.