February 2018: Album Review Roundup

Swim Into The Sound is back with another Monthly Roundup! I’m honestly not sure how long I’ll be able to stay this “up” on new music, but so far I’ve been having a good time keeping track of new releases and compiling my thoughts.

As great as January was, February was even better, both in terms of quantity and quality, so I’ll waste no time in jumping into it. Here are some of the best/most notable releases from February of 2018.

Cameron Boucher & Field Medic - Split

Released on Valentine’s Day, this lovely and heartfelt split features two songs from Kevin Sullivan of Field Medic and two from Cameron Boucher of Sorority Noise. With both artists coming off wildly-successful2017 releases, this split seems to be a low-key acoustic victory lap of sorts from two of emo folk’s current reigning champs. Oh, and all of the album’s proceeds go to Covenant House, so on top of the great tunes, these two dudes are also class acts.

Hovvdy - Cranberry

Easily my biggest surprise of the month, Hovvdy is a band I’d never heard of until I sat down to listen to this record. When I hit play, I instantly fell in love with the warm, hazy, nostalgic sound of Cranberry, and with each subsequent listen a different track has jumped out at me and grabbed my attention. Both spiritually and stylistically, this album reminds me of Turnover’s Peripheral Vision from 2015. Both albums hooked me on first listen and bear the same fuzzy spaced-out sense of nostalgia. While Turnover’s record is more pop-punk influenced, Cranberry finds itself taking cues from bedroom indie, Americana, and even country at times, but both play out like a distant memory that slowly grows to shroud the listener in their own nostalgia.

MGMT - Little Dark Age

MGMT have had a long and storied history since their humble college-based beginnings in 2002. Continually straddling the line between synthpop, psychedelia, alternative, and indie, their 2018 record Little Dark Age finally seems to have attained the perfect balance of every one of their styles. While nothing may ever be as iconic as the breakthrough “Kids” or instantly-recognizable as “Electric Feel,” this album strives for (and achieves) something much different. From the opening narration-based exercise of “She Works Out Too Much” to the far-off echoes of “Hand It Over,” every move on Little Dark Age seems more self-assured than ever. A compact, addictive, and beautifully-crafted comeback.

Turnstile - Time & Space

Hardcore will never die, and bands like Turnstile are here to prove that single-handedly. Over the course of 25 minutes, the Baltimore group runs the listener through an obstacle course of unbridled ferocity, pure aggression, and raw power. You’ll experience throat-shredding vocals, chest-pounding riffs, and thunderous drums, eventually to be spat out on the other side invigorated and aggressive. Proof that there’s beauty in brevity, the forceful grouping of songs off Time & Space rarely cross the two-minute mark. Turnstyle doesn’t seem to be interested in wasting a second of the listener’s time or expending one ounce of wasted energy.

Various Artists - Black Panther: The Album

Unlike Drake’s More Life, the Kendrick Lamar/Top Dawg-helmed Black Panther album feels more like a playlist than a record. With a (loose) central theme, a wide range of guest collaborations, and consistent contributions from its figurehead, Black Panther: The Album is what all collaborative art should strive to be. Well-performing on its own right outside of the already-successful movie, Kendrick’s accompaniment is both an achievement for Marvel and an artistic work that stands on its own. Between the album’s pop bops, futuristic chase songs, and braggadocious fight music there’s something here for everyone. When I saw a grandma groove out to SZA as the movie’s credits rolled, I was more confident than ever of this album’s universal appeal.

2 Chainz - The Play Don’t Care Who Makes It

2 Chainz has been on a roll for years now. Often opting for smaller, more bite-sizedprojects and collaborations over full-on albums, The Play Don’t Care Who Makes It is the newest installment in Mr. Chainz’ series of low-commitment EPs. Coming in at a crisp four songs over 16 minutes, each song is expansive enough for Tity Boi’s usual comedic bars, a couple of guest features, and even a loving shoutout to all of Atlanta’s strippers. The Play is 2 Chainz incarnate: every song hits, and the short running time doesn’t leave any room for it to wear out its welcome.

Justin Timberlake - Man of the Woods

Whew. I don’t want to spend an excessive amount of time shitting on this record because I’m far from the first to do it, but also because it feels a little over-done… that said, Man of the Woods is a pants-shitting mess from front-to-back. Self-described as “Americana with 808s,” this album was doomed from conception. Even one half-attentive viewing of the “Supplies” music video is a good indicator of the full-album experience: a violently-bright and schizophrenic country-fueled acid trip gone wrong. Each track feels like Timberlake is throwing everything at the wall, indiscriminately mashing ten ideas into one track, laying terrible lyrics over the top, and then just delivering it all in the most earnest way he possibly can. In a way, I admire it.

As a whole, Man of The Woods feels like some sort of Joaquin Phoenix-esque meta career move in which you’re not quite sure how much of this is serious and how much is parody. Featuring Do-wop vocals, dueling harmonicas, and unnerving narration, it’s like Timberlake heard Young Thug’s Beautiful Thugger Girls and thought “I could do this” … but he can’t.

Some cuts are perfectly fine and listenable (“Montana” is pretty great, “Breeze Off the Pond” is at least pointed), but the remainder of the songs are comically bad and go on for minutes longer than they need to. The album’s most definitively bad moment comes in the backstretch when a half-awake Jessica Biel provides the excruciating introduction to “Flannel” which sounds like Lonely Island performing a children’s lullaby.

At the end of the day, this is just a pop album from Justin Timberlake, so I didn’t expect high-art, and I didn’t expect a mind-shifting release. That said, it’s been fun to revel in the collective schadenfreude of watching someone fail at such an audacious genre experiment in such a spectacular and public way. The full album may leave the listener in a state of ongoing agony begging for it to end, but the good thing is: it’s just pop.

Car Seat Headrest - Twin Fantasy  (Face to Face)

For the sake of getting the rotten taste of Man of the Woods out of your mouth, we’ll end with one of the best albums of February: Car Seat Headrest’s remake of Twin Fantasy. Already a breakthrough record in its own right, this 2018 release is a version of the record that’s been completely remade from the ground up. While the original album is still up for streaming in all its lo-fi charm, it’s hard to deny the absolute achievement that Twin Fantasy represents.

Just as verbose, meta, poetic, philosophical, and fraught with emotions as the day that it was first recorded, Twin Fantasy will stand the test of time as an album about the most universal of journeys. About the simplicity of letting go and putting your hands around someone else’s shoulders and the complexity of everything that tends to follow. Temptation, rejection, debauchery, desire, contradictions, fears, manias, sexuality, routine, experimentation, depression, addiction, nervousness, otherness, love, and heartbreak. This album somehow manages to touch on every one of those topics in a raw, poignant, and open way that rarely is captured in life, much less crystallized on an album.

The fact that one of this generation’s most pivotal breakup albums could not only exist but be remade not to its own detriment is a testament to the creative core and message at the center of this record. Car Seat Headrest managed to improve the original, change it just enough that it feels new, and managed to keep the original spirit intact, all of which sounds like an impossibility, yet at the end of it all, there’s this album. It’s the most accurate portrayal of modern love ever captured in sound. It’s love and heartbreak on an oceanic scale. It’s Twin Fantasy.

Quick Hits

Because I may not have a lot to say, but I listen to a lot, and I like to be thorough.

• Rich Brian - Amen: After achieving viral success and undergoing a name change, the Indonesian rapper offers up his first official release packed with chilling, bassy, self-produced songs.

• Ratboys - GL: A four-track EP of slidey, female-fronted emo songs in which every move is measured, and every past action is regretted.

• Towkio - WWW.: Dropped from space, WWW. is this Savemoney crew member’s debut following the excellent .WAV Theory mixtape.

• Dashboard Confessional - Crooked Shadows: Chris Carrabba’s first album in 9 years is the definition of “hit-or-miss.” We’ll probably never get another song as precious or hard-hitting as “Ghost of a Good Thing,” but this album still has its moments.

• SOB X RBE - GANGIN: After introducing themselves to a broader audience with their Black Panther appearance, the group smartly follows-up their newfound exposure with this ballistic sophomore album.

• Rhye - Blood: Adult contemporary, but not in the way you’re thinking.

• Pianos Become the Teeth - Wait For Love: An unrelenting, explosive, and propulsive grouping of 10 songs from the post-hardcore torchbearers.

• American Pleasure Club - a whole fucking lifetime of this: The recently-renamed Run For Cover signees openly noodle, experiment, and remorse for a laid-back genre-less half-hour.

• Caroline Rose - Loner: Yet another album filed under “surprises provided by the internet,” Loner is the exact type of lowkey hyper-conscious slacker indie that’s eternally-appealing to me.

• Superchunk - What a Time to Be Alive: The 90’s DIY-rockers are back with 11 tightly-wound tracks that they volley at the listener without pause.

• Thundercat - Drank: The “chopped not slopped” remix of last year’s Drunk finds even more groovy mellow bass-centered love here.

• Ought - Room Inside the World: Ought lurch forward sadly with this collection of glowing tracks that bubble up to the listener’s ears with palpable remorse and moodiness.

• Palm - Rock Island: Traditional time signatures be damned! The fourth record from the Philadelphian math rockers is polished, jagged, and filled with more unexpected moments than a Black Mirror episode.

• Franz Ferdinand - Always Ascending: It’s ok.

• U.S. Girls - In A Poem Unlimited: Psychedelic, sexy, and occasionally-dancy indie jams that explode with violence and lust.

• Ravyn Lenae - Crush EP: Slow-moving and delicate, this Steve Lacy-helmed EP is a brief outing that should fill the R&B-shaped hole in your heart.

Plus we’ve also got fresh singles/covers from Frank Ocean, The Wonder Years, Beach House, Courtney Barnett, Ryan Adams, Father John Misty, Blocboy, Parquet Courts, Sorority Noise, Underoath, Code Orange, Run The Jewels, 6Lack, Kero Kero Bonito, Girlpool, Mount Eerie, , Remo Drive, Rae Sremmurd, The Voids, Flatbush Zombies, Car Seat Headrest, Post Malone, Julien Baker x Manchester Orchestra, Janelle Monáe,Jay Som, A$AP Rocky, A$AP Ferg, Kim Petras, Chvrches, Soccer Mommy, and Future.

Universal Melodrama: Lorde and Medea

“We told you this was Melodrama.”

Lorde’s Melodrama is a shining pop masterpiece, but as new as the album sounds, the story that it tells is one as old as humanity. Autobiographically-told, it follows Lorde as she grapples with heartbreak and fights to free herself from the intensity of young womanhood. Beloved by both fans and critics, Melodrama is a record that perfectly captures what it’s like to be in love. From the initial feelings of being “wild and fluorescent” to the shift of wondering why you’re dancing alone, the album tracks love as its vibrance slowly fades.

However, to say that Melodrama is merely about romance would be missing the point. The record also addresses what it’s like to be a young woman, transitioning into a world full of expectations and contradictions. In her own words, Melodrama follows the story of a house party, from the euphoric highs of “The Louvre” to the dark intricacies of “Liability,” each song depicts a different stage of the evening as Lorde searches for peace in the aftermath of a breakup. In an album filled with complexities and confusion, the line between heartbreak and freedom becomes blurry, and the party rages on while Lorde tries to keep up.

About 2,000 years prior to Melodrama, Greek playwright Euripides wrote a tragedy called Medea that touched on many of the same topics. The plot focuses on the heartbreak our heroine Medea faces and her plan to get revenge on her adulterous partner. But more than that, it follows a powerful woman who struggles with the expectations placed on her by society. Lorde and Euripides’ works bear a striking number of similarities to each other. Both of our protagonists become obsessed with their lovers, and find themselves willing to betray friends and family. The two narratives posit that love often leads to heartbreak, but it can also lead to freedom.

Part 1 | The Lover

At the beginning of Medea, our main character falls in love with Jason when he visits her island of Colchis on a quest to retrieve the Golden Fleece and take his spot on the throne. Compelled to help her lover, she feeds Jason tips and helps him attain the fleece through the power of her wizardry. After the current king blocks Jason from taking the throne, Medea hatches a plot to take the kingship illegitimately by tricking the king’s daughters into chopping him up. When her plan is uncovered, both Jason and Medea are banished from the island, chased away by Medea’s own family. In an attempt to escape by sea, Medea devises a plan to slow her father down by killing and chopping up her brother’s body then throwing it to the sea, knowing that her father will stop to collect the individual body parts.

Meanwhile, on Melodrama Lorde finds herself experiencing the same intoxication of love on “The Louvre” where she feels ready to betray friends and family for her lover much like Medea did. At the start of the song’s third verse, she recounts “Blow all my friendships / to sit in hell with you / But we’re the greatest / They’ll hang us in the Louvre.” While she obviously doesn’t go as far as killing, Lorde is still obsessed with her lover in the same way that Medea was, willingly destroying all of her friendships in favor of newfound love. Earlier on in the track, she bottles up that feeling of infatuation with the lines “I am your sweetheart psychopathic crush / Drink up your movements still I can’t get enough.” Both women experience the electrifying fluorescence of new love and succumb to the rush that it fuels.

Part 2 | The Betrayal

After escaping her homeland, Medea and Jason relocate on Corinth, a remote island where they settle down and have a number of children together. Eventually, Jason finds himself enamored with another woman, Creusa, who also happens to be a princess on the island. Drawn to Creusa’s beauty (and her social status) Jason abandons Medea, leaving her stranded on a strange land, alone with no standing as a foreigner and as a woman. Her time in love with Jason was ultimately quick and intense, and they fall apart just as quickly as they were drawn together.

Lorde also finds herself grappling with a similar situation of new and unfamiliar love on “Homemade Dynamite” where she opens the song with some scene-setting lyrics: “A couple rebel top gun pilots / Flying with nowhere to be / Don’t know you super well / But I think that you might be the same as me / Behave abnormally.” Intoxicated with the feeling of fresh love, Lorde is inspired to act irrationally, jumping into a relationship with little foresight or evidence of compatibility.

Within the same song, we witness the relationship’s quick end as it devolves into a spiteful and violent split. Lorde ends up with someone else despite seemingly still being attached to her original lover. “See me rolling, showing someone else love / Dancing with our shoes off / Know I think you’re awesome right?” Right after asking that, Lorde transitions into a vengeful chorus of “our rules our dreams, we’re blind / blowing shit up with homemade dynamite.” The rapid transformation within the song highlights how quickly the intense feelings of love can retreat and metamorphosize into equally-passionate emotions of hate or violence, just as they did with Medea.

Both Lorde and Medea find themselves impassioned by their unfaithful lovers in different ways. While Lorde finds herself partying and wanting to “blow shit up,” Medea’s emotions come out in the much more biblical form of a speech. Tied to her husband by law, Medea is left feeling powerless once he abandons her for someone who will lift his status in society. Men, she claims, lead an easy life and can leave their woman whenever they want. Meanwhile, women are the ones who suffer as divorce is reprehensible, women are the ones who have to give birth, and powerful women are feared. Abandoned by Jason, Medea shares her frustration, orating to the women of her city, she claims that even death is preferable to marriage.

“In my case, however, this sudden blow that has struck me has destroyed my life. I am undone, I have resigned all joy in life, and I want to die. For the man in whom all I had was bound up, as I well know—my husband—has proved the basest of men. Of all creatures that have breath and sensation, we women are the most unfortunate. First at an exorbitant price we must buy a husband and master of our bodies. And the outcome of our life’s striving hangs on this, whether we take a bad or a good husband. For divorce is discreditable for women and it is not possible to refuse wedlock. And when a woman comes into the new customs and practices of her husband’s house, she must somehow divine, since she has not learned it at home, how she shall best deal with her husband. If after we have spent great efforts on these tasks our husbands live with us without resenting the marriage-yoke, our life is enviable. Otherwise, death is preferable. A man, whenever he is annoyed with the company of those in the house, goes elsewhere and thus rids his soul of its boredom. But we must fix our gaze on one person only. Men say that we live a life free from danger at home while they fight with the spear. How wrong they are! I would rather stand three times with a shield in battle than give birth once.”

After the outward destruction found on “Homemade Dynamite,” Lorde tries her best to find peace in her own company. She confesses her own experiences of being isolated in “Liability,” the emotional centerpiece of the record in which Lorde finds solace in her own self-love. No longer dependent on someone else for her happiness, she focuses on her relationship with herself. “So I guess I’ll go home into the arms of the girl that I love / The only love I haven’t screwed up / She’s so hard to please, but she’s a forest fire.” In these lines Lorde admits that love has shaken her up, but begins to realize that happiness can (and must) come from within first. She goes on to depict a scene of her evening alone, revealing that she’s indeed talking about herself. “I do my best to meet her demands, play at romance / We slow dance in the living room, but all that a stranger would see / Is one girl swaying alone, stroking her cheek.”

Part 3 | The Revenge

Betrayed by Jason, Medea plots her revenge, eventually deciding to kill Creusa, and the children she’s had with Jason. By taking Jason’s fatherhood and social status, she hopes to harm him in the most painful way possible. Medea eventually decides to kill Creusa by sending her a cursed crown and robe delivered by the children that Jason had with Medea. At first reluctant to accept the kids into her house, Creusa immediately becomes amicable when she notices the beautiful gifts they are offering. Once put on, the crown takes a moment before it latches into Creusa’s skull while the robe burns her skin into a waxy substance. Before she is killed, Creusa is given a chance to admire herself in the mirror, only to watch her beauty that was so treasured be torn away.

In Melodrama Lorde is at her most vengeful on “Writer In The Dark” where she warns her ex of the mistake he made. Instead of remaining heartbroken, she turns her ex’s departure into something empowering. Just as Medea hurts Jason and Creusa in the most personal way possible, Lorde defies her ex by achieving superstar status off an album partially about the empowerment of being alone. “Bet you rue the day you kissed a writer in the dark / Now she’s gonna play and sing and lock you in her heart.” The chorus portrays Lorde at her most vicious as she bares her fangs through flashes of love-infused threats. “I am my mother’s child, I’ll love you ‘till my breathing stops / I’ll love you 'til you call the cops on me / But in our darkest hours, I stumbled on a secret power / I’ll find a way to be without you, babe.” Eventually, she lands on the self-reliance detailed above in “Liability” and explains that she found her own way out of the darkness of heartache.

Part 4 | The Escape

After having achieved her revenge, Medea leaves the Earth and disappears into the sun on a chariot given to her by her grandfather Helios, the sun god. By giving her the chariot, Helios is also sanctioning her actions and is giving Medea a chance to escape the world that has caused her such pain. This is a moment of triumph, as Medea is now free of her lover and all the actions that came in the aftermath of his betrayal.

Melodrama also includes a reference to disappearing into the sun on “Liability” when Lorde whispers “They’re gonna watch me disappear into the sun / You’re all gonna watch me disappear into the sun” on the track’s outro. In Melodrama’s context, disappearing into the sun is the final act of an incredibly dark and intricate song, yet this disappearance, like the rest of the record, isn’t easy to reckon with. She’s leaving behind her lover in favor of her success, much like Medea left her world behind after achieving revenge. It’s not the choice either would have made in a vacuum, but rather a step that is necessary in order to fully attain the freedom from their past lives.

On Melodrama’s closing track“Perfect Places,” Lorde is confronted with the reality that perfection is impossible, despite the bliss partying seems to bring. To start the song, she details her attempts to get lost in the ecstasy of an average night out. “Every night, I live and die / Feel the party to my bones / Watch the wasters blow the speakers / Spill my guts beneath the outdoor light / It’s just another graceless night.” Checking to make sure her company is as immersed in the party as she is, Lorde asks “Are you lost enough? / Have another drink, get lost in us / This is how we get notorious.” She quickly turns around and explains why she feels the need to party in order to be free, offering that she is ashamed of herself and is afraid of facing the fact that her heroes are disappearing around her. “All of the things we’re taking / 'Cause we are young and we’re ashamed / Send us to perfect places / All of our heroes fading / Now I can’t stand to be alone / Let’s go to perfect places.” After trying to avoid her pain through partying and drinking, Lorde finally comes to realize that life will probably always be an unavoidable mess, and distractions won’t help her deal with her issues despite providing a few hours of escape. She sends the album off with an anthemic chant of “All the nights spent off our faces /  Trying to find these perfect places / What the fuck are perfect places anyway?”

Universal Melodrama

So how did these two works of art end up with such eerily-similar arcs? Well, they are both centered around universal themes that are always relevant to the human experience. While love and heartbreak will always be relatable topics, Lorde has admitted that she designed Melodrama to emulate the feeling of a Greek tragedy. In an interview with Vanity Fair she elaborated:

“[Melodrama is] a nod to the types of emotions you experience when you’re 19 or 20. I had such an intense two years, and everything I was feeling—whether it was crying or laughing or dancing or in love—each of them felt like the most concentrated version of that emotion. I also have a love of theater and I love drawing a parallel with Greek tragedies. But there’s definitely an element of tongue-in-cheek; it’s very funny to title your record Melodrama.”

Lorde clearly invokes classical ideals in her record, as she emphasizes the unity of time, place, metaphor, and action. This makes for a more concise album, and as a result, everything is condensed and easy to follow. Similarly, she employs unity of metaphor with repeated references to the sun and fire, ribbons tying her to someone, and the feeling of being used in a relationship. All the imagery is meant to connect, spawning echoes and reflections across the album.

On “Sober II (Melodrama)”, Lorde cautions “We told you this melodrama / Our only wish is melodrama.” Much like the Greeks used to pen cautionary tales of being swept away in a fit of emotion, Lorde’s cry acts as a claim that the listener got exactly what they came for, just as she presumably knew that heartbreak often follows love. Despite the suffering caused by the disintegration of her relationship, Lorde knows every part of her life will be amplified in her transition to womanhood, even the highs.

The upside to these stories is that both Lorde and Medea turn their cautionary tales of heartbreak into stories of self-success. Thinking less about the specifics of what Medea did and more about the concept, we see two women who successfully seized opportunities to take control of their lives when they could have easily blamed the world for what was happening to them. Without discounting the fact that they both did take a moment to acknowledge the pain of their situation (“Liability” in Melodrama, Medea’s speech in Medea), we can see they were both more interested in accepting the challenge the world had given to them than they were in wallowing in self-pity. That can be a scary concept to tackle, and one that is even harder to realize in actuality. But as Lorde sings in “Liability,” her forest fire-like passion is what enables the wild fluorescence of love, the following crash of being alone, and the ability to embrace a new life. And the unique confusion that comes from that mix of feelings is worth it to have her strength and passion.

Another metaphor that unites both Lorde and Medea is the idea of disappearing into the sun. Lorde does so in “Liability,” a song about feeling used and retreating into yourself. Medea disappears into the sun literally as the final act of the play, leaving behind Jason to join the gods. They both do this as a way of showing heartbreak is not only something that can be overcome, but that the lessons learned from it and the resulting actions might have a more positive and permanent impact than loving someone else did. Lorde and Medea both understand that they can be better off alone and that the empowerment that comes along with their actions allows them to defy the usual feelings of heartbreak.

In many ways, the human experience will always be the same. We will always search for connection, we will always find heartbreak, and we stumble into relationships that change us forever. The fact that these two vastly different works, in two disparate mediums, from two artists centuries apart can both feel equally valid speaks to this. Viewing these universal truths through different lenses is how we evolve and connect as humans. It gives us an outlet to reflect on our own experiences, and (hopefully) grow as people through them. Whether it’s a murderous sorceress ascending into the sun or a New Zealand teenager dancing in her room by herself, there is truth, experience, and life to be gained through both of these pieces of art.

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Studying at Boston University, Grant loves writing about all things music. From Jeff Rosenstock to Bleachers, you can see what he his is listening to here. To stay up to date on more music thoughts, follow him on Twitter here.

Lil Pump Versus The Elderly: A Long and Storied History

Letter From the Editor: The writer of this piece would like to apologize in advance for the abject stupidity contained within the following wall of text. If you’re brave enough to subject yourself to the mania that’s about to unfold, then you have my admiration, gratitude, respect, and appreciation. Thank you for understanding, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Pumpology 101: The Mystifying Origins of Gazzy Garcia

Lil Pump is a dreadlocked 17-year old rapper from Florida who first began making waves in late 2016 when his song “D Rose” became an unexpected viral hit. Over the span of a few short months, the wrist-obsessed track had garnered millions of plays on Soundcloud and over one hundred million curious YouTube clicks. By the end of 2017, Lil Pump (whose real name is Gazzy Garcia) had established himself as a mainstream success when his song “Gucci Gang” peaked at #3 on the Billboard charts. Spawning from his self-titled debut, the alliterative hit quickly became the focal point of a heated debate on the declining state of rap music rap music, the ongoing idocratization of popular culture, and the bare minimum required to pass for lyricism in the year of our Lord 2017.

Expertly covered by both Rolling Stone and The New York Times, Mr. Pump has become a figure at the forefront of the budding “Soundcloud Rap” movement. This subgenre is a spin-off of Trap that’s focused on crafting a particular brand of blown-out, vapid, and repetitive hip-hop that, while lyrically substanceless, still manages to be catchy, memorable, and (most importantly) energetic. It’s hype-up music that’s been distilled so many times that words practically don’t matter.

I’ve already discussed my conflicted feelings on the genre back in August, and while some members of this scene are still objectively-horrific human beings, I’m willing to admit that I’ve come around to Lil Pump thanks to the catchiness of the aforementioned “Gucci Gang.” While the man himself should never be looked up to as an idol, Garcia is still making exciting creations within a field that I’m morbidly fascinated by.

The Lyrics (or Lack Thereof)

Like most rappers, Pump’s songs typically center around the same award-winning trifecta of drugs, money, and women. What makes “Gucci Gang” unique is the fact that it ticks all these boxes while also managing to be accessible to a mainstream audience. Soundcloud Rap’s previous biggest success came in the form of “Look At Me!,” a song whose lyrics are probably just a touch too edgy for mainstream audiences.

Meanwhile “Gucci Gang” has just the right mix of garish colors and catchy lyrics, both of which are accompanied by a distinct feeling of “newness” that helped it stand out from the crowd. Additionally, the song’s bouncy three-syllable chorus proved perfectlymemeable, ripe for parody, and endlessly reworkable, all of which led to a song that hit, and lingered in the cultural consciousness for longer than anyone ever expected. Possibly even a reflection of our society at large, “Gucci Gang” is an undeniable success no matter how you cut it.

Outside of the song itself, Lilliam Pumpernickel has also gained fans through numerous extra-musicalantics including second-floor balcony jumps, a love for iCarly’s Miranda Cosgrove, and a running joke that he’s a Harvard Graduate. Essentially, he’s not afraid to be a meme, and that lack of fear makes him even stronger. Complete with his own catchphrase, there are many reasons to be entertained by Lil Pump, and all of these elements combined help explain his meteoric rise to success.

The Emergence of an Astronomical Happening

Though my numerous listens to “Gucci Gang,” I began to approach the song the same way that many others did: first with curiosity, then ironic enjoyment, then genuine adoration. I can’t stress enough that the lyrics are nothing to write home about, however one stanza in particular stands out amongst the rest like a bright, shining star:

My lean cost more than your rent, ooh (it do)

Your momma still live in a tent, yuh (brr)

Still slangin’ dope in the ‘jects, huh? (yeah)

Me and my grandma take meds, ooh (huh?)

These bars initially seemed like a single metaphysical barb amongst a sea of relatively-straightforward brags and boasts, so I explained them away as a one-off lyric with no deeper significance. Unbeknownst to me at the time, this line was just the tip of the iceberg.

By the time December had rolled around, “Gucci Gang” had won the honor(?) of being recognized not once, but twice in Swim Into The Sound’s 2017 Un-Awards. While part of a largely-negative post, I shined a relatively-positive light on “Gucci Gang” as my second-biggest “WTF” moment of the year (second only to Bhad Bhabie) in which I found myself surprisingly endeared to both equally-trashy artists. Later on in the proceedings, I cited the lyrics above specifically as the single “Weirdest Flex” of 2017 (barely edging out a Drake lyric about napping).

In researching the Pump-penned lines for that write-up I found myself jumping between various Genius pages and in doing so, I quickly began to uncover a conspiracy deep as the Carly Rae Jepsen Cinematic Universe: Lil Pump has an unshakable fixation with the elderly.

The Quest For A Universal Truth

It’s no secret that artists tend to use the same concepts, thoughts, and ideas over and over again throughout their work. Usually in hip-hop, these recurring topics (like drugs, money, and women for instance) are framed by using twists on conventional language that are given new meanings within the scene’s culture. From “bricks” to “bands” to “bitches” every possible theme has dozens of different synonyms that can be switched out interchangeably to keep the rhyme fresh and the topic from going stale.

However, slang goes in and out of popular vernacular like the tides of the ocean, and Monsieur Pump is not above these familiar tropes. While drugs, money, and women remain the primary topics around which Pump waves his tales, he, on more than one occasion, has used his grandma, or the grandmother of the listener as a reference point for these interests.

Of course he likes lean, and naturally, he talks about it, but what makes Pump unique is his ability to relate that commonplace idea to the elderly in a hilarious and unexpected way. He’s using age as a barometer by which to measure his own life; the elderly representing an extreme through which he can cover these well-trodden topics.

It’s quite the signature flair for a 17-year-old to brandish, but perhaps through these lines he’s revealing his own obsession with death and mortality. Maybe these grandparent-based lyrics are allowing us a brief peek into the inner machinations of Lil Pump’s mind and we are learning what troubles him on a deep, cosmic, existential level. The philosophical reaper that keeps him up at night. These lines act as an illumination of the human experience as told through the grounded eyes of one man who yells “ESKETIT” like it’s his Pokemon name. What follows is a comprehensive list of every time Little Pump has rapped about senior citizens. You are welcome.

Exhibit #1 - “Gucci Gang”

My lean cost more than your rent, ooh (it do)

Your momma still live in a tent, yuh (brr)

Still slangin’ dope in the 'jects, huh? (yeah)

Me and my grandma take meds, ooh (huh?)

For the sake of completeness, we’ll begin with lyrics that started it all. The quote above comprises exactly 25% of the sole verse found on Lil Pump’s breakout hit “Gucci Gang.” In it we find Pump surveying his surroundings, living situation, and pattern of systematic drug use over a bassy beat and twinkling piano line.

First, we get the worrying comparison between the upkeep of his own opiate addiction to monthly rent, then the (uncalled for) implication that the listener’s mother is homeless, and the final cherry on top: the fact that Pump spends quality time popping pills with his grandmother. While the specifics remain vague here, it’s implied that he’s taking drugs recreationally while she is taking them for health reasons.

This being one of Pump’s numerous references to the elderly, the topic’s pervasiveness now leads me to believe that this is both a genuine lyric, as well as a thinly-veiled cry for help. As distressing as the lyric may be, at least he’s spending some quality time with his elders before they pass. Even if it’s a drug-fueled haze, I hope that both parties treasure their remaining time together and cherish each other’s company.

Exhibit #2 - “Fiji”

I got Fiji on my neck

I got Gucci on my chest

And my grandma sippin’ Tech

Off a Xan like Ron Artes

In this one-off Lil Pump loosie, Young Gazzy uses the artesian water brand as a descriptor for both his jewelry and his sex life. Following a similar structure as “Gucci Gang,” this track features a brief intro, and one verse sandwiched between two short choruses. Clocking in at a mere 88-seconds, “Fiji” is a striking minimalist creation that embraces reductionism and revels in ambiguity.

Within the world of hip-hop, “Water” can actually mean many things. From sex to swagger, the use of ‘water’ in-song is generally something you have to pick up from context clues, and this track is no different. In “Fiji” Pump walks a beautifully-ambiguous line between these typical definitions of earthly possessions and literal water, turning the brand’s name into a primal chant of “I pour Fiji on her neck.”

After a brief water-laced refrain, Pump proceeds into the meat of the song: a 45-word verse that discusses his public persona and ticks all of the seemingly-mandatory drug-based name-drops. He has jewelry on his neck, a Gucci logo tattooed on his chest, and most importantly the incongruous mention of his grandmother casually enjoying some hitech (aka Lean).

Perhaps elaborating on the lines of “Gucci Gang,” this lyric implies that maybe he and his grandmother both enjoy drugs on the same recreational level. Later on in the song he continues:

Slice your auntie in the neck

Lil Pump disrespect

Run up on you with that 40

Grab your grandma by the neck

After the verses earlier drug revelry, Pump seems to “set his sights” on the listener, attacking us via multiple familial ties. In a single moment of clarity he utters “Lil Pump disrespect” as if he knows what he’s doing is morally reprehensible, but remains out of his control. A haunting sentiment to say the least.

His hunger is insatiable, and your grandmother is his target. Violence is the only thing he understands, and your grandmother is the only thing he can grasp onto, both physically and metaphorically. And then, just as suddenly as the attack unfolded, the song fades into nothing, leaving the listener in the bloody aftermath.

Exhibit #3 - “Smoke My Dope”

Whippin’ up dope in the trap spot (what)

Sellin’ cocaine to your grandma (yuh)

Whippin’ up dope in the trap spot (yuh, yuh)

Sellin’ cocaine to your grandma (yuh, yuh, yuh, yuh)

In this early-album cut Lil Pump and fellow Florida rapper SmokePurpp trade verses for a compact and chaotic 2-minutes. In Garcia’s second verse he exerts himself enough to present one specific instance of creating and selling drugs over a series of escalating “yuh’s.”

In this simplistic portrayal of Pump’s supply chain, he gives his process away to the listener:

1. Whip up an indeterminate amount of “dope” within the “trap”

2. Proceed to sell that cocaine to the listener’s grandmother

Perhaps connected to the seemingly-uncalled-for violence depicted on “Fiji,” these lines seem to explain how Pump has obtained his wealth. I imagine that the elderly are comparatively easy-going when it comes to the purchase and intake of drugs, so it’s presumably easy money for Pump and a decent enough business model. Backed up by voracious twitter claims that echo the song’s lyrics, Pump has given us no reason to doubt him or his business acumen when it comes to selling the white stuff to the Greatest Generation.

Exhibit #4 - “Had”

My loud pack smell like fish tank

My backwoods filled with dumb stank

I can’t fuck with you, cause I know all you ni**as stains

My grandma selling loud pack and she selling cocaine

She run up on your block and she’ll shoot you in the fuckin’ brain

With “Had” it seems that there’s a new wrinkle to Pump’s drug operation as it’s revealed that he’s running a family business by employing his grandmother as a key player.

Depicting his bubbe as savage and violent as himself, this example could possibly explain Pump’s own outwardly-destructive actions as a learned behavior. In portraying a systematic issue within our society, this line directly tackles how family can fail us, or lead us to repeat the same mistakes as those that came before us. It’s a tortured and agonized call for help as Pump removes himself enough to realize the trauma that he has indirectly absorbed and the conditions that he has had no choice but to grow up in.

This all said, it’s still nice that people like Pump’s grandmother can find purpose in the fast-paced working world and be driven by the fulfillment of a hard days work. The fact that she’s willing to kill on top of the drug dealing means that she’s committed to the cause, and is likely quite experienced, even in her old age. At the very least, Pump must come from good genes!

Exhibit #5 - “At The Door”

I got junkies at the door

I could serve you 2 for 4

I could serve you couple Xans

I could feed your bitch some coke

Yeah my Uzi automatic

Make your grandma do a backflip

On this mid-album cut, we see yet another allusion to the violence that Pump has inflicted upon the listener’s grandmother specifically. Perhaps wielded by Pump himself, or maybe even his grandmother (as we saw in “Had), it appears as if the drug dealing illustrated on “Smoke my Dope” has gone sideways for one reason or another, and Pump has been forced to resort to violence.

This line is actually one of the multiple familial references within this verse, the others being father, daughter, and aunt, so while this reference fits squarely in the bounds of the topic at hand, there’s no getting around the persistently-elderly angle that Pump takes.

This is yet another line later echoed in a Tweet by Pump, either lending further credence to his unfeeling savagery, or (perhaps) his commitment to our society’s collective physical fitness by inspiring the elderly to do advanced-level gymnastics.

In Conclusion

None of this was good. While Pump’s initial references to the elderly seemed to be a twisted form of mutual enjoyment, things quickly devolved into selling drugs, and eventually inflicting violence directly on the listener’s grandmother.

This analysis is absolute stupidity, but I find it too amusing that a 17-year-old who has so few songs officially released has referenced the elderly half a dozen times throughout the history of his recorded work. The way I see it, there are a few explanations for this lyrical ouroboros:

1. It’s a creative crutch.

2. Lil Pump has that little to say that he keeps defaulting to “grandma.”

3. Deep-seated familial trauma in his own past that Pump may or may not be cognizant of.

4. Pump thinks that the savagery of his grandma implies, dictates, and directly translates to his own.

5. By “attacking” the listener and showing disregard for their loved ones, his devil-may-care attitude is preemptively deflecting any criticism they may have of Pump or his music.

6. Lil Pump truly does fear the uncertainty of death and projects that concern through the multiple references to the elderly in his music.

It very well could be all or any combination of all of these, but in any case, I feel it’s safe to say that this qualifies as an unhealthy fixation. Whether it’s a profound fear of death, a thinly-veiled attempt to address his own mortality, or irreconcilable childhood trauma, I genuinely hope that Gazzy Garcia can get the help he needs to get over this mental block.

He’s still got many years ahead of him, and a full life to live. If he wants to make it to the status of “Grandpa Pump” he’ll have to overcome this irrational fear and tackle his issues head-on, or else they will continue to emerge in unhealthy ways.

Here’s to you Mr. Pump, I hope you get the help you need and deserve.

I’m sorry for writing this.

The face of regret.

January 2018: Album Review Roundup

For a traditionally-quiet time of the year, January has been a surprisingly fantastic month for music. As 2018 trudges off to a slow start, I figured it would be helpful to collect all of the best projects from the past 31 days in one place.

Truth be told, this is just a writing exercise to get myself going on a particularly-sloggy Tuesday morning, but this roundup is as much for me (to help keep track of the ever-growing mountain of music I love), as it is for you to (hopefully) discover something new and refreshing.

Tiny Moving Parts - Swell

Within the space of two years, Tiny Moving Parts have cemented themselves as one of the most interesting, technical, and personable acts in modern emo. Featuring unpredictable math-rock time signatures, heartfelt lyrics, and shimmering production, Swell is the group’s most concerted effort to date.

Lil Wayne - Dedication 6: Reloaded

After a steady stream of qualitymixtapes beginning in 2015 Lil Wayne has been low-key killing it for years now. As he continues to grapple with ongoing public problems surrounding his forthcoming Tha Carter V, it’s becoming more evident with each passing day that fans may never get to hear that album. Luckily for us, while we wait for the vaporware LP Wayne is still free to drop impeccable rhymes over some of the hottest beats in recent years. From “Plain Jane” to “Gucci Gang,” D6: Reloaded is one of the best mixtapes of the rapper’s career. Interspersed with brief interview clips, each track offers a peek one step further into Wayne’s psyche until we’re deeper than we’ve ever seen before. The mixtape ends up being a 90-minute proving ground of chest-inflating punchlines, pussy-eating poetry, and effortless flows from one of the best in the game. A true return to form.

Ty Segall - Freedom’s Goblin

Packed with funky grooves, hip-swiveling rhythms, and lip-curling fuzz, Freedom’s Goblin is Ty Segall’s unabashedly-glammy double-album. Just as eclectic as fans have come to expect, Goblin dips into dozens of different psychedelic sounds over the course of its 1 hour 15-minute running time. After he borrows inspiration from them, all these disparate genres are then filtered down through one bizarre, unique, and unified multi-instrumental mind. This is a rock album of the highest order.

JPEGMAFIA - Veteran

One of my biggest surprises of the month, Veteran is the fourth mixtape from Los Angeles-based rapper and producer JPEGMAFIA. Taking cues from Clipping, Death Grips, Yung Jake, and Odd Future, Peggy offers up an utterly ballistic assault on the senses with this tape. Attacking everyone and everything in his sights, he uses a deft understanding of music, humor, and internet culture to create something that’s wholly his own.

Jay Some - Pirouette 7”

Following the critical acclaim of the blissed-out bedroom pop found on Everybody Works, Jay Som is back with two new tracks from the same session that didn’t make the initial cut. Equally dreamy, hazy, and intimate, both “Pirouette” and “O.K., Meet Me Underwater” flesh out Duterte’s musical persona and act as supporting evidence that the success of her breakthrough LP was no accident.

Migos - Culture II

With 24 tracks stretched over an exhausting 105 minutes, Culture II is a prime example of an artist doing their own thing. Following-up last year’s impactful sophomore effort, Culture II doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it doesn’t have to. From earworm choruses to infectious ad-libs, the Atlanta trio busts out trap anthem after trap anthem at an alarming pace until they tire themselves (and the listener) out. The group seems to have accepted and/or embraced their fate as musical popcorn: not exactly filling, but an undeniably fun snack.

No Age - Snares Like A Haircut

With bright, driving, summery rhythms, Snares Like A Haircut is a dream punk album in the style of Japandroids that’s designed for cruising the highway top-down on warm summer days. It’s an album-length injection of adrenaline into your veins that will keep you in motion, either willingly or by force.  

Drake - Scary Hours EP

Unceremoniously released late on a Friday night, Drake’s two-song EP has already been streamed millions of times, shattered single-day streaming records, and then preceded to break them again. Both mid-tempo stream-of-consciousness updates on the 6 God’s life since More Life, these two tracks are merely supporting evidence that Drake is still at the top of the game.

August Burns Red - Messengers Remixed

Messengers, one of the most pivotal metalcore records of all time, enjoyed its tenth anniversary this past July. Supported by a worldwide tour celebrating the album’s enduring success (and hot on the heels of a Grammy nomination for 2017’s Phantom Anthem), the progressive metal pioneers also released a full remaster of their breakthrough LP. Just as hard-hitting as the day it came out, Messengers now sounds better than ever with crushing breakdowns, tight instrumentation, and a newly-balanced mix.

Jeff Rosenstock - POST-

On literally the first day of the year, power pop god Jeff Rosenstock made his mantra for 2018 clear when he unleashed POST- into the world. With optimistic tracks of self-affirmation, aimless aggression, and political defiance, POST- is both the cure for your New Year’s hangover and the solution to everyday lethargy.

Shame - Songs of Praise

Far and away my favorite album of the month, Songs of Praise is the debut record from London-based post-punk group Shame. It’s an aggressive, moody, and surprisingly poetic album that’s currently filling the IDLES-shaped hole in my heart. Cold and grey, angry and calculating, this is an unflinching and immaculate record that took me by surprise and still hasn’t let go.

…and the rest

This month we’ve also been lucky enough to get new singles from Camp Cope, Jack White, The Voidz, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Troye Sivan, Ought, Palm, Alesana, MGMT, Savages, Franz Ferdinand, Car Seat Headrest, and Yo La Tengo. Whew.

We’re off to a good start, now let’s keep it together.

It Gets Brown: Swim Into The Sound's Guide to Ween

Every fandom begins somewhere. No matter what medium, format, time or place, everything you love can be traced back to a single moment when everything clicked into place. While we’re not always conscious of these origins, the fandoms that we can trace back to inception often feel so much more visceral and noteworthy than the ones that unfold gradually. Back in 2012 I heard a song that single-handedly sparked a fandom, ignited an obsession, and sent me on a years-long artistic exploration that remains one of the most twisted and wild experiences of my entire life.

The song in question was “If You Could Save Yourself (You’d Save Us All)” which was placed at the end of the 234th episode of a comedy podcast called Uhh Yeah Dude. I found myself transfixed by the song as I let the remaining minutes of the hour-long podcast play out on my dark gray iPod Classic. Mistified with a strange sense of familiarity, I clicked over to the information screen of my device to find the name of the band that performed the song. Ween. By the time that the ballad had faded out, I felt compelled to research the group further, and I quickly discovered why the song felt so familiar: I’d been listening to Ween since I was a child.

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Thank You, Stephen Hillenburg

It’s already weird to think about what music fandom was like in a pre-internet world. As someone born in 1993, I feel like I’m part of the last generation to experience the “entertainment oasis” that came with only having access to the physical media that’s on-hand. When you were a kid with five CDs, endless free time, and zero taste you’d find yourself listening to the same things over and over again without thinking twice.

Now that the internet is pervasive enough, platforms like iTunes, Youtube, and Spotify have made the entertainment oasis a thing of the past. These services have changed our world so rapidly that it’s interesting to cast your mind back to the time before they existed… though there’s still no accounting for taste.

One of the first CDs that I ever owned was Spongebob Squarepants - Original Theme Highlights which is a 12-minute compilation of songs from the first two seasons of the Nickelodeon show. This album, along with Eiffel 65, Sum 41, U2, and Spider-Man comprised the highly-unlikely and undeniably-absurd quintet of albums that made up my first CD collection. Looking at this list now, it seems inexplicable and extraordinarily embarrassing (especially given how many times I listened to each of these) but like I said, being 8 in 2001 was weird.

I listened to those five albums enough to memorize every one of them word for word because I had nothing else. Of the Spongebob record’s 12-minute running time, 61 seconds are taken up by a Ween song called “Loop De Loop.” I didn’t have last.fm then, but I would hazard a guess that I listened to this song at least a few hundred times throughout my childhood.

Ween resurfaced within the Spongebob oeuvre several years later when “Ocean Man” was used in The Spongebob Squarepants Movie as the film’s closing credits song. I didn’t listen to that movie’s OST nearly as much as I did Original Theme Highlights, but I still heard “Ocean Man” enough times for the song to make a lasting impact on me.

Thanks to Stephen Hillenburg’s apparent fandom of the band, I found myself overwhelmingly susceptible to nostalgia when I heard “If You Could Save Yourself” close out that podcast in 2012. This childhood band had wormed their way back into my musical consciousness in the most unexpected way possible over one decade after I was first exposed to them. I ended up diving into Ween that same year, and the band proved themselves to be a powerful creative force that I desperately needed in my life at that time.  

For the sake of not turning away any more potential readers with further hyper-specific personal details, I’m now going to remove myself from this narrative as much as possible and formally introduce you to the band called Ween.

The History

Ween is a band from New Hope, Pennsylvania comprised of Aaron Freeman and Mickey Melchiondo Jr. Formed in 1984, the two met in a middle-school typing class and quickly bonded over their shared love of music and drugs. Eventually, this unlikely pair of slackers set out to record songs of their own using nothing but the cheap-ass equipment they had on-hand. Donning the personas of two brothers, Freeman and Melchiondo became Gene and Dean Ween respectively. Together they combined to form Ween, and the duo began crafting unrelentingly-goofy and drugged-out lo-fi indie music that was “designed to be obnoxious.”

For five years, the pair recorded a series of cassette-based releases in which Gene sang, Dean played guitar, and a pre-recorded beat kept time. Occasionally joined by Chris Williams on bass as “Mean Ween” the group quickly garnered a cult following that was drawn to the band’s absurdist approach to music, songwriting, and life.

By 1990 Ween had released a (relatively) polished debut that culled the best of their cassette tape-era tracks into one commercial full-length. Within one decade of their inception, they were four records deep, playing with a full band, and hailed as one of the weirdest acts in indie. Through sheer persistence, Ween has managed to cultivate and maintain a hyper-dedicated fanbase that simultaneously allowed for the group’s continued success while also allowing them to fly under the radar.

They’ve had a few one-off hits throughout the years that gained them mainstream visibility, but for the most part, Ween has primarily remained a cult band with a long list of semi-impenetrable albums, and an even longer list of b-sides and bootlegs. While the history is important to know, these are just the (very) broad brush strokes of a band that’s had a 3+ decade career. More important than the timelines and the drama is the actual music, so let’s talk about that.

The Sound

The reason I felt the need to create this guide is a simple one: Ween is one of my favorite bands of all time. Unfortunately, as incredible as their music is, they don’t go out of their way to make it particularly accessible. While there’s a slight “barrier to entry” to most of their records, they’re a band that’s worth the effort. Additionally, once their music does click, it’s actually hard to be a “casual” Ween fan because their work is so vast and diverse that each song becomes a rewarding adventure that stands on its own. They’re a group that practically begs to be worshiped, but they definitely test your faith in the beginning.

In spite of (or perhaps because of) their extensive body of music, it’s often hard for would-be fans to find a proper entry point into the group’s work. That goes double for an outsider who jumps into Ween’s discography with no primer or guidance from a long-time fan. In a way, you have to “build up a tolerance” to their sound in order to fully-realize the brilliance of their earlier albums. It’s a long and twisted journey, but it’s worth taking.

Perfectly described by Hank Shteamer as “pan-stylistic,” Ween is a genre bender in the truest sense. Never limiting themselves to one sound or concept, the members of Ween actively embrace just about every type of music under the sun. This is another reason why it can be hard to get into the band. Because they play a little bit of everything, any given Ween album can contain up to a dozen different sounds, accents, and goofy lyrics, so knowing where to start can vary depending on the listener’s taste.

What’s impressive is not the fact that Ween can play every genre, but that they can play every genre competently. Within minutes they can jump from hard rock to country to funk to piano balladry, all without breaking a sweat. More importantly, this isn’t done in some half-assed ironic way, every genre that Ween tackles is done in a full, loving, and complete embrace of the sounds they’re emulating. It’s a universal reverence for art, music, and creativity.

It’s not that their style is hard to define, it’s that they’ve invented their own style.

Early on in their partnership, Gene and Dean coined the term “Brown” to describe the band’s sound. Explained as “fucked up, but in a good way,” Brown is the all-encompassing term (and a major piece of mythology) used by the band and its fans when discussing the music. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but you’ll know it when you hear it. Brown knows no genres. Brown knows no limits.

The most frequent comparisons made are typically the Grateful Dead or Phish, but even those do Ween a disservice because it makes them sound like a jam band which they are decidedly not. A more apt comparison would be to Frank Zappa or Captain Beefheart but even then, Ween stands alone from each of these artists as a unique entity.

In fact, the closest reference point to Ween may not be music at all, but the broader concept of Gonzo. Unedited, profane, druggy, sarcastic, personable, exaggerated, humorous, and eclectic. All of these words are simultaneously accurate and describe Ween’s music to a T.

Jumping back to why I felt the need to create this guide: Ween’s early stuff is rough and dissonant, and their later material can be more serious and spotty. As a result, they’re a band that benefits significantly from a specific listening order if you genuinely want to sink your teeth into them. If you don’t have a Ween fan in your life, I’m here to be your faithful Ween shaman. This is an album-by-album guide, telling you what to listen to, providing context, and walking you through each of the group’s core works.

I’ve successfully used this same path to turn two other people into fans, and (for the most part) it follows a largely agreed-upon “canon” according to other hardcore fans. I’ve merely composed the words to go along with each record in an attempt to explain why each one is special. While I’m always a proponent of listening to albums in whole, I’ve also selected three cuts from each LP that offer brief glimpses into the variety of sounds and genres contained within each record. You can check out these select tracks in this Spotify Playlist if you’d like, but I’d still say each of these albums are worth listening to in-full if you have the time.

Now that we’ve got all that out of the way let’s dive in.

1 |The Mollusk (1997)

By far the most commonly-agreed-upon starting point amongst Ween fans, The Mollusk strikes a perfect balance between polished accessibility, outlandish weirdness, and objective greatness.

Opener “I’m Dancing in the Show Tonight” immediately sets the tone for the record, kicking things off with a jaunty tuba-filled track featuring multiple distorted vocal takes all simultaneously fighting for the listener’s attention. It’s a curveball right off the bat, but it’s also just short enough that the listener may write it off as a one-off intro track.

From there, the songs range from woozy psychedelia on “Mutilated Lips” and “It’s Gonna Be (Alright)” to rip-ass rock on “I’ll Be Your Jonny On The Spot.” There are straight-up novelty songs like “Waving My Dick In The Wind” and “Blarney Stone,” but even the weirdest tracks here serve to add an additional layer onto the record’s barnacle-ridden Celtic aesthetic.

Most notably, the aforementioned “Ocean Man” was expertly-deployed as the credits song to 2004’s Spongebob Squarepants Movie and probably remains the single best entry point to the rest of the band’s work. Perfectly singable, wonderfully upbeat, and just weird enough to feel “Weeny,” “Ocean Man” will forever be the definitive entry-level Ween song.

2 |Quebec (2003)

Shiny, high-flying, and shockingly mature, Quebec is a melancholic sample platter of everything Ween had mastered after nearly two decades of music creation.

Three years after one of the most polished records in their discography, Ween went back to the drawing board and decided to throw themselves headlong back into the absurdity that got them where they were. Mixing their early psychedelia with very adult-like sadness and grounded realism, Ween managed to craft one of the most well-rounded records in their entire discography.

Featuring some of the most stoner-ready tracks in their discography alongside some of the most shred-worthy, Quebec is a testament to the group’s staying power. With 15 tracks stretched over 55 minutes, Quebec helped the band find a second wind through “Transdermal Celebration” which became a relative commercial success. Occasionally the scope swells to grand operatic scales on songs like “If You Could Save Yourself” only to rapidly shift back to childish goof on songs like “Hey There Fancypants.” In jumping between these vastly different voices, the band fleshed out their sonic scale and landed on a formula that cemented their position as all-time greats.

3 |Chocolate and Cheese (1994)

Chocolate and Cheese takes the variation of Quebec, adds the outlandishness of Mollusk, and then jumps five steps further into humor.

Probably the earliest “accessible” album of the band’s career, Chocolate and Cheese is often cited as an alternative starting point to Mollusk mainly because it bears more of the band’s trademarked comedy and goofiness throughout. Unfortunately, this album is also the tipping point for some fans in this early part of the Ween journey because if you don’t like this record, it’s unlikely you’ll enjoy anything that comes after it.

While the production on Chocolate and Cheese is slightly more limited than Quebec, this record contains the most ideas per square inch than any other record in the band’s career. Some later albums are more “out there,” but nearly every track on C&C stands alone as a well-polished, fleshed-out, and fully-realized concept. Not necessarily the “weirdest” album in their repertoire, but when every track is different, you never have the chance to be bored.

“Voodoo Lady” is a groovy tongue-twister of a bop, “Take Me Away” is a hard-charging opener, and “Mister Would You Please Help My Pony?” is yet another ‘childlike’ Ween track that, if it weren’t for a few scattered “fucks,” probably could have fit in on an episode of Spongebob. There’s a little something for everyone, and no song resembles anything close to the one that came before it.

The definitive song on Chocolate & Cheese comes in the form of its 13th track “Buenos Tardes Amigo” which weaves an epic 7-minute spaghetti western tale of drama and betrayal. It’s a passionate track that’s impeccably-delivered with a jaw-dropping guitar solo centerpiece, all of which makes for a narrative that’s deserving of your full attention. The fact that it’s followed up by a track called “The HIV Song” is a quintessential Ween move.

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While the Mollusk, Quebec, and Cheese make up for a perfect triumvirate of “Beginning Ween Albums,” we now take a few steps further into obscurity with the middle three records in this guide. Featuring later-career albums that are slightly less accessible, and just a little spottier, we now find ourselves in the depths of it all.

4 |White Pepper (2000)

White Pepper is Ween’s most impeccably-produced album featuring a 40-minute collection of powerful would-be radio hits.

Following the (again, relative) success of The Mollusk, the band went back into the studio for several years and emerged in 2000 with White Pepper which represented a noticeable slide towards cleaner production, shockingly-polished instrumentals, and decidedly more thoughtful lyrics.

Perhaps fittingly, there is almost nothing “Brown” about White Pepper, even still, the group manages to find moments of grit with songs like “Stroker Ace” and “The Grobe.” Conversely, there are also uncharacteristically breezy songs like “Even If You Don’t” and “The Flutes of Chi,” but even these objectively-pleasant songs are undercut with a hint of unmistakably Ween-ey humor once you begin to analyze them past the surface level.

The best example of this is “Bananas and Blow” which sounds like a pitch-perfect Jimmy Buffet song if he wasn’t so worried about turning off his listeners with blatant casual drug use. This track features “Buenas Tardes”-esque southern guitar work, female backing vocals, and an island-worthy rhythm section. The exotic instrumental is paired with a wispily-delivered and heavily-accented delivery by Gener depicting an isolated potassium-rich drug bender. Indeed a paragon of the Ween dynamic.

5 |12 Golden Country Greats (1996)

12 Golden Country Greats is precisely what it sounds like: a collection of wonderfully-creative and surprisingly-earnest original country tunes.

Even if you’re not a country fan, the way that Ween finds a way to impress their signature sound on ten songs of differing speeds is worth witnessing. From high-speed hoedowns (“Pretty Girl” and “Japanese Cowboy”) to remorseful bluesy tracks (“I’m Holding You” and “You Were The Fool”) 12 Golden Country Greats hits every measure with pitch-perfect accuracy and surprising grace.

Most impressively, “Piss Up A Rope” has managed to worm its way into all-time classic status as one of the group’s live staples. On the same tip, the heartache-inducing “Fluffy” represents the exact tonal inverse of “Piss Up A Rope,” but still manages to strike a balance between these two mid-nineties goofballs and one of America’s oldest music genres.

It’s not the album that you’d expect following the slight commercial success of Chocolate & Cheese two years earlier, but that’s what’s great about Ween: every move is unexpected, yet they manage to pull it off flawlessly. While 12 Golden Country Greats is obviously as diverse as any of their other records, the band manages to make a full-album genre experiment look like a cake walk.

6 | La Cucaracha (2007)

La Cucaracha is the Ween’s carefree late-career album and the long-form reflection of a decades-long journey.

Already over a decade old at the time of this writing, La Cucaracha is, sadly, Ween’s latest record. While they’ve had a few public brakes and even a full-on hiatus in recent years, it’s still surprising that La Cucaracha is the last we’ve heard from the band in any official capacity. I say that both because I want new songs, but also because this album is a bit of a sour note to go out on. I almost considered cutting it for the sake of the listener experience, but eventually, I decided that I want this list to be comprehensive.

At the end of the day, La Cucaracha isn’t a bad record, it just feels less inventive than everything else that’s come before it. While there are still some scattered highlights like “Your Party” and “Fiesta” there isn’t much to write home about on La Cucaracha, at least nothing that you couldn’t get from earlier releases.

The album’s single most significant contribution comes in the form of “Woman and Man” which is an 11-minute epic that erupts into a ferocious and densely-packed 8-minute instrumental jam.

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After a slightly saggier middle section, we’ve reached the final trio of Ween albums. This is where things get weird. This is where things get great. This is why the previous albums were necessary. The build-up is worth it because the payoff is beautiful. In this final grouping of albums, we fully-descend into Brown, and everything will begin to make sense. Brace yourselves.

7 |GodWeenSatan: The Oneness (1990)

GodWeenSatan is the group’s full-album unveiling to the world with over two dozen songs of lovesick mania.

On Ween’s debut, we find a surprisingly-accessible early version of the band that is already brimming over the top with outlandish ideas. Clocking in at 76 minutes with 29 tracks, nearly every song on here hovers around the 2-minute range which allows the band to showcase their wide variety of genres, voices, and whacky lyrics. Throughout the LP the duo finds themselves quickly springing from one idea to the next with no warning, no regard for the listener, and no concern for perceived “cohesiveness.” Most songs end in improvised conversations, explosions of laughter, or simply incoherent screaming. It just sounds like two teenagers who are having making music… because that’s exactly what it is.

While there’s still more genre variation than any other band, the group occasionally finds themselves visiting similar sounds throughout the record. “You Fucked Up” and “Common Bitch” are both explosive balls-out rock tracks. “I’m In The Mood To Move” and “Blackjack” are pitch-shifted stream-of-consciousness ramblings/word associations placed over minimalistic instrumentation. “Cold and Wet” and “Nan” both find Gener adopting an Adam Sandler-esque voice over rolling bluey riffs.

Meanwhile one of the album’s most ‘traditionally pleasant’ songs “Don’t Laugh (I Love You)” ends in one minute of off-puttingly-loud screeching and uncontrollable laughter, and if there’s a better encapsulation of Ween than that dichotomy, I don’t know it.

Despite how early on it is in their career, it’s incredible how polished and well-produced these tracks sound thanks to a 2001 remaster. While GodWeenSatan has a few rough edges, you can already feel the band laying down the framework for their future releases, plus the tunes are absolutely undeniable. It will overstimulate your senses.

8 |Pure Guava (1992)

Featuring the band’s breakthrough hit, Pure Guava is a psychedelic album in a style that only Ween can do with songs that only these minds could have conceived.

Ostensibly a balance between the ideas founded on their first album and the whacked-out trip of their second album, Pure Guava is Ween at the peak of their lo-fi powers. Both visually and stylistically reminiscent of John Frusciante’s Smile from the Streets You Hold, Guava offers the most refined version of the band’s early sound before they jumped to the relative polish of Chocolate and Cheese.

Songs like “The Goin’ Gets Tough From The Getgo,” and “Reggaejunkiejew” play out like absurdist exercises in which the band is testing the edges of their own sanity by repeating a single sticky phrase over and over again atop an infectious groove. On the other end of these twisted experimentations are tracks that fly in the complete opposite direction stylistically, lyrically, and instrumentally. “Don’t Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy)”is a soaring conceptual ballad in which the band volleys a non-stop barrage of unforgettable psychedelic imagery at the listener. All of these phrases culminate in a Bohemian-Rhapsody-like vocal break that shines forth unlike anything else in the band’s discography. It’s something so original and unique that it couldn’t thrive anywhere but this album.

9 | The Pod (1991)

The Pod is Ween’s secluded, deranged, and drugged-out masterpiece that quickly reveals its brilliance to those willing to listen.

Even making it this far into Ween’s discography, you may still feel a palpable reaction of “what the fuck” when you first hit play on The Pod. Mutch like adjusting to the warm water of a hot tub, or learning to enjoy your first alcoholic beverage, The Pod comes with a brief adjustment period, but once it’s over, will be an experience you’ll remember forever.

Deeper and darker than anything else the band has ever recorded, it’s awe-inspiring how many impeccable melodies and brilliant ideas are hidden just one layer beneath a wall of practically-impenetrable sound. “Strap on that Jimmypac” is the opening curtain raise that attempts to acclimate the listener to the unique brand of narcotized journey they’re about to embark upon. From there each additional track throws the listener for a loop while also maintaining the same thematic range of strung-out haziness throughout. “Dr. Rock” is a punchy punky rock song. “Sorry Charlie” is a woozy saloon track that drips with regret. “Pollo Asado” is literally just a guy ordering Mexican food over muzak. It’s insanity.

Some of the most stellar tracks in the band’s discography come midway through the record in the form of “Captain Fantasy,” “Awesome Sound,” and “Demon Sweat.” These represent some of the most distorted, far out, and extreme lengths the band ever went to musically. Each song generally runs around 3-4 minutes, indicating a little more of a full-album approach than the sketchbook-like approach we saw on their debut.

The Pod is a true masterwork of a band without boundaries, traditions, or limits.

But Wait, There’s More

As much as I love Ween and these albums, this guide barely scratches the surface of the band’s output. There are B-side compilations, two EPs, several officially-released live albums, multiple different solo projects, demo sessions of most albums, radio recordings, and five of those early cassette releases. On top of all this, there’s Browntracker.net which hosts literally thousands of obsessively-made fan-created live recordings.

In short, there’s more Ween than you can shake a stick at, and if you wanted to, you could probably dedicate the rest of your life to listening to one of these a day and still not hear them all. But that’s one of the reasons that the band has such a dedicated fanbase, and it’s one of the things that makes being a Ween fan such a rewarding experience.

Finally

Ween revealed themselves to me at a pivotal time in my life. A time when I didn’t know what I wanted to do or who I wanted to be. A time when I was burnt out life, tired of music, and couldn’t find joy in anything. That was a soul-sapping and destructive feeling, and it’s crushing when it’s something you recognize but can’t shake.

The way that Ween balances abject silliness and utter sincerity felt like a cosmic revelation to me at the time. As I dug deeper into the group’s mythos and their music, Ween’s approach to the world came to influence my own. Simultaneously embracing absurdity and seriousness (or packaging one inside of the other) has been a comedic voice I’ve adopted for years at this point. As much as I love reveling in this bipartisan goofiness, recent events in the world have also given me a newfound appreciation for wholly genuine acts and real emotions. It was fun walking the “Ween line” where no one can quite tell which side of the fence you lie on, but it’s no longer my default approach to life as it was back then.

Aside from this newfound voice though, Ween’s discography along with John Frusciante’s PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone served as part of a one-two punch that year that reinforced and reignited my love of music. These albums blew the hinges off my preconceived notions surrounding art and single-handedly proved to me that there’s still room for untethered creative expansion in the world.

Ween helped remind me that the world is a beautiful place and it revealed to me that there are unheard and unfathomable ideas living within all of us. There are goofy lyrics and serious ballads. There are beautiful paintings and inspiring words. There are things that only you could ever think of, and these records serve as concrete proof that the only limits we place on ourselves are self-imposed.

There are beautiful, goofy, wonderful ideas inside your head that have never been heard, seen, or read before by anyone else. Concepts that, after millions of years, have never been conceived until you came along. And until we can unlock those ideas within ourselves, we might as well appreciate the sounds of others.

Supplemental Material

Dean Ween - Guitar Moves

God Ween Evan Podcast

Ween: An Abbreviated History

Ween - Wah Wah

Ween’s Chocolate and Cheese (33 1/3) Paperback

Ween’s The Mollusk Turns 20: An Oral History By Mickey Melchiondo

Weenology 101: The Early Days of Ween Documentary

WTF Podcast - Aaron Freeman