by Matt Keim
Vintage Crop do not want to go to work, especially if that work involves an office. Of the four tracks on their new EP, Company Man, every single one brings a tirade of abuse against living life as a white collar schmuck. Right out the bat, after -of course- the sound of a printer booting up, Jack Cherry’s yelling. He’s yelling about money spent on business school, or how a tie is just another collar, and of course the length of a certain appendage gets a reference to make sure you’re listening. This is not happy music, and it’s not angry either. It’s an endless barrage about the mundanity of existence delivered with dry sarcasm and the force of a baseball bat to the stomach.
The songs don’t necessarily charge forward as much as lurch and shudder, carried along by the insistent ticking, clicking, and pounding of the drums. If that beat is humming along, then the guitars will almost certainly be either thwacking out big chords or laying down skittering lines, and if the guitars are chugging, then the beat’s going to be slopped around all off-kilter. This creates a fantastically uneven bedrock for Cherry and Co.’s manic diatribes against office life to bounce off of. It’s only on an occasional chorus that the whole Vintage Crop get going into a proper head-down pelt, and it smacks.
The final track, “Stock Options,” is the standout. They slow it down and relax for a second as they let a melody peek out of the madness. Ignoring the lyrics at this point, one could almost believe in the real possibility for happiness as a company man. Then Cherry busts out a dick joke and the ruse is up. There is no happiness, and there’s no answer either. Luckily, Vintage Crop are here with a beer and a tune to help you release your frustration until next Monday rolls around.