by Mick Reed (@thasoundblog)
I’ve come to hate album reviews that begin with the line, “At a time when…” and then trail off into some light, poorly informed, and vacuously broad proclamation about the state of the world and its politics, that usually ends with the statement, “at least we have [insert milquetoast indie band] to get us through these dark times.” I’ve written a few of these over the years and I regret my part in perpetuating this awful writing trend. I mention this because the new LP from the pop-punk band Worriers begins with a track titled “End of the World” which is about figuring out how to survive a traumatic confluence of world events, and it would be extremely easy to begin my review of their latest album, You or Someone You Know in the aforementioned tired and rote fashion. I won’t though, because the Worriers are a great band and they deserve better than a hack job review.
If you’re not familiar, Worriers is a NYC punk band comprised of singer, songwriter and guitarist Lauren Denitzio and whichever of their friends they can rope into the project between records. This has consistently been Mikey Erg since their debut, but on the most recent record, the line-up also includes bassist Nick Psilas and guitarist Frank Piegaro. Even from Lauren’s early releases under the Worriers moniker, it was clear that they had an imminently relatable songwriting style, full of folksy flourishes and driving guitars, they were damned if they were going to let the world pen them in. The band’s 2015 debut Imaginary Life was produced by Laura Jane Grace and tackled some at-large political issues of that time: rapid gentrification, criminal cops and racist murders, and linguistic battles involving identity, balanced out with some personal, biting commentary cornering past relationships. You or Someone You Know is the group’s third LP, and is much more inwardly focused. None of the political issues that were addressed back in 2015 have been resolved, and the world has sunk several rungs lower into the pit of hell since its release. As indicated by the title of the band’s’s second LP Survivor Pop intimates, if you can’t put out the flames of this garbage fire of a world, how can you at least survive long enough to see another day with in it?
Planning for the future is an obvious concern for most of us. How do you plan for retirement at age 70 with the hopes of maintaining your current meager lifestyle when you can’t save even twenty dollars today? The personal has never been more political in real materialistic terms, meaning that the inward focus of You or Someone You Know is not a turn towards solipsism as much as it is an understanding of the practical barriers presented to us in our continued attempts to subsist on this planet. As a result, “End of the World” is a perfect place to start. Where do you go when the world is going to be underwater in thirty years? When supply chains collapse? When fresh, potable water becomes more precious than gold? …when it’s already more valuable than oil. It’s worth asking, “What Comes Next?,” as Denitzio does on the swelling, folk-punk waltz with its teeth-grinding groove on the latter half of the album, vacillating between the weight of carrying on and the crushing reality that whatever you do will be unlikely to save you in the long run. A straightforward question with no clear answer.
There are moments that are just personal on You or Someone You Know as well. Like on the buzzy, acidic roil of “PWR CPLE” a rejection of the label pushed on people’s relationships when their pairing serves as a surrogate for other’s (or even on of their own) ambitions while being unable to control the centrifugal forces at their center. More arresting, is the stripped back mid-album confessional “Terrible Boyfriend” which is honest in a way that is painful to observe and cathartic to experience. Denitzio shares a lot of heavy emotions throughout the course of the album, which makes moments of self-recognition and acceptance like on the strummy, assertive stroll of the perfectly titled “Chicago Style Pizza is Terrible” all the more welcome and necessary.
You or Someone You Know is another penetratingly prescient reflection of the moment in which it was made, with relatable lyrics and concerns in a world we will all surely leave before we find our place in. It’s not a portfolio of solutions and doesn’t profess to have any answers, but it does help me feel less alone to realize that someone else shares my fears for the future and is able to translate their trepidations into some rock solid punk music. Sometimes all you can ask of the world is to be seen, if it is just a glimpse, before you are swallowed again in a quicksand like furrow of suffocating anxiety.