Album Review: Worry. by Jeff Rosenstock
Captures something I haven’t heard in years, and it’s making me feel things.
Jeff Rosenstock is an arrogant son of a bitch. No, really: before going solo, his previous acts included ska-punk godfathers the Arrogant Sons of Bitches and Bomb the Music Industry!. Chances are you haven’t heard of those bands before, and you’d be in good company — Rosenstock et. al have always held ideologies of DIY methods, so the majority of his music spread through little more than word of mouth. Maintaining ethics of inclusive all-ages shows and affordable pay-what-you-can records, Rosenstock has helped build a community of romantically nostalgic punk that he’s carried with him since launching his solo career in 2012. The third entry in his catalogue, Jeff Rosenstock’s Worry. continues the tradition with the backing of a label, SideOneDummy, for the first time. Despite the financial support, Rosenstock opted to once again record and produce the album with only the help of his bandmates and friends. And the result?
Rosenstock is in his mid-30s, but the record he’s created in Worry. feels timelessly relatable. He really nails a feeling of youthful disillusionment mixed with resentment against conventions of maturity and adult life, while also addressing general anxiety in today’s times. That is to say, he can appreciate how shitty it is to be young, but also doesn’t want to grow old — especially not in today’s fucked world. Rosenstock’s erratic singing style, with all its imperfect cracks and wavers, especially connects with the listener. Much like the lyrics being delivered, Rosenstock feels like he’s clinging to his own ideals and sense of self by grasping at the mental threads in his words. The connectivity adds some great momentum to the tracks as Rosenstock’s frantic delivery keeps you wanting to hear the next lyric — which I have to add, are seriously worth looking up. The content can be hard to discern at first, but the sharp listener (or researcher — look these lyrics up, damnit!) will pick up general themes of rallying against gentrification, economic inequality, housing anxieties, police brutality, and much more. Yet even though these aren’t novel themes in punk, Rosenstock addresses them as reluctant participant rather than condescending observer, and I really appreciated that shift. Nobody’s perfect, and songwriters that criticize society while pretending to be completely separated from it build up vaulted narratives that unrealistically step away from the problems that need to be remedied. Rosenstock not only directly addresses his unwilling participation in the opening line of ‘Festival Song’, but also criticizes the mental gymnastics of rebels who buy into anti-society trends without ever doing more than glamorizing the cause they believe to be a part of. It’s a balance that feels fresh and grounded, rather than preachy or exclusive.
Each topic is tackled by Rosenstock so effectively that a few more instances are worth mentioning. There are several tracks that touch on the struggles of development and gentrification swallowing decent places to live, such as ‘Staring Out the Window of Your Old Apartment’, ‘HELLLLHOOOLLE’, and more. What makes them so interesting is that even though Rosenstock is speaking from the perspective of an assumedly less-affluent dude approaching middle age, there’s a level of relatability that still comes across — and this rings true for the whole album. I personally haven’t been chased around by shitty landlords demanding more and more money for less and less quality, but I can understand the twisted amusement that comes with living in a complete shithole despite your best efforts. Even the depression of living in a hyper-digital world becomes quantifiable in ‘To Be A Ghost…’ when Rosenstock brays “born as a data mine for targeted marketing, and no one will listen up until you become a hashtag or a meme,” or during ‘Blast Damage Days’ with “these are the Amazon days, we are the binge watching age, and we’ll be stuck in a screen until our phones fall asleep.” While it sounds like there’s a lot of doom and gloom on Worry. (I mean, just look at the title), there’s a nice enclave of cautious optimism scattered throughout the tracklisting, too. ‘June 21st’ and ‘I Did Something Weird Last Night’ come to mind, and especially the latter with its charming deluge of excitement, triumph, and anxiety over new romances. Even in these tunes, or others about police brutality or reevaluating the importance of self-respect, Jeff Rosenstock creates ways to directly tap into the anxieties of a generation of youth that are still figuring it all out. And in this case, Rosenstock’s age doesn’t matter — he’s clearly working it all out for himself, too. (If you want to hear more about the themes of Worry. and how Jeff nails them, I’d recommend reading Pitchfork’s review next, as they go much more in depth).
Each song and its themes are distinctly flavoured, and the actual musical feels have unique characters as well. Ghosts of Rosenstock’s past creep up in the spectrum of punk that is heard on Worry.: thrash, hardcore, folk, lo-fi, and even ska elements are scattered across the album. For an album made on their own, the band did a fantastic job of producing a record that feels dynamic and fresh. Varying changes in loudness and speed reduce fatigue on what might otherwise have been a heavy and taxing album to listen to. Even the minor imperfections help tie together Jeff Rosenstock’s mantra of inclusiveness — the blips and screeches feel like happy accidents that you could have made yourself if you were helping put the record together, and there’s a sort of authentic personality that comes from keeping the hiccups along the way. Although, if the lyrics don’t keep you enthralled, the second half of the album will absolutely distract you from any stumbles — several songs on the B side transition into one another as they blow by in a whirlwind that was seriously overwhelming the first time around. For real, you hear about nine songs nonstop in something like 10 minutes, and the way they flow seamlessly into one another nails down the feeling that this album was intended to be listened to all at once. The second half shifts through so much emotion and sound that you need to go through it all over again to understand what just happened, which kind of makes a neat allegory for today’s age and landscape that the album’s lyrical content so accurately reflects. All in all, Worry. is easily one of my favourite albums of 2016. The record itself, and a Rosenstock show I saw in Toronto at the end of the year, brings me back to when I first fell in love with punk in high school. It’s a seriously formidable emotion that I can’t quite describe, but one that Jeff Rosenstock’s compelling and cathartic performance captures in song.
Verdict: You must listen to this album. It’s available for free right here, so seriously do it at least once.
