Breaking The Balls Of History

About

The keyboard-and-drums duo Quasi (Sam Coomes and ex-Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss) have long lived by the immortal advice of Oscar the Grouch to let a frown be your umbrella. Their 10th album sketches a familiar hellscape of mass shootings (“Nowheresville”), internet addiction (“Doomscrollers”), and environmental ruin (“Back in Your Tree”) with the same sweet, ’60s-inspired garage pop that has underpinned their miserable reflections going back to the ’90s, when misery seemed cuter and less pertinent. But it’s the more existential writing that resonates most, from the cosmic brain of “Gravity” (as in “…don’t care at all”) to the nihilistic passivity of “Queen of Ears” (“I float above it all/Wizard of idleness/Mistress of killing time”). And if all that sounds bleak, remember that they’re the ones making art in the face of the void, and heed their hopeful parting words: “You’re gonna lose anyway/Again and again/Until the day the losers win.”

via Apple Music