Review Summary: Dreamin' dream dream dream dream dream dream dream
Life is fucking relentless, and Jeff Rosenstock knows it. Jeff has lived the life every sweaty DIY musician dreams of. He spent the 2000s plugging away in the New York underground and he put his anarcho-punk credentials to the test and founded the first pay-what-you-want-or-don't-pay-anything music platform, long before Radiohead let everyone steal In Rainbows. Here he is now, critically acclaimed, on modest Cartoon Network money and making enough to fuck off to the desert, as he lets slip on "Life Admin."
And yet,
and yet. Those old anxieties, those nagging doubts, those long held fears, the imposter syndrome, they're still there. Jeff knows others have it worse than him, he knows the position of relative privilege he now lives in, so he lives in the sweet spot of existential angst and guilt so many ageing millennials seem to find themselves in. Someone always has it worse than you and you've slipped into the comfortable banality of pre-middle age. You can keep screaming about it, but does that really make any difference?
Jeff Rosenstock had a better 2010s than most.
WORRY is a bona-fide, canonised punk classic, the kind of record that comes around maybe once a decade and that most artists can only dream of making.
NO DREAM was a salve to the nightmare that was 2020,
SKA DREAM somehow outdid it through the power of horns and skanking. Enter
HELLMODE. Leaning more into melodic hardcore and alt rock,
HELLMODE finds Jeff grappling with the same emotions he has been since
WE COOL?, now filtered through the lens of living through the proliferation of far-right populism, a global pandemic, the slow death of the very live music industry he's always had an uneasy relationship with and the general sense that everything is on the decline.
If that all sounds a bit overwhelming, it's because it is. Fortunately, Jeff knows how to take self-doubt and spin an anthem or two out of it. "Will U Still U" is an ode to living in crippling fear that your partner will realise, any second now, how much of a massive piece of shit you are. The aforementioned "Life Admin" explores the neurotic classic of feeling guilty over having a single nice day, when you know someone you love is having a terrible one, with a self-consciously chipper melody to boot. "Doubt" uses the language of self-help and mindfulness to reach the conclusion that a big scream is what you really need, with a fittingly blistering finale. "Liked U Better" is a jaunty ode to wanting closure and never getting it. There's a perennial relatability and a humanistic touch to HELLMODE that keeps it from alienating the listener through an avalanche of self-hatred.
The sound palate here is an equal mix of heavy and clean tones, jangle pop sweetness, power pop righteousness, soaring lead melodies and blistering percussion. Jeff and his band have a near telepathic relationship, something that becomes all the more apparent if you're lucky enough to see them live. The band know the parameters of their sound well, giving them scope to push things into new directions. Fans of "June 21st" and "Perfect Sound Whatever" will be thrilled to learn the glockenspiel returns in spectacular fashion on "Will U Still U", and the battered synths that permeated much of
WORRY. and
POST- make a welcome appearance.
"And would you transcend time and space, so you can punch my stupid face and knock some sense into my head?"
HELLMODE lulls you into thinking its strength is in the quality of its individual tracks, that it's more a collection of great songs connected by loose themes and a prevailing sense of dread. Then you reach "3 Summers", which brings everything the album was building towards into sharp relief and sends
HELLMODE into the stratosphere. "3 Summers" follows the "Ohio Turnpike" playbook of steady builds and placing as the long, introspective, multi-movement album closer. Each verse explores a 'summer', a different phase in Jeff's life. First the relentless touring and drinking to drown out any feeling that has the gall to rear its ugly head, then the desperate clinging onto any friend in the vicinity, finally the stillness of exile and the space to reflect. In terms of cohesion, it doesn't quite tie everything together like the side B medley of
WORRY, but that's the kind of trick you can only pull once.
The wistful melancholy hearkens back to the slacker philosophy of Pavement's "Gold Soundz" and makes for one of Jeff's crowning songwriting achievements. The album ends less in angst and more in muted resignation. The world is a different place, you no longer feel invincible and nothing will change that. The appearances of longtime scene friends Laura Stevenson and Pup (credited, along with others, as the "International Vox & Clap Co. Class of 2022") further accentuate the message that the only thing you can do to keep yourself from spiralling is to surround yourself with people who will help pull you out of that hole, even if it takes more effort than last time.
Ultimately,
HELLMODE is about wanting to capture every single fleeting moment of joy, to bottle it, because it knows that another night of crippling self-flagellation is just around the corner.
HELLMODE knows the folly of this. It does it anyway. What else is there?
"How hard can you go and for how long can you sustain it?"
Musically and contextually,
HELLMODE is a triumph. The fact that Jeff carries his new found success with an equal measure of scepticism, both through an appreciation of its precariousness and the foresight to keep his label, extracurricular musical activities and the fact
HELLMODE was recorded in the same studio as
Toxicity at an arm's length, is a testament to the depth of his values. Jeff will never let it go to his head, and there's something reassuring about that. He'll carry on uploading his albums to be downloaded for free on the Quote Unquote website and he'll name and shame venues taking advantage of artists through exploitative merch cuts. Artists need to eat, but they also need dignity.
