Before I forget—the trio of guitar/bass/drums is pretty tight on Emphatically No., and I have zero complaints, even if, in the context of this album, they are pretty much beside the point. They are good at what they do—a couple cool solos, otherwise the rhythm stays in the pocket—but they might as well be a trio playing at a cocktail hour in some Plumbers Union Hall off of State Road, as far as the music is concerned.
But you can tell by the end of the first song that this is a very lyrics-front album (which, as an aside, makes it stand in pretty stark contrast to the last three albums covered in Record Club, for one reason or another). You appreciation of Cheekface is going to sink or float depending on what you think about these lyrics. I could see it going either way for most of PoYB's readership. I personally am pretty torn.
The first problem is that a lot of the content of the lyrics seem to be explicitly designed for plugged-in millennials to be able to say: "Hey, I know what he is talking about." This annoys me because I am a plugged-in millennial and I am self-hating, but also because there isn't much commentary on the references—Cheekface is content to just drop semi-specific internet references for no reason other than the fact that it's a meme (I know! That word! Ugh!!!). Just some examples: pink Starbursts, CVS receipts, dumpster fires, emergency alerts. All these phrases have a secondary meaning if you've scrolled through Reddit every day for the past seven years. It just annoys me that making such references is what passes for "clever" on a rock album. (Like I said: self-hating.)
The second problem is that frontman Greg Katz sings a lot of these lines like you can just tell he fucking thinks the lines are so fucking clever. I'm not complaining about the mostly droll delivery, I'm actually complaining about those moments when he loses the drollness and attempts to inject some cadence into the delivery as if to tell the audience that this is supposed to be a punchline or something. A more succinct way to say it: You've heard of faces being punchable, but this is a voice that is more punchable than a male SNL cast member.
Still, these are more likely Joe-problems than general problems (though I will say, as another aside, that I'm surprised Pam has been liking the album so far, since the sense of humor here is pretty similar to Sledding with Tigers and their Space Jam rock opera EP, which historically Pam has hated with a fiery passion, but maybe sense of humor is pretty low on her list of musical attributes she gives a fuck about).
And even despite my qualms, there are plenty of times that a particular song comes together despite itself. I mean, the dude literally claims at one point that he is "right twice a day," and the assessment is dead-on as far as my appreciation for the lyrics goes. Brush away all the Cinnamon Toast Crunch references and other brutally lame non sequiturs, and you'll occasionally find a couple nuggets of inspired wisdom.
"Emotional Rent Control" is a good example of a song where it all comes together (possibly by coincidence, but still). It has a coherent theme: how a thousand little societal obligations can add up inside you and create a kind of pressure that affects your overall well-being. And it has specific examples that don't come off as lazy memeing: "Is it a business or a hobby?" speaking to the fucked up Etsy-esque monetization of everything you enjoy; "replace all vowels with asterisks" (e.g. "tr*mp"). Plus, the line "young, dumb, and full of... psychiatric medication" is a legitimately funny line. Plus plus, the line reading of "giant freaking Snickers bar full of ice cream" is the only line on the album that's made better by Katz's delivery. Good song.
And I guess I should clarify that I don't usually have anything negative to say about music that features this type of tuneless vocals. Cheekface can be compared to plenty of other bands—Cake (Pam immediately pinpointed this one), Parquet Courts (made by someone whose pain over Tom Brady's participation in yet another Super Bowl next week might make them want to shout expletives in his direction), the Cars (the band's own comparison, via Genius.com), Minutemen (you may know them as the band whose song "Corona" was chosen as the immortal Jackass theme song, which is sound-checked at the beginning of "(I Don't Want to Go to) Calabasas"), um, Baz Luhrmann (c'mon, you didn't need the sunscreen reference in "Crying Back" to make the connection)—and all those other bands (besides Luhrmann, probably) are at least pretty good in my book, if not great.
The difference, again, has more to do with my particular hang-ups when it comes to interacting with another brain that has clearly been fried by the internet. It makes me uncomfortable.
Still, credit to Cheekface for being good enough for the most part to allow to me to forget about those hang-ups and enjoy the album. Like, there's probably a hard limit regarding how many times I can cringe over a 35-minute period, and Cheekface manages to stay just below that limit on Emphatically No.
And who knows, man, maybe you're reading this right after you got done Liking the last dregs of "2020 Was Awful" memes posted by Fuck Jerry on your TL, and now you're thinking that Cheekface might be the perfect band for you. That's great. Enjoy. At the end of the day, we can at least agree that there are way worse bands and way worse albums out there. Emphatically No? More like Equivocally Yes.
GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5
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