teen suicide
goblin problems

THE REVIEW

In summer, I like to listen to somewhat preppy bands that make ultra lo-fi pop-punk, perfect for listening to while cycling around the city in summer, sipping a can of Finkbrau, on the lookout for an open tobacconist selling rolling tobacco because vending machines only have packets. In winter, I prefer to focus on bands that are less of a wannabe and more genuinely pathetic, to listen to on Bandcamp after spending the afternoon studying massive tomes (when perhaps others might be more useful) and preparing for the new wine festival + sausage-onion sandwich on Friday evening. And today is Monday.

Pathetic people, as I was saying. There's a lot to discuss about the infinite meanings that the word "pathetic" takes on in the Italian language. Here, we're not talking about losers in the generic sense of poor fools or in the figurative sense of people who would have liked to hit it big and didn't (no big jokes like "instead, they just got screwed over," that's too much even for me). This is about people who aren't pathetic, but who experience it. A sentence that clearly means jack ***, but could easily have come out of the mouth of one of us young fans of indie depression, living in a world of bedroom pop, knowing how to make a "castle" with short papers, thinking life is more sad than happy, and adapting. And we frantically refer to the late eighties-early nineties indie scene, with all the aftermath of adolescent punk, low-fidelity recordings, and depressing rock that follows.

Today, I was digging through the numerous EPs released under the name Teen Suicide and I found this. Goblin Problems, five minutes and forty seconds of raw, hallucinatory punk rock, played with heart and recorded sloppily. I decided to talk about this because it's the music I would make if I ever wanted to play something.

If reading this page wasn’t enough to justify listening to just five (albeit excellent) minutes of music, I can recommend Hype, eight minutes of hallucinatory and depressing emo, and the Bonus EP, eighteen minutes, more poppy (it even has random vaporwave samples tossed in), always lo-fi like sludge. Otherwise, there are the full-lengths: three have already been released in five years, and they're very long. But that’s another story.