Sometime in the last couple of years I was exposed to 100 gecs’ music, though I’m not exactly sure how it happened. I think I let Spotify create a radio station based on a track from Poppy’s masterpiece I Disagree (which is, for me, one of the few “perfect” albums where I don’t really skip any tracks unless I’m feeling especially ADD). For those that don’t know, I Disagree is notable for almost moment by moment switches between bubblegum pop, thrash metal, glistening and ethereal guitars, and vocals that are by turns cloyingly sweet and ragingly guttural. This is pertinent, as the Spotify algorithm did its due diligence well, connecting me with another genre hopping group.
The first track I really glommed on to of 100 gecs was Stupid Horse a ska-infused headbanger of a track that (I think) is about going to the racetrack and losing your money and how incredibly stupid it all is. It’s the sort of track you put on when you really want to get a lot of cleaning done and/or if you want to run into a wall at high speed, repeatedly.
It’s a bit hard to pin down their overall sound. The term “hyperpop” has been thrown around, and I think that’s apt. Many of their songs sound like someone took the sort of catchy riffs, basslines, and vocals for a bubblegum pop song and decided to hand them over to Buckethead to interpolate, who then passed it along to some trap DJ to add beats while finally shoving the whole thing through idiotic levels of compression. There are elements of ska, what I’d call pop-punk (imagine Sum-41’s Fat Lip and you kind of get the picture - incidentally, the best Beastie Boys song that’s not a Beastie Boys song), breakcore, trap, glitch-hop, and just straight up pop.
Sometimes 100 gecs remind me a bit of Ween, because there is a playfulness matched up with extremely capable musicianship. Other times they remind me of Weezer, because they clearly love old school rock and somehow have brought some of the worst trends of the 90’s into the 2000’s and made it listenable. However, for all the catchy riffs and head nod inducing rockery of those others, I actually think there is an air of sincerity and jagged edge with 100 gecs which helps them stand out as unique. Yes it’s all fun an games, but maybe along the way someone really did lose and eye, and maybe that really, actually hurt pretty bad.
A lot of their songs are, at least on the surface, just silly. There’s a tune on the new record, performed as a mostly straight ahead ska track, about a frog who likes to jump around and do keg stands. However, even in this track, there’s an undercurrent of something a little bit raw, perhaps a bit sinister. Is this just a frog? While all the other lyrics make you think so, halfway through the spectators at the party suddenly stop in shock because the frog is running around shoving flies in his mouth. Which seems like a totally normal frog thing to do (much more normal than doing a keg-stand, which everyone seems to treat as utterly fine). Another way to read this song is that the “frog” is actually just some kid who showed up at a party and ended up crashing in their basement. Think, Kids or Gummo. Is that what’s intended? I don’t know.
I bring this up to say that I actually think the quality that makes this group both so much flippin’ fun and so able to BE so much flippin’ fun is that, at their core, they’re actually punk.
“Punk” is a weird term that lots of people associate with different things. Some people think it’s all about the anarchy jackets and the mohawks, or about getting totally wasted and moshing. I actually think it’s much less complicated than that (though, maybe, more nuanced). To me, it seems to be a willingness to buck expectations, to push against the grain, to not let other people dictate who or what you are - even if that means sometimes allowing your self to conform to externalities. I know that a lot of “punks” will kill me for saying this, but great punk music was great not just because it was raw, and filled with rage, and angry, but also because everyone could jam along to it. On some level, even if you’re screaming, you want to be screaming in unison, and that doesn’t occur without some structure.
I think this interplay is really at the heart of 100 gecs’ music. The first three tracks on their new record are about as catchy and poppy as you can be (while still being ultra extreme in some of their production techniques), but they also defy a lot of pop traditions. While a lot of people would stretch these tunes out an extra chorus or verse just to hook as much of the demographic as possible, the duo seems determined to get in, make a whole heck of a lot of musical statements, and just get out.
And then there’s the lyrics. The first track for the album is literally called The Dumbest Girl Alive and starts off with:
You think I'm stupid now, you should see me when I'm high And I'm smarter than I look, I'm the dumbest girl alive I took ten Advils today, I've got bruises on my thighs Plus I gave away my brain, I'm the dumbest girl alive I've got lightning in my veins, walk around like Frankenstein
I mean, it’s pointedly and decidedly stupid, and the phrase “I’m the dumbest girl alive” is repeated throughout the track to the point of nausea. At the same time, the track is musically brilliant, a catchy pop-masterpiece that switches from 80’s glam rock guitar riffs to a distorted bass and trap beat with autotuned vocals, before it decides to throw in a moody, acoustic guitar break before dropping back into the chorus. You’d kind of get whiplash if you weren’t so engrossed in it, jumping up and down in your livingroom/car/office. If all that isn’t punk, I don’t know what is.
There’s a bit of a law of diminishing returns on the new record. The first half really seems to chug along at full speed with a three song intro that’s probably the best three song intro to an album I’ve heard since, well, Poppy’s I Disagree. It loses a bit of steam in the back half, but I can totally forgive it for that because, again, the duo seem to be having a hell of a lot of fun here. Even tracks like “I Got My Tooth Removed” feature this charming blend of utterly daft (but possibly brilliant) lyrics with a sort of desperately histrionic delivery that make you just kind of have to love the group (even if you don’t love the song).
I’m going to make a whole lot of punks mad and also say that I think SLC Punk! might be one of the most accurate takes on punk I’ve seen. One of the themes of that film is that being punk is a certain state of mind - you can be straightedge and punk, you can wear flannel and be punk and, if the film’s conclusion can be believed, maybe you can even “buy in” and still be punk. Another theme seems to be that, underneath a lot of that devil may care “eff the world” attitude is a lot of pain, anguish, and genuine emotional sincerity that yearns to break free. Maybe that attitude is there because of all the pain, anguish, and trauma and maybe part of that is desperately wanting to be accepted by a world that has repeatedly rejected you.
In the track Hollywood Baby, a song that appears to be a stinging indictment of a girl desperately seeking the adoration and fame of the Hollywood lifestyle, the break has our duo sing, in a crescendo of repeated lines, “You’ll never make it in Hollywood, baby.” As thunderous guitars rise to meet vocals that sound increasingly desperate, you wonder if the song is still about this fictional Hollywood girl, or the duo themselves facing all the voices of the world telling them they’ll never make it too.
Does that really matter? Maybe not, when you realize you’ve spent the last minute and a half jumping up and down with abandon at your local laundromat and everyone is staring at you.
Sometimes, spazzing out without a care in the world isn’t a byproduct, it’s the point.