x
You be the real one / I’ll be your toy
Don’t forget to throw me out / when I’m broken and destroyed
And I’ll just lay here / you pull the string
How am I supposed to speak / I don’t feel anything
One of the bigger conundrums for music writers (and there aren’t very many!) is figuring out how to describe something that just sounds cool but in an ineffable way cuz no matter how inventive your word choice and metaphors and similes it’s still bound to end up nothing more than a smudged Xerox copy of the actual sounds themselves which of course can be accessed by anyone at will in our everything everywhere all at once digital panopticon culture…
everything all the time: https://www.themarysue.com/how-everything-everywhere-all-at-once-perfectly-captures-our-internet-addicted-existence/
…and sure we could sit here and say how Shred Flintstone’s new single “Toy” starts off with what sounds like a guitar purchased from a five-and-dime store played thru a 40-watt toy amp (g: Dan Barrachia and/or Charlie Pants) soon morphs via inverted-fadeout into a more fulsome version of the same loping riff with sludgy stoner-rock distortion applied and how in the pre-chorus the bass suddenly sounds extra phat, chunky as Pace Picante salsa (b: Ben Petty and/or Ed Weisgerber) and how the drums gets more splashy and sibilant in parallel (d: Ozzie, formerly Joe Giambra) and how the sustained tones on second guitar in the chorus fatten up the overall enveloping sound even further before breaking off on its own into a wailing twin-lead part with a guitar tone like the one you’ve heard in Bill & Ted movies where they say “excellent!” and do that little air guitar hammer-on motion…
Woolworth’s: https://www.premierguitar.com/pro-advice/wizard-of-odd/budget-rock-guitar-built-for-woolworths
Bill & Ted air guitar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITj39ooz_FU
…but we can’t sit here and describe all that without feeling a twinge of imposter syndrome twisting these glorious sounds into wholly insufficient verbiage when again you can simply get straight to the sound itself easily tho’ then again maybe it’s fitting in this particular instance given how the song “Toy” seems to be about imposter syndrome itself in some part at least where “it’s hard to understand / why everything’s pretend” as the band fittingly redirects the frenzied energy of their “shreddier” material into a towering power-pop edifice evoking Cheap Trick circa In Color or the Replacements circa Pleased To Meet Me in the process…
…which hardly makes Shred Flintstone “imposters” obviously since they’ve already got plenty of other melodic, hooky songs that still manage to shred but what’s more notable here is how the song’s narrator hardly sounds alarmed at all about submitting to the unreal status of a plastic plaything, even one soon to be relegated to the Island Of Broken and Destroyed Toys, with the song’s lyrics delivered in a wavering alter-boy alto like Rivers Cuomo pining away for his teenage Japanese sweetheart tho’ this could be a form of subterfuge seeing as Shred is clearly possessed of both smarts and sly humor as demonstrated in their previous work not to mention their deceptively IDGAF dad-joke moniker (they’ve also got a song called “Shred Durst”_…
…and here’s another imposter-worthy entirely unauthorized theory to ponder and that’s that the song “Toy” could actually be a not-so-veiled critique of the cultural logic of late capitalism—what British cultural theorist Mark Fisher has termed “capitalist realism” which is an idea the band’s explored at greater length on their blistering, barnstorming Unlimited Power LP from 2021—where the (hyper)reality of the ever more deregulated economic and political system has become so hegemonic and seeped so deeply into every nook and cranny of our everyday lives that it’s gotten to be easier for most people to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism despite the fact that ending the latter is likely our best hope for forestalling the end of the former…
Jameson: https://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/english/theory/postmodernism/modules/jamesonpostmodernity.html
Capitalist Realism: https://files.libcom.org/files/Capitalist%20Realism_%20Is%20There%20No%20Alternat%20-%20Mark%20Fisher.pdf
So put the heat on / let’s melt away / I don’t want you cold like me / with all the plastic in our veins
And we’ll just lay here / and pull ourselves apart / with our tiny little plastic hands / and our plastic little hearts
…so maybe it’s more than mere coincidence that “Toy” boasts the seductively gleaming surfaces and the underlying steamrolling power both crucial to capitalism’s cultural logic and dominance not to mention a narrator seemingly resigned to self-objectification and “false consciousness” with seemingly no means of escape other than thru self-immolation (see the lines above) but then again maybe the song’s about Ken and Barbie or about buttplugs who knows…
…but hey as long as we’re being speculative maybe the main takeaway of the song is how when faced with a closed circuit of a cultural system the best of even the sole means of escape can be through subterfuge where people for instance take on the role of trickster-imposters figures who copy distort, mutate, exaggerate, and degrade the system’s main tenets from within until it shatters from all fissures and all the self-contradictions and collapses from within and in honor of its ultimate demise let us end this piece with one of late capitalism’s most favored literary forms that being quite obviously the listicle…
End of capitalism: https://www.newagebd.net/article/21826/karl-marx-was-right-at-some-point-capitalism-can-destroy-itself
************************
THINGS WE LIKE ABOUT SHRED FLINTSTONE BESIDES THE SONG “TOY”:
1) Over the past couple o’ years Shred Flintstone have turned themselves into a compelling “singles band,” favoring punters with one fine standalone platter after another plus a short EPs too every few months with a minimum of fuss where you never know what to expect from one new sonic installment to the next like how they transitioned from the jam-bandy, laid-back ramble of “Reno” and “Seasick” (both are indeed pleasantly woozy) and the indie rock reverie of “Love Song’ all from 2022 to the sharp turn of January 2023’s Casio keyboard-driven potential diamond-certified-diamond-in-the-rough “I Want To Get High But I’m Too Paranoid” which sur3e sounds like a surefire hit to us if were re-recorded by Rhianna or alternately some face-tatted Soundcloud singer-rapper-moaner (teardrops requisite) we’re totally unaware of at present.
But then on June 23, 2023 just as suddenly the Shredders returned to more familiar sonic territory with the grungy Pumpkins-esque power balladry of “Blue 42” which reminds us even more of the largely forgotten Scottish band Aerogramme—part of the Chemikal Underground stable in the early-to-mid aughts and they sound like it—sucking you into its sludgy embrace with immersive production (the band often record at Kaleidoscope Sounds in Union City, New Jersey) before turning slightly mathy and dropping down to an acoustic strum before building back up again which is either about a restaurant located in Elmwood Park, New Jersey or a football audible call…
…and then a week later to the day they tacked on a couple more tracks under the aegis of an EP called Post-Irony and from what I can gather these dudes are truly, unironically post-ironic that also includes a two-minute-minus rave-up called “Dead Weight” (far from it!) and a final track called “Take The L” that’s so hooky and texturally immersive that it’s likely to make our Top Ten Singles of 2023 list (note to reader: we’re never made such a list) that’s either about taking the Manhattan-to-Brooklyn-and-back shuttle train or about the process of accepting and working through loss and given the quality of this material it’s an even ore hopeful sign for the future that Dan told us the following in a phone call last week:
Aerogramme: https://open.spotify.com/album/1TSBbzYIkrIPMriZeY3znF?si=1xVJh-p7SyCMWdNJb-XOaA
I feel like this is the first year that I really understand how to make the music I want to make. It took a lot of trial and error. That’s why I feel feel more excited than I ever have been in my life to make music. The Post-Irony EP was the first time I realized something where I was fully satisfied it.
But it all traces back to my parents playing rock music when I was growing up—lots of Southern rock bands and jam band music.\ I became fascinated by Jimi Hendrix in 5th grade after hearing “Voodoo Chile.” My mom bought me a guitar that I didn’t start playing much until a few years later when I started smoking weed and constantly annoying my parents in high school.
2) Shred Flintstone are originally from New Jersey but they’re not intent on CONSTANTLY REMINDING US they’re from New Jersey and for this we’re grateful cuz musical artists from the state often seem intent on doing just that which can get old pretty fast and despite dropping a few references to their geographic origins on the debut EP They’re Not There (originally a full LP; see point #2 below) especially on their one Bruce-adjacent tune “I’m on the Parkway” but when asked if he sees the band as being part of a “New Jersey scene” Dan bluntly answered and bless ‘em for it:
I don’t know about that. I don’t feel like I’m a part of any music scene…just feel like I make music. We play shows and whoever I connect with, I connect with. I’ve never really considered myself part of a scene tho’ I’ve seen them and been around them.
And then when I quoted some random webpage that called Shred Flintstone “the hottest New Jersey band since Visiting Day” and asked for Dan for a response he said he’d never heard of them and to be perfectly frank I guess I hadn’t either tho’ for some reason I assumed they were a emo/screamo type band (not my finest hour as an interviewer!) maybe I was thinking of Saves the Day (?!?) but as it turns out Visiting Day is fictional band featured in a story arc from the first season of The Sopranos which is pretty freakin’ hilarious especially after you watch this scene…
VISITING DAY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfK0GPSl-1U
3) Far from overwhelming listeners with a “cacophony of stimuli” of every musical impulse that’s ever entered into their heads, Dan and the rest of Shred Flintstone—who work in a highly collaborative manner btw—are good at self-editing and have even taken down a fair amount of their own material formerly posted to Spotify and streaming media in general including what looked to be some sort of Ziggy-esque concept album from 2022 titled Shred Flintstone presents Jake Brake and the Heavy Haulers. Dan on the creative process:
I’ll sit in my room and come up with ideas all the times. Out of 20 song ideas maybe 2 or 3 stand out. Then I’ll bring to whoever I’m playing with—bring it to Charlie and Ozzie who are my tight friends. There’s only so much one person can do. Projects may seem that way but there’s always a bunch of people behind the scenes working on it. Charlie is such a quality guy. Super creative. Plus he fixed my guitar when I smashed it onstage, brought it back like Frankenstein. Ever though I’m the face of Shred they’ve all been working their asses off this year.
With “Toy” I was messing around in a dropped D tuning and came up with riff. I brought it to Charlie, Ben, and Ozzie who helped me finish writing it. I kind of wrote the song but it was kind of collaborative at the same time. I would never have formulated those lead parts without Conner Hanson who engineered the song and at once point said “why don’t you try out something new in this par” and I wouldn’t have ever come up with those leads without Conner pushing me to expand the boundaries of the song. “Toy” was recorded at Connor’s studio.
4) Shred Flintstone have an excellent but not overbearing sense of humor and overall they totally live up to both the heaviness and the silliness implied by their name in equal measure whereas not many bands have managed to pull this particular balancing act over the year among which we’d say are Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. Camper Van Beethoven. They Might Be Giants, and Ween (hold this space for more recent examples if we think of them but hey thank goodness we got Shred Flintstone) the latter of whom (Ween) have been officially declared as SF’s spirit animal band, i.e., the musical North Star they all agree upon.
5) In the past year Shred Flintstone brought on the single-monikered “Ozzie” as drummer and while their post drummer(s) sure sound great on record to our ears we know first-hand what a monster Ozzie is on the skins having seen him savagely yet virtuosically going to town on his kit with both InCircles and Chocked Up and what’s more the dude’s a total mensch whether in being one of the most tireless supporters of the local scene and his friends and acquittances in it or in booking scads of shows featuring local bands tthru his own Showbrain Productions many of said shows being free and “for the people” in public locales like Tompkins Square Park (Lower East Side) and Maria Hernandez Park (Bushwick) and we can’t think of anything more counterfactual to capitalism than that…
Ozzie: https://bandsdobk.substack.com/p/519-a-wknd-w-ozzie
It feels like this was a transformative year for me making music. Ozzie’s such a nice person and he’s so dedicated to everything he does. He literally lives just to play and be around rock ’n’ roll. Plus he’s very sociable—a good counterbalance for Shred and myself since it’s easy for him to meet and befriend people where I tend to be more shy and not always great at making connection ‘cause I get nervous around people sometimes.
Not The Deli Magazine Magazine 
Leave a comment