If there's anything the Pitchfork litmus test has shown time and time again, it's that despite all the conjecture regarding ethics and self-management, drugs make for effective music. The Flaming Lips' Soft Bulletin, an album which successfully approximates the ambience of a powerful psychotropic experience, is regarded as veritably perfect: a 10.0. So, theoretically, the sonic approximation of Valium would rank a 5.0 on the Pitchfork rating scale. If that's the case, then Jonah and his friends in New End Original are pleading with their parentally assigned psychiatrists, social-workers, and Big Brothers to help increase the potency of their music as we speak. Dream as we may, though, the most visceral experience Thriller induces is the lightheaded wooze you experience after a rough bout with carsickness.
With ex-members of Texas Is the Reason, the Americans, and Far, one no longer needs to scour their older brother's record collection to find a stunning synopsis on the quality of musicianship that was being signed in 1991 amidst the grunge hysteria. The fact that each of these guys were in their own respective garage bands at the time ensured their being offered record deals. But your standard alternative/modern rock radio format can be a bitch-goddess; taking with one hand while disbanding with the other, and from the uninhabitable landscape produced by the post-grunge insurgence of nu-metal, New End Original came to be.
Kicking things off with a track the band knowingly refers to as "Lukewarm," New End Original want you to know that they've seen the revolution... and it's called the Green Album. "People always tellin' me how happy I could be/ I'm never gonna find out," sings Jonah, a man so revered in some circles that, like the Greek poets and philosophers that preceded him, society needs only his first name with which to fill its history books. Potential can be heard seeping through the cracked vocals and broken equipment littering Thriller: "Hostage" and "Leper Song" recant on the group's more wounded interpretations of the Promise Ring, opting to place their subject matter in a more appropriate musical setting. For the New End Original, this means sub-par renditions of whatever Mark Kozelek threw into his dumpster yesterday evening.
I'll tip my hat to the romantics out there who maintain the belief that anything written in an overtly emotional state is not only the most honest reflection of character, but is also capable of purging your sores and sins in a way that only an authentic artistic realization can. Still, relying exclusively on the hackneyed pop-punk formula and poetry that raises Billy Corgan to the upper echelons of American literature reflects a sort of self-involvement which, in all likelihood, got Jonah's ass kicked on the playground after lunch, and on the way to practice today.
So yeah, we created this monster. The optimist in me wants to say that the almost childlike simplicity found in the execution, song structure, and lyrical content reflect the honest sentiments of a band baffled and disoriented by the complexity of day-to-day living. The pessimist? Well, he took his own life seconds after hearing, "Do I have something to hide/ Who am I to say/ I'm lonely as a leper."
