Lip Critic revels in absurd tales of their own making: a guy who stuffs his shirt with pork to make it look like he’s really bleeding when you stab him; a guy who thinks he sees his wife getting it on with a green goblin in a dressing room; a guy who has an ego trip in a convenience store; basically a bunch of guys who say and do weird shit. But the protagonists of their songs are often so off-the-wall, narcissistic, and desperate that they’d make the Safdie brothers blush. But then the Brooklyn digital hardcore band encountered the type of guy they’d write about in one of their songs, except this guy was completely for real.
Around the time that they’d finished writing a follow-up to their debut Hex Dealer, frontman Bret Kaser’s identity was stolen. The thief was none other than a highly devoted fan, trapped in a risible delusion that the foursome’s Bandcamp catalog contained clues to a 4D chess-level scavenger hunt. He believed that he’d won some elaborate game. Curious to hear him out, the band took him to a 24-hour halal restaurant and recorded him reciting the intricate rules of this puzzle they’d apparently set up and how he became its conqueror. “It’s an insane situation, but you got to make the best of it. You got to make lemons with lemonade,” Kaser told Paste earlier this year. Theft World, a sophomore album that’s as delirious, intoxicating, and volatile as its origin story suggests, is the lemonade, the lemons, and the whole damn fruit aisle.
Kaser’s identity theft was the impetus that sent Lip Critic’s second LP in a new direction. The group was so captivated and disconcerted by this unusual experience that it mandated a complete overhaul of what they’d been working on. The 15-20 songs that were already in the works have since been shelved, and who knows if they’ll ever see the light of day. But what we do have is one of the best albums of the year. Theft World is a ludicrous, dizzying, 30-plus-minute confrontation with notions of originality, fatalism, and fantasy. Instead of writing autobiographically about the extraordinary events they’d become embroiled in, Lip Critic uses this real story of a wild dude to create unreal stories of a whole bunch of wild dudes. Absurdity becomes a catalyst for even more absurdity.
For starters, Theft World opens with “Two Lucks,” a dance-punk DEVO-meets-Death Grips banger that transports us to “junk space” where the protagonist is “a junk god,” all of which Kaser delivers in his signature nasally yelp. Near the outro, that sermonizer voice transmutes into a bloodletting scream: “Because You! Are the hell! That I made! For myself!” On “Debt Forest,” we meet a character known as the ATM man who seems ripped straight out of a Toby Fox game. “I try to keep the score / but end up wanting more,” Kaser shouts, channeling the B-52’s and MSPAINT in equal measure, underlining the insatiable avarice that capitalism can’t exist without. We pay a visit to a grocery store casino on “Shoplifting,” where a regular visit (as regular of a visit to a combination-grocery-store-casino can be, that is) sparks a patron’s childhood memory that sends them spiraling into a spell of existential dread. “You’re not getting to heaven,” God told them at this very checkout stand 20 years ago. It’s funny and disquieting all at once.
It’s a boon that the music itself matches Kaser’s outlandish lyrical premises. Dual drummers Danny Eberle and Michael Sandvig are locked in like two professional Smash Bros. players, dashing and dodging and landing powerful blows. Their kinetic performances add to the adrenalized gambling stakes of “Jackpot,” which recounts a narrative of a man who hides coins underneath his skin, and they make the tingling body horror that much more palpable. Their rapid-fire syncopations fuse into a vertiginous onslaught of rollicking toms on “Drumming with Izzy,” interspersing occasional jolts of cymbals to keep you on your toes. “Yard Sale (230 Take)” is a blast of full-on hardcore synth-punk bristling with Kaser’s curdled screams and Eberle’s and Sandvig’s relentless pulverization. It’s got a 101% chance to ignite the pit into a frenzy.
Connor Kleitz’s live-wire sampling augments the feverish intensity throughout Theft World. His production taps into an omnivorous delirium that only Lip Critic could awaken you from, taking you to the teetering edge of Skrillex’s post-post-post-modern cyber-detritus, only to sadistically catapult you off the cliff anyway. Everything is so high-octane all the time that you don’t have a choice but to listen with your full attention, and you’ll be rewarded all the better for it. “My Blush (Strength of the Critic),” for instance, makes me feel like I could outrun a car and then lift it into the air once it catches up with me. Meanwhile, the abrasive ending of “200 Bottles on Eviction” is like a mad dash to the finish line, cramming in as much clamor before it sputters out from sheer excess. Then there’s “Talon,” built on black metal breakdowns, which swerves into drum ‘n’ bass chugs on the following track, “Charity Dinner.” If SpongeBob and Patrick really wanted to have a wild night at a laundromat, then they’d be best off catching a Lip Critic show at one.
It can be hard to stand out in an age when visceral noise infiltrates both underground indie shows and left-of-center pop music. But on Theft World, Lip Critic makes their maximalist presence known. The only way to outdo your own preposterous art is to lean into those playful, no-fucks-given sensibilities, and Lip Critic have embraced them without reserve. For the uninitiated, it could be a grating listen, a reflection of how everything is competing for our attention all the time to an excruciating degree. But how poetic it is that this decibel-heavy critique of capitalism mirrors and pays heed to our increasingly atomized concentration abilities. For those amenable to sensory overload (complimentary), there will be nothing else you’ll even want to think about. So you may as well succumb to the febrile onrush. Theft World is the only place where you’ll really want to be. [Partisan]
Grant Sharples is a writer, journalist and critic. His work has also appeared in Interview, Uproxx, Pitchfork, Stereogum, The Ringer, NME, and other publications. He lives in Kansas City. You can follow him everywhere @grantsharpies.
