The Orwells are five dudes from the suburbs of Chicago playing a codified style of garage rock, like so many suburban dudes before them. But despite what you may have read about the impending obsolescence of groups exactly like this one, the Orwells signed to a major label before they turned 21 and were quickly thrust towards enviable font size on festival lineups and a career-making performance on “Late Show With David Letterman.” There’s clearly an under-served audience for a band like the Orwells, and Terrible Human Beings caters to their needs and lets everyone else know they can fuck right off. These guys wisely recognize the need for a space where the ground rules of Weezer’s “In the Garage” still have merit, where knucklehead behavior is allowed and encouraged, so long as no one gets hurt.
“Told me ‘Act your age’/That’s why she’s underage,” Mario Cuomo shouts on “They Put a Body in the Bayou,” which will only raise an eyebrow if you’ve never read a single thing about the Orwells up to this point. The two things most people know about the Orwells is that they are young and they like to start shit, twin concerns summed up nicely on the chorus: “Good boys come in last/Bad girl by my side/Poppin’ pills on the fly/Cold grave when I die.” Considering their sound, their look, their name, the zippy hooks and laddish malfeasance—and not even counting the BBC and NME namedrops on “Ring Pop”—the Orwells probably would’ve been called rock’n’roll’s new saviors at least twice over by this point if they were British.
They might as well be, with Jim Abbiss behind the boards here. He was one of the three heavyweights responsible for producing their 2014 album Disgraceland*,* along with TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek and Chris Coady (Beach House, Future Islands). Abbiss, meanwhile is best known for helming the Arctic Monkeys’ canonical debut, as well as Kasabian and Editors albums you probably haven’t heard if you’re American. He knows how to get a song to sound like it belongs on satellite radio, but this just leaves Terrible Human Beings in a netherworld between the Black Lips pisstakes of their earliest work and the Black Keys commercial ambitions of their present.
Terrible Human Beings can still be cherry-picked for catchy singles bound for algorithmic playlists, but it’s impossible to overlook how much of the Orwells’ appeal is bundled into their persona as enfants terribles. And since there’s absolutely no way for them to generate the violent potential of their live shows here, Cuomo has to bring it second-hand: “Heavy Head” is a weirdly sanitized hostage narrative, and the song called “Black Francis” includes a nod to California street gangs plucked directly from Pixies’ “No. 13 Baby.” The borrowed menace is awkward on many levels, but it mostly underlines how wholesome these guys feel in 2017. This is an album called Terrible Human Beings with a naked woman on the cover, but like so much of what lies herein, they suggest malevolence without much to show for it.
Rock music doesn't have to be “dangerous” to be thrilling, of course. Rock music is still relevant, in large part because it can do other things besides conveying suburban angst—it can comfort, confound, speak for marginalized voices or give people the energy to get the fuck out of bed. But the Orwells aren’t here for any of that. “I don’t think it’s going to bring rock back,” guitarist Matt O’Keefe said about the record. “I just think it’s a rock record that maybe some people will enjoy.” It’s best to take O’Keefe at his word—if you don’t expect too much from them, you might not be let down.
