As leader and guitarist of Spirit of the Beehive, Zack Schwartz constructs densely layered indie rock that teeters between throbbing distortion and uneasy calm. Listening to their last record, 2018’s Hypnic Jerks, can feel like free-falling down the rabbit hole, post-punk guitars shredding through tape loops. On i am gambling with my life, his first album under the name draag me, Schwartz doubles down on that genre-agnostic ethos, applying his chaotic DIY production style to chillwave, rap beats, club music, punk, and seemingly whatever else he wants.
i am gambling with my life is functionally a solo album; Schwartz handled nearly every aspect of its creation—writing, recording, mixing, and mastering—on his own. Culled from dozens of drafts, the album was completed after he returned home from Spirit of the Beehive’s fall tour last year. The most noticeable fingerprint is a palpable sense of anxiety, one that permeates every groggy chord and Auto-Tuned performance with malaise. (There are appearances by other artists, such as Isaac Eiger of Strange Ranger and fellow Philadelphians Body Meat and Pedazo De Carne Con Ojo, but their voices are, for the most part, subsumed within the greater draag me universe.)
Like Toro y Moi, another musical polyglot who has thrown himself into various styles over the course of his career, Schwartz is knowledgeable enough to know when to subvert different subgenre tropes and when to indulge in them, sometimes over the span of a single track. “there is a party where i’m going” starts out like a scuzzy ballad in the vein of Yung Lean affiliate Bladee before it gradually disintegrates, leaving only eerie synth drones in its wake. Songs like “the curve” and “form” flirt with house music and vaporwave while retaining similarly strung-out atmospheres.
There’s a surprising amount of detail. Save for some scattered exceptions (like the closing “i want to go first,” which unfortunately devolves into ’80s pastiche), the album comes across as the handiwork of a deep listener, not the demo of a dilettante. Textures dance around the stereo field while guitars glitch and warble in unexpected ways. Such production tricks might be tougher to implement in a band setting, but devoid of any such constraints, Schwartz is free to flex his chameleonic prowess across these 19 bite-sized songs.
Still, Schwartz’s voice can get lost in the haze, his words ghostly and indecipherable. But when the lyrics peek through, they reveal an insightful writer who’s writhing in self-reflection, observing his own internal battles and the way his inner conflicts are projected onto the world around him. He can be a gifted storyteller, too. On “lie,” probably the closest Schwartz comes to the sound of his primary band, he quietly ruminates on his role in a toxic relationship. “Paid for damages/You crashed our car into,” he mutters. “Both our lives are wrecked/I still lie for you.”
While his artistic identity can be murky, Schwartz’s studio ability is undeniable. In an alternate universe, he could easily have been a reliable behind-the-scenes Los Angeles hitmaker turning out catchy bedroom pop and niche genre revivals. Instead, he’s a beloved figure in the Philadelphia indie scene, and as his solo debut makes clear, he’s got even more to give the world than Spirit of the Beehive has let on.
