Definitely Rosie Tucker knows how to grab your attention with a first line: “I hope no one had to grab a bottle at work to get me what I ordered online.” That's just one of the anti-capitalist jingles in the brilliantly titled All My Exes Live in Swirls. Tucker dismantles modern culture Utopia now!, a fresh, tender, innovative and fantastic piece of indie-rock agit-prop tunecraft. These songs combine 20-something malaise with a critique of the consumer machine and what it does to our brains.
The Los Angeles singer-songwriter (they/them) has already honed his craft on a few albums, including the acclaimed 2021 Mock Supreme, released on Epitaph – and were promptly dropped from the label. But Utopia now! is a bold new beginning, produced by Tucker with their partner Wolfy. Every song is filled with great lines. “White Savior Myth” crams so much into 56 words: “The white savior myth is well rested / She's twenty minutes late and she's impeccably dressed / She's skinny as a teenager and just as depressed.”
You might hear That Dog or Juliana Hatfield in the sound, with a pop-punk crunch in Tucker's guitar. But the combination of playful humor and anger also evokes the Minutemen, as Tucker veers between crude propaganda and come-home sentiment. There is no guardrail between the staff and the politician here. Songs like “Suffer! Like You Mean It' and 'Me Minus One Atom' ('I Know You'll Be With Me When I Die Alone') look at how capitalism affects the tiniest details of our daily wretched lives. On “All My Exes,” Tucker quips, “I'm just a medium-sized fish in a pile of plastic wider than Texas.”
Tucker sounds obsessed with the political, moral, and artistic failings of online culture, especially the corporate brands of social media. Yeah, sure, you've heard a lot of indie rockers complain about Internet alienation, but not with this level of wit—or with such sharp lines as “I buried the lede but the bitch came back.” “Lightbulb” reflects on the life of the artist, at a time when expressing dissent simply turns into self-promotion. “Paperclip Maximizer” takes on the office culture where every worker is turned into “a paragon of puritanical panoptic persistence,” but is embedded in the not-so-comforting lullaby, “Baby, when you come/you'll find everything you love has been consumed.”
No talking here, but the selection has begun Utopia now! it might be 'Gil Scott Albatross'. Tucker warns, “They'll turn the moon into a sweatshop,” feeling too weak to fight back: “If I turn my life into a treadmill/Write me on a spreadsheet, lay me in a dump.” But it builds into a bona fide love song, about two people building a real relationship in the midst of life's daily storm. “What you give me can't sell,” Tucker sings. “What you give me no one can destroy / What you give me can't be bailed / What you give me no app can track.” That's more, around 2024.
Utopia now! it's certainly a portrait of North America in our moment, in a culture where unsponsored entertainment is just a rumor, where your phone is spying on you, where every part-time artist has to turn into a full-time hobbyist to keep making their art. Even on the beautiful Pavenent-esque guitar ballad “Big Fish/No Fun,” Tucker sings the wry punch line, “The metadata proves you're the real one.” But somehow, Tucker manages to make it sound both romantic and terrifying – a signature achievement for this great album.
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