The members of the Massachusetts post-punk band Landowner say that their new album Assumption was built on the intentionally ridiculous concept of "weak d-beat... as if Antelope were reading the sheet music of Discharge." That's pretty fun! The album drops on Friday, and we've already posted the singles "Rival Males" and "Normal Returns To Normal." Today, Landowner share "Bow To Your Superior," which really does sound like the restrained, arty version of a transcendently angry 76-second hardcore protest anthem. (It doesn't really sound like d-beat, though.) Here's how frontman Dan Shaw explains it:
"'Bow To Your Superior" is a short banger about obediently submitting to the supremacy of artificial intelligence. The lyrics suggest AI as a sort of boss we come across at work, whose high position we've been trained to submit to. A lot of Assumption explores how our lives are shaped by the various assumptions we all make, as we engage with media, politics, anxiety, and our own internal landscapes. "Bow To Your Superior" contributes to this theme: AI essentially generates output based on computers making assumptions, and our culture has quickly pushed us to bow to this new tool. We assume AI can do the thinking for us. We're submitting to AI's authority by choosing "Bow To Your Superior" as a single, because, as you may know, short songs perform more successfully on most streaming platforms' soulless algorithms. There's a chance this song reached you today in part due to our obedient cooperation with the machine."
You, however, can hold your head high knowing that you did not encounter "Bow To Your Superior" through streaming-service algorithms. You read about it on Stereogum dot com! Listen below.
The gym can be scary. It can be menacing. On “Deadlift,” the latest single Chicago post-punk group Stuck, you can hear it in the visceral drum bangs and loose bass shifts. I hear the weights dropping in annoyance and relief. The tension in the air is thick with aggravation and endorphins. I hear the time pass at a frustrating pace. People in this place have an agreed understanding that it’s a necessary evil — something that doesn’t feel good until we’re halfway to the result. It’s all about build and anticipation, and that’s the triumph of “Deadlift.” It feels good even though it’s intimidating: "Headphones in/ Eyes locked on my figure a room full of men/ Ignoring each other." That’s some spooky mundanity! But Stuck know how to keep us wanting to come back, rep after rep.
Landowner recently announced their upcoming full-length, Assumption, arriving February 27th via Exploding In Sound Records, and today they're back with another cut of abrasively clean, minimalist punk, "Normal Returns To Normal."
Landowner operates with a unique set of parameters: distortion-free guitars, an airtight rhythm section, and vocalist Dan Shaw's observations on the systems, mindsets, and dark absurdities that entangle and complicate our lives. The result is a truly one-of-a-kind band that's undeniably strange and unexpectedly catchy in equal measure. Lead single "Rival Males" (which drew attention from Stereogum, BrooklynVegan, and more) was a concise introduction to Assumption, and now "Normal Returns To Normal" stretches out over six minutes, turning the intensely precise band and vocalist Dan Shaw's incisive lyricism into a hypnotically satisfying endurance test.
“Chicago post-punk purveyors” (Crack) Stuck announce their new album, Optimizer, out March 27th via Exploding in Sound Records, and share the video for the lead single, “Instakill.” In conjunction, they announce a North American tour (all dates below). Optimizer, the third album from the trio of Greg Obis (vocals, guitar), David Algrim (bass), and Tim Green (drums), reports live from the front lines of a society on the decline, where every attempt toward self-improvement only locks you into a more efficient downward spiral. The album is their most ambitious and eclectic collection of songs yet, without losing the nervy, quirked-up approach to post-punk that they’d established on their first two full-lengths.
Optimizer’s cover, designed by Green, depicts a classical statue trapped in buffering hell while the album’s title below it sinks along a declining trajectory. Obis’ lyrics trace the same futility, taking stock not just of the delusional patterns around him but the diminishing returns of sticking to your guns with nothing but air left in the chambers. Turning his eye for political lyrics instead to more directly social subjects, Obis sees the world as one big commercial gym packed to the gills with debt-ridden and desperate marks who only tear their gaze away from the mirror to watch the latest pitch from the latest digital huckster promising a better you at a reasonable fee. Obis doesn’t spare himself either. Written directly on the heels of the band’s tour for 2023’s Freak Frequency, the album also grapples with the personal costs of devoting your life to music while the music industry crumbles around you.
This is apparent on today’s quirked-up single “Instakill,” which deals with the predatory nature of social media ads. In the song's opening lines, Obis sings: “I saw an ad online // with a man in his prime // “you can change your life // for a limited time” // My life was in decline.” Commenting on the song, Obis says: “I found myself in a bad way in 2024. Reeling with financial stress and a deep sense of precarity with my career, I was desperate for answers. This led me down a deep hole of online self-help huckster gurus. Charitably, I think that many of these people mean well and a few genuinely have good advice. But even the best of them are trying to prey on your insecurities and circumstances in order to sell you a course or a health supplement, which I think is both dark and funny. "Instakill" uses these huckster gurus to explore the futility of constant self-optimization. Is it possible to change who you are?”
Guiding Optimizer is an image that came to Obis in a recurring dream, one where he was trapped in the passenger seat and careening toward disaster. He only discovered this potent metaphor once he started keeping a dream journal after an encounter with Jungian psychotherapy. The same exposure led Obis to reconnect with the “mystical” element of music making. This approach resonated with him after the experience of touring on Freak Frequency, when he began to feel boxed in by the persona that he’d constructed for the stage. Obis began writing songs without worrying about whether they sounded like Stuck.
To record Optimizer, Stuck reached out to engineer and producer Andrew Oswald (Marble Eyed, Powerplant, and Smirk). Oswald suggested that they track at Electrical Audio, the legendary Chicago recording studio once run by the late Steve Albini. With Albini’s passing still fresh, the opportunity to record at Electrical took on a personal significance for Obis; recording at Electrical would simultaneously help a local institution fill out their calendar in a moment of tragic instability and affirm Stuck’s place in a lineage of fiercely independent Chicago rock bands. Stuck are proud, in the humble way that any good Midwestern folks are proud, of embodying that archetype. Not only did Obis take over Chicago Mastering Service from Shellac’s Bob Weston when the latter decamped abroad, but Stuck’s choice of album title subconsciously mirrored Big Black’s classic Atomizer.
Optimizer continues their incorporation of synthesizers and also brings along more backing vocals, bigger choruses, and even blast beats. Oswald made his name recording extreme metal bands like Mortiferum and Caustic Wound. Though it is by no means a metal record, Oswald brought that genre’s level of tactile closed mic detail to Optimizer, resulting in the most high-definition and physically propulsive Stuck record yet. Previous Stuck albums needled you, using fast twitch guitars to keep you on edge. Optimizer goes straight for the emotional haymaker.
Stuck have no illusions about solving the problem they’ve diagnosed here in short hand. On the contrary, Optimizer confronts the very idea of trying to solve life head on, drawing implicit connections between ideology and addiction. Every choice demands a sacrifice. The same instinct that drives us to simplify and streamline our lives can leave behind only our darkest and dumbest impulses. If there’s no escaping the ride we’re on, we might as well crank the dial.
Does the endless deluge of bad news and AI garbage have you feeling down? Landowner's upcoming full-length, Assumption, just might be the antidote. Arriving February 27th via Exploding In Sound Records, the album is 35 minutes of abrasively clean, minimalist punk that uses mechanical precision to create deeply human music.
Landowner operates with a unique set of parameters: distortion-free guitars, an airtight rhythm section, and vocalist Dan Shaw's observations on the systems, mindsets, and dark absurdities that entangle and complicate our lives. The result is a truly one-of-a-kind band that's undeniably strange and unexpectedly catchy in equal measure. Lead single "Rival Males" encapsulates all of Landowner's appeal in just over 90s seconds. Shaw's dryly ominous delivery rings out over cuttingly clear guitars, primal punk drumming, and even a breakdown that will make you see red without a distortion pedal to be found.
Landowner's initial concept was a made-up genre called “weak d-beat”, meant to sound intentionally absurd “as if Antelope were reading the sheet music of Discharge," says Shaw. When the vocalist was joined by his current bandmates (guitarists Elliot Hughes and Jeff Gilmartin, bassist and backup vocalist Josh Owsley, and drummer Josh Daniel) in 2017, they translated these early experiments in restraint and caricatured hardcore as a live band. Assumption captures the vibrancy and intensity of those performances. Comparisons could be made to The Fall, Lungfish, or Uranium Club, but across their five albums, they make it clear: Landowner just sounds like Landowner.
The tension that's present in Landowner's taut, high-energy minimalism goes hand in hand with Shaw's lyricism, becoming an expression of the anxiety around the decline of Earth's life-giving capacity, the instinct to ensure the well-being of our children, and the deep fears that arise when these combine. Shaw's words often reflect on our relationship with the built and natural environment, perspective gained from his day job as a landscape architect designing public spaces. Now with fatherhood in the mix, his reflections have evolved with an added sense of connection and urgency. “As the album progresses, I am increasingly addressing my own assumptions, specifically the assumption that the world is doomed and my kids will experience increasing suffering," he explains. "I end up reminding myself that this view is indeed itself an assumption, or is at least simplistic, and I am not an all-knowing prophet. This insight has been deeply valuable to me, in learning to cope with personal-level crises and anxieties, or more global-scale worries. Things usually turn out differently than I assume, and that's a simple but deeply valuable thing to realize.”
