Having Your Cake and Eating It Too
The infamous hyperpop, alt-rock, get-the-hell-out-of-my-room wave duo 100 gecs, made up of internet weirdos and music geeks Laura Les and Dylan Brady, is back with another album. Their 2019 debut, “1000 gecs”, was polarizing. Straddling restless futuristic pop and highly dated nostalgia-drenched genres, it remains to this day oddly timeless. The album was not and still isn’t for everyone. It wasn’t made to be. I don’t mean that in the sense that the duo’s outlandish output is too clever, deep, or enlightened. Those kinds of exclusionary pretensions elude 100 gecs. However, I do think it takes a special kind of person to enjoy the group and their music. The relentlessly booming 23-minute “1000 gecs” taps into the same jovially juvenile centers of my brain as The Unicorn’s “Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone”, an existential unicorn ride about life, death, and sorrow through a miscellaneous amalgam of those musical electronic crib toys for infants. It’s 100 gecs’ likewise unabashedly jovial and angsty approach to music, which makes them so appealing to some and, conversely, so unappealing to others. 100 gecs is food for the inner child and an outlet for suppressed silliness and glee, and this remains to be the case on “10.000 gecs”.
In line with this sophomore outing’s title, “10.000 gecs” sees the duo dialing up the energy tenfold while leaning further into the alt-rock and ska undertones of their debut. The intro, “Dumbest Girl Alive”, which opens with the “THX Deep Note”, is a great poster child for the philosophy Les and Brady are operating under. Distorted pentatonic guitar riffs open and close the track while Laura’s verses are backed by a bouncy 808-centric beat, effectively showcasing both sides of the album’s sonic ideas on one track. It is radically dumb and unabashedly proud of it. As Laura states, “I’m smarter than I look/I’m the dumbest girl alive.” It is essentially a warning – “Music intellectuals and creativity snobs, beware! This is not for you”.
What follows are maximalist compositions of chronically online sensibilities and existentialist escapism. On “Doritos & Fritos”, raw, shouty, and slightly monotone verses are underlined by kookie guitar squawks and a grooving bassline. These are beautifully contrasted when Les soars on the autotuned pre-chorus, which might be one of the best melodies she has ever penned. “Hollywood Baby ” with its speaker-destroying chorus is a similar stroke of melodic genius, complete with millennial whoa-oh-whoas and evocative alt-rock angst. Delving further into the rocking cuts on the tracklist, “Billy Knows Jamie” is a driving nu metal jam that sees Laura and Dylan channeling their inner Fred Durst — nookie and all — before imploding in industrial noise and death metal, ultimately making me want to break something. “Frog on the Floor” is a bouncy lullaby of a ska ballad about a frog “fucking around” and doing keg stands. The most emotionally charged track on the album, “I Got My Tooth Removed”, is a breakup song about a decaying tooth. Beautiful metaphor or musical shitpost? I’ll let you decide.
This question is inherent to the magic Les and Brady are creating here. They don’t want to be limited to one or the other. They are having their cake and eating it too. “The Most Wanted Person in the United States” is plodding and muted on one hand and utterly goofy on the other. Sampling a pitched-down version of dancehall classic “Sleng Teng Riddim”, Brady and Les trade verses embodying serial killers on the run, all the while backed by cartoon spring sound effects, neighs, record scratches, and sampled snippets from the film “Scary Movie”. Again, this album is not for everyone. Short but sweet, “10.000 gecs” is a no-frills tour of some of the most unfiltered ideas the paradigm of modern pop music can bear before dipping into complete nausea. Case in point: “One Million Dollars” is a 2-minute techno-metal odyssey with a Primus-esque jazzy prog break in the middle sampling the TikTok text-to-speech voice. It is utterly breathtaking.
The creativity and, by extension, the lack of restraint on this thing is truly inspiring. There are some utterly infectious pieces of songwriting here and some utterly mind-numbing antics. Consistently, “10.000 gecs” begs the question of whether it is the result of a couple of musical virtuosos discovering slap bass for the first time or two kids tossing slime and playdough at the wall, letting it slide down to the floor in a glittery goop of rubber and chemicals. I don’t really care to discuss the merits of artistry or musical genius, to be clear. The unburdened fun of this album is an oasis in the hellhole we inhabit, and that, in a sense, is enough merit as far as I’m concerned. Let your inner whatever loose and catch a break from the crippling monotony of life with 100 gecs or at least give “Hollywood Baby” a try and scream your throat sore.
The infamous hyperpop, alt-rock, get-the-hell-out-of-my-room wave duo 100 gecs, made up of internet weirdos and music geeks Laura Les and Dylan Brady, is back with another album. Their 2019 debut, “1000 gecs”, was polarizing. Straddling restless futuristic pop and highly dated nostalgia-drenched genres, it remains to this day oddly timeless. The album was not and still isn’t for everyone. It wasn’t made to be. I don’t mean that in the sense that the duo’s outlandish output is too clever, deep, or enlightened. Those kinds of exclusionary pretensions elude 100 gecs. However, I do think it takes a special kind of person to enjoy the group and their music. The relentlessly booming 23-minute “1000 gecs” taps into the same jovially juvenile centers of my brain as The Unicorn’s “Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone”, an existential unicorn ride about life, death, and sorrow through a miscellaneous amalgam of those musical electronic crib toys for infants. It’s 100 gecs’ likewise unabashedly jovial and angsty approach to music, which makes them so appealing to some and, conversely, so unappealing to others. 100 gecs is food for the inner child and an outlet for suppressed silliness and glee, and this remains to be the case on “10.000 gecs”.
In line with this sophomore outing’s title, “10.000 gecs” sees the duo dialing up the energy tenfold while leaning further into the alt-rock and ska undertones of their debut. The intro, “Dumbest Girl Alive”, which opens with the “THX Deep Note”, is a great poster child for the philosophy Les and Brady are operating under. Distorted pentatonic guitar riffs open and close the track while Laura’s verses are backed by a bouncy 808-centric beat, effectively showcasing both sides of the album’s sonic ideas on one track. It is radically dumb and unabashedly proud of it. As Laura states, “I’m smarter than I look/I’m the dumbest girl alive.” It is essentially a warning – “Music intellectuals and creativity snobs, beware! This is not for you”.
What follows are maximalist compositions of chronically online sensibilities and existentialist escapism. On “Doritos & Fritos”, raw, shouty, and slightly monotone verses are underlined by kookie guitar squawks and a grooving bassline. These are beautifully contrasted when Les soars on the autotuned pre-chorus, which might be one of the best melodies she has ever penned. “Hollywood Baby ” with its speaker-destroying chorus is a similar stroke of melodic genius, complete with millennial whoa-oh-whoas and evocative alt-rock angst. Delving further into the rocking cuts on the tracklist, “Billy Knows Jamie” is a driving nu metal jam that sees Laura and Dylan channeling their inner Fred Durst — nookie and all — before imploding in industrial noise and death metal, ultimately making me want to break something. “Frog on the Floor” is a bouncy lullaby of a ska ballad about a frog “fucking around” and doing keg stands. The most emotionally charged track on the album, “I Got My Tooth Removed”, is a breakup song about a decaying tooth. Beautiful metaphor or musical shitpost? I’ll let you decide.
This question is inherent to the magic Les and Brady are creating here. They don’t want to be limited to one or the other. They are having their cake and eating it too. “The Most Wanted Person in the United States” is plodding and muted on one hand and utterly goofy on the other. Sampling a pitched-down version of dancehall classic “Sleng Teng Riddim”, Brady and Les trade verses embodying serial killers on the run, all the while backed by cartoon spring sound effects, neighs, record scratches, and sampled snippets from the film “Scary Movie”. Again, this album is not for everyone. Short but sweet, “10.000 gecs” is a no-frills tour of some of the most unfiltered ideas the paradigm of modern pop music can bear before dipping into complete nausea. Case in point: “One Million Dollars” is a 2-minute techno-metal odyssey with a Primus-esque jazzy prog break in the middle sampling the TikTok text-to-speech voice. It is utterly breathtaking.
The creativity and, by extension, the lack of restraint on this thing is truly inspiring. There are some utterly infectious pieces of songwriting here and some utterly mind-numbing antics. Consistently, “10.000 gecs” begs the question of whether it is the result of a couple of musical virtuosos discovering slap bass for the first time or two kids tossing slime and playdough at the wall, letting it slide down to the floor in a glittery goop of rubber and chemicals. I don’t really care to discuss the merits of artistry or musical genius, to be clear. The unburdened fun of this album is an oasis in the hellhole we inhabit, and that, in a sense, is enough merit as far as I’m concerned. Let your inner whatever loose and catch a break from the crippling monotony of life with 100 gecs or at least give “Hollywood Baby” a try and scream your throat sore.
