Review Summary: "Your emotion is B-U-L-L ****ing sh-", woah, calm down there Jeff, it's not quite that bad.
Surprise! It’s 2018, and what better to ring in the new year than a brand new record from, arguably, modern punk music’s most distinguished and memorable songwriter, Jeff Rosenstock.
Well, unfortunately, six more months have made it pretty obvious that this surprise was perhaps celebrated a little prematurely. This album has some great tracks but recent listens have made it painfully clear: POST- is the worst record Jeff Rosenstock has been a part of since The Arrogant Sons of Bitches’ (ASOB) immature predecessors to their cult classic, Three Cheers for Disappointment. I’m someone who has a lot of Jeff’s records in constant rotation and often get the feeling that I can never burn out on them. Who knows how many times I've listened to Three Cheers, Scrambles, Get Warmer, Adults!...etc. But I have barely touched POST- in the six months since its release. Why is that❓
A primary point of interest here is the production. Jeff Rosenstock’s previous two albums (the excellent We Cool❓ and WORRY.) signaled a progression of increasingly grimy production when compared to Jeff’s previous works with his last band, Bomb the Music Industry! (BTMI!). This style made the guitars sound a little bit bigger, the drums a bit more battered, and the general atmosphere of things that tad darker. POST- continues this trend off the deep end though. There is simply no benefit to how a lot of this record sounds. Jeff is someone who often uses a lot of instruments outside of a punk band’s standard setup. So there’s usually a lot going on. In the past this has made for some of the most symphonic moments in punk’s history, like on ASOB’s quintessential “So Let’s Go! Nowhere!”. Here though, everything often sounds like a mushy mess. Good luck distinguishing the chords from the synths in the middle of “TV Stars”, for example. A quick listen to the chorus of “All This Useless Energy” emphasizes this point, with Jeff’s vocals sounding like they’re being played back through speakers just dunked in the water pushing up against the side of Jeff’s yacht.
Just kidding. Jeff doesn’t have a yacht. Probably. But what I’m saying is that nowadays, Jeff is more successful than he ever was in the past and therefore has the most freedom he has ever had to make his music sound exactly like he wants to, and so the production is a creative choice deserving of criticism, unlike the first couple BTMI! albums where the fact that everything besides the vocals sounded pretty bad only added to the charm of a scrambling group of punks trying to record their passionate sound however they could.
Despite the above, even Jeff's worst is still pretty decent, because POST- certainly houses some great tracks such as Powerlessness and TV Stars. But it just feels kind of hollow to me. And that it's bookended by two of Jeff's longest, most poorly written songs really doesn’t help. Forget the politics, “Let Them Win” and “USA” are the first two times I ever thought a Jeff Rosenstock song was boring and dragging on for too long. These songs feel really stretched, with certain parts that go on for twice as many measures as they probably should, since they really just aren’t that captivating (like Let Them Win’s intro). Lastly, they also sport these disappointingly lackluster refrains in their outros which is sad because it’s something Jeff usually does so well. I still scream the beautiful outro of “Hurricane Waves” at the top of my lungs whenever I listen to it, but these just do nothing for me.
In the end, maybe those aforementioned politics are part of the reason some of this album just doesn't work for me. I mean, Jeff is someone we've heard be so honest for so long about the most specific experiences that he could somehow universalize to make relatable for the listener. Although, on POST-, we often know exactly what it is that Jeff is singing about. And yet, I always have trouble empathizing with that sad, hopeless vocal melody that closes out POST-. It brings me a certain feeling I never got when relating to Jeff’s most sorrowful tracks, such as “Get Warmer”, “Wednesday Night Drinkball”, and “The Lows” - which, frankly, are all way more emotionally effective than anything on this album. Yeah, the 2016 election was pretty bad. But in my mind it was more about who was nominated rather than who was elected. Maybe POST- just isn’t for me.
