Where's My Utopia?: 5 Songs on Enshittification
This week's songs are from Protomartyr, TV Priest, Squid, Viagra Boys, and Shame
RIP Todd Snider
I never dove very deep into Todd Snider’s music, but people whose opinions I respect are fond of it. He was a disciple of John Prine, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Kris Kristofferson. In other words he wrote songs with stories about daily life and characters with the same failures and feelings as anyone else, with a bit of humor. Somehow that’s a rare thing these days. His cover of Robert Earl Keen’s “Corpus Christi Bay” occasionally pops up on my shuffle. It’s a pleasant song about some unpleasant things.
Snider passed away this weekend at the all-too-early age of 59.
LCD Soundsystem’s first album was release in 2005. They originally broke up in 2011, but have since reunited, toured, and released new music in 2016. I haven’t paid any attention to it or listened to them in years. Their music encapsulated a time and place. I mention the dates above because they pretty closely align to when social media, web 2.0, and a burgeoning techno-utopianism was accepted as inherently good. We had rising benevolent overlords. Snarky, observational, sardonic, and culturally literate people considering themselves uncool could earn social capital, and therefore become cool (and extremely wealthy). LCD Soundsystem’s music had self-deprecating, confessional, but witty lyrics set to upbeat dance music. It plays just as well in the coffee shop as it does in the cocktail or wine bar. They simultaneously defined and critiqued a lifestyle curated for social media. Their best-known song “All My Friends” is ostensibly about aging out of the party lifestyle, but it works just as well as the interior monologue of someone scrolling Instagram. The stuttering piano and drums that play on a loop provides the sense of exhilaration while never actually going anywhere—the infinite scroll. So when they got back together as the negative effects of the modern internet revealed themselves—they put out an album called American Dream in 2016—I couldn’t help but think: Who wants to dance at a time like this? They had embodied an era and that era was over.
2016 is the pivot point when enshittification revealed itself. Big, real-world events and toxic behaviors were suddenly connected back to misinformation and people losing actual social connection. But it’s also when tech companies pivoted to profitability, chasing more of our attention. It’s also when non-tech companies started funneling real world interactions and customer experiences towards chatbots and mobile apps, making things easier for who? You were annoyed your rideshare got more expensive while your rideshare driver was annoyed they weren’t making any money. The math wasn’t mathing, and still ain’t mathing. Things get worse for the many and really good for the select few and its trended that way for nearly a decade. While this is primarily about the internet and technology, it’s also about the real-world consequences we are now all reckoning with and is news to none of us.
Thankfully, one of art’s many jobs is to reflect the time it’s made in. A number of bands that either consider themselves, or are labeled as, “punk” bands embody this phenomenon, whether that’s intentional or not.
I qualify the “punk” label, because very much like LCD Soundsystem, their musical styles and influences they pull from are highly intersectional. What they have in common above all is the effect on the listener. However, there are some notable traits:
The singers, with dynamic and exaggerated talk-singing vocals, deliver often hilarious commentary on modern life. They might be stream-of-conscious rants, monologues from an (often deluded) character’s perspective, or biting takedowns of a misguided belief system. Some are more overtly political than others, but there is a dominating voice galvanizing the listener. I equate this to the influencer, podcaster, online personality leading their audience with a clearly established point of view.
The music is discordant, distorted, often glitchy and pixelated, and abandons nearly all rules regarding genre, song structure, and any separation of the instruments. Beats are imbalanced. There’s noise for the sake of noise. It’s propulsive, delivered with energy that pushes towards the chaos, it’s designed to overwhelm the senses. That seems to be the point.
As LCD Soundsystem balanced the id and ego of a carefully curated Instagram lifestyle, with a soundtrack you can dance to, these bands zero in on the doom-scrolling id, barreling through a hyper-politicized, polarized warped version of SkyMall with captivating talking heads exploiting your attention and spouting misinformation. Some of these bands dabble in the dance-rock of LCD Soundsystem (some have even collaborated with the band), but there’s a harder edge and a more expansive musical palette. Almost like listening to music on shuffle—or swiping though Instagram Stories or TikTok, this music swings from genre to genre sometimes song to song, and occasionally between the verse and chorus. Unlike punk of the past, speed and power drill guitars are replaced with chopped beats, electronic effects. They will cite influences from hip hop and free jazz and disco more than a given punk band, kraut rock, or house music DJ.
It’s here I should note that many of these bands are not American. Many are grouped into “The Windmill Scene,” which is tied to a single South London venue. Assigning this cohort to a single scene ignores those from Detroit, Bristol, Dublin, Stockholm, New York, Melbourne, and beyond. But as the UK reckons with their own political self-own (Brexit), they’re spared a singular boogie man to monopolize their righteous anger and frustration. This frees them up to identify and explore the structural forces at play, and then articulate how toxic internet culture manifests more broadly in modern life. .
So who am I talking about?
Idles. Sleaford Mods. Viagra Boys. Fontaines D.C. Protomartyr. Yard Act. Parquet Courts. Shame. TV Priest. Black Midi. Amyl & the Sniffers. Squid. Heavy Lungs. Weeping Icon.
This sub-genre conjures up the anger, exhaustion, alienation, and gallows humor that comes along when things go bad and only seem to get worse. In other words: enshittification.
Here are 5 songs for the age of enshittification.
“‘Cause the water keeps on rising
And we know there’s no surprising
Anyone with eyes and ears ‘round here
That we’re all gonna sink
And we just wanna have some fun before we’re sunk
And if that’s the attitude you exude, then you know you’re really punk”
- Yard Act, “We Make Hits”
Protomartyr - “Bad Advice”
Protomartyr sound like a Joy Division cover band lost their singer before a gig so they got the drunkest guy at the bar to fill in, and he’s reading YouTube comments in place of lyrics. I of course mean this as the highest of compliments. Singer Joe Casey rants and raves in free-associative poetry that is impossible to decipher, but it sounds like he knows a lot about ancient history and myth and is channeling visions from an apocalyptic future. They’ve been at it since 2010, long before we were subject to the loony rants and “the weave.”
“Bad Advice” shows that the band is equally as capable of patching together bits and pieces into a barely-together whole. The bass and drums repeat an out-of-balance stutter while the guitar shifts around it as soon as it starts to feel predictable. Casey repeats a few words, but there’s nothing hear that would formally structure a song.
“I just wanna be famous already
This is boring, it’s boring, boring
I deserve a TV show
That runs maybe one season too many
About me and my friends, like a bit of a modern day Entourage
But obviously more progressive, it’s 2024, not 2004”
- Heavy Lungs, “Mr. Famous”
TV Priest - “Decoration”
TV Priest played as a band as teenagers, but reunited in their 30s just ahead of the pandemic. From their 2021 debut Uppers, “Decoration” struts in with a thunderous groove and kicks the door open with a great opening line delivered with an acidic delivery showing clear disdain for the proceedings:
I have never seen a dog do what that dog does
And you’re through to the next round
I imagined this to be an allusion to some sort of art version of The Hunger Games—constant measurement against others, all competition to prove any feeling of self-worth. Pet tricks, painting, awards, Sunday clothes, TV shows, books, they’re all decoration. Meaningless, there to fill space. But turns out, the line was a running joke among the band, a line they borrowed from Simon Cowell, who actually said it on Britain’s Got Talent. The song is a bit of a thudding rant—no guitar line or really hummable melody—but I find it gets stuck in my head quite a bit. And the way the drums sound, it’s begging to be played loud.
“I thought about deleting you on socials
Because you keep coming in with stuff
And it’s winding me up to be honest
I never see ya, I don’t want to either
I’ll just end up coming ‘round to your house
And I’ll just stick my phone in your head”
- Sleaford Mods, “Right Wing Beast”
Viagra Boys - “Creatures”
By appearances alone, Viagra Boys don’t look like the disco types. Ostensibly a punk band, they play cartoonish, synthy dance-rock. Lyrics are often hilarious send-ups of modern life, the deplorable ideas of terminally online, mostly male, conspiracy theorists. Having moved from the US to Sweden as a teenager, singer Sebastian Murphy’s sharp eye for the absurdities of American culture comes from the insider’s outside perspective. “Man Made of Meat,” and “Troglodyte” are downright catchy new wave. “Creepy Crawlers” sounds like “Frankie Teardrop” if Alan Vega was mainlining Facebook and Fox News during the pandemic. “Creatures,” upends the formula a little bit. The chorus toes a fine line where you can’t tell if the singer is singing from a place of pain or celebration, and it’s a richer commentary that it’s both.
“Always crashing, screaming, relentlessly bashing
Incessant, repulsive, backtracking hypotheses
And we’re seldom finished”
- Black Midi, “Chondromalacia Patella”
Squid - “Houseplants”
Here’s one that calls back to LCD Soundsystem’s dance-funk inflected rock, but leaning into a bit of mania. The late-night partier has settled into a new life as a homebody and has gone insane with boredom. What has he got to show for it? Houseplants. They’ve chased status too far only to end up in a “beautiful house I can’t afford to live in.” And those plants may look nice and require care and attention, but his energy is only going towards the stuff in his house. If TV Priest didn’t free your mind, Squid is here to remind you:
Gardens ain’t a savior
decoration ain’t behavior
“My life is my brand
I sell my life
Fashion, travel, lifestyle, health
Don’t forget to click to subscribe
Don’t be shy
add me to your cart”
- Weeping Icon, “Like Envy”
Shame - “Six-Pack”
Not many bands can pull off a good wah-wah pedal. Jimi Hendrix, Rage Against the Machine, Soundgarden, end of list? Who’s to say…But Shame absolutely pummels the wah-wah pedal on “Six-Pack.” Chaos erupts almost immediately pulling your ears in every direction where the only thing you can follow is singer Charlie Steen stealing your trust with a false promise right off the bat:
“Everything you see is free, within this room”
I take “the room” to be that curated life one strives for, creates, curates, and maintains. Maybe its living a virtual life, getting sucked into the metaverse, ending up like one of those people who fall in love with ChatGPT, or whatever fresh hell of a simulated reality awaits. Getting healthier, achieving self-actualization, getting people to like you—the algorithm has the solution for you. But every promise Steen makes in the lyrics comes at a cost. And he hands you the bill with the final line:
“You got nothing and no-one to live for
But you’ve got this room
And guess what?
This room has got you”
Thanks for reading. Enjoy listening.
Full playlists of songs featured in 5 Songs: