courtesy photo
AUDIO REVIEW:
review by Chance Solem-Pfeifer and Jacob Zlomke
Omaha electronic duo Routine Escorts have a taste for thematic direction.
Their debut EP, Grown-Ups, features five pop-minded, ambient tracks about what exactly its title suggests: being a grown-up. Specifically, being a grown-up with jobs and kids and committed relationships, while trying to hang on to the carefree ideals that got you through your 20s.
The record deals in familiar contemporary artistic sentiment: a lack of connection between man and nature, the struggle to find balance between western civilization's unwavering desire for onward and upward progress, and the individual’s want for equilibrium.
“We’ve climbed a mountain to the top, and I’m sorry, but we don’t know how to stop,” asserts the vocal track on “Gag Jeans,” and later, “You can take anything you want.”
Grown-Ups deftly wonders when the train of progress will finally reach its destination.
And they’re not exclusively concerned with at-large societal circumstances. Often, tracks like “Bullet Train” could address civilizations and a personal relationship equally.
If an electronic group can write a folk song, “Bullet Train” might be it. In folk-country classic “Jackson,” the characters burn to move to Jackson in order to either escape or improve the dire conditions of a fevered marriage. Similarly, the characters of “Bullet Train,” which also features a male-female duet and a relatively fast-paced freneticism, board that same train and use its forward momentum against stationary reflection on their current state.
“Brooklyn, Man” suggests an enticing alternative to a life in the dull suburbs. Electronic grooves and a relaxed voice, pitching the potential of life in the borough, offer a place where an adult can maintain a creative, urban lifestyle while pursuing a promising professional status. Whether Brooklyn is a myth is left to be determined.
If the EP worries over destinations and modern progress lyrically, the music only reinforces the anxieties.
It is electronic music, but tracks here are not filled to the brim with every feature on a MIDI controller like some fully-produced Skrillex song. Routine Escorts take their cues much more from ‘80s new wave, playing with the hollow sound of the drum machine to achieve emotional depth. These songs are danceable, but they are not a barrage of noise.
Rather, they are left open, with room for sonic growth. There is space to move upward, onward. But what is that growth worth if it fills all the space, and still wants to keep growing? At some point, room for contemplation has been forgotten, replaced by man’s own desire for progress.
Grown-Ups is careful to leave that contemplative space. And if it feels at times hollow, so might a move to the suburbs, or a cubicle job you took only for the benefits package.
Jacob Zlomke is Hear Nebraska’s editorial intern. He’s never gonna grow up. Reach him at jacobz@hearnebraska.org.