Remember how scandalized we were in 2017 when Kellyanne Conway went on CNN to defend the White House providing what she called “alternative facts”? Do you recall how freshly infuriating it was to think there were people who didn’t know that simply meant “falsehood” or “a lie”? And then, you feared that truth, facts, and evidence would lose all meaning. But then that did actually kind of happen over the course of the next few years. And now, you realize that many of us just live with the understanding that the government and media almost exclusively lie to us. And you long for the 2017 version of yourself that could still experience outrage over something that now feels so commonplace. What a time to be alive!
Anyway, Atlanta-via-Athens alt-rock band Wieuca wrote a song about that all-too-familiar feeling. The group’s newest single “Everybody’s Living in Their Own World,” off their forthcoming full-length (TBD), is a bright garage rock ode to the malleable disposition of the current American public obsessed with spinning facts to meet their personal agenda. It’s a bleak premise Wieuca has wrapped in an undeniably catchy package.
Spending the first half of 2020 trickling out demos and singles, the boys of Wieuca have covered a great deal of ground since their EP Local Celebrity in 2018. They’re all over the place genre-wise. Just this year, Wieuca released a trippy astrology-inspired indie track, a rock anthem about the Heaven’s Gate cult, and a Chic-fil-A-themed collaboration with Atlanta rapper Houdinne. They routinely dip their toes into pop, rap, alt-country, and some buttrock. Wieuca doesn’t mind using cheesy musical conventions, and they are self-aware enough to do it in “Everybody’s Living in Their Own World” with control and cleverness. Finding charm in music that flagrantly draws influence from the likes of Korn, Blink-182, or The Offspring is a difficult thought with which to contend. Yet, here I am, fully converted.
However, “Everybody’s Living in Their Own World” narratively comes on the heels of their March 2020 single “Man of the House,” an impenetrable track written from the perspective of a chauvinistic man who rules over his home with machismo and bigotry. Both are set to appear on an impending LP, and I’m starting to get a little curious here. We have some relatively perceptible political commentary, themes of misguided patriotism, slipping into the perspective of unlikable characters, and very palatable alternative rock music.
With all the questions looming over the remainder of 2020, another arises: Is Wieuca poised to have a Trump-era American Idiot moment on their next release? If so, I will welcome it.
