Jeff Rosenstock has been singing about the same problems for a while now. Both his former band Bomb the Music Industry! and his last solo album “We Cool?” explored depression, listlessness and watching others grow up without you. “WORRY.” acts as both an anthology and an evolution for Rosenstock’s music. It encompasses all the punk and ska music of his career while ambitiously tackling the modern age moving past him.
The first track “We Begged 2 Explode” is a typical Rosenstock opener, with lines like, “This decade’s gonna be f—d / Friends will disappear after they fall in love and get married / Isn’t that s—t like crazy?”
By the time “Festival Song” comes around, it’s clear Rosenstock is aiming larger. Here, the music industry is targeted for its monetary greed — in contrast to Rosenstock’s DIY ethics — while “Staring Out The Window At Your Old Apartment” contemplates, “The city don’t care if you live or you die.”
Whether it’s the industry or the city, Rosenstock sees the world as a ruthless, unfeeling place. “Festival Song” says it best with, “They wouldn’t be your friend if you weren’t worth something.”
It’s a little awkward when “WORRY.” turns its attention to the Internet. “To Be A Ghost…” has the clunker, “No one will listen up until you become a hashtag or a meme,” while “Blast Damage Days” reminds us “These are the Amazon days, we are the binge watching age.”
Rosenstock’s point is clear — the Internet has changed how we consume entertainment and how we interact with each other. However, this could have been expressed without name-dropping various bits of online culture.
Barring the conceptual elements of the record, no one can deny Rosenstock’s songwriting chops. The musical variety of “WORRY.” is a giant grab bag full of punk rock goodies. The album glides in and out of genres with ease, from acoustic ballads to 100-person gang vocals to ska punk. Highlights like “Wave Goodnight To Me” and the incredible “I Did Something Weird Last Night” have some of the catchiest hooks of his career.
The real surprise is the 15-minute, nine-track medley that closes out the album. These short tracks bounce around musical ideas like a kid in a punk candy store, from the rapid-fire vocal delivery of “Bang on the Door” to 29 seconds of delicious hardcore punk in “Planet Luxury.” If Rosenstock set out to create a punk “Abbey Road,” this medley is a worthy successor to that album’s legendary side B.
“WORRY.” is a Rosenstock album through and through, and that’s exactly why it succeeds. It’s an anthem for the modern age, for the disillusioned at any age. Most aging punk musicians fail to make that connection with their music, but at 34, the fact Rosenstock can make such consistently relatable music is a testament to his skill as an artist. This is easily an album-of-the-year contender and isn’t to be missed.
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