It’s 2020. You should be listening to Sego by now.
For Rock music, the turn of the millennium was dominated by musical acts over-emoting their way into the limelight, led by emo/pop-punk and anything adjacent.
Fast forward to now, and don’t be fooled, their replacements care just as much. Or at least they used to, before they took too much Xanax, used too many plug-ins, and employed a well-rehearsed facade of jaded malaise for social acceptance. But what happens to a generation of artists plucked from a society constantly teetering between a panic attack and a state of medically induced contentment?
A lot of bad things. But some good, too.
Sego is one of those good things.
Tbh I don’t know a lot of their backstory, but you can go read a bio or something.
What I do know is Spencer Petersen and Thomas Carroll combine atonal math-rock texture with melodic dance grooves to create perfect art for the new decade. It’s potent, but it goes down smooth, like a non-confrontational “chat” with your step-dad who smokes weed with you.
Spencer takes a non-traditional, hyper-stylized approach to the guitar that might come off as amateur to the casual listener. But upon closer examination, his licks are tastefully crafted. Clearly he knows the rules in order to break them and consequently fool you into loving guitar music again. He pivots between groove based riffs and wild, modeless solos. Their track “Give Me” is a great example of him at his best. Give it a listen and notice how one second you’re casually bobbing your head to the rhythm and the next you’re shocked out of your trance by an ambulance siren guitar solo. His lead vocal lives in a similar territory- one second a spoken, Butthole Surfers-style verse and the next an anthemic soaring melody(see “Neon Me Out”.) Carroll and co’s rhythm section accentuates the groove and keeps the listening experience fun and palatable so that the listener can follow the stark contrast between Sego’s two preferred sonic spaces: fun and jarring. To follow suit, the lyrics take turns either painting pictures of millennial escapism or bringing scathing social commentaries to boil.
Sego feels like contrived social contentment in a world on the verge of nuclear war. Timely? Yes. Enjoyable? Definitely.
Check out their most recent release, “Sego Sucks” here. I’m not sure whether or not the title was inspired by Primus’s 90s ad campaign, but either way the bass-lines would do Les Claypool proud.
Enjoy.
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