A post-punk album grappling with the advancement of technology is about as common as an ad on your Instagram feed. A man bemoaning content nausea in a deadpan over animated guitars may be a bit played out at this point. But it’s 2026 and things are weirder than ever. You can be an influencer for smashing your jawbone with a hammer. You can livestream yourself being abused and humiliated until you die. Has the link between the expanding digital world and the desire for self-destruction ever been this clear before? This is something Chicago band Stuck explore on their new album Optimizer.
“It’s hard to know what you want/ And to know it is worse/ The newfound knowledge of self/ You carry it like a curse.” Greg Obis opens Optimizer with these menacing lines. “Totally Vexed” is a portrait of a disoriented generation, about the moment “when what was normal once starts feeling absurd,” he proclaims like a detached narrator or god. The following track, “Instakill,” offers grounding: “I saw an ad online/ With a man in his prime/ ‘You can change your life/ For a limited time.’” “Instakill” was the lead single, and it buzzes and twitches, anchored to a staccato rhythm, like a finger intermittently tapping a screen, accelerating in the chorus so it’s almost like sonic strobe lights.
Obis explained that financial stress and irresolution about his career “led [him] down a deep hole of online self-help huckster gurus,” which inspired “Instakill.” There are very few things I’m skeptical about more than wellness influencers, a title so paradoxical that it’s hard to not view it as ironic. (Speaking of irony, did you know there’s a “conscious lifestyle brand” named after a Joy Division song?) In an incoherent spurt, Obis lists: “Cutting sugar, exercising, reading, writing, organizing mindful habits, minimizing judgy thoughts and criticizing, if you spend life maximizing myopically optimizing, pretty soon you’re gonna hit a wall.” It’s an accurate portrayal of the way everything gets gamified online, especially when apps are designed like slot machines.
Things get the most Ballardian on “Fire, Man”: “You feel it/ Compulsion/ A craving/ Destruction.” In his classic 1973 novel Crash, J. G. Ballard posited that the advancement of technology would be accompanied by a perverse desire for violence. Every day sleek new machines are being introduced and taking on human tasks — even writing books that get sold to major publishers — so isn’t using technology a sort of subconscious deathwish? “The only thing you can count on/ Is to be let down,” Obis shouts declaratively, a simple fact of all social media. The satisfaction we want is never there, because if it were, we’d close the app — the tech lords' worst nightmare. We have to keep scrolling to get what we want. What do we want? We want fire, man. Obliteration. Oblivion. On “Net Negative,” he sings, “Thrill/ Can’t get your fill/ You can’t sit still.”
Masculinity in the era of Andrew Tate is under scrutiny on “Deadlift.” Whereas the other tracks burst with colorful chaos and achieve overstimulating crescendoes, “Deadlift” captures the deeply empty feeling of the manosphere with dark, menacing riffs and Obis’ droll description of the gym: “A room full of men/ Ignoring each other.” The sound is infectious but off-kilter, building toward a catharsis that never arrives. It doesn’t feel like he’s judging or mocking; the song merely paints the sad but realistic scene and floats through it, almost asking for sympathy. Because the only way to deal with these things — or anything — is earnestness. On “Punchline,” Obis narrates the irony epidemic: “We were set up/ To be knocked down/ Tried to be sincere/ Looked like a clown.” His life is, still, in decline: “A joke told by a child/ Without a punchline.” He announces, “I’m not in on the joke.”
As long as we’re sincere and using our brains instead of AI, we’re not in on the joke. If we surrender ourselves to the numbness the machines are meant to evoke in us, if we treat everything as a joke instead of taking anything seriously, if we use ChatGPT and worship influencers who hit their jawbones with hammers, then finally we may be granted access, we can have fun, we can’t be the clown because we’re just joking around anyway. So cheer on the absurd, help it become the new normal because it’s funny, even though there’s no punchline.
Optimizer is out 3/27 via Exploding In Sound.
Other albums of note out this week:
• Robyn's Sexistential
• Flea's Honora
• Snail Mail's Ricochet
• Yeat’s ADL (A Dangerous Lyfe / A Dangerous Love)
• RAYE's This Music May Contain Hope
• Courtney Barnett's Creature Of Habit
• The New Pornographers' The Former Site Of
• Fcukers' Ö
• SLAYYYTER’s WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA
• Tigers Jaw's Lost On You
• The Twilight Sad's It's The Long Goodbye
• José González's Against The Dying Of The Light
• Holy Fuck’s Event Beat
• King Tuff's MOO
• Lauren Auder's Whole World As Vigil
• Irreversible Entanglements' Future Present Past
• Konradsen's Hunt, Gather
• Dälek's Brilliance Of A Falling Moon
• Fetty Wap's Zavier
• True Green's Hail Disaster
• Charlotte Cornfield's Hurts Like Hell
• Paula Kelley's Blinking As The Starlight Burns Out
• Lone's Hyperphantasia
• Wintersleep's Wishing Moon
• worriedaboutsatan's No Knock No Doorbell
• Monster Rally's Echoes Of The Emerald Sands
• Hit Like A Girl's Burning At Both Ends
• Krooked Kings' In Another Life
• Nina Hagen's HiGHWAY TO HEAVEN
• Yttling Jazz's Illegal Hit (Out Of Bounds)
• Dry Socket's Self Defense Techniques
• Melissa Etheridge's Rise
• Em Spel's Bird Or Snake
• MEMORIALS' All Clouds Bring Not Rain
• LuxJury's Giving Up
• Stimmerman's Challenging Music For Difficult People
• Sluice's Companion
• Butler, Blake, & Grant's Murmurs
• Cannons' Everything Glows
• Uni Boys' Uni Boys
• Dobrawa Czocher's State Of Matter
• Myrath's Wilderness Of Mirrors
• The Pretty Flowers' Never Felt Bitter
• Luke Winslow-King's Coast Of Light
• Helicopter Leaves' Sabrina Nickels
• Black Label Society's Engines Of Demolition
• Nene H's Second Skin
• Sanaya Ardeshir's Hand Of Thought
• Ty Myers' Heavy On The Soul
• The Academy Is…'s Almost There
• Elmiene's sounds for someone
• Drayton Farley's A Heavy Duty Heart
• Cult Of Dom Keller's Unholy Drum
• Free Throw's Moments Before The Wind
• RY-GUY's Like A River EP
• Spencer Cullum's Coin Collection 3
• Dermot Kennedy's The Weight Of The Woods
• Party Cannon's Subjected To A Partying
• Loreen's Wildfire
• Big Harp's Runs To Blue
• Pet Needs' Elbows Out! This Is Capitalism
• Samurai Pizza Cats' Press Start
• NEEDTOBREATHE's The Long Surrender
• Variant's The Setting Sun
• Trust Me's Why I Like Dead Guys
• ADULT.'s Kissing Luck Goodbye
• Lou Gramm's Released
• Kökht Aräkh's Morning Star
• Closed City's Closed City
• Diana Darby's Otterson
• New German Cinema's Pain Will Polish Me
• Teratoma's Longing Voracity
• Tom Misch's Full Circle
• Lynn Breedlove's Why I Like Dead Guys
• Joshua Abrams' Music For Pulse Meridian Foliation
• Lyyra's Rising
• Melanie Martinez's Hades
• Balancing Act's Who've You Come As? (Part 2)
• Rump State's Psychic Sidekick
• Good Riddance's Before The World Caves In
• Flatland Cavalry's Work Of Heart
• Justine Skye's CANDY EP
• Robert Francis' Phantasmagoria
• Don Broco's Nightmare Tripping
• Resistor's BITE THIS! Radius' Alive & Thriving
• Myaap's Pixie Dust
• Chamber's this is goodbye…
• David Gray's Nightjar
• New Not Shameful's Interlude
• Tommy Peltier's Echo Park
• The Casualties' Detonate
• Buzzy Lee's Shoulder To Shoulder
• Varmia's lauks
• Lukas Ligeti's Notebook
• rum.gold's Is There Anybody Home?
• Godsticks' VOID
• oskar med k's feel
• Layla Kaylif's Call Of The Yoni
• Year's ADL (A Dangerous Lyfe / A Dangerous Love)
• Karen Dahlstrom's Love These Days
• bunii's VIRGILIO
• Sasami's Blood On The Silver Screen: Director's Cut
• Van Halen's 5150 (Expanded Edition)
• Various Artists' WHEN THERE IS NO SUN - Intergalactic Music Is Of The Outer Darkness
• The Charlatans' Some Friendly (Expanded Edition)
• Queen's Queen II Reimagined: Deluxe Collector's Edition
• Rogue Wave’s Out Of The Shadow (Deluxe Edition) & Descended Like Vultures (20th Anniversary Director’s Cut)
• Paul Carrack's For One Night Only - Live In London Therapy?'s One Cure Fits All (20th Anniversary Deluxe)
• Dave Harrington & Tim Mislock's Isle Of Palms Whitney Whitney's 1.2 EP
• Clarion's Blue Fairy EP
• DJ Nobu's Shō EP
• Headsend's Angel Glands EP
• Life Cycle's No One Escapes Death EP
• Artemas' getting up to no good EP
