- Genre: 'Indie'
- Release Date: '28th January 2021'
Our Rating:
There are ultimately only two kinds of music – good and bad, and there are good and bad musics to be found in every genre, which is why it doesn’t pay to be too prescriptive. Just as there are bands and albums you’ll hate in genres you love, there will be bands, albums, or at least songs that just hit you and stick as classics in genres you loathe on every level. Well, that’s the general rule.
So with no a priori knowledge of Kulick, the pitch for ‘Everyone I Know Will Die’ hit with a certain resonance. The older you get, the more people you know pass, and when it’s not just elderly relatives, but you start losing old school-friends while in your thirties and forties, mortality is thrown into sharp relief. It’s fucking real. You start to wonder, ‘who’s next?’ and ‘when is it my turn?’. You begin to worry that you really don’t have all the time in the world after all, that you could die tomorrow. The last couple of years have only amplified these nagging concerns, from a whisper to a scream.
Jacob Kulik’s experiences are by no means unique when he writes, “Without going into too much detail, this album practically wrote itself with life (and death) experiences. I have always been obsessed over “why are we here, what is the point, and why do we die” since I was young. It was the first topic I found myself writing about… I was forced to dive into it a lot again this year for the first time since then. For certain reasons, I found myself in doctors offices and hospitals a few times a month, surrounded by others struggling with their own health. I found myself being a caretaker to someone I couldn’t imagine losing. I found myself having massive anxiety attacks about the health of my loved ones and myself.”
And so I hoped to find some solace in this release. Perhaps not solace in the sense of comfort and affirmation, but in songs that would resonate and reflect my own experiences.
But not to dismiss pop tunes – there are some pop songs that really speak, and still slug me in the guts – this set of flimsy emo-flavoured punk pop fails to capture or reflect the gravity of living life. Everything is just so bland, so fucking nice; the lyrical content is lost to the buoyant tunes and bouncy vocal melodies.
Maybe misery loves company, but it’s really not that I want or expect every song that deals with darker subject matter to be as bleak as hell, but this just feels far too joyous to be remotely serious.
