Take a Jolting Beat w/ Sweeping Promises' Good Living is Coming For You
On 9/18/24 we are challenging our perceived inadequacies with the power Sweeping Promises' crunchy, blown out, pop-riddled punk.
I just learned from Reid HT’s amazing Every Genre Project newsletter, where he (brilliantly) breaks down a new genre and album within that genre EVERY DAY, that Hong Kong is Cantonese for “fragrant harbor”?! That’s blowing my mind!! (Why is that blowing my mind? Is it blowing yours??)
If you download the Substack app, you can learn cool stuff like that from Reid, from me, and again — it allows you to easily sample the many song links I post in each newsletter. Substack app FTMDJW (“for the musical discovery journey win”).
Take a Long, Wisdom-Filled Beat
Sweeping Promises’ Good Living is Coming For You & Snapping You TF Out of It
Recently, a professional rejection laid waste to my defenses. One lethal slash of a disheartening email, and my self-worth was suddenly under siege from all sides, no matter how impersonal or far-fetched the follow-on “rejections” I experienced were —
Someone didn’t reply to my “Hey handsome” on Grindr?
OH! I guess I’m ugly, and I’ll never find love!
Someone posted a beautiful Instagram of their vacation in Greece?
RIGHT! I’m poor and will have to settle for trips to Long Island beaches for the rest of my life!
On LinkedIn a peer proudly posted about a new promotion?
TOTALLY! Because I’m actually dumb and bad at my chosen job and therefore will be stuck in an entry level position forever!
And on top of all of those extremely personal attacks from people to whom I have maybe never spoken, there’s the ADVERTISEMENTS. I looked at a local jewelry retailer’s website one time, and now every ad on Instagram is teasing me about owning only three good necklaces! I walked into The RealReal store in SoHo, and every clothing rack got one look at my old white tee before rolling themselves over to a more deserving customer!
It got so bad that I saw a picture of Sabrina Carpenter, and thought —*sigh* if only I could tap into my talents the way that she can…
Luckily the recoil from the inciting rejection email lasted but a few days before I came back to my self-confident senses, but it was a sobering reminder that the modern world is not built to support the self-esteem deficient nor the emotionally compromised.
Rather, it is built to ravage you.
On Good Living is Coming For You, Sweeping Promises are keenly aware of the odds they are up against by the mere fact of existing in the modern age, their guitars and drums on a constant swivel, musically bracing themselves against the very worst society has to subliminally offer.
Take a Wise Beat
By the virtue of merely existing in the modern age, we face great subliminal odds to conform, and to feel as though we are failing should we not.
You may have noticed that there were no fewer than 5 mentions of apps in my introductory anecdotes (I’m counting TheRealReal), and in each of those mentions the dastardly apps are making me feel less than. And I’m sure it was on Instagram or YouTube where Sabrina Carpenter had the absolute NERVE to be so goddamn young and talented as to intimidate me. In the parlance of Sweeping Promises’ opening track on Good Living is Coming For You, Sabrina Carpenter and the other pretty/accomplished/successful people laughing at me from within these apps acted as my “Erasers” — enemies of my own design, empowered by the agency I accidentally gave them by peering at their social media posts for 15 seconds too long. BPMs increase and tensions rise across “Eraser” as lead singer Lira Mondal tries to resist deletion, but it’s a losing battle, the song ending with two sighs, as though a gust of wind has blown what remains of her off a chalk board and into anonymity.
But why should a silly professional rejection shake me to my core so thoroughly in the first place? I mean, we all know that the only things that really matter in life are the love that surrounds us, our health, meeting our basic needs, touching grass, etc. <3 — which, while cute and theoretically true, certainly does not explain my desire, nay need, to excel at my frivolous little tech job…
Sweeping Promises are wary of this American capitalist disease, one that for me began as early as a letter grade could be assigned to a worksheet, and battle against it on “Connoisseur of Salt”. With sharp driving guitar like a ticking clock on speed, they snap me out of my bootstrap-pulling daze and in second person address us corporate goons directly: “Bury yourself in sweat / Never admitting / That you can’t taste it”. What’s it all for, if the time put in yields only shallow rewards. After all, “There’s no sleep / For the dead”, Mondal sings in a drawn out cautionary growl.
Sweeping Promises’ cautionary tales across GLICFY are not inherently important by nature of being about holistic topics (Rupi Kaur, I need you to reread that line). They are important and imperative because they are illuminating the often subconscious effects of modern media consumption as well as the age-old arms race that is keeping up with the Joneses.
On the title track Sweeping Promises place us in a musical haunted house, booming drums like the tiptoes of a silent stalker, suspicious guitar melodies belying nefarious forces hidden in the shadows. And then as we approach the bridge, Mondal identifies the silent threat for us… DOMESTICITY! Okay, as a gay man I haven’t been threatened by domesticity in some time (why follow societal standards when who you love inherently breaks them? It’s quite freeing, actually!), but goddammit I’ll be snuck up on by Mondal’s gorgeous, throaty howl any day.
However, I do see many engagement announcements on my Instagram feed that make me go —
And if none of Sweeping Promises’ musical slaps to the face work, maybe some good ol’ fashioned teasing will! GLICFY contains a few delightful ditties that poke fun at themselves and the rest of us silly sheeple and our herdlike behavior. On “Petit Four” Mondal puts on a crackling, mimicky voice to deride our never ending dissatisfaction “One isn't and two is not enough / Three isn't and four is not enough”. On album closer “Ideal No” Sweeping Promises look around at how un-ideal things are and conclude in a clown-like, shrugging synth that things are just… not going to be ideal! Why kid ourselves!
Sometimes it’s the joke that hits a little too close to home that causes you to finally re-evaluate… it’s no one’s favorite method, but goddammit it can be effective!
When listening to Good Living is Coming For You, the songs’ lessons are imparted forcibly, because us listeners are in a trance that only the power of crusty, enlightened punk can snap us out of. The astoundingly live recordings maintain high-level RPMs throughout the constant hooky riffs and catchy melodies, which result in a f*cking good time. But those riffs and melodies are at much gnarlier frequencies than your usual pop-punk, frequencies that can penetrate our stupefied states: Sharp, ringing blows from what sounds like a knife scraping the guitar strings, blown out drums that pummel the brain, alarm bells that raise the hair on your skin. And then you have Mondal who is wailing, hissing, growling, and wailing some more as she helps us face our sneaky demons. It all adds up to a piercing punk-pop confection with the power to break whatever monotonous, downward spiraling spell you’ve been unknowingly lulled into.
Be safe out there, Take a Beaters, and when you find yourself mourning a job opportunity for a construction management tech company based out of Omaha, Nebraska, let Sweeping Promises remind you that… well, that’s simply a symptom of a disease!!
Take a Short Beat
“Black Quarterback” by Death Grips
I am so goddamn Death Grips-pilled that I think this song should be on the Billboard Top 40. No matter the typical angry gibberish from MC Ride, nor the aggressively experimental production from Zach Hill, nor the strange interpolated vocals from The Icelandic Freak herself Bjork — Josh declares that THIS is pop music!!
All I know is that when MC Ride says “Eddy baby / Eddy’s crazy / Kadabra, abrogate me / Two blue bake on absolutely (???)” on the viscerally thrilling chorus I find myself jumping up and down and punching the air to the beat, just like the best radio-ready pop. Long live Death Grips and their particular brand of… whatever the genre of music they make is.
Bits & Bobs from NYC
See you next week for the return of exclusive-brand-new-never-before-seen Take a Beat infographics…!
Thank you kindly for that shoutout, so gratifying 🥲 Every time I read your work I'm always impressed at your ability to relate it to the personal, humorous, and larger-than-life all at once... as someone who also has been faced with too many inferiority-complex-triggering slaps in the face lately this one reallyyy hit