The Gotobeds

I first encountered the Gotobeds in August 2014, at a benefit for the great rock bard Karl Hendricks in their mutual hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Gotobeds went on fashionably (if not voluntarily) late and proceeded to lay waste to anything else anyone tried to do that evening. I took an abnormal number of photos and was made a fan for life. This kind of instant affection happens to me, particularly in my jaded dotage, so very rarely that I feel it is worth noting.
Almost inevitably, an attempt to describe an unnameable jolt will devolve into predictable cliches. I'm talking about old chestnuts like:
            Bouncing off the walls
            Spending about half an hour in a washing machine full of bolts and rose petals
Having sand thrown in your eyes just before being kissed vigorously on the neck. All of which are a) barely better than nothing on the word front but b) do apply, if lazily so, to the Gotobeds’ various, terrific issuances: on 12XU (to which they have happily returned), their erstwhile label Sub Pop, etc. And the latter two apply perhaps most especially to their terrific new record–'Masterclass'. The Gotobeds have an unwavering commitment to bending and breaking things in the process of remaking them into something bolder and better (and, a couple of lineup changes to the contrary, not laying anyone off wantonly from critical government jobs). "Goes Away," to wit, is remarkably fractured, chomping up the minutes, 0% rounded off as is their default setting--do not toy with perfection. The Gotobeds are aggressive, cannily disjointed, occasionally raw propellent, with an ear for melody that leavens the entire enterprise with a reasonable, non-diabetes-inducing amount of sugar. The lovely-yet-scaly "Mirror Writing" is nearly six minutes long and somehow too short. "Second Sight" doesn't pass for mellow but has guitar lines in the chorus that I'm pretty sure were written by Richard Carpenter on PCP (please fact-check). All of the guitar playing that comes out of this band is 100% whacked (a wildly positive modifier, not to be confused with its opposite of "wack")...oh what can I say to pique your interest, that you might understand through reference. Hmmm...how about...Rowland S Howard riding on the shoulders of Lee Ranaldo through a house of mirrors. Hack move on my part. But perhaps it leaves the right taste in your mouth. The complements to this wrangling and strangling are warm and charming vocals (albeit semi-buried), with perhaps surprising heart and richness to them, plus (crucially) an insistent, melodic bass guitar and beguilingly slushy drumming that together invite that most welcome and rare of rock sense-memory tingles (The Clean). In closing, I will suggest: Apprise your ears, brain, and genitalia of this brazen, scabrous, lovingly made record–the Gotobeds’ fourth or fifth depending on how many fingers you have left on your counting hand. 'Masterclass 'was spat out during a low point of recent human history–the Great Plague of 2020-2022–but as we should all know from watching the History Channel, there’s always a sub-sub-basement. And beautiful art, great music, good books–these things are necessary for survival, as well as being prime antidotes to the scourge of psyops-enabled doomscrolling. If you've access to a better (or even marginally equivalent) ball of punk, surf, no-wave, Beat-adjacent literature (ala John Fante, namechecked herein) and bubblegum, a) I have serious doubts that you are telling the truth, but b) please let us all know because we can surely use it. - Tim Midyett