Originally from Phoenix and now based in London, Middle Name John explores modern anxiety on the EP is it the bills? amidst a blend of punk-jazz, electronic flourishes, and art-pop creativity. The project also excels in tackling burnout, societal expectations, and AI’s increasing dominance through a surrealist lens. Collaborators like Nix Bakx and drummer Frank Byng further the experimental textures, creating a confessional narrative that questions the hamster wheel of urban life.
Opening the EP, “Walking Checklist” is exemplary of the project’s dynamic capacity. “How’s the weather? Hope tomorrow gets better,” a spoken-word presence navigates briskly amidst sporadic rhythmic punches and glimmering keys, moving into a spaciously hooky “you’re a walking checklist … running late and anxious” vocal entrancement. Musings on modern technology — “they’re gonna model new software using my voice as a reference for modern AI” — bolster that sense of anxiety, the stream-of-conscious outpourings melding with a melodic drive of guitars, fragmented rhythms, and synth buzzes.
The EP continues to delight, right away with the memorable “Don’t Forget Your Pills,” where accounts of burnout, medication reliance, and incessant advice frame further accounts of modern life. Balmy guitar twangs propel with hypnotic allure alongside the head-nodding vocal cadence. Elsewhere, “Family Matters” succeeds with an eerie title-touting proclamation, lingering with robotic synth-pop charm, while EP finale “More Means Less” stirs in its alternations between funky Momus-esque art-pop and effervescent dreaminess. is it the bills? is an inventive, melodic standout of an EP from Middle Name John.
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“Walking Checklist” and other tracks featured this month can be streamed on the updating Obscure Sound’s ‘Emerging Singles’ Spotify playlist.
We discovered this release via MusoSoup.
