The Geeks’ downtrodden veneer on their third record belies the oddly celebratory (and essentially revelatory) material within. A must-listen—and if you can get your hands on one—a must-own on vinyl.
A disgraced auteur once said tradition is the illusion of permanence. And if we juxtapose that against musical signposts, then indie rock is the most favorable to survival.
It doesn’t age. It doesn’t care. And it ultimately doesn’t matter.
But the funny thing is, its best practitioners—from canon to new-gen to even its most spirited naysayers—couldn’t be damned about traditions, illusions, and permanences.
And in these shores, I count The Geeks in those ranks: they with an uncaring veneer but also a nurturing love for the form; they who sing for laughter and love, but also, to nick from Kundera, our many laughable loves.
Their third record (also their first in this humble little label), “Sitcom Theme Songs,” is an easy sell to me and my ilk: I like sprightly melodies, I am embarrassed by dour-faced earnestness, I can play music but doing it well isn’t something I lose sleep over.
And more on “dour-faced earnestness,” it’s kind of like James Mercer coming up with a song like “Caring is Creepy,” explaining the discomfort that comes with sharing one’s feelings, and then dancing uncomfortably around the very meta-ness of even participating in the conversation.
That said, there is not a sliver of uneasiness in how The Geeks wear their hearts on their sleeves in “STS”: not in the happy-sad surrender of ‘She’s Leaving and I’m Wasting Away,’ certainly not in the slide-and-tremolo ‘60s revivalism of ‘The First Time.’
Part of this confessional willingness was buoyed by the pandemic, or the solitude it inevitably forced on creators. “[It was] written during an intense period of isolation, with nothing but TV sitcoms to draw emotions and inspiration from,” the band shares in a release in anticipation of the record.
More importantly, singer-guitarist Jam Lorenzo, guitarist Nigel Cristobal, bassist Mags Borbon, and drummer Brian Sangco reveals the album is the “culmination of a decade-long obsession with writing sad-happy songs about loneliness, isolation, and the burden of existence.”
There’s much to love in “STS,” whatever side of the existentialist fence you’re on. And although their influences (Rocketship, Yo La Tengo, Teenage Fanclub) and the acts most pinned on them (Weezer, Blur, Ciudad) are sufficient to pique the curious, it is their brand of slacker juvenilia, spiked with a warm, familiar musicality that will ultimately make you stay.
Despite the difficulties poised on them (and the rest of the world) over the last three years, The Geeks share that “It was a really easy record for us to make,” explaining that since they’ve worked (to a certain degree) in a similar (remote) fashion for close to a decade now, “We’re all accustomed to each other’s tendencies.”
The most memorable numbers remain advance singles like ‘The Song of Yesteryear,’ a boy-girl ditty featuring Formerly Maryknoll’s Jillian Santiago that’s audio candy of the highest caliber; as well as the irresistible ‘All My Favorite Songs,’ a “roll call of all things dire, defunct, and dead,” as I posited in a previous writeup.
But the boys are particularly thrilled about other choices as well, among them ‘Hey, Sister!,’ which has got healthy doses of romantic self-flagellation bathed in sarcasm; ‘Mags’ Existential Crisis,’ an homage to early lo-fi Geeks that not-so-oddly embraces the sound of a song “played through a bad cassette player.”
The Geeks’ downtrodden veneer on their third record belies the oddly celebratory (and essentially revelatory) material within. A must-listen—and if you can get your hands on one—a must-own on vinyl.
“Sitcom Theme Songs” is out now.