Numbers Game (Grocer album) – Queen City Sounds and Art

Nicholas Rahn’s treatment in the video for Grocer’s song “Calling Out” presents the appropriately surrealistic mood of the song. People dressed in animal suits as a pig, a bird, a horse and perhaps a caterpillar work regular jobs as part of the usual rat race and in desperate need of some time out of that maddening and mind-dullening world as exemplified by the discordantly playful, herky jerky dynamic of the song with guitar both in staccato melody and in frantic pace with the rhythm. The vocals sound like inner dialogue diary entries sketching out the unspoken thoughts and all but shouting them like a triumph over the overwhelming mundanity of too much of everyday existence. The video ends with the members of the band sitting at a diner table being served by the caterpillar in one of the more meta music video moments in recent times and ending like we’ve just seen an outtake of an episode from Kids in the Hall, Mr. Show or Wonder Showzen with a different cast. Fans of Dehd and Lithics will probably find something endearing about the song and what Grocer is doing in general. Watch the video for “Calling Out” on YouTube, follow Grocer at the links provided and check out the rest of the group’s new album Numbers Game which released on May 6.

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It seems entirely appropriate that Grocer is in the dark dimly lit by occasional flashlight illumination focusing on parts of members of the band for the video for “Pick A Way.” In writing the song the band found a way to make start and stop dynamics work without sounding like they’re stumbling over each other while conveying a deep sense of existential stasis with a burst of guitar noise splaying out and churning back in among the other sounds while the rhythm section maintains the meditative beat. It’s like listening to a much more introspective early Preoccupations song with the willingness to take straight forward sounds and rhythms and deconstruct them mid-song while maintaining forward motion without collapsing. Which is a bit like an analog to the state of mind described in the song where maybe you’re living a life where there were expectations based on what you’ve been told implicitly by culture and maybe even aligning with the trajectory of your life until it isn’t and you’re left wondering where to focus your energies, what direction to go when there’s really nothing there for you and you have to try to figure something out in an economic, social and political world that is in disarray and turmoil and basically collapsed but not yet recognizing it and with no leaders or movements to suggest a path out of the slow moving quagmire to doomsday. It’s an unusual song yet what better music to help clarify where you might be at by expressing similar feelings with such clarity of mood? Maybe, as with many psychological states of stasis and emotional paralysis, it is best to pick some route of action in life and go with that rather than flail while the world burns. Watch the video for “Pick A Way” on YouTube, connect with Grocer at the links below and look out for the band’s forthcoming LP Numbers Game due out 5/6/22.