Pain in the Yeahs – Queen City Sounds and Art

Pain in the Yeahs Channels the Exhausting Demands of the Attention Economy Into the Upbeat Energy of Synthpop Single “Consumer”

Pain in the Yeahs, photo courtesy the artist

It’s pretty much impossible to escape being marketed to these days unless you’re willing to pay for the privilege with a subscription that isn’t presented as such. Pain in the Yeahs has zeroed in on the existential ennui that comes from being targeted and your insecurities and vulnerabilities exploited digitally by algorithms. It’s even hard to function or get through something even as basic as a doctor’s appointment without being asked for your feedback and told your opinion matters. It all feeds into the same dynamic that demands little bits of your life. James K. Ultra of Pain in the Yeahs sounds like he’s been through it all and as an artist the things you have to go through to get your creative work the attention it requires to flourish outside your immediate circle of friends. It can all wear you down and erode your spirit. But with a heavy and expertly cadenced rhythms and spiraling, spooky swirls of tone and Ultra’s every so slightly dissociated vocals born of an emotional exhaustion from the death spiral of late capitalism’s demands might be perceived to be a satire of how we’re all basically being eaten up by a thousand bites on our energy and attention daily and it is but it’s also an act of resistance to the whole process by making a banger of a single that reflects all of it back in vivid contrasts. Think something like “Cars” for the modern era. Listen to “Consumer” on Spotify and follow Pain in the Yeahs at the links below.

Pain in the Yeahs on Instagram

Pain in the Yeahs on Bandcamp

Pain in the Yeahs Deliver Synth-Driven Post-punk Song “Message of Mercy” With a Liberating Sense of Conviction

The pounding drums and distorted synths have a very stark and moody aspect at the beginning of “Message of Mercy” by Pain in the Yeahs. It’s industrial feel is reminiscent of when Nine Inch Nails covered Joy Division. The spectral synth melody fits in with a song that is both bleakly melancholic and defiantly expansive. The sound is futuristic like the kind of music that would have emerged in Oceania after the fall of the regime that propped up the image figurehead of Big Brother—all strong rhythmic lines and uncompromising and widely emotional expression but one tempered by decades of having had to be more buttoned up than is natural meaning there is a quality to the music that seems to have come up from a time of pent up incubation of a creative project with lots of development and close attention to how the beats and production would make the music come across as emphatically intentional. Listen to “Message of Mercy” on Spotify and follow Pain in the Yeahs at the links below. The sophomore album from the Virginia-based project Deep Sigh Sci-Fi released on July 21, 2023.

Pain in the Yeahs on Bandcamp

Pain in the Yeahs on Instagram

Pain in the Yeahs’ “Former Terraformer” is a Retrofuturist Post-Punk Dance Club Hit

“Former Terraformer,” the title track to Pain in the Yeahs’ new EP hits with a retro electronic post-punk aesthetic like James K. Ultra did some world building while writing the songs. In its distorted synths, driving rhythms, pounding percussion one imagines the dance club pop counterpart to Author & Punisher. But for a dance club set in a universe where Alien, The Terminator and Blade Runner somehow coexist, humanity has defeated the A.I. to colonize outer space and come to terms with hostile life forms and life can still be a bit of a grind because despite these strides in civilizational development the originating sin of crony capitalism has leaked into far future human endeavor. And thus the title of the song as though one could live long enough in this future scenario where being a terraformer was your prior avocation and now you’re burnt out and recognize that what you wanted out of this bizarre life of fake endless horizons and opportunity was a love that cut through that haze. And this song is a romantic ballad to that yearning. The chorus of “I need you, Candy/Candy do yo see me/I’m all fucked up this evening/I’m working hard, getting stronger/But the nights are getting longer.” And the opening line of “I could never turn my back on you even if I saw the worst in you/You that it’s true/Back on earth things are strange/I make money but I feel the same” speaks to this ennui and seeking meaning in career when it feels like you’re just going through the motions as part of some big, unfulfilling machine is not unlike how a lot of people feel now. It strikes at universal themes and like all science fiction conceits is a commentary on the present. Listen to “Former Terraformer” on Spotify and follow Pain in the Yeahs at the links below.