Teen Mortgage take an unorthodox approach toward the subject of class and income inequality on “Oligarchy.” There’s the fuzzy and crunchy guitar sound and the stark vocal approach that provide nice bit of caustic sonic quality appropriate for the song but then the percussion is both traditional drums but also electronics and in the guitar riff there are melodic flares that accent the rhythm so that the undeniable punk style and fury here has a wider than average range of sonic expression even at its one minute fifty-one seconds length. The lyrics outline the stark class differences and the gross hypocrisy baked into an economic and political system that was designed from the beginning of the nation to favor elite power with little concessions along the way to keep the lower classes from outright overthrowing and liquidating elite power. You hear a lot of nonsense about a two-tiered justice system when an ex-president commits multitudes of crimes including seditious conspiracy or oligarchs commit acts of war and undermining national interest with their own form of unilateral executive action but Teen Mortgage in singing “because corporate flaws they make all the laws” points out what a two-tiered justice system really looks like and which has been carried out from the founding of most if not all modern nations: one set of laws and consequences for the rich and another to keep the not-rich in line with a system of punishments to which the wealthy are rarely subjected. Teen Mortgage just packed a lot of actual history into its catchy and energetic punk song with poetic concision. We all live in a corporate controlled world and have to use the tools and currencies open to us but it’s our choice whether or not to buy into it, as it were, and identify with the interests of the elite. Listen to “Oligarchy” on Spotify and follow Teen Mortgage at the links below.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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