FEATURE: Spotlight: Lip Critic — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Griffin Lotz

Lip Critic

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THERE are a lot of great interviews…

PHOTO CREDIT: Jake Kenny

and features about Lip Critic. The New York Noise quartet are being tipped as one of the best young bands around. At the moment, they are completing some tour dates in the U.S. In August, they are coming to the U.K. It will be exciting for fans here to embrace their incredible live set. With more attention from the U.K. press aimed their way, we are seeing this amazing group grow into something special. Loved and respected here and in the U.S. In fact, they have right around the world. I will get to some reviews of their amazing new album, Hex Dealer. It is a stunning follow-up to their 2020 debut, Lip Critic II. I am going to start with an interview from Loud and Quiet. Published earlier this year, the band were in London on their first visit:

“Formed in 2019, in the past four years the band has gone from conquering their neighborhood venues to becoming one of NYC’s most talked about acts, and they are now poised to branch out to a global audience. By all accounts, the last year has been their busiest yet, with the band hitting the road supporting Screaming Females and sharing the stage with IDLES on some of their recent US dates, and recently they signed with Partisan Records. They’ve done all this while confusing the hell out of everyone. Their sound is so hard to define that they’ve found the band playing hip hop nights, punk all-dayers and even the occasional techno club.

Everything has been happening so fast that it’s left Lip Critic still trying to process it. Asking them about their recent signing with Partisan, the band stares at each other and puff out their cheeks in disbelief. “I mean, it’s crazy, right?” Drummer Ilan Natter asks me. “It’s like PJ Harvey’s label!”

It’s not bad going for a bunch of kids just out of college. “Connor, Ilan, and I were studying music. Danny was studying anthropology and journalism,” explains frontman Bret Kasner, recounting Lip Critic’s early days. “Danny and Ilan were in another band who had a show, and the bassist couldn’t show up, so they tried to salvage the gig by having Connor play bass and asking me to sing. I guess they thought it was funny. They had me just say stuff over the music; we were improvising; that was sort of like the start..”

PHOTO CREDIT: Jake Kenny

These haphazard beginnings have evolved into their defining strength. Everyone brings something different to the table. Drummers Eberle and Natter hail from a raw hardcore foundation, reminiscing enthusiastically about their formative years playing high-school parties and gritty dive bars. Connor Kleitz, the primary sampler operator, subtly raises an inquisitive eyebrow at their anecdotes. Rooted in an art school background, his solo music on Bandcamp hints at a love for sparse techno and expansive electronica.

Kasner, on the other hand, occupies a space between these influences. A self proclaimed lover of Deerhoof and Skrillex, his primary goal appears to be igniting dance floors. “Why would you even play a show if people didn’t move around?” he shoots back when I ask him about his influences. “The whole point of music is to give people that feeling.”

Watching Lip Critic perform live, you can see what Kasner’s getting at. The band are unlike any other punk or metal act out there. Drawing from their foundation as an improv act, almost none of their songs follow an established blueprint or pattern. Some tracks have the dual drummers managing to sound like bass players and the synths sounding like percussion; others see the band playing off each other, like some weird jam band. The only thing that stays consistent is Kasner’s vocals of bizarre slogans and ironic statements barked out seemingly at random, turning every song into a hybrid of industrial noise, party-boy dubstep and the soundtrack to a Dance Dance Revolution game. Written down, it sounds more like a recipe for disaster than instructions for high-energy dance music”.

Formed in 2018, the New York quartet of Danny Eberle, Ilan Natter, Bret Kaser and producer Connor Kleitz are ones to watch. A band that need to be on your radar. The Line of Best Fit spoke to the band in February. Again engaging with the British press, it is great that they are getting some seriously exposure here. When they return in August, they are sure to be met with fevered and passionate audiences:

“Satirical mavericks with just a hint of nihilism, the genre-defying and aesthetically amorphous Lip Critic challenge – even to their own disadvantage. Playing live with two drummers, they actively chose a setup that constantly proves a logistical and practical nightmare. “Alex Cameron, he wrote this Facebook post when I was in college; ‘Get Your Good Ideas Away From Me’ was the headline. He was saying, all my good ideas have failed me forever. They've cost me endless amounts of money and time and all this stuff. He’s like, any time I've had the worst idea and I've tried to do it, it's always been very fruitful. It's the one that always works out,” explains Kaser.

Named as ones to watch across the board, the quartet recently signed with fellow New York upstarts Partisan Records, the internationally renown label heralded with breaking the likes of Idles and Blondshell. Fresh from dates supporting Screaming Females on their farewell tour and a slot at Pitchfork Paris, it seems Cameron’s advice has been paying off. “It's so funny because this is the worst idea ever and it's been the most fun, opportunity-opening thing where we've gotten to play with so many groups that we love. We've gotten to travel and play shows and all this stuff when it's like, this one that’s working? It's so sick,” Kaser laughs.

Announcing their debut album proper, Hex Dealer, today, it’s a record that’s ready to sucker punch any unwitting music fan. A raw and abrasive collection of carefully conducted chaos, it grips for every second of its brief play time. It’s not a relaxing listen, but is thrilling, progressive and ferociously addictive. Getting a release on 17 May, it primes the band for a summer of festival stages where they’re guaranteed to obliterate audiences with the dizzying spectacle they’ve become known for calling a live show.

PHOTO CREDIT: Elyza Reinhart

Completed by producer/sampler-firer Connor Kleitz and drummers Ilan Natter and Daniel Eberle — who joins the call from a non-descript New York bedroom, the four members had fairly pedestrian starts.

Kaser grew up in Connecticut. His parents taught high school and would commute daily into New York. While they weren’t explicitly musical, their tastes and approach had a big influence on him. “They were super exploratory listeners. That was the big thing, they would listen to new stuff all the time,” he says. “They were just very open to stuff, so I always have had this relationship with music where I'm obsessively listening to new stuff. If you have the choice to repeat or try something new, I'd always go with the new thing.”

His mum loved Motown, while his dad was a big Talking Heads fan, taking Kaser to his first proper gig - David Bryne and Brian Eno on their Everything That Happens Will Happen Today tour. “That was the first show I ever went to that was something I actually wanted to go see,” he smiles.

Eberle grew up on Staten Island, his formative influences tidily crossing over with Kaser’s. “My dad's two favourite bands are the Talking Heads and The Cure,” he says. “We were listening to a lot of alternative radio, so The Strokes, Arctic Monkeys were new at the time when I was very young. My dad showed me The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Who, anything like that.”

In likely teenage fashion, it was Green Day that opened the door for Eberle to discover a world of heavier music. “It kind of put me into a world of punk-rock and soon that became hardcore, and soon that became metal,” he says. “That was my gateway, when I was around thirteen, into a lot of punk and hardcore music and then hip-hop as well.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Elyza Reinhart

Sharing a similar musical history to Eberle, Natter grew up in Manhattan. “I know his parents were huge Grateful Dead people, and that was kind of like the thing until he started to listen to this pop-punk, alt sort of genre of music that pulled an entire generation into heavier music,” says Kaser.

Kleitz was raised in Rockland County, Upstate New York, his formative influences aligning closer to those of Kaser. “We were listening to a lot of really internet-focused rap groups; Raider Klan and a lot of the Chief Keef stuff that was coming out at the time. His whole family was very musical, loved listening to stuff and going to a lot of shows and everything,” Kaser says.

With all members of Lip Critic now in their twenties, their teenage years were defined by the decade when the blogosphere exploded, bedroom producers were propelled to infamy, disappearing just as quickly, and a niche, DIY approach was not just accessible but acclaimed. “So much of this stuff I listen to now is just a result of things that I was digging around on the internet for and discovered,” says Kaser. “We grew up on the internet where you could look at anything at any time and listen to stuff from every corner of the world and from any era”.

I have a few more features to spotlight. In April, Stereogum named Lip Critics as a band to watch. Spotlighting their amazing music and chemistry, I know a lot of people might not be aware of Lip Critic. They are a band that are going to be around for many more years. Hex Dealer is one of the best albums of this year. You really do need to check it out and give it a good listen:

“Now, Lip Critic are near perfecting their highly curated kind of chaos. Their setup feels deceptively simple. Eberle and Natter man their drum sets (yes, two drum sets) while Kaser and Kleitz man their samplers. Eberle and Natter grew up playing music together, the latter on guitar and the former on drums. Their creative chemistry has evolved over the years. “I feel like what we’re doing in the live session almost plays like two guitars,” Eberle says, explaining how the double drum kit setup works. “I always think of the album Marquee Moon by Television. As far as that they reworked two guitars to almost sound not like conventional guitar parts. They’re both bouncing off of each other in such a unique way. In my own perception, I want to transfer that to drum performance.”

Kleitz and Kaser go a bit more in depth on their digital setup. Kleitz offers: “I’m using an Elektron Octatrack, sample-chaining the production that we do in the studio. I’m chopping that up, retiming some of it or applying effects to some of it, modulating it live and playing it rhythmically to the drums. We’re not using a click. I’m pressing buttons in time with Danny’s snare.” Kaser continues, “I’m just playing bass. I have bass notes on an MPD, a MIDI controller that’s structured like an MPC. So it’s got like 16 pads and a few knobs and sliders. I’ll have some granular delay effects but other than that it’s just bass.”

While talking to the band, it’s clear they thrive off open-minded ambition and the thrill of amusing each other. It’s why you might never hear a song played the same live more than once. Actually, you won’t experience anything live verbatim the way it’s recorded either. “The record feels like the Gen one in Pokemon, the base Pokemon. It feels like we’ve evolved a lot of these songs like three times and the record is the base version of that,” Kaser says. “I always think we’re a two-for-one band. We sound like one band on the record and we sound like another one live. You know,” he adds. “It’s a pretty good deal.”

Since their live setup is mostly remixed and improvised, Lip Critic joke they’ve been doing things a bit backwards at the moment. They’ve been living with Hex Dealer for over two years, initially thinking it would come out in 2022. They saw this album as a jumping-off point where they, as Kaser puts it, would go “pedal to metal, being super self-critical, absolutely no fat on it and then we’ll go and make the next thing.” But things changed when their now label home Partisan Records expressed interest. So if you hear a new song from Lip Critic on the road, it is an original but it isn’t the original. “We’ve already remixed everything ourselves and now we’re playing the remixed versions and putting out the original,” Kaser says. “It’s putting out the Skrillex ‘Cinema’ and then ‘Cinema‘ comes out. Where’s the fucking massive dubstep drop?”.

NME heralded the unconventional stage set-up and incredible live energy of Lip Critic. The quartet have already blown away the U.K. press. I think they are going to have a very warm and open home here. Apologies if any information is repeated. There is a lot of exciting press around the band. So many people wanting to salute and embrace the wonderful Lip Critic:

“Their shows have since expanded over the years, leading to that aforementioned UK debut last autumn, which they remember fondly. “We went as hard as we possibly could,” remembers Kaser. “I was sweating so much, I felt like I had stepped in a shower with all my clothes on. I spilled a bottle of water directly over a power strip, and somehow it kept going. It really was a fun show.”

It is the plight of most great new bands to be lumbered with comparisons with pre-existing artists, and much of the early hype about Lip Critic has seen them linked inextricably with Death Grips. While the band are eager to point out their countless other influences – Melt-Banana, Soul Coughing and Deerhoof included – they do accept that the Sacramento band looms large in their collective psyche.

“It’s hard to deny that Death Grips are one of the most influential bands for all of us,” says Kaser. “The stuff they’ve achieved is pretty astounding. They are a symbol of a lot of the things that we believe in – and musical and creative freedom – that feeling of putting your all into stuff. It’s comforting to know they exist.”

The same anarchic chaos that is synonymous with Death Grips seems destined to follow Lip Critic around, too. After a run of shows opening for the likes of IDLES and Screaming Females in 2023, and with the prospect of an extensive international headline tour on the horizon to support their forthcoming record, they are hungrier than ever.

“This album is the most unified piece of work we’ve made,” says Kaser. “It is the sound of us trying to make the most visceral, poppy, sweet candy moments and the most dark, disgusting, viscerally gross moments too. It’s the heaviest and the fastest stuff we’ve done – we tried to hit on every single cylinder that we could”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Sam Keeler

Before moving to a couple of reviews for Hex Dealer, there is another interview I want to get to. Rolling Stone asked this question last month: “Is Lip Critic the Wildest Band in New York?”. It is a bold claim, yet one that they may be able to live up to. You can really sense this anticipation and electricity around them. The same sort of excitement and hype that New York bands like The Strokes got early this century. Maybe not on their level yet, you would bet against them achieving the same recognition and acclaim:

“They recorded Hex Dealer across a year of dedicated work, trading files back and forth, cutting and manipulating and mixing and remixing as they went. “It’s like that question of if you have a boat and you replace every part of the boat, is it still the same boat anymore?” Kaser muses. “Is this even the original song we started with? There’s nothing left from it.”

As wildly unorthodox as it sounds in your headphones, most of the album was recorded using entry-level software. “If you have a copy of Ableton Live, you could probably recreate 40 percent of the songs without any extra plugins,” Natter says. “It was an extremely cheap record to make in terms of recording setup,” Kaser adds. “It’s a fun limitation to be like, I’ve gotta use something that’s kind of bad to try and make something good.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Griffin Lotz

Lyrics are the last part of the Lip Critic process, drawing on an archive of thousands of notes on Kaser’s phone. (“What did I do before this?” he cracks. “Was I carrying around some kind of a quill and papyrus?”) His disjointed words are the final ingredient that brings it all together, frequently tapping into a funhouse-mirror vision of modern masculinity. “In he walks, with his hands behind his back/He’s that Barbie-movie Ken/He seems to have all that I lack,” he raps over the metallic bounce of “Milky Max.” On another bizarrely catchy banger that made Rolling Stone’s list of the best songs of 2024 so far, he shouts like someone who’s moments away from getting kicked out of a convenience store: “Standing in the Wawa, convinced I’m a god/So I’m gonna get any sandwich I want.”

Like many of their peers, Lip Critic cut their teeth at venues like TV Eye in Ridgewood, Market Hotel in Bushwick, and the late, lamented Saint Vitus in Greenpoint. Eberle was there this February when the city’s Department of Buildings shut down Vitus in the middle of a show by the hardcore band Mindforce, citing a laundry list of alleged violations. “They made us line up on the wall,” he says. “It looked like we were all getting arrested.”

Even after signing with Partisan Records, the indie label behind recent triumphs by Blondshell and Fontaines D.C., Lip Critic have retained a notable DIY spirit. At the release party, Kaser manned a screenprinting station, scrubbing white ink onto the dark-hued shirts brought by fans. He makes much of the band’s merch the same way, printing his own designs in the living room of the apartment he shares with his girlfriend in Sunset Park. “We print for other bands as well now,” he says. “The visual stuff is half the fun to me”.

I will end with a couple of reviews. Pitchfork admire the almost child-like abandon you get from the band. How they mix genres like Noise and Hip-Hop together to create something exciting and fresh. There are not many bands like them around. If you do get a chance to see them live then definitely do so. Lip Critic are going to be around for many more years to come:

“The band officially came together while studying at SUNY Purchase in 2018. The Westchester school boasts alumni like Mitski, so Lip Critic’s harsher sound immediately clashed with their more indie rock-oriented cohorts, sometimes literally; frontman Bret Kaser recalls an online post complaining about noise from their band practices traveling across campus. Lip Critic’s ethos resembles Death Grips in their raw, uninhibited performances, but their thematic interests also approximate a more raucous iteration of fellow Brooklynites Model/Actriz. On opener “It’s the Magic,” where Death Grips’ influence is most evident, blown-out percussion pounds against Kaser’s vocals, echoing DG multi-instrumentalist Zach Hill’s uncompromising, primal drumming on “No Love,” one of their most recognizable tracks.

Hex Dealer is a loose concept album about predatory preacher-types who resort to snake oil tactics to fulfill their craving for control. In this world, everything is a means to gain power, a façade to mask these characters’ true depravity. They numb their emptiness with overconsumption; whether that’s brand new jeans on “It’s the Magic,” trips to the butcher’s shop on “Bork Pelly,” or creating the ultimate gas station hoagie on “In the Wawa.”

The album is a master class in genre-hopping, running the gamut of drum’n’bass, hip-hop, and ska. It feels as though Hex Dealer is a litmus test; take Lip Critic as they are or not at all. When “Love Will Redeem You” breaks out of the gate with pitched-up vocals and anxious percussion, it seems things can’t get any more abrasive—and yet there are still 10 songs to come. “The Heart” immediately follows, the tempo accelerates, the drums get harder, and the noise gets thicker and more suffocating. The con man at the center of the song grapples with his vices, and punctuated by Kaser’s rapid yelps, he convinces himself that he hasn’t succumbed to corruption.

Hex Dealer is as frenzied as it is hilarious. On “Bork Pelly,” the band hands over duties to the now-dissolved Philly grime duo Ghösh for a verse that sounds like something Baby Billy Freeman of The Righteous Gemstones would market to you: “Take this flesh and take this wine/It will all be yours/And you’ll all be mine/For three easy payments of $19.99.”

The record starts cautious and distrustful, but ends with a smug shrug. “I never seem to win/I’m losing every day,” Kaser sings on “Toxin Dodger.” “So I’ll become the problem/That I refuse to change.” Like Frankenstein’s monster, Hex Dealer’s encyclopedic curation and roots might sound like a disaster. But that’s half the fun of it, and even when everything has gone to shit, Lip Critic still makes it sound like a party”.

Hex Dealer is one of the most innovative albums of this year. Filled with so many wonderful moments, you get the feeling this band could top that. Reach dizzying heights. NME. Even though they call Hex Dealer the band’s debut – their 2020 Lip Critic II was self-released -, it is their second album. It is their best work yet. NME underlined how the album is bold, energetic and blisteringly smart. I pick up new layers and highs every time I pass through the album:

“2024 has been a big year for Lip Critic, who are well on their way to becoming one of the next great New York bands. The quartet – comprising Bret Kaser, Connor Kleitz, Daniel Eberle and Ilan Natter – have spent the past half-decade building a loyal and sizeable hometown following that has, in recent months, caught the attention of music fans across the other side of the Atlantic.

Lip Critic make music that is both freewheeling and fun – with a thrillingly dark, Frankenstein-esque edge to their sound and aesthetic. They have played alongside rappers, hardcore bands and dance acts – and toured with IDLES and Geese – with NME describing their live show as “a pulsating rush of energy” in a five-star review last November. “You never know what sound is going to pop up next – our focus is to not get pinned down into a set of aesthetics, but to stay nimble” Kaser previously told us.

and their blistering EP ‘Lip Critic: The Truth Revealed’. Since then, they have found a home at Partisan Records [Geese, Blondshell] and are now making their label debut with ‘Hex Dealer’ – a collection of 12 weird, brilliant, erratic tracks that showcase Lip Critic’s unique genius. Booming beats, boisterous samples and Kaser’s charging yet playful vocals all dominate the LP. It feels like the soundtrack to a fun acid trip while you’re storming the streets downtown.

Opener ‘It’s The Magic’ bursts into life with a set of heavy 808s followed by contrasting rhythms. “I told them take their grace / And send it where it came / Only the generous get to live another day,” Kaser sings, evoking a sense of danger. ‘The Heart’ follows, diving headfirst dives into skittish, almost anxiety-inducing drum patterns – it’s wild and brilliantly unnerving.

’Bork Pelly (featuring Gösh and ID.Sus)’ is a perfect fusion of The Prodigy and ’90s hip-hop influences. ‘Death Lurking’ (featuring Izzy Da Fonseca), meanwhile, offers a change of pace, an atmospheric number that builds into a skippy beat fit for headbanging.

Throughout ‘Hex Dealer’, Lip Critic prove why they are the band of the moment. A full-on, disruptive force emerging from their city’s underground scene – their music rides high on a bolt of infectious energy”.

Go and follow Lip Critic on social media. After the release of Hex Dealer, they are going to keep that momentum going. Currently in North America, they have dates in Europe and the U.K. ahead. Some very different but equally adoring crowds. I have not seen the band live, though I am tempted to check them out when they are in the U.K. in August. A truly special band. If you have not heard of the mighty Lip Critic, then make sure that you…