Lose Yourself (If You Can) in Zookraught’s Incredible Vida Violet
We have a lot of good music here, but good music doesn’t need all the jigsaw pieces to fit together the way they do in Zookraught. Whenever that happens, you take notice.
Baylee Harper is the finest drummer and Stephanie Jones is the finest bassist and Sami Frederick’s guitar work complements both of them better than anything you can imagine, and, crucially, everyone takes vocal duties in a way that removes the need for a front person. There’s no soft link, no permeable barrier - we love trios for many reasons, one of which is that you can’t break a triangle easily - and yet each member beams with a formidable individuality that makes it just as easy for anyone to fall in love with any of them. People attend their sets with curiosity and tend to leave as converts.
VIDA VIOLET, like the GRIP IT SHAKE IT EP before it, is another surefooted step in Zookraught’s transformation from withering art rock to tightly-wound dance punk. Where the EP thrilled in its immediacy, their debut LP is a comparatively slow burn, allowing the band to contort themselves into expository new shapes. There are moments louder and faster than before, and there are moments where the band takes time to breathe in the smoke from their combustion, but they all work toward a complete picture: one cohesive, thoughtful exegesis on modern thoughtlessness.
You don’t need to understand that to enjoy the record, and that’s a separate triumph. Ryan Leyva and Chris Hanzsek do an amazing job with the production, making each instrument gel and stand out in alternating necessities. He makes it easy to catch the details that make this seemingly simple music so captivating. There are too many to count: the smell of drilled teeth as Frederick’s guitar suddenly cuts through “Not For You’s” breakdown; Jones’ bass line slithering through “Brew” like it’s actively swallowing it whole; the Grohl-like thunder crack of Harper doubling up on her snare amid “What I Want”; the discernibility of which member is singing what words as the whole band volleys the verses on “Matchstick”; the way they leave just a hair of silence between the hits of “Red Hot Summer” in a way that demands you fill it in with your own movement.
So on the surface it’s more of the good stuff, music for people trapped in their own heads to drool and thrash to. That’s the “dance” part. The record’s masterstroke is how the band not only understand that paradigm but respond, in theatrical punk fashion, with equal parts reptilian id and relentless superego. Songs like “Chew Tobacco, Spit” and “Red Hot Summer” relish in uncut electrochemistry - sex drive and nicotine and phone addiction - and yet it’s telling that the lumbering mise en place of “Key and Lock,” with its permanent fight-or-flight mentality, opens the record. Consciousness can never truly be relinquished anymore. There’s always the reminder of the burning world: the boorish fucks of “Burn” and the dehumanizing heuristics of “Brew” and the anonymous “Brain Dead” pissants fucking up the high.
It’s also telling that the album concludes with the Primusesque “Waterparks of America (And Other Places Too).” Jones’ Wikipediated litany of facts about U.S. waterparks is front and center in the ears, almost obscuring the astounding musicianship underneath her words. Frederick’s guitar in particular swings between hedonistic legato and a buzzing two-note repetition, akin to a pinball that occasionally gets stuck behind a bumper in the machine. The song abruptly ends the way a vinyl record slows to a halt, evoking the feeling of wasting hours watching TikToks: mindless fun on the surface until you catch your openmouthed reflection in the black blank of your phone screen, robbed of stimulation, and emptiness quickly replaced by mild despair and embarrassment from wondering what exactly it is you’ve gained from the experience, what you’ve lost.
Until then, just like the rest of VIDA VIOLET, it’s exhilarating, confounding, fun, and impossible to tear yourself away from.