The revolutionary Philadelphia hardcore band expand the genre’s possibilities on their new EP, which feels cruelly short at only 12 minutes.
On the week Soul Glo released their new EP Songs to Yeet at the Sun, the outcome of the presidential election was largely seen as resting in the hands of Black Philadelphians such as themselves. After spending a half-decade deftly scrutinizing their tokenization in the DIY hardcore scene and the limitations of white allyship, Soul Glo surely saw the irony of this newly obsessive and granular interest.
Songs to Yeet at the Sun arrives after an entire election cycle where the Black vote was delegitimized on one side, taken for granted by the other, and seen as a monolithic body by both. “If that cop had taken a further step than just putting his hand on his gun, and shot us right there, we might never know whose side yr really on,” Pierce Jordan screamed in one of the many instant quotables from 2019’s THE NIGGA IN ME IS ME—an album whose cover commemorated their 2018 arrest in Missouri and the subsequent GoFundMe that exceeded the $15,000 bail requirement, which the band members claimed was three times the amount normally charged. Soul Glo’s music is firmly based in intersectional identity and lived experience, providing an opportunity for many to see themselves represented while challenging any attempt to label or categorize them.
Early in September, Soul Glo dropped Songs to Yeet at the Sun’s feral opener “(Quietly) Do the Right Thing” just weeks before the Breonna Taylor verdict inspired new protests in Philadelphia. Soul Glo’s songwriting is generally more in line with the Coup’s absurdist, anarchic humor than Public Enemy’s stoic militance, but the parenthetical isn’t played for laughs here. Here and elsewhere, Jordan fixates on how to operate ethically in an artistic community where clout serves as the primary currency.
But as widespread protest reignited interest in Spike Lee’s eternally resonant masterpiece over the summer, it also served as a reminder of the fear-mongering that surrounded its original release. Like Spike Lee, Soul Glo are not interested in solutions. Their music feels like the unignorable act of violence that follows after more socially acceptable forms of communication have failed. Songs to Yeet at the Sun is destructive and abrasive hardcore that nonetheless feels utopian. “(Quietly) Do the Right Thing” functions as Soul Glo’s stylistic syllabus, cross-referencing D.C. hardcore, West Coast thrash, and Midwest screamo while Jordan’s feverish, foaming vocals betray their love for Korn. The end of “29” smuggles “Great Balls of Fire” piano riffs into a post-hardcore Molotov, whereas the production on “2K” finds a common space between industrial grind, pornographic sex raps, and morbid horrorcore.
“Don’t get me wrong, but don’t get me fucked up!” Jordan announces at the very top of “(Quietly) Do the Right Thing.” He’s interested in expressing an anger and urgency potent enough to require the lyric sheet posted on their Bandcamp—and even then, the run-on sentence structure, clipped verbiage (“YT,” “yr”), and pile-ups of agitated question marks make them writhe on the screen. A collaboration with the Richmond DJ and trans artist Archangel, “2K” is about the only time where the lyrics are clearly intelligible.
Songs to Yeet at the Sun rushes forward as if written in real time, slices of life that give voice to the marginalized—Black, queer, trans, musicians, “non-essential workers”—and make them feel accessible to anyone who doesn’t immediately identify. It’s essentially a concept piece about what it means to be broke as fuck in 2020. “Microbudget all your 20s, not just the bills,” Jordan shrieks on “29,” a painfully detailed account of having to penny-pinch to afford exorbitantly priced SSRIs. Meanwhile, as marijuana becomes legalized and commercialized across the country, Jordan sees only people like Elon Musk and “each and every Punk Goes Crunk white nigga” standing to benefit. “It’s places you can cop legally, but till they drop my nigga’s charges, it don’t mean shit to me” he shouts on “Mathed Up.”
“Trump’s going to be great for punk rock!” has served as a running joke for the past four years, but it’s not the assumption of great music that prompted laughs. Rather, it’s the belief that Donald Trump somehow represented a clean break in our supposed arc towards moral rectitude rather than a logical endpoint for the American experiment. “Our era is a marketplace of contained demolitions, pleasant distractions under commercial supervision, and affordable suicidal coping mechanisms,” Jordan cries on the closing track—a sentiment true of the Obama era and the promised return to “normal” when none of Soul Glo’s demands for police reform or debt cancellation get addressed. “Joe Biden’s going to be great for punk rock!” will probably be a running joke too, but the moment Pennsylvania ostensibly tipped the election, the one thing I wanted to hear most of all was the next Soul Glo album. By the end of “I’m on Probation,” the possibilities for Soul Glo appear limitless, leaving Songs to Yeet at the Sun to feel cruelly unfinished after its 12 minutes have passed.
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