As a dedicated listener of Gum Parker, I counted down the days for the release of this album. “The Breaks” was released earlier this month, April 11th to be exact, and I was blown away by the catchy melodies and the lyrical depth.
Gum Parker is composed of songwriter and prolific Portland, Maine DIY legend Galen Richmond, bass player Kate Sullivan-Jones (of The Outfits and The English Muffins), drummer Jeff Hamm (of Lemon Pitch and Teenage Tom Petties), and lead guitar player Jason Unterreiner (of Wood Burning Cat)! They come together in the most cohesive way to create this masterpiece, the building blocks of which are mostly songs written between 2022 and 2024.
The first four songs almost feel like one cohesive body of work to me; Two Subarus, Limited Engagement, Not Breaking Rocks, and Only Boxes are chock full of sweet guitar riffs, fun melodies, and catchy lyrics. Some of those lyrics I really enjoy are: “This nostalgia’s like glue that I track on the rug / But a little can’t hurt / cause I saved room for dessert / My memory’s long it’s got a real sweet tooth.” Those are insane words that paint such a picture of (maybe?) self-inflicted bittersweet pain through replaying things in your head, refusing to fully let go.
Hive is the fifth track, and I’ve actually covered that when it was a single a handful of weeks ago or so. Definitely check out that blog if you haven’t read it. That being said, this is one of my favorites on the album, such a great chorus line, and the guitar riffs, in the beginning, are incredibly cool.
Speaking of cool guitar riffs, Crocodile is a song that I would kill to see live, it has immaculate energy and I can picture the overwhelming stage presence Gum Parker would have playing it to a room full of excited fans.
Track 8, Silver Medalist, has a chiller vibe than most songs on the record. With a slower tempo, this track brings the energy down a bit while still appealing to the rock-lover in me. The lyrics are full of metaphors and comparisons, and we get the highly-anticipated album name-drop. These words stuck out to me in the track: “Doesn’t matter if you think that you’re enjoying it / folks’ll still notice when you fail / I’m gonna write it off as charming / and probably you should do the same / Treat it like a shot out the disposable camera / then you’re gonna leave with what you came with”.
The perception of others is something I regularly struggle with, and these lyrics do a great job of explaining that feeling while lending advice about what to do about those inevitable failures.
Track 9, Assembly of Finalists, has some of the most RELATABLE lyrics on the record, something that I am currently thinking about and remembering on the daily: “The judgments that you pass on your / friends they’re a simple indication of a mental situation / you find yourself swollen with / It’s so tidy when you think about when you talk about it when I practically shout it / I pretend I’m referring to somebody else”. Projection is a real thing, and the more that I judge someone else, the more I’m really judging myself, and I can find the same themes in my own life 99.9% of the time.
Thumbtacks, the 10th song on “The Brakes” slows us down again, gearing us up for the finale of the album while still painting images of indecision, possibly rooted in that same issue they explored earlier: the fear of failure and what that means for your self-esteem. It’s easy to avoid accountability when you’re not the one calling the shots, and many of us use indecision as a technique to absolve ourselves of responsibility, usually unintentionally.
The final track of the record, Birds in the Furnace, comes in hot and fast, and the snippy guitar riffs remind me a little bit of Hive. We get a vision of self-sabotaging behavior in this one: “Stretched the trap till my foot fit / called a dog self-indulgent / skipped ahead to the good bit / lost the plot of the show / I wanna walk out of the movie throw my keys down in a grate / I wanna bite the hand that drew me take my time it’s mine to waste”.
The message I pulled from this album is that we can either be our own worst enemy or the main reason we thrive and succeed. Through projection, we keep ourselves on top of this moral high ground, and then use self-sabotage to keep ourselves “safe” and stuck in our comfort zone (even if it’s toxic and killing us). The cycles we keep going are a testament to our current mental state, so choosing wisely is the most important thing to keep in mind, even if you have to go through hard things to make it out the other side.
This is a fantastic album instrumentally, lyrically, and conceptually. I highly recommend checking this one out, especially if you like indie rock. Stream “The Brakes” now on Apple Music, Spotify, Bandcamp, and Soundcloud!
Written by Newt Fangs
