You may listen to Statues’ new record, Dopamine, and think, “Oh, of course, another banger from one of punk’s most notable groups,” and then recoil in shock when you learn it’s only their fourth record. Fear not, fellow listener. I reacted the same way.
But there’s a reason for the band’s experienced sound. Although Statues have only put out records under their current moniker since 2018, when they dropped their debut Adult Lobotomy, their founding duo has jammed together for over thirty years. All the way up in Umeå, a university town in northern Sweden with a thriving DIY scene, Johan Sellman (vocals, guitar) and Magnus Egerbladh Öberg (drums) have spent plenty of time honing their craft together, their music growing with their long-lasting friendship.
Their inspiration comes from the legendary sound of SST Records, the company of Black Flag founder Greg Ginn, which released records from iconic punk acts such as Meat Puppets, Minutemen, Hüsker Dü, and Sonic Youth. Another label to which the band pays homage: Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson’s Dischord Records, which helped fuel the rise of their band Minor Threat (and later on, MacKaye’s Fugazi), as well as many, many other groups.
And so Dopamine is chock full of the catchy hooks and noisy arrangements that blistered the skin of the ’80s and ’90s, with just a hint of melodic pigment that has colored the indie punk movement of the past decade. Statues defines the sound of the new record as a balance between “chaos and control” and “a three-minute pop song having a nervous breakdown”, the latter perhaps a reference to Black Flag’s debut EP.
Joining Johan and Magnus on Dopamine are Mathias Rask-Andersen (guitar) and Henrik Wiklund (bass, mixing) to round out the album’s sonic onslaught. Swedish songwriter Christian Kjellvander joins the band on the track “Cures”, a jam on coping mechanisms with a riff like The Jam’s “In The City” or RVIVR’s “The Tide”. (Lyrical snippet: “When drugs don’t satisfy/Please sugarcoat the lies/We need talking cures/Instead of bad news”.)
“Cures” is the album’s theme distilled into song, but Dopamine contains ten tracks (the perfect amount, according to the band on Facebook) regarding a need to fill a growing void. Take the album’s lead track, “Big Freeze”, which we covered in September. The title seems to reference the term used for youthful disillusion and loss of idealism, and ultimately, the heat death of the universe, leading to the end of all life as we know it. With that fate in mind, one could turn to a number of sources to help them forget it.
Other songs on the record note the things we do to fill our time and avoid the darkness, such as “Mad Dash” and “Occupational”, while the titles of other tracks more literally hint at the album’s theme, such as “Mechanism”, “Chasing A Dream”, and the (sort-of) title track “Dopamine Hits”. All ten of the songs on Dopamine have a melodic tint that make them sound almost uplifting, as if that’s the whole point: Here, have a shot of this really cool chord progression and riff that makes you want to dance, and ignore the fact that the lyrics are about chasing a high in a world that constantly seeks out every opportunity to beat you down. Or don’t ignore them, maybe. Perhaps the words are what you need.
Dopamine delivers thoughtful punk in every regard, from the music to the lyrics, and it stems from Statues’ study of the scene’s most celebrated groups throughout its history. I assume it would make Greg Ginn proud.
Written by Will Sisskind
