Charm School | Debt Forever (Surprise Mind)

Photo of Charm School by Destiny Robb

A band’s debut album tells the world who they are, and Debt Forever by Charm School bursts into being with tracks that journey from a high-energy, heavy pedestal to a grounded place of modern No Wave.

Louisville group Charm School comes from the mind of vocalist Andrew Sellers, who has previously released music under the name Andrew Rinehart, guitarist Drew English, bassist Matt Filip, and drummer Jason Bemis Lawrence. Sellers has been involved in the city’s underground scene since he was a teenager, and the listener can’t doubt that experience upon hearing this record.

Titular song “Debt Forever,” also released as the second single in anticipation of the LP, kicks off the work with punky ins and outs and a sense of urgency, both in the instrumentals and the lyrics. Sellers howls out, “S.O.S., I.O.U., D.O.A., I.C.U., Run Rabbit Run” in the chorus, seemingly chasing after the listener. The title itself, which extends to the entirety of the album, makes one think about an eternal state of incompletion: you will never get out of this debt, whether that be literal or metaphorical—how do you feel?

Both “Without A Doubt” and “Figure 8” stand out as the slower songs on Debt Forever. The former brings an unexpected and unique indie-rockness to the record and repeats the phrase, “Don’t let me run out of money,” continuing off the themes of the first track and the overall sense that the album gives. “Figure 8” plays similar sounds and includes a dark, almost Western-style guitar plucking that adds a sort of worldliness.

“Happiness is a Warm Sun” plays on the name of a Beatles tune, and like that song, Debt Forever’s eleventh and final track sounds persistent. The swirling guitar sounds rise and fall, but they keep going around the head of the listener — the final four-ish minutes of “Happiness is a Warm Sun” relies on just those instrumentals, heavy guitar distortion and clashing drums with occasional breaks that lead the melody down a path of specific chords and rhythmic cymbals. As the longest track on the LP, it closes the work out with subdued, intentional guitar strums ending on one final, played-out chord.

The band said, “This song is kind of an outlier on the record. It’s the only song that was basically improvised in the studio, and the only one where the lyrics were written sort of ‘automatically.’  They’re all ideas that have been swirling around in the collective unconscious for a while now, pertaining to the intense state of the world: the rise of fascism, ongoing wars, financial pressure, overpopulation, media at a million miles per hour, the spectre of the algorithm, the total lack of empathy online, etc.”

Charm School definitely provides a late 20th-century post-punk sound in this record, but it carries a presentness, something unmistakably 2020s, in those themes and the overall feeling of stressful inactivity. The songs seem to flow one from the other in anxious anticipation of each other. “Boycott Everything Everywhere” transfers quickly into “Crime Time,” which lends itself to the dark guitar on “Cherry Red” and “Breaking The Waves.”

Debt Foreverby Charm School comes out January 24 — look out for it, because it will come for you. | Krista Spies

Sample the album or order the deluxe 12” vinyl version on Charm School’s Bandcamp page.

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