La Debacle de las Divas by Blanco Teta

If capitalism ever feels impossible to appease, that its demands make a mockery of our human nature and capabilities, you’ve felt the rage animating the inventive new punk record La Debacle de las Divas by Blanco Teta. The album documents a narrator frantically treading water amid consumer culture’s absurd prioritization of youth and novelty, with a wide variety of sung, spoken, yelled, and screamed vocals dangling our character over an angsty abyss. A vibrant rhythm section pulls the instrumental sounds in a dark yet energetic direction, filling out the low end as dueling outbursts from anguished vocals and squealing guitar dazzle overhead. As our narrator struggles through the ratrace, forced to continue their pace even as they see the goalposts moving ever further, we realize that the impossibility has been baked into the system from its conception. We were never meant to succeed; we were meant to be replaced. As you scream out in anguish, you can only pray that the next group of runners hears your call before you’re dragged off the court, collapsed in exhausted and inevitable defeat.