Optimizer by Stuck

For fans of Minutemen, Parquet Courts, Chat Pile, the contemporary underground noise rock boom, looksmaxing, and leaving your house anyway despite that feeling you get when you look in the mirror, Optimizer by Stuck takes a critical look at self-improvement culture with a heavy take on the post punk sound. Carefully placed dissonant guitar riffs draw our attention immediately, standing out boldly from the album’s off-puttingly traditional rock n roll production with heavy emphasis on chirping guitar flourishes and chorused half-spoken vocals. Given these circumstances, Stuck’s bold lyrical tirades feel like an unprompted, unstoppable meltdown from within a restrained cultural context, the sort of stage outburst which can end careers and change lives. As these straightforwardly horrifying words enter our ears, we recognize all at once all the harm done to us through the self-improvement industry, leaving us still fundamentally broken and oftentimes less healthy and more alienated. When enough of us answer the call and have our own radical reaction, we push the tide through something much more conducive to lasting inner peace.