Album Review: Depeche Choad "Songs in the Key of Vitamin C"
Photo Credit: Depeche Choad (Facebook)
I wasn’t sure what to expect from a band called Depeche Choad when I first heard of them, but I figured, with a name like that, you can’t miss.
I’m not being facetious. No, I had no way of knowing what kind of music I was getting myself into when I first hit play. I had no way of knowing that this album would make me both chuckle bemusedly and violently headbang alone in the privacy of my room. I had no idea that this bizarre Scottish punk/garage/rock/you name it band would win me over with a sheer earnestness for life, but here we are. Sometimes fate intervenes and, because I am intrigued by a bizarre band name, I fall in love with a brand new sound.
Songs in the Key of Vitamin C is the first full length album from the South Dakota/Scotland-based Depeche Choad that was released August 2nd of this year. Though the album runs for only 36 minutes, it packs quite the punch in both style and lyricism. The band is composed of Stewart Ross (vocals, keys, acoustic guitar, electric drill), Duncan Dallas (vocals, drums/percussion), Cameron Masson (bass guitar, additional vocals), Dream Magic (additional vocals, electric guitar, ukulele), and Craig Henderson (additional guitars, vocals, and drums). Together, they are a chaotic force of nature that blows your socks off from the very first track.
Is Depeche Choad punk? Sort of, but not quite. Folk rock? Sure the elements are present, but sometimes they’re just thrown right out the window in favor of beats that go too hard, and screams that make me think more of metal or deathcore. Then they go ahead and toss a synth and a toy piano in there for good measure. They describe themselves as Girth-rock/Post-trivial/Factcore. I don’t know what that means, so I describe them as “absolutely buck-wild, but ready to turn up for a good time.”
The opening song “Sun/Moon” feels like a tavern ballad that I’d hear in a movie: very folk, fun to sing, easy to follow. “The Sun is bigger than the moon” seems to mean something, but I’m not sure what. All I know is that it feels like a song best sung in a group at the top of your lungs, warm in a bar. This lulled me into a completely false sense of security as it morphed into the second track, “Spearfish.” As soon as that falsetto seemed to fearfully repeat, “I’m on the run from the law,” I knew this was nothing like the first track at all. A wild, punk feast for the ears, “Spearfish” is frantic, more than a little odd, and an absolute banger. Named for Spearfish, South Dakota, it’s almost like going on a joyride through the town - perhaps after having done something very illegal. This morphs into the softer folk-punk “The Ballad of Jason and Pharis” which is about...cougars. Whether or not the song is about the animal, older women, both, or something else, is entirely up to you. But this song won me over with the lyric “Ain’t it crazy how a girl with perfect pitch chooses to marry a banjo player/Ain’t it crazy how a banjo player manages to marry someone who’s seen a cougar/I’ve got perfect pitch.” I’ve already caught myself humming this song in the middle of the day.
The rest of the album is just as manically good-natured and wild as the first few songs. “Paul Miller Socks,” a song about a brand of socks I’ve never heard of before, is silly but also quite a rocking time. “Rock Fruit Salad” makes me think of the Wiggles and how time has not been kind to them. Never in my life did I think I’d end up dancing in my bedroom to a punk song about actual fruit, but here we are. And, in case you were wondering, you’ll hear them sing the album title here. Those boys love their citrus. “Intellectual Love” is an endearing, kind of cute song that “is not sexual, it’s just intellectual.” I unironically liked the date idea of just going to a library and having somebody read to me, but maybe that says more about my own pretension than anything else. This song is cute. I stand by that.
Synth again in “Roderick and Wolfgang’s Beautiful Bird’s Nest”, but I kind of didn’t expect anything less with a name like that. A rocking tune about wanting to get high but not by doing drugs, and wanting to get high in your tree house, feels like a nostalgic callback to simpler childhood days, wanting to cast off adulthood and be at peace for five minutes. It captures the chase you feel as an adult trying to feel the same high you did as a kid when you had a treehouse, or the scholastic book fair, or going to a water park for the first time. The song is simple. It’s only about four lyrics repeated, but it becomes a chant, a mantra, a path to actualizing being happy in your tree house. Damn. How did I feel all of this from just four different lyrics? You’re good, Depeche Choad. You’re good.
“The New Welsh National Anthem” got points for rhyming Shirley Bassey with “classy lassy,” and also prompted a google search to confirm that she is, in fact, Welsh. I was shocked but also pleasantly surprised to learn about all the things that were and were not Welsh in this song, and even more surprised to find that, even though it’s clearly meant to make me smile, it isn’t making fun so much as celebrating these things that make Wales special. I vote this be made their new national anthem immediately.
“Unexpected Item” was as the title described: unexpected. It’s a cool, synth-y techo sound that’s all about, you guessed it, an unexpected item in the bagging area. I never thought it possible to turn a mundane slice of life into a fun, danceable bop. But you know what? That beautiful scream of “APPROVAL NEEDED” perfectly captures the rage that I too feel when this happens to me in the self check-out aisle. I don’t know what the inciting incident that inspired this song was, but I have a feeling that we’ve all probably lived our own versions, and this was the straw that broke Depeche Choad’s back.
“Hold it All Together (For Heather Graham)” may have a silly title, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t strike a kind of chord. The final song of the album is a quiet, simple, stripped down ballad where the only real lyric is “It’s difficult sometimes to hold it all together your mind.” Compared to the hard-rocking “Wikipedia” that preceded it, “Hold it all Together” is quite sincere and sweet. I know that the secret joke is that you’re supposed to be holding it together for Heather Graham, but nonetheless it was nice to commiserate for 2:08 minutes that life is hard sometimes, and you have to find a reason to keep yourself moving.
Arguably, this whole album is a bizarre slice of adult life that ultimately tells you you have to laugh at it to make it through. Depeche Choad is the personification of looking on the bright side of life, of taking that spoonful of sugar to help everything else go down. Maybe they seem a little silly at first, but who doesn’t want to just cut loose to a song about socks, fruit, treehouses and getting lost in Wikipedia rabbit holes? Who doesn’t want to dance in their “Paul Miller Socks”? If your life is feeling a little blue, maybe what you need to pep you up are some Songs in the Key of Vitamin C.