One of the things that never fails to excite me is hearing some new (at least new to me) music that gets under my skin in ways I wasn’t expecting. This used to be a pretty regular experience for me, particularly in the 1989-91 and 2003-06 eras, but I’m not quite the consumer of new music I was so it’s been a while.
And then I clicked on Polyphia’s “G.O.A.T.”
I didn’t know what to expect but I can assure you I didn’t expect this. I’m not a big fan of “musicianship for the sake of musicianship,” but that’s not what this is. The musicianship is absolutely off the charts, but it’s catchy as hell, it’s a really unusual mixture of genres and techniques, and the composition is masterful.
That said, I didn’t really have the vocabulary or the experience to describe it. So, now fully committed to exploring the rabbit hole, I started watching reaction videos. I watched a lot of reaction videos. I find it kind of comforting that a lot of the people doing these videos have the same reaction and the same struggles with coming up with suitable words. Here’s one of the better examples by Chase Carneson:
I cannot tell you how many of the videos start with “I’ve never heard of them before, but they call their song ‘Greatest of All-Time'. We’ll see about that…” and then stopping the video after the opening guitar lick and saying “I was not prepared for this. Wow.”
What gets really interesting is seeing the different descriptions vary based on where the video maker is coming from. The guitarists are obviously just blown away by Tim Henson but they often struggle with what are unfamiliar rhythmic elements. On the other hand, the drummers tend to be all over the bass and drums and call out the trap music elements immediately. The producers are fascinated by all of the production and engineering elements that seem very out of the hard rock element but fit perfection.
My personal point of reference would probably be early-80s King Crimson with Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew, Tony Levin, and Bill Bruford. There are similarities: The wild mix of guitar techniques, the clean tones, the incredibly tight playing, and the non-traditional song structures. It falls short as an analogy. Polyphia’s approach to incorporating production, samples, hip-hop, and whatever else is unlike anything else I’m aware of.
There really isn’t a vocabulary to describe this kind of cross-genre virtuosity. They seem to be not so much breaking the rules of what you can do so much as…ignoring them? Acting as though the rules don’t exist. It’s not so much rebellious in the way punk is/was/was supposed to have been and more like Neo at the end of The Matrix just realizing that the boundaries don’t exist.
That might seem like hyperbole for less than four minutes of music but I’ve spent a lot of time with this song over the last month or so and I just start giggling every time I hear it. I’m still loving watching YouTube reviewers see it for the first time and try to describe it. At the end of the day, it wouldn’t matter if the song wasn’t great and, not gonna lie, it gets stuck in my head for days at a time.
So, yeah. I’ve been a little obsessed. I wanted to share, and I needed to get some of this down on (not exactly) paper. This song has opened my ears to quite a few newer bands playing in this neighborhood: Animals as Leaders, Yvette Young and Covet, Sarah Longfield, and Ichika Nito (plus, of course, more Polyphia songs too). I’m not even a guitar guy, but…man, it feels good to hear stuff that excites me. I hope you enjoy it too.
-RK
