2ND GRADE

Double Double Whammy

Get off work. Get on the subway, maybe your bicycle. Put your earbuds in. A pop song only lasts a couple minutes, but can create a universe. 2nd Grade’s new 23-track album, Scheduled Explosions, is another entry in Philadelphia songwriter Peter Gill’s rapidly expanding catalog, and simultaneously his most focused and expansive work yet. Scheduled Explosions was home-recorded with friend and engineer Lucas Knapp (who recorded 2nd Grade’s breakthrough album Hit to Hit); it’s an odyssey of 60s-inspired dream logic driven by melody, charted through an environment of ambient violence and existential dread, and touching down in a pantheon of prolific pop weirdos like Robert Pollard, Alex Chilton, Lily Konigsberg, Chris Weisman, and Nate Amos. The work of a visionary at the height of his worldbuilding powers, Scheduled Explosions is a heat-seeking missive addressed to the past, present, and future of rock & roll.

On Scheduled Explosions, songs move fast and unexpectedly, staving off encroaching boredom with incredible motion: “I’m out of focus/ On the summer solstice/ Too bored to wonder why/ Too dehydrated to cry/ A language dies/ Every time I try to say hi/ To a lifetime passing by/ Always on my mind” (Triple Bypass in B-Flat). Songs like “Ice Cream Social Acid Test,” “Instant Nostalgia,” and “Like Otis Redding,” feel like multiple Troggs b-sides smashed together, their hummable melodies put through the wringer with noise, textural abrasion, and lopped-off chords. One mood collides with another. A surreal and exciting antidote to apathy, not because the mind is always turning, but because it’s depressingly good at turning off.

Scheduled Explosions rewards 2nd Grade oldheads with a kaleidoscope of references, made believable precisely because the associative bonds are loosened. A Cold War era lexicon of missile silos and fallout shelters, early Jack Nicholson flicks, and perversions of British and American 20th century radio music congeal into a disconcertingly natural musical language transmitted via tape-damaged guitars, psychedelic percussion, and the tinnitus hiss of crash cymbals pushed way over the limit. Authentic identity is impossible, and still earnestly sought: “If anybody can choose to be anybody/ Then how come it seems to never work out that way/ I try so hard to change my life/ but trouble is here to stay… this excommunication breakdown’s/ Driving me insane… I killed someone for front row tickets/ To the show tonight/ Like a wild thing” (Like a Wild Thing).

For listeners just tuning in, the album’s power pop cosmos is just as exciting. 2nd Grade’s particular genius has always been a breathtaking balance of the accessible and the inscrutable, wherein the complex labyrinth of musical and lyrical references never delays the direct path of pure hooks and clean refrains. Like Gill’s daydreaming narrators, you’re never lost and you’re never found. Scheduled Explosions repeatedly asks “what else can a pop song do?” Put your earbuds in and find out.