Premiere: Drunken Logic warns of being ‘Alone in America’

No one gets to check out today. Complacency is complicity. A monkey is making a monkey of the highest position of power, and while the flames seem pretty distressing and acutely overwhelming all on their own these days, that’s not the thick of it. It’s what we do about it that matters in the end. As Los Angeles genre-bender Jake Cassman, known as Drunken Logic onstage, reminds us, “civic participation is a sacred duty,” he tells B-Sides & Badlands about a new song, premiering today, “but…it’s never clean and rarely successful.”

Puncturing the waves of brassy horns, a throwback funk underpinning and a message of unity and liberation, Cassman urges the listener to take responsibility for their role in a dying world. “Pleading the fifth of the Jack / The girl is not so innocent / Working both sides of the aisle when a new Congress is sworn in,” he sings, as he assigns blame to each and every one of us in the process. It’s not necessarily an act of damnation but a ringing of the bell to inspire, to propel, to incite. Change is coming, whether we’re on board or not ⎯⎯ but hopefully, we are. “Have faith in the Constitution / She’s not damsel in distress / To make a more perfect union, baby, you gotta get undressed…”

There is an uneasy electricity humming just below the surface, and even Cassman’s vocal is icy, unapologetically grave and fearless. “I try to make music that you can rock to at the live show and think about in your headphones, and this might be the most successful attempt at that I’ve ever made,” he says. “We are always flawed and often feel broken, but that is who we have always been and will always be. And that shouldn’t stop you from trying to make the world a better place, no matter how difficult and scary that effort might be.”

Fear can often drive us to greater understanding, and it pushes our humanity to the edge of a cliff in a way that brings focus in clearer view. The rose-colored glass are smashed to dust and into the earth, and we’re left with the reality raging right before our eyes… “Alone in America / Forever surrounded by herself / It’s painfully clear that this is just who she will always be,” he concludes, letting that troubled statement linger in the air long after the song has stopped playing.

“Alone in America” is lifted from Drunken Logic’s new record, The Loudness Wars, out everywhere Oct. 5.

Listen below:

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