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Smut is the project of lyricist Tay Roebuck, guitarists Andie Min and Sam Ruschman, drummer Aidan O’Connor, and bassist John Steiner. Roebuck, Ruschman and Min started the band a decade ago in Cincinnati, Ohio. Since then, they’ve played alongside Bully, Wavves, and Nothing. After years in the Cincinnati DIY scene, they made their Bayonet Records full-length debut, How the Light Felt. The record was a revelation. Pitchfork called it “a rigorous, decade-spanning study,” and a “well-oiled spin on late-’80s guitar pop.” Under the Radar called it “pop perfection,” that “blends subtle hooks with wistful lyrics.” It was a record that explored grief through the lens of melancholic dream pop, using drum machines and layered, intricate melodies.
How the Light Felt brought the band to Chicago, a city with more room for their growing sound. They still faced the modern struggles of the working musician, though: instability, objectification, financial precarity. The band channeled this period of touring, personnel changes, and personal upheavals into their latest offering, Tomorrow Comes Crashing.
Tomorrow Comes Crashing, Smut's first record with O'Connor and Steiner, sees the band re-energized and trained on the limitless potential that comes with making music with people you love. Galvanized with a new lineup, Smut focused on creating a record that possessed the same towering intensity as the records that first got them into music: Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, Relationship of Command. The outcome is ten of their most intense, bombastic, and focused songs to date.
Catharsis bursts through the seams throughout Tomorrow Comes Crashing. “Syd Sweeney,” inspired by the actress, is the record's centerpiece. It's about how profoundly strange it can be to be a woman, to be misunderstood by people who don’t even know you. The song is driven by chugging guitars and big, rolling drums. In other words: stadium rock about perception. Paramore meets Dookie. “She connects to the youth and the girls in the water/All she amounts to is someone’s daughter,” sings Roebuck in one particularly poetic moment. The song comes to a thrashing metal-inspired breakdown. It’s ecstatic.
It is a record interested in capturing those big emotions that come with falling in love with music for the very first time. Lead single “Dead Air” begins with crystalline guitars, fall-air crisp bass. Then Roebuck’s vocals come in. Her voice enters honeyed and dreamy, ala Harriet Wheeler, then turns into a wide-eyed scream. Lyrically, the song describes a break-up: “I heard you say forever,” Roebuck sings, sending a final 'forever' into the ether with a lilting melody.
To make the record, Smut recorded “as live as they could,” alongside Aron Kobayashi-Ritch (Momma) in a studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn, over the course of ten days. “We have so much energy right now,” says Roebuck. Right before they went off to New York, Roebuck and Min got married, with the rest of the band by their side.
The recording was a true labor of love — driving from Chicago with all their equipment, returning from 12-hour studio days to sleep on friends' couches and floors, Roebuck completely blowing her voice by the end. Smut has always been DIY. Because they love it. Because they have to do it– there’s no other option. Tomorrow Comes Crashing is the culmination of that DIY spirit: making a record that completely encompasses the intensity, moodiness, and emotion of their journey so far.
Dirt Buyer is the project of Joe Sutkowski, a Brooklyn-based musician who has released two well-regarded albums under the name, while becoming a familiar face in independent music circles, appearing as a live member of This Is Lorelei and sharing stages with artists like Horse Jumper of Love, Greg Freeman, and fantasy of a broken heart.