Neglect an Oscar. You’ve made it in Hollywood when bands begin writing songs about you. Montgomery Clift yielded tributes from two of probably the most consequential bands he by no means lived to listen to. Robert De Niro invited Bananarama out for a drink after they turned his identify right into a synth-pop earworm. Extra lately, Drew Barrymore served as an unwitting muse for each R&B megastar SZA and frat-rap darling Bryce Vine.
Sydney Sweeney is simply 27, however she’s gaining on these luminaries already. Each Ken Carson and Midwestern indie-rockers Smut have named songs after the Euphoria star. The fashion rapper’s “ss” is crude and anatomical, Smut’s “Syd Sweeney” its inverse; powered by empathy and angst, the Smut single rails in opposition to a tradition that turns younger actresses into family names, then rips them to shreds after they make use of their sexuality onscreen. “Poised for manufacturing/Made in your idol picture/You strip me all the way down to really feel good,” Tay Roebuck sings over palm-muted energy chords, figuring out with Sweeney’s plight. Finally, the tune mutates right into a scorched-earth, metallic outro: “When in the long run/She’s a lady and also you’re on her once more!” Roebuck screams.
This heavier, extra bombastic facet of Smut thrives on Tomorrow Comes Crashing, the Cincinnati-born, Chicago-based group’s third album. Smut’s earlier album, 2022’s How the Gentle Felt, carried a dreamy, mournful pall befitting songs impressed by Roebuck’s sister’s loss of life and drew comparisons to each ’90s dream-pop legends like Mazzy Star and Cocteau Twins and up to date shoegaze revivalists. Tomorrow Comes Crashing, their first album with bassist John Steiner and drummer Aidan O’Connor, retains a keenness for sculpted Clinton-era guitar tones however takes affect from poppier touchstones, like Inexperienced Day and My Chemical Romance. Roebuck has cited loving MCR for “the singing and the theatrics of all of it,” which made her need “to be as desperately emotional as I may for every of those songs.”
That comes by way of on “Syd Sweeney” and on the thundering opener “Godhead,” which finds Roebuck perfecting a pop-punk wail earlier than the tune abruptly flames out on the 01:45 mark, like a sullen teenager storming off throughout an argument. Even a moody break-up tune like “Useless Air,” which at first looks like a return to dreamier textures, breaks into an indelible refrain that The Matrix might need penned for Liz Phair within the early aughts. Roebuck has the charisma and the versatile voice to tug off these pop strikes, although the file’s angstiest moments can really feel a bit sophomoric. “Spit,” a punkish outburst about business frustrations, seethes from one acidic slogan to the subsequent (“I’m bored with performing fortunate to be right here/Break my again, lean within the highlight”) with out a lot of a melodic anchor. As a sentiment, it’s righteous, however as songwriting, it lands as clichéd and skinny.
