The Bobby Lees - New Self
It’s hard to believe that The Bobby Lees almost called it quits. The mid-level rock act - it’s hard to classify them under any one particular subgenre - stated that platforms like Spotify have actually devalued music and made it harder for mid-level artists to make a living and sustain themselves. They’re not wrong; while it can give an artist great exposure, unless they are raking in billions of streams a month, it’s not going to move the needle for mid-level touring artists financially. Jason Momoa even contacted them and offered to finance a new album, stating “bands like this should be all over the world.”
Two years later, the band announced that they had signed with Epitaph Records. New Self, the band’s fourth album, is a result of that signing, and what a beautiful album it is. It can be hard to even classify this as an album, as it clocks in at only around twenty minutes with eight songs. But there is a fire burning under The Bobby Lees - you can hear it on every track of New Self. My first introduction to this album was back in March when I first heard the title track. It hasn’t left my playlist since; their power as a band hits you like a punch in the face.
Comparisons to Rage Against The Machine have been thrown around, particularly on the title track and the album opener “Give”. Their lyrical content strays more personal than political, although “Give” references the homelessness epidemic sweeping the country (“They’re lined up down the street, orange, purple, yellow tent/I wanna give ‘em money, but the money’s all spent/They say “Ask, and you shall receive”/Does that apply to me or that man living in the street?”
New Self’s eight songs wind between breakneck punk rock (“The End”, “50 Ft”), dizzying radio-ready alt-rock (“Napoleon”, “New Self”), and even hints of early (and I mean early) nu-metal (“All I Got”). The inclusion of the latter “All I Got” is almost disorienting; vocalist Sam Quartin’s once brash and in-your-face vocals temper themselves here into something even more melodic in the verses. “Got Me Good” finds Quartin on her own, jumping between no more than four chords and singing about giving up her vices. “New Self” is a song that, on the surface, is loud and abrasive, but the lyrics speak of past regret and can veer into darker territory before Quartin confidently assures us, “I’m older now, I’ve gotten help, I wish you could meet my new self”. One listen to that song alone could give you the energy to take down an army singlehandedly.
New Self ends by transitioning from the softer-spoken “Got Me Good” to the accelerating “Red Hot”. The song is barely two minutes long, with Quartin explaining how she has given up literally every addiction she’s ever had except the song’s subject. At the halfway point, the song breaks into a chaotic salsa-infused beat, Quartin making bird-like noises in a sertonin-infused episode as the word “dance!” is punctuated in the background. Bands like The Bobby Lees deserve our support as a scene, particularly if they’re putting out genre-bending numbers like New Self.
