Diet Cig are a rock band from New Paltz, NY. Fronted by Alex Luciano with drums from Noah Bowman of Earl Boykins (who we featured on our Favourite Free Music of 2014 list), Diet Cig have a sound that combines the intimate honesty of bedroom pop with the rough-edges of garage rock.
‘Breathless’ opens with the mixture of worry and excitement faced when moving into a new home. “I don’t have any kitchenware but I can walk ’round in my underwear” Luciano sings, but is soon worrying about her new-found freedom/isolation. “Will you still come visit me on North Front street? Will you still watch the Simpsons on my floor, pretend it’s 1994?” The mixture of energy and naivety is as relatable as it is enjoyable, a childish (in a good way) reaction to the threat of normality and dead-eyed maturity. ‘Pool Boyz’ features another life at the child/adult interface (“lets have a slumber party tonight in jail”) and ‘Harvard’ speaks of the alienating effects university can have on us and our friends (“Fuck your Ivy League sweater, you know I was better”).
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The other two tracks concern one of the age-old defences against growing up, The Scene. Unfortunately, living The Scene to the point where lives revolve around it is just as brain-numbing as a shitty job, as lead track ‘Scene Sick’ points out. “I’m sick of hearing about your scene, I’d rather talk about something more exciting. I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care.” Things are taken a step further on ‘Cardboard’, highlighting that loneliness descends upon everyone, even those is something as tight and communal as the music scene. “Let’s start with I’m sorry I didn’t go to your show, the thought of seeing you depressed me too much to go. I smell like cigarettes and last night’s booze and I hate everybody here but that’s no excuse.”
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Over Easy is an album by and for people too old to be kids but too young to be capital-A Adults, where relationships are dictated by your presence or absence at shows, boredom is seen as the ultimate evil and growing up looms like some nightmare threatening to come real.
Over Easy will be released on cassette on the 24th February. You can pre-order it now over at Father/Daughter Records.