#121: The recipe is simple: wine power!
Apes of the State; Pigs Parlament; Robot Civil War; Governor Vomit; Adorable Anarchy
Apes of the State
Not to be confused with Mates of State, though just hearing a few seconds of Apes of the State’s music will clear up any confusion. Whereas the former plays synthy indie-pop, the latter plays folk-punk.
Did you wince? With its crusty vibes and sloganeering, folk-punk makes an easy target. Sure, a song title like “I Saw God in a Homeless Man Yelling at the Sky” reinforces your preconceptions. And yes, it’s not unexpected that “She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain When She Comes” makes an appearance in the discography, albeit rewritten as an existential hoe-down called “What am I Doing With My Life?”
I’m so sorry mom and dad
Oh I’m so sorry mom and dad
You gave me everything I ever needed to suceed [sic]
and I threw it out to play in a folk punk band
To be fair, their parents probably had bigger worries than folk punk. April “Apes” Hartman started playing music after going to rehab: “I picked up a guitar and started writing about shit instead of doing drugs about it,” she explains in the group’s bio. That became the expectedly raw All I Did This Summer Was Go to Rehab, released in 2015 under the name Apes. At some point that expanded to “of the State” and a full band.
Since then, Apes of the State have maintained a punishing tour schedule and a steady drip of DIY releases, including a 2024 split with BNB alumni Sister Wife Sex Strike. Nothing Makes Sense Anymore drops next month, featuring said “Homeless Man” song and another called “Jig for Straight Men Who Would Kiss Luigi Mangione.”
What, no song about Tyler Robinson?
Pigs Parlament
My fellow pedants among the readership will want to add an “i” to “Parliament,” but in Slovenian, it’s spelled “parlament.” And when you play wine-fueled “party punk,” who cares about spelling, bro?!
Pigs Parlament hails from the celebrated Goriška Brda wine region—“Some call it Slovenia’s Tuscany,” per its website—which has “had a great influence on their music and lyrics,” per their bio. “The recipe is simple: wine power!” We should introduce them to Wine Lips, who we recently learned are named after a terrible Canadian wine. Some call it a star on the Ontario market!
Pigs Parlament doesn’t appear to be named after anything in particular, but their music—SoCal-style speedy ska-punk—has plenty of porcine imagery. “Desno Leva Drhal,” the opening track of their 2024 double album, opens this way:
YOU ARE PIGGS!
NO! YOU ARE PIGGS!
DON’T LET ME COMPARE PIGS WITH PEOPLE!
They were even more direct in “Anarchy is Order, Government is Chaos,” from 2018’s Koruptistan:
We don’t need a government
we can govern ourselves
We don’t need all this [sic] pigs in our parliament
Their 2018 EP S.S.S. - Slovenska Svinjska Stranka translates to “Slovenian Pig Party.” So Pigs Parlament is nothing if not thematically consistent.
S.S.S. is one of three EPs they released that year, culminating in “Don’t Panic, It’s Organic,” basically an album version of this T-shirt:
There’s “I Like to Smoke” (self-explanatory), “Hemp for Happiness” (ditto), “Golden Era” (about getting too high and freaking out?), “Brave Mykayla” (about a 7-year-old Oregon girl whose cancer went into remission after she started taking cannabis oil), and “Fighting for G.O.D.,” which is about, like, pot solving war?
Just exploit our magical plant, and the world will be as one!
Just exploit our magical plant, because everything can be done!
You can do gasoline, you can use it in medicine
You can do everyfucking [sic] thing
From fuel to food, from hempcrete to shoes
Hot dispensary idea: Based Hardware, your home for cannabis and hempcrete.
Adorable Anarchy
Sure, Pigs Parlament support anarchy, but what about adorable anarchy? Specifically the kind that specializes in “Guitar, Harp and Other Weird Stuff”? And “weird stuff” as in “playing Nelson’s hit song on a guitar harp”?
I can’t find much info about the person behind Adorable Anarchy other than she’s based in Dayton (per her bio) and shreds (per her videos). She’s a classically trained guitarist who can also play pedal harp, lever harp, piano, guitalele, ukulele, array mbira, kalimba, guitar zither, and guzheng, which are all presumably real instruments and not invented words.
She also creates a lot of AI pop music under the name AA with an avatar that resembles the woman in the videos and hails from Cincinnati instead of Dayton. Even in an alternate universe, Adorable Anarchy can’t get out of Ohio.
Governor Vomit
This beautifully simple name is secretly thought-provoking: Is it vomit left by a governor? Is the governor’s name Vomit? Are they two different words put together to make a point about politics? Is there a Cockney band named Guv’nah Vomit? Or better: Vomit, Guv’nah?1
Ponder all you want, because little information is available about Governor Vomit. From what I can tell, it’s a one-man project based in NYC that specializes in caustic hyper-pop with a pronounced chiptune streak. How caustic? I invite you to sit through all six minutes and 40 seconds of last year’s Sacred Binding: No Dessert EP.
Three nearly impenetrable tracks ostensibly themed around marriage: “First Marriage: Perfect Breakfasts,” “Cruel Union: Divine Confection,” “Psycho Matrimony: Forever Supper.” What I like about those titles is you can rearrange the words, and they don’t make any less sense: “Perfect Union: First Breakfasts,” “Cruel Matrimony: Forever Confection,” “Psycho Supper: Divine Forever.” Idea for merch: Governor Vomit-branded Magnetic Poetry.
If you know anyone getting married this summer/fall, Bandcamp offers the option to send Sacred Binding: No Dessert as a gift.
Robot Civil War
Like Governor Vomit, Robot Civil War prompts questions: Is it a civil war among the robots, with Serve carts taking on Waymos taking on Roombas? Is it a civil war led by, or fought against, robots? Are the members of Robot Civil War nostalgic for Michael Bay’s terrible Transformers films, whose lore includes the Cybertronian Civil War between the Autobots and Decepticons? Or are they hardcore Isaac Asimov fans, eager to describe upheaval during the Settler Era?
As with Governor Vomit, we may never know the answer. It’s not that the trio is similarly inscrutable and anonymous—save for bassist Mech Hi-Z, whose stage name reveals some audio-engineering experience—it’s that Robot Civil War played its final show in May, shortly after the release of Mechanical Warfare.
We do know that the trio played speedy, hardcore-inflected punk and described themselves as “proletaribots raising their voices in song against the capitalist machines.” Why yes, they did write a song called “Fuck the System.”
Less expected is 2023’s Greasy Gears, whose songs are heavily informed by issues of queer/trans identity, sometimes serious (“Closet Kids,” “Meter Squared”), sometimes playful. See “God Bless Drunk Girls”:
Got my high heels on // night club dress // broad shoulders // hair on my chest
A welcoming hand tells me it’s ok
God bless drunk girls! The nicest folks that you will ever know!
God bless drunk girls! A friend in need’s a friend indeed for sure
God bless drunk girls
If you come to my neighborhood any weekend, you will find more than enough of them to bless.
POST-SCRIPTS
Mentioning again that I was on VHS Party Live!, the weekly web series from the Found Footage Fest guys. I highlighted a guitar-instruction video featuring a resentful metalhead who grudgingly teaches you how to play Nirvana songs. But the recording of an early ’80s NYC-area newscast is absolutely worth your time. Think Anchorman meets Heavy Metal Parking Lot.
Not as far as I can tell. Get on it, Londoners.