American Lips Are “On Strike!”. Art-rock’s smartest slackers take aim at the burnout era.
American Lips are clocking out and turning the amps up. On Strike! isn’t just a random album title . It’s quite literally a middle finger to burnout culture dressed in wireframe guitars and punchy irony. The Montréal/Los Angeles trio (Adrian Popovich, Jessica Bruzzese, Sebastien Grainger) spin chaos into charisma, finding beauty in the breakdown, humor in the overload.
If Waste of Crime was their cryptic calling card, On Strike! is the bold, underlined, fluorescent note stuck to your boss’s desk: “I quit and I sound amazing doing it.” The riffs are serrated, the hooks barbed, and the humor bone-dry. Tracks like “Cardboard Trash” and “Sleep” tap into that anxious, caffeine-drained twitch we’ve all learned to normalize, only to turn it into something danceable, cathartic, and defiantly human.
There’s a vintage pulse under all the noise. An analog heartbeat that recalls Gang of Four’s angular mischief or early Talking Heads’ paranoid funk. But don’t get it twisted: American Lips aren’t nostalgic; they’re aware. Their sound is wired to the modern malaise, one feedback squeal away from full collapse, and somehow still having fun about it.
Produced between Ancient Fashion East (Montréal) and West (Lucknow/LA), the record carries that DIY scuff. Grainger’s mix crackles with live tension, while Popovich’s guitar work slices through with all the precision of a tired genius skipping his fifth meeting of the day. It’s noisy, absurd, self-aware, and deliciously alive. “On Strike!” is the perfect protest soundtrack for a generation that can’t afford to care, but does anyway.
American Lips aren’t striking for better conditions. They’re striking for the hell of it. And we’re lucky to hear the picket line hum.
“On Strike!,” out now on Ancient Fashion Records.
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