100 gecs “10,000 gecs” Album Review

10,000 gecs

100 gecs

• Genre: Alternative
• Date: 17 Mar, 2023
• Content: explicit
• Region: NGA
• Track(s): 10
• Dog Show Records/Atlantic Records, ℗ 2023 Atlantic Recording Corporation

With their sophomore album, 100 Gecs strike the ideal balance between live and electronic music, combining tastefully and expertly produced synths with live instrumentation. Dylan Brady and Laura Les are here to have fun. Yet while doing so, they produce some of the most intriguing and enjoyable hyperpop currently available, as well as some of the funniest and most off-the-wall lyrical pop music has ever seen. The pair is at its peak in the under-thirty-minute blast “10,000 gecs,” making some absolutely insane music and never conforming.

Album Cover Art

On the random-looking shot for the album, the American hyperpop duo are standing in casual wears with their black shirts raised over their heads and covering their faces. They really don’t try to make anything appear perfect because this looks like a chill goofy evening that ended up getting captured on cam. They display simplicity in a different hue and even make it look attractive.

Tracks and Features

“10,000 gecs” wastes no time in kicking things into a diverse high gear, beginning with the high-frequency crescendo of the THX Deep Note before launching into a hard metal riff, followed by a string of snappy, distorted bass lines. The rest of the first song, “Dumbest Girl Alive,” features Les singing in her signature squealing voice. After a while, the song transitions into a quieter acoustic guitar section before concluding with more deafening shredding.

The second song on the album, “757,” comes the closest to being a “classic” 100 gecs song. It’s a standby in their live performance already, but the recorded version is noticeably different since vocalist/producer Laura Les’ new lines change it from being a party anthem about celebrating cockiness to an earnest and heartfelt contemplation on human growth. It plays like an ode to trans joy and liberation, even though it isn’t specifically billed as such. This sentiment permeates the entire album “10,000 gecs,” both thematically and sonically.

Before it spirals out into its death-metal outro, “Billy Knows Jamie,” a paranoid meditation on a homicidal stalker, is a rather simple piece built on bass chunking and turntable scratches that sounds a lot like Limp Bizkit. In the absurdist agitpop song “One Million Dollars,” computerized voices chant the song’s title over churning beats and sharp electronic noise. Money-related desire is shown as a mechanical feedback loop. Nevertheless, 100 Gecs sound as though they are also caught in a loop. Brady and Les trade lines about fictitious victims over the legendary Sleng Teng riddim on the hilarious “The Most Wanted Person in the United States,” a riot written from the perspective of a serial killer on the run.

“I Got My Tooth Removed,” a song from the ska-punk revival, is more Reel Big Fish than Sublime, but it’s still a fun time. As usual, their intelligence serves as a unifying element. It had the kind of absurdist sensibility that would make you want to gently pat a friend on the back and check in on them if they were alright. But in this instance, the emotional wall itself is the joke, similar to how you would have to define a kegstand if you wanted to play the cheesy lullaby “Frog on the Floor” for a kid.

The final song, “MeMeMe,” stands as 100 gecs’s most mature statement to date and their finest attempt at sincerity. The song tacitly addresses the parasocial reality of the band’s cult-like fan base, asserting that they’ll never truly “know, know-know-know, know-know-know anything about me, me-me-me, me-me-me,” and it expressly addresses the difficulties that its members face in making friends in daily life.

Tracklist

NO	TITLE	TIME
1	Dumbest Girl Alive	2:17
2	757	2:06
3	Hollywood Baby	3:07
4	Frog On The Floor	2:41
5	Doritos & Fritos	3:16
6	Billy Knows Jamie	2:43
7	One Million Dollars	2:00
8	The Most Wanted Person In The United States	2:35
9	I Got My Tooth Removed	3:17
10	mememe	2:46

Album Theme

“10,000 gecs” is outrageously entertaining and remarkably ambitious. Also, it’s brief but delicious, launching into a tumultuous flurry of blows and slipping out before listeners have a time to stop and think about what’s happening. And thus lies the secret to truly enjoying “10,000 gecs”: don’t overthink it; simply take a deep breath and go with the flow.

Production Credits

The album was produced by 100 gecs, Dylan Brady & Laura Les.

Stream