If you don’t recognize Neil Berthier’s vocals from their place fronting cult indie-punk group Donovan Wolfington last decade, you might place his bright blue hair within its spot in Joyce Manor’s current touring iteration. Yet for the past few years, Berthier has been channeling most of his creative energy into the solo project PHONY, with two albums in two consecutive years establishing the moniker as a name to watch for in various punk-centric circles.
His third collection of songs—titled At Some Point You Stop—is set for release this Friday, and promises to lean into the oxymoron that is the project’s moniker with Berthier’s most honest and open songwriting to date. The latest single from the album, “The Middle,” demonstrates such vulnerability with its lyrics expressing the conflicted feelings of engaging in therapeutic writing sessions while knowing there’s no greater purpose beyond personal catharsis. “I had a tough time dealing with my father’s dementia conceptually,” he explains. “To cope, I wrote letters to get my feelings out there, knowing no one would see them. It was more helpful than I thought it would be. This song is about wishing there was a recipient to eventually read these letters, knowing that’s not possible.”
Adding another dimension to the song—on top of its catchy pop-punk choruses built on top of a new-wavy electronic drumbeat—is a visual directed by Dom Vaughn which leans fully into the Cronenbergian world of bodies getting things plugged into them, orifices getting reached into, and the word “flesh” making an appearance. “The concept is that of a body-horror procedure that plugs Neil into a simulation,” Vaughn explains. “The VR setup Neil is connected to in the beginning of the video allows one to experience a kind of cosmic gumbo of abject loneliness and his happiest memories.”
Check out the video below. Long live the new flesh, etc.
