This Friday, one-time Thurston Moore Guitar Ensemble member Jen Chochinov will release her debut album with her new outfit Schande, a project which embraces a penchant for overblown guitar sounds within an otherwise-subdued post-punk soundscape that once propelled Sonic Youth to stardom. Across Once Around, Chochinov explores heady concepts previously addressed by the likes of Hannah Arendt and Adriana Cavarero. The latest cut, “Gregor MacGregor,” highlights the band’s ability to abruptly overwhelm the listener with a wall of noise in a way that might please the track’s trickster namesake.
Perhaps more prescient, though, is the lyrical element of the song, which addresses how false empathy—no matter how well-intentioned—is really a form of deception if you think about it. “It’s from an absolute place of love to want to comfort each other and get each other to see the silver linings in situations, but sometimes having that be our only reaction without outright acknowledging what the other person is going through hurts more than it helps,” explains Chochinov. “There was a great story on This American Life called ‘Distant Replay’ that talks about the harm in trying to make each other feel better rather than address an uncomfortable reality, and I’d listened to it just before writing ‘Gregor MacGregor,’ so it all kind of came out in the lyrics.”
Check out the track below, and expect Once Around to arrive this Friday via Thurston Moore’s Daydream Library Series.
