It was a running joke all through 2020 that the entire year was just generally…very not good. Among all the nervous laughter of referring to the quote-unquote new normal of a global pandemic as goofy things like “the panini” was an unspoken assumption that this misery would be confined to the calendar year, or that a change in power in the U.S. in November would exact any sort of major change—and yet, here we are at the end of 2021 struggling to differentiate the events of last year with those of this one. Yes, the “panini” persists, but when was the last time you bothered to check COVID rates in your city before spending a night out on the town?
While some artists have already released follow-ups to their “pandemic albums,” Ceschi Ramos is still invested in the global situation as it persists on his LP This Guitar Was Stolen Along with Years of Our Lives, which abruptly arrived at the beginning of November. Mostly known for his rapid-fire rap delivery over an impressively wide variety of instrumentals, the album highlights his secondary persona as a singer-songwriter, with this album honing in on the acoustic folk-punk sensibilities that occasionally flare up across his discography.
One track in particular stands out, and that’s the “American Pie”–length acoustic invective against the global conditions in play long before the pandemic, where the artist’s raised voice recalls that of Jeff Rosenstock more so than the alt-rap peers signed to his label Fake Four. “Eat your neighbor to survive,” Ceschi sings on “2020 BC,” paraphrasing capitalist doctrines before referencing the popular right-wing sentiment of the moment: “We were born free to spread incurable disease.” “During the earliest days of the pandemic I started to chip away at a folk song about the domestication of humans,” he shared in a press statement. “What you’re hearing and watching is processing a history of greed, irresponsibility, violence, hegemonic social conditioning that has led to tribalism, calculated division, fear, uncertainty, and rage. I empathize because I am one of the manipulated.”
Today Ceschi is sharing a visual for the eight-minute track, appropriately pairing the charged lyrics with now-a-little-too-familiar images of riots and billionaires we haven’t had the luxury of not hearing about for quite some time, along with all kinds of religious and Oz-related imagery.
Check it out below, and hear the full album here.
