Asymmetrical Hearing: Notes from a Sbilenco Ear

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• 27 Dec, 2025 *

Maybe carried away by the hype of a supposed Punk revival (…) I listened to this album. But according to my own cultural, musical, and political background, this is not a punk record. It’s a basic, slightly grimy pop album with lyrics that pretend to be aggressive and transgressive. Plenty of melody, friendly rhythms made for dancing at a middle school party (not even a Saturday one — more like a Wednesday afternoon with five friends). Nothing here feels new — stylistically, musically, or in terms of sound — compared to what we’ve already heard over the past 30 years. And yet it still makes me think. 1. Maybe one of the biggest problems we’re facing right now is the widespread ignorance of people who use musical categories as if they were mere tags or hashtags. Fair enough: the Nineties killed off clear, distinct genres that required a sociopolitical stance even just to listen to them (and even more to play them). And it’s also true that post-punk today seems to include everything: all you need is tattoos and a couple of weird faces (yes, I know punk always had an aesthetic dimension since the Seventies, but come on… REALLY?!). 2. Maybe punk (once we accept that this label just doesn’t apply to this band) is a cultural phenomenon that not everyone has lived through, internalized, digested — nor learned to express convincingly. Maybe punk always has something to do with a disturbing feeling (even just aesthetically, without dragging Freud into this) that is its core. Engaging with that is hard, especially in a cushioned, soft world like the one we’re served today. But here there’s no attitude at all.

No need to despair though: I close the album and remove it from my listening queue. And the world becomes slightly better.