--::--:: JEFF ROSENSTOCK - POST- ::--::--

JEFF ROSENSTOCK
POST-

Jeff Rosenstock was an anxious kid who grew into an anxious adult and has also made a bunch of music along the way with a bunch of bands, most notably Bomb the Music Industry! who apparently pioneered giving shit away for free on the internet - or at least got some of the credit for it. Now he plays with his bi-coastal band of rad musicians, mixing punk heart with diverse instrumentation and occasional accuracy.

The new record POST- was written in a snowy mountain dreamscape, recorded in a marathon session and finished moments before it was released on New Year's Day. Most of it (like totally 51% minimum) was recorded live to tape, making the record a fiery distillation of Rosenstock's high energy live shows that push the boundaries of dynamics in rock music.

I hope. I don't know, that's what I was going for at least.

click here to buy this record from Polyvinyl!
click here to download the album for free!

1. USA
2. Yr Throat
3. All This Useless Energy
4. Powerlessness
5. TV Stars
6. Melba
7. Beating My Head Against A Wall
8. 9/10
9. Let Them Win

JOHN DEDOMENICI - BASS
JEFF ROSENSTOCK - VOCALS, GUITAR, KEYS, ETC.
MIKE HUGUENOR - GUITAR
KEVIN HIGUCHI - DRUMS
DAN POTTHAST - LAP STEEL

CHRIS FARREN - VOCALS ON "USA", "TV STARS" AND "LET THEM WIN"
LAURA STEVENSON - VOCALS ON "USA", "TV STARS", "9/10" AND "LET THEM WIN"

INT’L VOX & CLAPCO: GILBERT ARMENDARIZ, ANGELINA BANDA, SIM CASTRO, LAURA HAMMOND, JULIA LOAN, PUP, NEAL SHARMA, SHANNON TOOMBS

RECORDED, MIXED AND MASTERED BY JACK SHIRLEY
PHOTOS BY HIRO TANAKA

I wrote the songs and the liner notes. And did the layout. This is Jeff.

This record was recorded and mixed from November 28th - December 5th 2017 by Jack Shirley at the Atomic Garden in East Palo Alto, CA. a few days later, he MIXED IT SOME MORE AND mastered it. Jack makes great records, is affordable and you should make records with him. Thanks, Jack!

We rehearsed from November 24th - 27th at District Recording in San Jose, CA. That studio is also affordable and Ryan Perras makes cool shit there too. Thanks Ryan and also Ace Kimura for letting us make the loud loud noises.

Thanks Mikah at Starving Musician for helping us get our percussion stuff sorted. Thank you Dan Potthast, Shannon Toombs, and Skylar & Joa Suorez for giving me and John homes to sleep in while making this record. Thank you Lauren Brief for sending positive vibes at us all day long while recording.

Additional recording happened at Quote Unquote Records, Brooklyn, NY in April 2017 and alone in the mountains of East Durham, NY in January 2017. THE LATTER is also where a significant amount of the record was written. Kara Zuaro and Pete D’Angelo, I can’t thank you enough for sharing your double wide trailer with me, it was snowy and magical.

ADDITIONAL Additional recording by Nestor Chumak, Chris Farren and Laura Stevenson at their respective homes in December 2017. Thank you so much for being part of this record y’all.

To the wonderful people at SideOneDummy, thank you for taking a chance on me when no one else would. Love you very very very very much.

A lot of the best things our band experienced in the last two years would not have happened without the tireless work and guidance of Jamie Coletta. It’s hard to put it all into words, thanks for believin’ in me more than I do, bud. The photos in this record were taken while touring off our last record, WORRY. Over the last two and a half years, Hiro Tanaka often joined us on tour to hang out and take pictures. Thanks for being so much fun and keeping us smiling, Hiro! Gomena! Thanks to the usual batch of friends who help with things I am inept with - Tom Kelly setting up guitars, Rick Johnson, Jake Katz, Justin Yates for doing sound at the big scary things. To everyone I forgot, I suck, I'm sorry.

To Katie Ellen, Hard Girls, Rozwell Kid, Menzingers Fam, Summers, Still Ill, Doe, Lurmin Silverton, Foley, Jess Locke Fam & Greg Bower, it was a pleasure to share the planet with you over the last year or so. Thanks Chris Farren & Gethard! Thank you Modern Baseball for lending us your van, and Sorority Noise for the trailer. To our friends in North America, thanks for spending your nights and breakfasts with us when we pass through town. Sara & Raph, Irene, Till, Iona Cairns & Nina & Allen as well, LouisE, Francis & Paul, Beeeeez, Matty Boo & Lanah too, Marnie & Gibbo and our wonderful giant Melbourne F A M I L Y that would take up three more lines - do you know what it feels like to be on the other side of the planet, sometimes where you can’t understand anything anyone is saying and feel like you’re at home and you can just kinda wander around like you live there ‘cause you’re with your buds? It feels awesome that’s how it feels!!! Thanks for the feeling!!! AJJ, Smithies Fam, PUP Fam, Camp Cope, Bennies, Sidekicks, Worriers, Tiny Moving Parts, Dan Andriano, Kitty Kat Fan Club - so proud to be your pals, you all make such killer music.

Thanks Polyvinyl for taking on this record even though we didn’t really know each other and i wanted to release it for free with no announcement, on a holiday when no press people are working. And even though you couldn’t hear it until the day it was due to be sent to the record plant, for vinyl that would be released three months after the album was released digitally. for free. FYI at no point did POLYVINYL try to change my mind, say that what I was doing was stupid or a bad idea or any shit like that. That’s fucking tight.

Andrew and Kay at Specialist Subject and Moorwoorks Records! THANKS FOR TAKING THIS SHIT WORLDWIDE BAYYYYYBEEEEEE yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

Right before making this album I was lucky enough to go on a tour of Hawaii, Japan and Korea with The Bruce Lee Band. Thanks Mike Park for teaching me at a young age via Asian Man Records that making music does not have to mean financially exploiting anyone. For treating me like family and taking me to places I never thought I’d ever see playing in a ska band. GOCHI! Thanks BLB for being the best damn band of all time. Thanks to Johnny, Chris, Melaina, my new Hawaiian buds, Kemuri Fam, Skasucks and Jeff & Trash Yang Moses.

Yo! Jason Klein at Fender and Tim Dove at Ernie Ball! it was super sick to swing by and peek behind the curtain that one time. Thanks for hooking us up with free & cheap stuff that we like a lot. Ben at Vic Firth, Shirlene and Christian at Sabian, John at Pearl, Alex at Orange, Peter at Quilter - same goes to you!!! It’s very nice of you to treat us so well!!! YES!!!

Thanks to all of our families, our partners and our friends for being supportive of our transient lifestyle of trash snacks, garbage toilets and spontaneous beauty. Especially enormous thanks to everyone who has listened to and supported our music. Listeners? Audience? Fans? I never know the right word. We’re all just people doing our own shit hoping not to fuck it up, right? Anyway, vocabulary aside, thanks for giving us the opportunity to do the dreams we had when we were kids.

Fuck the NRA.
For Weezy, Tequila and Rocky.
See ya in the giggle pit.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

HI! A PORTION OF THE PROCEEDS FROM YR DONATION WILL GO TO DEFEND PUERTO RICO, WHO ARE PROVIDING HURRICANE RELIEF!

USA
Dumbfounded, downtrodden and dejected.
Crestfallen, grief-stricken and exhausted.
Trapped in my room while the house was burnin’
to the motherfuckin’ ground.

I saw the sign but it was misleading.
I fought the law, but the law was cheating.
Screaming for help, but somebody keeps on
telling me to settle down.
Please be honest, tell me was it you?

Clerk at the midwestern service station
Striped uniform, giggling at catch phrases
look in her eyes we’re up to something
oh, it doesn’t matter now.

Man in a crossover with his family
sketched in decals on the window smiling
driving parallel in the lane beside me
oh, it doesn’t matter now
but please be honest
tell me was it you?
I won’t hate you
I just need to know.
Please be honest.
Tell me was it you?

At first he thought it was the undertow
but he was dragged to the bottom of the lake
by a couple of kids saying, “it’s a joke”
though he didn’t know any of their names.
As they held him down, the crowd got loud
and they cheered when they thought he had escaped.
When the anchor needed something for the 10 o’clock,
What could they say?
Oh what else could they say?

They said,
“Well, you promised us the stars
and now we’re tired and bored.”

YR THROAT
I can’t find any way
I can’t find any way to relax
I can’t do anything
I can’t do anything of impact
I emptied out my brain
In hopes that I would have some success
Finding some clarity
But I just made a mess
What’s the point of having a voice?
What’s the point of having a voice
when it gets stuck inside your throat?

I’ll ramble incessantly
On pointless rattlings in my head
First person shooter games
Guitar tones, ELO arrangements
The differences in an MP3
and a vinyl record that you can hear!
But when it means something,
I always disappear.
What’s the point of having a voice?
What’s the point of having a voice
when it gets stuck inside your throat?
When it gets stuck inside your throat?
When it gets stuck inside your throat?

After the contest I saw my neighbors
Line up the shots and say to each other,
“There’s nothing left we can do right now.”

After the tape leaked
I searched for answers.
Accountability.
All I discovered gave me
Fever sweats from the inside out
It made me cold from the inside out.
It’s not like any other job I know.
If you’re a piece of shit they don’t let you go.
If you’re a piece of shit they don’t let you go.
If you’re a piece of shit they don’t let you go.

ALL THIS USELESS ENERGY
Darkness holds
Begging me to lose control
We wrestle it back and forth ‘til urban silence
Cuts through night
With a scalpel for the light
that bleeds through the margins
and leaves me semi-conscious.

I haven’t found the rhythm yet
to anchor down my life.
I didn’t know I needed one
to hold me through the night.

Ain’t it great,
smashing through the interstate
where we guess the futures of
our concurrent strangers?
They’re on their way to the doctor or to raise
Grandkids of young twenty-somethings
and teenagers.

I’m worried of abandoning
The joys that framed my life
But all this useless energy
Won’t hold me through the night.

Oh please,
you’re not fooling anyone
when you say you tried your best
‘cause you can’t be your best anything
when you can’t get any rest.

Oh please,
you’re not fooling anyone
when you say you tried your best
‘cause you can’t be your best anything
when you can’t get any rest.

I’m worried of abandoning
The joys that framed my life
But all this useless energy
Won’t hold me through the night.
Won’t hold me through the night.
Won’t hold me through
Won’t hold me through the night.

POWERLESSNESS
This just dawned on me:
I haven’t spoken to another person in a week.
I’ve been sitting silently,
telling myself I need time to think.
I met you at the coffeeshop,
we marched on the interstate and blocked the cops.
The echoes of the flash grenades
Rang in our ears as we moved along.

I called it “positivity,”
and congratulated myself on a job well done.
But after a couple of days
the fire that I thought would burn it down was gone.
Meet me at the Polish bar
I’ll be the one staring at my phone,
shaking like a nervous kid,
absolutely terrified of being alone.

So where can you go when the troubles inside you
Make your limbs feel like they’re covered in lead?
How can you solve all the problems around you
When you can’t even solve the ones in your head?
I need you right now
I need you right now
Before I feel totally dead.

This just dawned on me:
I haven’t spoken to another person in a month.
Well, small talk, OBVIOUSLY,
but nothing beyond barely catching up.
I have lots of things to say,
but they’re gonna sound dumb dumb dumb.
I have lots of things to say,
but I’m just an idiot.

So where can you go when the troubles inside you
Make your limbs feel like they’re covered in lead?
How can you solve all the problems around you
When you can’t even solve the ones in your head?
I need you right now
I need you right now
Before I feel totally dead.

Shriek into the toxic well
Where everybody’s screaming for themselves
and leaves no space to process feeling lost.
These overwhelming distractions
lead to powerlessness
and I feel to weak to walk it off.

Meet me at the Polish bar,
I’ll be the one staring at my phone,
shaking like a nervous kid,
totally terrified of being alone.

So where can you go when the troubles inside you
Make your limbs feel like they’re covered in lead?
How can you solve all the problems around you
When you can’t even solve the ones in your head?
I need you right now
I need you right now
Before I feel totally dead.
[ghost noises]

TV STARS
I can’t play piano all that well.
Like, I’m fine,
I can get away with it
If I’m acting like I’m drunk on stage
and you’re shocked that I’m playing anything,
I’ll get away with it.
I’ll get away with it, ooh.

I can’t see you in another’s arms
Like, it’s cool,
I just can’t imagine it.
Would you fall asleep to different shows
Than the ones that we drift away with?
I couldn’t dream of it.
I couldn’t dream of it.

TV stars don’t care about who you are.
TV stars don’t care about who you are.

It’s like somebody traded out my skin
For something I could never feel good in
And told me “suck it up, get used to it,
breathe in, repeat it.”

It’s like somebody traded out my skin
For something I could never feel good in
And told me, “suck it up, get used to it.”
To breathe and repeat it
Instead of listening.

TV stars don’t care about who you are.
TV stars don’t care about who you are.
Don’t care about who.
Don’t care about who you are.

I can’t spend another night alone
‘Cause the echoes are too distracting
Getting high and diving into holes
‘Til I can’t even dream of sleeping
and getting away from it,
getting away from it,
ooh.

MELBA
After the storm breaks,
fluorescence radiates
off skin overflowing with underexposure.

This was a shit day.
Can’t power through the haze,
I’m tired of waiting for it to be over.

Let’s go back to Melbourne.
We can start over because
Mistakes get forgotten
Dreams can be remembered.

After your heart breaks,
ears ring and colors fade
and everyone smiling feels like an intruder

And you’re drawn
to the word that came out wrong
as if all along you weren’t ignoring the truth:
you’re a loser.

Let’s go back to Melbourne.
We can start over because
Mistakes get forgotten
Dreams can be remembered.

So go on.
Listen to some stupid song
and pretend to sing along,
and try remembering
what I’d think was smart when I was young,
Where my memory makes me strong
But the record shows me dumb
and breaking everything.
Oh, I paid the price for being wrong.
I’m alone in this mess and a blizzard’s coming on.
I’m alone in this mess and a blizzard’s coming on.

Go back to Melbourne.
We can start over.
Mistakes get forgotten.
Dreams get remembered.

BEATING MY HEAD AGAINST A WALL
Talk talk talk talk talking to you but
You don’t wanna hear me speak.
I’m try try try try trying to give you
The courtesy of listening.

Beat beat beat beat beat
Beating my head against a wall.
Beat beat beat beat beat
Beating my head against a wall.

I know know know know know in my heart that
All I wanna see is peace
But I I I I I wanna fight you
With every little bit of me.

Beat beat beat beat beat
Beating my head against a wall.
Beat beat beat beat beat
Beating my head against a wall.

Beat beat beat beat beat
Beating my head against a wall.
Beat beat beat beat beat
Beating my head against a wall.
Beat beat beat beat beat
Beating my head against a wall.
Beat beat beat beat beat
Beating my head against a wall.

9/10
Every night you go to bed,
you wake up just a little more in pain.
Every time you’re dressing for a sunny day,
The clouds surprise you with rain.
Every cigarette you smoke
‘cause you’re addicted to a quiet source of company.
Every time you told ‘em you were busy
‘cause you’d rather go to sleep.

9 times out of 10 I’ll be stoned on the subway
Reading backlit directives of what I should do
Dodging eye contact with anyone who looks my way.
9 times out of 10 I’ll be thinking of you.

Every little victory don’t matter
if nobody seems to care.
Winning ten bucks on a scratch-off lotto ticket.
The keys you thought disappeared.
Every vacant moment you’ve exhausted all the options
that you thought could fill the hole.
Every star you’re wishing on
just hoping for a little self-control.
Tired of feeling selfish.
Tired of feeling restless.
Tired of feeling down.

9 times out of 10 I’ll be stoned on the subway
Reading backlit directives of what I should do
Dodging eye contact with anyone who looks my way.
9 times out of 10 I’ll be thinking of you.

I’m so out of place when I can’t be with you.
If I don’t see your face It’s almost like I missed you.
Don’t see your face, it’s almost like I missed you.
It’s almost like I miss you.

LET THEM WIN
They can kick us in the knees.
They can push us in the trees again.
They can roll their eyes.
They can criticize, oh yeah.

They can hang us out to dry.
They can profit from their lies.
They can shake our souls.
They can send us home again.

We’re not gonna let them win, oh no.
We’re not gonna let them win, oh no.

They can make us feel afraid
and try to turn it into hate, oh yeah.
They can steal our slice
For the hundredth time
Judge us when we cry
And never empathize
With anyone but themselves.

We’re not gonna let them win, oh no.
We’re not gonna let them win, oh no.

They’re not gonna win
They’re not gonna win
Again
Again
Again
Again

They can sic us on each other
To displace our power,
But it won’t happen again.
Not again.
Not again.
Not again.

They’re not gonna win
They’re not gonna win
Again
Again
Again
Again

We’re not gonna let them win
We’re not gonna let them win
Fuck no.