Garage pop group Washer just aired their dirty laundry on the internet. All puns aside, the Brooklyn band just premiered “Rot”, their contribution to the upcoming split with Big Ups, coming out on Exploding in Sound next month.
“Rot” opens with a warm chunky jangle. The guitar starts as insouciant as the vocals, but bending strings and a groove that builds on repetition amps up the feels as the song plays on. It’s a narrative song, primarily. The lyrics tell the story of a pretty demanding internal struggle. “Overthink for the worst/morning subway as a hearse/10 by 75 feet to think about your life/for 30 minutes at a time/hostile contact strangers eyes”. That metal tube one gloomy headspace does make. All that self-comparison, isolation, existential confusion, all the stressful makings of a the narrator’s and the title’s fatalistic end. “All I want to do is rot.”
The bouncy grunge track, though, doesn’t leave a bad taste in anyone’s mouth. Instead pulling you (and perhaps Washer themselves) out of that thought cycle and into a more upbeat mood.
Stream “Rot” below. Washer plays in Manhattan tonight, Friday October 10 at a skateboard auction / benefit show for the Harold Hunter Foundation. You can pre-order the Big Ups/Washer split on Bandcamp before it comes out November 18.
