Saturday, May 31st at Drunken Unicorn
Nobody’s Booking Presents...
Johnny Falloon, Pinkest, and SMALL
Doors at 9:00pm / $15 /21+
Tell Hell I’m Not Coming, the debut full length record self released by Athens, Georgia’s absurdist no-wave rock and rollers Johny Falloon, takes its seriousness unseriously and its unseriousness with reverence. The May 30th release is a sprawling and chaotic ode to the calamity of modern day stimuli and the violence of the day-to-day sensory experience. The eight song production explores today’s ridiculousness with cacophony and poise, taking a brutally raw approach to post-suburban life, white Christian culture, and life’s involuntary marriage to technology. Through a smattering of breakneck drum and bass, simultaneously poignant and ridiculous lyrical subject matter, and off-the-cuff arrangements, Johnny Falloon concoct something that feels like it might fall apart or ignite at any second on Tell Hell I’m Not Coming. In brilliant and devastating fashion, Falloon’s music verges frantically between comedy, drama, and pure lizard-brained survival instinct; the result leaves listeners liable to dance, cry, laugh, and bleed while exploring the dirtiest and most surreal parts of life. Tell Hell I’m Not Coming’s lead single “Dog Flesh” out April 1 packs an action-movie-on-acid punch, jumping between heavy hits and suave grooves in a surreal depiction of masculinity at its most plastic. Rhythmic verses complete with danceable sixteenth note hi-hats and spirited woodblock turn to intense deluges of double-kick, abrasive textures, and fuming vocals on the “Dog Flesh” outro. Complete with foreboding tones and psychopathic lyrical pitherings, Johnny Falloon’s anabolic answer to manhood conjures up superficial machismo ripe to snap at any point.
“Cortisol, Animal Running on Empty Seminal vesicle
Pumping out Single barrel whiskey
You say “drive”, I say “how high”
Will the wheels burn?
Will your mother cry?
From the outside I am alright
From the outside I am alright
And If you asked me, I’d reply
“I can never die, never die””
Edmondson, “Dog Flesh”
Johnny Falloon consists of John Edmondson (Vocals, lyrics), Lowertown live drummer Joseph Clementi (drums), and Mathew Greer (bass, production), first convening in late 2022 to perform several impromptu and off-the-cuff performances. The biblically-named trio continued in this fashion, creating and destroying their sound and performance expectations constantly, a process leaving only the group’s bones behind. The surviving skeleton find’s its strength between Edmondson’s enigmatic and varied vocal delivery, Clementi’s inspired, frantic, and enduring percussion, and Greer’s inventive and unconventional bass lines. Utilizing their “Think, Don’t Think” methodology of improvisation and composition, Johnny Falloon conjure something fresh (and a little bit rotten) in Tell Hell I’m Not Coming. Recorded primarily over three days by Greer at Full Moon Studios outside of Athens, the group found themselves at their most ambitious during the some 13 hour sessions. Taking a handful of favorites from their varied live performances and marrying them with a healthy amount of studio floor invention, the result is an organic, moving, and curious endeavor. Tell Hell I’m Not Coming is due out May 30th, with it’s lead single “Dog Flesh” out April 1st. The group commiserate the single with an April 3rd show at Athens’ Flicker Theatre, and a performance at Milledgeville College radio station WGUR’s Sounds of the Spring festival April 4th.
