Track Review: Total Revenge — “The Fair”
Posted: by The Editor
Photo by Grace Woodward
Los Angeles-based songwriter Ryan Pollie has spent the past couple of years experimenting with his music and trying on all different kinds of styles. I first discovered him back in 2014 when he was releasing languid bedroom pop as Los Angeles Police Department. After two records under that moniker he eventually switched to his real name in 2019 for a self-titled full length, a meditative collection of folk songs that found him drawing inspiration from singer-songwriters of the ‘70’s.
His latest left-turn finds Pollie returning to the pop-punk music of his youth and “The Fair,” his first single as Total Revenge, is a fuzzy cacophony of sounds. It’s a complete 180 from the polished production of his previous works—on Total Revenge syrupy melodies collide against blown out guitars, and the end result sounds like Guided by Voices on a bad acid trip.
About the song, Pollie said “I grew up on punk and kind of transitioned into being a hippie rocker later in high school. This project was so cathartic for me to get in touch with my inner middle schooler again and write some songs in the tradition of the first songs I ever wrote. It was nostalgic and freeing for me and the way I recorded it transformed it into something different than a traditional pop-punk record.”
Total Revenge is out 9/4 via Forged Artifacts
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Michael Brooks // @nomichaelbrooks
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