“Money” by Money: EP Review
THE OKLAHOMA CITY ALT-ROCK BAND ATTEMPTS A GOOD OL’ GRUNGE REVIVAL
The eponymous debut EP by Oklahoma City alt-rock band Money rips. Hard. Combining the dynamics and ethos of grunge with the sonic sensibilities of shoegaze and the slightest bit of sparkle, Money is the bastard child of the last 30 years of heavy alternative rock. And what a beautiful bastard! Welcome in a wicker basket on my doorstep anytime.
The standout of this four-song offering is “Fuct,” the EP’s opening track, wherein a glitzy, understated intro yields to grimily powerful guitars and infectious drumming. Here, and through the whole effort, laconic, reverb-laden vocals nestle into the surrounding noise; laconic, though, is not to say vacuous or trivial. True to genre, Money’s lyrics are rife with disaffection (consider: “Face down, it doesn’t matter now / Strung out, I’m just floating down,” off “Down4ever”), but they avoid the trap of solipsism that good – even great – artists of this general persuasion often succumb to. “Budd Dwyer,” presumably a reference to that fascinating and disturbing chapter of Pennsylvania state politics, and “Slower Hell,” which opens with audio from a Heaven’s Gate recruitment video, demonstrate an attention to the anxieties and paranoias that permeate American life in this most neurotic of eras.
As our collective rabid appetite for nostalgia races through the 80s and into the 90s, it is worth considering what comes next. In the aftermath of crypto giant FTX’s sudden, absurd implosion and with Meta stock in free fall (at the time of writing—who knows whether the vicissitudes of the market will cooperate), one might be reminded of how the dot-com bubble ushered in the aughts. Maybe we’ll get a chance to revise some of the worst mistakes of that time. No, not the War on Terror, or the expansion of the surveillance state, or Bush v. Gore, or any number of execrable cultural trends. But just maybe we’ll get a good grunge revival, one that allows some glittering light into what would otherwise be a rather depressing, sludgy puddle of mud(d). That’s what Money’s going for, anyway. Listen to them try.