Jack White once famously sang on the White Stripe’s 2001 album White Blood Cells: “When you’re in your little room/And you’re working on something good/But if it’s really good/You’re gonna’ need a bigger room/And when you’re in your bigger room/you might not know what to do/You might have to think of how you got started/sittin’ in your little room.” He then promptly proved himself right by becoming as uninteresting as possible in his solo career; replacing Meg White with an actually polished drummer and a full backing band only had the counter-intuitive effect of making him less adventurous, less experimental, less vital and less imaginative. Turns out he really did need that little room after all.

And now Jeff Rosenstock–whose 2000s Punk band Bomb the Music Industry! helped pioneer the entire concept of free internet releases back when that was still considered a radical idea–has at long last suffered the same fate. After maintaining his vitality and inventiveness far longer into his solo career than Jack White did, it brings me no pleasure to report that last year’s HELLMODE (2023) is his blandest offering to date.

I’d wondered how I could have possibly missed a new Jeff Rosenstock album, until I finally heard it and promptly wondered how anyone could have noticed it in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, the album is never bad per se, and is at least bereft of the cringiest moments that now blight Jack White’s solo discography. But especially after Rosenstock’s last two albums POST- (2018) and NO DREAM (2020) absolutely nailed the mood and zeitgeist of our present historical moment with such astonishing clarity (especially on tracks like “USA” and “Scram!^[1]Which asked “Don’t you wanna get away” right in the middle of the pandemic lockdowns”), HELLMODE by contrast can’t help but feel rather rote and perfunctory, even a little forced. Every fear and anxiety he expresses here—about climate change, commercialism, fascism, pessimism, his own self-doubt—he had already expressed before and expressed better, both with Bomb the Music Industry! and his 2010s solo albums.^[2]Weirdly, this has been a bizarre trend with so many artists who released their most politically charged work towards the end of the last decade—Andrew Bird, Sleater-Kinney, Kishi Bashi, Run The … Continue reading I mean, this man released Vacation for heaven’s sakes! He has for sure done better! But not today. Whereas before he was known for his endless inventiveness, restlessness, and unpredictability, Rosenstock has now settled all-too-comfortably into a formula of his own making. Again, not a bad formula at all! But still a formula.

What’s more, he has apparently fallen into formula for the same reason Jack White did: he moved into a bigger room. Per the album’s own marketing materials, Rosenstock here finally got away from his DIY roots and recorded inside a genuine, professional recording studio for once—in this case, the same one where System of a Down recorded Toxicity, and his hero Brian Wilson recorded Pet Sounds.

But alas, the same fiery ambition that System and Wilson brought to their most famous records didn’t carry over to HELLMODE. With the exception of the near-title-track “HEALMODE”—wherein he is surprised to find himself appreciating the California rainfall after a lifetime of complaining about the rain and cold in Long Island—these tracks exhibit no growth, neither personally, politically, nor artistically. Having access to a full studio ironically only made him less adventurous, less experimental, less vital and less imaginative.^[3]I mean, his only random TV sample this time—a mainstay of his Bomb the Music Industry! output—is a freaking Simpsons quote, for crying out loud! Like Jack White, he needs to get back into his little room.^[4]Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that Rosenstock finally found acclaim and a steady paycheck as the Emmy-nominated composer of “Craig of the Creek,” and the move to California has … Continue reading

But then, don’t we all? At the risk of didacticism, do we not also find ourselves way-too-often settling into anesthetizing routines that, while perhaps good for us professionally, stunt our growth spiritually, and leave us ill-prepared for the challenges of the present moment? Do we not all constantly need to get back to our basics, in order to paradoxically move forwards?

Yet one might here protest, so what if one settles into a comfortable routine spiritually? (You know, like HELLMODE does—which, again, isn’t a bad record! Only unremarkable.) If we perhaps cease to progress, but also don’t really regress either, what’s the big deal? What’s so bad about that? Well, as Hugh Nibley might quip, such is literally the status of being damned; surely you don’t want that, do you? Such really would be a hellmode.