Career Day
Photo Credit 📷 : @askaboutmyfilms
It's becoming harder and harder to keep it in. This growling, angry, sad and despondent thing that is occupying me. The state of the world is sick and we all know, yet a rent payment only knows indifference, a job can only yawn in our face and the grocery register stares blankly while the total bill keeps climbing and climbing. This is a lonely feeling, even while I know so many of my peers, neighbors and friends are feeling the same way. Many of these woes and pains find themselves named and cursed on Career Day’s latest EP I’ll Always Be This, and with an even stronger grasp on melody and lyricism that the band has clearly honed since 2022’s Where We’ve Always Been, they plumb the depths of these dark modern times we find ourselves in.
Sickened by this weekly dance / To keep a roof over my head / Just to tell a therapist/ About the place that’s paying for it. Fuck me man. These lines have been rattling in my head since I first heard them. And where is the lie? Even being flanked by sick rhythms, tasty riffs and infectious drumming can’t pull away the gnawing reality of it, which is where “Team Player” and largely by extension Career Day pull off their deftest tricks on the EP. Pogo-able moments with lyricism that elicits a powerful understanding.
The EP single, “Rumors of My Wellness” immediately gets the heels rocking and the body swaying. A despondency that greets you with a sobering reality is certainly a difficulty that anyone who’s tried to layoff of a familiar vice can identify with. Here it feels huge, anthemic even to make amends with who you are, as you are finding the rope to pull yourself forward. Heady fretwork and colossal drumming bind “Last Thread” tightly, an undisputed toe tapper, couches pinpricks of hope in the familiar darkness found on the project. The closing track “One Bad Day” hits all too close to home while maintaining its presence as an absolutely massive track. Eager moments of finger pointing and dogpiles are inevitable, as the track careens and crashes with its sickeningly saccharine hooks and irresistible chorus of One bad day is all it takes.
Career Day carry all the hallmarks of a pop punk band. But they’re a pop punk band in the way that bands like Comadre were a punk band, or that Dawn Ray’d were a metal band. The simplicity of a moniker, an ascription of a sound that is both complex and nuanced and richly patchworked with so much history and influence that it can almost be a sort of inside joke to call them such. The band self-describes as emo punk, and as clearly shown throughout “I’ll Always Be This”, the emo aspects are there and the punk energy too.
What sets Career Day truly apart is how they take a sound that is as infectious as it is fun and make it real. “I’ll Always Be This” depressed me upon my first listen. It isn’t chock full of lighthearted and aimless lyricism that could be found in other poppier works within the genre. However, as I looped the EP again, washing dishes, driving my car to and from work and even while fulfilling my monotonous tasks that ensure a paycheck so that I can survive and provide, a truth became more and more clear. Yes, we live in a pretty rough moment in history and yes another few dollars are definitely more than deserved by me and so many others, but no matter what I’m doing or how I’m doing it I can only be who I am as I do it and ultimately, that’s a beautiful thing. I’ll Always Be This is now streaming everywhere.
Follow them on Bandcamp : Career Day
Writer : @letsgetpivotal
Editor : @just_reidz
09/27/24
