Sometimes the stars align. Sometimes multiple things happen at once. Sometimes Milwaukee has a lot of currently active “bees” bands for some reason. (Collections Of Colonies Of Bees, Vile Bees, The Last Bees.) And, like that last one, sometimes two Milwaukee musical acts with similar names release new records on the same day. And sometimes those records have kinda-sorta similar titles! Huh!
First up, Social Cig! The past few years have been busy ones for Parker Schultz and his self-described “indie-skate-rock” project: multiple records, big local shows, extensive touring. Social Cig’s fourth LP, Patchwork: A Road Dog Story, is a document of those years. It’s an aural travelogue filled with endless shows, endless cities, car troubles, more cities, and, eventually, coming home. “This project reflects 2023-2025 after I quit my full-time office job to pursue my music career,” Schultz writes. “This was a chapter of discovery, growth, failure, determination, and grit. It was a whole lotta work but a whole lotta fun.”
Patchwork: A Road Dog Story is a whole lotta fun, too. Like previous Social Cig records, it’s earnest, funny, sweet, and buoyant; this time around, though, Schultz has a few more hard-won miles under his belt.
Up next, Socially Suspect! The genre-flouting band has always been hard to pin down—a little bit of hard rock, a dash of prog, etc.—but Ghost Stories is really hard to pin down. According to the band, “these are songs written in our parents’ basements in the early 2010s; songs that were rejected by other projects; songs that only ever existed as demos for short-lived bands.” Thus, Ghost Stories is an odds-and-ends EP filled with anthemic prog-rock (“The Original”), noisy funk/fusion (“Caustic Figments”), slightly manic indie (“Drinks & Driveways”), and doom-and-gloom metal (“Empire Of Rust”). Sounds about right for Socially Suspect!
“We’ve pretty much thrown everything at the wall here,” the band says. “We like what stuck.” Same!
Want more Milwaukee Record? Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter and/or support us on Patreon.
RELATED ARTICLES
• Watch Social Cig and Wave Chapelle play a packed, “unplugged” show at Riverwest Radio
• Social Cig closes out 2023 with breezy ‘In The Pocket’ EP
• The Show on Riverwest Radio: Social Cig
• Oh, the places you’ll go with Social Cig’s “Wonderin’”
• Social Cig finds Jurassic love in colorful “Hot Red” video
• Socially Suspect’s “Empire Of Rust” is the feel-bad song of the summer
• Socially Suspect has something to add with cathartic “P.S.”
• Live the glamorous life of a DIY band with the Socially Suspect card game