Reclined in the driver’s seat of a crashed sedan, his head wound gushing between drags of a cigarette, Jeremy Rogers sings, “Where are your friends?” The moment lingers betwixt the careless wilds of youth and the oppressive reality of adulthood.
Welcome to “Youth Is Breaking,” a grimy, sexy portrait of night life directed by filmmaker Zachary Parks and soundtracked by fellow Austinites Buhu, an electronically addled guitar/drums/synth trio unifying the disparate disciplines of art rock and party rock. Rogers, the colorful group’s guitarist and vocalist, reveals he’s singing about the complicated relationships between twentysomethings.
“It’s about crossing that age line where you can’t handle your own bullshit anymore or anyone else’s. It’s about fighting growing up and being stuck in a mundane party culture,” he offered. “It’s about internal, external, and existential conflict, and dealing with that conflict in an incredibly freshman/sophomoric way. The poetry is bad, the characters are bad, and the prose is worse, but there’s somehow an inherent truth.
“It’s a flash portrait of what it means to have anything and everything you need but you are too dumb and young to access or appreciate it until you grow up a bit.”
Throughout “Youth Is Breaking,” a sequence of scenesters pose, kiss, and party in vignettes resembling the raw, uncomfortable sexuality and lo-fi glamour of American Apparel advertisements. Those unfiltered depictions of the young and reckless include a provocative clip from Dozen Street owner/performance artist Madi Distefano and a stare-down from Sip Sip’s Adrian Audain. The scenes, filmed at the home of producer Wayne Dalchau, resulted from Parks sitting actors down and instructing them to act weird.
“The randomness Zach demanded really fed into the chaotic portrayal of all these characters,” wrote Rogers. “It’s like a strange party where something is off and it’s not all the fun parts. It’s the human parts.”
“Youth Is Breaking,” riding a memorable guitar riff from Rogers, plus buoyant grooves from drummer Clellan Hyatt and the synth splatter of Juan Pablo Mendez, peels from Buhu’s debut 2016 full-length, Relationshapes. The group puts the album to bed Jan. 21 at Swan Dive, playing it live for the last time.
Behold “Youth Is Breaking”
This article appears in November 11 • 2016.