Since listening to Gobby’s newest release on DFA Records, No Mercy Bad Poet, it’s been genuinely hard for me to press play on anything else. The entirety of No Mercy Bad Poet is at once captivating, emotional, humorous, and intriguing, and putting my finger on what exactly this feeling (collectively) might be is why Gobby has become fetishized in my daily ritual of music listening. Maybe it’s a mutually stigmatized catharsis. Maybe it’s because Gobby went totally vocal on this one. Maybe it’s him. Maybe it’s just me. Hear No Mercy Bad Poet for yourself:
“The Dishwasher” is Gobby’s second video off No Mercy Bad Poet and also the first song on the album that nearly put me into tears. It hits hard, with the dehumanization of Gobby’s voice being virtually stripped, harmonized with animal noises, and noosed by a minor melody and beat. The subtle, robotic narrative voice. That cleverly cryptic “Romance Frog” foreshadow. The video is akin to arcade shooter games like Silent Scope or House of the Dead, as listeners view themselves in a first-person vantage point moving toward a deserted, woodland location, or in a helicopter viewing the White House from above; Gobby as frog prince; a frog-kingdom of black movement in the rain: reality stripped to a core fantasy. A tattered American anthem.
Grip Gobby on tape via DFA or his Bandcamp, and find out what it takes to be a No Mercy Bad Poet, and scope “The Dishwasher” into infinity below:
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