Let Me Do One More, the latest record from LA-based Illuminati Hotties comes off in many ways like a sigh of relief from founding member Sarah Tudzin. After a record deal gone afoul that resulted in the release of a mixtape defiantly entitled Free I.H., Tudzin signed to Hopeless Records and opened up her own imprint, and got to make the album she’d presumably been waiting to release for years, on her own terms. An industry veteran with an impressive, lengthy list of production, engineering, and mixing credits to her name, Tudzin started releasing music under the IH name in 2017 and the band put out their debut the following year, and traffic in a blend of indie rock and punk sensibilities that they’ve come to call “tenderpunk” – and it’s a fitting label. The band’s sound explodes with the raw energy of punk music inflected with a bit of manic indie spark, but also encompasses a softer edge that peeks through in certain moments.
That raw energy, though, is the first and most defining feature of both IH’s recorded music and live performances. It’s utterly infectious and LMDOM is the finest example yet of the band’s capabilities at crafting loud, hooky tracks destined to be sung along to by sold-out audiences across the world, and that’s exactly what Illuminati Hotties arrive to on a frigid evening in Cambridge, MA. A classic four-piece on the stage, the band open with a cut from, of all things, their mixtape – it’s scarcely a minute in length, but its presence is surprising given the circumstances surrounding its release and the band’s subsequent liberation. But it’s an undeniably excellent piece of music: fuzzy guitars, oddly syncopated, with a scattershot vocal delivery from Tudzin that threatens to explode but cuts off before it can. And how many records can claim to open with a line as brazenly hilarious as, “Let’s smash to a podcast”? Like her contemporary Bartees Strange – who not incidentally remixed one of the band’s songs recently – Tudzin’s experience behind the mixing board pays dividends across the band’s discography, the kind of pristine result that can only spawn from the same person writing, playing, and perfecting the music before it’s sent out into the world, no translation of her intent to another person required.
It’s no surprise that the tracks from LMDOM are the centerpiece of the band’s night in Cambridge as they progress through the set – they’re longer, much more fully realized, and often bristle with a sardonic joy as Tudzin accentuates her voice in every direction to send up a varied cast of characters. The shining highlight of this is ‘MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA’ – yes, that is the actual song title, and there’s no way to further articulate how it’s pronounced without simply listening to it sung. It begins with atonal guitars and then quickly barrels, occasionally accompanied by what sound like whirring slot machines, through a host of personalities and voices like the listener is speeding on rails through a haunted house of tech- or finance-bro caricatures, all endlessly sloganeering. In the band’s native LA, it’s entirely too easy to imagine the real-life inspiration for such banality, and Tudzin also crafts a similar kind of pastiche in ‘Joni: LA’s #1 Health Goth’, which shifts dramatically in tempo twice a minute.
The philosophy of the album is emblazoned on a banner behind the band: “ALL RIP’RS”, stylized like the logo from Top Gun. It’s a line from another album standout, ‘Pool Hopping’, which was released mid- 2021 at a time when the sun was coming out, temperatures were perfect for swimming, and the situation globally looked, for the first time, a bit optimistic under that summer sun. IH made a bonafide anthem for the time, perfectly encapsulating that exact blend of uncertainty and possibility. Even in the dead of winter the crowd excitedly sings all the gang vocals back as Tudzin leans over the lip of the stage, resting precariously on a monitor.
As high-energy as LMDOM tends to be, however, there are points in the night where the “tender” portion of “tenderpunk” takes over as the driving force. ‘MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA’ tweaks consumer culture through the lens of outsized humor, but ‘Threatening Each Other re: Capitalism’ finds Tudzin in a much wearier state. In a similar interplay between two sides of the emotional coin, ‘The Sway’ is a plaintive foil to the unsteady-yet-fun relationship described in ‘Pool Hopping’, where Tudzin and another seem to lean in or out at just the wrong time, never getting on the same page. And ‘Growth’, the final song of the band’s main set, which she plays alone, is a “ripper” of an entirely different breed in the way it tears out a listener’s heart.
It’s bleak, specific, deeply personal. Tudzin recounts a relationship where she felt like a fancy piece of property, and to add insult to injury the onlookers couldn’t even be bothered to be impressed. In the third verse, she confesses: “Each time I come home, I still look for my dog. / it’s a force of old habit, it’s not that I forgot”. Even though she’s performed it dozens or perhaps even hundreds of times, there’s a moment in the pause before the next couplet where the infectious joy that she exudes for the rest of the evening is gone for a moment. Things like that are impossible to access without feeling that trademark lump in the back of your throat, and the room is silent. It’s far and away the loneliest song on the record, but it’s a massive credit to Tudzin’s ability as a songwriter that this album contains some of the most upbeat, energetic songs to come out in 2021, and also one of its most somber that hits home in equal measure.
The night comes to a close with ‘You’re Better Than Ever’, the only nod to the band’s first record for the evening. In this tale from the POV of a jilted lover, crunchy bass riffs carry the song through its verses but give way to soaring surf-esque guitars and “ah-ah-ah” backing vocals in choruses, an unlikely but expertly-executed choice, the kind of thing that would only become more prominent across IH’s music as time went on. It’s a snapshot into the past of a band’s potential, potential that would be realized in staunch defiance of difficult circumstances. The band have already released a new rip’r in 2022, entitled ‘Sandwich Sharer’ – and with Tudzin and co. free to chart their own course, the prospect of new IH material is more exciting than ever.
Photos and Review by Collin Heroux