Local Review: Lounge Monkey — An Ode to Self Sabotage

Lounge Monkey
An Ode to Self Sabotage
Self-Released
Street: 11.28.2025
Lounge Monkey = Sonic Youth + Pixies + Thornhill

Lounge Monkey has made an honest man out of me. But before you get excited, know that I’m talking about my brief review of their single, “Fields of Indigo,” which appeared in SLUG’s Local Music Singles Roundup this past October. While my exact words at the time were, “There’s more to come,” there was no way for me to be certain the band had more music already glistening on the horizon. To my infinite gratefulness, Lounge Monkey fulfilled my promise and confirmed my hunch, releasing their first full-length album, An Ode to Self Sabotage, just about one month later, on Black Friday.

According to a post on the band’s Instagram, An Ode to Self Sabotage was a year and a half in the making. They say it heralds the new psychedelic-grunge sound they perfected over that time, a period which also saw several changes to their lineup, delaying the album’s release. Whether through this changing of the guard or sheer inspirational drift, their sound has become darker and more emotional. Their website self-description says they’ve “shifted focus from easy to swallow indie to innovative rock/psych grunge in the past couple of years.” From listening to their mid-2024 EP, Post 1999 Aliens, which sounds like Tame Impala had a baby with The Kooks — who then married a member of The Smashing Pumpkins and had another baby — it seems evident that before, they were like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon given to bursting. When it eventually does, it creates a spectacle, maybe even blocking out the sun for a moment, letting darkness crash down upon our naivete for enough time to make some people rethink their lives.

While Lounge Monkey’s past music is still high-quality, albeit lighter, indie rock attempting to fit into a more digestible form, I appreciate that they went through the paces of growth despite the potential confusion and heartbreak that comes with the kind of forced evolution and layer-shedding they likely experienced. Now, nearing the end of 2025, they can finally be a confident, “born-again,” five-piece rock band with clear direction and purpose, unleashed from their balloon handlers, insecurities and inhibitions.

This type of maturation sounds messy, but An Ode to Self Sabotage acts as a snapshot of Lounge Monkey’s last year and a half, and it’s anything but disorganized. While you hear them experimenting with their craft on almost every track, they’re able to establish an anchor in their core, distorted sound, which is the static-heavy style of someone who listens to a lot of Sonic Youth mixed with strained vocals in the vein of Black Francis. From the opening track, “Go Live With Your Own Kind,” lead singer and drummer Gabriel Rietzsch sounds justified in an anger that he’s tired of aiming inwards. Between earwormy rock melodies and electric grunge riffs from guitarist Kamden Gill, Rietzsch howls in agony into the unforgiving void. He would seriously give Ted Nugent’s cat-scratch scream a run for its money, most acutely in his harsh crooning near the end of the track “Nowhere Land.”

Much of the album is awash in an ominous and introspective mood. “When Leaves Fall Down,” “Fingertips” and “Strange Things Are Happening” are all particularly well-suited for prowling a shadowy graveyard at night, headphones blasting and hood turned up. At times though, the band breaks this nightmare space open with the pointed rebellion of punk and garage-y alt-rock, like on “Slowly, Lovely,” and the jumpy, pop-punk “Girl’s Gone Quiet.” They also have a trailblazing spirit that shows itself during their instrumental sections throughout, providing contrast and a kind of musical depth that straightforward, to-the-letter rock ‘n’ roll can never achieve.

When I first heard “Fields of Indigo,” I was impressed by what I called Lounge Monkey’s “explorative” approach, and how at one stage they veer from their base indie-rock tone with a fully psychedelic instrumental part, adding extra sparkling hues to the middle of the song and letting the tune breathe. After listening to how they employ this same inspired noodling throughout the album, their skill with connecting “divergent ideas” becomes even clearer. At any moment they’re liable to launch skyward or sideways from the given template of their rock inspirations, often assuming an amorphous curiosity within the bridge, evidenced again on the last song, “(Hidden Track).”

Whether in the overall noise factor, Rietzsch’s howling or the ripping instrumentals, you start to get a sense of Lounge Monkey’s awareness that there’s a lot to be angry about as a young person these days. Before the end, “Supernova” and “Thoughts Boil Over” unleash this bristling emotionality of theirs entirely. Both are dramatic, latter-album odes that open with guitar strumming, sounding like Oasis or acoustic Green Day, then transform into soaring, cinematic ballads. “Thoughts Boil Over” in particular contains everything that’s unique and diverse about Lounge Monkey: starting with a Beatles-esque melody, the song grows into a piano-led epic, Rietzsch’s voice harmonizing with others and finally sounding earnest, sincere and free from his constraints. —Kyle Forbush

 

Read other album reviews by Contributing Writer Kyle Forbush:
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