Ask me tomorrow what I love most about Sunset Pig’s new single “Highway Sign” and I’ll likely have a different answer. Yesterday it was the apocalyptic atmosphere that accompanies the song’s barreling forward thrust. The day prior it was the underlying menance lurking within Karl Green’s droll poetry. In this particular moment, however, it’s the casual cool the band evokes to help calm the track’s quiet sense of terror. Road songs generally tap into a certain mythos—a yearning for freedom, escape, and self-discovery. Within the claustrophobic contours of Sunset Pig’s countryfied post-punk, however, lies a far darker reality. It’s the grim realization that modern life is a hellscape and “cheering with the loser’s pom-poms” is better than embracing the bloodsucking charade.
As the first single from Sunset Pig’s forthcoming debut, Free Songs, “Highway Sign” paints a stark yet mesmerizing portrait. Anchored by a taut, propulsive bassline, the track rumbles along insistently, twangy guitars reverberating like the glare of oncoming headlights. But it’s Green’s potent lyrics that shape the landscape, revealing the ugly underside of a noisy, belligerent America that leaves the protagonist “pining for isolation” and “yearning for a slice of quiet.”
That aura of foreboding continues into “Free Time,” a non-album B-side that makes up the second half of the single. Although the track strides forward with purpose and intensity, the breezy rhythms and wry wordplay can’t cover the despair and desperation hiding beneath the surface. This is a world where the search for love is a “fairytale trapdoor contest,” where free time is a “luxury liner” and expendable income is a myth. But despite these sobering admissions, the song never feels downtrodden. Instead, the protagonist declares “crown me the devil, I’ll dress it up nicely” as the band’s spry instrumental kicks up a cloud of dust.
The end result here is both caustic and illuminating, pointed and impactful. Sunset Pig may stare down some uncomfortable truths on these two tracks, but they do so with steely confidence and a defiant gleam in their eyes.
Listen below.
Recorded in January of 2020 by Nate Wedan at the now defunct Electric Nature Studios in Nashville, TN, Free Songs will see its release in the spring of 2023. The album was mixed and mastered by Benjamin Price at Studilaroche in Decatur, GA.
Sunset Pig will perform on Thu., Sept. 22 at the EARL in support of VV Lightbody and Rose Hotel. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Admission is $15. 21+ to enter.
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