Lost in the world: five years of chrome neon jesus

By Abena Oppon

At the time of their first album’s release, Los Angeles-based Teenage Wrist were a three-piece band. Five years and a sophomore effort later, they are down their former lead singer, bassist, and songwriter, Kamtin Mohager. The split was amicable: speaking to Buzzbands.la, now-frontman Marshall Gallagher explained that Mohager could not commit to touring in addition to having a day job and a family. Independently, Mohager continues to release music as The Chain Gang of 1974 and Heavenward. 

Chrome Neon Jesus is a standard blend of grunge and shoegaze. But the album’s enduring magic lies in its atypical parting message of tentative hope, and the band’s commitment to progression despite change. These ideals are refreshing in a genre that is intrinsically entrenched in the concept of nihilistic stagnation. 

The album contains a key feature of grunge that I like to call “Grunge Futility”:  an existentialist perspective in which everything, in one way or another, means nothing. The first track exhibits this feeling, foregrounding a lingering, disquieting sense of loneliness in its liminality and apathetic lyrics: “this town is dead / there’s nothing left to give”. The obsolescence of this mise-en-scène denies the speaker a chance for companionship, their life so empty that “the ghost in the machine” they call upon, a kind implausible techno-religious companion, is the only one who can stop them being “forever alone”. 

Track two, ‘Dweeb’, is an exhibition of textural delight. The other side of Grunge Futility is lyrics that mean little-to-nothing. In the genre’s magnum opus, Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, the lyrics are the least significant part of the song (incidentally, I think this is what makes most covers of it fail, as most find it essential to drastically change its style and give the words more focus). Like any decent shoegaze number, ‘Dweeb’ coaxes the listener to drown themselves in the tightly interlaced guitar melodies and stop thinking as the song blasts them with heavy drums and the reverberant refrain of “I do”.

A hallmark of Teenage Wrist’s music is excellent guitar solos, and while almost every song on this album has one, the solo on ‘Swallow’ is by far the most impressive, the frenzied scales underpinning frustration. Although the lyrics, about accepting the fact that life will grind you down, are atypically sensical, classic ‘90s oxymorons (“the long road to transience”) prevail to undermine these stable foundations. 

Following ‘Swallow’, fear of failure perpetuates through ‘Stoned, Alone’. What surfaces on the band’s most popular song is a lack of connection. The speaker wants love, trust, and safety, yet they languish in their inability to do anything but get high alone, paralysed by the infinite trials of life and industry explored in the next track, ‘Supermachine’.

‘Supermachine’ is a sonic departure. Gallagher swaps his electric guitar for an acoustic underneath harsh stabs of white noise that hearken back to a time of more wieldy technology; it is as if the ‘Supermachine’ of the global economy is a literal supercomputer with a CRT screen, running on dial-up. 

Teenage Wrist are, by self-admission, not a popular band. They are not invincible rocker-philosophers. Unlike critical darlings who spout fatalism from a cushion of recognition and commercial success, they are in the exact conundrum they lament. Most artists, especially in this genre, battle bureaucracy and financial constraints. For most touring musicians there is no glory. As shown by Mohager’s departure from the band (despite continuing the sound with Heavenward’s music, to which Gallagher also contributes) the job is as taxing as any other.

A low-passed intro slides into a cruising riff that returns the record to its punchy heights on ‘Black Flamingo’, a song akin to an episode of manic delusion. Its frantic beat to explosive rhythms fight against the previous groundwork laid, blocking out harsh realities with suffocating force. Grunge requires a level of passivity, a resignation to allowing life to do its worst as it passes over you. Consequently, the speaker’s active nature in this song, begging anyone to “look their way”, adds to its off-kilter, uncharacteristic feel.

‘Kibo’ abruptly fades in and out, like walking into the wrong room at a party, or being unceremoniously put on hold. It serves as an ethereal palate cleanser as the record transitions to side B. 

‘Rollerblades’ is relatively more grounded, and the heavy influence from classic rock connects the song to its worldly themes. As in ‘Stoned, Alone’, the speaker blames others for their untethered-ness, this time focusing on their previous significant other. 

In the face of navel-gazing self-sabotage, the lyrics of ‘Daylight’ ring suitably hollow. Rather than curling inwards, the speaker becomes domineering; the kind of overbearing partner that demands the impossible from their ideal girlfriend. This results in a performatively masculine and uncomfortable attempt at being less existentially-occupied and a little more “normal”. With the chorus comes a downward key change, and the trajectory of their relationship is unveiled: “we’re ripeness sliding into rot”. This phrase encapsulates the ephemeral glow of the veritable grunge gods, so many of whom are thus memorialised within their work. In grunge, nothing good lasts forever, least of all life. 

‘Spit’ exemplifies this impermanence. Gallagher contemplates how easily his flight could crash, placing his life at the mercy of “awful, trembling hand of God”. The existential Grunge Futility is coupled with introspection; he uses the precariousness of uncertain death to discern what matters most, if anything at all. As the four-chord loop continues, feedback overcomes the track, as if the plane itself has gone down and the radio receiver gone dead. 

The last track, ‘Waitress’ is thematically the most important. It distinguishes both Chrome Neon Jesus and Teenage Wrist as an act from the pessimism that seeps through grunge. It bridges between the art and the artist, and highlights the pragmatic optimism that exists in both. 

The motif of blueness runs through the album. Everyone holds sadness within them. But ‘Waitress’ illuminates the conditions of artistry. It is a selfish endeavour but is still constrained by caveats. No artist is “free”. And yet, the song’s pivot towards a “breakthrough” says there is still freedom in living through the path you are being taken on. 

The lives of ‘90s grunge musicians often exemplified the deep resignation found in their art. ‘Waitress’ refutes this. Grunge does not have to be a state of mind. Real life can hold the solution to teenage quandaries: just see the happy middle ground that the current and former members of Teenage Wrist have found in their side projects. The meandering solo and faded ending of ‘Waitress’ reflect how life ticks on alongside our aspirations and expectations.

It is difficult to put into words the extent of how I feel about this album. When I first fell in love with it, much like the predecessors that Teenage Wrist diverge from, I wasn’t having a great time in life. The grunge trappings of Chrome Neon Jesus provided refuge to a sixteen-year-old lost in the world. But now, at least for a few moments, I can appreciate the closing words of ‘Waitress’: “go home to the teenage you, tell you not to worry / stumble through the careless evenings where you dream of who you'll be”.