Look Mexico - Uniola

Pitchfork 74

Look Mexico covered Jimmy Eat World’s “A Praise Chorus” at last October’s Fest 14 and basically spoiled the entire plot of their LP Uniola with one lyric: “Are you gonna waste your time thinking how you’ve grown up or how you missed out?” In a word, absolutely. “My 20s were a stressful vacation, most expenses were deferred, costly lessons,” Matt Agrella sighs on “You’re Lucky You Didn’t Lose an Arm,” and yeah, call ‘em First World Problems, but they’re every bit as real as that student loan bill arriving every month, or the quarterly review for a job you barely want to keep.

This isn’t truly heavy stuff, just things that weigh on people. Agrella’s lyrics here are primarily focused on “marriage, kids and life in general,” also likely the top three reasons being in a band becomes impractical in your 30s. It’s safe to assume that Look Mexico did not spend the past five years with a deadly serious and singular dedication to the making of Uniola: Obsessive tunnel vision is an ideal a(and a luxury) of legendary, cool artists and that’s not what Look Mexico are about: Prior to the stylized, gorgeous shot gracing Uniola, every Look Mexico cover could’ve passed for a Torche tour poster and every song title in their decade-deep discography is a line of Vin Diesel film dialogue. Agrella spends long stretches of Uniola having discussions with himself, in a voice that’s somehow more nasal than the one he uses to sing. Look Mexico could reasonably be described as “math-rock” if that term meant the literal class; in “Ok, Ok, I’ll Turn Down the Music,” there’s a TI-83 joke.

But whether Look Mexico come off as lyrically clever or instrumentally proficient, there’s never a sense that they’re trying to make a big deal about it. Uniola is playful, not clever—similarly, it’s not dance music, nor are Look Mexico a jam band, but they do have elements of both. From their earliest days, Look Mexico were an evolutionary spawn from a point where indie rock’s avatar had shifted from the collegiate slacker to a tightly wound, high-achiever who owns their awkwardness. It’s a caffeinated kind of indie rock that works to the rhythm of daily life, seatbelt-constrained air drumming, the tapping of fingers on a desk, feeling the effect of the first cup of coffee in your cubicle.

But Look Mexico have played enough basement and bar gigs to know what works in a small room of drunk people: while “Well, Kansas Ain’t What it Used to Be” constantly shifts tempos and flow, it’s centered by a feel-good riff that rivals anything on the new Diarrhea Planet album. “My Superman Seat-Grab Barrel Roll? I’m Still Working On It” grooves under Agrella’s buried soliloquy about discerning the true meaning of compassion before exploding into a forthright, cathartic call-and-response that could be a sequel to the Dismemberment Plan’s chest-beating “What Do You Want Me To Say.”

The lyrics are full of soul-searching, but not in a painful or self-excavating way. Agrella sees regret as a natural, inescapable part of living that can be the source of purposeful introspection rather than morbid reflection and self-pity. “You haven’t done all you wanted to/Now you think it’s abandoned you,” Agrella sings on “I Even Got This Scar to Match” before his bandmates shout away any self-doubt: “You are just the same!” Thinking about how you’ve grown up or missed out isn’t necessarily time wasted.

As with Braid’s 2014 comeback No Coast and Mock Orange’s Put the Kid on the Sleepy Horse, Uniola is the work of a band that’s been around long enough to have some perspective. Look Mexico have returned to Tiny Engines eight years after their Gasp Asp 7” served as the label’s inaugural release. It was only in 2014 when the Carolina imprint started to make a national impact with the releases from Dikembe, Beach Slang, Cayetana, Somos and the Hotelier’s classic Home, Like Noplace Is There. Look Mexico have also frequently appeared at the Fest in nearby Gainesville, which has evolved from a local phenomenon to a definitive, renowned locus for divergent variants of popular punk rock that generally went ignored by mainstream media until recently.

Even with the increased visibility of their scene, Look Mexico know damn well they’ve dedicated themselves to a style of music that has made nobody rich and definitely hasn’t made anyone look cool. It’s easy to be dedicated to craft when it’s the only thing, but to paraphrase the longest title here (taken from the $2.6 million-grossing Find Me Guilty), Uniola is about recognizing where your loyalties lie under difficult circumstances. “Sometimes perseverance barely even makes a sound underground,” Agrella sings on “We Are Groot.” And that’s fine with Look Mexico, as long as someone is listening.