Music: WIMPS Should Be Your Punk Soundtrack

February 07, 2022

Music: WIMPS Should Be Your Punk Soundtrack

L.G. Catbird

WIMPS formed in Seattle in 2012, roughly 15-20 years too late to join the city's infamous grunge scene. But their unique take on 3-chord punk comes with a kind of updated grunge attitude—a grounded balance of cynicism and empathy for the disaffected and disillusioned alike.

Though they eschew politics in their writing, at least on the surface, this 3-piece made up of Dave Ramm, Rachel Ratner, and Matt Nyce make a statement about life in our postmodern dumpster-fire of a society with almost every song. Yet they do so with an energy that takes you back to the turn of the century, to a near-empty Tully's Coffee on a drizzly afternoon, on your lunch break, with one working earbud connected to your portable CD player.

Their decidedly Gen-X worldview is perhaps nowhere more evident than on the titular track of their most recent LP, 2016's Garbage People (Kill Rock Stars). In a 2018 Bandcamp feature, Ratner said of writing the song, “I was thinking a lot about environmental stuff, and how all of our achievements are going to pale in comparison to all the garbage we’re going to leave behind as humans. It’s a love song to a garbage man; he’s the person taking away our garbage.”

But don't tune out, Millennials and Zoomers; they speak your language. 2013's Repeat (Kill Rock Stars) is prescient of the gaslighting and alienation the working class is facing in 2022. There is even a song on it called "Quit Your Job," with a chorus worthy of r/anti-work: "Starin', down the clock/ Oh no, they don't pay you enough," Ratner sings. On the same record, "Time Suck" speaks to the easily-bored introverts many of us have become since the pandemic started. In fact, much of their music should be extremely relatable to anyone neurodivergent, anyone socially isolated, and more broadly to anyone who feels like their generation got a screw-job. It's music that commiserates with you when your life seems "stuck on repeat."

In 2015, the band released their middle child, possibly the most interesting of their LPs, Suitcase (Kill Rock Stars). Between the rather bittersweet, Buzzcocks-like compassion of "Take It As It Comes" (on which Ratner flatly repeats "I/ Know/ This/ Sucks") and the trope-challenging first-person narrative of "the old guy at the party" on the unusually long track "Old Guy" ("No, I'm not your dad/ No, I'm not the landlord shutting you down"), Suitcase is a great introduction to the emotional intelligence and imagination Wimps weave into what sound at first listen like simple, understated bangers.

In a 2018 interview for INLANDER Spokane, Ratner explained, "That first one was more lo-fi, punk and fun. On the second one I was trying to be a better songwriter maybe ... sort of at the expense of some of the faster, fun punk."

Well, we think it's plenty fun. Give it a listen and we think you'll agree. ▢