J. Robbins – “Un-Becoming”

Janet Morgan

J. Robbins – “Un-Becoming”

Janet Morgan

J. Robbins is about to be a very busy man. Back in the ’90s, Robbins led Jawbox, the great DC post-hardcore band. Next month, the reunited Jawbox will head out on tour for the first time in 22 years. Before that, though, Robbins will release Un-becoming, his first-ever solo album. Since Jawbox broke up in 1997, Robbins has produced a whole lot of great underground rock records, and he’s led bands like Burning Airlines and Office Of Future Plans, but he’s never gone solo, and that’s changing now. We already posted “Soldier On,” a song from Robbins’ album Un-becoming. And now, Robbins has also shared the title track.

“Un-becoming” song is as anthemic as “Soldier On,” but it’s also a weirder, more intense song. The new track is heavy on the off-kilter dynamics that Robbins helped to pioneer with Jawbox, and it’s got a piano line that sounds like a half-broken music box and a noisy, molten guitar solo. The song tackles our rotten new era, rhyming “gilded age” with “decades of decay.”

Talking to New Noise, Robbins says, “The lyric in that song is a little bit about the unravelling that’s going on right now. The unraveling of society and the seeming, sort of time travel back to the gilded age. The depression era.” Listen below.

Un-becoming is out 5/31 on Dischord.

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