Sickpay

As anyone who's heard the proliferation of country trap can attest, the rules maintaining the lines between genres have truly disappeared. One can argue that music no longer grows when there is only genre inbreeding. It takes this diversity to birth new forms and new styles and this can lead to some interesting hybrids. For every labradoodle, there's a rat with a human ear growing out of it. At the end of the day, experimentation has to be embraced if only for its own sake.

Sickpay, the punk-guided, grunge-pop fusion project courtesy of multi-faceted Brooklyn artist Mike Birnbaum takes fuzzed-out raucous guitars and mixes them with pop-punk drums and catchy vocal melodies. His latest five-track EP Pureocracy runs the gamut from the post-grunge apex alternative hits that emerged in the latter half of the 90s to a new form of post-punk in the vein of Idles with the odd addition of heavily autotuned vocals. The result is an EP that demands you stop to listen as Birnbaum cooks up a brand new recipe for gumbo.

The opener and lead single 'Quiet As a Joke' is a descendent of that earnestly strummed, distorted hook-based alternative that filled the radio waves and movie soundtracks in the years following Cobain's demise. There's a kinship to The Flys' 'Got You Where I Want You' here. Birnbaum's vocals are effortlessly catchy in their imperfect croon and the lead guitar's simple hook is extremely effective. Steady, thickly overdriven guitar is honking with beefy midrange. A classic alternative hit as effectual now as it would have been 25 years ago.

'Devoid' leans on a Pixies-style fuzzed-out half-time that also recalls the tenants of shoegaze. 'How Many Times' comes as a shock as Birnbaum hits the autotune hard over a pop-punk base. The use of the plugin as an effect may be widely accepted in heavily-produced pop and rap music but the sharply edited vocals are jarring in this context. 'Generosity' hits harder with a chunky bass riff and even chunkier guitar breaks over and energetic post-punk drums. The IDLES-style track still employs cartoonish autotune but now, perhaps since you're expecting it, it doesn't throw you off as much. The closer 'Sick Pay' is a ska-spirited romp with Birnbaum's gravelly voice trading off from speedy verses to sing-along choruses.

Pureocracy casts a wide net finding success with well-written hooks and taking chances by bringing new effects into genres that are notoriously obstinate to penetration from the pop mainstream. Birnbaum surfs the break between alternative and punk while experimenting with autotune with questionable results. Those tracks will surely be divisive between the generation gap.