Chuck SJ – Sink Your Teeth In (self-released)

Chuck SJ – Sink Your Teeth In (self-released)

BYENARY member Chuck SJ moves toward the release of a fourth album with latest single Sink Your Teeth In, full of atmospherics and reflection on the digital era. 

Chuck SJ Sink Your Teeth In artwork by Lisa RoseArtist: Chuck SJ
Track: Sink Your Teeth In
Label: self-released
Released: 28 December 2020
Find it: Spotify | Bandcamp

With Country-infused cinematic sweeps of alt-rock guitars and creeping ticking rhythms shot through with devastatingly spiked electronics the new single, Sink Your Teeth In, by Chuck SJ is a masterpiece of blended genres with introspective and intimate lyrics.

Taken from their forthcoming fourth (or twelfth depending how you cut it) album the track builds over its five and a half minutes from sparse and carefully picked notes twinned with glitched electronica through keening guitar interludes and a half-spoken vocal to dark space made claustrophobic with repeating hard truths.

‘I can’t feel my body anymore / I’m just a glitch’

In a track preview for Get In Her Ears Chuck SJ (also of BYENARY) said of the track it was about, “intimacy, dissociation and the way in which this dystopian digital era manipulates the psyche” and that can be felt intensely through the track both melodically and lyrically. Repeat listens strike home just how accurately disassociation has been captured here. And on a track full of duality it is throughout remote and pulsing with isolation while at the same time an inescapable internal-feeling sound.

Recorded during lockdown at a cabin in the woods the track is also a marker of self-taught recording and production – although it has come from a place of DIY the track is far from the lo-fi aesthetic most commonly associated with the approach. If this is an indicator of how the album is sounding we’re in for something very special indeed.

Sink Your Teeth In by Chuck SJ is taken from forthcoming album, Resist.Recharge.Revolt, due in Spring 2021. You can support this release through Patreon.

Find Chuck SJ: Facebook | Instagram | Bandcamp | Spotify
Artwork: Lisa Rose

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We took a hiatus at the end of 2020 but put together a list of our Top 40 albums from the year – check it out here.

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Sarah Lay

Sarah Lay is editor of Popoptica.
A long-standing music journalist she's also co-founder of independent record label Reckless Yes, an author of novels, and when not messing around with words and music, a digital strategist.
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