President Biden’s SAVE plan, his audacious agenda to cancel student loans for millions of Americans, was immediately embraced by the public when it was revealed in 2022. The President’s administration recently announced it will hand out $1.2 billion to wipe out Federal education loans starting this year, specifically paying it out entirely to Jackson Lemming of Sheboygan, Wisconsin. The Hard Times was fortunate enough to sit down with him and talk about being the recipient of this historic windfall.
Hard Times: Jackson, you’re the envy of the nation. How did you take the news of your loans being forgiven?
Jackson Lemming: I didn’t believe it at first. Apparently they had sent me a certified letter, but looked exactly like a bill so it immediately went into the trash. They ended up having to send some G-Men to my house to tell me the loans were forgiven like I’d won the Publishers Clearing House prize.
HT: That must’ve been quite a shock, given how improbable this must’ve been when you graduated. It’s been well documented the Fed always comes guns blazing at anyone making less than $50,000 a year.
JL: Fuck me for growing up middle class, right? But yeah, I thought I’d be raking in cash with a B.A. and an M.A. in engineering, but after I graduated the only jobs I could find paid $14 an hour. And those were the ones that required a Master’s degree. I was barely a week into working at my local Sonic before the bills started showing up.
HT: Wait, $14 an hour? And just to clarify, engineers are the people who design bridges and stuff right? So then how much did you have to borrow?
JL: Around $80,000 initially, but then there were the two unpaid internships, post-graduate school, and springing for the nicer on-campus apartments that didn’t have black mold. I think it came out to roughly $150k in change. But that my loan has been forgiven I can finally cut down to only selling my plasma to twice a month!
HT: Jesus man, what the fuck!
JL: Right? When Biden announced the SAVE plan I applied immediately, but with all the pushback and legal battles I thought it would be a bust. I had almost made peace with only having $43 in my bank account when I got the news. I just hope that at this rate it can help at least seven or eight more people. It makes the most sense economically.
HT: Well with this financial burden lifted, how are you going to spend your free money?
JL: At this point since I’ve been priced out of owning a home and likely won’t retire, I’ll probably just buy myself a little treat and then start chipping away at my SallieMae loans. I borrowed $2,000 for books and somehow I now owe them $90,000. But who knows, maybe they’ll get bailed out again and let everyone off the hook – damn, I’m sorry. Now I just sound crazy.
Nothing wrong with a long, droney interlude on your album, but this one gets pushed just a little too far. The middle section could be mistaken for a slightly-less-dense version of a Sunn O))) record. Closing track “Piss Clowns are Trebled” (did we mention these guys have a gift for song/album titles?) is killer, but it feels like it takes all day to get there, and this is on one of their shortest albums.
Darker and more ominous than most GY!BE records (and that’s saying something), the dirge-like tracks on here are apparently meant to support the entirely reasonable list of political demands included in the album’s packaging, notably “an end to foreign invasion, an end to borders, the total dismantling of the prison–industrial complex.” It’s an admirable attempt, but the people with the power to bring those things to an end are more likely listening to bro country than to intricately-composed instrumental avant-garde post-rock by a bunch of anarchist weirdos.
This EP has two tracks, one of which is perfect entry-level GY!BE, a nice little 10-minute piece that is pretty much the distilled essence of the band’s style. The other is primarily a field recording of some malcontent (who probably stormed the capitol 22 years later) bragging about how he mouthed off to a judge while paying a parking ticket and then reciting an “original” poem that is mostly plagiarized Iron Maiden lyrics. You can listen to it as a nifty piece of performance art, but remember, you really don’t have to.
The band was already selling merch with this album title almost a decade before its release, so it must have been a slow-developing concept. We’re also not sure why a band this transgressive and decidedly non-mainstream felt the need to censor the title, but that’s surely all part of some grand aesthetic plan. A solid album front-to-back, with less emphasis on drone, a return to field recordings as a central (but not overused) element, and some riffs that, played a little faster through the right guitar pedal, would practically be death metal.
This one sort of had to be in the middle of the pack, and there’s a simple litmus test for whether you’ll be into it: Do you like GY!BE’s whole deal? Then you’ll like this, but it probably won’t be your favorite. Do you not like GY!BE’s whole deal? Then you won’t like this, and probably won’t feel inclined to compare it to the rest of their discography. This is just the band doing what they do, but very little really stands out. We’re giving it a break though, because it was the follow-up to “Lift Your Skinny Fists” (see below), which is a stone cold banger.
We’re at that magical point in the ranking where you could shuffle them up in any order and it would be perfectly respectable. This record was such an anomaly in the 1996 music world: In the context of an era of easy-listening pop treacle and post-grunge crapola, this sounds like it might as well be a transmission from Mars. The music is painstakingly weird, and that iconic opening spoken-word piece—”The car is on fire, and no driver at the wheel, and the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides.”—not only sets the tone for GY!BE’s entire discography, but also sounds like something from a particularly bleak Cormac McCarthy novel, and ain’t nothing wrong with that.
It’s a masterpiece, and most people’s gateway not only to this band, but to experimental turn-of-the-millenium instrumental music in general. It’s a straight line from this to Explosions in the Sky and This Will Destroy You, but it’s also more ambitious and audacious than anything either of those bands, excellent as they are, have ever done. Unlike on “Slow Riot,” the spoken word and field recording bits mesh so well with the music that you can’t imagine them not being there, especially the moody street preacher on “Static.” But even some guy waxing nostalgic about Coney Island or a looped recording of a grocery store PA announcement add depth and nuance to the album. And musically, “Static” is a master-class in the slow-burn payoff. It’s not just that it spends 15 minutes (!!!) building upon a simple muted guitar riff with more and more layers and intensity—that sort of compositional trick is a dime a dozen in this genre—it’s that the tempo picks up right alongside it, and by the time the crescendo hits, the song is cruising at practically 200 BPM and you feel like you just got pummeled by the experimental music equivalent of a crowbar-wielding mob enforcer. But, like, in a good way.
The band’s first album after a 10-year hiatus, and unequivocally their greatest. “Lift Your Skinny Fists” is incredible, but this record is an absolute triumph. The two longer tracks steal the show, with opener “Mladic” culminating in a weird, loopy drone that will make you think the record is skipping for a few seconds before the payoff comes in a beautifully-composed crescendo. “We Drift Like Worried Fire” is built around a simple but gorgeous riff and is, at least by GY!BE standards, practically a ballad in its gentle simplicity. The shorter tracks are less memorable, and it’s almost like the band wants you to see them that way (the vinyl version has them on a separate 7-inch while the longer tracks are on each side of the LP), but you should take the time to alternate the discs accordingly, because experiencing this album as a complete work is deeply rewarding. Five stars, two thumbs up, 10/10, perfect album.