Hometown: Rancho Cucamonga, CA
Album: God Get Me the Fuck Out of Here, out now via DIAS Records
RIYL: Escapism. Literal Escapes. Guitars.
There’s something about humanity’s innate need for comfort that renders escapism one of life’s great joys. Whether that’s books, music, movies, stand-up comedy, or even just strolling through nature, literally or metaphorically closing your immediate responsibilities and plugging into a “positive vice” as I like to call it is so fucking amazing. I’ve been bingeing some of the classics psychological thriller novels, and reading about the trials and tribulations of people who are literal psychopaths yet couldn’t tell the truth if their life depended on it has been a wonderful alternate to the shitshow that has been my professional life of late.
Cold Gawd understands maybe not my exact issues but certainly the sentiment of needing to get the fuck out of something or somewhere. God Get Me the Fuck Out of Here is the most captivating audio escape I’ve heard in a long time. Mastermind Matt Wainwright has a very particular set of skills, and those happen to be molding shoegaze around R&B and hip hop concepts. What he’s created is a world until itself, and it’s the type of record that washes over you like a weighted blanket. Maybe it’s not all comfort—Shit, this is hitting my soft donut center… but it’s warm and inviting all the same. As he explains:
“I wanted the listener to enter a different world when they put the record on. During the writing process, I fell in love with When I Get Home (by SOLANGE) and fell back in love with (Childish Gambino’s) because the internet and My Bloody Valentine’s MBV. All three of those records made it possible for me to escape whatever life was throwing at me from general anxieties about the world to terrible jobs to shit commutes; I would be transported to a place of comfort, and I wanted to be able to do that with my music. I feel I was able to build a world of loud and warm noise that may not be as detailed as a 72-page screenplay, but where you can still feel that something is there to get lost in.”
Wainwright explains the fact that the album was a bit of an accidental exorcism for his emotions:
“I wanted to talk to myself, I think. The lyrics were definitely the hardest thing to come up, and still the hardest to talk about, within the whole process. I remember writing them down, memorizing them for the studio, and then singing them, but during that time, my focus was to flex my pen and do the best I’ve ever done vocally.
“It wasn’t until I heard the first round of mixes back in the record sequencing where I realized I was detailing emotions I had been feeling but not really addressing chronological order. I knew I had issues with myself and the people and the world around me, but I was always putting them on the shelf to be dealt with later. With all of that piling, I arrived at this feeling where all I wanted to do was escape life. With that said, I don’t think I was stuck in the Midwest, but I was stuck in my bad habits and old ways of thinking and dealing with emotions, people, etc.
Photo courtesy of Devon Cohen
