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Album of the Day: It's Sorted - Cheekface

 

 
It's Sorted (2024) - Cheekface
 
Call me a Cheek Freak. Call me an instant convert. This is the album that did activated me.
 
Clocking in just under a half-hour, this has to be the newest release of any artist I can recite line for line. (Exception: Their 2025 album, Middle Spoon.)
 
My children can recite the lyrics. I'll throw a random "Okay, cheesecake" at them and they'll hit me back with a "I saw you at the pharmacy." My seven-year-old listened to nothing but Taylor Swift until I spun this one, and then she ditched Swiftiedom entirely and spends her time begging me to take her to see Cheekface live.
 
What's the appeal? Everything, really. Every song is catchy. Every lyric is absurd, yet still they find a way to throw the occasional biting commentary at the listener:
American chaos, carnage, and death,
Nature really is returning,
And we really are the virus, dude.

This from a song that also includes: "We used to brush our teeth, but we got hotter since we stopped."

Paranoia abounds in the deeply cynical "Popular 2," yet the band still manages to sound like something adjacent to Weird Al. It gets stuck in my head for days, mainly due to playing it repeatedly.

Every song is a standout and includes memorably lyricism. Let's dance:

"The Fringe"

I will make breakfast avocado toast,
You'll be father, son, and the holy freaking ghost. 

"Popular 2"

The future is now!
Unfortunately. 

"I Am Continuing to Do My Thing"

Thrifting from the sand,
Thrifting from the bank,
Dispassionately vaping while I water the plants.

 "Grad School"

Everybody's here for the first time,
Waking up again and again,
Because they heard it in a podcast and it changed their minds,
The currents are recurring events,
They are recurring events.

"Life in a Bag"

I contain multitudes.
I contain multiple dudes.

And that's just the first half of the album. The second half contains "Largest Muscle." When they play that one live, they segue seamlessly into Hall and Oates "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)" and right back into "Largest Muscle."

Self-proclaimed as "America's Local Band," Cheekface is the best of us. And the rest of their discography is equally as catchy, absurd, and oddly trenchant.

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