I think the first time I was vaguely aware of Johnny Franck was circa 2008. I had met a certain Micah Powers at a house party, and my friend David Thian had been hyping up Micah’s band called Before We Forget. I started following Before We Forget and heard about a tour they did with Attack Attack! Or maybe it was a Columbus show? In any case, the rest was history. Attack Attack drama, yadda yadda yadda, here’s a new project called Bilmuri (pronounced “Bill Murray”).

Last year was my first time really digging into Bilmuri’s sound, with the release of Wet Milk. Beneath all the nonsensical song titles was a collection of tunes full of left turns, but really accessible and fun. Fast forward to today, and EGGY POCKET has me convinced this is true.

I don’t really want to sit here and throw a bunch of meaningless accolades at you, but I’ll try to give you an entertaining stream of consciousness. Is it weird that I’m motivated enough to write a whole album review but too lazy to type out the all-caps, dumb track titles of this album? Or is it an EP?

We don’t know. And Bilmuri doesn’t seem to know half the time either. But that’s the whole beauty and appeal of his sound. It’s sort of “Eff it, let’s do this. Here’s the working title. Actually let’s make it the real title.” That’s the sort of trust in your fans that many artists can only dream of having. There’s one song title in particular that makes me cringe, in the sort of guilty pleasure dad joke way, but it has probably the most unironically enjoyable chorus of the release.

I’ll let YOU figure out which song that could be.

Ah, screw it. I’ll type out this one song title. Not the song I was referring to in the previous paragraph, by the way. “ISERIOUSLYDISLIKEMOSTOTHERHUMANS” is a vibe, and not in the way that I want it to be. But in the way I want it to be. For the probably 87459th time today you’re gonna read that someone is fed up with how the general populace is responding to the COVID crisis. Like a weird piece of dark humor, a flute (or maybe a recorder) carries a metalcore like breakdown to reflect this weird mental state I’ve been in going back and forth between—irritated that people can’t stop being around either because I want people to be around each other. You have to laugh instead of cry. And Johnny Franck strikes me as that sort of guy.

I’ll finish this with a random thought, because that’s the mood this music puts me in. Bilmuri should open for The Flaming Lips. He could be Wayne Coyne’s sadboi darling, and teach the psychedelic masses the ways of emo. And play every song on EGGY POCKET. P.S. Please, Yoko Ono, make a cameo on the next Bilmuri EP!

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