Guy Music is a Lot of Fun

If you are willing to journey to the 72nd most-populated city in Ohio, you too can find Guy Music. Their consistent shitposting and unbelievably overstimulating website makes me feel ancient, but their current and upcoming releases show too much promise to pass up. 

Each member goes by a different moniker: Henry, the front man, is “Guy,” guitarist Finn is “Music,” the drummer, Miles, is “Band,” and bassist Matthias is stuck with the nickname “Instagram,” though he himself doesn’t have one. Our rambling conversation has been heavily trimmed for online release, but a more-complete version along with Poison Tree’s review can be found in the autumn edition of the print magazine.

Cover photo by Alice Falkowski, courtesy of the band.

Instagram: We all were working on music separately from different perspectives but only joined up to play together recently.

PT: How recent is recent?

Music: October.

PT: What’s the difference then, between your solo influences and what you look for when you’re making stuff as Guy Music?

Music: Early 2000s sounds are what I draw from most. I’ve been listening to a lot of Ty Segall lately. I mean a lot of indie rock is what I draw from for work on my own. The way I used to write songs before I met Guy was purely rock, but he’s allowed me to realize I can explore more pop-centered stuff when I’m writing guitar parts, especially for Guy Music.

Band: My background is more in jazz and classical when it comes to influences. I’m into funk and prog-y stuff too, anything that has a lot of improvisation. But with Guy Music, I’ve actually been playing much simpler drum beats but finding I have to still practice them so much more than I thought I would have to in order to maintain a tighter sound. 

Guy: My influence is anyone who pisses me off if I’m being completely honest. Often I hear something from an artist and I start seething and I’m like “I can do something like this” and it inspires me to get to writing. I had a country phase for a second then I tried to write songs like Cameron Winter but I got stumped which infuriated and humbled me. I would just, all day, write these long stream-of-consciousness paragraphs and dump them in a discord server and I couldn’t do it.

Music: I remember that, you coming home with some long ass list of concepts.

Guy: Something about smoking cigs in France or whatever. My favorite lyric is about Jelly Roll. 

Photo by Rivers.Lens_

??: Ever since Jelly Roll got skinny he’s been in and out of the news.

PT: He’s skinny now? There’s no way they got him too.

Guy: I’m gonna look up a photo of Jelly Roll right now to show you. 

Music: He’s skinny now and it’s fucked up. It’s not okay.

Instagram: Jelly…Jelly Eclairrr

Guy: There’s an episode of Tulsa King, that boomer show where they have, like, a guy ordering a black coffee and the barista doesn’t get it which is a thing that’s never happened. And they have Jelly Roll play that song and there’s no plot relevance to him being there. 

PT: Has there ever been a moment where Jelly roll was plot-relevant?

Guy: I have to admit I have a soft spot for Jelly Roll. I had a weird dream about him that was the beginning of my fascination with him. Y’know when a mom will threaten to, like, call Spiderman on a kid for not eating his vegetables? Cuz he respects Spiderman? I had a dream about that but instead it was about a mom threatening to call Jelly Roll but it was because he felt bad for Jelly Roll. So I guess that’s part of my influence.

Instagram: For Guy Music I’m influenced by a lot of post-hardcore and really percussive bass sounds. That’s how I go about it, I mostly listen to noise rock. 

PT: I can totally hear that in a lot of your songs, there’s a stunning lack of thinness in your sound that I’ve been missing in some of the pop-focused projects I’ve been listening to lately. There is a bit of that classic kinda Beck-ish, Weezer-inspired sound that I’m not usually a huge fan of but–

Guy stands up to reveal a Weezer t-shirt

PT: I have a set of questions I’ve been asked to ask you, the first of which is “would you rather be only allowed to make third wave ska forever or never eat meat again?”

Guy: Ska. Easily.

Band: Matthias [Instagram] and I already don’t eat meat. Even if we did, music is way too important to me to only do ska.

PT: Specifically ‘90s ska too. We aren’t talking Desmond Dekker or The Specials, we’re talking checkerboard vans.

Guy: We could maybe get really good at ska though. We could do it genuinely. 

Music: I think we could do ‘90s ska. I like meat. I don’t know. We could pivot. I think I would be extremely unhappy in either of these directions.

Guy: Wait, do we have to adopt the wardrobe too?

PT: For the sake of the hypothetical I think you would have to fully commit.

Guy: Wardrobe wise: meat wardrobe.

PT: Lady-Gaga-style. I have one more hypothetical: would you rather piss yourself on stage once a year or have everyone think that your band is consistently trying to do a Morrissey impression?

All: PISS.

Music: It’s got to be piss.

Instagram: I think you could make a bit out of the piss thing but there’s not much saving copying Morrissey.

PT: Plus your meat wardrobe would make less sense.

Guy: I wouldn’t want that. I think I would slowly become him. And he only sings, like, two notes.

PT: It would be hard to work that into ska.

Guy Music members then began riffing an approximation of what a ‘90s ska song by Morrissey would sound like.

Guy [yelling]: Put it on the record: I like third wave ska. 

Photo by Maxfield Creative

You can find their upcoming release “Sara’s Secret” on all streaming services at an indeterminate time in the future. The rest of their discography is also online wherever you find music.