On Better Living Through Static Vision you can hear Staticlone— which features vocalist George Hirsch, bassist Dave Walling, and drummer Jeff Ziga channel everything from crust to metal, and the hardcore punk they’ve all been steeped in for decades.
At his core, Hirsch is a storyteller. Go back and listen to anything he’s ever done and you’ll see it in the unflinching honesty of his lyrics and hear it in his heartfelt vocals. On Better Living Through Static Vision that poetry is paired beautifully with some of the catchiest, heaviest music out there.
The lyrics on the album, all written by Hirsch, focus on themes of alienation and loss. Over the course of the last few years, he moved to Chicago and then back home to Philly. He says the album closer “Red Eye,” which arrives today, is about “…a few moments of clarity I had while taking a train across the United States. One was ending my previous band, realizing I was not made to make music with other people. I was to stick to bedroom recordings, and cut out having to pretend to like or be connected to people just because they play an instrument. I’ve since gone back on this realization (let’s see how that goes) with Staticlone.” He continues, “I’ve never romanticized or even understood the American dream of ‘going west.’ I am an East Coast person. It’s convenient, and based in reality. Moving to Chicago was west enough for me, they have Lou Malnati’s and Trouble, why travel any further past that?”
Hardcore and punk aren’t genres that necessarily celebrate change. It’s not like the music is stagnant; it’s more that the tried and true is rewarded while anything new, anything different, is greeted with a quizzical eyebrow and the spoken or unspoken question of: “Is this good? Can you mosh to it?”
If there was anyone in Philadelphia who could answer those queries with expert authority, it’s Hirsch and Walling. Though really, you don’t even need to ask them. Put on the debut album by Staticlone and you’ll find all the answers you need.
