Quips
!Amphetamines!
Translation Loss
They love the '90s
If Quips had just transposed two letters and called themselves Quisp, my job could have been way easier. I could have made reference to !Amphetamines! clocking in at a “sugar-high 24 minutes,” or to its “crunchy hooks.” It probably would have also helped if anyone under 30 knew what Quisp was. See, Quisp was this super-sugary cereal from the ’70s, and—ah, fuck it. Kids today… OK, enough with the cereal jokes—on to the drug references!
Given the album title and the song “Drugs Are Fun,” it makes sense that the most immediate frame of reference for Quips’ sound is that Pacific Northwest band with the heroin/rohypnol enthusiast frontman. Remember, though, that before all the hype, Nirvana were just a punk-rock band that worshipped at the altars of Black Flag and the Melvins. Quips lay on the sludge riffs here and there, but due to the garage-y production, they don’t hit like the doom-pop depth charges of Torche or Floor. The vocals also evoke the N-word, lots of mewl/SCREAM back-and-forth and mostly unintelligible lyrics. Goddamn, these songs really could be Bleach outtakes.
The other big touchstone for Quips’ sound is ’90s pop-punk, again largely of the Northwestern and garage varieties. (It should be noted that the band is actually from Pennsylvania.) All but the last track clock in under the three-minute mark, and all of them pack in the hooks. If this had come out in 1995, you’d probably be hearing “I’ll Be Okay” or “Drugs Are Fun” all over whatever local radio station had an “X” or “Edge” in its name. Today, !Amphetamines! is plenty familiar, but how often does catchy punk rock shift musical paradigms, anyway? Well, there was that one band, but nevermind.
—Anthony Bartkewicz
