“Take It Out On Me” – Smug Brothers

The Columbus, Ohio-based Smug Brothers return to Fingertips with more of their durable lo-fi pop rock, in which the “pop” has little to do with its contemporary usage but refers rather to the platonic ideal of modern music that’s incisive, immediate, and admirably well-built. This is the pop of “power pop” and “jangle pop” but less confining. It’s music made by humans with three-dimensional instruments and a reflexive predilection for the Beatlesque.

This song’s particular charms are rooted in the way it ongoingly anchors its melodies away from the downbeat (i.e., the first beat in a 4/4 measure). This creates a slinky, seductive atmosphere in which the song becomes its own backstory–a propulsive backbeat on the one hand, melodies that weave between the lines on the other. Kyle Melton’s sturdy vocals begin the verses within a megaphone filter, inviting us to lean in, before allowing his Tweedy-ish tone to fully inhabit a song that eschews narrative for the stringing together of evocative lyrical phrases. All in all these guys operate so far from what passes for popular music here in 2025 that I can nearly imagine a moment of cultural whiplash that would bring them straight to the forefront of the zeitgeist. Don’t laugh: any indie band forever remains one canny song placement away from if not fortune then at least fame.

“Take It Out On Me” is a song from the 11th Smug Brothers album, entitled Stuck on Beta, released earlier this month on Anyway Records; check it out via Bandcamp. MP3 courtesy of the band. The band has also released seven EPs and nine singles, all of which are also up there on Bandcamp. The band has previously been featured here in 2023 and 2019.