Well this is a new feature for us… but let’s face it, summer is here, it’s hot out, and you need some damn ice cream. Thankfully the kind fellas from Chicago 3-piece sewingneedle have the perfect sweet treats to go along with each track of their delicious new LP user error. We’ve provided the tracks below you just have to BYO ice cream and you’re in business. Enjoy.
Written by sewingneedle drummer Drake Jensen and vocalist/guitarist Calvin Fredrickson
1. “234”
Flavor: Vanilla. Tastes like being stuck in the daily rut of living a bland life while others are experimenting with flavors like Ethiopian coffee and cayenne pepper. “Do your peers travel often / Accomplish great things / While you wither?”
2. “User Error”
Flavor: Blue Moon. A flavor as unnatural as networking is awkward: “Is your number still the same? We’re looking for a sponsor / Think of the exposure / I’ll follow up in a few days.” Sometimes, a little blue food coloring and almond flavor is all you have brain space for. The flavor reminds you of the simplicity of childhood. Oh, and wouldn’t you know? Here comes a friend from long ago, offering a firm handshake and backslap, a “Remember when?” and then, their dreaded business card. Talk about a brain freeze.
3-4. “Dumhinger” (instrumental) / “Whirlybird”
Flavor: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. History smiles upon the classics. Much like raw cookie dough, the instrumental intro is indulgent but satisfying. This is a skivvies-on-the-couch kind of ice cream listening session. The song screeches and pulses like your body might after the salmonella kicks in. You think I have an ice cream problem, eh? The chorus is my response: “Oh, you don’t say?”
5. “Feel Good Music”
Flavor: “Flavor of the Week.” Ordering the flavor of the week can be as much of a dice roll as clicking on the album stream of a band you’ve never heard of. For better or worse, it’s time you can’t get back – or in the case of ice cream, room in your stomach. “This week’s internet success […] another quarter in the punk machine.”
6. “Buddy”
Flavor: Rainbow Sherbet. Gone are the melancholic storm clouds of user error’s side A; here comes track one of side B, a rainbow of quasi-happiness. It’s not fully ice cream, but it’s better than dairy-free sorbet (yuck). There’s something weird about the combination of colors, something that doesn’t belong: “I appropriate, equivocate / Wear pastel JNCOs to the discotheque / Gimme some sugar.”
7. “Philistine”
Flavor: Rocky Road. Legend has it that in 1929, William Dreyer conceptualized the rocky road flavor by using his wife’s sewing scissors to cut up the walnuts and marshmallows. Ninety years later, and we’re no less nutty when it comes to our imaginations with food, in light of the popularity of burgers that use doughnuts for buns and “unicorn-style” everything, from bagels to noodles. Indeed, “It’s a shame / We’re the same / More or less philistine.”
8. “Puppies”
Flavor: Chocolate Peanut Butter. Puppies love chocolate and peanut butter – even though one of those ingredients is deadly to them. Like dogs, people have an attraction to things that can, in large doses, be unhealthy. We love to share – and over-share – on social media, and yet we are so quick to decry our vulnerability to privacy invasion, worrying that FBI agents are monitoring our phone and computer cameras. Still, we scramble to publicize our most inane and intimate moments: “Give yourself away / In pixels to the void / What bliss is indiscretion / To err.”
9. “Forget it”
Flavor: Dark Chocolate Velvet. This flavor epitomizes “Grim speech / All black attire,” a reference to the fashionable nihilism and nonchalance encountered at parties and basement shows. Like the characters in this song, dark chocolate velvet is smooth, but maybe too macabre for its own good.
10. “Credits”
Flavor: Turtle Sundae. Midwest Action readers are likely aware of family-owned burger and ice cream chain Culver’s, whose turtle sundae is a standard bearer for the style. We’ve been gunning for a Culver’s sponsorship for years, but Scoopie never returns our calls. For this song/ice cream pairing, treat your mouth to the warm embrace of melted caramel and fudge dripping down a pile of vanilla custard. Pecans accent this array of sweet flavor – and soft first half of the song – with a crunchy and nutty finish. Sludgy guitars inch back and forth in the song’s outro as the melding streams of caramel and chocolate pool at the base of your bowl. Please don’t follow the advice of the song: “When the credits roll / When the music fades / Ready armament / Rose or rotten fruit will do.” We’d rather you throw Scoopie tokens at us.
Hungry for more? Pickup user error on vinyl or digital formats via bandcamp and host your own sewingneedle ice cream social!