Taking Meds – “The Other End”

Dial M For Meds, the new album from the New York-via-Rochester punk band Taking Meds, is shaping up to be really good. Dial M For Meds, which the band recorded with Converge’s Kurt Ballou, comes out later this week, and we’ve already posted the early tracks “Memory Lane,” “Outside,” and “Life Support.” All of them are catchy and propulsive in that world-weary scratchy-throat Jawbreaker way. Today, Taking Meds drop one last song before the LP arrives, and it hits right in the same comfort zone.

“The Other End” has some serious wasted-romantic energy. On the track, bandleader Skylar Sarkis, belting out big melodies over jagged guitars, imagines a reality. In his dream, he’s made an autofiction film about all of his friends back home in Rochester, dealing with all the ramifications of his new fame: “I spent so much time waiting to be interviewed/ That I realized that I had nothing to tell you.” But then Sarkis has to deal with the understanding that his movie’s not real. Here’s what he says about it:

“The Other End” was one of the first songs we wrote for this record. I’ve had the chorus melody in my head for a couple years. I’m really glad it came together the way it did. One of the main themes in this song is mundanity. When you have a vision for how something should go, or even how your entire life should go, it’s always going to get filtered through reality and come out looking pretty different. There is, of course, something wonderful about that, but this song talks about about how disappointing and empty that can feel.

Check out “The Other End” below:

Dial M For Meds is out 9/1 on Smartpunk Records.