Swear I'm Good At This
Diet Cig are here to have fun. They’re here to tear you away from the soul-sucking sanctity of your dumpster-fire life and replace it with pop-blessed punk jams about navigating the impending doom of adulthood when all you want is to have ice-cream on your birthday. Alex Luciano (guitar and vocals) and Noah Bowman (drums) have been playing music together ever since Luciano interrupted the set of Bowman's previous band for a lighter. The New York duo have since released the infectious, 2015 ‘Over Easy’ EP that introduced consistent sing-a-long lyrics with thrashing drums and strums that never held back. ‘Swear I’m Good At This’ is the first full-length from the band and accumulates their tenacity for crafting life-affirming, relatable tales with a gutsy heart at their core. Luciano has the ability to write lyrics that are both vulnerable and badass, perfecting a storm of emotive reflection that creates a vision of a sweaty, pumped-up room screaming these lines in unison. Diet Cig make it okay to be the hot mess that you are. But there’s also a deeper, more powerful fuck-you among the bangers that see Diet Cig grow into an unstoppable and inspiring force. “I’m not being dramatic, I’ve just fucking had it with the things that you say you think that I should be” spits Luciano on ‘Link in Bio’; “I am bigger than the outside shell of my body and if you touch it without asking then you’ll be sorry” she yells on ‘Maid Of The Mist’. It’s the sound of a band doing things on their own terms. Wrapping up ‘Swear I’m Good At This’ on Halloween 2016, exactly two years after they finished recording ‘Over Easy’ on Halloween 2014, Diet Cig’s first, full-length LP validates the experiences of punks who aren’t always accepted first time around; the punks who throw their deuces up at the dominating bro-dudes and ignite the importance of owning everything that you are.
On their debut LP, the eager duo fumbles that which makes indie pop so meaningful. It becomes a lively collection of empty gestures.
You can’t overlook the voice of Dan Bejar, a nasal yowl that has a captivating way of meandering around a melody, often scrambling its way toward the end of a lyric as his tongue shoehorns more words between the remaining beats. But you might miss what an important service that voice provides to the first six albums…
The frenetic New Paltz duo blend fun and feelings on their superbly chaotic debut Swear I'm Good At This
New York pair Diet Cig’s debut lives up to the hype, portraying a new vision of punk with unusual tenderness.
A line delivered late on Diet Cig's debut, Swear I'm Good at This, lays bare the dichotomy in singer-guitarist Alex Luciano's songwriting: "...
Diet Cig's candidness is enthralling. Like their 2015 EP Over Easy, the New York duo's debut full-length album Swear I'm Good At This is loud, blunt, and totally fun.
'Swear I'm Good At This' by Diet Cig, album review by Owen Maxwell. The full-length comes out on April 7th on Frenchkiss. Diet Cig, play 4/6 in Philadelphia
Much of indie-rock’s best warriors are women, and they’re finally starting to get the recognition they deserve.