The album is, in Gallo’s own words, what an existential crisis would sound like if it could also be fun.

There’s a fine, fine line between optimism and crushing nihilism, and it’s a border that courses through Ron Gallo’s new album, FOREGROUND MUSIC like the neon orange barriers and construction tape that accent gentrifying neighborhoods across cities everywhere; it’s unavoidable. There’s a central conceit at the heart of this album, which is that we’re probably doomed, but what’s the point in laying down to die instead of raging against the vast and plain as day inequalities that plague our nation and those across the globe?

The only thing more pointless than hopefulness is hopelessness, and with this belief, Gallo records an album that confronts the villains of our society and helps those crushed by them by finding a way to laugh at the absurdity of it all. With FOREGROUND MUSIC, Gallo screams at the developers turning neighborhoods into unremarkable AirBnB advertisements, corporate overlords deciding how much music costs, and extremists hellbent on bringing forth an apocalypse of racial and civil destruction.

The album is, in Gallo’s own words, what an existential crisis would sound like if it could also be fun. Over the course of 11 songs, Gallo displays what Ann Powers once called “literate electricity.” It moves from fuzz to lounge jazz to freaky pop to post-punk and back again to rollicking, truly FUN rock music, all the while taking aim at any and everything. An abbreviated list: male entitlement, the age of anxiety, apathy vs. action, gentrification, narcissism, retail therapy, xenophobia, the dread of future generations, right wing extremists in giant pickup trucks, capitalism, climate change and the experience of having a loved-one who is an addict.