Is playing a show to 13 people in a laundromat worth it? Do Mr. Krabs and Peter Griffin have more musical hot takes? Has the American contemporary experimental music scene lost its edge? Are glitchy hyperpop production, ubiquitous samples, and goofy ’90s pop-rock effective devices for rigorous, high-concept art, or do tongue-in-cheek, doomscroll-evoking sound collages now feel cynical or dated? Is subjecting yourself to the grueling life of a working independent musician a cry for help? A character flaw? A beautifully noble pursuit in this isolating, morally bankrupt world? These are just a handful of the questions raised by Callahan & Witscher’s audacious new LP, Think Differently.

This record marks Jack Callahan and Jeff Witscher’s first foray into pop music, and it’s pretty safe to say they took the most laughably circuitous, unconventional road to get here. They’re both long-established figures of the American underground, having made esoteric electronic and experimental music under various monikers (most notably, die Reihe and Rene Hell, respectively) for more than a decade. Witscher has released music for revered labels like PAN and NNA Tapes, and his countless projects — traversing everything from ambient shoegaze and deconstructed country music to radical minimalism and harsh noise — radiate with futuristic mischief and provocative intrigue. Callahan, in addition to crafting absurd, formalist sound studies influenced by styles such as house and trap music, is a veteran sound engineer whose credits include Cloud Nothings and Wolf Eyes, and a co-founder of the independent, open-source music hosting platform Nina Protocol.

The duo’s works have been loosely categorized as “music art,” “sound music,” “computer music,” and occasionally even “non-music,” and while these descriptors may seem jarringly simplistic or pretentious, they do succinctly capture their agonizingly conceptual, punishingly abstract, and narrative-free approaches to composition. For example, last year, Callahan released a strident, extremely muffled LP titled Compression, which mangles tracks from popular artists like Madonna and the Beatles beyond recognition in an effort to process his “personal trauma” stemming from the widespread conflation of two disparate types of sound compression. In short, there’s something deeply insane and funny about their musical practices, which are underpinned by relentless self-interrogation and the finest of technical minutiae — but ultimately, their giddy passion and forward-thinking spirit are hard to deny.

In this context, Think Differently — a collection of deliciously groovy, fun-loving, screwball guitar-pop songs — may seem like both the antithesis of serious sound experimentation and the logical conclusion of a pair obsessed with pushing boundaries and making each other laugh. But simply put, traditional pop song structures were just the next summit to climb, or as they describe it: the next fix for two insatiable music junkies. Admittedly, veteran American contemporary experimental musicians making a ballsy Smash Mouth-ian rock record about the American contemporary experimental scene sounds like a horrible idea on paper — an offhand 3 a.m. joke that you’d promptly forget the next day. But this NYC-based two-piece brings a whole new meaning to committing to the bit. What could’ve been an insufferable, thoughtless, insular novelty project is instead a heartwarming, astute, endlessly catchy romp that anyone can enjoy — though that doesn’t mean these songs won’t ruffle a few feathers.

In this summery, blissful swirl of late ’90s radio rock, trip-hop, rap-rock, hyperpop, and plunderphonics, Callahan & Witscher have captured something visceral and unique, and they’ve already achieved an exciting milestone totally foreign to them in their accomplished music careers: writing songs that listeners can feasibly sing and hum along to. Several events and artistic fascinations have brought them to this point — one being a generational shift within the American experimental scene.

“This epoch of the early ’00s [experimental] scene, which was really fruitful, was dying a slow and painful death, and then COVID just absolutely killed it,” Callahan says. “Anyone who was on the fence or aging out just completely stopped, and the kids who started picking up and doing stuff again, who are doing really cool and amazing stuff … this is not a judgment, but I don’t think they had the mentoring experience that we did from older people in the scene because it just wasn’t there. So coming out of COVID, taking the rose-tinted glasses off and being like, ‘I’ve been denying that this has been happening for years, and now it’s actually happened,’ I kind of felt a little lost.”

“It was such an integral part of our lives,” Witscher adds. “That’s how I met all of my close friends who I’m still in touch with today. It’s kind of just everyone I know, actually. So that’s what a lot of [this record] is about — realizing that you have so many stories and knowledge about this [scene] that nobody else knows or cares about. Nobody cares about the story of The New Flesh driving with a broken windshield because the bassist threw a cinder block through it. But to me, I was like ‘God, this is incredible. What a band!'”

They weren’t just experiencing the fall of a scene they deeply identified with, they also grew disillusioned with the popular music and myopic view of artistic “seriousness” within that world. “When you make really abstract music, at a certain point, in your darker moments, you’re like, ‘What is enjoyable about this?'” Callahan says. “I definitely had a moment where I picked up the guitar and was like, ”Oh, now I remember why I started playing music in the first place.’ … There’s a long history of [conceptual] artists making pop music. Most of the time, it’s pretty wack, and it’s really more about the concept of trying to make populist music to convey their ideas, but in working on this, I was like, ‘I want to make sure the songs are actually good and catchy and relevant and could exist completely outside of the context of our background in the experimental music lineage.'”

But arriving at gloriously excessive, headbang-worthy pop music wasn’t such an obvious A to B pivot. The artistic origins of Think Differently actually lie in an interest in concepts such as information, communication, cybernetics, and speech, which they explored in recent experimental works. Their first formal collaboration was a live project titled What Happens On Earth Stays On Earth (immortalized by the 2022 LP ISSUES), a voice-only patchwork of friends’ answers to interview prompts. This use of text and human voices then led to the intermingling of easily recognizable pop culture samples with spoken-word stories (2023’s Live At Montez), and eventually, those zany jingles, loops, and sound effects were paired with auto-tuned choruses, absurd music-themed lyrics, and electric guitar (their 2023 performance at an NYC exhibition called “Bring The Flowers To The Theatre”).

That NYC set bears the closest resemblance to this current iteration of Callahan & Witscher, though the songs were more fragmented, discordant, and provocative — it even featured an early draft of the Think Differently cut “Boiler Room,” which premieres today as the last single before the album drops Friday. To paint a picture of the show’s inspired madness, at one point, they interpolated Joan Osbourne’s “One Of Us,” and with those same chorus melodies, Witscher dryly intoned, “What if music was interesting?” It might verge on eye roll-worthy if it wasn’t genuinely one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard. Their whole set was punctuated with samples of Pop Smoke, Hanna-Barbera cartoons, Coldplay, Wife Swap, and practically anything else you can imagine, which brought a much-needed lightheartedness, but also functioned as a sharp social critique of the brisk, anxiety-inducing whiplash that is internet-mediated modern life. Similarly unmistakable samples that appear on Think Differently, like Family Feud, Taco Bell, and The Simpsons sound effects, are an integral part of the record’s wired, unpredictable appeal.

“[Those samples] literally came from this style of memes that high schoolers would make,” Callahan explains, “like video collages with all of these meme sounds collaged together. Sometimes, one thing would be sped up, pitched up or slowed down. That, to me, felt really exciting at the time, like three or four years ago, because it really was these high school kids who have no relationship with conceptual art or sound art, and they’re just doing stuff that’s funny to them … So we began collecting [samples], and now we have a library of thousands of sounds. I think people would say it’s the sound of going insane in the 21st century, and that was a big stepping stone to making this record, which then turned into ‘Why don’t we try to make songs that, for us, growing up in the late ’90s, pull from the most ubiquitous-sounding pop music from that time?’ Something you’ve heard before, but not.”

Between its funky, mid-tempo bounce and energizing gang vocals to its beefy yet playful riffage and Callahan’s sugary auto-tuned choruses, these songs feel tailor-made for house-party buffoonery. Besides these late ’90s visions of lava lamps, frosted tips, and West Coast mainstream rock, there’s also suave trip-hop (“Hate The Player”), trap-infused rap-rock (“Who Knows Where The Time Goes”), Streets-esque alternative hip-hop (“Participation Trophy”), and atmospheric vocoder rock (“Boiler Room”). But Callahan & Witscher aren’t keen to stew in these sounds or engage in mere genre exercises, as there are frequent interruptions via errant electronic hijinks, from extreme stop-start production to radio soundboard-style maximalism.

With its humorous hyperpop and happy-go-lucky rock palettes, one might be caught off guard by a record so sonically beautiful and occasionally tear-jerking. Gorgeous string accents from the Like Of Life Orchestra and breathy, charismatic vocal features from Ana Roxanne and Sedona bring a more delicate emotional resonance. There are also moments of wistful, jazzy ambience, and the heartening, ballad-like final track “Columbus” is a gut punch that, for lack of a better phrase, hurts so good — but even random sequences like the uplifting auto-tuned passages in “The Value Of Music” are so explosively euphoric they bring a tear to my eye.

Oddly enough, the one sonic element that functions as the record’s emotional center is actually a sample of TikTok comedian Steve Bridges, in character as some guy named Junior, poking fun at experimental music. The duo’s friend and fellow musician Nick Malkin ordered a Cameo video from Bridges and gave him some direction, and the result is incredibly amusing. “Y’all supposed to be trying to get money, dog,” Junior fervently advises. “Oh, you do experimental music? You did the experiment. What’s the outcome? Oh, nobody like y’all stuff, dog.”

The sample appears at the end of “Who Knows Where The Time Goes” atop haunting choral vocalizations, and it’s a fascinating juxtaposition that captures the crux of Think Differently’s tensions. On the one hand, Callahan & Witscher find this snippet funny, but its inclusion also seems to indicate that they have, in fact, grown weary of the inherently isolating nature of experimental music. This humbling sound byte is also fundamental because it takes some sting out of their more inflammatory statements, namely the subversive spoken-word opener “I Love Music,” which rails against artistic conformity and complacency in eyebrow-raising fashion.

But on Think Differently, Callahan & Witscher clown themselves for engaging in music industry masochism just as much as they pontificate about the sad state of affairs. On “Won’t Let You Go,” Witscher boldly declares, “Time is a valuable thing/ I spent most of it on a frivolous scene,” and on the touring-themed “Columbus,” Callahan sings, “I bear my soul to 13 people who I’ll never meet.” With “Boiler Room,” Witscher cuts to the heart of contradictions that arise when engaging with respected arts institutions that are fundamentally flawed: “Thank you for giving me/ This wonderful opportunity/ To share my music with all of you/ And create content for ad revenue.”

Part of the album’s devilish charm is trying to decipher when and how much they’re in on the joke, but there’s also a sincere despair, especially concerning the tiring, disorienting experience of touring, which imprints a relatable sense of existential yearning. The fine lines they draw between cynical provocation, droll detachment, and benevolent earnestness make for scintillating subtext and rewarding self-inquiry, but what feels like a grounded record with skin in the game wasn’t necessarily that way in its previous stages — some since-scrapped songs veered too far into hyper-focused inside baseball, like one titled “Local Club Sound Man” and another about the online avant-garde record store Boomkat.

“It was too isolated at first,” Witscher says. “If you can imagine, it was actually too alienating [laughs]. You’re writing and you’re like, ‘Oh, this makes sense,’ and then you’re like, ‘Wait, this only makes sense to us and like 10 of our friends.’ … We had a song about the sound guy, which was insane. It was completely psychotic. People were looking at us when we were performing it and being like, ‘Oh man, they’ve actually lost it.'”

There’s a poster hanging on the wall of Callahan’s Manhattan post-production studio, emblazoned with the phrase “The act of drinking beer with friends is the highest form of art,” which comes from a conceptual work by Tom Marioni. No matter where their lofty experimentation takes this pair, they always come back to that ethos of camaraderie, humor, and creativity. In the album’s final lines, they refer to themselves as “jesters in agony” for continuing to weather the throes of experimental music-making. Callahan even says with a laugh, “I hope it’s self-evident that we’re not well.” But there’s something very true to life about this LP, where extremes of soul-baring candor, very-online, irony-pilled humor, and alienating, world-weary complaints coexist not as a means of contradiction or deflection, but instead of honest confrontation. Above all, Think Differently is a rorschach test. Are these songs absurdly serious or seriously absurd? Is it self-important drivel, or an optimistic affirmation of artistic devotion? Well, one thing’s for sure, and that’s nothing they do is half-assed. How does that phrase go? Clear eyes. Full ass. Can’t lose. I think that’s right.

Think Differently is out 9/6 on Post Present Medium. Callahan & Witscher are playing an album release show 9/12 at Union Pool in Brooklyn with Gatekeeper, Headless, and DJ Maggie Lee.