When you're pumping gas, do yourself a favor and don't look at those numbers ticking up. Look at your phone or take a trip to the vending machine or something. You don't need to experience the panicy despair that inevitably arises when you watch your expenses adding up, cent by cent, especially now. If you track gas prices too obsessively, you can drive yourself insane, and now there's a song about exactly that.
Chicago's Cel Ray specialize in a frantic, jackhammering form of post-punk, which they play at hardcore speeds. Cel Ray released their first two EPs Cellular Raymond and Piss Park in 2023, and they'll follow those record with their full-length debut Cel Rayzer next month. Lead single "Price Of Gas" is an itchy, careening garage-punk panic attack, and it's sung from the perspective of a guy who is way, way too mentally invested in gas prices. Here's how singer Maddie Daviss describes it:
This song is a rock opera from the perspective of an American man who is obsessed with the price of gas. He has bottled all his troubles and resentments at the country into the rising gas prices, and how they are keeping him down. He desperately wants to impress his wife, provide for his family, and be behind the wheel constantly, but the cost of living keeps rising without him. He blames the price of gas and his wife for his unlucky lot in life to the point of madness, never seeing the bigger picture.
Below, check out "Price Of Gas" and the Cel Rayzer tracklist.
TRACKLIST:
01 "Gotta Get Away"
02 "Hot Gossip"
03 "Price Of Gas"
04 "Toxic"
05 "Snake's Maw"
06 "Trash"
07 "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang"
08 "Teen (Cult) Song"
09 "Phone Stuff
10 "Treat Economy"
Cel Rayzer is out 7/24 on Exploding In Sound.
