100 gecs - “10,000 Gecs Tour 2” @ Great Hall at Avant Gardener 4/28/23 Concert Review

Last semester, I wrote a paper on a musical genre in the 2020s that has come to be known as “hyperpop.” The term was created by a Spotify playlist, in an attempt to easily categorize a handful of rising stars gaining sudden success on the platform. Early hyperpop innovators exaggerated pop tropes of the 2010s and incorporated influences of the underground genre of PC Music, characterized by heavy autotune and often mimicking and mirroring hyper-capitalist consumer and celebrity culture. Hyperpop artists emerge and circulate primarily on the internet, and they will often lean into and reflect internet culture, giving a voice to an underrepresented subsect of nostalgia: Y2K aesthetics and Web 2.0 culture.

100 gecs have arguably become the posterchildren of hyperpop. I’ve been following the musical duo of Dylan Brady and Laura Les since they released their debut album 1000 gecs back in 2019. While the genre can be polarizing, I fell in love with many of its trademarks— heavily distorted drums, synths arpeggiating at breakneck speeds, and chipmunk-y vocals. Others couldn’t stand it. A viral meme mocking the sound of the duo made its way around the internet, likening their music to the noise of “a squirrel fall[ing] in a wood chipper.”

As the 2020s began, hyperpop was evolving and many other artists were rising up with (and being compared to) 100 gecs. From their labelmates at Dog Show Records like Food House, to their contemporaries like Dorian Electra, to artists who would incorporate hyperpop influences into genres like rock and punk, such as underscores, brakence, or glaive. Lady Gaga invited a host of hyperpop artists to remix her 2020 album Chromatica, even bringing on PC music and experimental veterans like Arca and A. G. Cook. A plethora of other artists also hopped on 1000 gecs’ own remix album, resulting in legendary collaborations like Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy singing the hook of “hand crushed.” The early 2020s proved that hyperpop was not a passing fad. I’ve also tracked their rise to prominence in real time, watching the crowd become more devoted since they were the first of two opening acts for BROCKHAMPTON back in 2019.

Nearly 4 years after their debut, 100 gecs returned this year with a new album, and they brought 9,900 more gecs with them. 10,000 gecs is a more refined and logical next step for the group. Despite its 26 minute runtime, the album presents the group’s sound as more cohesive and clarified, while still embodying the quirky, scatterbrained nature of their previous work. After hearing bits and pieces of newer work at previous shows of theirs, I was delighted to see how the newly released album would fare live in concert at their headliner show Great Hall at Avant Gardener in Brooklyn, New York.

The industrial warehouse turned concert venue made for a spacious yet intimate setting for the duo’s music. A lone laptop atop a pelican case and trash can sat on stage. The crowd was riled up and many were in costume, donning wizard garb which has become synonymous with the visual aesthetic of the duo. Time was not wasted waiting for the gecs to emerge. The crowd interacted with each other to fill the dead air, holding up images on phones, plushies that they brought with them, or Nintendo handheld consoles to record the concert with, all to elicit a reaction from nearby concertgoers; A transgender pride flag, a stuffed Sonic the Hedgehog on a crucifix, videos on phones of popular content creator Jerma985 or virtual pop idol Hatsune Miku. There was a sense of nostalgia bonding the seemingly unrelated items together, but not the kind that continues to be exploited by major media companies to appeal to wider demographics. Moreso the kind that appeals to the chronically online, where referential humor reigns supreme. 

Laura and Dylan materialize to the all too familiar THX deep note, and begin with 10,000’s first track, “Dumbest Girl Alive.” The song jumps back and forth between a thrashing guitar-driven beat and a sharp trap loop featuring bass hits reminiscent of Travis Scott’s “SICKO MODE.” On the song’s lone verse, Laura Les delivers oxymoronic lyrics that typically circle back to self-deprecation, and her palpable anger towards the end of the track stresses just how much the world’s political incorrectness can take a toll on her, but in a way the song serves as a statement of reclamation but also acceptance. She’s patronizing in the song’s outro, singing, “Why you wanna pout? Is there something in your eye? / Can you show me how? Can you show me how to cry?” As if she’s never done so herself.

The duo are often engulfed in flashing light during each song. That of blue and red made the perfect backdrop for the siren-like pulsating synths of “757,” which has the duo push out an infectious and jumpy melody that would be near-impossible to sing without copious autotune. The crowd welcomes their performances of their older material as well, cheering for gecs hits such as “stupid horse” and “ringtone”. In between each song, Laura would crack a joke or encourage audience participation as Dylan toys with the laptop, her questions to the audience usually segue into the next song, not before Laura owning up to how cheesy or poorly-executed these segues would be.

Through all the noise, tender moments are able to make their way into the setlist. The duo break out acoustic guitars for a heartfelt rendition of “gecgecgec”, shortly after making an “Anyway, here’s Wonderwall” joke. “I Got My Tooth Removed” initially sets up for a ballad, as Dylan whines about a tough breakup. The crowd immediately swayed their upward arms, with some lighters going up as well. However, the song’s sudden comedic gut punch leads into a full-on embrace of ska, which left me genuinely awe-struck on first listen of the album, and the humorous writing evoked masters of the craft such as “Weird Al” Yankovic. When I saw the people next to me were starting a mosh pit, it was impossible to tell whether or not it was rooted in irony. Ultimately, does that even matter?

Laura’s vocals on “The Most Want Person in the United States” are lackadaisical and sing-songy, evoking the early work of MIA, while Dylan hushes the hook, placing unexpected emphases on certain syllables of the song’s title. The beat is the most overtly quirky on the whole album, laced with Hanna-Barbera sound effects, car screeches, and plump bass tones. “I am not ready for this boing sound effect,” I heard someone say toward the song’s beginning. Similarly, the record scratches and rapped vocals of “Billy knows Jamie” evoke nu-metal, but end in a ferocious finish, an explosive moment that shook the clumped together crowd.

The duo close out the aggressive, text-to-speech-driven interlude of “One Million Dollars” with a cavalcade of Dylan’s metal scraping and Laura’s guitar noodling, leaving the crowd stunned. They briskly move on to “Doritos & Fritos”, with Laura placing a fisheye lens atop her mic, creating a bizarre backdrop, almost as unsettling as the AI-generated visuals they used for “Torture Me”, the uncanniness of which creates a new subgenre of horror. The setlist finishes strong with some of their biggest songs, including “money machine” and “hand crushed by a mallet”.

It was interesting to see the song “mememe” as both 10,000 gecs’ lead single and final track, the first and last taste of it. They also put it towards the end of the concert, as it now has become one of their biggest tracks to date. The track serves as a bridging between their older “hyperpop” stylings and their newer aesthetic powered by rock and punk. It’s a recapitulation, something they didn’t want you to hear until you finished the rest of the album first. While it was a bold move for them to somewhat step away from the scene they had a large part in creating and propelling into the mainstream, I’m glad they stuck to making the music they wanted to rather than capitalizing on trends, which runs the risk of having them die quicker. Maybe it’s for the better that I didn’t include gecs in my paper on hyperpop, confining them to a genre that many of its own artists resent the restrictive nature of. As they emphasize in the song’s chorus, I’ll never really know anything about them, and I honestly prefer it that way.

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