“We’re characterised as more wacky than we are. “I just like that music – not necessarily because it’s whatever people say it is.” Brady sighs.
Much has been made, for example, about how their music takes on typically maligned genres the band framed as redeeming saviours for pop-punk, rap-rock, and nu-metal. Genial but laconic, the St Louis duo are uninterested in playing into the press-ready dramatics of their so-called story. They both have the same dye job (platinum blonde) and general mood (tired). Meanwhile, Brady is sunk deep into his sofa. Les is perched by her desk, one tattooed knee raised and a ceiling fan whipping about behind her. The pair are calling from their respective homes in LA. There are remnants of the old gecs – “757” is the closest thing to a hyperpop track, and the album is a similarly short affair at only 27 minutes long (“I feel like if we ever hit more than 45 minutes, I’m gonna feel like I have a stick up my ass,” says Les) – but for all intents and purposes, 10,000 gecs is something new, which is probably the most gecs quality of all. Lead single “Hollywood Baby” is the sort of turbo-charged pop-punk anthem that makes you feel old and young all at once, while the nu-metal of “Billy Knows Jamie” is more indebted to Limp Bizkit than any electro-pop artist. “Doing the same we did on the last album wouldn’t have been very fun.” 10,000 gecs is a lot of fun. “We’re just trying to keep it interesting,” shrugs Les of the switch-up. It’s hard to say exactly what sort of album would’ve made sense as a follow-up to that mind-boggling debut but no one predicted the alt-rock top notes of 10,000 gecs. Starry collaborations with artists like Charli XCX culminated in a multi-record deal with Atlantic Records. Staggering streaming figures (their ecstatic trash-pop “money machine” is within arms reach of 90 million listens on Spotify). “Insane s***,” remarks Les.)ġ000 gecs punched the pedal on a viral climb. (So original was their sound that it spawned a new subgenre of hyperpop. Sonically, it’s about as smooth as glass in a blender. Their debut is a flash-bang of high-energy dance-pop as you’ve never heard it, sliced through with razor-sharp shards of ska, dubstep, trance, quick-jab rhymes and greasy industrial sound effects. With 2019’s 1000 gecs, Les and Brady did not so much burst onto the scene as explode. Reviews of their second album – bar that bazooka comparison – have been very nice, if a little surprised by 10,000 gecs. “But it’s nice when they’re nice.”Īnd they are. “I hate it,” says Les in her chronic deadpan. But the duo – Laura Les, 28, and Dylan Brady, 29 – loathe reading reviews.
Divisiveness to that extent – the sort that has one critic heralding the record as a glimmering bravura of 21st-century pop music, another comparing it to a bazooka firing out the world’s worst genres at your face – is almost unheard of these days. It’s not every day that an album receives polar-opposite reviews.
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