Adult Dude, PPL, STRANGE HERD

The part of the 1990s that almost everyone got wrong (then and now) is that, despite the slacker aesthetic, Generation X cared more than most. Unfortunately, the remnants of that era are limited to oil-stained flannel shirts, torn jeans, unkempt hair, and the phrase “Whatever.” This same superficiality is the problem with independent music’s recent fascination with the 1990s, but Brooklyn NY’s Adult Dude is one of only a few exceptions. Sure, their debut LP Adult Moods is full of songs that might have made it onto alternative radio in 1998, positioned nicely between Soul Asylum and Local H, but these ten songs attempt to neither recreate nor revere the alt-rock stereotype that preceded them. Indeed, they take the torch, but opt to trample down an alternative route. Part of this comes from Adult Dude’s penchant for punk-rock, especially during “Riff Dog”, whose guitars ramble along with crisp drumming that pops and cracks beneath the lumbering melodic landscape. Toward the end of the track, singer Manny Soares’s slack warble rises into a youthful roar, riling the song into a playful fit until its end. Likewise, many remember the alt-rock lyrics of the 1990s as nonsensical and Nihilistic, but Adult Dude’s reflect the introspection of the decade’s best wordsmiths. Throughout Adult Moods, the band explores the fine line between youth and adulthood, the value of love and loneliness Clearly, Adult Dude doesn’t try to revive anything. Instead, they wear their influences on their sleeves, incorporating the honesty that made those musicians meaningful, expressing the passion and depth that made grunge and alt-rock important, and making sense of being a Millennial the way that those Gen-Xers did.