Wolfgang Wallace's newest single, "The Buddy System," shits all over that with glee, then lights it on fire, dances in the ashes. There's a bristling, almost manic energy from the music's opening seconds that dares you to keep up. The vocals here don't sing so much as lurch, tumble, and scream their way through the track like a fever dream you can't quite shake. It's not about being pretty. It is about being there, raw and fiercely unpredictable. The riffs turn, one of them shooting up from one point, darting away into something entirely different.
And the song's structure stubbornly defies settling into anything familiar. You are thrown into a wonderland that, at every step of the way, feels like it's moving beneath your feet. That's exactly the point. The Buddy System exists in its own world, lyrically. But it's the good kind of weird, the kind that makes you want to listen again, and maybe again, to figure out what is really going on here. There's a method to the madness, even if Wallace never quite lets you get entirely comfortable with it. Combining disparate elements intelligently, what makes the track pop is how it refuses to be nailed down. It's creatively chaotic.
There's a unfiltered curiosity coursing through every moment of the song, a purposeful deviation from what is expected in favor of something more primal, more true. This is not music for sewing or the background noise of civilization. This is the music that gets under your skin, forces you out of complacency, and makes you wonder what Wolfgang Wallace is going to do next. Whatever it is, we'll be listening with wide eyes and a small amount of discomfort. In a place where predictability often prevails, "The Buddy System" is the wild card we didn't know we would need.