For Jon-Mikal Bartee, a new album with The Idiot Kids allows for a deep exploration of the past and a clear pathway for the future.

The lead vocalist-guitarist of the Detroit garage-punk trio mines personal experiences, thoughts and emotions related to sex, identity, addiction and trauma on Chapels. In turn, those excavations create more space for relief and renewal.

“That’s kind of what the whole album is about. Through trauma and addiction and all of that, trying to find acceptance. That’s just what it kind of turned into. It’s not like we sat down and said, ‘I want to write an album about my childhood,’” Bartee said.

“For me, listening to artists like Elliott Smith, Thom Yorke, Bob Dylan and people who talked about very personal things—sometimes in a more abstract way and sometimes a little more literally—that’s what I connected to. Just from hearing people talk about what they’re dealing with didn’t resonate in the same way as like putting it to a melody or a rhythm.”

Alongside bandmates Nicholas Zambeck (bass) and Andrew Maslowsky (drums, vocals), Bartee adopts that refreshing approach on Chapels, which features a dozen tracks filled with candid lyrics, earworm choruses and turbocharged punk-rock instrumentation.

“This is the kind of stuff, as a kid and as a teenager, I didn’t hear anyone talking about. Luckily, the world has come a long way in the last 20 years. But, at the same time, with more visibility, there’s also more hatred, so it’s kind of like this battling force back and forth,” said Bartee, who grew up in a religious family and came out as an adult.

“These are the songs I wish I had heard as a teenager or a young adult, and I was dealing with that internalized homophobia and religious trauma and whatnot. That’s why I ended up calling it Chapels because it all kind of went down to that.”

Machines and Obsessions

Inside The Idiot Kids’ Chapels, listeners receive an honest, intimate look into Bartee’s vulnerable struggles and the courage and growth he develops along the way.

That vulnerability is first unearthed on the frenzied second track, “Your Machine,” which addresses a primal need for sex and connection. Fueled by restless electric guitar, bass and drums, Bartee sings, “Can’t you see my gauge is low? / I need more than a dream to wake from / And we could wait a while more / But I can’t bear the hesita-tion.”

“It’s about when you’re with a partner and you’re wanting that connection so badly in a sexual way from them. It’s getting that validation physically from somebody where it’s like, ‘I have this emptiness, and I have this longing to be with another person,’” he said.

“It’s very similar to ‘Bedside’ … where you want a physical connection with somebody. That’s why I wanted to put them both toward the beginning of the album. It’s that initial primal side of your identity, the sexual side of something you can’t control, and maybe you don’t have the highest standards. It’s longing for something more, even if deep down you know it’s not right.”

Next, The Idiot Kids tackle another bedside struggle—insomnia—and the lingering frustration and exhaustion that accompanies it on “White Flags.”

Backed by determined electric guitar, bass and drums, Bartee sings, “Why you’d pick my nightstand to wage your war? / Invade some other place / Some other man!”

“A lot of that comes from my mental well-being and the things that keep me up at night are just these racing thoughts going down the rabbit hole and not being able to pull myself out of it and not being able to shut my brain off,” he said.

“‘White Flags’ is a feeling of surrendering yourself to the things that you can’t control, which is one of my biggest—if not my biggest—downfall when it comes to my anxiety. I’ll do anything; I just need to go to sleep, I need to get my head on straight.”

After battling insomnia, The Idiot Kids confront addiction while missing past interactions with friends on “Wilted Bloom.”

Surrounded by fiery electric guitar, Bartee sings, “I miss the blurry TV sets / I miss the basements where we used to run / To pass out in a kitchenette / With a bottle beneath my thumb / And I wish the nights were longer / So we’d stay forever young / When we’d stay out until we saw the sun.”

“That was me dealing with [it] even now seven years sober … I still long for those things, but it’s more the experiences that I had with friends on those things and not so much the actual substance. The idea of that bloom—that thing you got from it—was actually the experiences with other people and not the actual substance,” Bartee said.

“If the substances keep coming back, it escalates so quickly that you’re not going to be able to bloom. You’re not going to be able to be who you think you’re going to be.”

The Idiot Kids continue to spotlight struggles with addiction on “Movement,” which features haunting electric guitar, bass and drums.

Bartee sings, “I hope you can breathe out confidence / Laughter starts to beam / A false sense of radiance / So I will try and feed / You a loving sustenance / Though I can’t even see / I’m giving blindness one more chance.”

“‘Movement’ is searching for stillness … searching some sort of peace, some sort of understanding, some sort of leveling things out. I was drinking heavily, and then I started doing coke, which would bring me back up, and then I would drink more,” he said.

“It’s about being on the more intense side of things when it got into cocaine. It’s this sort of surrender, but surrendering yourself to the darkest part of yourself. It’s that feeling of ‘Yes, I’m getting this confidence, and I’m having these intense conversations with people because I’m on the substance.’ I think it’s going great, but this is a very distorted version of myself.”

The Idiot Kids also come to terms with identity in a religious world on the contemplative title track. Consoled by cathartic electric guitar, bass and drums, Bartee sings, “Every Sunday morning / Only offered a one-way sign / Not the U-turns inside my mind / There’s no need for warning / Cause what I’ve come to find … / In heaven everything is fine.”

“I was 20 years old, and I had just come out to my parents. I went to the church they were going to at the time. My dad had stopped pastoring, but he was still working with the church,” Bartee said.

“I hadn’t been [to church] in a couple of years, and I had a feeling of ‘I’m just gonna go.’ It’s a bigger church where they have a main auditorium, and then there’s a little chapel off to the side.”

Inside that chapel, Bartee discovered a baby grand piano and became overwhelmed with emotion while playing it. His brief time spent on the piano inspired the writing of “Chapels” and ultimately the album’s title.

“I was singing a [lyric] from a song [featured in] David Lynch’s Eraserhead—‘in heaven everything is fine’—that the Lady in the Radiator sings. I was singing that over and over again as a mantra, and I started weeping,” Bartee said.

“Even though I had already come out, that was the first acceptance of like, ‘Oh, this is totally fine. No one hates you. God doesn’t hate you; you are who you are.’ It’s being in that place of where I felt that trauma, and I felt that judgment, and then having a feeling of acceptance in that same environment.”

Finally, The Idiot Kids examine the unrelenting need for love on “Obsession,” the album’s raw and honest closer. Alongside agitated electric guitar, bass and drums, Bartee sings, “I’m spacing out but I won’t resist / I’m feeling I do not exist / Scream divinities of righteousness / But your words scream triple six!”

“This song has taken on so many different versions, and we kept playing it live. We would just be improv-ing, and the lyrics at the end, that was just an improv I did one night at a show,” he said.

“It also felt right to end on a note where [dealing with trauma] is a constant struggle, and these things keep coming back. Just like the album when you’re streaming it, you’re going to keep going through these things. It might be a little nasty, and it might be a little raw, but sometimes it’s sweet, sometimes it’s poppy and sometimes it’s happy.”

The Origin of Chapels

To bring Chapels to life, Bartee started writing the bulk of the tracks for The Idiot Kids’ second full-length album right before and during the pandemic. Three of the tracks—“Reaching Out,” “Spare Room” and “Obsession”—were written several years earlier.

“I got in this space where it was like, ‘What do I want to say?’ I also had so much time on my hands … and for me, music is very much a compulsion,” said Bartee, who formed the band in 2011 and named it after “idiot kids” references Elliott Smith makes on his 1995 self-titled album.

“If I don’t do it for a few days or at least pick up a guitar and play, I feel off. It affects my mental health, and during the pandemic when we were stuck inside, I had to be doing that.”

During that time, Bartee started recording demos in GarageBand and fell in love with the recording process. That interest resulted in taking online classes and later recording the album’s tracks in a Hamtramck basement practice space and at Maslowsky’s family’s cabin up north.

“I was learning, and I was like, ‘Well, let me buy some equipment.’ I bought some used microphones and this TASCAM board that wasn’t very expensive and plugged it into my laptop,” said Bartee, who also mixed and produced Chapels and released it via Jett Plastic Recordings.

“We recorded a couple of practices, and I was mixing that, and I had been mixing my demos and all of that. These songs are kind of personal, and I wanted to capture that. People usually come to see us for our live performance because it is very raw, and we never use a setlist … just to keep it fresh every time.”

The Idiot Kids are capturing that same raw, personal feeling of Chapels at their Dec. 2 album release show. They’re sharing the stage with Carmel Liburdi and The Cult of SpaceSkull at Detroit’s Outer Limits Lounge.

“We’re playing the album from start to finish, and it’s going to be a very theatrical night. We’ve got some fun things planned,” Bartee said. “I wanted to get some of my favorite local groups to play, and I’m usually pretty theatrical. I perform in drag a lot of times, and I had to get some other theatrical people with me.”

After the album release show, The Idiot Kids will perform Dec. 29 at Rumba Café in Columbus, Ohio with MethMatics and The Scratches. They’re also planning a spring tour throughout the Midwest and East Coast and looking at releasing new material.

“I’ve got a bunch [of material] that didn’t make the album and that didn’t fit. I’ve got half an album written already. We’re going to try to keep the momentum going and do some little singles next year and maybe an EP,” Bartee said.

“Hopefully, we can get some buzz with this album, and we can do a lot of touring next year. If not next year, then maybe the following year we’ll have another album out.”

Show details:

The Idiot Kids Chapels Album Release Party with The Cult of SpaceSkull and Carmel Liburdi & Friends

Saturday, Dec. 2 | Doors: 8 p.m. & Music: 9 p.m.

Outer Limits Lounge, 5507 Caniff in Detroit

$10 cover