On Instants, Jon-Mikal Bartee didn’t plan to write from a deeply personal perspective.

Initially, the Detroit vocalist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist wanted to take a fun and intuitive approach to writing and recording The Idiot Kids’ latest album.

“As I was working on this record, I was running with the initial ideas for the music and the riffs,” said Bartee, who fronts the punk/garage-rock band.

“I thought, ‘Just keep going. Take the demo and run with it,’ but the songwriting ended up being just as introspective and autobiographical as anything else I’ve written. I was trying to have fun with [the album], and then all of a sudden, I was writing more songs about addiction, suicide, and super heavy topics.”

What resulted is a cathartic album that explores acceptance, authenticity, and recovery. The nine tracks on Instants serve as a finite point in time for Bartee to process and heal from past trauma.

“These songs are about … what’s happening with me, or it’s me addressing old feelings, but from the perspective of [last] year. I can look back at it as a time capsule,” he said.

“It was all written here, and everything was finished in [that] year. Almost all of it was recorded in my apartment, and then it was mixed and mastered by me [there as well]. It’s an unintentional, very personal album.”

Outside of his home studio, Bartee brings the songs from Instants to life on stage with Andrew Maslowsky (drums, backing vocals), Jarrett Koral (bass, backing vocals), and Carmel Liburdi (bass, backing vocals). Together, they make up the live edition of The Idiot Kids.

“The Idiot Kids is still a band and not just a solo project,” he said. “Andrew Maslowsky has been with the band since 2017, and the other members rotate live, including Jarrett Koral, Carmel Liburdi, and other guests.”

I recently spoke with Bartee about the album and its creative process.

Q: How did “Age of Instants” inspire the album’s title?

A: I was working on that one when we were doing Chapels, but I hadn’t finished it. That demo was one of the first ones I had finished post Chapels. It’s this idea of living in the modern world, everything being instant, and [needing] instant gratification, but never being gratified.

I was also doing [this album] with a go-with-your-gut, first-idea-type [of approach]. That’s where Instants came from. It refers to the song and our day and age, but it’s also the driving force behind the record.

Q: “Bulldozer” examines feeling exhausted by society and anticipating negative treatment from it. How did past interactions with toxic people inspire this song?

A: [2025] was a lot for a lot of people. It ends up dealing with stuff that a lot of people are dealing with right now, especially people like me, queer people. It’s writing about exhaustion, and there’s a lot of exhaustion. It’s just trying to get through the day, and that’s what “Bulldozer” is about. It’s this flippant “just kill me”-type of feeling.

Q: “Time for Me” advocates practicing self-care and setting boundaries. How did this song become a wake-up call for you?

A: I started writing it right before I went back into therapy in 2023, and then I finished writing it as I was starting therapy. The whole idea of that song is finally taking time to address anxieties, work through them, and take care of yourself. The lyric, “My fear infected the child inside,” is talking about finally addressing your childhood trauma and trying to embrace it and befriend it. It’s taking the time to give it the attention it needed because it had always been ignored.

I wrote that one when we were on tour, and I came up with the lyric, “I’m takin’ time to take some time for me.” I liked how it sounded, the rhythm of it, and I thought, “What is that song about?” It wasn’t until I reached my breaking point that I knew I needed to go back into therapy and address these things. Then, I was finally able to complete that song. It was this proclamation of acceptance.

Q: “Pastor’s Kid” examines the feeling of being ostracized while growing up in a religious family. How did this song help you address that feeling?

A: “Pastor’s Kid” was something I wrote for my brother and me. It was this feeling of when we were kids, feeling vulnerable and ostracized because of the family we were born into. When we were kids, people didn’t think we were fun because my dad was the pastor.

Feeling ostracized, even at that young an age, before realizing my sexual identity, coming out, or [having] any addiction, it was just the simplest childhood wound of feeling alone and [realizing] that people didn’t want to play with you. Writing from the perspective of the bully and talking to me in the song was very cathartic.

Using religious imagery is easier for me now that I have some distance from it. I had a lot of trauma from growing up queer in the church, but now I feel closer spiritually and closer to God. I feel more comfortable criticizing it, but I’m feeling more connected to it.

Q: “The Letter” explores the impact of suicide on you and other people. How did this song evolve over time?

A: “The Letter” stems from the first song I ever wrote when I was 18. I was coming out of being hospitalized on suicide watch, and I was trying to write. I sat down at the piano and tried to write something. The bones of that come from back then, but when I was doing this record, I had wanted to revisit that song for so long.

I thought, “Well, I want to revisit it now,” [especially] after having gone through therapy, having gone through that whole process, reevaluating it, and then stripping it down to its bare bones. It was a matter of thinking, “What am I trying to say? And how do I say it in the least amount of words?” That was a challenge for me because I can be very wordy, and I love wordplay. I stripped it down with a piano and kept it as simple and raw as possible.

It’s something I’ve dealt with in my family, including family members who attempted and then some who succeeded. I dealt with that at a young age. I had a lot of unresolved trauma, which was what Chapels was all about, and that seeped into my life. It was nice to revisit the song after it was in the rearview mirror. We had put it on an early demo and released recorded versions of it, but it had never turned out how I wanted it.

I was never fully satisfied with the lyrics, but I have a few friends and a couple of people I’ve seen at shows over the years. It used to be called “Letter to a Friend,” and they would ask, “When are you going to bring that song back?” It had been on my mind, and I thought, “I’m working on this record. Let me see what I can do with it and revisit it.”

Carmel Liburdi and I also had a long conversation about a year ago. She had talked about revisiting old songs from a different perspective and doing different instrumentation. I realized it was time to come full circle because it was the first song I wrote, and it’s the last song off this record.

Q: How was the songwriting for Instants cathartic for you?

A: Once I started writing songs, that was always the goal—to speak truly as to what was going on with [me]. I continue to do that, so that’s why no matter how hard I try to write whatever and keep it light, I keep telling myself, “Just focus on the energy of the [music],” and the lyrics end up being what they are. I heard from some friends who I shared the record with early on and then some other people [recently] talking about those specific songs that are dealing with those tougher issues. Those are the ones that resonate.

Having some distance from the pandemic up until 2023, it became more natural to write about those things because I had more words to write about them. I had broken down some of those more complex feelings that I didn’t have the words for. Throughout the years, when I was starting out, I used to keep receipts, scraps of paper, and cigarette packs that I would write on. If I had an idea, I would write it down before I got an iPhone. And now, anytime I have a lyric or a song idea, I write it down on my Notes app.

Q: You revisited old lyrics for some of the songs. What did you learn about your songwriting?

A: A lot of these songs, I went back through old notes and reanalyzed other lyrics. Some of them go back to 2013 because I rarely delete them. I would see them and think, “What was I thinking at that time? Maybe I can write from that perspective of what I was thinking at that time.” This one was definitely a different writing process than before because the demos were the finished songs. I was definitely working in a different way.

Q: Tell me about the recording process for Instants. How did it come together in your home studio?

A: With this record, this is the first time where it’s all me as far as playing all of the parts. I had always been the songwriter, but then I would show it to the band, and the band would learn it. We would practice it, and then we would rerecord it. It had just gotten to a point where it felt like we were wasting a lot of time, especially now that I have a home studio. I can just record it, and we can start moving forward a lot quicker.

I’ve been doing this band for over a decade now, and these songs are so personal; it was another challenge that would separate me from the last couple of records. I wondered, “Can I do this?” I know I can play those instruments, but it was taking that on and thinking, “Can I handle this emotionally and the stress of it?” Also, it was the vulnerability of it and thinking, “Well, if people don’t like the drums on the record, they’re my drums.” It’s all me, I’m the one on the chopping block.

I was trying to push myself on every song here. I started out as a drummer, and I drummed a lot in my teenage years, but I haven’t been in a band drumming since I was 21. Apart from coming up with demos, [the drums] didn’t have to be perfect because I was showing my band. I had to work on my muscle memory and get fast enough to play these songs. In between all of that, I was trying to find time to record, breaking out the practice pad, and playing notes to a metronome.

“Time for Me” was the one that took the longest for drums because of the fast hi-hats throughout the song, which I didn’t think about when I was writing it. I thought, “Oh no, it’s got to be like a Joy Division thing,” and once I had that stuck in my head, I couldn’t change it. I told myself, “You’ve gotten good enough at recording and mixing, and you know that your production has gotten stronger. Listen to yourself and keep going.”

Q: You’ve been producing other artists through Pulling Teeth Recordings. What do you enjoy most about it?

A: Chapels was the first record that I recorded and mixed myself. Then I got the bug, and that was all I wanted to do. It’s been just as fulfilling as performing, which is wild to me, because I never thought I would get that same kind of feeling from anything else. It’s just a different form of creating.

After Chapels turned out at least good enough, as far as the production aspect, I thought, “OK, it worked.” Then I started recording some friends for free and doing stuff at home. Other people started asking, and the ball started rolling. Now, I have a whole mobile recording rig, and I go to other bands’ practice spaces and record them where they’re at.

Q: What’s up next for you?

A: We are doing some tour dates this spring in the Midwest and the East Coast, and we will be sharing those dates soon. Recently, we’ve had more time to regularly get together as a full band again, so we are working on new material and new covers. We may even be able to get a new EP out sometime this year. We had the vinyl cut for Instants, and you can pre-order that now. It should be shipping out mid-to-late March.