Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on the Ann Arbor District Library’s Pulp blog.
After years of writing about monsters, Fangs and Twang didn’t expect to find them in human form.
The country-rock trio of Billy LaLonde (drums, vocals), Andy Benes (guitar, vocals), and Joe Bertoletti (bass, vocals) discovered some people started spreading monstrous misinformation at the height of the pandemic.
In response, Benes channeled that disbelief and frustration into the Ypsilanti, Michigan band’s opening track, “You Monster,” from its fourth album of the same name.
Alongside explosive electric guitar, organ, and fiddle, he sings, “It’s hard to be you and me / When we can’t tell what’s true / It seems to me that we can’t agree / Even that the sky is blue.”
“That song came to me … and it was done in 20 minutes,” Benes said. “All of the lyrics and all of the music just came out, and that was what was on my mind. [It’s about] not having a common set of facts or a common language that we’re speaking anymore as people and how horrible that is.”
The title track also lays the groundwork thematically for the horrors and delights Fangs and Twang uncovers on You Monster.
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