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.”
The Stratton Setlist 