Singles Spotlight:
Old Joy –
“Gut Shot”

Hello reader,

How are you today?

Welcome back, or welcome if this is your first visit to SWT.

I’m stoked to talk about another singer-songwriter making great music: Old Joy, the project of multi-instrumentalist Alex Reindl, who started in Chicago’s music scene. According to the press release for Old Joy’s upcoming album Why Burn Bridges You Can Live Under, which is out Friday, September 18th via Boston-based Candlepin Records, Reindl played, “…in bands like Sonny Falls and Dogs at Large, and he brought over more than an album’s worth of finished recordings to Austin when he moved.” We’ve had the pleasure of hearing some of them on recent releases. In 2022, Chicago Public Radio’s iconic station WBEZ interviewed him and called him “the city’s greatest dive band.” 

Much of Old Joy’s discography has a 90s and early 00s power- or jangle-pop sound that’s warm and inviting, especially paired with his usually mellow, comforting vocal delivery. The press release for this new album elaborates, “While Old Joy gets compared to Elliott Smith often, he also brings a power-pop and 90s indie-rock edge to his songwriting. Before he moved from Chicago to Austin a few years ago, he recorded the album at Jamdek with longtime collaborators and stalwarts of Chicago music, Doug Malone (NE-HI, Glyders) and Keifer Douglas (Chaepter, Sick Day), before mastering by Greg Obis (Stuck).”  The past few years, while covering more and more Chicago-based artists with this site, I’ve come to recognize and have blind trust in Greg Obis and Carl Saff for mastering. Definitely two of the best in the city and arguably the state for my money.

Digging deeper into Old Joy’s discography, you’ll find some releases that I highly recommend checking out to all music fans, but especially to those who really like Paul Westerberg, Fountains of Wayne, Elliott Smith, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Teenage Fanclub, the Replacements, T. Rex, Pavement, Archers of Loaf, Butthole Surfers, and more that you’ll think of as you listen. If you like those bands, you’ll dig the shit out of listening to Old Joy. It may even bring some nostalgia, as songs often do, fittingly for the band’s name. Old Joy’s discography includes Monks Aflame EP (2020), in which Alex collaborated with his father, James, who wrote all the lyrics; the band’s full-length album debut, Trash Your Life (2021); Go Away Evil EP (2022); Too Sick For School (2023); and Again & Again & Again EP (2024).

What is today’s Singles Spotlight entry? A new version of “Gut Shot”.  The original version of the song was first released in 2019, but was recorded earlier, as Reindl notes, in a premiere for the song via Soundvsystem, “I wrote this song a long time ago at this point, probably 2014. I was a junkie, I was dating a junkie, we had these kind of ridiculous dreams about having a life together, ‘we will buy a house, have kids, love each other forever,’ that kind of thing. The kind of delusional shit that only makes sense when two people are too high to think clearly. So the song is kind of about that, a doomed relationship based on fantasy, bleeding out slowly, shot by something you ‘didn’t see’ coming, even though it was right there in your face the whole time…You know being gut shot was the thing soldiers feared most of all. It takes about 20 minutes to die after being shot in the stomach; it’s the most horrific shit ever.”

All that said, the melody and songcraft make “Gut Shot” an upbeat power-pop song, which may surprise some listeners if they expected something darker sounding and feeling. The guitars are lively and roar forward at times; the drums are a great example of the power pop sound, and at times the drum beats paired with Reindl’s vocal delivery remind me of Fountains of Wayne’s great Welcome Interstate Managers (2003) album. To round out the melody in “Gut Shot”, there are also moments of pedal steel twang. It fits the sorrow of the lyrics. Using two sets of vocals to tell a story of a crumbled relationship is a great choice, and Reindl executes it well. I think this song is a great introduction to Old Joy and thus deserves its own day as part of our Singles Spotlight series here at SWT. After you listen, let us know what you think.

Press play and listen to “Gut Shot” for yourself:

Credits for Why Burn Bridges You Can Live Under per its Bandcamp page:

Engineered by Keifer Douglas & Doug Malone
Recorded at Jamdek Studios, Chicago, IL, Mar 2020 – August 2022
Mixed by Keifer Douglas
Mastered by Greg Obis, Chicago Mastering Service
Album art by Roxanne Hoffman

Max Petot, drums (tracks 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)
Brian Cummings, bass (tracks 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)
Ryan Ensley, guitar (tracks 3, 6, 9, 10, 11)
Robby Kuntz, drums (tracks 1, 2, 5, 12), piano (track 1)
Ryan Donlin, bass (tracks 2, 5, 12), cello
Mike Molitor, guitar (tracks 1, 2, 5, 12)
Sam Larson, vocals (track 7)
Ben Carbone, pedal steel
Alex Reindl, vocals, electric & acoustic & slide guitars, piano, organ, mellotron, synth, vibes, marimba, glockenspiel, drums (track 1), bass (tracks 1, 4)

Take a gander at the cover art for Why Burn Bridges You Can Live Under:

The track list for Why Burn Bridges You Can Live Under:

1. Cinco De Mayo
2. Gut Shot
3. Pocket
4. Pretty Waste
5. Crucifiction Song
6. Loud 1
7. Kind of Girl
8. Rear Guard
9. Sonny’s Blues
10. My Brother
11. You Are Loved
12. Everybody Loves You When You Die
13. Everybody for Themself

Alex M Theel

Co-Founder, Reviewer, Content Creator, Business side, Editor at Scummy Water Tower Productions | Web

Scummy Water Tower Productions co-founder, reviewer, business manager, and editor. Thank you for visiting this site, scummywatertower.com, and YouTube for Water Tower Sessions and SWT Interviews. And all of our socials.
Questions, feedback, or more? Contact me: alex@scummywatertower.com