MISSIO (2021)

One Liner: Annoyingly hip electronic pop

Wikipedia Genre: Pop rock, synth pop
Home: Austin

Poster Position: 8
Both Weekends.

Saturday at 5:20 on the VRBO stage.

Thoughts:  These guys were here in 2017.  Lucky for me, that means most of my review is already written!  But, I'll give their newer stuff a listen and tack on some more knowledge.  I have to say that, overall, I don't much care for this when I target in on any one song.  But the overall vibe of the tunes, so long as I don't listen to the lyrics, is enjoyable to work to.  So, that is something?

Back in 2017, in a weird coincidence, I listened to the most popular song at the time ("Middle Fingers"), then went and got into the car with the wife to go grab lunch, and that same exact song was playing on the radio when I got in the car.  So, to give you reasoning about why I'm calling this annoying, I give you three examples: (1) the song "KDV," in which the chorus, spoken over trap-ish bounce synth beats, just says "Killin' Darth Vader with my motherfucking kick drum" over and over; (2) the top song is about waving your middle fingers in the air; and (3) their next single is called "Everybody Gets High" and involves a sing-song tone that sounds like a nursery rhyme.  Their 2017 Spotify bio said that they are "known for the dark, emotive pop." At that time, they had 5 singles, by the way.  I'm not sure that anyone with only five singles can be considered "known" for anything.  Especially when one of those five songs is a Lana Del Rey cover.  After I wrote about them only having five singles, they released their debut album, Loner, which adds to the annoyingness with songs like "Kamikazee" that is all about wanting money and power and fame and champagne.

Their current Spotify bio makes it sound like they went out to Marfa or Terlingua to a "ghostlike desert ranch" to "inform, impact, and incite" their 2019 album called The Darker the Weather, the Better the Man.  I'd like to be on record that this album name is terrible.

These guys are from Austin, have gigantic beards, and many, many tattoos.  They are likely not affiliated with missio.org, which is "MISSIO is the official online platform of the Holy Father's own Pontifical Mission Societies that offers a one-to-one connection with the Pope's overseas missions."

Interestingly, that top single in 2017, the mysteriously named "Middle Fingers," isn't very popular at all in their list of songs.  19.3 million streams and all, but I figured it would get  heavy play on the radio because it allows everyone to sing an arena-sized hook about throwing your middle fingers in the air.  

Although, honestly, that song is genius.  It may be annoyingly contrived, but its got the big fat wooooooaaaaahh chorus that people can sing along to, a catchy refrain that people will remember, and a rebellious "dance" move people can join in with by throwing up that middle finger and jamming along.  Its like the perfectly crafted pop tune.  They are probably going to freaking kill it. Dammit.  But three other tracks off that debut album have more than 45 million streams, so those are obviously the hits.  

The second most streamed one is "Everybody Gets High," which has 48.4 million listens on Spotify.

In that same vein?  The terrible "Rad Drugz," which is so surprisingly about him doing rad drugz.  Or the painful "Misfit Lunatic," where he pretty much just repeats over and over that he is, in fact, a misfit lunatic AND repeatedly says "namaste on my vibe," and I want to run so far away from knowing that lyric I could just run right across the Gulf of Mexico without touching the water.

If I have to pick top songs I kind of liked?  "Bottom of the Deep Blue Sea" was pretty good.  The instrumentals are kind of nice?  I like that Paul Wall appears on a few tracks?

None of their newer songs have nearly as many streams as those ones of the first disc.  Which is interesting to me.  It looks like "I See You" is the top recent tune, 27.5 million streams, from the 2019 album about dark weather making guys great.

Well, that was weird.  He finally jumped into the middle of the circle to dance in front of everyone, but no one even looked at him, they just kept playing with their ball.  I thought they'd be like "I SEE YOU SCARY FACE GUY!!!"  Lovely little sentiment though.

I'm pre-emptively annoyed at how this is going to be a huge show and everyone is going to be going nuts about how amazing this show was when they all got to throw their middle fingers in the air and eat pills while jamming to these two bearded geniuses.  So very annoyed.  It'll be like when 21 Pilots blew up at ACL despite the fact that I hated them and thought they were terrible.  The music is catchy.  But despite the fact that I'd love to be repping the next big thing, this is not my bag, baby.