Review: TV Cop – “TV Cop Smokes Weed”

Bloated Kat Records, June 5, 2020 

TV Cop smokes weed, and smokes your 90’s grunge / power pop / punk heroes. 

TV Cop comes from my general neck of the woods, Ottumwa, Iowa, and they put music out on Bloated Kat Records, an Iowa label.  They play a sort of grungy power pop punk music that’s probably way better than you remember the 90’s being.  TV Cop Smokes Weed is the new record, a 5-song EP that does the quiet-loud thing pretty perfectly.  It’s got great, heavy guitars, throbbing bass, and banging drums with crashes all over the place.  Plus, the songs have some of my favorite words I’ve heard on a new record this year.    

The opener on here is probably my favorite.  “Pancake King” starts with some really cool and fuzzy power chords, and then they get joined by some thunder drums and rib-rattling crashes before a guitar arpeggio sort-of-thing works up to some chugging guitars. On top of that, they unleash maybe my favorite words of the year: “I guess I should probably stop calling you my friend from high school, cuz you know you fucking killed that guy, like real hard, not just stab and run away”.  And somehow, a ways into it, they toss off this spacey reverbed guitar solo thing that works and the whole spectacle all of a sudden reminds me of Hum.  I don’t know, it just hits right.  

The middle section is pretty awesome, too.  “Anyway” positively destroys.  Guitars and throbbing bass alternate and share space on the verse before the song explodes on the chorus, giving off a bit of a Local H feel.  The bridge is great with its guitar rhythms and “aah’s” sounding so right.  And with lines like “sitting here, wasting my brain away, I’m just staring at a tv screen, nothing good’s on, but I’m watching it anyway”, I wonder how they figured out what I do with my Saturday nights.  And “Pre-9/11”, is a blast.  Over top what is almost a heavy pop punk-type song, they throw in lines like “way back in 1998, I was only six foot, I remember the day, when Dale Earnhardt won the Daytona 500” (huh?) and “pre-9/11 kicked ass, but I wouldn’t wanna go back, cuz I wouldn’t know how to find weed”.  Again, they do the fuzzed-out guitar arpeggio solo thing, and this particular one just obliterates me.  I’m pretty sure it’s way better than your favorite solo.  

The closers, “Over It” and “Probably Not”, both go for a little bit more of a downer vibe.  “Over It”  does a sort of wonky alternate universe intro to a Nirvana song and then the crunchy noise guitars and destroyed drums come in and they sing “when the time comes, I’m gonna quit, pack my shit into a box, I’m fucking over it”.  It’s kind of great.  “Probably Not” does the quiet-loud thing, singing stuff like “will I always be this stressed, broke, stupid, and depressed, the odds are looking good, for me” and “I don’t wanna be by myself anymore, but I wish it wasn’t better than being with you”.  And while the lines sound sort of rough, they’re not sung with some sort of desperation.  Maybe it’s just bummer music for people that still know how to have fun. 

By the time these 17 minutes wrap, I’m just left wanting more, so another time around we go.  TV Cop sound beamed in from the 90’s, but TV Cop Smokes Weed makes the 90’s sound way better than the stereotypes and copycats.  Plus, they do Iowa proud.  This is good stuff.  

You might like this if:

• You like heavy and fuzzy guitars and great pop hooks worked in
• You like funny, self-deprecating, and sort of destroyed lyrics

You might not if:

• You’re done with the 90’s and have no interest in going back