(Sweet Cheetah Records, CD, digital, vinyl)
Does anyone know what the “post” in post-punk is supposed to sound like? Asking for a friend. And that friend is the Burlington band Goodnight Nobody.
The newcomers’ debut LP, s/t, lurches from tittering math rock to dynamic, ’90s-loving alternative to college-radio slacker-indie fare, often within the same song. It’s almost as if the band were trying to cover every possible post-punk base to create the ultimate beard-stroking, slightly too-old-to-mosh aesthetic.
The album’s first track, “Happy Birthday,” roars out of the gate with a propulsive fist-pumper of a beat from drummer Nicholas Kramer. Ben Glassman’s staccato, New Order-esque bass line locks in like clockwork as guitarist and vocalist Jason Dean channels Boston post-punks Mission of Burma. And s/t is off and running.
It’s clear over the album’s eight songs that Goodnight Nobody worship at several altars: space, power and dynamics. As a trio, the band creates a full sound, bordering on beefy, but knows when to let space do the work. The closely controlled dynamic shifts on “The Staircase” build upward like a goth Jenga tower. The new-wave minimalism of “Aurora” likewise takes a circuitous route to a massive outro.
Dean, formerly of Seattle indie-rock outfit Mutiny Mutiny, also records under the moniker Starvation Wages and dropped the lyrically dense, dark-as-hell Marketplace Fear in 2023. The record was a gritty industrial project, seething with political rage and chock-full of direct lyrics.
Goodnight Nobody are more elusive, and Dean’s lyrics are held a little closer to the vest on s/t. “God damn this cycle,” Dean howls on “Planned Obsolescence,” a ferocious snake pit of razor-sharp riffs and snarling angst, before intoning “nobody wants this” over and over. It’s a punk-rock “opt-out” anthem, a great song to blast while canceling a Spotify or Amazon account. Would that genre be reverse synergy? Unsubscribe-core?
For a new group, the trio is remarkably fully formed and, for the most part, pulls off the balancing act of essentially being several different modes of rock band all at once. “Cans vs Should” maybe isn’t the best version of Goodnight Nobody, with Dean’s melody weirdly sedate as the band finds itself in a lingering shuffle that goes on longer than necessary. But such missteps are few and far between on an otherwise promising debut.
“Already Enough” serves as a kind of thesis statement for the band. The song is an epic album closer, moving through all the ingredients simmering in the post-punk cauldron of s/t and culminating in a swaggering coda of high-intensity instrumental prowess.
For Goodnight Nobody, the “post” in post-punk may mean many things at once, but they’re well suited to navigating a wide expanse of buzzing guitars, trancelike bass and impellent drumbeats. There’s no identity crisis on s/t, just a band in enough command of its influences to confidently fuse them all together.
s/t is streaming on major services and available for physical purchase at goodnightnobody.bandcamp.com. Catch Goodnight Nobody on Saturday, October 3, at the Monkey House in Winooski with fellow Burlington rockers Peddle and We’re Here! to Kill.
This article appears in September 23 • 2026.
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