Lip Critic
The Underworld Camden174 Camden High Street, Camden
Thu 22 Oct · 19:00 · £16.50
About this event
Lip Critic’s new album Theft World was born from a real-life act of theft. While on tour supporting Hex Dealer, vocalist Bret Kaser discovered his bank accounts had been drained by an identity thief. Among the fraudulent purchases was one unexpected transaction: the scammer had bought Lip Critic’s entire Bandcamp discography. Days later, after a show in Boston, a masked fan approached the merch table and recited Kaser’s social security number. The fan admitted to stealing his identity, explaining that he believed Lip Critic’s music contained hidden messages as part of an elaborate scavenger hunt that he had finally solved. Rather than call the police, the band sat down with him and recorded a lengthy conversation as he explained his bizarre theories, characters and imagined worlds hidden within their songs. None of it made sense, yet the story became impossible to forget. Returning home, Lip Critic abandoned the album they had been working on and started again from scratch. Inspired by the thief’s surreal interpretation of their music, they built a new record around his fractured mythology — populated by figures like “The ATM Man” and strange locations including “The Junk Space” and “The Grocery Store Casino.” The result is Theft World: a feverish, unpredictable album shaped by paranoia, obsession, mistaken meaning and the strange ways art can be interpreted once it leaves its creator’s hands.
