NEW MUSIC: T-Rextasy – Gap Yr Boiz

Last week, Stereogum posted an amazing, weird animated music video to an amazing, weird song, “Gap Yr Boiz” by the band T-Rextasy.

T-Rextasy is doing some of the most interesting, important work in today’s DIY punk scene. Comprised of five college students, T-Rextasy’s music, mostly off their album Jurassic Punk, is hilarious and groundbreaking.

The band is not able to be on tour all the time because its members represent four different college campuses around the country, but they are taking second semester off to tour, as they did this past summer (and I would love to see them come to Brandeis this spring). That said, they are seeking a drummer for their upcoming tour, so feel free to contact them via Facebook with any leads, keeping in mind that they are committed to maintaining a lineup of non-cis men.

T-Rextasy’s commitment to remaining an aberration from the college punk scene’s cis male dominance (not to mention its tendency toward transphobia and rape-supportive culture) is refreshing and notable. Self-identified feminist punk-rockers, their music positions essential political messages beside hilarious lyrics and high-energy rock music, resulting in surprising music that leaves you listening to the full album straight-through without even noticing.

When I first heard “Gap Yr Boiz,” I laughed out loud, in part because I took a last-minute year off to work before starting my first year at Brandeis and met the widest range of other young adults doing the same, and T-Rextasy’s parody of the boys who take a year off to “search for themselves” is poignant, naming heartbreakers like “Eco-Terrorist Eric” and “On-the-Road Rodney,” complete with dreadlocks, beats on Soundcloud, and expensive farming trips in the global South.

T-Rextasy also parodies infantilizing pet names (“Chik’N”), college boyfriends’ lack of basic respect (“What Gets Me”), and offers a charming, hard-hitting tribute to a lunch lady (“Ms. Dolores”).

As a college student, I am awed by the ways the musicians in T-Rextasy, while spending their days in class just like us, are also contributing in such a groundbreaking way to feminist and gender-inclusive punk, and I cannot wait to see how that important work expands.

 

-Peter Diamond