ALBUM REVIEW: Somerset Thrower – ‘Take Only What You Need To Survive’

Hearing about the AI music debate has been unavoidable. I’ve tried to shut it out myself, I really can’t stand the stuff. Something about an AI band whose garbled bio states their sound comes from a time you think you know, but can’t place? It’s absolute garbage that has no right to exist in the first place. Whatever. Let’s instead think about music that does remind you of times that did exist. Good ones. And good artists, too.

We are already obsessed with musical times already passed. Whether it’s dads thinking Foghat were the only group to do it right, or today’s Y2K throwbacks and reclaiming of ‘90s weirdo alt-rock, once you hit 30 you’re stuck in a timewarp. There’s some credence to it. As brilliant as it is to discover music that makes your head spin, dipping into nostalgia is also outstanding. Why not combine the two? Take Long Island’s Somerset Thrower: reminiscent of the melodic hardcore they grew up with, with timeless hooks (and a name inspired by a Lennon-penned song from Sgt. Pepper no less), and a modern sheen to their underlying DIY punk-y outlook. It’s very much the noughties nostalgia a certain demographic loves (guilty); the emo landscape inspired by Jimmy Eat World’s post-Clarity days.

You also know when actual songwriters claim “yes, we are Beatles freaks” that they’ll transfer the Fab Four’s pop sensibilities into whatever they do. With their third full length, Somerset Thrower fine-tunes their inherent knack for doing just this. Fronted by Frank Traficante’s explorations into life on the road and recapturing the joys of growing up, Take Only What You Need To Survive brings excellently chiselled ‘rock band hits’. Ode to friends in bands and single Motor City hinted at the catchiness of what’s to come: a stuttery power chord riff that bounces around, morphing occasionally throughout its runtime in a natural progression. Never Going To Therapy even more so. Beyond its behemoth singalong chorus and nifty little solos, there’s not much more to say beyond it being one of 2025’s most burrowing earworms. It’s not all loudspeaker thrills though. The Losing Streak is the record’s most melancholic instrumental and its highlight, drifting out into a fuzzy daydreamer of an outro.

Down to that song’s lyrical content, it really juggles the idea of taking the smooth with the rough. Under the runtime’s upbeat rhythmic pulse, Traficante sums up the sadness of modern ills succinctly—“bearing our souls to telephone poles, Percocet and power lines”—doubling down on us all being “a slave to modern speed” where “we’ll tell our stories to the turnpike”. John Stippell’s riffs looming at the back of Whole in the World feels like the ominous horrors within the tale, “we dig these ditches ourselves, skeleton motors drag us all to hell”, and the howling, screaming leads in Free Time back up the vocalist’s nightmarish imagery of the songwriting process: “Spill, let it fill into a sea / Watch my creation consume me.” Even the standout line on the rollicking Brooklyn Zoo is the Patrick Kindlon-esque “You’re catatonic in a fucking parking lot!”. Among all this is a candour that really comes across. In the throes of joy, there’s an underlying darkness. And that’s just the way life is.

Yet for every downbeat part, this album’s stacked with fun, memorable excursions that make up Somerset Thrower’s staple sound. There’s no wonder it begins with the band fading in with a radio being switched on. The lyrics are for belting out of a car window across ten amp-splitting tracks, just like we all did with a tape deck or a CD before the aux cable became a thing. Actually, on the subject of time and music again, when did we forget to sum up that some music just fucking rocks? Because this is exactly what this does.

For fans of: The Menzingers, Anxious, Can’t Swim

‘Take Only What You Need To Survive’ by Somerset Thrower is out now on Smartpunk Records.

Words by Elliot Burr