Jeff Rosenstock has always made music for the slow days after the end-times, and "All This Useless Energy" is a kick-the-can punk ballad for crawling out of aimlessness toward a purpose.
Rosenstock wrote POST- in the months following the 2016 presidential election — it reaches across the full spectrum of anger, acceptance and action. Rosenstock constantly waffles between resignation and resolve, especially in the chorus to "All This Useless Energy": "I'm worried of abandoning / The joys that framed my life / But all this useless energy / Won't hold me through the night."
The solution? A three-legged race! Shot in Washington, D.C. (the setting of this national drama), Rosenstock referees a race in which all participants willingly handicap themselves. Choose your fighter: Rosenstock's full band and members of English pop-punk band Martha and D.C.'s own Bad Moves, plus some racers in animal costumes and others in goth attire. (We won't tell you who wins.)
"In the spirit of expending 'useless energy' we thought we'd really dig in and make as serious of a sports video about as stupid of a sport as possible," director David Combs says of the video.
That's the thing about energy: you can't create it, and you can't destroy it either. But one can try.
POST- is out now viaPolyvinyl Records.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.