Anything but melancholy, Plastic Hacks’ debut record dazzles
A product of Bryan and Brandon Peach, “Fabulously Melancholy” is moody, catchy, and smart with the perfect summer vibes.
One of the refrains in the opening track on Plastic Hacks’ debut “Fabulously Melancholy” offers a reflection on life’s absurd rituals, calling them “typical, traditional, lifeless,” but those words could not be further from what this record offers listeners. Just as that refrain fades, we’re met with a synth melody that is as memorable as it is haunting. It’ll disturb your dreams for days.
Brandon and Bryan Peach, Philadelphia-adjacent twin brothers, collaborate on this debut. Their creation is quite an achievement. The music is original and so compelling, I wasn’t able to stop listening to the early tracks I bore witness to and haven’t stopped spinning (or streaming) this masterful record. The lyrics are poetry, and turn the writers’ lived experiences into autobiographical and fictionalized storylines that transport us into the minds and hearts of two nearly-40-somethings as they reflect on their exurban upbringings from their post-Evangelical vantage point.
A synth-driven post-punk album, it’s clear that they draw homage from punk rock legends the Ramones, the emotionality of none other than Morrissey (except these two have great politics), the vibes of early LCD Soundsystem, wrapped in a bow that only Chapell Roan could tie.
“Slow Glow” is a reflection on the staleness and the growing Walmartification of small-town America. “Can’t find myself sometimes / feels like dying / Slow glow bleed into white / Christ I’m trying.” The opening verse offers us the ever-familiar, monotonous automated response of a customer service robot—a germane encapsulation of late-capitalist life. The scenery of a former industrial town is no offering for inspiration. Brandon sings, piercing us all in the heart: “And when I try to write another metaphor / Compare the way I’m feeling now to how I felt before / The vacant Blockbuster back behind the liquor store / seems too sore.”
The poppy “Get It Together” exposes the emptiness of the passion-less pursuit of mental health, where the writer wonders if we were better then than we are now. “Way back in time, people had to take / just whatever chemicals their brains would make / And they died at thirty and couldn’t hack it / ‘Til we invented pills and microplastics.” Get it together. Or don’t.
They aren’t trivializing mental illness and its treatment, though. The next track—a highlight of the record—opens with a recitation of commercial SSRIs, with which the lyricists are personally familiar. The writer tells us of a trip he took to the beautiful coast of Scotland, only to find himself bedridden, unable to leave his hotel room. “Would it even be enough for me / If I took my pills on time and / every night I got eight hours of sleep / And I always watched my diet?” The rhetorical question doesn’t need an answer, but under the wet cloud of depression, if there were one, it would be a painful “no.” What if they called up every lover they had known in all their life and said they’re sorry for the bother? Still no. No, the emo kids lied to you. Even the best of romances can’t lift this cloud.
And chasing that ideal partner is a fool’s errand, too. The song, which contains the record’s title, tells us as much. An everyday woman sacrifices her soul for fame—trading her mid-Atlantic accent for Milanese, Barcelonan (sung with a “th,” mind you), and a Parisian one. Her suitor longs to capture her attention, and she reassures him with a lie, “She’d love to share a moment with you but she’s so sorry…. She’ll meet you in Chelsea.” But she doesn’t want a moment with you, she isn’t sorry, and she’s never meeting you in Chelsea.
Part of the beauty of this record is often how joyous the melodies are, and as you bob your head, the genuine lyrics that spare no lie capture your attention, balancing the truth of the difficulty of life, while never succumbing to cynicism. Faced with the inevitable dissatisfaction of life, the singer tells us we’ll be joining them in the nosebleeds, even as Rome collapses.
Fit with that lack of satisfaction is “Eight Days of Fresh Hell,” a song that tells of the excruciating separation of two lovers who once held each other as the ones for each other. In the midst of the narrator’s existential crisis, they wonder out loud what they plan to do for the rest of their life. “You said and you promised / You said this would be it / And I’m saying honest that I don’t see it.” They continue, “we said this was working before we were quitters.” Asked what they want, they utter their confusion, “I’m just not sure anymore.”
While not exactly a concept album, I can’t help but think that the approaching-divorce individual in the aforementioned song is not only hopeless in their love life, but that their workplace and vocation offers no comfort. In “Office Holiday,” an overworked office worker is already dead before they even leave their house for work. They trade in their Volvo for a pack of reds—no idea what they cost now. They always thought they’d die before this, perhaps a reflection on when we’d submit to our despair before we had a chemical cocktail to take each morning just to try to survive this 21st Century nightmare we’re living in.
Even though the album ends by telling us that the narrator is “going out, not down,” the depression of the post-work happy hour with the same boring, stagnant conversation is not liberatory. “Fabulously Melancholy” is indeed a picture of the darkness of our modern world. This nine-track debut is tight but quite compelling, with depths that exceed its brief runtime. And if the words discourage you or they feel too relatable, the melodies will lift your spirits.
If the record has a weakness, it’s that the composition sometimes overshadows the lyrics. You do have to pay attention to it to get its whole meaning. But it’s so dang catchy, it doesn’t matter. Life is hard but at least we have music. The rawness of the writing is perfectly balanced by the actual music. And maybe that’s how life is. Fascism lurks but it can’t take away our joy, our creativity. That’s what listening to and making music is about. Music is liberation. If life is just a battle to stay together, keep your job, and try to get up in time for work and school drop-offs the next morning, at least we get to sing along to it all, as the melodies from the Moog comfort us.
“Fabulously Melancholy,” Plastic Hacks, 2025: https://plastichacks.bandcamp.com/