Grumpy

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ARTIST BIO

The comfort of kids’ hidden object games––iSpy, Where’s Waldo, a carnival treasure dig––is that the thing you’re searching for really does exist, and you’ll find it, should you only try hard enough. Not quite so as we get older. The more we learn, the more we realize the coveted loot isn’t always within reach. It might not exist at all. The Golden Fleece, the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail. For Grumpy, this is the “Unfindable Ring.” The record opens with a confession, an appraisal of his work until now: “I dive for an unfindable ring,” Grumpy’s Heaven Schmitt sings on the title track, “a grand gesture type thing / that doesn’t have the effect I hoped for.” Schmitt––and thus his alter ego Grumpy––is a guy of Big Romance, the sweeping, theatrical stunt, chivalry and pomp, thorned rose stem between his teeth, the spectacle of the thing over the thing itself. But there’s a limit to the magic of performance. On ‘Unfindable Ring’, he’s beginning to see the charade weigh on its recipients: even if the ruse works, it’ll cost him.

‘Unfindable Ring', out October 23 on Bayonet Records, is an adventurer’s epic. The arc of the journey, like any good Spirited Away or Neverending Story, lands its wide-traveled protagonist right back at home before bedtime. Grumpy, like many great hero tricksters before him, has always been a project of juxtaposition: upbeat radio-ready hits whose buoyant, goofy hooks belie the dark thoughts they describe. Much of this, Schmitt acknowledges, owes its due to the matter-of-fact morbidity of the trans experience in America. It’s from these experiences—personal, romantic, political, and existential—that the tale of ‘Unfindable Ring’ unfolds.

Ambition and play have always defined the Grumpy sound. Late last year, the Fader praised their “demented, hooky” EP, “Piebald,” whose innovative fuzz-pop confections earned them coverage in NPR and the New York Times. Stereogum heralded them as “wonderfully weird,” and Paste designated them “the best of what’s next.”” Through boisterous collaborations with the likes of Sidney Gish and Claire Rousay, they’ve effortlessly ingratiated themselves with the titans of DIY, and, more recently, Schmitt has become an unlikely favored collaborator of chart-topping country giant Zach Bryan, who named his new record––which prominently features Schmitt’s harmonies––conspicuously, ‘With Heaven On Top.’

In Grumpy, Heaven Schmitt is joined by Anya Good, Ellie Long (Kid Lake), Austin Arnold, Diego Clare (D.A. Crimson), and Lane Rodgers, who each contribute to every step of the process—engineering and recording, mixing, drafting artwork, producing, and making music videos. A kind of interdisciplinary thieves’ guild, the project, while once Schmitt’s solo eponym, is a labor of communal love.

They recorded the album “in the tiny stinky room that is our practice space and studio,” run by drummer Arnold, and finished it at Living Room in Queens with Lucas Padulo (Gunna, Roddy Ricch, Lil Baby). Even when they sent it to their mixing and mastering engineer Steve Vealey (Phoenix, Bon Jovi, Laura Marling), they didn’t relinquish control, spending a week alongside him in his studio, perfecting the levels together.

“We are living these happy lives, and there are people we come across who don’t know us at all who want us to die,” Schmitt, explains. Often the visibility of the joy itself is what prompts the vitriol––“I’m so happy I could die,” Schmitt belts over and over on the chorus (a familiar figure of speech, sure, but one which, upon any scrutiny, shows Schmitt’s hand in the macabre.) A middle finger to fate, Good started asking, “What are you going to do with your One Beautiful Life?” Grumpy is going to keep playing, touring, searching, finding.