zen fuse box

Brutal is one of our favorites from Audio Dropouts, Vol. 1, and it has become a staple of our live set. We released this one as a single in 2021 as we were working through recording and mixing the rest of the album.  The artwork for the single was a photo by the talented Abby Marcil, who has also produced several videos for us!

Brutal was originally recorded by Olivia Rodrigo for her 2021 debut album, “Sour.” The song hit #12 on the Billboard Hot 100. Here are ZFB's notes about their cover version:

Rich: Great, punky tune by Olivia Rodrigo and a fun suggestion by Steve via his daughter Aly. We've played this one live and the boys “eagle crushed” it! Brutally good fun to play!

Pete: This a great tune that earned a Grammy right as we were working on it! My favorite line-switch is from “I might die before I drink” to “I might die from all this drinking” which emphasizes the adult male doing lyrics meant for a young girl. This has been a crowd favorite at live performances and also a stated favorite of younger listeners. Rich adds a great non-canonical guitar solo, and Steve is on point on the heavy bass lines. I'm close to actually memorizing the lyrics, but I sort of like reading the verses of a piece of paper, and then crumpling them up systematically to do the chorus part. We must have goals to work towards, though. 

Steve: I brought this one to the table after driving with my daughter Alison and grooving to Olivia Rodrigo's “Sour” album. She mentioned that this would be a good idea for a ZFB cover, and she was right!  On every album, we've included the line “what about the slide thing?” somewhere. On this one, I get the honor of saying it right between the intro and the main part of the song. There's a little cameo backing vocal by the Daughters of Zen which is quite fun. Pete modified some of the lyrics to make them less “teenage girl” and my favorite of those is “I can only parallel park,” which make gloriously little sense to me. I also really enjoy the punky guitar tone employed by Rich and the drastically deliberate slow-down at the end.