Album Review: You're Doomed. Be Nice. by Rob Crow's Gloomy Place

At first, the title of Rob Crow’s new album reads as dismal, an indicator that, despite the Pinback frontman’s sobriety, weight loss, and renewed outlook on life, perhaps he’s still overwhelmed by the same darkness — some of it self-imposed, some of it from outside factors — that caused him to almost quit music last year. I suppose it is somewhat dismal, not for Crow as an individual, whose transformation and re-calibrated priorities are to be admired, but for humanity as a whole. Even if you live to be 100, your planet will someday die.

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What’s the worth of a song? In the weeks before the release of You’re Doomed. Be Nice. by Rob Crow’s Gloomy Place, disparate voices appear in the media to raise that question. One is an executive, Recording Academy President Neil Portnow, speaking onstage at the Grammy Awards. “When you ….

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All the way back in 2015, it looked like indie rock had lost one of the good ones when Rob Crow of Pinback—facing the possible foreclosure of his home—announced that making music had become an unrewarding financial strain on his family and he was calling it quits. It was certainly a sad sign of the times for the industry, but at least Crow had a brisk ascent from that low point: By the end of the year, not only did negotiations with the bank and his wife’s new job solve some of the money problems and save the house, but he also quit drinking and lost about 100 pounds. He had rapidly become, in many ways, a new version of himself.

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