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Music

Sincere Engineer Made an Anthem for Waking Up on the Bathroom Floor

Chicago punk songwriter Deanna Belos has a hangover on “Ceramic Tile,” the lead single from her debut album 'Rhombithian.'
JT
Chicago, US
Photo by Randy Korwin

Sincere Engineer's Deanna Belos is at her best when she makes songs about feeling like shit. The first lines on her debut album Rhombithian finds the Chicago punk songwriter screaming, "I had a corndog / I fell asleep / I feel weird now / I had a bad dream about you." Belos always manages to find heart and humor when things are their worst, even if it's encased meats malaise on "Corn Dog Sonnet No. 7" or the punk chorus sing-along, "I don't care about anything as much I used to" on "Overbite." There's no better example of this than lead single and hangover anthem "Ceramic Tile."

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The track opens with Belos singing about waking up on the bathroom floor over clanging guitars, "My mouth is bleeding and this day's starting too soon / I welcome kisses from the floor / I said, for real this time no more." The track imagines what would happen if Hop Along grew up listening to the Brokedowns rather than Rilo Kiley.

"I mean, we've all woken up on the bathroom floor before," Belos laughs while explaining the track at Chicago's Gman Tavern, one of many places she has spent cutting her teeth performing around the city over the last couple of years.

But while Belos has spent most of her career so far playing acoustic solo gigs, most notably opening up for the Lawrence Arms bassist and Red Scare Industries labelmate Brendan Kelly, Rhombithian is a total rocker. Recorded with Matt Jordan (You Blew It!, Signals Midwest), Belos enlisted a full band which included members of Dog and Wolf and Mother Evergreen, trading the "folk-punk" genre tag that's followed her over the years for high decibel riffs. "It was Matt's idea to make it with a full band. I was thinking the album would be more of a Sundowner acoustic vibe but he wanted it to feel more like the Lawrence Arms' Oh! Calcutta!, which is like the best album of time," Belos says.

To pair with "Ceramic Tile," Belos is also debuting a new music video directed by Sean Kelly and Remsy Atassi at Emulsion. Shot over a couple days in Chicago and Sleepy Hollow, Illinois, the bonkers visual features Belos getting over a hangover with her reptile roommates. Belos explains of the clip, "The idea came from the dudes at Emulsion who wrote this treatment about reptiles being in the house and cooking eggs. I knew it was something I could get behind." Watch it below.

Rhombithian is out October 20 via Red Scare Industries and you can pre-order it here. Sincere Engineer will be playing a couple shows soon (including Fest). Dates below.

10/28 - Gainesville, FL @ The Fest
11/10 - Chicago, IL @ Township