Dr Sure’s Unusual Practice deliver an electrifying ode to the social-digital crisis of smartphones occupying our waking existence with their post-punk single, “It’s Alive.” The zany song rises fresh off the laboratory slab with a seriously silly mad scientist vibe. The guitar surges as if it is lightning zapping a Tesla coil, frazzled and fried just like our dopamine-choked synapses.
Dr. Sure’s strained prophesizing vocals are that of a tinkerer playing God who realizes only too late the true horrors of his invention and runs screaming into town to warn others of his monstrosity. The story of the song is that of a smartphone overtaking the body of its user, of the tool we created using us and stealing our life force. This is best encapsulated in the verse:
“It’s growing legs
It’s growing arms
It’s got my face
Ripped out my heart
This thing is conscious
It’s got my mind
I’m just a bag of bones
It’s alive”
After which the solo echoes the inane insanity of our lives trapped inside of black mirrors, the modern pseudo-Orwellian existence where we have paid for the installation of our own thought screens and carry them in our pockets.
You are probably reading this review on a smartphone. Run to the woods and never look back. We spend far too much of our lives mindlessly consumed by the portable supercomputer in our pocket. Like Dr. Sure, this reviewer is quite concerned with how smartphones are stealing our minds.
Dr. Sure is the new invention of a team of mad musicians in Melbourne. The brains of the operation is Dougal Shaw, Dr. Sure himself, and he enlisted the technical knowledge and skill of Miranda Holt, Jake Suriano, and Jack McCullagh. Their single release party at the Tote in Fitzroy this Thursday February 28th is bound to be a horror show good time.