Grumpy – OBL
“Twenty Five” showed up earlier this year grungy and glitchy. “OBL” is the follow-up, and it’s alt-country almost the whole way through. Both are off Unfindable Ring, Grumpy’s debut, due October 23 on Bayonet Records.
Schmitt wrote “OBL” about touring as a band that’s mostly trans people, and not knowing how a given room is going to react. What they found instead, according to Schmitt, was smaller than that: “We protect each other and laugh and live our normal lives.” The song takes a line about being happy enough to die and flips it back on the people who’d rather the band didn’t exist at all. I found it blunter than most of the surrounding coverage lets on.
Grumpy used to just be Schmitt, across two Bayonet EPs, Wolfed in 2024 and Piebald in 2025. Five more names are on Unfindable Ring: Anya Good, Ellie Long of Kid Lake, Austin Arnold, Diego Clare of D.A. Crimson, and Lane Rodgers. Recording, engineering, mixing, production, artwork: it’s split across all six now, not funnelled through Schmitt alone.
Grumpy have gotten a lot of press this year, the kind that tends to puff a band up before a debut even lands. I keep waiting for “OBL” to sound like it noticed, and it doesn’t.
