ODD BEHOLDER - Honest Work

Sisyphus, when we’ve kept trying

And all this nonsense has made sure we got rich

When all this spending and buying

Will have us shrunk to tiny dots in the kitsch

What would Sisyphus's punishment have been, had the Greek myth been set against the backdrop of extractive capitalism? A possible answer can be glimpsed between the lines of the new album by Odd Beholder. On "Honest Work", Swiss musician Daniela Weinmann explores the absurdities of contemporary working life, from unrewarding, meaningless tasks to the exploitation of workers' bodies and energy, and an ever more pronounced income inequality. Within this structural distortion, consumerism narcotizes the working Sisyphus of "Second Beer", offering instant relief while functioning just like an opiate. The punishing boulder thus takes the shape of an endless recourse to brief, thrilling acts of buying and consuming, incapable though of satisfying a hunger that may well correspond to the simple need for meaning in a reality where meaning itself seems as elusive as vapor. Paradoxically, it's only through the intoxicating effect of alcohol that the obstructing veil frays, and it's over a second beer, suspended in a chill-out haze, that, like an epiphany, desire flares back up: "I just wanna get out of here".

Compared to "Feel Better", the atmosphere and arrangements grow, with a few exceptions, darker, the synthetic beats more direct and icy, mirroring the mood and theme of the collection. Realistic fragments and dystopian glimpses alternate in painting the many faces of a contemporary alienation that is no longer confined to the working class of nineteenth-century factories, but that also creeps and winds its way through the modern open-space offices of the middle class. Even the role of the artist has cracked: in the digital ocean of algorithms, they become a content creator. And when the only prospect left is that of endlessly repeated, fleeting consumption, this new figure, by metonymy, mutates - and loses - its own identity through a metamorphic process: on "Ring Light", artist and product have become one and the same thing.

I'm just another incarnation

Of the product placements on the shelf

A private life feigned to perfection

I objectified myself

Is there, then, a way out? The razor-sharp "Drive", poised between post-punk and shoegaze echoes, could be an answer to the disorientation in which Sisyphus and his wife find themselves in "Second Beer": an impulsive flight into the night to cross the borders of this anaesthetizing limbo and reclaim their freedom.

But is such an escape still truly possible, or, as it seems, is there no longer any way out of the labyrinth? "Now that we're needy/ Are you gonna eat those?/ I need another dose": if we really are trapped within a structure whose exits have been sealed off by flows of lava and concrete, then perhaps, rather than fleeing or flying away, it's better to find a way to tear down these walls and rebuild, together, the foundations for a fairer reality.

After all, the alienating monotony of those endlessly identical days is shattered on "Remind Me" by a rebellious act and a jab at capitalist production: "Taking a day off/ There is too much at stake/ honey", sings Weinmann in what strikes me as the peak of the record. Built on a gradual escalation whose sweeping breadth recalls Odd Beholder's earlier indie triumphs (the superb "Disaster Movies" and "Landscape Escape"), "Remind Me" launches, propelled by its digitized kick drum, into a search that is in itself already a reclaiming of meaning. Suspended between the past of memory and the possible future of a transformed society, the song doesn't hide its difficulties: "And if I surrender/ There ain't no shame/ 'Cause it can't be won/ This lonely game". Sure, this game can't be won alone. But what if, collectively, we all took the day off?

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06/06/2026