I Tried To Draw A Straight Line

Welcome back to Finetuned! Hello, how the heck are ya? I hope you’ve been well, crushing life, and gearing up for the holidays full of fun and nothing bad ever, right? Is that cope? I think that’s cope? Meh, anyways. 😅 HIHI, welcome back, again.

This week, we are chatting about Petey USA. Let’s get into it! ❤
_{ps. you should go listen to his song I Tried To Draw A Straight Line}

Petey USA started as the musical outlet of Peter Martin, who grew up in the Midwest before eventually centering his creative world around Los Angeles. He has this dry, hyper-aware humor that sort of ends up becoming the emotional DNA of his music. His writing develops songs in such a way that is honest, weird, and deeply human. There are little flourishes of Medium Build, Bleachers, and acoustic Midwest Emo all over every song.

The environments that shaped his sound feel very “between worlds”. Midwestern quiet, internet-era chaos, and West Coast creative loneliness. There’s a sense of dislocation that runs through everything: the feeling of outgrowing your hometown but not fully fitting anywhere else, watching adulthood creep in while you’re still emotionally 17, and trying to make meaning in a world that feels kind of fake. That push and pull, nostalgia versus forward motion, shows up constantly in his work. Unrelated to our rec today, you should also check out his cover of My Friends Over You by New Found Glory.

Petey USA’s sound feels like indie-rock filtered through a foggy memory. He leans into reverb-soaked guitars, warm synths, steady drums, and melodies that feel like they’re softly collapsing in on themselves, which is somewhat indicative of how the lyrical themes align. There’s a very intentional lo-fi edge to parts of his sound that isn’t sloppy but intimate. Everything feels close, like it was written at the exact emotional temperature of the moment.

His music balances simplicity with emotional density. The chord progressions don’t overcomplicate themselves. There is melodic repetition that leaves the song hooky, but unique, all in the same given the delivery of production and performance. There are touches of alternative rock, bedroom pop, and a faint Midwest-emo undercurrent, but truthfully always grounded in sincerity.

The Yips (our rec today) leans harder into atmosphere than anything else in his catalog, I feel. The guitars feel heavier with delay and reverb, the drums feel more deliberate and spacious, and the synth textures feel like distant headlights on a foggy highway. The album lives in mid-tempo grooves, soft distortion, and melodies that burn slowly. The music feels similar to a well-worn jacket, but not too far gone. It’s experienced and individual, but not dilapidated by years of life → abuse, love, high, and low.

Lyrically, The Yips lives inside anxiety, self-doubt, and the strange paralysis that comes when you suddenly start caring too much. This is a feeling I know all too well. It’s something I’ve battled with for my whole life. There is this ever-growing desire for change, but a tug of caring too much. The flip side of this can be rough, too, not caring enough. The title itself points toward that mental block. The fear of messing things up, of freezing mid-motion, of being stuck in your own head. Petey writes about aging, ego, burnout, broken relationships, and the quiet terror of trying to be a normal person when your brain feels like a crowded room. This is just truly too fucking real.

Thanks for reading here, Finetuners! I do hope you all have enjoyed this week’s Finetuned. I’d appreciate any insights, admiration, or otherwise. You can email me here: [email protected].

See you all in the next one! 🙌

^{(Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petey_(musician), https://www.stereogum.com, https://floodmagazine.com, https://www.rollingstone.com, https://www.laweekly.com)
web header image source: Photo by Travis Bailey}