This Is Our Jam: Appetite, “Tussy”

The Bay Area has recently received a lot of well-deserved recognition for garage rockers like Thee Oh Sees and The Fresh & Onlys, but there’s a lot more than scuzzy psych and off-the-cuff punk to Northern California’s music scene. Appetite, a Sacramento-based project helmed by multi-instrumentalist (and former Rooney drummer) Teddy Briggs, is a one-man act that owes more to Animal Collective than the recent crop of S.F. lo-fi. “Tussy” shows Briggs to be quite the wordsmith, with an MC’s dexterous delivery and overstuffed rhyme schemes that take multiple listens to unpack. Free-associative couplets like, “In a whip with friends / sick of the cinnamon / we’ve been sniffing too stiff again / friend’s sick again,” sound like something from the mouth of Why?’s Yoni Wolf, with heaviness and humor in equal measure. While Appetite's lyrical fireworks are no doubt impressive, it’s really Briggs’ sense of melody that holds the track together. The final portion of "Tussy" slows things down as double-time rhyming gives way to wistful harmonizing. The song closes with the lines “Now that you’re here, have a sip of beer / and It’ll be clear, It’ll be clearer here,” which it just might be after the third or fourth listen.