Coolzey is an artist from Fairfield, Iowa who has been releasing music for about fifteen years. His most recent full-length album came in January of 2020 when he released Fight the American Celebrity Machine. He’s been on a bunch of collaborative tracks and released a few singles since then, but now it’s time for his fifth full-length album, Thank You For Drinking of Me.

The fun part of following an artist like Coolzey is that you never know what you’re going to get from release to release from him, because there are so many sides to him as an artist. It could be nerdcore, it could be lounge, it could be alternative rock, it could be synth pop, or it could be some sort of hybrid. Once you press play on this album, it doesn’t take long to figure out that this is a guitar driven punk/indie rock album. For the album, Coolzey is singing, playing guitar, bass, keyboards, drums, and MPC, doing pretty much all of it himself with the exception of Bentey Monet, Corey Peak, and Seth Owen stepping in to fill out the band on “Pissed 2 Exist.” It’s an album that feels born out of frustration, which is understandable given all we’ve been through in the past couple of years, whether it be health, politics, the music industry, or just whatever bullshit might be happening in your personal life. Over the course of the album, Coolzey is turning that frustration into some driving rock songs, pulling influence from Midwest acts like The Replacements, Dead Milkmen, and Violent Femmes, just to name a few. We take a slight detour towards the more metal sounds of “Pissed 2 Exist,” but most of the album has the mix of tenderness and vulnerability alongside the anger and the frustration. We do get a taste of Coolzey’s hip hop side on the closing track, “You Fucking Suck,” with Schaffer the Darklord, which does nice job of finding a hybrid sound by building the sound around loops of guitar riffs and turntable scratching while Coolzey and Schaffer get to unload on their strawmen and vent for a couple of minutes.

Thank You For Drinking of Me is yet another side of Coolzey as he continues to carve out his own unique niche over the years. It makes for a cathartic listening experience, and it sits nicely alongside a long lineage of Midwestern punk and indie rock.