According to his bio on Discogs, Deaton Chris Anthony is an “aspiring R&B musician, designer, and athlete in search of finding true love on the internet.” His biggest claim to fame so far is co-producing “New Shapes,” last year’s alt-pop icon summit convened by Charli XCX, featuring Christine And The Queens and Caroline Polachek, and a few years back he had a song with Clairo.

Anthony’s debut solo album SID THE KID finds him pivoting from synths to guitars, with contributions from beabadoobee, BENEE, and Mac DeMarco, who plays bass and drums on “I Hope My Dog Missed Me.” The album is a loosely fictionalized story of Anthony’s childhood in Kansas with his older brother, as he expands on in this statement:

I draw inspiration from childhood. I have an older brother, Korbin. This record is dedicated to him. We would drive in the country in Kansas with the sunroof open. We’d listen to Dashboard Confessional, a lot of emo stuff, and he would scream the lyrics, looking up at the stars. That’s where SID THE KID takes place: rural Kansas. Imagine this: I was a chubby ten-year-old, and my nickname was Sid the Kid. Korbin and I lived in this little shed in the middle of this forest. This shed had our computer, T.V. and all of our music gear. We’d walk to school nearby, and we hung out at the skate park and the bowling alley.

“iScream,” Anthony’s collab with his Dirty Hit labelmate beabadoobee, is the lead single. It essentially matches the sound of peak-accessibility blink-182 (power chords, whiny sing-song vocal) with a squelchy electronic beat and some post-Sleigh Bells dynamics. The song’s high-fructose glitz exists in parallel to hyperpop, in the sense that it might drive you nuts in the same way 100 gecs drive people nuts, but it’s more straightforward than all that and never really dips into the uncanny. Personally, I listened because of the beabadoobee feature, found it obnoxious at first, and ended up enjoying myself by the end. Your mileage, as ever, may vary.

Hear “iScream” below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “I Don’t Wanna Go To School”
02 “iScream” (Feat. beabadoobee)
03 “Shed Head”
04 “R3al Eye$”
05 “Behind The Lockers With Hunter”
06 “I Told You I Hate This Feeling”
07 “Tell Me What Your Friends Say Behind My Back”
08 “Re4lL1ze”
09 “Colors My Dog”
10 “Go!”
11 “Good Buy My Old Life” (Feat. BENEE)
12 “R34l L1e$”
13 “I Don’t Care About My Parents”
14 “Friends Don’t Hurt Each Other”
15 “I Hope My Dog Missed Me”
16 “DECA” (Bonus)
17 “ANGL” (Bonus)

SID THE KID is out 7/29 on Dirty Hit.

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