Thane Leshner finds his ‘Happy Mode’ in Compact Utility’s bleak debut

It doesn’t take long to realize that the title of “Happy Mode,” which kicks off the debut EP from Compact Utility, is something of a red herring.

“I wish I were dead,” Thane Leshner repeats amid the thrum of trash-compacting drums and a dingy, metallic guitar, going on to lament his inability to shake these self-destructive thoughts. “I wish that I didn’t, but it’s lodged in my head.”

Elsewhere on Life’s Not a Gift, out digitally on Friday, Feb. 6, the former Why Omen singer and songwriter struggles with deep-rooted anxieties (“Suicide Mantra”), finds himself disconnected and adrift (“Nondescript Four-Door Sedan”), and embodies caustic narrators who appear determined to chase away anyone who might offer a supporting hand. “You’ll die poor and I’m the shit,” he taunts on “Sammy Sam Sam,” which plays like a sludgy noise-rock tantrum.

“I was just in a really, really bad place,” said Leshner, who described how the songs began to emerge roughly a year after the dissolution of his former band. “Things in my life just felt like they weren’t going well. I was spending a lot of time alone, talking to myself a lot, and things just got darker and darker.”

Rather than diverting his attentions from these toxic thoughts, the musician leaned into them, pairing his writings with a series of abrasive tracks inspired by noise-rock pioneers such as Beat Happening and Flipper, whose debut album, Generic Flipper, from 1982, served as a sonic template. “I think I’m biting really hard from that record,” Leshner said. “And Generic is an extremely bleak record, but it ends with, ‘Life is the only thing worth living for.’ And for me as a young kid, that was really important to hear. … But with [Life’s Not a Gift], I didn’t want to focus on the duality of life. I wanted it to just be the sad stuff. … … Even the title is so fucking in your face. I didn’t want to dilute any of it.”

And yet, there are occasional moments of black humor that breach the darkness like heat lightning, such as the moment midway through “Happy Mode” when Leshner pines for greater wealth while also acknowledging the limited impact it might have on his state of mind. “I wish I were rich/I wish I were rich,” he deadpans. “I wouldn’t be happy/but at least I’d be rich.”

Leshner is no stranger to exploring weightier concepts on record. Interviewed prior to the December 2020 release of Why Omen’s Sentient Blue EP, the musician noted that the songs populating the album were heavily steeped in loss, be it from relationships gone to pot or once salient opportunities evaporated.

“I think I generally talk about things in my music that I’m uncomfortable talking about in real life,” said Leshner, who recorded the Compact Utility tracks alone during a three-week stretch he spent house sitting for an acquaintance. “And I think that’s part of the reason why this came out the way it did. … If I had been working with other people, I don’t think I would have been able to say the things I needed to say.”

In doing so, Leshner acknowledged that he needed to gain a comfort level with granting outsiders access to his more guarded interior world. “I’m going to be real, I’m a little nervous about it,” he said, “but I’m not gonna let it hold me back from putting this out.”

It helps, of course, that the musician now has some distance from the sessions that yielded the EP. And while he’s still prone to the occasional depressive episode, he allowed that he’s now better equipped to deal with and rebound from the fallout when these occasional mental fogs roll in. “I can vacillate, but I think I’m generally a pretty happy person, honestly,” Leshner said. “And those moments when I am like that, I don’t let those define me as a person. I don’t know. I feel like desperation can get kind of selfish, and even when I’m in it, I still know that the world’s out there, and I can still take the piss out of myself. And that’s all part of it.”