B-Side Guys

“Euphoria” arrives like a cautionary tale wrapped in velvet, with Miami’s Pump Action crafting a narrative about addiction that refuses to either moralize or glamorize. This University of Miami quartet has managed to make desperation sound seductive while keeping its teeth.

The track’s opening lines establish its timeline with chilling precision: “Only takes thirty to get moving.” What follows is a descent narrative that uses its funk foundations not as party fuel but as ironic counterpoint to a story of progressive isolation. The band’s Frost School of Music pedigree shows in how precisely they deploy their musical elements for maximum emotional impact.

What’s particularly striking is how the lyrics create character through external detail. “You get mad when they say it’s not yours” reveals more about mental state than pages of internal monologue could, while “Your hair’s a ragged, greasy mess” sketches physical decline with documentary efficiency. The arrangement mirrors this deterioration, the funk elements becoming progressively more fractured and distorted.

The chorus’s question “Is it real or in your mind?” serves multiple purposes, speaking both to the immediate effects of intoxication and the larger dissociative experience of addiction. Those “cheap motels and long, long lines” aren’t just setting – they’re milestones on a downward trajectory.

The band’s diverse influences, from Polyphia to Fleet Foxes, reveal themselves in subtle ways throughout the arrangement. The bluesy undertones don’t just add mood – they provide commentary, creating a sonic environment where pleasure and pain become indistinguishable.

Most impressive is how the backing vocals in the latter half (“Gonna make your momma cry”) introduce judgment without taking sides. It’s here that Pump Action demonstrates real songwriting maturity, allowing multiple perspectives to exist within the same musical space.

The repeated refrain of “Can you feel the euphoria slipping away?” gains power through accumulation, each iteration carrying more weight as the evidence of loss piles up. By the time we reach the final “Can you feel it?” the question has transformed from chemical inquiry to existential crisis.

This is sophisticated work from a young band, suggesting that their time in those University of Miami practice rooms was well spent. They’ve created something that manages to be both cautionary and compelling, using funk’s physical pleasure to tell a story about its opposite.