B-Side Guys

Mental health milestones rarely announce themselves with such gleeful chaos, but Pinc Louds transforms personal breakthrough into public celebration on “Sequins (Do the Twenty Two!).” The latest single from Claudi’s experimental outfit reads like a manifesto written in glitter and subway grime, where stopping medication becomes the catalyst for finding new forms of magic.

Gordon Raphael’s production honors the song’s contradictory impulses, balancing the rawness that defines Pinc Louds’ subway origins with enough polish to support their increasingly ambitious arrangements. The track careens between intimate confession and anarchic celebration, much like the band’s live shows that transform public spaces into participatory theater. Raphael captures both the Pixies-influenced dynamic shifts and the Violent Femmes-style folk-punk energy without sacrificing the experimental edge that makes Pinc Louds genuinely unpredictable.

Claudi’s vocal performance embodies the fractured joy of someone who’s survived their own breakdown and emerged with new appreciation for controlled chaos. The delivery shifts between whispered observations about pigeons at windowsills to full-throated proclamations about sequined body parts, creating a sonic portrait of recovery that refuses to be sanitized or simplified. There’s genuine vulnerability in the admission about stopping medication, followed immediately by surreal imagery that suggests freedom found through embracing rather than suppressing internal strangeness.

The song’s most compelling element lies in how it treats recovery as creative opportunity rather than return to normalcy. Lines about feeling “complete in crowded elevators” capture the paradox of finding peace through stimulation rather than retreat. The repeated mantra about 2022 becomes both timestamp and incantation, marking the moment when pharmaceutical intervention gave way to artistic expression as primary coping mechanism.

What makes “Sequins” particularly powerful is how it celebrates the messy reality of mental health rather than offering false comfort. The track doesn’t promise that stopping medication leads to happiness—it suggests that sometimes the most authentic response to internal chaos is external spectacle. Pinc Louds has created something that functions as both personal anthem and public invitation, proving that recovery can look like anything you want it to, including wearing someone’s body like an evening gown while barking at dogs under moonlight.