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**AJJ - Good Luck Everybody: A Band's Anxious Evolution Reaches Its Logical Conclusion**

After two decades of channeling existential dread through acoustic guitars and Sean Bonnette's unmistakably neurotic warble, AJJ has never sounded more defeated—or more necessary. "Good Luck Everybody," the Arizona outfit's eighth studio album, arrives like a final exhale after holding your breath through the apocalypse, a collection of songs that feel less like musical compositions and more like therapy sessions set to minor chords.

To understand where AJJ lands on "Good Luck Everybody," you need to trace their trajectory through their holy trinity of releases. Their 2007 breakthrough "People Who Can Eat People Are the Luckiest People in the World" established the template: Bonnette's stream-of-consciousness anxiety attacks over deceptively simple folk-punk arrangements, with Ben Gallaty's upright bass providing the only thing resembling stability in songs about knife fights and personal demons. It was lo-fi confessional punk that made The Mountain Goats sound well-adjusted.

By 2011's "Knife Man," AJJ had refined their approach without losing their edge. The production remained deliberately rough around the edges, but the songwriting had sharpened considerably. Tracks like "Brave as a Noun" and "Big Bird" showcased Bonnette's ability to find profound meaning in seemingly nonsensical imagery, while the title track remains perhaps their finest four minutes—a meditation on masculinity, violence, and self-destruction that hits like a panic attack set to a campfire singalong.

Then came 2016's "The Bible 2," their most ambitious and polarizing effort. The addition of electric guitars and fuller arrangements divided longtime fans, but the album represented a band refusing to be trapped by their own aesthetic limitations. Songs like "Goodbye, Oh Goodbye" and "Disposable Everything" proved that AJJ's neuroses could translate to bigger canvases without losing their intimacy.

"Good Luck Everybody" feels like the culmination of this evolution—and possibly its endpoint. Recorded in the shadow of global pandemic, political upheaval, and personal reckonings, the album finds Bonnette at his most vulnerable and least hopeful. The opening track "A Big Day for Grimley" sets the tone with its resigned acceptance of chaos, while "Mega Guillotine 2020" updates their earlier political screeds with a weariness that cuts deeper than any manifesto.

The album's standout moments come when AJJ embraces both their folk roots and their expanded palette. "No Justice, No Peace, No Hope" builds from whispered confessions to cathartic release, Bonnette's voice cracking under the weight of his own observations about American decay. "Psychic Warfare" showcases their knack for finding humor in horror, a gallows-laugh anthem about information overload that somehow manages to be both their catchiest song in years and their most disturbing.

But it's "A Poem" that represents the album's emotional core—a seven-minute meditation on depression, creativity, and the struggle to find meaning in meaninglessness. Over minimal instrumentation, Bonnette delivers what amounts to a suicide note that transforms into a reluctant affirmation of life. It's devastating and beautiful, the kind of song that makes you grateful for AJJ's existence while worrying about Bonnette's mental state.

The production, handled by the band themselves, strikes the perfect balance between their scrappy origins and their expanded ambitions. The guitars still sound like they're held together with duct tape and spite, but there's a clarity here that serves the songs' emotional weight. When they add strings to "Kokopelli Face Tattoo" or let feedback swallow "Mega Guillotine 2020," it feels earned rather than indulgent.

Lyrically, Bonnette has never been more direct or more despairing. Gone are the surreal metaphors and absurdist imagery that once provided distance from his subjects. These songs confront depression, political helplessness, and existential terror head-on, with only occasional flashes of the dark humor that once defined their approach. It's their most mature work, which isn't necessarily a compliment in AJJ's universe.

"Good Luck Everybody" won't win AJJ new converts—it's too insular, too wrapped up in its own despair to function as an entry point. But for those who've followed Bonnette's journey