Kevin Bronson on November 27th, 2022

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The video for Giant Waste of Man’s “Creditor” is a winking riff off Richard Ashcroft’s shoulder-bumping walkabout in the Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” visual back in the 1990s. “Minus the mean-spirited machoism,” notes GWOM singer and multi-instrumentalist Cameron Dmytryk.

His jaunt through Highland Park offers a smiling moment devoted to a serious album: “Biographer,” Giant Waste of Man’s sophomore full-length (released in August via Chain Letter Collective), is an expansive slab of fifth-wave emo/post-rock/hardcore. GWOM’s four principals — Dmytryk, Ben and Heather Heywood and Brandon Hardy — go back more than a decade in L.A.’s underground scene, and they have dissected the ennui of the pandemic (and before) on this meticulously wrought opus.

“Every friendship leaves us in debt / The only question then is who pays at the end,” Dmytryk muses on “Creditor,” which references the Wilco doc “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Ode to No One” and the worst-sounding drink ever (gin and Vitamin Water?). The video, directed by Michael Feerick of Amusement Parks on Fire, is the last of a trilogy he did for the band, following the heart-stopping “Summer, After” and “Millennial Ghost.”

||| Watch: the video for “Creditor”

||| Stream: “Biographer” in its entirety

||| Live: Giant Waste of Man plays the Buzz Bands LA Holiday Happening on Dec. 7 at Harvard & Stone. The show, which is free, also features the Pretty Flowers and DJ Bumbaclot. Information here.

||| Previously: “AMPM,” “Millennial Ghost,” “Summer, After,” “Swim”