Public Opinion - The Curse of Public Opinion

Sometimes the only way to feel better is to spend some time feeling bad. Countless albums have provided the soundtrack for picking yourself back up, but Public Opinion are there for when you’re getting kicked while you’re down. Their sophomore album, the cheekily titled The Curse of Public Opinion, is a ten-song, 23-minute ode to frustration and disappointment–all set to some of the catchiest punk songs you’ll hear this year. Who knew swallowing a bitter pill could be this fun?

The Curse of Public Opinion isn’t the first time vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Kevin Hart–along with his bandmates, guitarist Kevin Johnson and bassist Sebastian Stanley–have felt like they might be under a cloud of negativity. In fact, they might have been forged in it. The band emerged from the Denver, CO, hardcore scene in 2020 as an outlet for Hart’s existential anger, after several years of bad luck and life upheaval that turned out to only be the beginning. They released their debut album, 2024’s Painted On Smile–which reckoned with the passing of family members and every day existential dread–all while continuing to navigate the one-step-forward-two-steps-back nature of pursuing a career in music. “With a lot of creative things, or with life in general, there’s this constant moving of the goal posts,” Hart explains. “Maybe you accomplish something or have some personal growth, but then you realize you still have a lot of the same problems you always have.”

On The Curse of Public Opinion, Hart seems less interested in breaking the spell and more intent on seeing how far it goes. Recorded with Brett Romnes (Anxious, I Am The Avalanche, Hot Mulligan), the album plumbs the depths of disappointment over a tight set of fuck-you anthems that perfectly bottle 2000s garage rock swagger, classic punk hooks, and hardcore ferocity into Public Opinion’s own sneering cocktail. It’s a rejection of social media-derived faux therapy sentiments and platitude-drenched motivational speeches; this is properly pissed-at-the-world music for when it’s just time to vent. “A lot of bands make music about feeling bad but they’re so dialed-in. I think our message is a little more messy, but a lot more human,” says Hart. “At the end of the day I’m kind of a quiet, angry guy. I don’t explode, I implode. So when it comes to the songs I don’t try to stop all that from coming through–people hear the music and they go ‘sounds great, but how are you…’”

Raucous opener “Balloon Man Running” bemoans the neverending feeling that happiness is just out of reach over the kind of primal rock n’ roll riffs that few bands have the guts to try, let alone pull off. “There’s an art installation outside my train stop that I see on the way to work every day,” Hart says. “It’s a guy running all the time that never gets anywhere. Hard not to relate.” Elsewhere, tracks like “I Pay Everyone I Still Talk To” or “Enhancement Talent” musically lean into Public Opinion’s pop sensibilities while Hart’s lyrics lament complicated interpersonal relationships with friends and family, and how some things just don’t resolve in a satisfying way, if at all.

For all the vitriol directed outward, Hart reserves his fiercest critiques for himself, with songs like “Lucky Me” or “Closed Captioning” aiming the blame towards the mirror. “There’s a lot of self-awareness in these songs, maybe too much–sometimes even when I’m trying to write from a third-party perspective, it might just be for plausible deniability,” he laughs. “But I don’t want to be the guy always working through something.” It’s this striving for something more that makes all of the anger in Public Opinion’s music feel like more than lashing out–yes it’s ok to feel awful, but you’re still going to have to figure out what comes  next. “I don’t want to be stuck in arrested development,” Hart says. “I was a person a long time before Public Opinion started and I hope I’ll be a person for a long time after it’s done, so I do want to tend to those gardens too.”

The Curse of Public Opinion comes to a close with its title track, a contradictory barnburner that packs the most triumphant melodies Hart has ever penned alongside some of his most disheartened lyrics. “I resign unsatisfied,” he roars with the confidence of a battlecry, “I’m becoming calcified.” His words spell defeat but his delivery tells a different story. “It’s just trying to see that a lot of problems are a matter of perspective,” Hart explains. “This album is just a time capsule. It’s not going to change my life–if that’s gonna change it’s because I’m the one doing it.”