By the Time I Get to Phoenix is choppy, incoherent, and sounds rough on the ears. On my first listen to this album I stopped listening by the time I got to "SS San Francisco" because I hated what I was hearing. It was unlike any of Injury Reserves previous works I grew to love. Months passed when I thought about giving it a second chance with more context and paying more attention made a world of difference. 

Context is needed before diving into this album. The Rap trio Nate, Groggs, and Pete would form Injury Reserve in 2015 releasing their first mixtape Live from the Dentist Office and while not perfect, showed their creativity in the fun production throughout the album and their openness in the lyrics especially with Groggs being very vocal on his addiction to alcohol. All of this culminates into By the Time I Get to Phoenix, an album full of dark soundscapes and heartful lyrics celebrating and grieving the passing of their friend: “What's the elephant in the room? Let's talk to him” This opener sets up not only talking about the uncomfortable topic of the passing of Groggs but sets up issues on other songs that will come up on the album like “Postpostpartum.” The song ends with a synth melody that sounds nice at first but glitches out and distorts more and more until the song ends. 

SS San Francisco is where I turned off this album on my first listen. The lyrics didn’t make sense, the production wasn't traditional and the delivery of the lines left me with a bad first impression. On return, this song is clever with how Nate talks about how he copes with the loss of Groggs. The song has Nate going through A phone call with his family. He can’t accept the death of Groggs here and his family wants him to move somewhere closer to them but to Nate this feels like a betrayal for him in the lines “Nah, I ain't gon' do it fam, nah, I ain't gon' do it, got kin, Buried in the dirt, And we just gon' uproot and deucin,” . Top Picks for You is such a unique track but at first I didn’t quite understand it. The instrumental is all over the place with the ghostly bass fading and layering with this church organ and this screeching synth that disrupts the entire instrumental. After reading into the lyrics though the concept of this song is very unique. We see Nate's immense grief in lines like “By God, I won’t log out, I won’t log out” He sees these online algorithms still reacting within the devices and even though it hurts he just can’t log out of these devices because in a way Grogg’s is still here. Going back to the instrumental, this distracting synth in the instrumental to me is supposed to be Groggs scattered and out of place like a fragment within the track, something they can’t let go of. 

Knees is the climax of this album. This track is where all of the topics on this album come together. This song's instrumental is a little different from what you come to expect from previous songs on this album. The guitar they use with the almost jazzy drums feels nostalgic like a call back to the jazz rap songs in their past. There is a reason that they went for a nostalgic sound because this song is directly about Groggs and his passing. In this track Nate has my favorite lyric of the album “My knees hurt when I grow, And that’s a tough pill to swallow, Because I’m not getting taller” In this track we get another Grogg verse from one of the last remaining recordings of him and it says a lot “Okay this last one is my last one, Probably said that about the last one, Probably gon’ say it about the next two” in these lines it’s clear he’s talking about alcohol and how he can’t stop drinking. This is the most direct reference to the song “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” as he says he needs to stop drinking. It makes this track very solemn near the end switching out the instrumental with static and a heavily reverberated bass making a more unsettling atmosphere when Groggs voice starts fading out saying he needs to put down the bottle. It leaves for an impactful song that transitions into the closer. 

Bye Storm is the final track on the album and while the instrumental is more upbeat the lyrics aren't any happier than the ones in Knees. The distorted guitar riff feels reminiscent of the past and the more traditional drum pattern sounds like a return to form. The song ends this album with Nate saying how he’s cracking under the sadness he feels and leaves us with the line “It rains, it pours, but damn man, it’s really pourin". I like that this song doesn’t try to make it seem like they overcame all of the struggles of grief throughout the album but that it’s still pouring and it’s going to take time to heal. 

This album is unforgiving but that's what I ended up loving about it. The untraditional production and instrumentation that made me give up on my first listen I see now as brilliantly executed. The instrumentation is raw just like the lyrics and emotions in this album giving you an uncompromising sound like what they sent out to do in track 1. The sound of this album isn’t going to be for everyone with their death grips like production creating a raw experience. I’d recommend this album for those who want a dark lyrically driven experience that doesn’t compromise its sound.