Underneath the Jokes with Free Casino on “Jester’s Privilege” [Single Premiere]
“In a way, I guess musicians aren’t too far removed from jesters, clowns, carnival barkers, etcetera,” speculated Sean Saville, guitarist and sometimes vocalist of Brooklyn, NY post-punk jokesters Free Casino, “and I don’t mean that as an insult. I find those things to be pretty cool.” Wormbrain chatted with the trio about their upcoming album Beggar’s Pitch set to be released on April 14th, 2023 through fellow Brooklynites Sad Cactus Records and its raucous sophomore single “Jester’s Privilege” that premieres today on Wormbrain World.
“Our tastes, like anyone’s, evolve and so the music needs to as well,” shared Free Casino bassist Marc Gabriel. “We just ask folks who’ve listened thus far make this leap with us, too. We have just grown more serious about honoring our own sound, and that sound partially comes from what we’re into listening to ourselves.”
Free Casino share their latest single “Jester’s Privilege” today via Wormbrain World:
“I think it’s the case that each project — Punk Thing, the EP, now Beggar’s — is heavily informed by things we were listening to at the time of creation,” Gabriel continued. “On the one hand we just became better, more capable musicians over time who could play the technical stuff we loved to hear. On the other hand, we became less concerned with writing a certain way in order to receive a certain reception; we just wrote what we loved. For the new record I think that we have grown into a space of reconciling Our Casino’s ‘mathy’ tendencies with aspects of either post-punk or slowcore or whatever other more ‘accessible’ styles we each listen to a little more these days.”
While their latest finds them exploring playfulness and unfamiliar territory, as evident when pairing first single “Slam Dunk Highlights” against the fresh “Jester’s Privilege” as a sampling of the album’s full eight tracks, Beggar’s Pitch is still very much a Free Casino record.
Photo courtesy of the band.
“We became less concerned with writing a certain way in order to receive a certain reception; we just wrote what we loved.”
“I think the two tracks work well to contrast one another. We wanted to drop ‘Slam Dunk’ first because it felt like a statement, a sound we haven’t captured before that’s just loud and brutal, and it’s probably the ‘darkest’ track on the album too,” offered guitarist and vocalist Jake Denning, comparing the first and second impressions the chosen singles intended to make. “On the other hand, ‘Jester’s Privilege' has this groove that’s maybe almost tripping over itself. It’s more lighthearted in that way maybe, aside from the lyrics which are pretty silly at face value too. Similarly to the first single, it's a track where we’re trying to pull from different influences and ideas to mesh them together in a way that we haven’t done before. I’m personally hoping people get to listen to this one after having heard ‘Slam Dunk Highlights’ and say ‘Wait ok, what IS this album going to sound like?’”
“I think that ‘Slam Dunk Highlights’ is like the ‘anthemic’ song off the album. Easy to sing to and whatnot, but it’s a little more serious in tone than a lot of our other songs,” Saville said, similarly comparing the Beggar’s Pitch singles. “I think that ‘Jester’s Privilege’ shows off how much fun we can have as a band and it’s good to have that to balance out the first single. I also look at ‘Jester’s Privilege’ as a spiritual sequel to the song ‘Coward Stern’ off of our last EP. They’re both kinda goofy and twangy and tons of fun to play on guitar.”
Photo courtesy of the band.
“Pranking people is one of the purest forms of love that can be shown.”
When asked to define the term “jester’s privilege” for Wormbrain, Saville provided, “I always understood it as the jester has the ability to joke about whomever in the kingdom they wanted to, like they could poke fun at anyone without punishment because it was part of the job.”
“I think the coolest feature of a so-called ‘jester’s privilege’ is that the joker has the impunity to say whatever, even though it’s assumed to always be a joke. There’s never a consequence, but there’s also never confirmation that they are actually joking,” Gabriel proffered. “So in this way, it adds a little further to the irony in the song. Jake’s lyrics are about fictional characters, but those tough guys are actually—satirically—depicting a real-life dissatisfaction with the world. The jester can actually speak the truth underneath the jokes they tell.”
Further, Denning said, “The jester sort of gets away with poking and prodding and mocking by way of the ‘jester’s privilege.’ I think there’s a dry irony there, in relation to the song's lyrics. Its narrative was written to be equally praising and condemning of some idea of ‘making it’ in a big city, all while these characters are smoking cigars and flashing gold-toothed grins and selling this idea to you — the beggar’s pitch, which the album's namesake also came from. It’s maybe a bit disingenuous, but they get to get away with it. I think those characters could just as easily be the jester’s in question as we can as the songwriters.”
The band are admittedly no strangers to “goofy” and “tons of fun” and “lighthearted” but they also take joking seriously.
“Being a fool is my full-time occupation, so really it’s just business as usual,” stated Marc Gabriel, when probed by Wormbrain on how they spend April Fools’ Day, a holiday celebrated just days ago.
To this, Denning vouched, “I can personally attest to Mark’s foolishness, 100%. But I definitely think each of us have trickster-tendencies that teeter between impish and admirable. Every day is April Fools in this band.”
“Pranking people is one of the purest forms of love that can be shown,” Saville concluded. “It will always be cool.”
As far as what comes next for Free Casino, Saville added, “We’re playing a bunch of shows over the spring and summer! We’d love to meet new friends and see some new faces out at those gigs.”
Wormbrain World asked the members of Free Casino to consult the Wikipedia article List of Jesters to share with us their personal faves.
SS: A couple of my favorite Jesters come from video games. When I was a kid I used to wheel and deal old video game consoles as a sort of hobby I guess? Nights Into Dreams on the Sega Saturn was one of my favorites, the two characters from that game were really cool. A super underrated one is the main villain from the arcade game CarnEvil. I used to go to an arcade near my house to play that game growing up — super gory. I looked it up, its name is Umlaut.
JD: Pagliacci the clown is the greatest of all time. The Michael Jordan of Jesters and tricksters. Close second is maybe Willem DaFoe for the 3 minutes he was on screen in The Northman. But one day, I hope to be considered one of the greats too.
MG: For sure Spinel in the Steven Universe movie. I’ve been a huge fan of the franchise for a bit. Good to finally see some jester representation.
Free Casino’s Top 5 Favorite Jesters List:
Pagliacci
Umlaut (CarnEvil)
Spinel
Nights
Willem DaFoe…?
Photo courtesy of the band.
W.W: What is Wormbrain?
JD: Wormbrain is a flowstate. A mentality. Like when Bruce Lee said “Be like water”.
MG: Honestly… sounds like mad cow disease to me.
SS: When you’re walking outside and turn over a rock and you strike up a conversation with the grubs hanging out under there.
W.W: Thank you for sharing with Wormbrain.
Free Casino’s forthcoming album Beggar’s Pitch will be out April 14th, 2023 via Brooklyn-based independent label Sad Cactus Records.
