Notes by Brian Berger:

"Chuck Klosterman, author, former editor and chief of Spin magazine, and pop culture guru, once wrote that his favorite moment in any piece of music was an accidental flub in a Fleetwood Mac song. There was something humanizing about it, as if you were in the room with them. Like you could laugh along with the very band you idolized as you mutually made the decision to keep the take in the final version of the song. I experienced a similar moment of connectivity when Collin Thomas, or in the music world and in the case of this record, Rich Boy Junkie, sent me an initial recording of “The Western Voice on Midwest Heartbreak”, track 5 off his upcoming record. He sings (whispers) “I’m back here/back alone/singing to myself in my parents home” followed by a heart-stopping sniffle. It is brief and it is subtle, but it’s my favorite moment in the entire record, and in fact my favorite moment of a song in a very long time. Instantly you’re there with Collin, sitting in the quiet night, voicing concerns and disappointments, failures and regrets over hushed tones as to not wake the members in adjacent rooms.

The reason this moment is so powerful is because it serves as a synecdoche. It is a miniscule portion that represents a bigger whole, the entirety of the record.  It is the sniffle of a post grad, early 20’s kid caught between the love of a college town and the fear of true adulthood. It is the sniffle of the impending approach of failure. It is the sniffle of cautious optimism. It is the sniffle that everyone who has graduated school, moved to a new city or moved back in with their parents, got a new job, hated their new job, had their heart broken, or felt the guilt of breaking another has felt with feverous completeness. It is the sniffle that represents the record that represents a time in our life where everything, for the first time, feels so permanent. Where decisions lead to lifestyles and where actions lead to true consequence, for better or for worse. “I’ve been hiding away/from the feeling/that I’m not doing what I wanna/or going where I want to be,” he laments on the first single, Dean. It’s simple, but it resonates. The first time I showed this song to my roommate, her reaction was visceral and apparent. Her brow furrowed as she too questioned her current state of comfort.  Did she sacrifice her passion for security?

While this record is riddled with more questions than answers, it surfaces something profound and important during this brief yet transformative period of time. Armed with an array of instrumentation and voicemails connecting everything together, Rich Boy Junkie’s “Illinois, You’re Killing Me” is a collection of songs that I didn’t realize I needed to, but so desperately needed to, hear. It is not a happy record, yet it veers slightly left of pessimistic and settles into something much more important: the truth. He ends his album with the most fitting words we should all take into account during the most tumultuous, seemingly earth shattering moments that swell into our lives…"[does] this mean anything at all?"