There’s a restless, road-worn energy running through Lord Sonny the Unifier’s new album The Escape Plan Handbook. The Brooklyn project, led by Greg Jiritano, throws punk, psychedelic rock, primitive synths and greasy biker-rock swagger into the same battered machine, then floors it. There’s a deliberate lack of polish here, but not a lack of control. Guitars snarl, keyboards buzz and scrape, and Jiritano’s voice moves between a rough-edged croon, bark and outright howl. The production leans hard into analog texture, giving the songs the feeling of something dug out of an old rehearsal space rather than assembled inside a computer. It suits the album’s subject matter: escape, frustration, alienation and the fantasy of simply disappearing for a while.
What keeps the record from becoming a nostalgia exercise is its agitation. Jiritano isn’t merely looking backward at a freer, less connected era, he’s using that imagined freedom as fuel. The songs carry the nervous energy of someone staring at modern life and deciding that opting out might be more interesting than trying to fix it. There are obvious touchstones in the mix, from post-punk abrasion of Viagra Boys to the garage rock of Ty Segall and 70s heavy metal like Motorhead, but The Escape Plan Handbook doesn’t feel assembled from references. Its personality comes from the rough edges. This is music that prefers sweat to sheen, distortion to precision, and a good getaway plan to another hour of doomscrolling.
