Mr MooQ & The New Occupants – “Too Much Information”

Mr MooQ & The New Occupants – “Too Much Information” – Single Review

It’s funny…you’d think I’d be more cautious here, given that the source once wrote “Be Careful What You Listen To” back in 2018…yet here I am, feeling like I’d always listen to a collaboration between Mr MooQ & The New Occupants if it came my way, as proven by this shiny single “Too Much Information.”  I didn’t even hesitate, or think twice about it, despite their previous advice…I wasn’t careful at all really – I just pushed play.

And here I am, alive and able to tell the tale (so far)!  If I wasn’t, I assure you, there’d just be a blank page where these words you’re reading are right now.  That’s how you know, that’s the litmus test here.  If I’m still cranking out words, I’m alive.  You can officially cancel the calls you’ve placed to search and rescue.

So let’s see here…Mr MooQ & The New Occupants are back at it again are they?  We last heard from them on these pages of ours with the single “Super Boom” back in 2023, and of course it was about five years prior to that with “Be Careful What You Listen To,” as I’d mentioned earlier.  I tell ya…the longer we keep going as an online magazine connected to the independent music scene, it’s kinda nice to find out who was built for longevity and ready to keep doing what they love over the years, especially when so many tend to pack it in before they even really got started.  We’ve had a few more encounters with Mr MooQ along the way…singles like “Good Luck With That,” “Dreaming In Color,” and “Double Happiness” – but it’s great to see this collaborative set of mischief makes continues to work together as well.  When something works, why not see what else it can do, right?  There’s no harm in that, I reckon.

Plus, when you’ve got a wealth of material like Mr MooQ  & The New Occupants have to draw on, with so much ‘progress’ being made in the tech industry & such…there’s no real reason to slow down.  I’m glad that the “Super Boom” hasn’t happened yet (though I still have my suspicions that everything they were writing about was true), and to be truthful with ya, I’ve actually always been careful about what I choose to listen to.  I hear lots of things, yes – but I’m much more choosy about what is genuinely able to pierce the mental armor I’ve set up around my cerebral cortex.  That in itself should tell you that it’s okay to be pushing play on “Too Much Information” by Mr MooQ & The New Occupants – they’re vetted and verified, trusted sources we can rely on to tell it to us straight whether we like it or not.  Love that.

You end up in this ever-interesting subliminal space when you listen to these two in action.  On the one hand, it’s easy to understand that yes, there’s humor involved and they’re always happy to take another opportunity to entertain you & bring a smile to your face through something clever they’ve written.  On the other hand, there’s an unquestionable seriousness in the topics they choose, which gives their music a whole different layer for your brain to chew on, which I dig.  It’s almost to the point of what you could define as ‘gallows humor’ if you’re familiar with the term…and of course, “Super Boom” probably makes that the most clear…but make no mistake, what Mr MooQ & The New Occupants bring up in their songs is well worth paying attention to, not just because it’ll sound good, but because they’ll make you think.

“Too Much Information” deals specifically with the massive sensory overload that many of experience in our day to day life now.  If you don’t feel like that’s something you deal with at all, please switch places and/or bodies with me…because I’d like to be free like you.  From the obviously insidious nature of cell phones, to more classic thieves of your attention like gridlock traffic, to the many conversations we have in a day, media we consume, technology we consume…the amount of inputs we have is so ridiculously stress-tested that it’s amazing we’re not all lying down in the middle of the street like the dude in that video for “Just” by Radiohead, hoping to get run over.  We do it to ourselves, we do – and that’s what really hurts.  It’s true.  But the simple thought of unplugging for a day or a week is by no means as easy of a task as anyone might like you to think it is either; it now comes with built-in FOMO to start, but beyond that, on the inside of a twenty-four hour news cycle, it might take you a week to catch up on what you missed out on in the course of one bloody day.  “Too Much Information?”  You fuckin’ betcha.

As always, I find myself saluting the way that Mr MooQ & The New Occupants are able to shed some light on what can be quite dark subjects.  They’re the musical equivalent of that dude riding the bomb to the ground in Dr. Strangelove, grinning at their own impending doom & encouraging us to do the same.  Honestly, what else CAN we do?  Why shouldn’t we join in on what little fun we can have while we can still have it?  “Feeling stupid on my smartphone” isn’t the way I want to spend the rest of my days.  Hell, I’m getting old enough to the point where I’d practically throw my arms around a paper map in a sincere effort to LEARN the route I’m taking instead of constantly relying on my GPS like the next fifty people in traffic with me at the same time.  We all experience “Too Much Information” these days, don’t we?

All that being said, I do love it when music takes a moment to make us think, and this song accomplishes that through its zany lyrical cleverness.  Beyond the words, you’ve also got absolutely stellar hooks in the synthesized sound surrounding you as you listen.  Ultimately, I’d be the first to tell you that the music in what they create is often a vehicle to deliver the words and messages in their music to you, but credit where credit is due; it’s a highly efficient one.  I mean…if we’re to at least assume that numbers aren’t lying to us, this particular vehicle has already delivered the video for “Too Much Information” to a staggering quarter of a million-plus music-fans in less than two months’ time – that’s truly impressive.

We could get into the nitty gritty of what the selling features are here in terms of the musical hook likely being the most memorable aspect of what you’ll hear…but hopefully the concept resonates just as strong at the end of the day.  Mr MooQ & The New Occupants have a gnarly habit of basically telling us exactly what’s going on straight to our faces and are still able to send the message right over the heads of the masses as they listen.  That’s a remarkable achievement in itself, and another I certainly applaud.  As to whether or not the final destination in this storyline is as impactful as the way it started…I think we could probably have some fun debates about that…they kind of take “Too Much Information” from a place where it applies to all of us and arguably make it a whole lot more individual by the end, but I think it’s a reasonable assumption that it’ll still be tremendously relatable to a whole bunch of us tuning in, and it’s still fun to listen to even if you don’t feel that way I’m sure.  It’s a fine line to walk, between being funny and deadly serious at the same time, but somehow this is a collaboration that has always found a way to make it work, make it interesting, and make you think.

At the very least, the last thing these two would ever make is something normal or typical…so you squares can beat it!  The rest of you will have something strange and beautiful to groove to while this world we live in continues to disintegrate around us, smothering and burying us hopelessly, mercilessly, and permanently underneath an avalanche of “Too Much Information,” Pompeii style, like we deserve.

Find out more about Mr MooQ from his official website at:  https://www.mrmooq.com

Find out more about The New Occupants at their official website here:  https://www.thenewoccupants.com

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