Bad Omen

Jake Flores brings a distinct dirtbag-left sensibility to his 2021 digital release, Bad Omen. Originally recorded in 2018, the hour operates as an accidental time capsule from a pre-pandemic landscape, capturing a room of people who have no idea how much worse their personal and political realities are about to get.

Flores leans heavily into self-deprecation and left-wing cynicism. He addresses the real-life fallout of his infamous Cinco de Mayo Twitter joke, which prompted federal agents from Homeland Security to pay a visit to his Brooklyn apartment. His storytelling shifts from high-concept paranoia to the deeply mundane, detailing a scheme to avoid a hotel bill by staging an impromptu, apolitical sit-in at the Georgia Aquarium.

Distributed by Stand Up! Records, the set relies on Flores’s ability to juxtapose heady academic references with trashy, elder-millennial living. He discusses the panopticon and David Foster Wallace in one breath, and poppers, sex classes, and Bob Seger in the next. There is a charm to his unpolished style, especially when finding unexpected progressivism in his home state of Texas.