Disasterbation

Derek Sheen treats clinical depression like a logistical problem with a surprisingly simple solution: sleep. His advice to anyone on the verge of throwing in the towel is to just wait until the next day, since things might look slightly less terrible in the morning. That specific brand of gloomy, practical optimism anchors his third album.

Recorded live in Olympia, Washington, and released in October 2017 on Stand Up! Records, Disasterbation finds the Seattle-based comic translating existential anxieties into highly structured, verbose stories. He is a comic who works in hyper-detailed pictures, whether he is talking about the cartoonish absurdity of the Kool-Aid Man acting as a form of divine punishment, or detailing the sheer indignity of his own medical colonoscopy.

There are also detours into heavy metal nostalgia, the fatigue of constant political dread, and an incident involving a racist grandmother on a plane. The material is consistently dark, but Sheen’s rhythm on stage is fast and lyrical, keeping the heavy topics from sinking the room.