Lip Critic
Schedule
Sun, 07 Jun, 2026 at 07:00 pm
UTC-07:00Location
Barboza | Seattle, WA
Barboza Presents LIP CRITIC
Flatwounds + Bejalvin
SUN, 7 JUN 2026 at 07:00PM PDT
Ages: 21 & Over
Doors Open: 07:00PM
OnSale: Fri, 13 Feb 2026 at 10:00AM PST
Announcement: Tue, 10 Feb 2026 at 07:00AM PST
Theft World is an album about stealing.
I’ve stolen a lot, and I’ve been stolen from a great deal. Nothing interesting has been taken from
me though, just the things that everybody seems to have, social security number, credit cards,
etc. Not long after I turned 25, while at the Lost Lake Lounge in Denver on tour supporting our
last album Hex Dealer, I got a notification on my phone that I had successfully checked into a
Comfort Inn & Suites in Amherst, Massachusetts. I quickly logged into my bank account only to
see a long list of charges on my credit card, as well as a couple thousand dollars missing from
my checking and savings. The purchases seemed fairly mundane, a lot of hotels, huge
purchases at Costco and Walmart, but one stuck out. A single thirty-five dollar purchase on the
website Bandcamp. My heart dropped, and when I went into Lip Critic’s Bandcamp it confirmed
what I was afraid of. Whoever stole my card had bought Lip Critic’s whole discography. It made
me sick. It was as if the scammer was reaching out from some abstract place into the real world,
saying “I see you.”
Seven shows later on tour we were at O’Briens in Boston. The show was an especially feral and
violent one and when we finished our set I ran over to the merch booth. A kid in the line caught
my eye, a tall lanky white kid wearing a surgical mask and a Five Nights At Freddy’s zip hoodie
with the hood on. When he finally got up to the table I asked if he knew what he wanted. I could
tell by his eyes he was smiling underneath the zip-up. After a brief pause he recited my social
security number to me. As much as it shook me, seeing him there in front of me felt harmless,
like a little kid playing a prank on you, unable to contain their excitement and watch you realize
what’s happened. I asked him if he’d talk to me alone and he instantly agreed. As soon as we
got outside he excitedly admitted to stealing my information. He exclaimed that he “couldn’t
believe the prize” he’d won. When I pressed him about why he had targeted me, he said
because I had told him to. “You hid it well,” he kept saying, “but I figured it out.” I realized pretty
quickly I was talking to someone who was not in the same world as me. He told me he was
convinced that we had been leaving coded messages and patterns in our music that were all
part of some massive scavenger hunt, and that he had won. In my head I was grazing through
all the lyrics I ever wrote, all the songs we’d ever put out, trying to understand how someone
could have come to this conclusion. The more I stayed quiet the more he filled the space with
words, detailing the parts of this grand narrative and puzzle that I had supposedly made.
After a few minutes I stopped him. I told him I had no interest in going to the police, and didn’t
expect to get any of my money back. I asked him if he would be willing to tell me the story in full
as he saw it, what he thought I meant in the lyrics, what patterns he was picking up, and how he
decoded all of my personal information from the music. He was extremely willing, and after we
packed up that night, we met him at a 24-hour halal spot. All of us set up audio recordings on
our phones beforehand, and about 45 minutes later he had told us everything.
None of it made any sense.
We spent the trip home from Boston listening to the recordings in the van laughing and trying to
make sense of what the kid had said.
The more we listened to it the more entertaining things became, and we started to see recurring
themes and characters in his rambling. He said he knew certain songs were from the
perspective of “The ATM Man” and some songs took place on Earth while others were placed in
“The Junk Space” and “The Grocery Store Casino.” I remember feeling a sense of jealousy that
I hadn’t actually concocted this whole thing. The actual themes and ideas of the music we had
made paled in comparison to this one kid's freakish interpretation of them. We got back to New
York the next day, played our last show at TV Eye in Ridgewood, and the tour was over.
A week later, Connor and I were at his studio starting to lay out our next album. A bunch of
demos were already done and we had been feeling super confident about it. But something felt
off then. All the tracks felt too safe, even boring. We had been over the moon about them in the
months before the tour but now it all just felt weak. The session was massively unproductive in
terms of music, but we couldn’t stop talking about the kid's story - my scammer’s story. It
dawned on me later in the night: let’s make his album. Whatever this kid thought he was
hearing, let’s make that. He had given it to us all on a platter. Every detail story boarded out in
the recording of our conversation.
We ended up shelving the album we had worked on in the months leading up to our headline
tour and started from scratch using the recording of our conversation with the kid as our guide.
Theft World is that record.
Accessibility Disclaimer: Barboza is not wheelchair accessible.
Important Information:
* This event is 21 & over. Valid ID is required. Minors will not be permitted entry.
* Doors open at the listed event time.
* Event start time is generally one hour after doors open but is subject to change without notice.
* All tickets are nonrefundable with the exception of event cancellation.
* Support acts are subject to change.
* Orders in violation of the published ticket limit are subject to cancellation without notice.
Where is it happening?
Barboza, 925 E Pike St,Seattle, Washington, United States
Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.
