Naming a song after the man who tried to shoot Donald Trump is a choice that demands some explanation, and Subterranean Street Society is upfront about where it came from. Singer Louis was having a day where a depressed roommate had blamed him for their suicidal thoughts – and then, on the same day, he watched the assassination attempt unfold on the news. Two acts of violence, one private and one public, collide on the same afternoon. The Amsterdam-based Dutch-Danish trio built a song out of that collision, and rather than resolve it into a clean political statement, they left it deliberately open. The lyrics frame Crooks as having committed suicide, a provocation they freely admit they can’t fully explain. Whether it’s about gun violence, about Trump, about something else entirely – they’re putting that question to the listener. It’s an unusual kind of honesty from a band that seems more interested in generating friction than commentary.
Musically, the song is quite ingenious: it starts off with a gunshot sound that you soon conflate with the snare itself, and as the creepy guitar chord keeps ringing out through the verses, it feels ominous and teeters on psychedelic rock more than a bluesy, swampy jam. Though the verses are groovy, the groove is broken up by a dream sequence halfway through, where the ambient sounds are big, but it works to push you even deeper inside your own mind. It works a great balance between trippy and groovy.
“Thomas Matthew Crooks” is the follow-up to their critically received single “Kindness,” which came out of a hitchhiking trip through the north of Ireland, and the contrast between the two says something about the band’s range. Subterranean Street Society has a club tour through the Netherlands coming up, and an album due later in 2026. On the strength of these two singles, it’s shaping up to be an interesting one.
