How ironic that a track about getting ready for a party and building up excitement for it would be the final track on the one and only album that Test Icicles would release during the short, short time of the band’s existence. I was 10 years old when the video for ‘Circle. Square. Triangle’ was in rotation on the regular on MTV2. I was the same age when the band announced they were splitting up just under a year later. At the time, I was very much into them, so my reaction to that announcement was one of a large indifference.. But it was when I was 15 that I revisited For Screening Purposes Only for reasons that I’ve forgotten at this time, and found out how much fun the album was. Released in that dance-punk era of the ’00s, it very much handles ‘dance’ and ‘punk’ in its brash and noisy way.

I feel ‘Party on…’ is very much an account of lead vocalist Sam Mehran, witnessing the kids of 2005 feeling alive, being out in the town and knowing the places to go to have a good time. Under the pressure of being one of three vocalists and songwriters in a band, he can forget that feeling of unadulterated joy and freedom. He reminds himself that he’s just “gotta catch it”, with a nice reference to the track of the same name on the album. When he does, and the band perform, throwing out the energy to the crowd, everything comes together. He witnesses the fans waiting in anticipation to get into the venues they’re playing, people try and push in to the queues, and it seems like as soon as things get underway and the band do their thing, it’s time for everyone to leave and the band to move on to the next place. But no matter where they go, what matters is that a party’s gonna go down and things are gonna get wild.

And that was the final statement made on the band’s sole album. Well, that is if you don’t count the hidden track that followed after a few minutes of silence. That one’s a bit of a mess. From what I recall, the three members of the band really weren’t interested in the music they were doing, and weren’t expecting to create as much of a buzz as they did. They weren’t their separate ways and pursued their own individual careers. Rory Atwell became a producer, made remixes for a ton of bands and played in a few other bands of his own. Devonté Hynes became Lightspeed Champion before then evolving into Blood Orange. Mehran also forged out his own solo career under various aliases and was in the midst of making another project when he sadly passed away in July 2018 by suicide at the age of 31.