Denver’s lounge punk provocateurs Jesus Christ Taxi Driver have officially dropped their second full-length, Taxi The Rich, out today via Midtopia. If the title alone didn’t tip you off, this is not a record interested in playing nice. It’s rapturously irreverent, politically pointed, religiously disoriented, and existentially uncertain — and yes, there is jazz flute.

Formed on Colorado’s front range in 2022, the quartet — Ian Ehrhart (guitar/vocals), Colin Kelly (guitar/vocals), Miles Jenkins (drums) and Will Ehrhart (bass) — have spent the last few years building a reputation for unhinged, Iggy Pop-and-The-Cramps-coded live shows. They’ve shared stages with Frank Black, The Hold Steady, A Place to Bury Strangers and The Thing, and racked up festival sets at Treefort, Somewhere Fest and Break Out West along the way. Their just-wrapped Taxi The Rich Again Tour closed out at Treefort Festival, and based on the band’s own admission that they intend to spend as little time at home this year as possible, don’t expect them to cool off any time soon.

Taxi The Rich pulls from garage punk, funk, surf rock, twang and even power pop, building an unlikely cast of characters that includes serial killers, Lana Del Rey, Jeffrey Epstein and more. The album was first teased with the satirical single “Too Cold To Golf,” a kiss-off to the silicone-faced set holding court in America’s unofficial capital, Palm Beach. The title track functions as the band’s thesis statement, pointing a finger squarely at the hypocrisy of the American religious right with a reminder that Jesus, in fact, was not a white man.

“‘Taxi the Rich’ is a worried perspective of our current time,” the band shared. “The album’s subject matter looks at the world from afar and from up close, even looks within and into the past. We wonder how we got here, we recite mantras to ease the fear, and sometimes we play our instruments loud to show our teeth.”

Critics are already on board. Westword called out the “jazz flute (!!!!) revival that would make Ian Anderson proud,” Under the Radar praised the band’s ability to transmute “the chaos and absurdity of our modern moment” into something electric, and Carry The Zero summed it up neatly: “Catchy as hell… lands its hooks before you notice the teeth.”

There’s also a nice wrinkle in how Taxi The Rich got to listeners. While today marks the digital release, physical copies have been in fans’ hands for a month thanks to Midtopia’s Buy Before You Stream initiative — a program that hands 100% of vinyl profits to the artist and prioritizes the human-level artist-to-fan bond over algorithmic spoils. A small act of resistance, fitting for a band this allergic to the status quo.

Stream Taxi The Rich and watch the video for “Too Cold To Golf” below, then go bother your local record store about a vinyl copy.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Jesus+Christ+Taxi+Driver+Too+Cold+To+Golf

TAXI THE RICH TRACK LIST
1. Have It
2. Jesus Christ Taxi Driver
3. Lana Del Rey
4. Tractor Man
5. White Roses
6. Too Cold To Golf
7. Alive
8. Too Long
9. Our World
10. Record Machine
11. This Town
12. Easy Love