Pandemic and angst: Arrested Youth brings head-banging indie pop rock to Sacramento show

The indie artist Arrested Youth will bring his cathartic, confessional brand of alt-rock Thursday to the Holy Diver bar in midtown Sacramento.

Arrested Youth is the project of Ian Johnson, a Louisville, Ky., native who started releasing music as a respite from his unfulfilling business career. As the possibly apocryphal origin story goes, Johnson graduated from college in 2016 and went straight to work consulting in corporate America. During this period, he began producing music to escape from his dull day-to-day life.

This period served as a central theme in his early work, notably in his debut single. In the song’s catchy hook, Johnson sings “All my friends are robots/They got real jobs/They can’t turn off.” The song ends as Johnson chants — with increasing urgency — “Won’t someone set me free?”

Johnson set himself free. In 2017, after creating enough songs to assemble an album, he quit his career to pursue music full time. Now, with two albums, an EP and a smattering of singles under his belt, Johnson is turning his attention to his latest source of angst: the pandemic.

COVID-19 didn’t hinder Johnson’s creative process; in fact, he says that the difficulties he experienced during lockdown served as fruitful inspiration for his work. He started writing his first studio album, “Nonfiction,” in April 2020 with his producer John Feldmann.

“I didn’t feel as though my inspiration was jeopardized,” Johnson told The Sacramento Bee in an interview. “I think I write a lot of my music out of uncertainty and doubts and fears.”

The album features a diverse spread of subjects and sounds. But it’s unified by Johnson’s signature style: anxiety and preoccupation permeate the record, and each lamenting lyric is punctuated with head-banging drums, melodic choruses and warm, modern production.

“It’s got roots in rock music, hip hop music, pop structure and singer-songwriter structure as well,” Johnson said. “So I would say it’s an eclectic hybrid of genres that have a personal story within them that tends to be pretty relatable.”

Fully extricated from the corporate drama that defined his first album, Johnson has turned his attention to a wide array of societal and personal issues.

“The idea of this album is to make it pretty eclectic in the sounds and the inspiration,” Johnson said.

And he did. The songs in “Nonfiction” touch on religion and his loss of faith: in “Unfaithful,” Johnson crones “It’s been so long since I talked to God;” in “Father Tell Me,” he croons “Father tell me now, what went wrong?” Other targets for Johnson’s angst: heartbreak, bullying, loneliness and plenty of pandemic-imposed isolation. Each issue receives an anxious, nostalgia-tinged treatment.

In the album’s most-streamed song, “98 Degrees,” Johnson illuminates the mental health challenges specific to living through a pandemic.

“Try to stay six feet away,” Johnson warns in the song’s stripped-back bridge. “’Cause right now, I don’t feel like me.”

In early April, Johnson used socially-distant methods to make a song with Mark Hoppus, the legendary bassist and co-lead singer of Blink-182. Spread out across the country, Hoppus and Johnson “hopped on a Zoom call” to make “Find My Own Way,” an impassioned rumination on the complications of personal growth.

Not only was the track a collaboration with Hoppus, but it was also Johnson’s first time working with Feldman, who went on to produce the entirety of “Nonfiction.”

“There’s a special spot in my heart for that song,” said Johnson.

Although he expressed trepidation that mounting delta variant concerns might derail his tour, Johnson burst with excitement at the prospect of getting in front of an audience again.

“The live show is so synonymous with the music that’s being created. The full connection is why I do it … just watching the audience and fans connect with these lyrics in these songs,” he said.

This story was originally published August 17, 2021 at 1:24 PM.