Lately I have developed an obsession with being on top of my shit. Much of this has to do with being 23, that weird prime number age when one is expected to wander aimlessly through themes of self loathing and self destruction. My desire to “do life right” stems from a rebellion against this expectation. It’s a little game I play, where I see if I can perhaps be the very opposite of the archetype I’ve been assigned, show them all how wrong they were.

The problem is that often it feels less like a game and more like an uncomfortable war against the inevitable. The facts are thus: I really am 23, I have only been in the proverbial real world for six months or so, and sometimes I don’t want to cook for myself or stretch my hamstrings or drink moderately, and so, I don’t. And then that self loathing comes on twice as strong as it would have, had I just calmly resigned myself to my fate and gotten on with my haphazard life.

So now I am working on a new game, a game that has less to do with overcoming small failures, and more about making those failures fun. And luckily a soundtrack for this game has come along just at the right time, in the form of Band Practice’s new record Make Nice.

Shortcomings, and grappling with them internally, are a huge theme in this brief yet multilayered album. On “Bartending at Silent Barn,” those refrains of negative thoughts become literal refrains; the simple profundity of lines like “Nobody at this show likes me” and “Sorry I got weird” repeat and snowball into weighty appraisals of character that are not truly worth their gravity. As most of us know however, that comforting reassurance—that internal hypercriticism is often blown out of proportion—is much easier to believe when understood from an external perspective, rather than experienced firsthand.

But that is the wonderful thing about taking such criticisms and outsourcing them into song. Not only do these low points become external by the nature of their being pieces of music, but they also become strangely enjoyable, a sadness that you can dance to. As far as I can tell from my experiments so far, this is the best way to make failure fun: turn it into a hook, put a melody to your melancholy, transform that which was previously enervating and mundane into a work of art.

And don’t forget to give yourself credit where credit is due, either. Be honest with yourself, as Band Practice is on “Put Up a Fight,” and you’ll find a balance of triumphs and defeats emerge in your daily actions, You may lose your keys, and sometimes even your car, but sometimes you can also dance pretty well, so are you really all that terrible? And am I, for that matter? I stretched my hamstrings today, and I also made myself a lovely couscous dish. As for drinking moderately, I’m still only on my first beer this evening, but only time will tell how that one will pan out. Either way, it will make for a good tune.

Make Nice is out now via Chill Mega Chill.