Beauty Saloon – BS | Album Review

Self-Released

By the time you finish reading this sentence, Beauty Saloon may have already broken up. The on-again-off-again Chicago group has been relaxing under the radar for over a year and a half, quietly assembling the pieces of their debut album, the cheekily-titled and almost eponymous BS. Singer-songwriter and guitarist Michael Molitor believes the band’s lifespan from here on out hangs in the balance, uncertain if the Saloon’s hours are up, but the release of their possibly sole LP acts as a celebration of progress, a document of a post-pandemic upstart band delivering everything they have to offer. Looking at the album’s track listing, BS may initially seem like a compilation or unfinished fragments of a more holistic project, but it all culminates in a complete listening experience that clearly delivers on the band’s intentions.

There is a wide range of influences that weave in and out of each song, starting with “What Are You Made Of? (Milk!),” which is immediately reminiscent of the quirkier sides of alternative music, such as Beat Happening, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Cheekface. The shimmering melodies and jangly guitars let the song sit nicely somewhere between emo and unfuzzed shoegaze, all with a ripping alt-country guitar solo to boot. Molitor’s vocals are restrained and captivatingly boyish, sifting on top of the music as another instrument in the mix. “Zelda” is a twangy, strummy ballad that almost sounds like a performance of a ‘60s Bee Gees soul song played three rooms away – smooth with a magnetic subtlety.

If you were a fan of MJ Lenderman’s seemingly nonsensical lyrics on Manning Fireworks, you’ll enjoy the fast food odyssey of “Dial Up,” Beauty Saloon’s opus clocking in at just under six minutes. This is one of a few tracks written by second guitarist Austin Rose but sung by Molitor, who handles it with the care the words deserve. I don’t mean to call this song “nonsense,” but there’s a lot about it that channels the spirit of a track like Lenderman’s “Rip Torn,” where Rose recalls, “When I was a child, maybe seventeen, me and my old man went down to Burger King. And we went to Popeye’s Chicken too, no, our dogs and our cats can’t eat that kind of food.” Following the end of that verse is a sprawling instrumental passage that encompasses a variety of different flavors, much like a Whopper and a classic chicken sandwich.

Rose’s other writing credits include “Pickups,” his only lead vocal on the album, complete with a backing track that sounds like a beachy b-side from Kings Of Leon’s Come Around Sundown, but less familial rock and roll and more slacker whammy bar worship. There’s a nice addition of cello performed by Chaepter Gottschalk, who glides along nicely with the rest of the band, and Rose has a great call to Molitor’s guitar solo á là Poison’s “Talk Dirty To Me.” Lead single “No One to Feed” is the third Rose writing credit and the third of four songs on BS that leans into a food theme, one that I suspect is unintentional overall but creates a fun throughline across the album’s duration. The groove, along with Molitor’s vocals, makes it sound like Elliott Smith at the not-O.K. Corral, a tear-in-your-beer tune turned tender for tongue-in-cheek tattooed millennials. The track is preceded by the album’s briefest moment, “Feels Good To Be Invited,” which could have been plucked from any of the classic, pre-insurrection Ariel Pink albums.

The second half of BS dips into the band’s slightly older material and recontextualizes it for an album presentation. Molitor rocks “Bassoon Girl” like a mix of Ram-era McCartney and early Springsteen, with more fun lyrics that could have come from an old Sparks album: “And I still hear the bassoon rushing over it all… and I ain’t got no hearing problems.” The song originally appeared on their first EP of demos in 2022, although interestingly, the three demos that follow on BS are previously unreleased. “Sugarbear Honeypie” is as sweet and mushy as the title suggests, but holy shit does Beauty Saloon put together one of the prettiest ballads I’ve heard this decade. The harmonized falsetto group vocals over the guitar arpeggios dance beautifully with each other and make the track sound like a generationally passed-down lullaby. “Can’t Keep Love Around (Dopamine Dragon)” is a lo-fi Kurt Vile-esque laidback rocker, and it would have been cool to see what the band could have done with it as a proper studio track, but this demo version gives it a particular personality.

“Liza Minnelli,” the band’s first proper single from 2023, closes out BS in an alternate, live-in-studio version, and is a nice button on the LP and the band overall. Listening to Beauty Saloon take one of their more popular early tracks and letting it ring out as the final moments on their first album gives a feeling of completion, like the band has served its purpose, and the next chapters are going to begin. It’s their encore performance before the bow, just like Minnelli herself would give.

Beauty Saloon’s brief period in the Chicago indiesphere could have been glossed over entirely, leaving them a memory of a memory of a band, but their work on BS shows them coming together and leaving their mark, reminding us locals of the special brand of DIY music they had to offer. And who knows, by the time you finish reading this sentence, Beauty Saloon may have already reunited. 

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Logan Archer Mounts once almost got kicked out of Warped Tour for doing the Disturbed scream during a band’s acoustic set. He currently lives in Rolling Meadows, IL, but tells everyone he lives in Palatine.

Eliana Glass – E | Album Review

Shelter Press

A sea of mahogany scrolls meets my widening eyes as richly shimmering instruments catch the hot sun that pours through the windows like water. 

It was the summer before my senior year of high school, and I was at a music camp smack dab in the middle of the sweltering southern California desert. Shy, awkward, and frumpy, I was among more peers than I had ever been before. As you can imagine, I felt like a fish out of water. I was there to attend the piano program, but campers were also given the chance to explore other instruments during the camp. I eagerly signed up for the strings class, having never had the opportunity to try any instruments besides the piano. 

The moment I entered the strings classroom is one I will remember forever. Everything changed for me that day as I pulled one of the massive upright basses into my arms, timidly plucking at the thick, ropey strings and startling as the vibration rattled through my ribcage. I was in love. 

Fast forward a year to 2012: it was my freshman year of college, and I had the opportunity to take four semesters of a group strings class as part of my piano major. Obviously, the piano, being my primary point of study, was my whole world, however, I was still deeply excited to reunite with the instrument that had intrigued me for the past year. I threw myself into every class period with vigor and enthusiasm. I even continued with private lessons during my senior year, playing whatever bass I could find lying around the music building in the few moments of free time I had during the week. Learning to play the upright bass developed in me a love and appreciation for genres and pieces of music that I believe I would have found far less accessible prior. I developed an ear for jazz, ever in awe of those bassists whose fingers could flit over the unforgiving strings like sparrows. I loved the mumbling runs and satisfying slap of pizzicato. I found joy in the husky whisper of the heavy bow as my little fingers scuttled across the fingerboard. Combined with my love for and dedication to the piano, I had huge new worlds and perspectives offered to me through the bass.

It is with this love for the upright bass and the piano that I approached Eliana Glass’s debut album, E. This modern jazz masterpiece is a stunning example of the delicate balance that can be struck between diametrically opposed instruments. Each track is unhurried, savoring the meandering harmonies and giving them permission to meld into a colorful blur of sound. Glass’s rich and elegant vocals have a resonant and woody quality, floating above the gentle rhythm of each song’s slightly varied instrumentation. 

I have listened through this album countless times, and it still presents me with something new each time - a new shadow, a new sunbeam, a new feeling. While I am comfortable with the ebb and flow of jazz harmony, having done more than my fair share of listening over the years, Eliana Glass has mastered her own unique brand of harmonic progression. It is at once listenable and fresh, full of subtle surprises and satisfying progressions that keep me coming back to listen once again. 

Glass’s musical career is impressive, and well explains her prowess as a musician and composer. From first learning the piano by ear as a child to studying jazz voice at The New School, followed by years of performance and songwriting experience, Eliana’s abilities have continued to evolve with time. Her composing draws on her thorough knowledge of jazz standards and love for Brazilian music, improvisation, and vintage equipment. While most of her writing features piano, upright bass, and drums, some pieces are stripped down to just Glass and a piano, and others feature warm and weird synths. 

My favorite track on E is “Flood.” It feels almost improvisatory in nature, something that would have been written alone one evening, hummed and tenderly pieced together by candlelight. The chord progression is heart-wrenching: simple arpeggios modulate between the major, its relative minor, and the secondary dominant, leading the ear on a sonically unstable journey that is nonetheless wonderfully satisfying. The tragic lyrics are intoned in Glass’s husky low register at first, sitting beautifully in her chest voice. As the song progresses, she switches to her head voice, and I am reminded of a theremin or bowed saw: Eliana sounds otherworldly and ethereal, hovering above the piano like a phantom. Another highlight is the opening track, “All My Life,” which feels deliciously like a song from a bygone era. The rich seventh chords, beautiful jazz progressions, and thrumming bass pizzicato create a romantic and brooding setting for Glass’s stunning vocals. “I’ve waited for you all my life - all my life, I’ve waited for you,” she croons. “Give me back my life, those stars are mine, this life is mine / Stars in the sky, this life is mine.” Somehow, “All My Life” does sound like stars: evoking a deep velvet evening sky, held against the heavens by glittering stars. 

A particularly standout work on this album is “Human Dust,” which is based on a poem by Agnes Denes. I have actually had the opportunity to see this work in person, as it was acquired by the San Francisco MoMA as part of their permanent collection in 2013 on a rotating display schedule. The piece consists of the poem, which hangs on the wall, and a small glass container of “calcareous human remains.” (So yes, bits and pieces of bones.) The poem tells the story of the life of a decidedly average man, chronicling how long he lived, how many people loved him, how many pounds of bread he ate, and so on. It is an eerie, deeply thoughtful work, and Glass pays Denes’ art piece the homage it deserves with her rendition. One can see the parallels between these two visionary artists: both Denes and Glass are pushing the boundaries of their respective crafts. While one works in physical media and the latter in sonic forms, both are confronting what it means to be a contemporary artist. There is no better person to tackle the challenge that Denes’ poem presents than Eliana Glass.

The modern listener would be remiss to pass over the masterpiece that is E. Full of stunning and fresh original pieces alongside well-crafted covers, Eliana Glass’s abilities are on full display. Each piece spins in orbit around the artist like a glowing moon, reflecting the cohesive beauty that this artist is so skilled in creating. And I, for one, will watch the moons, stars, and planets of E’s delicate solar system whirl above me over and over again.

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Britta Joseph is a musician and artist who, when she isn’t listening to records or deep-diving emo archives on the internet, enjoys writing poetry, reading existential literature, and a good iced matcha. You can find her on Instagram @brittajoes.

Colin Miller – Losin' | Album Review

Mtn Laurel Recording Co.

The first time I ever saw Colin Miller, he was sitting on a riding mower, kind of like a lawn chair and kind of like a throne. This wasn’t the first time I had heard his name, though. No, the first time I ever heard Colin Miller’s name was when he was introduced during the live rendition of “You Are Every Girl To Me” on MJ Lenderman’s album And the Wind (Live and Loose!). Toward the end of the Jackass-indebted love song, the group launches into an instrumental jam that allows Jake Lenderman to do a roll call of his band, the titular Wind. Lenderman’s voice kind of lulls as he calls out Miller, looping around the L’s and playfully drawing out the R in his drummer’s last name. It wasn’t until Zach Romeo’s documentary Rat Bastards of Haw Creek that I finally put a face to the name.

Rat Bastards of Haw Creek is a film about the rock band Wednesday, but it’s also secretly a preservative study of Haw Creek, the pastoral slice of North Carolina countryside that several members of Wednesday lived and recorded music on before they were evicted this past year. In his mini-doc, Romeo depicts this home through alternating shots of broken-down trucks, abandoned grills, worn-down sheds covered in ivy, and lush fields dotted with low white houses that blend into the landscape. With this footage and the accompanying interviews about living there, Romeo created a poignant portrait of a place that no longer exists.

We may only be halfway through the decade, but it already feels indisputable that alternative country is the sound of 2020’s indie, with the twinkle of pedal steel becoming what feels like a requirement for rock credibility these days. There are lots of intangibles in this Country takeover (which I wrote about in the second issue of Portable Model), but one tangible reason for this sound is Colin Miller, who has been at the periphery of this scene working as collaborator, creator, and contributor to some of the most buzzed-about records of the past few years. 

Tucked away in the idyllic greenery of Haw Creek, several of the biggest alt-country debuts of the past decade were produced in those low white houses with Miller’s support. Indigo De Souza’s, I Love My Mom, Wednesday’s I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone, and MJ Lenderman’s self-titled album were all recorded in the walls of Miller’s home. This isn’t including the countless other artists that Miller was producing up until his last day on the property. This also isn't counting the number of songs simply inspired by living in Haw Creek, depicting the lives of the people who populated this space.

These alt-country stars all ended up here because Miller had inadvertently built a thriving artistic community in East Asheville thanks to Gary King, the beloved owner of the Haw Creek property. King’s low rent, affable personality, and familial-like support for these artists resulted in the creation of entire songs, albums, and discographies. In the words of Miller, “Every part of the music process benefits from livin’ in a place like this.” 

Photo by Charlie Boss

But he doesn’t live there anymore. In 2022, after years as the de facto caretaker of Gary King and his land, watching NASCAR with him and mowing his lawn, King passed away, and his land was sold. In the years between his death and the official sale of the property, Miller tasked himself with maintaining Haw Creek’s magic in King’s absence, even buying Powerball tickets and scratch-offs with the hopes of winning enough to keep his home. 

This is all captured on Colin Miller's sun-faded sophomore album, Losin', both explicitly and implicitly. While some songs call directly to distinct moments, open in their mourning, the whole album is tinged with melancholia as Miller stubbornly pushes through his permanently changed life. The fuzzy melodies and ambient soundscapes of the album, combined with Miller’s unflinching misery, create a lightly haunted feeling that envelops the record, not in a literal ghostly sense, but rather in the way that life is constantly permeated by the presence of others, and once they are gone, the unrelenting memories remain. Through Miller’s signature North Carolina twang, Losin' is an album that is dogged in its sadness and stubborn in its acceptance of change.

“Birdhouse” kicks the record off with a woozy bent guitar lick and Miller laying out the pragmatic lyric, "If I stay here, I will die in silence here." Not exactly the typical place for an album about grief to start, but this is clearly the rumination of someone who has been dealing with grief and its effects for an extended period and is ready for tough change. This is the driving kinetic energy of the album: the want and need to live with loss, not disappear in it. Musically, there’s a porch-like quality to this song, as if its bright, bittersweet chords were first strummed while facing the sun despite the heartbroken words sung against it. Miller’s grief is lived-in and constant, palpable even on the best summer days.

There’s a hypnotic nature to Miller’s sound, and “4 Wheeler,” which starts with a line about robotripping, feels like hazy dreams appearing and disappearing in a thick country fog. Miller suddenly turns the blame on himself, repeating the refrain, “I can’t get to you.” In the final tragic moments of the track, an out-of-tune woodwind winds its way through Miller’s ambient sound and desperate repetition. The album is full of moments like this: a stray guitar pluck, a small riff on the keys, a faraway horn, soaring and sinking pedal steel. Behind these instruments are Miller’s friends, Jake Lenderman, who took over Miller’s usual space behind the drum kit, Xandy Chelmis, alt-country’s most prolific pedal steel player, and Ethan Baechtold, who holds it all together with his bass and keys. After all, his friends were inspired by Haw Creek and mourn Gary King, too.

Miller’s lyrics are sparsely placed throughout his songs, and the words themselves are minimal, focused on capturing a specific feeling rather than recalling an autobiographical scene. In “Porchlight,” Miller makes sense of the collapse of a relationship. Lyrics like the lamenting “I found a stranger’s boots in the living room” and the helplessly romantic “Darlin, you know you’re still my number one tube top angel” evoke a heartbroken strand of loneliness. While the lyrics are minimal, the sound is not – Miller traded his distortion at the door for a looser instrumentation. You can almost hear the cicadas chirping in the back of the track.

Cars, both driving them and watching them rust, are a constant reference for Miller throughout Losin', with most songs referencing different vehicles’ comfort, decay, or association with loved ones. The lead single, “Cadillac,” is the most straightforward in its metaphor, named after King’s favorite kind of car. This song was reviewed for Swim Into The Sound earlier in this album cycle, and in his review, Taylor Grimes notes the honest depiction Miller recalls of King, naming oxygen tanks, lazy eyes, and fake teeth. This is an incredibly vivid description woven over pedal steel.

Despite the clear grief and loss on display, the song floats by as an easy listen, light and breezy, the perfect soundtrack as the Carolinas warm up for the spring. By the end of the track, Miller lays out the stakes in the most plainspoken of terms: “It’s a good day at the wreck yard / It’s a bad day for my heart.”

If the other songs were Miller imagining cars that can’t move fast enough, “Hasbeen” is Miller with his pedal to the metal. Clocking in at under two minutes, this is the fastest song on Losin', and it zips past the sun-bleached tracklist, exhaust left in its wake. The track gains momentum as it powers on, charged by Lenderman’s kick drum. I imagine the greenery of the North Carolina hills sweeping past a car window. Lyrically, Miller likens himself to a rusting car or an aging athlete, with the capacity to rebuild with help from others; it’s wavering but hopeful. However, like a deer had leapt into the road, the whole song comes to a screeching halt as Miller repeats and pleads, “Was that you?” 

These songs feel threadbare, acting as bearers of Miller’s lamentation first, songs second. With needle-thin pedal steel warble wrapping around his words in “I Need a Friend,” Miller suggests, “Maybe I just needed / To be the one / Who leaves first.” His sad assuredness in “Birdhouse” returns in “Little Devil” as he promises, “I ain’t gonna waste your time, you ain’t gonna waste mine.” Sonically, the back half of the album moves away from the more country-flavored sound of the opening tracks and into a twang-tinged distortion. 

“Lost Again” begins with a shuffling drum machine loop, building with keys and strings and the pedal steel’s whine before Miller’s distorted voice, almost buried by the instruments, sings, “I don’t need another Christmas morning / I don’t need another birthday picture cake / I just need you here for a second.” It’s in this buzzy orchestration that Miller lets his heart beat out of his chest, his honesty humming alongside the bassline as he tries to bargain for one more glimpse at a friend. While other songs on Losin' depict Miller trying to stitch his grief into his life, “Lost Again” has a distinct air of distress, like an unexpected reminder of who you lost interrupting your day. Miller is raw in his anguish as he begs, “So excuse me for lookin’ like I lost my best friend.” The car imagery returns in crushing lines like, “Just tearin’ up in your muscle car / No one’s watching for my headlights now,” which makes his loneliness palpable. A couple lines later, Miller lays out, “And no Ford Mustang will drag you back to me / Who, yeah, who will dance at my next wedding?” simultaneously accepting loss while dreading imagining a life of joyful moments without a loved one.

The album ends with “Thunder Road,” a song that feels like the pressure that builds under your eyes when you’re on the verge of tears. But the emotion driving those tears changes. The opening lyric, “Singin’ Thunder Road karaoke to a disco ball that won’t spin,” devastated me, yet I crack a smile whenever I hear the start of the next verse: “In a cul-de-sac, with a potato gun / Decapitating dead end signs.” It’s a goofy reminder to let the good wash over you, not just the sadness. Like much of this album, this song roots itself in the present, weary of nostalgia and focusing purely on scenes of memories. “Thunder Road” is lyrically reminiscent of a scrapbook, tasking the music to match Miller’s sun-soaked hope. In the final moments, Lenderman's rhythm fades away, leaving Chelmis’ pedal steel and Baechtold’s keys to sing with Miller’s words and acoustic strumming. The album ends on that same bright bitterness it started on, but it’s different now: better, lighter, and freer with everything out in the open.

Haw Creek, as immortalized in these songs, doesn’t exist anymore, both in the artistic and literal sense. While the land was sold in the years prior, in September 2024, Hurricane Helene’s unprecedented storm surge flooded the mountainous region of North Carolina the neighborhood stood in and quite literally washed the entrance away. Back in his 2023 interview in Rat Bastards of Haw Creek, Miller said, “I think it’s our favorite place in the world,” but in a recent interview, after the landscape was left emotionally and physically unrecognizable, Miller said, “It feels haunted.” While its influence will live on, Losin' is effectively a bookend to the original Haw Creek sound. 

In Losin', Colin Miller memorialized a time and place that may not exist anymore but continues to live on in his words and twang. Losin' is not about getting over your grief; it’s about the opposite — living with it, seeing it in the sunrise and the sunset, weaving it into quilts, and smelling it in gasoline. Grief is in everything, like coffee, dentures, Pall Malls, muscle cars, and familiar tree lines, and since it’s so ubiquitous, that means loss happens over and over, again and again, every time a memory strikes. Accepting the circadian rhythm of grief is difficult but necessary. Things will never be the same; how could they? But that’s okay. 

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Caro Alt (she/her) is from New Orleans, Louisiana, and if she could be anyone in The Simpsons, she would be Milhouse.

Cloakroom – Last Leg of The Human Table | Album Review

Closed Casket Activities

It’s been three years and some change since the last Cloakroom album, Dissolution Wave, made its deep impact on the scene with the fascinating narrative of an asteroid miner’s life set to the backdrop of expansive fuzzed-out riffs, accompanied by desolate, crushing, and occasionally fissionful drumming. The dusty space epic’s successor, Last Leg of The Human Table, brings us back down to Earth with warm, grounding sonics and the tight, cloying squeeze of noise, all topped with lyrics that left me wondering: Is our number truly up?

‘Rollicking’ feels like a cheeky adjective for an album about just how bad everything feels. Yet when we work our way from “The Pilot” to “Ester Wind,” it's the word that lights a cigarette and asks if you’d like one. There’s a surprising amount of cordiality on Last Leg, an utter affability that is pretty comforting and can even make you forget how genuinely upsetting some of the lyricism can be. 

I’m listening to the album and scrolling, a fittingly wasteful activity, I know, but as I'm gorging on stimuli, the album's mystique unwraps a level. “The Lights Are On” thrums and undulates as I thumbwalk through videos of mass deportation news, an article about cops in North Carolina getting caught on film escorting neo-nazis to rallies, and another screenshot text wall gofundme post to bail out a friend of a friend or to help out a family in Gaza. The careful coat of feedback mirrors the numbness I feel as the entire world seems to be screaming out at me from my screen. 

Does it make you weak?
Does it take its toll?
The lights are on, but no one's home
Does it wear you thin?
Does it grind you down?
The lights are on, I don't know how

These words echo in my ears as the phone’s dull glow is swallowed by my darkening eyes. The track wafts in and out of soft, melodic chords before rearing up and stomping back down into thick and heavy guitar work that even J. Mascis would crease a grin at. 

Many a fellow reviewer has noted that there’s not much in the way of thorough questioning and answering on this record. They’re correct. Last Leg of the Human Table asks broad questions and rocks on its heels when you ask for an answer. However, this sort of gruff muddlement feels as natural a design as the tasteful harmonies and hooks found on the LP’s run. 

Last Leg of the Human Table has all the swing and sway of a rocking chair on a front porch with an all-too-clear view of the end of the world as we know it. The hum and buzz, softly padding careful fretwork, and rubber band wrist drumming all feel not too dissimilar from how a black hole breaks you down into whatever yet-to-be-named sub-sub measurement of the infinitesimally small we'll come up with, unknotting you like the slow, steady hands of an ever ancient elder being unspooling the yarn of some failed project. 

All the same, the delicate work is done with care and compassion, and this is what bleeds most through the album's attempted questioning of our state of affairs. No single answer can feel satisfying for all of this, but asking the questions is an ongoing need. It's how we battle complacency, it's how we challenge internal comforts and surrender, and though Cloakroom aren’t writing some grand war hymn for our present times, they are, however, doing what many of us should be doing: wondering out loud.

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Southern California born and raised, Elias can often be found at the local gig, be it screamo, emo, hardcore or whatever. Their time in the scene is patchwork but their dedication to it and the music that makes it has made up the last few years of their life. They love this shit with the whole of their heart and will talk your ear off about it if you let them. Screamo for fucking ever.

Love your friends. Die laughing.

Half A Decade of Speaking It Into Existence: An Interview with pulses.

On It Wasn’t Supposed To Be Like This, the Virginia-based post-hardcore act pulses. tackle the idea that we must make the most of difficult circumstances, that those hardships make us who we are and ultimately can lead to great things. I’ve never shied away from speaking about how pivotal pulses. were to my introduction to DIY, leading me to a music community that I’ve been able to foster through them. Over the past five years, I’ve been lucky enough to grow close to this band and celebrate their impact along with other fans, but around this time back in 2020, as an unforeseen pandemic was altering our lives forever, all I knew was a single called “Louisiana Purchase” and the album it was released on. 

To celebrate five years of Speak It Into Existence, I sat down with pulses. frontmen Matt Burridge and Caleb Taylor, drummer Kevin Taylor, and bassist David Crane to discuss the album's creation and what makes it so special to not only the band but also those who found them through it. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

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SWIM: How are you guys doing?

MATT: Solid. We practiced. David tracked some stuff. It's been cool.

CALEB: It's been a day.

KEVIN: [Laughs]

SWIM: Yeah, I worked earlier today, so I’m pretty fried.

Thank you for being here! I had this kind of epiphany earlier this week where I wanted to start doing these interviews, and I was like, “Well, pulses. is kind of where I started getting into my DIY interests and Speak It Into Existence (specifically), so it makes sense to go back and revisit the album.” 

Before we dove into the album discussion, I was curious what everyone had been listening to first.

KEVIN: It's funny. I feel like I'm not listening to anything. It's the weirdest time where I'll listen to stuff in really quick bursts, and then I won't listen to stuff for like three days. It's odd. 

SWIM: Yeah, I always have a weird complex like, “I’m not listening to enough music right now and definitely not enough new music,” so it’s nice to hear that other people are the exact same way. Nobody’s listening to new music constantly; it’s just whenever it happens.  

KEVIN: Yeah, Sleigh Bells had a record that came out that was good. Scowl’s record is pretty good. The new PinkPantheress song is really good. 

SWIM: [Heaven knows] was so fucking good, I’m excited for more from her!

KEVIN: Listening to the [Callous] Daoboys singles, they're all pretty good. The new Skrillex album was pretty good. 

MATT: That new Deafheaven is really good. I feel like every year and a half, when I'm having writer's block, I watch all the “making of  John Bellion" videos that he does, ‘cause he used to film the entire process of making a song and then edit it down to like ten minutes or whatever, and those get me feeling creative. His music is either terrible to me or really good. 

I discovered Model/Actriz today. I'm really late on that, but they're really good. It's like dance-punk, post-punk. The new singles sound like live band versions of deadmau5 songs. It's crazy. 

CALEB: Yeah, I've been lacking on newer stuff. I get overwhelmed pretty quickly with things, and lately, my time listening to music has been while I'm working or doing something else. So sometimes I'd rather give my focus on new music, like give actual focus on it and check it out. Especially if I'm working, I don't want to listen to new music to analyze it. I want to listen to something that makes me feel good, because I feel terrible while working. [Laughs]

Recently, I've been revisiting and re-listening to things I may have missed or previously listened to to gain new context. I listen to the first Foals record a lot. 

One I revisited that I haven't listened to in a while was Bad Rabbit's second album.

SWIM: They’re very good! They’re super underrated. 

CALEB: Absolutely. I love their first album a lot, and that stays in rotation. American Love and their EP, too. 

MATT: Relient K is one that I just saw pop up! One of my hottest pop-punk/emo takes is that Mmhmm is one of the best pop-punk records of all-time. 

SWIM: “Be My Escape” has one of the best pre-choruses in punk rock music. 

CALEB: Yeah. The other day, while I was working, I listened to four of their albums. I went in reverse order. I started with Forget and Not Slow Down. That one's a sleeper. I actually like that album a lot. 

MATT: I was going to say, you’re a Relient K oldhead. [Laughs]

David: I'm going back through The Acacia Strain discography. Slow Decay is honestly one of their best albums, and it's a pretty recent release. Some of their back catalog is really good, too. 

MATT: It's like beatdown, fucking super heavy.

David: Humanity's Last Breath is also really good. They just put out a new song. 

MATT: You’re the metal representation in our listening. [Laughs]

SWIM: Yeah, gotta keep things balanced. 

SWIM: So, somehow, Speak It Into Existence is turning five this week. 

David: That five years was fast as hell.

[All laugh]

SWIM: Time is a really fucked up vaccuum, especially since Covid. I think everybody who listened to that album when it came out is having a lot of feelings about it, but how are you guys feeling about that album turning five?

MATT: It’s weird. I feel like I don't listen to it, but I need to. I'll probably listen to it on the day or around the day, because I usually do that with each of our releases as they gain a year. I like parts of it more than others. I remember when we put out Speak Less, I was like, “I don't have a favorite of the two,” and then now I'm like, “Oh, I like Speak Less way more.” But I still like them both. Then there are a lot of people like you, that we've met on Twitter, who found us through [Speak It Into Existence] and have become really close with us off of that. So I hold it in a special place ‘cause it did things for us, but I don't listen to it much anymore, and we don't play a lot of it ‘cause it was super technical for all of us.

SWIM: Yeah, a lot of it is very shreddy. [Laughs]

MATT: Yeah, and trying to multitask doing that is hard, so we play the hits and that’s it. 

CALEB: It's funny, I don't remember a lot of it. I feel like I have pushed out so much of that time, because we were working on it, primarily, my senior year of college, and that was not a good year. [Laughs]

I still remember when we put it out; I had a lab assignment due the same day, and I was working on it up until like midnight. I was just like, “All right, fuck this. I'm just gonna take whatever grade, I don't feel like working on this anymore. Let me celebrate the album release.” I still passed that class, and that was the last thing I needed to graduate, so yay for me, but definitely a weird time. Obviously, I'm always gonna be incredibly proud of it. I like a lot of the songs for it. Like Matt was saying, I like where it got us. I feel like that was the thing that established us in a lot of ways. I feel like bouquet. established us in our local scene, and then it got out somewhat, but Speak It Into Existence is where things started to expand past the local scene, and we were really starting to do some things. Still proud of it.

MATT: Even with the pandemic and everything, I think that might have helped it, honestly, ‘cause it was like within a month and a half of it starting. 

CALEB: Yeah, nobody had shit to do.

MATT: Yeah, and nobody was dropping other than like a couple bands, but a lot of people were postponing their stuff, and we were like, “We've waited too long,” because that record took so long to make.

CALEB: “It's not like we have any marketing backing behind it or anything, so we can release whenever we want to.” [Laughs]

SWIM: Yeah, I remember around that time, before listening to “Louisiana Purchase” and this album, so much of my listening was just commercial music/non-DIY. It took my oldest brother and my friend Jack being like, “Yo, check out this single,” and that really was the start of it. I remember thinking, “Oh, these guys did this all by themselves. How do you do that? What is this process?” I recall that being the thing that stuck out for me. Hearing a song like “Louisiana Purchase” and just how professional it sounded to me – how polished – and my mind breaking a little. The fact that people can do that without being on a major label.

MATT: That's cool, because I feel like you and Will [Full Blown Meltdown] are like the two people that I know that are the most on top of DIY music now. So it's cool that we were kind of the start of it. 

SWIM: Was he one of those early adopters as well?

MATT: I knew [Will] before he was doing FBM, because Will was Sam's brother's friend from high school. So, I think we posted that we were in Frederick or something, and then he messaged them and said, “Yo, I'm literally in this hair salon with my wife and she's getting her hair cut, come by.” I met him and we literally just sat there and talked. We were writing Speak Less at the time, and I was just like, “Oh yeah, we're putting out some stuff soon that sounds like Orchid and Satia. Then we kind of bonded over that. Now, I always joke with Sam every time I interact with him, I'm just like, “It's so funny to me that I talk to him more than you do now, and you’ve known him since you were a child.” [Laughs]

SWIM: Will is definitely the DIY hype man. He’s the kind of guy you want talking about your stuff. [Laughs]

MATT: Yeah, he's all over it. But that's cool, ‘cause we recorded it right here. Literally, I was sitting in this exact spot with my laptop. 

CALEB: This was a guest bedroom at the time, too. So, there was a bed here.

MATT: We would finish at like three or four in the morning, [Caleb] would go upstairs ‘cause he still lived here at the time, and I would sleep on that bed that was in here. [Laughs]

SWIM: What’s it like having that connective tissue still to all of your recordings? Being in such a different place as a band, five years removed from that album, and doing it in the same space?

MATT: I don't think about it much, because it looks different in here now, you know what I mean? It's Kevin and Caleb’s house. I don't know if they think about it more that way, but it's a different room to me now. 

KEVIN: It's very odd. I don't really think about it much. Not that I live here right now, but we've been here for like, what, 20 years, Caleb?

CALEB: I think we moved here in 2002, yeah. 

SWIM: It’s been your folks’ home for that long.

KEVIN: Exactly. I guess it's just another piece of me growing up here. It doesn't register to me as a difference for the band. It's just like, “I used to have a twin-size bed and now I have a queen-size bed,” you know? You don't think about those changes, so I feel like it kind of stays the same.

SWIM: This is The pulses. Studio and it keeps evolving. 

KEVIN: We shot “Untitled” in here, from the bouquet. era. We shot parts of “Bold New Taste” in here. We'd done those live stream recordings, but for me, they're all like somehow in a different room each time, but also in the same space. Different pieces of the same puzzle. It's weird. 

CALEB: I think it grows with us. Funny enough, I was tracking drums for new Followship music, so that was the first time I was recording them here, and it was so funny, ‘cause they were somewhat geeking out. Like, “Oh shit, this is where y'all recorded the ‘I Drink Juice’ video! This is right here! Oh, this is where y'all did this!” And I'm like, “Yeah.” [Laughs] 

Again, I don't really think about it in that way, ‘cause this is just the basement I grew up in. I was telling [Followship] even, “This is my whole life, my whole childhood, everything was here in this basement,” you know? They walked in and were just like, “Oh, you got the Rock Band drums graveyard.” We had all the New Year's parties with kids on the block here. It's just grown with us, and now it's the studio.

MATT: It's every room down here, too. You even go into the bathroom and you're like, “Oh my God! This is the bathroom from ‘The Message Is Clear’ video!” [Laughs]

SWIM: It’s becoming a pulses. museum. 

CALEB: Honestly.

SWIM: I always mix up the timeline, because when I think of pulses., it’s obviously the current lineup with Matt in it, but what was the timeline with Matt joining and Speak It Into Existence coming out?  

MATT: I joined in 2018, so [pulses.] put out “The Appetizer” and “Jecht Shot” like three months after I joined. They had me go ahead and record a second guitar on “Jecht Shot.” Not for “The Appetizer,” but I'm on “Jecht Shot.” That's my first thing, but it's just guitar. Then we started working on the album and didn't put anything out, just played a lot of shows. I didn't do vocals on that record. The lineup had changed before the album came out. So I think that's why a lot of people get confused with it, ‘cause we put it out and it was like, “Okay, but this isn't me, but I'm gonna be doing it from now on.” Since then, it's just been the four of us doing everything.

CALEB: I remember we had a number of songs already written for the album when Matt joined. 

MATT: It was “Sometimes Y,” “Exist Warp Breaks,” “Mount Midoriyama.” “Olivia Wild” you had started. “Don't Say Anything, Just RT,” I think you had started.

“Graduation Day” [too]. 

KEVIN: That one's old. 

MATT: Yeah. I just added parts to all of those. Then we wrote “Plastiglomerate” and “Louisiana Purchase” first. Which is wild, ‘cause they ended up being the singles. The title track was gonna be for Speak Less, and then we were like, “This will be a good opener. We'll make it longer and fill it out.” Then we wrote “Good Vibes Only (Zuckerberg Watchin’)” because we needed a pop song. It was almost the whole thing they had the instrumentals at least started for, then we wrote a couple core ones together.

SWIM: You touched on it a little bit, but how do you think lockdown and Covid affected the album, how it was released, and people’s relationship to it?

MATT: I think people attached to it because they were just not doing anything, so that helped. I think that helped it spread a little bit, because, realistically, if it wasn't Covid, we would've played a bunch of local shows and it would've probably not had as strong of an initial connection with people.

KEVIN: Didn't [Dance Gavin Dance] have an album that came out later? 

CALEB: Yeah. That was the whole thing. [Laughs]

MATT: Later that month, I think. 

KEVIN: Yeah, ‘cause we were trying to beat it. We had to drop it before…

CALEB: Afterburner.

SWIM: Oh, god. 

KEVIN: Yeah, because if we dropped it after, no one was gonna care. So we rushed it to get the album out before them, and I honestly think that helped a lot.

SWIM: Do you regret not having a song in Spanish on Speak It Into Existence?

[All Laugh]

KEVIN: Honestly, I'm glad we don't for a number of reasons.

CALEB: If we did, we would actually have a native speaker on it.

MATT: If we did it now, we would get a feature that speaks Spanish. Andres or somebody who speaks Spanish. [Laughs]

SWIM: Yeah, you have no shortage of connections who could do that. 

MATT: Not trying to Google translate my way through a verse.

KEVIN: As we've always said, there's just such a tumultuous relationship with that fucking band and I do think the fact that we dropped it before [Afterburner] was helpful. I feel like people listened to [Speak It Into Existence] and had their moments with it. Then [Afterburner] came out and the fact that it was weaker for a lot of people, they were like, “Oh, well if you don't like that shit, listen to Speak It Into Existence!” Then people suggested us more, and it got around that way. 

MATT: People still liked that genre, so there was a fan base for it. Whether we were part of it or not. 

KEVIN: Yeah, there wasn't any animosity. 

MATT: Yeah, it wasn't as big of a deal then, but I still remember when we started getting reviews, one of the big ones was like, “Oh, ‘Exist Warp Brakes’ is like ‘Don't Tell Dave’ ‘cause it's like a funk thing!” And we were just like… stupid! [Laughs]

KEVIN: Yeah. “Dumb, but we’re just gonna let it rock,” because at the time, it wasn’t as annoying yet.

CALEB: I still remember back then, we were already trying to move off from it and were feeling that internally as the record was coming out. Especially because of how much time passed between us finishing it and when it came out, it was like, “I'm a different person now.” I think that album had the most time between us recording it and it actually coming out. That was the first album that we tracked ourselves. We started tracking it at [Matt’s] place. 

MATT: Yeah, at my old apartment in West Virginia. 

CALEB: I think we started with tracking guitars for “Louisiana Purchase” and “Exist Warp Brakes.” It was during that snowstorm, so it was like January 2019. And then we didn't finish tracking it all the way through until August?

MATT: We were almost done, but we were like, “We have to put out something,” so we dropped “Louisiana Purchase” in December. We were done, but I know we were waiting on two features that took a while. [Laughs] 

We finished around October, then, because it was before the tour.

CALEB: Well, the tour was in September.

MATT: Oh, I guess it was August. It’s been over five years now, I can't fucking remember. 

KEVIN: I wasn’t going to comment on any time thing, because I don't fucking remember. [Laughs]

MATT: I thought I remembered touching up things, but maybe I'm just thinking ‘cause we were writing Speak Less at the same time, and we were still doing that.

CALEB: I was still editing things, and I'm pretty sure we did one of those things where we got the master back for the record and then we put it out like two weeks later, which is something you shouldn't do, but we did it like twice. Three times, probably. I'm pretty sure we did that for bouquet. Especially ‘cause at that point it didn't matter. We were just a local band. I think we did it for Speak Less, too. Anyway, to go back to the original point. [Laughs] 

We were in a different headspace. We were already writing Speak Less, so by the time Speak It Into Existence came out, people were like, “Oh, y'all wanted to do this sound. It's like Swancore,” and I already started to move away from wanting to do that, by like 2018, 2019. But I'm not gonna get rid of songs, we still like those songs. I’m still happy with it. I don’t know, it's interesting. [Laughs]

SWIM: I think some people might be under the impression that when bands write albums it’s like, ‘Okay, we’re going to sit in a room, we’re going to bang out these eight to twelve songs, and it’s all written at the same time,’ and I think especially in DIY spaces and music creation in general, you guys are pulling from different places, seeing what works. So, you’re very different people for different songs, rather than like an entire album.    

MATT: Yeah. I mean a band with a label and a budget, it's like, ‘Okay, we're gonna take two months and go write and record this record.’ We can't do that. We get together once a week and write songs. Luckily for future things, it's been going very fast recently, which has been really cool. But yeah, Speak It Into Existence and Speak Less took such a long time ‘cause we were just chipping away at it. Then recording takes even longer, ‘cause you can't just take two weeks or a month and sit in the studio. 

CALEB: Even as an example: today, we were tracking a song for bass, and it's like, “Oh, we got X amount of songs we want to do,” and then this one song took like three or four hours to track. It's like, “Well, that's it for the day, we'll figure out another day we can get together next where people can take time off.” You're gonna spend eight hours a day, like a normal job, in the studio each day. It'll be like, “We'll come back to this tomorrow!” And it's like, “No, I'll see you in a week and a half. Maybe.” This is the first time we've seen David in like two months, ‘cause you know, life happens. 

SWIM: You gotta prioritize music over those fires, David. Priorities.

[All laugh]

MATT: No, but it's been cool now. I think we're in a groove right now, which is nice. It takes a long time and a lot of work to make an album, and I think you’re bound to be – by the time it's coming out – a little bit over it. Especially in a DIY band, because it takes so long.

CALEB: But then also when it comes out, and then people actually respond to it well, then it gets re-contextualized. It’s a weird thing. I saw this very recently again, where somebody was mad at a band for being like, “I don't like this anymore!” You can still like it, but they're a person too, even if they created it! 

I know going into the release, I was like, “I like this, but I'm changing as a person. This represents who I was a year ago, and I feel disconnected from it.” But then, when it came out, people started liking it, we started playing the songs live, and I was like, ‘Okay, now I have re-contextualized it all. I love this.’ Especially particular songs. I will always love playing “Louisiana Purchase.” I'll always love playing “Exist Warp Brakes.” So, all that hurt I had prior is gone now for that aspect of things.

SWIM: That makes a lot of sense. Any lasting thoughts on the album turning five? Anything you want to throw out there?

CALEB: I'm glad that we still exist five years later, you know? That's always something to be grateful for. Speak It Into Existence was named after that, in a way. We said we were gonna do a second record, so we're gonna hold ourselves to it and we're gonna make it happen.

It Wasn't Supposed To Be Like This is also, in a way, a statement of, “We're still existing, we're still creating music, and we're grateful to do that.” You can take the title in a positive or a negative way. We weren't supposed to start this band in 2015 and still be going 10 years later off of nothing, really. I'm grateful to still be at it and still be feeling even more inspired than ever before.

MATT: You got any plugs, Kevin? You're usually the plug man.

KEVIN: I don't really have a whole lot of plugs. In terms of Speak It Into Existence, it's still out on vinyl, still got CDs. I want to do another tape run, but money, you know. So, outside of that, we're working on new music. We're working on old new music and then we're working on new new music. So old, new music should come out sometime this year. New, new music should come out next year, most likely. 

CALEB: And then new versions of old music, in a live way, will come even sooner–

KEVIN: In the form of a live album that we did celebrating 10 years of a band with friends and shit. In the form of possibly a DVD, if I can figure that out.

MATT: Oh, I didn't even know you were gonna do that!

KEVIN: So, there's your scoop. [Laughs]

SWIM: Nice! Well, I got the exclusive one, thank you!

KEVIN: Always. Every interview has to have an exclusive drop.

That's about it. Got a couple of shows. They're fests, they're far apart.

MATT: We're spending all this time on new music. So, festivals, that’s what we got.

SWIM: Well, as a fan and someone who found you guys through Speak It Into Existence, thank you for that album. Love that you guys are still here and doing it. I appreciate y’all coming on for this first interview!

KEVIN: Absolutely, thanks for having us.

CALEB: It's fun to talk shit over a mic.

[All laugh]

SWIM: Love you guys, thank you!

---

Ciara Rhiannon (she/her) is a pathological music lover writing out of a nebulous location somewhere in the Pacific Northwest within close proximity of her two cats. She consistently appears on most socials as @rhiannon_comma, and you can read more of her musical musings over at rhiannoncomma.substack.com.