Tiberius – Troubadour | Album Review

Audio Antihero

During my sophomore year of college I recorded a breakup album. It was not very good. When I was writing it, I thought it was a raw—dare I say important—portrait of a self-loathing lover scorned. When I go back and listen to it now though, I find that it’s actually just mean and annoying, a dishonest collection of songs that feature little to no introspection. The main problem is that I ultimately just wanted the person I was writing about to hear the album and feel bad for me, a last-ditch effort to get them back. I was pretending to look at my heart while actually targeting theirs; it was a doomed pursuit from the start. 

When you try and fail at something, it gives you a greater appreciation for those who approach the same task and succeed. People who are able to paint their pain without bitterness coming through as the dominant force make me take note, because I know how hard that can be. This is the main thing that struck me when I first listened to Tiberius’ third album, Troubadour. Throughout the record, we hear about people in Brendan Wright’s life and how they made Wright feel, but the lens through which we see this is consistently pointed inwards. That’s not to say there’s no anger towards others or spiteful words on Troubadour—there’s definitely some of that—but when we do get those ugly feelings, they’re almost always tempered with self-reflection. 

Take, for example, the album’s fourth track “Tag,” where Wright sings: “Went to her apartment when she’s on a date / I’d rather hang with her than not at all / Lying on the lap of some dumb fuck that she doesn’t even like.” No argument from me, definitely anger there, both in the words and in Wright’s vocal affectation, but, this anger is almost immediately cut with the realization that “I just can’t let you know that I despise to be apart / I need to take this time to learn to be alone / And to really be alone I have to be alone.” The song gains a lot from this quick shift in viewpoint, which seeks the internal root of the emotion; it transforms what could be a simple “fuck you” into something more substantial. 

This all works especially well because the record’s path of reflection is not linear; we’ll get a track like “It Has to Be True,” where it feels like things are getting figured out, followed by “Moab,” where we once again find ourselves in despair. Too often, the road to self-actualization is portrayed as a one-way journey, but on this album, it’s presented much more accurately as a rollercoaster; ascendant acceptance that can be followed by a sudden, vindictive drop, only for us to rise again moments later. This is something that’s well encapsulated on “Sitting,” where Wright sings, “Am I starting to have fun? Am I starting to have hope? / Am I starting to be let down? Am I down again?”

There are so many different sounds and genres traversed throughout the record that it feels impossible to touch on them all in a short review. This range makes each song feel huge, with even the shorter tracks having distinct movements that stick with you. After I first played through the album, I thought that I had a few songs stuck in my head, but when I listened back, I found that what I’d been mentally replaying was actually just different parts of “Sag.” I love how this is done because you never get bored as you jump from moments that sound like Uncle Tupelo to moments that sound like DIIV to moments that sound like Modest Mouse, sometimes all within one song. There’s gazey post-hardcore, gut-wrenching emo outpourings, and wide-open indie country soundscapes. To seamlessly switch from one sound to another like this without ever feeling frenetic or scattered is truly impressive, and it all results in a great experience for the listener. 

Existential country rocker “Moab” is probably my favorite song on the record. I thought I might be tapped out on country-influenced alternative music, but I was wrong. Perhaps it’s the vocal inflection in the opening verse when Wright sings “plans her day while laying down for bed,” but something about the song conjures images of the country music I used to listen to as a kid in a way that modern alt-country rarely does. I also love the track’s more anthemic back half, which slows down and brings some indie influences to the table, sounding almost Band of Horses-esque. 

A sonic thread throughout Troubadour that I found to be particularly effective is the subtle use of non-core-to-the-band instruments to make certain moments really stand out. For example, at around 2:45 of “Tag,” bouncing piano chords come in out of nowhere to give things a groovy little boost; similarly, I loved this really reedy and dissonant sax that’s deployed about a third of the way through “Redwood,” giving the song some extra edge as it ramps up. These aren’t the biggest moments that will necessarily knock you over, but cumulatively, they add up and keep you engaged through multiple listens.   

I’d be remiss to talk about Troubadour without mentioning trees, which loom large over the journey the record takes us on. Where this most struck me was on “Sitting,” particularly the lines: “I need to leave again / Meander ‘round the trees / As if I’m looking for the sign / As my brother sings to me / What I'm feeling is alright.” As I listened to this, I thought back to Wim Wenders’ 2023 film, Perfect Days. When I saw the movie in theaters, they had a pre-show clip that featured Wenders and the film’s star, Koji Yakusho, discussing the concept of “komorebi,” a Japanese word that refers to the sunlight as it’s filtered through leaves and trees. This is core to the film, as Yakusho’s character is always able to escape and find joy by photographing the trees in the park where works. The main thing I took away from Perfect Days is that appreciation for the beauty of komorebi—or nature more broadly—is something that’s incredibly centering.

This sort of naturalism is woven throughout the record. In Wright’s own words, Troubadour was written during a period of time where the relationships in their life were changing significantly, likening that experience to ego death. For months, they “found solace in nature and the constant of the trees,” explaining that, for a period, “I felt utterly connected to the universe in a way that was completely outside my sense of self. I was everything all at once, and it was one of the most profound experiences I’ve ever had.”

As we see Wright’s journey through Troubadour and the way that nature and trees factor into it, I’m left feeling the same sense of power. That centering is key to everything. That’s why, by the time we get to the end of the roller coaster with “Barn,” we’re ultimately somewhere placid and peaceful, even if there is still some sadness along with it. It’s why we get reflection rather than just anger and why the album has such depth. It’s what separates those who can make a work like this—something truly reflective—from those stuck lashing out in attack mode. With that as the foundation, everything else clicks into place and we’re left with a really special record. These types of experiences are never linear, nor are their conclusions definite. In the case of Troubadour, the ending is satisfying, not because we’re at the end of a journey but because we feel like we’re finally on the right path. We’re left with reasons to keep pushing, and sometimes that’s all you need. 

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Josh Ejnes is a writer and musician living in Chicago. He has a blog about cassette tapes called Tape Study that you can find here, and he also makes music under the name Cutaway Car.

Stop Streaming, Start Listening

You know that James Baldwin quote that’s something along the lines of “Every writer has only one story to tell, and he has to find a way of telling it until the meaning becomes clearer and clearer”? Well, sometimes that’s how I feel with this blog, and this post might be my most concerted effort to articulate that yet. 

I’ve written critically about Spotify before: about how the streaming service has made music feel disposable, how they can yank your songs away at a moment’s notice, how they encourage streaming bloat and gluttonous album rollouts, how they’ve alienated the listening public from their own libraries and laid the groundwork for an algorithmically generated hellscape long before anyone realized it was happening. Combined, these articles add up to over 10k words against Spotify, and that’s just the stuff that I’ve written. 

Spotify made fake genres and fake musicians. They underpay artists and overpay bigots. They brought back payola and chased TikTok endless scrolling in a bid for our increasingly worsening attention spans. If quotes like Spotify saying that the company’s “only competitor is silence” didn’t tip you off, this is not an artful app designed by people who care about music. Rather, Spotify is an experience designed around collecting your data, funneling money upwards, and contributing to the “contentization” of music. Everything is designed to keep you in the app to track you for longer, facilitating surveillance creep in the process. There have been entire books written and podcasts recorded dedicated to covering how Spotify is actively ruining music, so all the hyperlinks shouldn’t be too surprising. 

As if there already wasn’t enough to criticize Spotify for, most recently, the company’s CEO, Daniel Ek, chipped in nearly 700 Million Euros toward an “AI defense company” called Helsing. Even though this isn’t the first time he’s reinforced that allegiance, this recent warmongering double-down has spurred a wave of discussion about the place Spotify holds in our lives and what we might be actively contributing toward, either with our $10 monthly subscription or with our time and attention. Bands like Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu, King Gizzard, and Hotline TNT have all removed their music from Spotify in direct protest to this news, sparking a long-overdue reckoning with the application that acts as the de facto hub for all things music. 

While these are relatively modest household names in the indie community (they’re no Neil Young or Joni Mitchell), these artists have acted swiftly and decisively, and one after the other, each making explicit statements about why they’re making this decision in their own words. “We don't want our music killing people. We don't want our success being tied to AI battle tech,” Deerhoof wrote. In an interview with Anthony Fantano, Jamie Steward of Xiu Xiu stated it plainly, saying that “bands lost the battle with streaming.”

In response, many people have been cancelling their Spotify subscriptions (met with a creepy "goodbye" playlist in a feeble plea to reel you in one last time), but hopping from one streaming company to another isn’t the entire solution. Swapping Spotify for Apple or Amazon on moral grounds is laughable—no ethical consumption and all that. Sure, cancelling your Spotify subscription sends a message, but I believe the bigger solution is to disentangle as much as you can. 

All the time, people ask me how I find new music, and the answer is never any one thing; it’s more to do with an underlying curiosity. It’s not just opening Spotify and clicking on whatever playlist the algorithm sputters out; it’s following bands and keeping tabs on their label. It involves digging through related artists and seeing which groups a band is touring with. It’s going to see the opening act or creeping through someone’s Bandcamp collection to discover other albums they've purchased. It’s following writers and small blogs (cough cough) to see what they recommend. In an era where AI threatens to water down and homogenize literally every aspect of life, flawed but earnest human creations and recommendations are going to win out every time.

When you approach music this way, with the idea that your new favorite band could be one click away, something beautiful happens. You’re no longer waiting for your favorite artist to drop another album; you’re making your own luck and digging until you find something that scratches an itch you didn’t even know you had. It’s music culture vs platform culture.

As with all technofascism, I believe that breaking out of the currently designed scroll cycle, logging off, and spending your attention elsewhere is an act of defiance. In that regard, having control over your own files is about as radical an act as a music fan can make in 2025. I currently have over 80k songs in my iTunes library. I say that not to boast, but to show that it’s possible to have a bunch of music you care for in one place. It’s rewarding and worthwhile and intimate and can even be a fun hobby. 

Go download some albums. Spend an afternoon burning all your old CDs. Redeem those codes that came on the little slips of paper in your vinyl. Go into Bandcamp and press “download” on everything in your library, even if it’s just to keep them in a folder somewhere on your desktop. What you might find is that that collection of music feels more representative of you and your taste than whatever Spotify is shoving into your face on the home screen. As you build this library out and listen to it, you might find you need Spotify less and less. 

There’s no escaping the fact that your money is going somewhere evil, so I think most of this boils down to intentional listening. It’s about asking yourself what you want and putting a record on, not letting Spotify tell you what it thinks you want. It’s about engaging with what you’re taking in, thinking about what you consume, and supporting what you enjoy. It’s about being informed, empowered, and making intentional decisions. 

Ultimately, the solution to so much of this is just a modicum more autonomy. The cool thing is, we can grant ourselves that.

Anamanaguchi – Anyway | Album Review

Polyvinyl Record Co.

The ground is firmly under your feet. Your gaze rises to greet an open street lined with trees and grass and apartment complexes that are knotted like corridors of a maze. The wind is warm and breezing past you as you trek one leg in front of the other. The sound of footfalls to the left and right let you know that your best friends in the whole world are right by your side. These are relationships forged across God-knows-how-many dreary hours of school, eyes aching in anticipation of the clock chiming the hour of freedom, releasing you into countless untold adventures through backyards, pools, and playgrounds throughout the summer months. A sense of wonder and excitement begins to bloom in your chest, and you can’t help but think, “I wonder what’s next?”

Whatever Anamanaguchi may have intended when they arrived at the American Football House to write their fourth full-length studio album, what they ultimately landed on was this: a collection of songs that feel as filled with emotion and childlike abandon as they do with air-guitar-inducing riffs, windows-down full-belt choruses, and an irresistible desire to drink in the setting sun. The music video for “Darcie” reads as a prime example of this. Shot in the world-famous Champagne, Urbana emo landmark, the playful fun of the track is paired with heartfelt lyrical recollections of a local legend. The video’s conceit sees the band reckoning with constant upgrades as their mics are replaced with popstar headsets and their instruments abruptly change size or are swapped for double-neck guitars. Throughout it all, a genuinely good hang is on full display.

Known as one of the preeminent bands in the chiptune genre, Anamanaguchi has been creating ultra-melodic 8-bit rock as far back as 2006. With a focus on instrumentals and a penchant for NES-style bleeps and bloops, it only made sense that the group would create the soundtrack for the Scott Pilgrim video game, contribute to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade-style beat ‘em up, and score their own high-concept experimental game. They’ve soundtracked podcasts, covered Nirvana, and collaborated with everyone from Hatsune Miku to Porter Robinson. It was only natural for the band to reach this point nearly two decades into their career and wonder “what’s next?” 

Turns out what’s next is Anway, a twelve-song collection billed as Anamanaguchi’s first “lyrically driven rock record.” Though it’s landing at the tail end of summer, the album bursts with the energy, wonder, and unadulterated sprawling joys of carefree summers’ past. Recorded by Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips, MGMT, Sleater-Kinney), the album’s embrace of vintage gear and straight-to-tape approach captures the scratchy incandescence of fireworks and sweating through your lightest clothes after playing for hours under an unset sun. 

This sensation is telegraphed clearly with the opening track “Sparkler,” a fuzzed-out rager which makes it clear that tapping shoegaze wunderkinds Ovlov open for them on tour was not some random decision. As pixels sparkle and guitars explode, it’s easy to imagine how well the song will translate to a packed, sweaty rock crowd. 

Later on, “Magnet” is a proper grungy alt-rock love song about a “dark romance that feels like it's gliding out of control in a blissful way,” with the band explaining, “We realized that this balance is a key part of the formula for Batman music.” Following that logic to its extreme, Anamanaguchi decided to turn this into a pitch to be in the next Batman movie, teaming up with Jared Raab of Nirvanna the Band the Show for a hilarious yet endearingly sweet homage to the lost art of the movie tie-in music video. Everything from Tim Burton’s 1989 classic to Nolan’s Batman and 2022’s Battinson are on the table as Anamanaguchi’s band members are spliced into pivotal scenes from the franchise’s various films, making for a marvelously edited music video. If this all sounds a bit confusing, the band has created this helpful chart to explain the various waves of Batrock.

While on first pass this graph reads as a funny instance of overcommitting to the bit, it’s actually a perfect example of the type of geeky dedication with which Anamanaguchi approaches their art. A studied band adept at richly texturing their music, the group display an omnivorous admiration for a multitude of rock genres throughout Anyway, accurately capturing the freeing, free-wheeling nature of jamming with your buds. 

“Rage (Kitchen Sink)” feels like it’s trying to capture the spiraling misery of everything while also offering a glimpse of hope towards the end. The gentle, plodding melody climbing up against the band’s classic chiptune scales is an absolute blast to witness. “Valley of Silence” has the type of gorgeous, melancholy groove you’d find on a deep cut by The Cure, complete with a long, winding instrumental introduction to set the mood. One track before that, the cascading pianos of “Sapphire” evoke flashes of Culture Club and soaring '90s arena rock as the lyrics recount a loose history of the band, showcasing appreciation for their roots and the tools that brought them to this point in their storied career.

There are rug pulls and genre pivots abound. The immediate urgency of “Fall Away” performed a bait and switch on me as the track’s middle section steps the pace back before ramping back into a huge surge of instruments, bits and bytes all swirling into a technicolor cascade before sliding into a fuzzy, prickly layer of feedback. One of my favorite tracks on the album, “Buckwild,” lies smack dab in the middle and is a Wild Hogs-referencing track that opts for the nerdy pleasure of scoring a sought-after DVD at a yard sale over a night out on the town. Even with each half-turn to different shades of rock music, everything fits together beautifully and still sounds unmistakably Anamanaguchi. The variety is both staggering and engaging, and not just because of where the band has come from. 

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You finally reach your destination. Friends and neighbors surround you in a semi-circle of chairs. You're handed a bowl of popcorn as your friends cradle candy and hot dogs, things that act as the perfect complement to the end of the day. Sodas, waters, and sparkling seltzers are handed out liberally. Somewhere off to the side, someone's father is grilling over a quick setup hibachi, and a hush falls over everyone as they tell you it’s about to start. Your eyes meet the first to fire into the sky. A lone trail of flame and stardust connects with a particular black spot where it was meant to go and explodes into a menagerie of color and sound. 

All the apprehension and twists and turns of the summer heat are beating upon your body till it feels like it’s cooking your bones. All the long walks and bike rides and time spent rollerblading have led to these moments where you get to stare into the night sky, surrounded by the people you care about. You're facing everything together, and you’re watching all the lights in the sky come up one after another. The immense and massive sound feels like it’s rattling your teeth. You feel every moment of the last few months – all the sticky days, the pool parties, the birthdays, the overeating, the trips to the mall, the walks off the beaten path into a hidden creek that you're sure no one else knows about. 

Anyway finds each of these moments and spreads them across its dozen tracks, giving you a long journey to walk, but not an unfamiliar one. When the four members of Anamanaguchi assembled in that infamous emo house, they rediscovered the one simple truth that, if you’re having fun, making music with your friends is the most natural thing in the world. Even as the band takes a conscious step away from the “pure” chiptune sound of their previous work, what remains is something just as true and just as representative of what it feels like to be a fan of music, movies, video games, and art. 

The one final truth that Anamanaguchi can offer to us with this album is that sometimes life is actually just really fun. Even in despair. Even in horror. Even as atrocities steal our breath and we experience a full-body chill for every autoplaying document of cruelty, we still have each other, we still have music, and we still have the hope of something better. 

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Southern California-born and raised, Elias can often be found at the local gig, be it screamo, emo, hardcore, or online @listentohyakkei, begging people to listen to theMANS Summer 2007 demo. 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.

Hater’s Delight – 2025 Edition

It’s hard to look around lately and think ‘You know what the world could use more of? hate.’ Of course there’s an abundance of hatred, animosity, division, and destruction right now. I’d argue it’s our number one export. 

Every morning I wake up with a pit in my stomach, scrambling for meaning and stability as I take in a torrent of crushing news alerts, outright rejections, and full-scale desperation. It all feels uniquely bad, and the idea of adding more negativity on top of that doesn’t feel like a way out. 

What does feel like a way out is leaning on each other. Finding strength in those around us who feel the same way and raising our voices together in displeasure. As much as I am a lover and an enjoyer and an optimist, it’s hard to deny the deep-down primal satisfaction of being in the presence of people who feel the same way about the same things and venting together. It’s not a solution to every problem, but damn it feels good to let it out. 

We’re going to zoom into the same corner of the world that we always operate in, which is to say we’re going to take a break from recommending music we like and think you should listen to in order to focus our attention on parts of this ecosystem that have rotted beyond repair. Just as Mood Machine exposed the evils of Spotify (now fully out in the open), this all feels symptomatic of larger issues. We may only be talking about one thing that might seem insignificant on the surface, but dig deep enough and you’ll find it’s tied to something deeper. Join us as we uproot the evil together and voice our unhappiness with The Current Arrangement. Hopefully whatever’s on the other side looks better than this.

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The Genericization of Metalcore or: When Genre Labels Break Down 

I hate genres. I hate the way that, as culture shifts and evolves, genres fail to recognize change until it's too late. I hate the endless gatekeeping that comes with a genre reaching new audiences and thus redefining itself. So, I plead: just be normal.

Metalcore, originating as a style that blends extreme metal and hardcore punk, has evolved from being a niche genre to a commercial behemoth that’s reached the general public, netting radio hits, Grammys, and sold-out arenas. For a brief crash course, I recommend listening to Converge’s “Effigy,” a grindy, guitar-forward track full of distorted screaming and flying instrumental parts. It’s heavy on the hardcore drumming and metal riffs, blending the two effortlessly for a perfect example of “classic metalcore.”

For something completely different, queue up Sleep Token’s “Caramel,” a song that many would class as “post-metalcore” or “Octanecore.” If you're listening to this one and thinking, ‘this doesn't sound like the other example at all,’ you’d be right. This is the shape much of metalcore has taken in the 2020s – trading riffs and brutality for commercially viable melodies, synth beds, and pop song structures with the occasional breakdown thrown in to remind audiences that they still want the metalcore label.

These songs clearly don't belong in the same genre, musically or culturally. This leads to old-school metalcore fans feeling upset that their spaces are being invaded by bands that don't resemble the genre they love, while new fans are upset because they aren’t being allowed inside the tent.

The gatekeeping is what really grates on me. Open up and allow new things inside. Perhaps you'll appreciate having variety, new friends, and a greater community that can raise all ships. We simply want to share in the fun while being introduced to music that expands our palates. Instead of closing the gate behind you, show someone new Better Lovers and invite them in. That’s what I'm going to do.

– Noëlle Midnight

Stop teasing me like I’m a child

I can not tell you how excited I was when Gouge Away returned in May 2023 with “Idealized,” five years after their last album, Burnt Sugar. I can not tell you how annoying it was to wait until JANUARY 2024 for their third record, Deep Sage, to be announced and see “Idealized” on the tracklist. So many bands are utilizing a strategy like this: dropping one single and pretending it is a loosie, then a month or two later announcing their next record, including said prior single. Jeff Rosenstock did it with “Liked U Better” and Hellmode, Mannequin Pussy did it with the title track of I Got Heaven, and I’m sure Courtney Barnett is doing it now with whatever album “Stay In Your Lane” will be on. It’s like we’re pretending Santa exists: ‘Oh we got a single, I wonder what this is related to, teehee. 

All of this does immediately go away once the album is out. No one but nerds like me will remember when a random single dropped; the context of the album will outweigh this complaint in the FOREVER after release… But why do we have to wait that long for the context? 

Be a grown-up. Announce your fucking album. Or give me a B-side as a little treat.

– Lillian Weber

Not Everyone Needs A Country Album 

The resounding opinion of your favorite local bar band goes something like this: “I love country music, but only the real stuff. Waylon, Willie, and Johnny. Not any of that bro country or stadium country.” Okay, I understand the sentiment that Ticketmaster country or coworker country doesn’t feel as genuine as the genre’s flagship men and women of the ‘60s and ‘70s, but I have no reason to deny myself a few actually great songs by Brad Paisley or Blake Shelton, Kelsea Ballerini, or Maren Morris. What I do feel isn’t genuine is every mega pop star getting their piece of the country radio pie. Beyoncé, Post Malone, Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, reportedly Lana Del Rey, and a slew of other already-hitmakers have been crossing over to cowboy hat territory since the once-primarily Middle American sound started bleeding out of every grocery store speaker across the nation. I actually commend Taylor Swift for staying in a traditional pop lane in her stratospheric rise, as opposed to reverting back to her original style, although it’s possible that streak may end soon.

Five years ago, Halsey scored one of her biggest career hits with “You Should Be Sad,” an indirectly country-influenced emo-pop track that had a heavy western saloon theme in its music video and Saturday Night Live performance, both of which may be in the top five all-time clips of a singer looking head-spinningly stunning on camera. I think, secretly, this was the genesis of the POP pop country boom of the 2020s, just like Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games” music video and infamous SNL clip was the secret genesis of the moody, sad girl pop star streak of Billie Eilish, Clairo, and, well, Halsey. I love country music in most of its forms, but there’s definitely enough of it out there, and I have no use for a saturated sound from new millionaire adopters.

– Logan Archer Mounts

Take a Breath

This is going to sound fucking insane to say as a guy who runs a music blog where we often post reviews on the day of an album’s release, but I think people need to chill out on the sweeping declarations. This applies to everything from the hyperbolic Geese claims to the outright dismissal of anything that doesn’t immediately “hit” or cement itself as part of the zeitgeist. 

Some of my favorite albums this year have been comforting and slow-simmering records that have grown on me gradually over time and with repeated listens. On first brush, these albums can appear reserved or down-the-middle, but that kind of dismissal is not one of a music fan, merely someone trying to have a take for attention, engagement, and affirmation. 

By rushing to these types of claims, you’re closing any sort of ongoing relationship with the art. One of my favorite things about music (and one of its most mystical aspects) is the imperceptible way a band, album, or song can infiltrate your existence and morph over time, growing in importance or association as it reflects off different things in your life. Having a knee-jerk reaction to the popular thing forces you into this game of extremes, potentially shutting yourself off from a more rich and complex experience. I suppose I’m telling this to myself, too. 

Part of me understands in a world that’s ever-accelerating, where tens of thousands of artists (both real and fake) upload songs every day. The desire to overreact is appealing, to break through if nothing else. Even when this very site publishes a review of an album on the day that it releases, there’s an implicit understanding that the writer has spent time with this record digesting the music, is recommending it for some reason or another, but is ultimately presenting it as an option for you to take off into your own life so you can formulate your own unique connection to it. To me, that makes way more sense as a way to approach art, not immediately exalting something as the best thing ever or brushing a release off as mid after a cursory listen. Give yourself time. Go back and revisit an album you forgot about. Spend time with a record and develop an understanding of it through an ongoing relationship between yourself and the music. I promise it’s much more rewarding than rushing to be the first one to make a bold claim. 

– Taylor Grimes

Don’t Even Think About Changing That Album Cover

Back in my day, you only got one album cover, and that was it. It was unthinkable to even suggest a different one, maybe with the exception of a cool deluxe version for the superfans. But something bad shifted this year.

I have identified three categories of album cover changes: the Overly Online, the Re-Do, and the Variants. The Overly Online album cover change is mostly an Internet phenomenon, a product of a music culture dominated by streaming; a prime example is Charli xcx BRAT-ifying her other albums for like a year. The Re-Do is when an artist totally changes their cover. This is pretty rare, but Lucy Dacus did it earlier this year for Forever is a Feeling. I agree with her that the new one looks better than the original, but no takesies backsies. “because… I want to and I can!” has to be the dorkiest thing any artist has posted all year, and I am a Lucy fan! The Variants is obviously whatever Taylor Swift is doing — multiple official covers for one album. She’s been doing this for a while, but her latest album cycle was the most overwhelming. Sabrina Carpenter also opted for Variants while courting controversy over the original Man’s Best Friend cover. If you’re going to be controversial, at least stick with it. Don’t release like three other regular versions, I thought this meant something to you. 

I just think it's such a pathetic thing to do. Switching a cover makes me think that you’re not confident in your album at a minimum or insecure about your art at a maximum. We are trapped in a world that demands content, but you do not have to cave to the mob with more covers! We are stuck with streaming for the foreseeable future, but you don’t have to change a cover just because the website has a setting that lets you! Everything is fleeting, stand by that damn cover and for the love of God, do not edit your songs!!!!!!

– Caro Alt

The Dichotomy is Crazy

Every time I visit my corner of the internet sphere, I experience the fleeting hope that I won’t come across another mediocre Punk-Goes-Pop-style cover on my Explore or fyp page. And without exception, that hope is immediately crushed as a video of yet another alternative man in Carhartts and a condom beanie asks the camera, “What if [insert any pop song here] was pop-punk?” I groan and throw my phone across the room as I’m blinded by rage. These all sound the same. Can’t any of you people come up with an original idea that isn’t ‘Pop Song Becomes Pop-Punk Song’? The obvious perpetrators of this trend need to get back in the studio and write their own music. I am begging them to look inward and come up with a chord progression of their own. Girls aren’t going to think you’re complex because you listen to Sabrina Carpenter. “Manchild” was never intended to be pop-punk. Stop trying to make fetch happen. It’s not going to happen.

– Britta Joseph

Colored Contacts 

I haven’t seen the Bruce Springsteen movie, and I won’t, because Bruce Springsteen has brown eyes, and they couldn’t trouble themselves to cast someone with brown eyes. I refuse to engage with colored contacts on any level.

To anyone involved in the choosing of colored contacts in any capacity, ever: You think we can’t tell they’re contacts? We’re not stupid!!!!!!!  

– Katie Hayes

Blowing up and acting like you don’t know your old albums 

I was very excited to see that one of the best bands in Minnesota was finally gearing up to release a second record. Gully Boys, the Twin Cities quartet-via-trio, has held a steady and special place in the heart of the local scene since they proudly declared their existence with 2018’s LP, Not So Brave. Singles, tours, and two stellar EPs came and went, until the early 2025 announcement of Gully Boys, the group’s… debut??

At some point, every digital version of Not So Brave was affixed with a new, undermining addendum: (Demos). This isn't the first example of a band seemingly trying to hide their early music by abandoning it to a fate of digital flotsamhood. To name a couple more examples, both 2025 Indie Rock Discourse Champs™ Geese and Wednesday have disowned their debuts. Rechristening one’s first major release, recorded at arguably MN’s most famous studio, as just a bunch of demos is an interesting attempt to have your cake and juggle it too—maximizing the promotional synergy of a faux-first LP without completely deleting the past.

I would chalk most of it up to the need for narrative. It’s not the Boys’ fault that parasocial attachment and relentless engagement are the only non-freak-accident ways to grasp at success. The new album, technically GB’s second self-titled release, is excellent. The quartet finally feels like a quartet. Every hook gleams with grungy radiance. Despite or maybe because of it, Gully Boys doesn’t sound like a debut. The years of work—getting in the van, community organizing at home, writing and recording — are blisteringly apparent. Especially after covering the band for years, the most satisfying aspect of Gully Boys is the improvement, the sharpening, the palpable joy of ever-deepening collaboration. Rewriting your discographical history via misdirection only masks how hard you worked to get here.

– aly eleanor

Streaming’s Steroid Era 

Welp, it appears we’ve officially entered the “steroid era” of album sales. In Young Thug’s leaked jailhouse tapes, the Atlanta rapper embraced the role of neighborhood gossip, spilling piping hot tea on everyone from Outkast to Drake and even Kendrick Lamar. Between the prison chatter, something stood out to me like a sore thumb on a hand model. Young Thug admitted to spending $50K on fake streams for Gunna, an artist on his label at the time, to debut at #1 over The Weeknd’s Dawn FM. What happened to the game I love? Next to Adam Silver’s insistent greed that is ruining basketball, this is the next biggest scandal in my world.

If an artist like Young Thug can brazenly go about botting streams for one of his artists, what’s stopping literally any other record label, especially the large ones, from doing that very same thing? I don’t know what or who to believe anymore when news comes across my desk about an artist selling an extraordinary number of records. At least during the “steroid era” in baseball, we got to see dingers being pimped out over 500-plus feet. This “steroid era” is just fake numbers going up higher than other fake numbers, and that feels cheap, slimy, and uncompelling to say the least.

– David Williams

Production Should Suck More

More music needs to have shittier production. Crisp, pristine production used to make sense for radio-oriented music: artists wanted their work to be as clear and perfect-sounding as possible in order to appeal to as many listeners as possible. In the clutches of the streaming era, there needs to be more interesting choices than making everything sound like a polished plastic water cup at Denny’s. Even music in the DIY space has taken on a timbre that sounds too nice for a freak like me—someone who wants to listen to music with some heckin’ character. Steve Albini was onto something in his attempts to capture sounds exactly how they are instead of just trying to polish an artifact. The former is a photograph, while the latter sits unappreciated on a shelf. If a production too polished flies too close to a generic sun, it burns up in its atmosphere. I would rather freeze in the dark shadow of an imperfect moon.  

– Joe Wasserman

Down with the Bits

I’m so tired of the gimmicks and the skits. The Sallys, the Junos, the Apple Girls, the Johannas, and whatever improv from hell Sombr is doing making teenage girls call their fellow teenage exes mid-concert in what logically can only be an effort to eat up time. Addison Rae pulls audience members onstage to scream with her during the “Von dutch” remix. PinkPantheress plucks a boy from the crowd each night to be her “Romeo.” They’re fan service at best and Hail Marys to appease the algorithm at worst, all born out of the hope that one more viral Pop Crave clip will keep the tour relevant.

It’s different from Justin Bieber’s fanfic-worthy “One Less Lonely Girl” schtick, or Janet Jackson “making miscellaneous uncs shoot poison on stage” in the early aughts. It’s also different from Lady Gaga getting the kid in the orange shirt on stage for the “Schieße” dance break at the Born This Way Ball. The former two, Jackson especially, were way before clips on Twitter had an actual impact on public discourse, let alone ticket sales. Bieber was leaning into his teen heartthrob, while Gaga’s was a serendipitous moment of recognition for one special longtime Little Monster, a shooting star in the greater Monster canon. 

All I ask is that everyone start to exercise a little more restraint. Lean into the element of surprise, uncertainty, and possibility. How many mid-40s actresses need to pretend they know the words to that Role Model song before we can all admit we’ve never heard it before? Wasn’t it painful enough when it was The Dare??? How many more sex positions are we going to make Sabrina Carpenter think of???? I’m tired.

– Cassidy Sollazzo

Notes App =/= Promotion

Apparently Instagram has started pushing anything Notes app-related higher in the algorithm, which has cascaded into artists, bands, celebrities, and anyone with something to say (or, more than likely, a lack thereof) utilizing the app to try to get in front of people. Your notes app is for your grocery lists, not for your apologies, announcements, or aggrandizements. Unless you’ve actually got something to say, you don’t have to push that stupid Calibri-whatever font onto your followers. It feels almost like a form of mockery. It’s a strange and truly terminally online type of thing to feel any sort of way about. We know you didn’t rob the Louvre, you don’t have to post about your whereabouts through that stupid app to get your dopamine fix. Go type in a Word document!

– Samuel Leon

Geese are Making Me Feel Old 

It’s not about Geese, it’s about me. I really enjoy the new Geese album, Getting Killed. It's so good! We all know this, but throughout the hyped rollout and far-flung claims upon the album’s release, I felt myself feeling weird about it. I couldn’t figure out why, and that really bothered me. Then, I saw footage from their free show in Brooklyn, and it all became clear. It wasn’t that I couldn’t be there in Brooklyn for the show; it was because seeing all of those kids together celebrating what seems to be “the band” of their generation helped me to understand that I’ve aged. I’m not ancient, I’m in my early thirties, but this is the first time I’ve had to grapple with the fact that I’m no longer a part of “the youth,” and that makes me feel weird and uncertain. I feel like I’ve transitioned from being an active participant to more of a witness. I can go to a Geese show, but it would be in poor taste for me to weasel my way into a space up front because that’s for the kids. This is their moment.

– Connor Fitzpatrick

ISO: Better Band Names, Better Bands 

Every day I get emails (I could just end the entry there tbh) about bands with the most uninspired, nothingburger-no-cheese names ever. All love to Shower Curtain and Computer and Guitar, but your names do not live up to the music they’re representing. All love to Wednesday, whose frontwoman Karly Hartzman has publicly rejoiced the ungoogleability of her band’s name, especially after the success of Netflix’s Addams Family spinoff of the same name, and one throwaway bit in another Netflix show in which Wednesday was literally the name of a band that doesn’t exist. 

The rule of thumb is that if your band is good enough and/or the bit is funny enough, you can have a generic-ass SEO-unfriendly name (the search results for “Geese Getting Killed” used to be much more violent, even though now what comes up is sometimes related to having a bomb in your car). But as for the rest of you, don’t come into MY humble inbox telling me I just HAVE to listen to the sprawling and ethereal new shoegaze record from a Philly band called “Couch.” Yes. I just made that shit up because it’s easy to come up with a bullshit one-word band name when you spend exactly two seconds thinking of a band name. Couch, the band does not exist, or maybe they do, either way, I have no fucking way of knowing because googling “Couch band” is probably not gonna yield any worthwhile results. Besides, how sprawling and ethereal can a band called Couch even be? 

My other gripe is that no one knows how to do an album rollout anymore. If you release eight singles ahead of an eleven-song album, I hope your next tour is an endless hurricane of tomatoes. 

– Grace Robins-Somerville

The Timeline-Altering Shoegaze of Total Wife

Photo by Sean Booz

Shopping for vintage clothes is a hobby that I treat more like a sport. Whenever I find myself researching the best places to find garments of the past, I feel like a star quarterback studying game tape. It’s both about the thrill of the hunt and that feeling of discovering a diamond in the rough that’s been repeatedly passed over by onlookers who didn’t realize what they were missing.

Today, shoegaze bands are a lot like going vintage shopping. There are so many different iterations and variations of homogeneous items from the past, but by being patient and dedicated, you will come across that timeless piece if you know exactly where to look. Insert the band Total Wife.

The Nashville experimental shoegaze duo is centered around the creative partnership between Luna Kupper and Ash Richter, though when they play live, their ranks expand to include a bassist, a second guitarist, and a drummer. The group is signed to Julia’s War Recordings, the Philadelphia-based record label founded by Doug Dulgarian of They Are Gutting a Body of Water, which is pushing the genre forward with some of the most exciting music in the underground from Her New Knife, Joyer, Bedridden, and now Total Wife. What makes Total Wife an unmistakable hit is their fearlessness. Both Kupper and Richter create art that feels like it could only have come from them and them alone. Their new record, come back down, has a DIY aesthetic both musically and visually that feels fresh, exciting, and unique to everything else that’s out there today.

Total Wife craft songs that would not only fit in on the radio in 1991, but also feel future-proofed for 3001.  Let’s start at that first extreme with tracks like “peaches” and “second spring,” which are good enough to make any My Bloody Valentine devotee blush with excitement. It’s a wet dream for any fans of that style of music; both Kupper and Richter are true students of the game, as evidenced by the way they’re able to slather on countless waves of distorted guitar tones that mend and mold depending on the mood of each song. There’s a sharpness and respect to their craft in how they are able to achieve such a specific sound while also molding their guitar tones into their own entity. It’s an impressive feat considering a shit ton (for the record, I consider a “shit ton” to be the unofficial highest measure of the metric system) of bands that are currently trying to achieve the same sound.

Elsewhere on the same record, we get a taste of what I imagine music will sound like eighty years from now. Songs like “ofersi3” and “internetsupermagazine” are sharp left turns into a combination of breakbeats, hyperpop, and hard techno that inspire Jersey Shore-levels of fist pumping where the speed gets turned up to infinity. The decision to veer into this type of rapid-fire sub-genre expedition feels so fresh, vital, and needed in today’s shoegaze landscape. The result is something I imagine people might listen to while flying to work on their jetpack.

I love it when bands try to test the limits of what musical lengths they can achieve. Total Wife’s reverence for the past while creating music that feels so future-forward makes them one of the most exciting projects I have heard all year. The most exciting part is that the music on come back down has constructed an endless number of doors, each offering different possibilities of where the band could take their sonic excursions next.

I got to chat with Total Wife over Zoom, where we talked about Halloween costumes, first-ever concert experiences, and a sado-masochistic moment on stage in Pittsburgh that potentially left a fan lost in another dimension.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length

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SWIM: You just finished touring for your latest record. How did it go? 

LUNA: Yeah, it was really fun! All the shows were fun, we love our friends, and there were some really late drives this time, but we made it out. We were doing a lot of late-night driving. 

SWIM: Do you have any fun playlists to keep you going when you’re driving at night?

ASH: It’s up to the driver. Whoever’s driving gets to choose.

LUNA: It gets a little manic at times. I feel like it’ll get into nightcore remixes and shit to keep us wired. 

SWIM: I read a lot of Stephen King, so whenever I hear the word “manic,” I’m instantly brought back to his work for whatever reason, which leads me to my next question: Are you all excited for Halloween this year?

LUNA: Yeah! We usually have some kind of Halloween show plans, but we don’t this time. There’s one like a couple of days after, but yeah, we have to figure it out. We were The Matrix last year, and that was great. 

SWIM: Was anyone Neo or Trinity? 

LUNA: We were more vague characters within the Matrix universe. Our own Matrix characters. 

SWIM: Do you guys remember your first Halloween costume? 

ASH: The first one that I remember was when I did The Wizard of Oz with my family. I was the Scarecrow.

LUNA: I was a pile of leaves. That’s like my first memory. Being a pile of leaves, just a suit with a bunch of leaves attached to me. [laughs]

SWIM: What was your first-ever concert memory?

ASH: I saw Van Halen in 2007 with my dad for my birthday. 

LUNA: My first show was in 2012, and I saw Connor Oberst at Carnegie Hall, which is a crazy first.

SWIM: Both of you have crazy fun first shows. Do you remember the first show you guys saw together? 

ASH: That’s a good question. I feel like it was the Flaming Lips. We’ve known each other for a really long time. But yeah, they were on tour with Tame Impala in 2013, I think, and The Flaming Lips were opening, so that was cool. 

Photo by Sean Booz

SWIM: I really love the guitar textures on come back down, they sound so lush and beautiful. Is that a style you guys developed over time, or is there a particular era of music that you were influenced by to achieve that type of sound? 

LUNA: We’ve always made dense, layered stuff, usually with guitars and synths. The guitar just became more natural and sounded more organic. Just adding more and more guitar layer textures until it was only that. I think it comes from listening to a lot of nineties music and early 2000s stuff over time. 

SWIM: I get a little My Bloody Valentine type of vibes, Loveless, which is my type of stuff. It was done so expertly, in my opinion.

I was watching an interview with Pete Davidson, and he was talking about how Adam Sandler is seven years ahead of everyone in fashion, and I thought it was really funny yet accurate. So, to bring it back to you both, I was listening to “ofersi3,” which sounds like it’s a hundred years ahead of where everyone else is right now. When I imagine what people in the year 3000 will be listening to, it’s exactly that. How did you come up with that song? 

LUNA: [Laughs] Thank you. The whole first half is just a couple classic breaks that I distorted to create different notes. It’s not any crazy processing other than chopping audio files super tiny to make them tonal. Over time in the song, each beat gets fragmented further and further until they’re tonal and then end up creating different sounds. Those sounds then get chopped up for the second half and mixed in with some of the vocal samples taken from an old Elliot Smith cover that we never finished.

SWIM: Was this a time-consuming process to create, or did it come fairly quickly to you? 

LUNA: It was pretty fast. It kind of had to happen all at once because of this one unfolding thought, and I felt like I had to see where it went in that moment or else it wouldn’t be true to itself.

SWIM: Both of your styles are so unique. Did that develop over time? Were you always outgoing and willing to express yourself, or did it mature over time?

ASH: I think it was always pretty unique. When we were younger, we were just trying really hard to be weird at the cost of something listenable.

I think being daring and bold has kind of always been in our repertoire of songwriting. 

LUNA: Yeah, but it feels like recently, with this album, and maybe for a couple of years, it felt like enough time had passed that we’ve been doing this, so as long as we stay true to ourselves, whatever we do would sound different. Also, not trying to sound like anyone else. For a while, you’re just inspired by other musicians and trying to learn how to sound like your favorite bands until you have your own mix of whatever you’re trying to do.

SWIM: Did it take a while for you to find your own voice, or was it a quick process?

ASH: I think we always were doing something that was our own voice, but our influences were just so solidly there. I felt like we had to learn how to write songs first before we could sound like ourselves. We’ve been focusing more on the songwriting and structure, then adding all the personality to something that’s already true to classic songwriting. 

SWIM: When you’re on stage, do you feel you’re able to get your personality across to the fans while performing? Do you feel you’re able to be your true, unfiltered self up there, or does it help to get in the mindset of a different character, similar to an actor?

LUNA: I’m curious to see what your response is going to be. [laughing while talking to Ash]

ASH: I try to lock into the songs themselves in my performance and really think about what I’m saying, ‘cause the majority of what I do on stage is just singing. Then I have like a few samples I play as well, which are leads.

So, to give my best performance, I usually focus really hard on how I felt when I wrote the words to the songs and try to embody the truest version of that me. 

LUNA: I had to learn how to be fully comfortable and myself on stage, ‘cause at first, I was pretty nervous about that stuff. We’ve been recording in a studio for so long, so I had to be the calmest version of myself, which at first was impossible, but I figured it out. So yeah, I feel comfortable with it.

SWIM: I have to ask about a recent show in Pittsburgh where you played an over twenty-minute extended noise jam at the end of the song “make it last.” I read an article Eli Enis wrote, which, I have to quote him here, saying that this instance “felt like a sado-masochistic ritual” and potentially left a 19-year-old man named Carl in another dimension after what he had just witnessed. Can you please describe whether this usually happens during your shows, or was this a one-off kind of thing?

LUNA: Yeah, we always do that. [laughs]

ASH: It’s not necessarily supposed to be sado-masochistic. [laughs]

LUNA: It’s funny to see everyone’s different reaction to that. It’s a thing that happens, and the audience gets to experience it however they want. 

ASH: The truth is that we’ve done it in so many different ways, and everybody has a completely different reaction to it. We’ve done it differently in different places, and sometimes it feels like that, I guess.

LUNA: It’s interesting ‘cause people will, I find it either very aggressive or very soothing, which, I think, we’re trying to go for soothing. It’s something I want to exist only in the time it exists, so it’s hard to talk about, but, yeah, it’s definitely supposed to create a oneness with everyone there. I hope it is meditative for some people, you know? 

SWIM: Do you have a favorite part of touring? 

ASH: Honestly, getting to perform every night is my favorite part. Whenever we have a night off, I’m relieved in part, but also a little bummed. I really enjoy the experience where we’re basically just playing all these local bills with people who are active in their own scene. That is really cool to see how other scenes function because we’re so used to Nashville at this point. Yeah, it’s cool to be inspired by the different ways every scene uplifts itself and try to bring that home. 

SWIM: Do you guys like to explore the cities you visit on off days? 

ASH: Yeah. Sean, who plays drums in Total Wife, he’ll usually look up something on Atlas Obscura on an off day, and we’ll go to a cool cemetery or something.

LUNA: It’ll just show you oddities in whatever city you’re in. Just like weird, strange things that you can usually find for free, stuff that you wouldn’t find on Google or Apple Maps if you typed in ‘local attractions.’ 

I obviously love the music part of tour, but didn’t realize that touring so much meant that you’re just traveling all the time, which is really good for my brain in a way that I didn’t expect. The way it removes you from the cycle of your everyday life puts you outside of your head for a second, and then you can come back into it. It really does something crazy to my brain that I need. The road can definitely be soothing for different people, like just to travel and whatnot.

SWIM: You both have created a really distinct visual aesthetic —from the album cover art to the music videos —is that a collaborative effort between you two? 

ASH: I feel like we just have been making a lot of stuff for many years. For example, need-based flyers for shows. Art for promotion and stuff like that. When I was younger, I kind of overthought making art, and I thought if I’m not some classically trained artist, then what’s the point of making anything? But basically, I started using collage when I couldn’t draw what I wanted. I just had all these conceptual ideas and collages that really lend themselves well—combining concepts and just mashing up imagery together. 

A lot of the art is collaborative; we kind of just pass it back and forth. 

LUNA: Yeah. It’s a lot of passing back and forth with that stuff, or just making art alongside each other. Just snap reactions to this will be cool; that’ll be cool for that. Also, kind of accumulating different ideas and collages over the years, like Ash said. This project has always been both musical and visual. I think all of our output is just put into Total Wife. 

SWIM: How fulfilling is it to tag-team visual mediums, stuff other than music, together? 

ASH: Oh, yeah. It feels impossible to imagine not working together. Just because of how long it’s been, it’s such a long, growing process where we’ve worked through a lot of artistic disputes and refined the art we make, using each other as a sounding board. 

SWIM: Do you feel you operate creatively differently now than when you first met? 

LUNA: Totally. We were just trying to work out how we wanted to make stuff and had no end goal. We still kind of don’t, but it’s much easier to finish things now. 

ASH: I feel like we’re much more sure when we’re giving our opinions. We used to know what we didn’t want versus what we did. That helped because it helped us refine ourselves, but it took a while to sort out what exactly felt like us.

Neither of us started with any music theory knowledge or any real background in songwriting. I was in and out of bands, but I never learned to play guitar until last year. 

SWIM: Has your songwriting become easier for you now than it was 12 years ago? 

ASH: Definitely, yeah. It really started with recording just to have recordings, make songs, and have sounds. And then we were slowly making songs, which was kind of the reverse. 

Photo by Sean Booz

SWIM: What do you all have planned for the rest of the year? 

LUNA: We just have one more show planned. We’re doing so much touring and the album rollout. We’re both really excited to get back in the studio.

ASH: Yeah, so we’re just taking a little break from shows. 

LUNA: We have a bunch of songs written, and the next album has about like ten Pro Tools projects for new songs. That’s been in the sitting stage for so long because this was the first time we decided to do anything with the release other than just upload it the second we had the masters. 

SWIM: Is there gonna be a tonal shift with your next project?

LUNA: Honestly, not really. I would like to hear what people think, because in my mind, a lot of these songs could have been on this most recent album. 

Starting an album while the other one is being finished means each new record half sounds like the last one. So I think that’ll probably be the case with this one. It’ll be like half of the ideas I wanted to finish up on the last thing, half new stuff, and further trying to mesh everything and sound less disjointed.

SWIM: Is there anything else you all wanna talk about or bring up before we sign off?

LUNA: Nashville is awesome. There are a lot of cool bands here, and I'm just always trying to rep that. There are a lot of weird and fun bands out here, a lot of cool music that you wouldn’t expect.

SWIM: Who are some bands people should know about from Nashville? 

LUNA: The members of our band all have their own projects. Celltower and Make Yourself at Home. I play in another band called Melaina Kol. There’s just all these great bands. Sour Tooth, they’re amazing. 

SWIM: With you both living in Nashville, have either of you seen Haley Williams walking around?

LUNA: Yeah. She comes to the bagel shop I work at. 

SWIM: Oh, no way. 

ASH: I wanna meet her so bad. 

LUNA: She’s sweet, actually, which is nice to know. She’s a sweetheart. Thank goodness. 

SWIM: Thank you again for taking the time. I really appreciate it, and I hope you both have a wonderful day.

Luna and Ash in unison: Thank you! You too! 

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David is a content mercenary based in Chicago. He’s also a freelance writer specializing in music, movies, and culture. His hidden talents are his mid-range jump shot and the ability to always be able to tell when someone is uncomfortable at a party. You can find him scrolling away on Instagram @davidmwill89, Twitter @Cobretti24, or Medium @davidmwms.