Palette Knife – Keyframe Walkthrough

Palette Knife are a band who recognize that the real world isn't actually too far removed from the fantasy one. The Ohio-based trio have an inherent understanding of the way our chosen form of escapism reflects the conditions and struggles we face.

Across three full-length records, the band has honed an energetic blend of pop-punk, math rock, and emo, sprinkling their lyrics with ultra-nerdy pop culture references that point to something much more profound. Soaring guitar riffs, delicious bass slides, and cascading drumming firmly root their discography as a catchy, melodic, and infectious extremity of the genre.

On their latest album, Keyframe, Palette Knife further expand into all of these territories, this time showcasing their knack for magical realism and worldbuilding. Through different anime, gaming, and techno-fantasy landscapes, the band conveys moments of longing, excitement, danger, anger, suffering, delusion, insecurity, and feeling absolutely lost in an ever-expanding world that seems to be constantly shifting.

To navigate the frantic pace and technical wizardry of Keyframe, we've created this walkthrough to help you advance through each level with ease. We've even got some tips and tricks from one of Keyframe's creators, Alec Licata, who sings and plays guitar throughout the record. For more help, get tips from the pros by calling 1-900-288-0707. Rates of $1.50 per minute apply. Help line not guaranteed to improve your gameplay, solve your problems, or make you happier.

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
        

---- STAGE 1: PHOENIX DOWN ----
        

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
        

Ok, so the first thing you want to do is crank your sound system as high as it will go, then do some light stretching so you can air-guitar effectively. It can feel a bit challenging at first, but once vocalist Alec Licata begins singing his incantations, you'll want to spam dodge rolls as the rapid-fire riffs start hitting you hard and fast.

SWIM INTO THE SOUND: The RPG imagery is rife throughout your entire discography, and there are more than a few references to different classic series found on the album, my favorite being this opening track. Who is your favorite Final Fantasy character, and how closely do you feel you resemble them?

PALETTE KNIFE: This is so hard. I have a soft spot for Lightning because FFXIII was the first one in the series I played. I also love Noctis because telekinetic crystal swords are all I really want, but I don't think I'm emo enough. Honestly, I feel a little similar to Cloud in Crisis Core: in that game, he has a lot more spark and optimism before the horrors of war turn him into the stoic husk we see in Final Fantasy VII.

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
        

---- STAGE 2: FAULTSIPHON ----
        

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
        

Figuring out a proper setup is crucial to navigating the world of Keyframe, especially around the time you start hearing debuff / stagger / weakness /shatter. Learning how to avoid each of these status effects is key to assuring your ultimate victory.

SWIM: I've always liked the idea of instruments being reflective of character classes in TTRPG worlds. Which character class feels suited to guitar, vocals, bass, and drums, respectively?

KNIFE: Oh gosh, I might be biased because I love wizards, but I'm going wizard for guitar. Drums definitely tank: like either a paladin or something heavily armored with good damage. Bass is probably a barbarian or berserker. And vocals might be healer or bard; the lyrics are inspiring or buffing the audience.

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
        

---- STAGE 3: PROTOTYPE V.2 ----
        

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
        

Nothing can prepare you for the iterative, emotional, psychic damage of this level. Crossing the Rubicon is no simple feat, but our next hint reveals the upgrades, armor, and stats you'll need to successfully configure your armored core to peak fighting form.

SWIM: If someone made a game out of Keyframe, what studio or director would you want to make it?

KNIFE: Ooooh, I would KILL for a FromSoftware game that's mech-themed like Armored Core but plays like a Dark Souls game. I realize that's sorta been done already with The Surge, but man, FromSoftware just does everything so right!

✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦
        

---- SECRET LEVEL ----
        

✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦
        

Blink and you may miss it, an easter egg left for the savvy player to find, a marriage of Gundam, Zoids, and Robotech, this secret monument to a forgotten war is a special nugget of lore that most players wind up missing.

SWIM: The cover feels halfway between Zoids and Gundam. How did you wind up with this imagery?

KNIFE: I basically told Aaron [Queener, Palette Knife's drummer] I had a vision of the mech that we all pilot together, The Keyframe, embedded in the side of a studio, a thinking mountain, all post-apocalyptic and overgrown. We both got very into Gundam kits over the past few years and knew we wanted the record to be mech-themed. After many hours and revisions, this is the digital painting I made in Photoshop, and we thought it was mature and powerful enough to display without typography.

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
        

---- STAGE 5: LIMIT BREAK ----
        

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
        

By now, jamming out to the multiverse of tasty licks, massive drums, and ricocheting bass lines should have your Limit gauge completely maxed out. For that you just gotta hit ↘ + → + X and you'll be tearing through to the final stage with ease.

SWIM: The album title is actually referenced only once on the entire record on “Limit Break,” where you sing: “It always takes so long for me to reframe / The mannequin I pose behind the keyframe.” Could you expand on this line and the meaning behind the album title?

KNIFE: Totally! I find myself caught in these paradigms and frameworks of thought where I base my whole world on a job, relationship, identity, or interest. So there's inevitable trouble in what happens when one of these paradigms is uprooted, and I'm forced to reframe my view of how I thought my life was going versus how it is. I'm basically saying it can take a while to heal from big changes—both good and bad ones—and, to an extent, I'm often frustrated by how long it can take me to adjust to change.

✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦
        

---- FINAL LEVEL ----
        

✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦
        

You've done it! Everything you've learned, the band, the songs, the moves, has prepared you for the wandering expanse of “ISS.” As the final cutscene plays and your fighter drifts off in their damaged Veritech, swallowed by the infinite dark glow of space, the gentle glow of the Keyframe title card is the last thing we see before the end credits roll.

Through healing, through struggle, through glory and through hope, Keyframe builds its loose narrative web into a multiverse of very real themes. It can be a difficult world to make your way through these days, and the band has a firm understanding of this. From the barreling opening of “Phoenix Down” to the calm and serene acoustic closer “ISS,” Palette Knife has built entire realms to explore and exist in, ones that we hope this walkthrough made more navigable for you, weary traveler.

---

Elias can often be found at the local gig or online advocating for some forgotten band from who knows how long ago. They currently live in the greatest city in the world Los Angeles, California and can be found online on Instagram and Twitter @listentohyakkei.

Elephant Jake – ‘98 / Swiss Army Wife – Emergency Contact | Double Single Review

Three years ago, Swim Into The Sound shook the music blog industrial complex to its core when we introduced the world's first-ever Double Single Review. That’s right; two bands, two songs, one post. While some cautioned that this invention would be too innovative, disruptive, or even dangerous, we proceeded anyway. Now that the dust has cleared from that initial fanfare, enough time has passed that it seems safe to revisit the format, and today is the perfect excuse, cause we’ve got another pair of bangers to talk about from emo bands Elephant Jake and Swiss Army Wife.

One weird side effect of COVID is that some bands feel fake. I don’t mean fake in an AI way, quite the opposite. I mean a band that feels so up my alley that it’s hard to believe that they actually walk among us. Their instrumentals are too tight, their smoke too tough, their press photos too swaggy. Until I see these types of bands with my own two eyes, they might as well be a figment of my caffeine-addled imagination.

Elephant Jake is one such group. I’ve been aware of the Philly emo band peripherally for years, even interacted with them online on multiple occasions, but was never able to catch them live due to a combination of small potatoes touring logistics and bad timing. Here was a group I’d listened to and enjoyed, but never laid eyes upon until they materialized on a random Friday night at Ortlieb's opening for the y'allternative emo band Innerlove. I showed up a couple of songs into their set, but by the time I walked in, the band was already tearing shit up, jumping, shouting, and sweating as they cranked out a 30-some-minute set of raucous emo music. 

Today, the group released “'98,” the latest in a line of singles they’ve been dropping throughout the year. The song kicks off with a funky-as-fuck bassline and reserved guitar jangle. Lead vocalist Sal Fratto sashays in with a gentle croon that gradually builds to an anthemic passage as he sings, “While I was fucking it up, you were holding it down / I’m never feeling alive, I’m only losing you now.” Soon, the instrumental bursts into a forward stride as the lyrics continue to wax poetic about the passage of time, eventually leading to a jazzy outro that’s more jam band than Midwest emo. This track, combined with singles “Give Flight” and “Sustain,” seems to indicate that a banger of a full-length is on the way soon. 

Another example of this fake-until-proven-otherwise phenomenon is Swiss Army Wife. I discovered Portland’s tallest emo band sometime in the early days of 2023 with the release of their knockout debut, Medium Gnarly. I’ll admit I was simply excited to have some honest-to-god DIY emo emerging from my hometown, but the group’s live show affirmed that this was, in fact, a real band. I’ve caught the group almost every time I ventured back home to visit my family, including three times in the space of a month this past fall. 

Each time I saw the band, they ran through the hits off their album, their split with Kerosene Heights, and The Ultimate Emo Album, but what excited me most were the songs that hadn’t been released yet. One of them, it turns out, was “Emergency Contact,” also releasing today and arriving courtesy of We’re Trying Records. The track bears the group’s usual jagged and lanky emo instrumentals, prompting fist-balling frustration and offering an outlet to let it out. Things peak about 40 seconds in when the group drops into the chorus with a four-count beat as they shout, “Let’s get married!!!” then proceed to spill their guts in an embarrassing, relatable, and public display of affection. 

Every time the band drops into this chorus, I’m elated. I’ve found it’s the perfect tempo to jump up and down to, already having seen a handful of hometown shows where the crowd shouts each word back, erupting into a jubilant dance floor of carefree emo groves. I’m so glad I can hear this song whenever I want now, and it appears there’s more Swissy to come, which is always a good thing. Portland emo is real, and it’s Swiss Army Wife. 

Cover Collector – April Greens

Design by Ryan Morrissey

I don’t know about you guys, but I love a good album collage. One of the first things I do every Friday is head over to tapmusic.net and render a 4x4 chart of the albums I listened to most over the past week. At the end of each month, I do the same thing with a 5x5 that recaps my previous 30 days of listening. By the time December rolls around, I look forward to recapping the last twelve months with a gigantic 10x10 grid in an unwieldy encapsulation of the 100 albums that defined my year. 

Is it a little self-aggrandizing? Sure, but it’s also a fun way to see a quick snapshot of what my last week, month, or year has sounded like. At its best, this practice has led to fun conversations and solid recommendations going back and forth with friends as we bond over specific albums. Sometimes it’s that shared love over a deep pull from years gone by, other times it’s just noticing trends with a recent fave that seems like an unshakable presence week in and week out. At the very least, I suppose it’s satisfying to see a bunch of records that I feel an affinity toward lined up and embodying a specific stretch of my life. 

At some point near the tail end of last year, I conceived of a more communal way to bring this love of album collage to life. Because, sure, getting a live readout of your listening history is cool, but this is also about album art, an essential part of the experience and something us nerds can fixate on just as much as the songs that sit beneath the cover. As such, I’m excited to welcome you to the fourth edition of Cover Collector: a monthly installation where the Swim Team discusses some of our favorite albums based on album color. For April, we’re writing about gorgeous greens. 

---

The World is a Beautiful Place and I am No Longer Afraid to Die – Whenever, If Ever

Topshelf Records

Much like the color blue, I think there’s something primordially calming about green. It’s everywhere in our natural world, from the grass of the field to the leaves on the trees that tower above us. It’s calming, pastoral, and speaks to something deep within our brains that seems to signal pause and restoration. It’s no big surprise then that the cover for Whenever, If Ever, the debut studio album from the foundational emo act The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die, evokes a sense of fuzzy nostalgia before you even hit play. The slightly out-of-focus photograph shows someone jumping off a high rock into a cool body of water below, everything framed by foliage and warmed by the bright sunbeams above. The album’s two-minute instrumental welcomes you into this world before whisking the listener away into the brilliant splendor of “Heartbeat in the Brain.” Not only is Whenever, If Ever a defining emo album, it operates from this mystical point of undying adventure and youthful adoration that every nostalgic teenager and wistful 20-something understands as soon as they realize that the world will never quite be the same again. The band rouses and rises to the occasion. There’s a collectivist sense of powering through with each other, despite it all. The band said it best themselves in the knockout seven-minute closer “Getting Sodas,” when they sang “The world is a beautiful place, but we have to make it that way.”

– Taylor Grimes

Blues Traveler – Four

A&M

In my journey as one who writes about music, I often return to my origins: MTV2, VH1, and my Mom’s big purple CD binder. My earliest music memories involve sitting at the foot of our wooden entertainment center, next to the six-CD changer-stereo combo, beneath a blue curtain with that classic ‘90s gold-moons-and-suns astrology pattern, leafing through this CD binder that must have held 300 CDs.

Among the Dave Matthews Band, Aerosmith, and Sheryl Crow CDs, two discs always caught my eye. The first was Kid Rock’s Cocky, because the image on the disc featured Mr. Rock flipping the double bird. The other was Blues Traveler’s Four. Not only because the disc was bright green, in great contrast to other CDs at the time, but because of the cartoon cat smoking a joint at the top. What can I say? I was like seven years old and titillated by things I knew were naughty! And yes, I’m sorry for airing out my Mom just now and admitting she owned a copy of Kid Rock’s Cocky, though it’s entirely possible that one belonged to my stepdad, and this was after the “Great CD Co-Mingling of the Early 2000s.” That’s where his Ludacris Chicken and Beer CD touched faces with her copy of Madonna’s Ray of Light, and they found happiness.

Four became one of my favorite albums over my childhood and adolescence, and it still reminds me of car rides with my Mom to this day. Blue Traveler has picked up a sort of “Nickelback Factor” where people love to talk shit but refuse to admit that they had some real joints. The singles from Four (“Run-Around,” “Hook,” and “The Mountains Win Again”) can come off a bit hokey now, but that’s because they’re devoid of context. Four was released in September of 1994. Grunge was in the rearview mirror, and labels were clamoring to catch the next rising star. Blues Traveler arose as something different with drawing power. In a crowded field of jammy, blues-inspired acts from the Northeast and Southeast (along with Spin Doctors, Phish, Widespread Panic, God Street Wine, Dave Matthews Band, and Medeski Martin and Wood), they innovated an entire new genre in a couple of years, playing thousands of live shows at colleges all over the Eastern United States. There’s a really great book about this mid-90’s jam scene, Mike Ayers’ Sharing In The Groove.

There’s really not a skip on Four, and it’s an outstanding document of a band at the tippy-top of a scene doing what they do best. For my money though, their first live CD, Live From The Fall, is the best way to hear what those A&R guys heard in 1992. John Popper is one of the greatest frontmen of all time, and Live From The Fall is the proof.

– Caleb Doyle

Type O Negative – Slow, Deep And Hard

Roadrunner

There may not be a more obvious, entry-level, green-coded band than Type O Negative. Few bands have held their identity with just one or two colors, but from 1991 to 2007, the Brooklyn “drab four” created an entire discography of iconic green-and-black imagery. My favorite Type O album is 1996’s October Rust, although that cover art is the least directly green of them all, so let’s dive into their penetrative debut, 1991’s Slow, Deep And Hard. Lead vocalist, lyricist, bassist, and 1995 Playgirl centerfold Peter Steele was beginning his next musical chapter after the end of his previous band Carnivore, and he was not in a good mood. Slow, Deep And Hard may be the first and only thrash metal breakup album, bridging the gap from Carnivore’s direct East Coast fury to the introduction of Type O Negative’s (anti-)romantic doom. It doesn’t sound much like what the band would become afterward, nor does it line up with any other metal album before or since. The twelve-and-a-half-minute opener “Unsuccessfully Coping With The Natural Beauty Of Infidelity” is a signature moment of Steele’s tongue-in-bleak attitude that he would carry throughout the rest of his career, even with it being a completely raw and unfiltered reflection of his feelings. “Xero Tolerance” moves back and forth between dissonant sludge and major-key punk rock, with a “kill you tonight” shouted refrain that’s as nasty as it is ridiculous.

Of the album’s seven songs, two of them are back-to-back entries in Type O’s list of album pranks: “Glass Walls Of Limbo (Dance Mix)” is nothing but a dark ambient/martial industrial interlude, and “The Misinterpretation Of Silence And Its Disastrous Consequences” is… well, you’ll have to listen to get it. The five core, multi-movement songs end with “Gravitational Constant: G = 6.67 × 10−8 cm−3 gm−1 sec−2,” simply one of the finest, physics-inspired, relationship-dissolving, gothic thrash album finales in Type O Negative’s history. Slow, Deep And Hard is something all its own, not for everyone, but should be heard by everyone.

– Logan Archer Mounts

Víkingur Ólafsson – Opus 109 (Beethoven | Bach | Schubert)

Deutsche Grammophon

It’s challenging to break through the noise in any genre of music, but I would argue that it’s particularly difficult to do so in classical music. The genre is overshadowed by great performers and ruled by strict, historically accurate performance demands. And yet Vikingur Olafsson has done the impossible and cut into the surface of this realm with clear, precise intent. I am an avid fan of Olafsson’s interpretations and claim him as my favorite performer of classical piano music - his 2017 album of various Philip Glass selections is a treasure, and he made waves with his fresh, sparkling recordings of the Goldberg Variations in 2023. 

In Olafsson’s latest recording, Opus 109, he explores the throughline that runs so clearly through Bach to Beethoven to Schubert. You can hear the pull of emotion in every note of Olafsson’s interpretation, indicative of the new era that music was hurtling towards. Programming Schubert alongside two giants of classical music may seem an unusual choice at first glance, but upon closer inspection, we can trace a theme from Beethoven to Schubert: both composers defied traditional compositional structure in their later works. Schubert’s two-movement sonata, widely considered incomplete, is argued to be the opposite by Vikingur. Schubert would be utterly pleased to see his name alongside Beethoven’s on this cleverly planned album.

Vikingur Olafsson’s renditions of the works on this album are resonant, warm, and thoughtfully prepared. The album exterior reflects an equal amount of care: it’s impossible to ignore the mesmerizing cover photo. Vikingur has always leaned into his artistic sensibilities for the covers of his releases, and this portrait of him is no exception. Lush, sensual, and surreal, the artist invites the listener into his world with a direct gaze that breaks the fourth wall. You are beckoned to experience the beauty of these works alongside him. The performer is nothing without someone to play to, for what is music without anyone to hear it?

– Britta Joseph

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Float Along - Fill Your Lungs

Flightless

Back when I was a green Gizz listener, I prided myself on holding the niche take that Float Along - Fill Your Lungs was the Australian psych-rock genre-be-damned mega-unit at their very best. And, even as “good ole days,” I still stand by it. Hearing “Head On/Pill” for the first time rewired what I thought a long song could be. (People joke about riffs or melodies being able to lift them from comas, but the “Head On” riff really does summon my Gizz geeker self from the depths of my psyche.) The opening guitar echoes and wobbles on “Head On/Pill” felt like a green, slimy, sticky, swampy flare shot straight into the night sky. (As Stu wrote in the liner notes: “It was short at first, but it just kept fucking growing like pond scum.”) And I realize now that I used to think it was the best Gizz album because it was the first Gizz album where the minds were truly meeting, the Gizzards letting their improvisational freak flags billow until they broke. It was also the de facto double-drummer album, a return to form that became a focal point of Gizz's live presence in the mid-2010s. With a ripping, wandering opener and a theme-song-esque title-track closer, the middle of the album is oft overlooked, but not in my world. Not in the world I’m living in. That’s where the Gizzards sneak their droning (“30 Past 7”), their fuzzy (“Pop In My Step”), their overmodulated (“God Is Calling Me Back Home”), and their funky (“I’m Not a Man Unless I Have a Woman”)—a great, big green journey into the outer reaches of it all. 

– Cassidy Sollazzo

The Hush Sound – Like Vines

Decaydance Records

When I was around 11 years old and burning the midnight oil on World of Warcraft in the family computer room, there was a good chance I was usually either listening to Billy Talent’s second LP or Like Vines by The Hush Sound. Released in 2006 on Pete Wentz’s Decaydance Records, this no-skip banger of an album is a masterclass in imaginative poetry and use of playful textures. Despite this release dancing in the same circles as Fall Out Boy and Panic! At the Disco, Like Vines stands strongly on its own feet outside the shadow of its contemporaries. This record’s unabashedly twee nature and jaunty rhythms, combined with its melancholic lyricism, feel very much at home in a time period where Hot Topic and the global village coffeehouse existed simultaneously. 

Like Vines gives you such a strong impression of what it’s about within seconds of starting with the charismatic, almost showtune-esque “We Intertwined” while tracks like “Lighthouse” and “You Are the Moon” display the group’s more heartstring-tugging, piano-forward qualities. It’s the effortless versatility, this shifting between full-band tracks with the more subtle breaks consisting of a single vocalist and a piano, that help this album stand the test of time. 

While I believe every track on this album is its own perfect, self-contained world to explore, the song “Wine Red” alone is reason enough for everyone to experience Like Vines at least once in their time on this earth. Of course, I’m also going to give a special shoutout to the Patrick Stump feature in “Don’t Wake Me Up” that I admittedly did not clock as him until many years into listening to the album.  

– Ciara Rhiannon

Hatchie – Giving The World Away

Secretly Canadian

If you’ve been looking for something to listen to while walking in a dusky city on a cool, spring night, look no further. Hatchie’s 2022 breakout album has the whimsical reverb that perfectly parallels Giving The World Away’s dreamy album cover, with beams of light and a glow reminiscent of a still frame from a futuristic Wong Kar-wai movie. The standout “Quicksand” was on my playlist for the entirety of 2022, making its way into my personal library when I would take the green-bullet G train and get a glimpse of the downtown skyline before heading back into the tunnels underneath Brooklyn. That bass during the chorus envelops me in such a beautiful way. Outside of Hatchie’s pop masterpiece, songs like “This Enchanted” explode with sound and color, while “The Rhythm” feels equipped for your dancing shoes. There’s a deep cut on this record called “The Key,” which is simply shoegaze perfection, with a chorus that slams with levels of distortion like nothing you’ve ever heard. There’s RANGE on this one! 

– Samuel Leon

Alex G – Rocket

Domino Recording Co

They say you never forget your first, and when it comes to Alex G albums, that’s certainly true for me. I distinctly remember trying to “get into” Alex G back in 2017; he was fresh off his contributions on Frank Ocean’s Blonde, and I was eager to learn more. First, I tried DSU since that seemed to be a consensus fan favorite at the time, but that record didn’t do much for me. This was still during his “(Sandy) Alex G” era, and I remember deciding to give him another shot early on in the summer when he released Rocket. I threw the album on while out for a walk, and the whole thing soundtracked my walk perfectly, seeping into the grooves of my shoes and flinging the hot air past me. I was walking through neighborhoods and fields that looked eerily similar to the one on the cover of Rocket: lush, waving, and full of motion off toward an indistinguishable horizon. There was no Jacob Sheep staring me down, sure, but I will tell you the first time I heard the dog bark on “Poison Root,” I took out my earbuds because I thought it was coming from a nearby backyard. That moment turned out to be transportive in the best way, making me laugh as I slipped my headphones back on and hit play again. The rest of the record is super laid-back and breezy, barring the off-kilter three-song suite from “Witch” through “Brick,” but even that I love as a sort of mid-album bridge into “Sportstar” and the remainder of Side B. Rocket is just a really special record that helped me unlock the rest of Alex G’s discography. I feel lucky to have fallen into it.

– Taylor Grimes

If we’re talking solid-color album art, there’s one band that stands above the rest, and that’s Weezer. Across fifteen studio albums, more than a third of their discography is made up of self-titled albums that fans simply refer to by their color. Each features the band members lined up staring down the barrel of the camera against a solid-colored background. In this recurring section, we’ll address the elephant in the room that is Weezer’s discography.

Alright folks, big Weezer fan Lillian Weber talking here. And by that I mean up until today, April 25th, 2026, I have only listened to Weezer, Pinkerton, Everything Will Be Alright in the End, and Weezer in full. No, those are not in chronological order, and which colored Weezer albums I am referring to is for you to decide. Weezer (The Green Album) was not one of them. Beyond those four albums, I knew the singles, and no one could convince me I really needed to listen to anything more from further Weezer albums. With Green, I knew one song that wasn’t a single, and it’s this live performance of “Don’t Let Go.” This is much better than the version on the record because River’s sings like this song actually has a target, like there is actually a love he is desperate to keep in his life. But I’m getting too close to my issues with this record, and we have singles to talk about. 

What do I think of the singles? “Hash Pipe” is obviously a perfect song, and “Island in the Sun” is just that: a pleasant idea. Listening to this record today, what I’m most struck by is how pleasantly this record goes down. You can’t call it bad, per se, because the melodies are good, the lyrics are inoffensive (except “crab at the booty”), and the instrumentals are the perfect bridge between the emotive alt-rock of The Blue Album and the fluff Weezer would continue to pump out until EWBAITE (but which immediately returned on White). The band went to the studio with the intention of resetting to what fans liked about Blue after the EVERYTHING of Pinkerton. But what makes The Blue Album so good to this day is how it melds the emotional anguish with hooks. The Green Album is just hooks for the sake of hooks, and hey, I’m not above the platonic ideal of a hook, but this is WEEZER we’re talking about. But now that I think about it, this is Weezer we’re talking about. 

The cover is okay. River’s looks a little surprised by the camera, and that’s about all the emotion we get out of him on this record…. I’m sorry he really sings “crab at the booty.” WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE? 

– Lillian Weber

Crash of Rhinos – Distal

Triste 

If you have an opinion on the term “midwest emo revival,” then you probably know this album already. Released in 2011, Distal is a brooding work of dueling guitars and uncertain trajectories, inhabiting the intricate space between emo and math rock. The reason I call this period “revival” is because bands like Crash of Rhinos, Algernon Cadwallader, and Sport brought back a sound from the mid-to-late nineties. The sound they breathed new life into was originally concocted by Cap’n Jazz and Braid, who crafted fast, chaotic, and thoughtful tunes for as long as they could manage. The cost of their energy and intensity was an all-too-brief lifespan. This was similarly borne out by Crash of Rhinos, whose original run as a band lasted from 2009 to 2014.

Despite knowing about this album and listening to it for the better part of five years, this is the first time I’ve looked intently at the cover. It appears to be a picture of a threshold into another room, with a dark green filter applied on top of some building notes. The cover is maybe even referenced in “Lifewood” with the line, “Take back these ideas / These words and notes and papers and plans.” 

It would seem to me we are living through another revival, but this time it might stick. Emo is approaching mainstream “cool” in a way it never has before, long-defunct bands are reuniting for huge festivals, and the internet has made it possible for anyone with enough free time and DIY grit to achieve global listenership. Luckily for us, Crash of Rhinos is one of these reuniting bands, with a full album releasing on May 22nd. If you can’t wait, you can already listen to two new badass singles on Bandcamp, released just last month.

– Braden Allmond

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – I’m In Your Mind Fuzz

Flightless

Am I in Heaven? No, I’m just listening to King Gizzard’s fifth studio album: I’m In Your Mind Fuzz. Often called a psych rock or garage rock record, this album transcends both genres to do something bigger, opening with a four-song suite, the first of many that Gizz would go on to do, becoming a staple of the band’s sound. This album is much more than its ripping first four tracks, however, as Side B gives us something else we’ve never seen before from this band: slow jams. Throw away your spring reverb, fuzz pedals, and turn down the gain on your amp, cause it’s time to slow things down and talk about saving the earth.

Of course, it’s hard to talk about this album without talking about the album art. Visual artist (and essentially the bonus member of Gizz) Jason Galea designs nearly all the band's visuals, from album artwork and music videos to show posters and projections. Galea, in short, is the band’s visual identity, which is why it’s so weird that this time he just shamelessly ripped off the cover art for the 1983 Atari game Fortress. as the band begins to create The Gizzverse, an interconnected story that ties together many of their albums and songs.

The Gizzverse is only visually depicted on this record through the cover art, but in subsequent albums, we’ll get context for why the sea is green on the cover and why the castle is crumbling. Perhaps we even get answers as to where the lightning is coming from. Indeed, this record’s art sets up the story for at least the next eight records the band would release. Don’t call it psych rock. Vocalist Stu Mackenzie has tried to shed that label. Rather, think of it as a puzzle piece, a first look into what’s to come, and an invitation to put in some work on this angel of a planet we call home.

– Noëlle Midnight

Coheed and Cambria – The Second Stage Turbine Blade

Equal Vision Records

As a lifelong Coheed and Cambria fan, I would be remiss not to give a special collection of words to the green album that started it all. The Second Stage Turbine Blade is easily one of the most ambitious debut albums I have ever heard, and even 24 years after its release, I am continually impressed and inspired by it. Coheed’s firstborn originated many of the group’s staples – the eerie, instrumental opening track and outro, the handful of proggy tracks exceeding 10 minutes in length – while also birthing a discography-spanning, sci-fi epic centered around the two characters for whom the band is named. 

While Coheed’s third album, Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness, is my indisputable favorite of the band’s catalog, The Second Stage Turbine Blade contains some of my top Coheed tracks, including the impossibility badass and sonically rich “Delirium Trigger” that I once transcribed by ear for classical guitar quarter in my final year of college. “Everything Evil” similarly ranks high in the pantheon of Coheed tracks and is probably their best live song to date, with its entrancing final “Dear Claudio-o” chant and typically present ripper of a guitar solo. It’s difficult not to list every track on this album as heavily influential, but “Junesong Provision” holds a special place for me, along with its acoustic demo featured in the deluxe version of the album, complete with an audio clip from the cult classic, Army of Darkness.

The Second State Turbine Blade is owed reverence not only in the history of great rock albums, but in my history as a music-lover, leading me down the paths I have been able to walk and the relationships I’ve been able to form through Coheed and Cambria. Fortunately, it remains a classic and a timeless masterpiece that I get to return to and enjoy to this day. 

– Ciara Rhiannon

Ogbert the Nerd – I Don’t Hate You

Sun Eater Records

My first show after the COVID-19 Pandemic was in July of 2021. It was called the DIY Super Bowl, featuring an absolutely stellar lineup: Guitar Fight from Fooly Cooly, Blue Deputy, Oolong, Carly Cosgrove, and Ogbert the Nerd—a veritable who’s who of the burgeoning community of fifth-wave emo bands. After over a year without shows, the DIY Super Bowl finally offered the catharsis we all so desperately needed. No one brought that catharsis on that sweaty July night quite like Ogbert the Nerd. 

Their debut LP, I Don’t Hate You, showcases their incredibly messy brand of emo perfectly. It is far from polished, even by the increasingly lo-fi, messy standards of fifth-wave emo. The guitars are frantic, constantly driving forward and nearly careening off course. On “Do It For Elio,” lead singer Madison James’ voice is constantly breaking and straining with pure emotion. Throughout its brisk 30-minute run time, their vocal cords always sound moments away from snapping in half while screaming about being a fuckup, being fucked up, and being fucking mad at your fuckup friends. “You Like the Raiders?” opens with genuinely one of the meanest opening lines of any song: “Hey fucker, nobody ever gave a shit about you.” For a 20-year-old whose life was just derailed by a global pandemic, who struggled with finding joy, who didn’t believe in herself, and who was harboring a great deal of frustration with the world, I Don’t Hate You felt like a bolt of lightning. An album that was the pure distillation of all the energy, anger, and anxiety I had bottled up inside of me.  

The moment from Ogbert’s set that will always stick with me is when I attempted my first-ever stage dive. Attempted is the keyword here, as it was much more accurately a belly flop. I fell directly into the first row, where somehow the perfect number of people both dodged and tried to catch me, leaving my feet pointing sky high, my face planting into what must rank as one of the top three grossest venue floors of my life. Despite this, the most vivid part of my memory is how I bounced right back to my feet, energized by the hectic, frantic music, ready to keep swinging, keep dancing, and keep embracing the pure catharsis that Ogbert the Nerd brought that evening.

– Caroline Liaupsin

Angel Du$t – Brand New Soul

Pop Wig Records

I am going to hop on my fucking soapbox and declare that Brand New Soul is the best record to drive to. Ever. Of all time. Don’t believe me? Okay, well, get in my Accord, baby, and we’ll go for a spin. “Brand New Soul” is the perfect song for trying to connect your phone to the Bluetooth thing. “Love Slam” is the perfect song for pulling out of your parking space and hitting the gas a bit too fast. “Don’t Stop” is a humble trucking song. “Racecar” is a song for sitting at the red light. “Space Jam” is for the light finally turning green. You get it? It’s a perfect LP, and I’m not just saying that because it has “Sippin’ Lysol” on it.

– Caro Alt

Anxious – Little Green House

Run For Cover Records

Anxious doesn’t waste time with sugarcoating difficult emotions in their debut album, Little Green House. Sitting at a tight 32-minute run time, this record approaches the bittersweet experience of growing up with honesty and wisdom beyond the band’s years at the time of writing. In the same way that life often demands that we balance many feelings at once, Little Green House simultaneously addresses themes of relationships, grief, change, and doubt. What better way to work through such heaviness than the tender, precise blend of melodic hardcore and emo that Anxious has been refining since high school?

Despite its subject matter, this record doesn’t lead me to dwell on things. Instead, it evokes grit, determination, and an intent to keep moving forward after reflecting on the past. The first three tracks are punchy – anthemic even – and they carry a momentum as if to suggest that the only way out of pain is by going through it. This energy is contrasted beautifully in the stripped-down moments of “Wayne” and the poignant closing track “You When You’re Gone.” Anxious stay true to the genre in their configuration, yet deliver an instantly recognizable sound through subtle vocal processing and unique instrumentals. This record feels like a raindrop-soaked memory in a rearview mirror; the perfect backdrop for leaving something behind before facing a new chapter. If you’re wrestling with confusion, gloom, or transformation in life, you very well may feel at home within the walls of Little Green House.

– Annie Watson

Bomb the Music Industry – Get Warmer

Quote Unquote Records

A bright, empty green field is a promise, a clean slate to build on. Jeff Rosenstock knew what he was doing when he picked a photo of a field for the cover of Get Warmer, a record about how you can get a clean slate by moving states, getting sober, and riding bikes, but things won’t really change unless you do. When Rosenstock sings, “It never seems to get warmer / no matter how far south you go,” he doesn’t just mean literally. The obvious double entendre implies that when you look outside yourself for the truth, you just get colder. It doesn’t matter what the Georgian summer brings when “problems are all I create.” For as goddamn fun as this album sounds — specifically how euphoric “I Don’t Love You Anymore” is to shout along with — this is a desperate record that can’t fulfill any promises you can’t do yourself. 

– Lillian Weber

Field Medic – Light Is Gone 

Self-released

I was pretty late to the Medic Nation. I jumped on board after seeing a tweet someone had posted about not being able to listen to Field Medic because of the way he looked. Usually I just scroll past that sort of online hate, but it was 2020 and I didn’t have anything better to do considering the world outside had stopped, so I decided to see what this person looked like that made someone so angry. Six years later, Kevin Patrick Sullivan, the man behind Field Medic, Paper Rose Haiku, and Protection Spell, remains one of my favorite artists. Debut album Light Is Gone is a homebrewed, lo-fi folk album that is somehow reminiscent of the old folk music my mom would play in the kitchen, yet also contemporary and fresh. Recorded live directly to cassette tape, the songs on Light Is Gone are sparse in their arrangements but dense in their lyrics of love lost and nights spent alone drinking. One of my highlights on the album is the closer “it’s still you,” where Patrick sings about a sketchy situation of some dudes getting him to cash a stolen check for them. I was genuinely shocked to hear something so transparent and vulnerable from an artist. That courage to put out a song that revealing inspires me to this day and always keeps me coming back to not only Light is Gone, but to Patrick’s work in its entirety. May we all be that true to ourselves in our lives.

– Nickolas Sackett

Honorable Mentions

Hey, we can’t write about every album with this color, so here’s a list of some more that we feel like we should mention.

• American Football - American Football

• The World is a Beautiful Place and I am No Longer Afraid to Die - Harmlessness

• Prince Daddy & The Hyena - Adult Summers

• Alien Boy - Don't Know What I Am

• Minus The Bear - Menos El Oso

• Anxious - Little Green House

• Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

• Soup Dreams - Hellbender

• Charli XCX - Brat

• Band of Horses - Everything All the Time

• Big Black - Songs About Fucking

• The Beths - Expert in a Dying Field

• Enter Shikari - Common Dreads

• SZA - Ctrl

• Wilco - Schmilco

• Big Thief - Double Infinity

• The Smashing Pumpkins - Pisces Iscariot

• Alex G - DSU

• Deftones - Private Music

• Pool Kids - Easier Said Than Done

• Tiberius - Troubadour

• Gladie - No Need to Be Lonely

• Ratboys - Singin’ To An Empty Chair

• Origami Angel - Somewhere City

• Fiddlehead - Between the Richness

• Lucky Boys Confusion - Commitment

• Opeth - Watershed

• Type O Negative - The Origin Of The Feces

• Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses

• Type O Negative - World Coming Down

• Type O Negative - The Least Worst Of

• Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me

• Type O Negative - Dead Again

• Alex G - Rules

• MJ Lenderman - Manning Fireworks

• bedbug - pack your bags the sun is growing

Quippy in Queens: An Interview with Nick Zander of Equipment

All Photos by Samuel Leon

When Samuel and I show up at Two Worlds Recording Studio in Queens, New York, we happen to be approaching the front door right as studio owner Billy Mannino and Equipment frontman Nick Zander are stepping out to the street. The two of them were making a quick run to the market across the street for some toiletries, and the two of us were happy to tag along to get a further taste of the Whitestone neighborhood. This funny timing is the latest in a long series of serendipities that had to fall into place for this interview to happen. On my end, I happened to be in New York at the same time as the group, photographer Samuel Leon happened to be available to snap some pics, and the band was kind enough to let the two of us into the studio as they were putting together their forthcoming third LP. 

We joined the pair as they selected items from the store’s rear wall, where illuminated cooler shelves had been repurposed to house a wide array of cleaning supplies and laundry detergents. We shot the shit as they checked out and returned to Two Worlds, which sits at the end of a long, liminal hallway of similar studio spaces. 

If it wasn’t clear immediately upon entering, Two Worlds Studio is hallowed emo ground. Framed on the wall are vinyl LPs from local legends like Oso Oso and Macseal, as well as more recent additions to the Emo Canon like String Theory by TRSH and That’s What Friends Are For, the three-way split from saturdays at your place, Summerbruise, and SHOPLIFTER. On nearby shelves sit more yet-to-be-framed recent releases from Kerosene Heights and red sun. Equipment are already among these ranks; over the last couple of  years, they recorded their two Drink Singles “tequila redbull” and “espresso lemonade” with Mannino, as well as last year’s surprise EP First time using slang. 

Under the watchful eye of a crocheted Mr. Met figurine and surrounded by cases of Yerba Mate cans, I picked Nick’s brain about Equipment’s mindset going into this new record, how the last few years have treated them, and what it’s like scaling their touring operation from DIY spaces to larger rooms.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

---

SWIM: First off, thanks for having us in the studio. I’ve loved the Drink Singles and First time using slang. It seems like the response to those has been great. Has dropping those smaller one-offs helped shape this new album in any way?

NICK: I would say those are the two extremes. There’s poppy Equipment, I would say “tequila redbull” and “espresso lemonade” is that, and then it got pretty weird on our last EP. I think some people were like, ‘I don’t know about this version of Equipment,’ and I’m okay with that because I don’t think it’s representative of the band as a whole. All the pieces of Equipment’s past are gonna be in the next record. I do think it is the weirdest one so far, but hopefully should flow the best. 

SWIM: That’s awesome. I was curious if there were any genres that you’re hoping people start ascribing to the band with this new LP, or any new sounds that y’all are trying to pull through a little bit more? I mean, I don’t even think it’s fair to say Equipment has been “full emo” for the last few years. There’s pop-punk and indie stuff, but is there anything that you guys are consciously trying to pull in that feels new genre-wise or influence-wise? 

BILLY: There’s so little emo on this record. 

SWIM: I would say, as an arc, that you guys have been pointed that way for a while.

BILLY: Equipment is an indie rock band. 

Photo by Samuel Leon

NICK: Yeah. I think it goes quite a few places on this album that are like… I dunno about “more emotional,” but the thing is, most music genres have emotion in them. If someone were to look up ‘Midwest emo playlist,’ I think there’s like one, maybe two songs on this record that would fit, and even then, it’d be fake emo. 

SWIM: As coined by Summerbruise. Yeah. No, that’s great. 

NICK: I’m trying to think of what songs they would even be. There are a few tap riffs here and there, but mainly, we were like, ‘How do we make guitars sound cool and have it be catchy?’ How do we trick people into thinking something is catchy when it’s written like brain vomit? 

This is maybe the worst news to certain people, but more like 2000s Indie. There’s even a song that’s like MGMT vibes a little bit, which is kind of crazy. There is more synth on this record, but it’s not like delving into actual pop music necessarily; it’s more like we’re trying to keep that catchy side that people who like Equipment like. 

SWIM: Who’s playing synth? 

NICK: We haven’t laid down any yet. There’s a scratch in there, but it’ll just be me on the record. We don’t know what we’re gonna do in concert yet.

SWIM: Okay. That’s exciting. 

NICK: Penny [Guarantee] is flying in on Friday, and we’ll be back-and-forth doing guitars. There aren’t defined lead or rhythm parts. It’s just like, ‘Penny, do you wanna do this part?’ or Penny will be like, ‘Nick, I don’t want to record this part, but here’s my idea.’ We’re sort of just like a committee of guitar.

SWIM: I feel like even live, y’all trade off pretty well. I think the last time I saw Equipment (other than the Swarmyard acoustic set) was at Fauxchella, and you were both locked in. It was a lot of fun to see the guitar trade-off, and Penny adds so much to the shredding and stage presence. I think that’s cool that comes through on the record too.

NICK: Yeah, and live who’s to say who’s actually gonna play what? There are many parts I recorded that Penny now plays and vice versa. Penny actually played bass on Alt. Account, ‘cause they were still the bassist at the time, but everything since “tequila redbull” has been full-band. 

Jake [Pachasa] is our drummer, who already recorded drums in July. He’s running sound for Mat Kerekes’ band right now on tour, so he’s doing his thing. It’s just a super busy time because we’re doing this record, Jake’s on tour, then we’re going on tour with Wonder Years, and then right after that we’re touring with Dear Maryanne. Then, after I get back from that tour, we are moving from Denver to Cleveland. 

SWIM: That’s awesome. Good for y’all. 

NICK: A lot of shit going on. Not a lot of money coming in at the moment, but that’s okay.

SWIM: Well, hopefully tour swings things back a little. Maybe the new album will help, but yeah, a lot of logistics and moving parts. That’s very cool, though. 

Photo by Samuel Leon

SWIM: What was on your mind most going into this record? I’m thinking about Alt. Account, and I feel like that was such a concerted effort to do “a record” in contrast to Ruthless Sun, so what would you say is the biggest thing that you’re keeping in your head?

NICK: I think we wanted to wait until we had enough energy to not half-ass it. I feel the same way about how the album is presented after it’s recorded, too. I think that is equally important to recording it and writing. I think a lot of what made Alt. Account special was our relationship with our listeners at that point, the album art, the singles we picked, the music videos, the whole concept. 

SWIM: Yeah. Very intentional. 

NICK: I think I was getting lost in the noise a little bit. I was thinking about what people might want or what might get us more listeners, and I’m glad I haven’t really compromised any of that. Instead of scratching Equipment and moving on to, not a different band necessarily, but like a different version of Equipment, I’ve just decided that we should take what we already have and let our weaknesses be our strengths, you know? Like people saying, “this isn’t emo!” Now I’m just sort of saying I don’t care anymore. 

You know, we’re in the emo scene, but I don’t feel like I need to be whinier in the songs. I don’t feel like I need to get better at guitar tapping; everyone’s already really good at guitar tapping. I feel like people like Equipment because of the lyrics and the choruses and the chemistry in the band and the spirit. I don’t think we need to conform; if anything, we should just keep going, and if it doesn’t work, then I guess it just doesn’t work, you know? 

SWIM: Yeah. I love that. 

NICK: But you know, it’s a risk. 

SWIM: Yeah, I’m picking up what you’re putting down. That’s cool.

Photo by Samuel Leon

SWIM: Billy, I guess you'd better close your ears for this one. I view Equipment very much as existing on a spectrum. I have a playlist of y’all’s songs that remind me of Death Cab for one reason or another, including those covers, and, to me, there’s a spectrum for this band with blink-182 on one side and Death Cab on the other.

If you got the chance to do the next record or next EP or a one-off single with Chris Walla or someone from blink’s camp, who would you pick? 

NICK: Definitely not fucking Travis Barker. Are you kidding me? 

SWIM: [Laughs] You could do Mark Hoppus if you want, he does some production stuff. 

NICK: He did produce Motion City soundtrack…

SWIM: Yeah. So that’s kind of up Quippy’s alley. 

NICK: I don’t think either of them really know anything anymore. Which is okay, they did what they needed to do. 

SWIM: But if they reached out and were like, ‘I love your stuff. I wanna record something’ you’d just stick to what you’re doing, which is cool.

NICK: Well, that’s really tough, ‘cause obviously the dollar signs are working with blink-182. 

SWIM: Yeah, yeah. You could be opening for MGK next tour, for all you know… 

NICK: [Laughs] Ugh, true. I think MGK has more money than Ratboys, I would argue, so if I wanted more money… That’s tough, but actually it’s not really. 

SWIM: Well, it sounds like your answer would be neither, so that’s totally fair. 

NICK: No, I would work with Chris Walla for sure. 

BILLY: I bring that up more than anybody that you should bring Chris Walla into the studio.

NICK: Yeah, Billy wants a collab.

SWIM: Get him in here!

BILLY: I wanna do an Equipment co-production with Chris Walla so bad. 

SWIM: I think that would rock. 

NICK: That’s the one thing that would bring Billy to Seattle for five months. 

BILLY: No, I won’t. 

NICK: Just kidding. I dunno if that would get him off the East Coast. And bring Chris from, uh, Norway. 

No, I don’t think I would really like… Okay. Don’t– Travis Barker’s gonna see this now. Let me rephrase my answer… I think for our future music, I see Chris Walla as a more appropriate option.

SWIM: [Laughs] Okay. That’s a very, uh, political answer. 

NICK: [Laughs] That’s gonna be the most boring answer. 

SWIM: I swear I’m not doing this to make you look bad; this isn’t Gotcha DIY journalism.

NICK: It just came to mind how Travis Barker apparently sometimes does reach out to bands. 

SWIM: Really? 

NICK: Watch him see this and be like ‘fuck these people.’

SWIM: He does seem like he follows some stuff, but also he’s married to a Kardashian and busy and probably working on, like, a Vitaminwater collab, so I don’t think he’s fully with it like that. But you never know. 

NICK: That’s a good spectrum, though. We always talk about that in the studio. I think I would say the two ends are like… yeah, blink and Death Cab are great. Somewhere in the middle is like Weezer and Elliot Smith.

SWIM: Okay, yeah. We’ll get a full grid going by the end of this like a political spectrum.

BILLY: That’s honestly such a large part of the conversation here is trying to figure that out. 

SWIM: Well, I hear a ton of Death Cab, but I’m from Portland too, so I just feel like I’m drawn to that kind of cloudiness. I think that was all over the last EP, specifically. I could just hear that a ton, especially the last song, which I loved. Are you guys cooking up any more seven-minute tracks?

NICK: No, this is all pop music now. 

SWIM: [Laughs] Okay. All right. Cool, cool. 

NICK: Just kidding. But, yeah, I would say that this song that we’re about to record might be the most pop-punk on the record, but there’s absolutely more Death Cabby moments than ever throughout the whole album. 

SWIM: Cool. Love that.

Photo by Samuel Leon

SWIM: Going back to the two Drink Singles, you have said that you just planned to do those two, but was there ever a third beverage concoction that you guys had in mind, or one that people had pitched to you? 

NICK: I’ve heard some good ones pitched. The funniest one I can’t even remember if we came up with or not, but I think it was “Malort root beer” or something. “Root beer reposado,” but that’s tequila as well. But no, we didn’t really have any plans to do another drink song.

BILLY: It was just those two, and then you’re done.

NICK: Within the band, I had thought about striking while the iron was hot, like I could write a full Blue Album vibe of drink songs, and we could just put it out. Then, within the band, I think Jake specifically was like, ‘You know, we got a record being written right now, we should probably just focus on that.’ But I’m always like, ‘oh, what if we did this type of album to transition into doing that kind of album.’

I mean, it’s still in the running that we could do just a power pop 30-minute banger that is like the drink songs, but I don’t think we have any plans to. In fact, “espresso lemonade” wasn’t even the plan; that kind of came in later. There was gonna be a B-side to “tequila redbull,” but that B-side is actually now gonna be on this record. 

SWIM: What city are you talking about in “espresso lemonade”? Was there a specific place in mind? It’s pretty visual, so I was just wondering what you’re tapping into.

NICK: There’s definitely vibes of New York, because, I mean…

SWIM: It’s expensive.

NICK: Recording here is kind of fun, just going into Manhattan and basically living that espresso lemonade lifestyle. We had moved to Denver shortly before. I had been living in Denver for a decent amount of time before that song was fully written, but it was pretty inspired by that. Denver’s such a cushy place; it’s expensive, but it’s very much that kind of vibe.

SWIM: Yeah. A little off-putting. 

NICK: With some of the lyrics, I was trying to reference specific parks or whatever, and the rhymes wouldn’t work out. I did find a coffee shop by a park called Eleanor Park in Houston, or something, and I almost said “spot by Eleanor,” but I feel like that wasn't as forward a lyric as “on Eleanor.”

Now it’s funny because, I won’t specify who, but there is an Eleanor [street] that a very close friend lives on, so I’m there often, and it’s funny because they’re the spot on Eleanor now. So it’s an amalgamation to answer your question.

SWIM: Cool. Yeah, that’s sick. 

NICK: I hope to give another three-page answer for the next question. 

Photo by Samuel Leon

SWIM: For First time using slang, you had alluded to that EP essentially being a writing exercise based on the album art, which was originally just a picture someone just had sent you guys, but then you went and turned it into those three songs, including the three-act structure of that last one. How did that materialize? 

NICK: I’m a fan of people who fully embrace the fact that we live in a time where bands can interact with their fans instantly online. I think a lot of bands either pretend not to see it at all, or they do it too much, but I like doing it just enough. I think, considering Equipment’s sort of like, uh, cult… community? I don’t wanna say “following,” it’s community. But because of that, I’m able to post something, and people interact with it; there’s no mystery there, but it’s rarely intersected with the actual releases so far. Kind of on the same train, Death Grips has done stuff like that in their heyday, just subverting expectations. 

When we first saw that picture that became the cover art, we shared it and were just like “lol,” but we knew that no one was gonna expect us to write a whole EP about it, including the person who took the photo. I was like, ‘You know, I have all these random ideas in my head right now, and I kind of think that I just need somewhere for them to go while I’m writing this record.’ 

SWIM: Yeah. That’s cool.

NICK: And you know, I really like EPs in general, that’s how Equipment kind of got our footing. It’s fun approaching an EP as if it’s a record, ‘cause you can fully flesh it out. I would say First time using slang has its own vibe. Even though all the songs are a little bit different, you can kind of tell it’s us just trying stuff. 

SWIM: Yeah. It felt a little more spur-of-the-moment. That’s cool. 

NICK: And it was fun—just such a weird album cover, tracklist on the front. I always like that, I think it’s interesting when bands do that.

SWIM: Yeah. I’m sure the person who took that photo was geeked to be immortalized in that way. 

NICK: Yeah. They were pretty stoked. I don’t even know their name. I asked how to credit them, and they just told me the name of their band, which is little field. 

Photo by Samuel Leon

SWIM: Last year, I caught about two hours of your three-hour all-request acoustic set and thought that rocked. It was cool seeing you, Penny, and Ellie [Hart] reinterpret those songs. Would y’all ever do a full-on acoustic album, or is that too pop-punk to be doing acoustic renditions of stuff? 

NICK: This sounds so jaded, but I think it’s just realistic. If we were more popular by now, I would highly consider it, but I think it’s kind of bad to rest on your laurels when you’re still a growing band. 

I think of this tour we’re about to go on with The Wonder Years, and every single night we’re gonna be a new band to like a thousand people. So for them to go to your Spotify and the first thing they see is an acoustic album of old songs, which could be weird and bad for growing. 

However, I have toyed with doing an album tentatively titled “Versions For Grandma.” Because I think the core of Equipment songs is actually pretty palatable. Just making really pleasant Sufjan Stevens-esque versions of all the songs could be pretty fire, but I don’t know if that’d come out as Equipment or a Nick solo thing. I would probably just want to live in those arrangements and do it all… not myself, but I could see it as more of a solo endeavor, even if it would be like an Equipment release. Or we would do it all as a unit. We don’t really have any plans. I will say I have thought more and more about acoustic touring between bigger tours. 

SWIM: I mean, it’s cool to see those songs done that way, and that’s how the band started more or less too. But yeah, that makes sense, you don’t wanna return to the well that early.

NICK: I would love to eventually. 

SWIM: Equipment has been on some pretty mega tour lineups in the last few years: Free Throw, Cloud Nothings, The Wonder Years. What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned from touring at that scale? Are there any things you saw and balked at and affirmed your decision to keep things at a more DIY scale?

NICK: I’m grateful that, up until this point, we haven’t had to pay a merch cut. I think that’s about to change in less than a month, unfortunately, but hopefully, a lot of venues will look the other way for the support acts. 

I think one of the most intimidating tours was Cloud Nothings, not because there would be so many people there, they were all well-attended shows, but it wasn’t like, “oh my God, I’m nervous, all these people,” it’s more that they take the artistry of their music very seriously. I’m not saying any other band that we’ve toured with doesn’t do that, but one thing that the emo scene has going for it is a lack of pretentiousness. No one in Cloud Nothings is pretentious; they’re just writing the music they feel like at any given moment. It just so happens to be more indie-leaning than emo-leaning. It’s a little bit of a darker shade than if you go see a band like Equipment at Faux, where we are like making jokes on stage and leaning into that sort of blink-182 energy we talked about earlier. 

It’s hard to be the chameleon that tries to fit in with each sort of band that we’re opening for. I think a good example of synergy with that sort of silly energy was when we toured with Origami Angel because a lot of the ethos of their songs is more carefree, youthful, and nostalgic. Then on the flip side, when we toured the whole country with Mat Kerekes last year, we had a song or two in the setlist that, in hindsight, didn’t make that much sense considering the bill, and I think hurt us more than helped us. So it’s almost like deciding what side of yourself to show is the real puzzle when opening for bigger bands. 

SWIM: That was actually a perfect segue, ‘cause the last thing I was gonna ask is tied to what you mentioned earlier about this Wonder Years tour and thinking about how this is the first time all these people are seeing the band potentially. Safe to assume that’s most of the crowd, so how are y’all approaching the set list? It sounds like you’re pretty aware of your perception and the shades of indie rock and pop-punk. I think that Equipment fits into a lot of those buckets super nicely, so how do y’all play that up or decide what’s gonna be part of the set list?

NICK: I think, thankfully, with the Wonder Years, we won’t be punished for playing into our pop-punk side. We were considering cutting “Raptured Trax, pt. 2” from our set list relatively permanently just because we don’t know how representative it is of us going forward, but we figured this is a popular song, and this is probably the crowd that would like the song more than any other tour we’ve opened for, so that got added back in. 

I think it would be a mistake to treat our next tour as the promo tour for First time using slang because it is such a niche release in our catalog, so we’re actually just pulling what we view as the best songs from our whole discography. Just a good in-between of what’s popular, what we like to play, and what we think we sound best playing.

SWIM: I’m trying to think of a suitable way to end this that’s not just spilling the beans on the new album or just ‘come catch us on tour,’ but just a way to point towards the future a little bit and what y’all are gearing up for in 2026. 

NICK: We’re being pretty transparent about the album, or at least as much as we know. I can say that we’re gonna wait until it feels right to release it and, you know, the vision of the album, when all that stuff that explains everything is ready, that’s when it’ll come out. 

I really do understand people who think first time using slang or even “tequila red bull” are a downgrade from our other stuff. I think that’s subjective, but I think everything we’ve gone through as a band has led up to this record. For now, I can say that anyone who thinks that this album is worse than any of our old albums, I would say this will be the wrongest they’ve been about that opinion. 

Friko – Something Worth Waiting For | Album Review

ATO Records

I sometimes fear that I’m nothing but a prisoner of suggestion. With so much stimuli out there, am I actually parsing things, or am I just letting them steer me?

Let’s take, for example, the band Friko. I was really into the group’s debut, Where We've Been, Where We Go from Here, when it was released back in the early days of 2024. While listening to it, I’d often find myself thinking of Radiohead, but I couldn’t fully put my finger on why. Then I realized that one of my intros to Friko was a video on Youtube of them covering “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” at their record release show. Was that it? Was watching one video enough to put them into my brain’s Radiohead cabinet? Am I even driving this car? 

A few weeks after having this realization, I put the record on while hanging out with some friends, and one of them remarked that it reminded him of Radiohead. It was an interesting development, as I was positive that this guy knew nothing about the aforementioned cover. Then, months and months later, another friend turned to me during a Friko show at The Empty Bottle and said, “I’m going to tell my kids this is Radiohead!” He didn’t know they covered them either. The wheels began to turn again. Maybe my initial feeling was sound. Maybe I do have autonomy. 

I bring all of this up because, as I listened to Friko’s new record, Something Worth Waiting For, I often found myself thinking about the Flaming Lips, and that old paranoia returned. I began to wonder, did this connection form because the band toured with the Flaming Lips not so long ago? Is my brain just making haphazard connections of convenience? 

After some more thought, I’ve decided it doesn’t matter. Sure, maybe the connection first came to my mind because of that tour, but if we go a level deeper, isn’t it likely that creative threads linking the two bands are part of what led to Friko getting that support slot in the first place? Both groups certainly have an appreciation for the grander side of pop songwriting, something Friko really lean into on Something Worth Waiting For. 

This record is Friko’s first as a four-piece after the addition of bassist David Fuller and guitarist Korgan Robb (side note: be sure to check out Robb’s other band, the courts), and though “sparing” is never a word that I would have used to describe Friko in the past, you can really feel them working on a bigger scale here. This first really struck me on “Choo Choo,” where the background harmonies throughout the chorus and outro have a really satisfying added depth. I felt the same thing one song later on “Alice,” where things get almost choral as the track drives to a close.

The song that I’d say most bowls me over here, though, is “Hot Air Balloon.” I can’t get enough of it. The song’s arrangement is absolutely killer, featuring some of the best bass lines that I’ve heard this year, and the way the lead guitar follows the main melody during the song’s chorus massages your brain in a way that’s just divine. It’s also maybe the best synthesis we get of the old Friko and the new, with the first verse giving us dual harmonies between Niko Kapetan and Bailey Minzenberger before things grow and grow to a triumphant finale that reminds you this is a capital-B Band that we’re dealing with here. I’ve seen Friko several times, and my favorite parts of their shows have always been when all four members are going all out singing together. Having that replicated in the closing minutes of this track and other songs like “Alice” and “Seven Degrees” really elevates the record. 

Speaking of Friko live, I’ve been dying to get my ears on the studio version of “Guess” since I first heard it performed a year ago when the band opened for BC,NR at the Salt Shed. It’s such a perfect show-opening song, and I was curious to see if that would fully carry over on record. Well, in a perhaps unsurprising turn of events, it also works incredibly well as an album opener. I kind of don’t want to say much more about it because there are elements to it that shouldn’t be spoiled, but damn, what another great song. 

One thing that I came to appreciate more about Something Worth Waiting For through multiple listens was the interplay between themes of travel and stasis. On the one hand, you have all these songs about different modes of transportation — “Choo Choo,” “Hot Air Balloon,” and “Dear Bicycle” — then you have lines like “In the background I'll be there / Because some things never leave there” on “Certainty” and “Someday we'll lay statues on this dirt beneath our feet / we'll be running circles round it just you wait and see” on the title track. Sometimes these themes are in direct contrast, particularly with “Hot Air Balloon” and “Choo Choo,” which are about escape, but as the album closes on “Dear Bicycle,” there’s a convergence that brings everything home. 

Early on, the album’s closing track presents travel not as a means of getting away but as a means to explore, with Kapetan singing “Bicycle I'm waiting for you outside we've got things to do / there's alleys streets and avenues and gas stations we've yet to cruise / so stick around.” It’s a beautiful and relatable sentiment, this realization that exploration need not take you too far from home. As the track continues, we get a more bittersweet set of lines: “Bicycle your rust is showing, what has happened to your bones / You’re rusty now but have a drink, there’s kids around that want to play and you can’t let them down.” This is where I really came to understand how those themes of travel and stasis connect; the person who got so much from exploring is ready to move on. The bicycle and those gas station rides are not for them anymore, but the narrator still understands the power those moments held and recognizes that others might follow a similar path. 

At the same time, there’s this sadness that comes with watching places and things grow old around you, whether that’s realized through rust on a bicycle or the dilapidation of the town around it. At some point, you just want to move on, but in doing so, you don’t want to forget the good ways those experiences shaped you. Maybe you leave, but those moments tied to that place sustain. That’s where track two’s “Wish I took the train today / Wish I took it almost every day / I’ll take it far away” connects with track five’s “In the background I'll be there / Because some things never leave there.” It’s the perfect place to end. 

There’s something about the way Friko’s sound has changed from the first album to this one that’s tied up in this, too. They’ve definitely evolved and progressed, but through that, there are still these echoes and threads—in Niko’s yelps, in little piano passages, in the way that harmonies come together—reflecting who they were before. And not to be the Friko-Readiohead or Friko-Flaming Lips guy again, but I think that’s just another way that I see Friko fitting into the same lineage as those two bands. Radiohead somehow always sound like Radiohead, even when they put out an album that’s not in any way like the one that came before it. The Flaming Lips moved from noise rock to psych-pop while still maintaining a sense of theatrics that was core to their identity. The reason I think these types of bands are able to maintain a continuity is that their shifts are born of an organic desire to explore new things rather than a methodical “let’s change things up on the next one” approach. I’m not saying Friko LP1 to LP2 is The Bends to Kid A, but that’s the kind of range that seems to be building here. Who knows, maybe their next release will have me questioning my motivations for likening them to Unwound or Depeche Mode. Ultimately, all that really matters is that they sound like Friko. If they do, I’m always going to love it.    

---

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.