Excuse Me, Who Are You? – Double Bind | Album Review
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Thumbs Up Records
I have a sinking feeling that I was a lot cooler two years ago. Back then, I was on top of new releases, ran like 20 miles a week, and always sang in the shower. Now, most days, I feel like I’m aspiring to be my old self. I lived abroad for two years and realized a few things pretty quickly: you never get back the time you spend, last-minute international plane tickets are heartbreakingly expensive, and there’s no such thing as a “makeup” funeral. I moved home last month, and, in a recent effort to correct course, I’ve been listening to “The Good Life” by Weezer twice a day (doctor’s orders) and leaning back into my old interests. Specifically, I’ve been reading way between the lines of music I like.
Excuse Me, Who Are You? (stylized as EMWAY) popped up on my radar two years ago, just after I left the US. Their debut single, “... In The Test Chamber,” was a 4-minute mission statement released in early 2022, showcasing everything the group brought to the Wisconsin emo scene and screamo at large. Noisy and unconstrained, the song was an instant addition to my running playlist, and I’ve listened to it multiple times a week since then. At the time, I remember being surprised that there was only one bangin’ single from an act that was clearly going somewhere. Luckily, I didn’t have to wait long for the group to release their Half-Life-themed EP About That Beer I Owed Ya in October of the same year.
Two years later, EMWAY have doubled down on their companion-piece method and screamed out an 18-minute LP where every song references or samples the film Perfect Blue, a 1998 animated psychological thriller directed by Satoshi Kon. The album takes its name from the movie’s fictional film-within-a-film, Double Bind. The release was accompanied by an impressively orchestrated rollout campaign with interviews, features in zines and blogs, music videos, and watch parties.
It might surprise listeners to learn Double Bind has been in the making since 2021, even before EMWAY’s EP. In addition to crushing vocals, driving percussion, and aggressive but tappy guitar work, the album has tasteful flourishes and consistent theming throughout, making the whole piece strikingly cohesive. The lyrics “I think about it all the time / I think about you all the time” from “https://mimasroom.com” exemplifies the sentiment of rumination heard throughout the album and even calls back to the band’s EP, where the same lyrics are present in “Chicken Cock.”
Sound bites introduce and conclude several songs, and ambient cues in key positions weave a unique soundscape with a careful balance between in-your-face despair and faraway ennui. These small details work together to make the album feel like an 18-minute musical short story rather than eight individual songs. Every song has forward momentum that pushes you through charged riffs, drags you under waves of twinkly atmosphere, and pummels you with throat-shredding vocal demonstrations.
Now, I’ve listened to a ton of emo and emo-adjacent music, and any time I hear a sample, I throw the song into a playlist called “Emo Media Recs.” I like to find these samples organically and mostly keep this playlist for myself as a reminder to watch the movies, TV shows, or video games that are referenced because I think understanding the broader context can give greater depth to the song. Most bands that do this sort of sampling might have one or two songs on an album with a sample, but those samples are usually from different places. EMWAY is unique in this aspect because every song of theirs has a reference of some kind, either to Half-Life in the case of their EP or Perfect Blue in the case of this new album. It’s fair to say this thing is absolutely littered with references and heavy themes, stuff that’s sure to get stuck in your teeth.
My favorite track is “https://mimasroom.com,” which is titled after a fictitious blog from Perfect Blue. The blog is written by a fan impersonating their idealized version of the main character’s former pop persona (I promise that string of words makes sense, please just watch the movie). In real life, the link takes you to an active website supporting the film, also including some blog entries we see in the movie. It’s a cool late 90’s stab at immersive media, with all the nostalgic ephemera you would expect from a blog on the early internet. This song sticks out to me for its impressive blending of styles and awesome feature from Caleb Hynes of Hey, Ily; its placement as the fourth track is the perfect switch-up. The bits of ambience in songs before feel like they lead up to this sort of faraway composition, and the more subdued parts of the album afterward feel like they’re recalling this song as a memory. Hey, Ily’s particular talent for blending chiptune and lo-fi techniques with shouts, screams, and in-betweens is front-and-center here and caused me to immediately revisit their 2022 album Psychokinetic Love Songs.
On the topic of featured musicians, four out of eight tracks on the album showcase emo talents from across the Midwest. In addition to Caleb Hynes from Hey, Ily, Tyler Stodghill of Stars Hollow is featured on the album’s lead single, “Maybe That Truck Hit Me… And This Is All a Dream…” Stars Hollow also recently released an EP that fellow Swimmer Brandon Cortez reviewed here. Next are Madison locals Ben Ludens of Tiny Voices and Maxwell Culver of Endswell, featured on “Volcano Balls” and “Double Bind,” respectively. Endswell, who shares band members with EMWAY, just released their debut EP, with a review soon to come on this very site! Clearly, there is a lot of emo talent in one geographic location, and all the groups embody DIY ethics that keep friends together and push the scene to new heights. This sort of team-up can also be seen on Tiny Voices’ 2023 album Make Up Your Place, which features both Endswell and EMWAY. It’s a good feeling to hear great artists working with other great artists, and I have officially put “See an emo show in Madison” on my list of “Life Goals for 2024” because of this album.
Despite the name, I don’t actually think Double Bind is about being caught between a rock and a hard place. The lyrics from Kyle Kinney are about his father’s passing, past relationships, and friends, which makes the title an interesting choice. My definition of a double bind is “being forced to make a losing choice in an emotionally tumultuous power imbalance, where no other course of action is possible or appropriate.” The movie Perfect Blue follows a young woman who finds herself in such a situation after jumping ship from a middling career as a pop star to try acting, where the roles are much more demanding than she anticipated. She has no way back from this choice and begins to lose her sense of self, at times believing she is the character she plays in the film-within-a-film, Double Bind. To me, this album has much more to do with losing your sense of self than with the literal concept of a lose-lose situation.
Grief haunts you. Losing someone changes you, often in ways we can’t understand until months or years later. Even after understanding, parts of your identity may be lost or changed forever. It’s a natural process of growing older, but knowing that doesn’t make it less painful or easier to deal with. Double Bind is a reaction to that grief, collecting honest bits of self-reflection, voicing frustration at life, and delivering a fulfilling musical performance, all neatly tied together with the thread from an old anime. EMWAY needed this album to get it all off their chest, setting themselves up for growth and the next big thing.
Braden is a nerdy guy from small-town Kansas who is really into emo music. He is working towards a PhD in experimental particle physics, but when he isn’t struggling to do data science, he’s running around and normally listening to good music too. You can find more of him on Substack, Twitter, Instagram, Strava, GitHub, or TikTok @braden.allmond.
