Exploring the Atmosphere: An Interview with She’s Green

Photo by Myles Ross

In a world that is becoming more chaotic and artificial by the day, the act of finding your peace has never been more important. The environment that we surround ourselves with is essential to maintaining our sanity and cultivating our creative inner world. Rising indie rock band She’s Green recognize this and have tailored their specific act of creation by going back to basics on the most human and naturalistic level. The Minneapolis quintet has made a habit of heading to various forests, lakes, and quarries to center themselves while creating the kind of music that not only replenishes their own souls but also those of the fans who listen to their music. 

The band – comprised of singer Zofia Smith, guitarists Liam Armstrong and Raines Lucas, drummer Kevin Seebeck, and bassist Teddy Nordvold – has established a worldwide following solely off a few EPs and a handful of singles. The music these five create speaks for itself with lush textures that are richly melodic, designed to draw you into inescapable dreamy atmospheres. Their songs have a cinematic quality, where one stroke of a guitar can feel gut-wrenching, then exhilarating at the drop of a hat. Smith’s otherworldly vocal range, matched with the whirling dervish noisy-yet-melodic guitar leads, is a combination that is just killer, and it’s clear as day why this band is connecting with so many people before they even have a proper debut album under their belts.

The group’s newest EP, swallowtail, has the gratifying feeling of a band finally putting together the pieces of their true potential. Opening track “locket” possesses a clear reverence for the shoegaze ancestors of our collective past, nodding heartily toward the lineage of 90s greats like Slowdive and Cocteau Twins. My favorite song, the mid-album cut “mettle,” has a smoggy wash of reverb-drenched guitar riffs that are thunderous in all the right places. One track later, “keeper” is another standout in which the rich guitar textures are painted with precision, and Smith’s vocal register is yet again a major highlight. It’s one of those songs that you can put on while staring out at the night sky, glaring at the stars and getting lost in space. 

I got a chance to chat with Zofia Smith and Liam Armstrong over Zoom, where we discussed everything from their patented “moss music” sound, the indie scene out in Minnesota, and touring China for the first time. We even managed to sneak in some Jonas Brothers talk.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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SWIM: I read that you describe your sound as “Moss Music.” 
What does that label mean to you? 

ZOFIA: Moss Music is a small thing that nourishes its environment and is very firm and dense, but also fuzzy and soft. I think that really describes our sound. Sometimes there's a love sound, and it’s a lot; then it’s heavy, and then there’s this gentleness to it. The point of us making music is to create an environment for a person to nourish their soul. 

SWIM: Are there any other bands that you would consider Moss Music? 

LIAM: That is so tough. I would say Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. He makes an ambient kind of tape guitar. I'm also gonna say George Harrison… And let’s get Weyes Blood in there too.

SWIM: What is it about dream pop and shoegaze that attracts you guys to make records in a similar aesthetic? 

LIAM: We had a huge obsession with 90s bands, but also music with ambient textures. We wanted to see how far we could push experimentation with the sound of a guitar. In a way, we tried to make it not sound like a guitar anymore. I think this helps me paint a more grandiose picture that also leans into our interests in movies and visual art. 

ZOFIA: Those sounds have always seemed captivating. I'm instantly drawn to the sounds of Beach House and that beautiful chorus reverb sound. It just invites me in, and I want to wrap up in a blanket and sink into it. This is the best, most comforting sound to me. That started my deep dive into shoegazing dream pop. That obsession made me want to try it out myself and see what I would come up with with the same sort of sounds. 

SWIM: What was the first concert you ever went to?

LIAM: The first concert I went to with my dad was this folk rock band, Dawes. Then I also saw Rush with my dad. So definitely bands on different ends of the spectrum. 

ZOFIA: My first one was the Jonas Brothers. I was obsessed with them. My parents were kind of in a different lane, so I got into cool music in high school, and it felt like I had all the cool discoveries a bit later than most people. 

SWIM: I gotta ask, did you have a favorite Jonas brother? 

ZOFIA: Nick was my favorite.

LIAM: I also went through a huge Jonas Brothers phase as a kid. My favorite was either Nick or Joe. I don't know, it’s too hard to pick. 

SWIM: I think it was scientifically proven that Nick is the coolest Jonas brother. Who are we to argue with scientists? Are there bands you listened to growing up that influence what you're doing sonically today? 

LIAM: Definitely, I used to listen to a lot of Coldplay and Death Cab for Cutie, because that's what my parents would throw on around the house. That music definitely opened up this kind of emotional side of me. I really just wanted to make some heartfelt music. That still always resonates with me. 

ZOFIA: I don't know if the music I heard growing up did so much for me because I listened to a lot of pop music. I think that definitely has helped me with certain melodies, though; you can come up with a pop melody and put it into any song for a chorus. I was listening to Celine Dion and Mariah Carey, just a lot of female pop artists. It plays a role in the melodies that I come up with, because I was always singing around the house and taking videos of me singing certain big pop songs. 

SWIM: Can you talk to me about how you come up with your melodies? Do you try to find certain pockets lyrically? How do you come about those? 

ZOFIA: Honestly, I am freestyling over something that they made, or we're jamming, and it’s just gibberish coming out. I don't usually have the words first. Usually I'm diving into the instrumental, and sometimes I'll find words in that. I'll listen back, and maybe subconsciously I'm saying this or my heart is telling me that. Other times, I'll have something written beforehand if I can't come up with a melody, and I'll see what works with the lyrics I already have. But, normally I'll come up with the melody first.

Photo by Liam Armstrong

SWIM: Your writing is really eclectic. Is there a specific formula in how She’s Green creates songs? 

LIAM: Nowadays, we all get in the practice space, and we'll be jamming, or we'll start with somebody's guitar riff. Sometimes one of us will have a fully fleshed-out demo, and it won't get changed much. I would say we're leaning more towards writing as a group and building off something that someone brings to a practice session. 

SWIM: How difficult is it to write within a group of people as opposed to solo? 

LIAM: It was definitely something that we all had to learn together, but I feel after touring with each other for so long and practicing so much together, we're all super comfortable now. 

SWIM: I’m always fascinated by how bands come up with names. How did you decide on She's Green? 

LIAM: We were just throwing out names. I think there was something about She’s Green that was kind of vague, but you can also apply a lot of meaning to it. The name kind of paints a metaphorical picture. She’s Green sounded cool and, for us, symbolized Mother Nature in a way because we are all really into plants. 

ZOFIA: I like that the name has a feminine identity. I know we're a band where I'm the only woman in the group, but our music is honestly pretty feminine from our melodies and everything that we're doing. I just think it's cool that we have a feminine-sounding name.

SWIM: What were some of the names that were on the cutting room floor? 

ZOFIA: Moon Due was an option, and before that, Liam and I had released a couple of songs under the name Sad Films. 

SWIM: You described your love of 90s music earlier. Are there any 90s bands you would love to dream of playing with? 

ZOFIA: Slowdive is my number one. Every time I've seen them, I'm overwhelmed. It’s just so, so beautiful.

LIAM: We're playing with Chapterhouse. They're a very sick band from the 90s, and that's a dream come true. 

SWIM: Is there a song you're most proud of creating on swallowtail? 

LIAM: I'm gonna say “close your eyes” because it's a song we've had for a really long time and we’re finally ready to get it out there. 

ZOFIA: Yeah, that one specifically we were sitting on for a long time, and we were messing with the instrumentation for a while, shortening parts, lengthening parts, and re-organizing them. We’ve been working on that song for two and a half years. We finally have this beautiful song, and it feels complete, and I don't want to change anything. It just feels so rewarding to have that payoff. 

SWIM: When you have a song that takes two and a half years to create, how do you fight through that? Do you go at the song head-on, attacking it daily? Do you just let it simmer for a bit? What kind of methods do you work through with writer’s block on a song?

ZOFIA: We put that song on the back burner for a second and took some time away from it because I wanted to have a clear head going in. That way we could listen with a new perspective on what it needs. I think we gave “close your eyes” a few months, actually. We just kept giving it more space to breathe. 

LIAM: It's also been kind of tough for us to really sit down and work on stuff in between touring. Some stuff just gets pushed to the back. There are still things that we would find that I say, “Wow, this is really cool.” It's a constant barrage of information that brings a lot of the good ideas, but also takes time to really find them.

ZOFIA: Our bassist Teddy was the one who figured out “close your eyes.” He knew right away what he wanted while we were practicing, so that definitely helps when someone comes in and knows exactly what they want to do with a song.

Photo by Nick Cai

SWIM: How was it touring in China? How big of a culture shock was it going from your home state of Minnesota all the way to China? 

LIAM: It was wild. I had been to Asia before, and our other guitarist, Raines, has been as well. It was just an insane experience. It helped a lot that Raines actually speaks Mandarin, so it was really fun to communicate more easily with the locals. The food is amazing, everything is affordable, and it's easy to get around. All the crowds were so tuned-in and very polite.

ZOFIA: It was cute. We had Raines on the end of the stage because he could have conversations with people. We could move him along, and then they could talk to him, and it was so sweet to hear from them. We got a bunch of letters from them. 

But it was so nice having Raines there. There were a lot of people that said to us, “I'll take you for a ride, come with me,” and Raines would say, “Okay guys, let's go.” We'd just be in some random person's car. We don't know what they're saying up front. We don't know what's happening. But it's so sweet to see how they open up to Raines and how interested they are in our culture. They're speaking with him about politics, and it was so cool to get that perspective. A lot of people were like, “If you're going to China, be careful,” but it just felt so safe, and everyone was so sweet.

SWIM: How did that feel when people on the opposite side of the world are so attentive and caring about your songs and connecting to your music?

LIAM: It was unbelievable. We were not expecting that at all. I was worried there would be around 10 to 20 people at every show, but it blew us away to have near sellouts every night.

ZOFIA: We were shocked. These venues have a capacity of 300 to 500. We just thought there's no way people are gonna show up, you know? We're gonna get like 15 people, but it was actually bigger than our normal show in America. Honestly, it’s unreal. People had signs they made for us. They wanted to take pictures.

SWIM: To take things back home, your sounds are very scenic. Is there a favorite forest or nature walk you like to go back stateside?

LIAM: We really love St. Croix Falls near River Falls, Wisconsin. There's also Kinnickinnic State Park. It’s a really clean trout stream, and it's nice to get down there because it feels like a different world. We just hang out,  take acoustic guitars, and write.

SWIM: Do you have any favorite bands from Minnesota?

LIAM: Yeah, definitely, The Replacements, obviously. Bands that are currently kind of up and coming are like Lana Leone, Mother Soki, and Berzica. 

SWIM: How tight-knit is the Minnesota indie scene? 

LIAM: It's super welcoming. I mean, people are always willing to help you out with anything you need. It’s so inclusive and also safe. A lot of people really look out for each other. I don't think we would have started playing in a band if we hadn't seen all these cool bands growing up. 

ZOFIA: I had been going to local shows since high school, so it was really just such a welcoming and tight-knit community, and everybody kind of knows each other, even if you're playing in a different genre. It's not just like a folk show or an emo show, you know, we kind of cross paths with the lineups. I love that.

SWIM: Is there anything you would like to accomplish before releasing your debut album? 

LIAM: Just taking everything in, I feel like right now, we're kind of in the brainstorming stage of creating. It's all up in the air. I think it's finding the time to actually sit down and write. We'll probably end up going somewhere, maybe this winter, like a cabin, to start writing it. But right now it's basically all ideas. I mean, we have some songs written and some we're still working on, but I think it'd be really cool to sit down and try to conceptualize the album itself. 

ZOFIA: I personally wanted to be more thought-out, like creating a story and a theme. It would be fun to have a visualizer for the whole thing, like a movie. That would be an ideal scenario where we could come up with some sort of plot and get a cohesive video because our music is very cinematic. I'm excited about some of our ideas from what we've been working on and making something out of that. 

SWIM: Speaking of cinematic, you both directed your music video “paper thin.” How fun was it creating from another platform?

LIAM: That was super fun. It’s something that we also get to do on the side just for fun because all of us are really into films. It was really fun to try our hand at that. 

ZOFIA: It was cool to have direction that day. We had a plan, but it was cool to be like, ‘let's do this. No, let's do this.’ That was a fun environment; nobody was being intense, and we didn't feel stressed about timing. We were just kind of going with the flow. That ended up being one of our favorite videos because it was just a lot of fun and low stakes.

SWIM: Final question. With both of you being big film buffs, what's your favorite movie you've seen this year? It could be new or old.

ZOFIA: Honestly, Purple Rain. It’s a Minnesota classic. I hadn’t seen that movie until recently, and it was awesome. It’s really inspiring. 

LIAM: For me, this Cantonese film called Love on Delivery, that we just went and saw in the theater. It was so funny and just a good time. It was hilarious. I definitely recommend that. You're looking for a goofy movie. 

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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.

knitting – Souvenir | Album Review

Mint Records

When you don’t know who you are, it’s easy to let the world drown out the part of your brain that can tell something is wrong. You know the corner of your mind that whispers things you’d rather ignore, don’t you? The one that questions if the gender you were given is the right one. Or if you hurt that loved one. Or if you need a new job or new friends or a new city. It is so quiet compared to the noise from outside, that’s just what happens when you need repression to keep yourself alive. But no matter what happens outside you or how much you actively try to silence that nagging feeling, it will always linger. That voice is all over Souvenir by knitting. 

knitting first appeared as the bedroom project of Mischa Dempsey in 2021 with their self-titled Bandcamp tape before expanding into a full band for 2024’s Some Kind of Heaven. That record demonstrated how, even with more minds contributing to each track, Dempsey’s writing could still grow more insular. Their sophomore album, Souvenir, has an even narrower focus on Dempsey's perspective, and the result is a record of patient indie rock capable of subtle devastation. 

The core of these songs is Dempsey’s singing, a solipsistic murmur that crawls through the mix like that whisper in your ears. Even when the music rises, as we hear on the chorus of lead single “I Want To Remember Everything,” their voice remains steady, untroubled by the emotional turbulence around them. Dempsey’s voice is emblematic of the philosophy that underpins these songs, one that they explain plainly on the chorus of “Sunrise,” in which they sing, “I’m trying everything to reach / Another version of me beneath / Layers of static and latency / I’m underground, and I need relief.” Figuring yourself out is a Sisyphean task to begin with, but when your entire emotional world is engulfed in external complicators, that task becomes less about getting the boulder to the top of the hill and more about finding the peace to keep it in place. Or as Dempsey puts it on “Here Comes,” “on and on the world spun / and shook me up.”  

One of my favorite songs on Souvenir is “Shuffle,” for how Dempsey grapples with the difficulties that come with realizing you need to move from passivity. The opening lines “told me / to go easy on myself / I said I’m not sure where to start,” are, for a girl who has avoided therapy for years, far too relatable. How do you unwrap all the layers of repression? How do you address the fears of something bad happening when “we were laughing / with reckless abandon”? That fear comes up again on “I Wasn’t Fully Cooked,” a song built around Dempsey asking if their existence is anything but a tree falling in a forest with no one around to hear it. Is your pain still valid? Can you even claim to be a person when no one acknowledges you? Those are the questions you ask when “[you] can only see / with the aperture of a child.”

My other favorite song here is “Sequel.” The first verse into the chorus sounds so seductive as Dempsey coos that they know assistance is an option, and that not every problem can be fixed alone. The rest of the song captures how hard it is to pretend like you don’t need help. My favorite moment is when they switch up from “if I called, you would come” in the first chorus to “I am not so innocent” in the second. 

When Souvenir closes on “Exit Desire,” Dempsey is alone. After a record spent swaddled in the mix by their bandmates, it all ends with Dempsey singing, “‘cause I know I gotta leave, but I’m not sure where to go” with nothing but a single guitar and the occasional synth. Throughout its runtime, Souvenir vividly documents the difficulties of prioritizing yourself, and it ends with the greatest challenge of all: that we’ll never really know which way to go. But that is the beauty of life; there is no right choice except the one that you believe in. If you’re searching for some path or a reason for life, Souvenir can help you extricate that voice. If you’re still ignoring that whisper, these songs can help you hear what you need.   

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Lillian Weber is a fake librarian in NYC. She writes about gender, music, and other inane thoughts on her substack, all my selves aligned. You can follow her on Insta @Lilllianmweber.

Emperor X – Unified Field | Album Review

Bar / None

Emperor X, real name Chad Matheny, is an incredible example of how algorithms fail us. Look anywhere in his discography and be amazed. Uncategorizable, extremely versatile, massively talented, and underplayed. Seriously, you could pick any work from his Bandcamp and be treated to a completely new idea that doubles as a masterclass in DIY music. Until today’s release, my favorite work of Emperor X was his EP on transportation infrastructure improvements, although his 10,000-Year Earworm to Discourage Settlement Near Nuclear Waste Repositories was a strong runner-up. If we all lived our lives half as intentionally as this guy does, we very seriously might solve our problems.

In addition to being a long-time musician in the indie-punk-emo-DIY scene, Matheney is an accomplished producer and oversees a jazz club in Berlin. Earlier this year, he produced Brian Sella’s debut solo album (reviewed right here by yours truly), and both bands hit a five-date run of shows together in March. The two originally toured together way back in 2013, laying the groundwork for this rekindling over a decade later. In one final tidbit, when Emperor X and Sella announced their respective albums, they dropped their first singles on the same day. On both LPs, you hear fully actualized artists wielding years of sharpened talent and percolated thought.

Unified Field is devastating, exhilarating, and ultimately hopeful. The majority of the album was written and recorded in Ukraine, spurred by what Emperor X calls an “aesthetic emergency.” In the release announcement, he explains, “I had a strong instinct that the record would come out better, and be more meaningful, if I did it with my friends who also lived their lives under fire.” It’s safe to say that instinct was correct. This album is one of Matheny’s most produced public-facing works and comes at a time when we need clear, strong voices in art and the world.

Before talking about the tracks, we’ve got to talk about the album title. Emperor X says the name “Unified Field” is a loose reference to David Lynch and Transcendental Meditation. It’s important to point out that the album is bookended by songs named “Unified Field” and “Also Unified Field.” In the first, Emperor X brings us into the scope of this work and in the chorus insists “in the unified field / materials collapse / into a unified field / materials collapse.” In the final song, we hear a portion of the opener, but without Emperor X. This last song is the world we leave behind, the echoes of our impact in life. 

Matheney uses “unified” in the sense of being globally connected, having a shared future on this planet, and eventually being reduced to the same raw materials. It took me a lot of listens to internalize why that’s important to the album, but ultimately it boils down to the pointlessness of conflict. Seriously, we are more technologically advanced than we’ve ever been before, more “productive” than at any time in human history, and more entertained than at any point in the past. And still, we fight, we militarize borders, and we underreact as we slip into more extreme climate change. To me, that’s what this album is about—that slip, that apathy, that impending destruction. More than that, it’s about the possibility to change, to rally together, and to encourage one another. All of that AND awesome instrumentation—what a bargain.

Photo by Carly Hoskins

When Lynch evoked the idea of a “unified field” in Twin Peaks, it was used to emphasize two things: one was the Greek idea of the muses—revelatory thoughts brought to individuals seemingly from nowhere and nothing, much like Dale Cooper’s sometimes ridiculous investigative methods. The other is the balance of light and dark. Lynch was told by a “scientist” that these concepts are intrinsically related to quantum fluctuations in a field permeating the universe, which anyone can reach through meditation courses at the low, low introductory price of $1,000. That “scientist” was Dr. Chris Hagelin, who, despite having serious mathematical proficiency and a legitimate work history, believes you can literally connect your mind to this field and influence the world by meditating. What Emperor X is singing about is something different. You can tell because the refrain “In the unified field / materials collapse” uses some language that doesn’t appear in Lynch’s public remarks. 

Right about here, I should mention I’m graduating with my Ph.D. in experimental particle physics this fall. In popular culture, when someone says “The Unified Field,” they’re typically referring to a theory of everything, i.e., a single equation that governs all fundamental particles. That’s what Transcendental Meditation is about: paying some bizarre company to teach you how to connect your mind to that equation. If you can’t tell from my tone, that equation doesn’t exist, and they’re using scientific language to grift. 

The idea of everything coming together is beautiful and has broad artistic license, but it is extremely difficult to test. If you want some more science background, you can check out my blog post here. The part of that artistic license that Emperor X is using is indistinguishability (unification) at high energy. At the end of “Feeling Nothing,” we get the line “hold my hand as we vaporize / feeling nothing.” This preoccupation with destruction and technology is interwoven with religion, responsibility, and citizenship throughout the album. Some examples include: being gifted a religious icon, burning a passport, staring at screens, mistaking radio signals for the voice of god, and on and on.

In the lead single “Praise Jesus! Hail Reagan!” Emperor X uses this fiery energy to call out the zealotry of pseudo-religious churchgoers who unthinkingly rebuke the teachings of their prophet in favor of Reagan’s beliefs. Improvements in technology, such as radio, television, and the internet, have made it easier to spread all kinds of messages, including propaganda. This has led to, among other types of grifters, televangelists running pay-for-salvation models of remote worship. Transcendental Meditation follows this same model, and the main message isn’t for anyone to actually do anything, because, as Emperor X sarcastically sings in an adapted worship song, “my feelings bear the weight of moral sanction / and that all we have to do / is praise Jesus, spread the gospel.”

An important component of Emperor X’s presentation is his sense of humor, found in the mocking guitars of “Ostrich Toss,” the premise of “Pissing with the Flashlight On,” and the browser game accompanying “Superbus.” I personally can’t get further than the WFMU stage, but I keep trying because I love the lo-fi instrumental version of the song that plays in the game. In the actual song, I’m like 90% sure the piano you hear at the end of Superbus is the exact same one used at the end of Well I Mean. Together with “Cybertruck,” these songs transition the album from religion into technology and the human cost of it all.

SCREENSHOT OF SUPERBUS GAMEPLAY

On “A Mouthful of Increasingly-Dangerous Substances,” we get drowned in two ways. First by ever-stronger toxins, and then by rising water levels. None of this should be easy to swallow, yet year after year, we let glaciers melt and sea levels rise. In some ways, climate change would be easier to deal with if it weren’t so gradual. If the water weren’t boiling so slowly, maybe more of us would try to hop out of the pot. 

Emperor X describes tracking this song while vacationing in the Netherlands: “In idle moments, I found myself imagining what creeping sea level rise in a country that has always been half underwater would bring, and I began to believe with both hope and nausea that humans would adapt. There will be chaos and death along the coastlines and in the floodplains, but also something like a new normal in the lucky places that were prepared with bikes, dykes, windmills, and power pylons that could absorb the impact of the rising brine.”  

The hope and nausea that Emperor X describes are evident across the whole album. It’s difficult to see how bad climate change has already gotten and to know how much worse it will get if nothing changes. But what do you do with this knowledge? Who do you turn to? How do you put this anger into something that makes the world better? The rising lake in this song connects very neatly to the stock market in the following track, because market output is currently directly connected to global warming (thank you, industrial revolution and data centers).

Photo by Akhil Kodamanchili 

“Line Go Up Line Go Down” is a biting, scathing, acid-boring critique of all of us, everyone. Everything in the world could fall apart tomorrow, and half of the American public would still try to go to the office. This track perfectly captures the public apathy at our own destruction, guided by the waxing and waning of the stock market. “To the middle of the Earth,” we will let business leaders destroy the world if it seems to be the will of the market. As a U.S. public, we are too polite. France whips our ass at protesting, and it’s because their government understands that its people hold the power, not corporations. We—you and I personally—need to shout as loud as Emperor X. This is the answer to the question asked in the previous song. We are not powerless, “not me, not her, and not you.”

Following up that political dirge with a palette cleanse, "Ostrich Toss” is my favorite track on the album. Silly as it may seem on first pass, if you pay attention to the dialogue, it’s not really lighthearted at all. The song starts with roommates bickering about climate change and has a really cute mocking guitar in the chorus: “If you’re so mad, what are you gonna do about it?” Among the roommates’ escalating aggressions, one brings an ostrich home, and the other throws it off the roof. A week later, we realize the ostrich is the main character, setting a car on fire and driving the two terrified roommates together. The best lines of the album are “THE THINGS YOU BUILD ARE USELESS / AND THE THINGS YOU BURN ARE GOOD / YOU PUT YOUR FAITH IN CONCRETE / WHEN THE WORLD IS MADE OF WOOD.” The all-caps come from the liner notes, giving the ostrich the voice of an almighty entity as opposed to an animal, because it’s a stand-in for Mother Nature. We talk about global warming as though it will end the world, but really, all it will end is human civilization. The Earth does not care whether you, I, or any society lives to see tomorrow, and one can easily view global warming as the Earth sweating out an infection. In the infinite complexity of the natural world, the ostrich says, “I CHOOSE NOT TO DESTROY YOU / I CAN SEE THAT'S WHAT YOU WANT / AND MY FORGIVENESS WILL ANNOY YOU / SO I FORGIVE YOU / FUCK YOU / FUCK YOU.”

This album makes me feel cataclysm and optimism. Despite this, I don’t hear any alarmism in Unified Field, just an honest artistic reaction to a heating world straining under “market forces.” There is as much global conflict today as there was during World War II. Part of this album is a relief valve for the frustration of waking up to new conflicts, new propaganda, and new lost futures. The other part is hope—the hope that we, as a species, are smart enough to read the past and predict the future. If we keep going like this, destruction is our future, but we have the choice for something else. And it is as simple as a choice. I’m not saying quit your job, abandon your family, or sell everything and find a bunker. I’m saying make a choice to do good in your community. The only control we have is in our communities, so you damn sure better be using it. Emperor X has been leading his own revolution for decades, and this album is an invitation to start yours.

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Braden Allmond is a particle physicist and emo music enthusiast. He anticipates graduating from KSU in December with his Ph.D. in experimental high energy physics. When he isn’t writing his thesis, he’s data-scraping articles and books about emo music, making tables and graphs to interrogate and understand the genre.

Josaleigh Pollett – “Like a River” | Single Review

Audio Antihero

I was a wistful teenager in an era when being a wistful teenager all but required getting really into The Postal Service. During this time, I came to love the band’s story just as much as I did their sound, often fantasizing about the magic I might someday unlock working on music with a far-off collaborator. Then, I gave it a try. It was not magic. It was downloading a new version of Logic. It was receiving Sampler files with no sample. It was looking up how to roll back to an older version of Logic. It was, in short, excruciating. 

If nothing else, the experience left me with a deeper appreciation for artists who are able to excel while collaborating over long distances, which is one reason I’ve been very keen to hear Josaleigh Pollett’s new album, If I Let It Quiet. The record finds the Salt Lake City-based Pollett working with collaborator Jordan Watko under unfamiliar conditions, the pair now separated by a sea following Watko’s relocation to Japan. Though I doubt adapting to this situation came without growing pains, there aren’t any to be found on their newest single, “Like a River.” Pollett and Watko are perfectly in sync, with spaced-out synth percussion and swirling samples wrapping themselves around acoustic guitar and raw vocals in a sublime combination.

Because Pollett’s voice creates such a strong, engaging focal point, there’s plenty of room for the rest of the production to shift and play around without the song becoming disjointed. There are moments where the mostly clean lead vocal almost glitches to become part of the electric peripherals, but you always get snapped back out of the cyclone. The start of the fourth verse is particularly great, where one of the track’s more expansive soundscapes falls away to give us a pulsing bass rumble as Pollett sings the album’s title lyric, “If I let it quiet / Who am I if not my thinking?” It’s a mesmerizing moment, like having all the stage lights pulled save for one spotlight set on a masterfully delivered soliloquy.

These sectional shifts are perfectly timed and bring with them a sense of drama and gravity. All of it is impressive in its own right, but knowing that Pollett and Watkins were able to get on a wavelength like this while half the world away from each other is really incredible and only increases my anticipation to hear the rest of the record, due out this time next month.

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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.

Widemouth – No Gasoline | Album Review

Urban Scandal Records

I have been meaning to buy a chair for my patio for months. I moved here last summer, and almost a year has gone by with nothing to sit on while I stare at the stars besides the steps to my neighbor’s apartment or the hood of my car. I like the idea of having a patio chair, though. Somewhere I can exist while listening to slow, syrupy music on my speaker at a reasonable volume. Somewhere I can bask in the hotter days while mosquitoes buzz around my ears. Somewhere I can watch the trees rustle at night. Maybe I’ll even get a table too. But after all this thinking about my own patio, I never thought about getting a second chair. That is, until I listened to No Gasoline by Widemouth.

For several years, Mak Carnahan and Jamie Eder have been toiling away in Chicago, writing song after song about growing up, growing into yourself, and how friendships bend and curve with all this growth. While they released Well, a twangy EP about a similar subject in 2024, No Gasoline is their debut album, with these same concepts paradoxically tightened up and everflowing. 

This album will undoubtedly receive comparisons to the works of the current steel indie stars. These comparisons to people like Phoebe Bridgers, Katie Crutchfield, or Karly Hartzman won’t necessarily be wrong, but Widemouth makes the sound their own. The band points themselves away from Wednesday’s fuzz or Waxahatchee’s clarity, instead opting to build a minimal sound within the expansive space that alt-country provides. With the help of producers Jack Henry and Sam Genualdi, all attention is on Carnahan’s and Eder’s harmonies as they ruminate on the quietest moments of friendship.

PHOTO BY Bella Peterson

No Gasoline begins with familiarity and a lot of names: Meme’s paintings, Frances smoking, Christian gone, Rachel, your family, you, me, and her. As the listener, it is up to you to conjure images of these people while you take in the opener, “I Wish You Passed On a Little Anger.” The brushstrokes Meme painted, the steps that Frances is smoking on, whatever Rachel said to irritate us, and the emptiness that Christian left behind. By being so personal so immediately, Widemouth trusts you with their private reflections. As Lily Mitchell’s drums build, the observations turn more personal, something you could only bear to whisper: “I know you hate her / I know you dream about being choked out on the mattress / I wish you passed on a little anger / I just feel sorry / you’re getting older.” Both searingly specific and purposefully vague, the music swells as the song ends, leaving you with your hands outstretched as you desperately try to learn more about these people too.

As the pensive “Pinecone” shifts to “Hotel Pool,” the restraint Widemouth shows through the album briefly unwinds, unearthing the careful fragility that this project balances on. Part of weaving together moments of friendship is that it requires equal reflection on yourself. Amongst whispered voices and steadfast strumming, Carnahan’s voice wavers as she sings “no open tongue,” and again when she sees “no future, no intent.” The music matches these brief moments, the instruments breaking away from the haunted sound of the melodies to collide with each other while Carnahan and Eder sing, “blame your hands blame yourself / what’s the matter I can’t tell.” The song trips over itself, as one does when trying to outpace yourself, outpace your past, in an attempt to find a truer version of you.

Of all the songs in the album that teeter on the edge of an unstoppable misery, “You & Your Girlfriend,” spirals directly in. Not every memory of your friends is a good one, something Carnahan roils over as she sings “I think you said you loved me, but I really don’t know at all / you just sat up back to the wall, and you cried / hands on your temples / that’s what I recall.” It’s a plain memory, one so bleak that it’s shrouded in potential mismemory, but Carnahan knows she’s remembering this right. Eder takes over on the next verse, “you told us your girlfriend was not a good person / with fear in your eyes like a dog on the fourth / none of us knew what to say / drove into town in the morning for groceries.” These lyrics are stark, barren in their simplicity. Carnahan and Eder conjure an immediate closeness between these characters, but one so close that the fear of conflict hurts more than helps. It’s a song about whispered confessions left to linger heavily and uncomfortably in a dark but loving air. 

After Eder’s voice joins Carnahan’s to ask, “Remember when you lost it?” in “The Water,” the titular song on No Gasoline arrives, carrying the cry of Sam Genualdi’s steel guitar. “No Gasoline.” A track that immediately envelopes the listener in a dimly lit atmosphere. The tension of the album–the friction caused by years of memories, secrets, and promises—had to break somewhere, and it turns out that's right here, only a few songs away from the end of the LP. Carnahan’s voice builds and builds as she croons “no gasoline / fourteen degrees” before demanding a promise and an apology from someone she loves. Despite the agonizing demand, she and Eder end on a hopeful note: “my last lonely winter / from what I can tell.”

After “Cattle,” the album ends on an instrumental reprise of “Pinecone” accompanied by the clatter and chatter of O’Hare’s bustling hallways as people desperately try to make their connections. A fitting button for an album quilted together by names and places and reflections on the unsaid complexities of building relationships with one another. 

Summer is basically here with warm nights and loving friends. I need to buy two patio chairs.

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