Squirrel Flower – Say a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going | Album Review

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Polyvinyl Record Co.

There’s an easy-to-understand romanticism when it comes to living a nomadic lifestyle. In its purest, most idealized form, your life has no rules; you simply make up your day as it goes along. The thought of being able to get up and go on a whim is one that many people dream of but can’t ever live. It’s a glamorous fantasy to imagine that one day you could be at a swanky bar in Los Angeles, then, on a whim, drive to the flat Midwest plains of Kansas. Maybe you’re struck with a sudden urge to venture north and visit the lush vegetation of the Pacific Northwest or head south to chase the warm weather. There are certain people who thrive with this sort of freedom, people who seem recharged, not drained, by that feeling of constant motion. Ella Williams is one of those people. 

The more I listen to the music of Ella Williams, better known by her stage name Squirrel Flower, the more I believe that this world is made for her. While her body may be based in Chicago when she’s at rest, her mind and soul will always be on the open road. Spiritually, Williams reminds me of Frances McDormand’s character in the Academy Award-winning film Nomadland. The music that Williams creates is a striking blend of raw, naturalistic, and ultra-relatable emotions. These revelations are channeled through her powerful voice and backed by reverb-drenched guitar in her early work, but scaled up to loud, cacophonous fury on more recent outings. 

The last project we left off with Squirrel Flower was in 2023 with Tomorrow’s Fire. That record was a seminal highlight for Williams that offered the best music of her career thus far. Songs like “Full Time Job,” “Stick,” and “Canyon” had the capacity to be thunderous and devastating, but possessed a quiet, centering storm within them. To back her up, Williams assembled an all-star team of indie musicians, including MJ Lenderman and members of Bon Iver and the War On Drugs, all putting in full-time shifts. Above this instrumental landscape, Williams’ ironclad voice brought an intensity to the songs that were her loudest to date. The results came back positive, resulting not just in one of the best indie records, but one of the best albums of that year. 

On her fourth studio LP, Say a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going, Williams continues to reflect the world as she sees it by amplifying what she does best. The loud moments are almost deafening while the quiet parts grasp for humanity in silence. All the while, Williams is a sturdy and reliable presence acting as the calm in the eye of the storm. 

There’s something to be said about how a change of scenery can influence your writing. A song written in the shadow of a towering New Mexico rock formation should sound different than one written while sitting beside a babbling brook in the middle of nowhere. Given how many times Williams has toured the country, both solo and with her rotating cast of road dog musicians, the influence of her accumulated miles is evident. Throughout this record, Williams sings about the physical landscapes of states like Indiana and California, but also the elements within them like the scorching-hot desert sun, foot-thick ice, and gusts of wind found on mountaintops. The opening title track sets the scene as an ear-splitting slow burner where the gods of “getting going” and “standing still” are held with equal reverence, because, sure, it’s great to be out there moving through the world, but if you don’t stop to take it all in, then what’s the point? 

The folk-inspired lead single, “Reelin,” is situated appropriately halfway through the album with shimmering acoustic guitar strokes that feel like a summer drive through the heartland. It’s a song about addiction to life on the road, contrasting flashes of normalcy in Williams’ life (“Drink my coffee / Do my chores / Trash on Sunday”) with the yearning to pack up a suitcase and leave on a whim as she sings “Oh mama I didn’t miss him / But he’s reelin’ me back again.” One song earlier, the subdued “Highway Woman” presents the restless heart of the album with Williams telling the story of a woman packing nothing but her guitar and a knife as she hits the road.  

One of the best songs on Say A Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going is “Cleveland,” where the distorted guitars hit like a freight train and have more muscles than Jean-Claude Van Damme. This track is a love letter to an overlooked city with Midwestern roots that finds itself on the outskirts of the East. It’s a city without a true home, which makes it hard to romanticize, yet the lyrics manage to find an underdog charm to it. Williams’ voice soars sky-high as she sings about liking a boy who doesn’t want to move, qualifying, “He’s cute, but he doesn’t like Cleveland.” She easily could have been singing about former Chicago Bulls center Joakim Noah, who famously said: “I never heard anybody say ‘I’m going to Cleveland on vacation.” In the end, “a few degrees of separation” provide some clarity to the other party’s lack of adventurousness and desire to take this leap, so Williams decides to hit the road solo, singing, “Guess I’ll go east on my own.” 

One of the heaviest songs on the album, “Foot Thick Ice,” feels like being caught in the middle of a Pacific Northwest rainstorm, starting gradually before building up to a torrential body-soaking downpour. The heavy feedback and guitar fuzz combine to create a sludgy tone that is beautiful as it is grimey. The soft-hard-soft guitar patterns feel like a modern approximation of the style popularized by countless PNW bands in the nineties. Immediately following, “Sick Tooth” has a little New York attitude, with Williams embracing a cool, nonchalant way of singing that Kim Gordon perfected in her heyday. Here, Williams puts her own spin on the old adage of “wherever you go there you are” by addressing the fact that new environments might seem like a solution or an escape, but often just end up presenting new problems of their own. It’s a rapid-fire rager with the shortest runtime on the album, coming in at only a minute and forty seconds. The song knows its exact assignment comes in, raises hell, and leaves. 

After the solitary sting of “Fought a Hornet,” Squirrel Flower hop back out to the West Coast for “Surfing USA,” which not only evokes The Beach Boys, but feels like a ride down the California coastline. On this track, Williams showcases her graceful vocal harmonies as she alludes to heartbreak while trying to ride off into the sunset on her bike. The shimmering guitar licks are just the cherry on top of the sundae for such a beautiful song. 

Say A Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going is as spacious as the plains of the Midwest and as textured as the rock spires of South Dakota. Each song feels like a portrait of Williams, her travels, and truths found out on the road. The record plays out like a sonic scrapbook, presenting these lessons with the understanding that the experiences aren’t universal, but the path that connects them is. Through these glimpses into her own life, Williams inspires the listener to find their own driving force, their own incantation, their own prayer to the gods of getting going. There’s an endless network of roads with the possibility to deliver you to new experiences, relationships, and emotions, and that all starts as soon as you step out your front door. Get going. Stand still. Open yourself up to something new. Even if it’s just a half step away from your normal routine, you might be surprised what’s waiting for you. 

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.

Wild Pink – Still Coming Down | Album Review

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Fire Talk

I've been thinking, maybe too much, about the many ways you can interpret the title of Wild Pink's new album Still Coming Down. I imagine my mom on the phone with a faraway friend, looking out the kitchen window, neck crooked, telling her friend, “Yeah, it’s still coming down.” I think about myself nervously texting a friend, asking if they’re planning on still coming down for a visit. I see a stranger at a bar ordering another beer, saying they’re still coming down from a bad day at work. It’s a title that demands characters and scenes, and throughout these nine songs, John Ross delivers. 

Still Coming Down is Wild Pink’s sixth LP and their first since 2024’s barnstormer Dulling the Horns. Back when that album was released, Aly Eleanor aptly described it as “rougher and rowdier than the band has ever sounded before,” and it absolutely was. Saxophone chaos and lyrics wound so tight around a steel pedal that one misstep could have veered into cacophony. Wild Pink’s previous four albums all varied between soft heartland rock and an emo twinge, but Dulling the Horns offered a foray into that sweet alternative country sound and stuck the landing. Twangier. Looser. Still Coming Down is still rough and still rowdy, but this roughness and rowdiness have been transferred away from the sound and into the stories that Ross creates within each song; imagining different people — a pleased shopper, a bank robber, someone pumping gas — living in the landscape of Wild Pink’s sound.

The album begins with “Box Store,” a track that sounds like a monologue Jason Lee’s character in Mallrats would give while walking the aisles of different stores — lyrics about a strip mall, a beloved air conditioner, and how underrated William Fichtner’s acting is. Instrumentally, the song also serves to establish the robust sound of the album, confident and solidified compared to the crunchier, still-experimental elements of Dulling the Horns. Ross has always had a fullness to his music, but with longtime bandmate Dan Keegan smashing through this record on drums and both Meg Duffy (Hand Habits) and MJ Lenderman (+ his collaborators in The Wind, Landon George and Xandy Chelmis), this is simply the loudest Wild Pink has ever been. This approach of burying complex feelings about life between opinions on Mark Wahlberg’s acting career and a cruisin’ guitar make “Box Store” a total dudes rock song, maybe the first in years that makes me think dudes rock is worth saving. 

One song later, the Remembering-Some-Guys of “Box Store” is turned on its head in “Round of Applause for the End of the World,” where Ross uses the Kennedy assassinations and the surrounding conspiracies to build up to the realization “I don’t know / What my idea of fun is anymore.” The character that Ross is singing from the perspective of in this song is interested in the shooters themselves, not Lee Harvey Oswald but his assassin Jack Ruby and Robert F. Kennedy’s killer Sirhan Sirhan, particularly the space they occupy between innocence and guilt. The guitars on the track are just as conversational as the conspiratorial lyrics, beginning an unending sound as if lost in thought alongside Ross. Next comes the album’s title track, almost slinking behind the lingering notes of the song before, its guitars washed in relentless feedback and buzz, attempting to swallow itself Ouroboros-style. Here, Ross uses the phrase “still coming down” to describe a cleansing storm raining thunderous love — a heartening notion that there’s still room for salvation in all of his observations. 

I normally wouldn’t compare Wild Pink to the Drive-By Truckers, maybe something closer to the looseness of Son Volt or the wild guitars of Drivin’ n’ Cryin — but not all twangy rock music sounds the same, Jesus. That said, there is something distinctly Mike Cooley about the first whine of Ross’ guitar in “Plates Keep Spinning”; it’s that laid-back, dry shred I’ve become accustomed to hearing right before someone starts singing about a life-altering party foul on a sticky night. “Plates Keep Spinning” isn’t far off from that; Ross compares heaven and hell to the threat of a second location being discussed at a fading party. Much like the title of the album itself, Ross’ notion about keeping the plates spinning points to this feeling of endlessness. 

The album slows down around “Simple,” a kind of modern-day bank robber epic. Over a cascading pedal steel, Ross pictures a well-insured, cheeky robber just in it for the thrill. On “500 Is The New 250,” the character observed in the story is less friendly: a man under a foreboding sky pumping gas with a “fuck you, Yankee bitch” tattoo. This proximity to hatred, just one gas pump over, fills the already dense song with dread. 

Still Coming Down ends on a rocker, “Relaxing, Special Interests,” with gentle lyrics about rewatching something you love. These softer lyrics don’t match the track's initial, harsher rhythm, yet as Ross sings about this comfortable familiarity, the song steadies too, becoming the loudest lullaby in the world. 

In the album’s final moments, Ross opts to end things with an optimistic perspective on hypothermia and the human body, singing, “Your brain is very kind / To make you think you’re warm inside / When you’re so cold / You’re dying.” It’s here where Ross answers what still coming down means to him. Despite relentless pain or sorrow or frustration, the notion that something or someone is “still coming down” implies that you believe it will eventually stop or won’t happen. It can be about rain in a desert or a tough day, but there’s a reliable sense of brevity and relief. It’s a hopeful outlook buried deep throughout an album contemplating private embarrassments or a longing to be someone else. It’ll change soon.

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

Crush Fund – GO | Album Review

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Lonely Ghost Records

The stories that can be told about trans women have undergone a dramatic shift in the past decade. A landscape that was once dominated by tales of coming out has since given way to stories of drama, friendship, and love… but especially drama. Cat Fitzpatrick’s The Callout and Emily Zhou’s Girlfriends are two books capturing the complexity of relationships in communities filled with people discovering themselves. The former is a novel in verse detailing a messy web of love, lust, and hate between six trans women in the city. The latter is a collection of short stories about Gen Z women living in New York and the everyday interpersonal drama that defines being a mid-twenties woman; roommates who won’t do the dishes, messy one-off encounters at parties, and awkward trips home. Contrast this with the book that helped popularize modern trans literature in the early 2010s: Imogen Binnie’s Nevada, a story about a trans woman who lives in New York and has limited encounters with other trans women. The novel follows her destructive behavior and simple attempts to survive while staying true to her punk roots. 

Since 2022, Crush Fund has explored this same delicious doll drama across their short but hard-hitting discography. The group’s most popular track, “Drama,” is like listening to your messiest friend gossip over lunch – easy to see how cramming that feeling into a two-minute punk track is nothing short of addictive. Members Nora Knox, Wendy Kya, Sean Kovacs, and July Brown also have a knack for putting on some of the most cathartic live shows I’ve ever seen, encouraging every crowd to exorcise their emotions, whether that’s frustration with a fling, anger at an ex lover, resentment toward your unaccepting parents, or just feeling fed up with how fucking hard it is to be trans. The band’s first full-length, GO, certainly does not abandon their obsession with drama, though as the album unfolds, Crush Fund are able to tap into some raw and honest rage, displaying their capacity to tackle all of the harsh realities of being a trans woman in 2026. 

Photo by @Ashtray_angels

Opening track “GO” sets the stage expertly, making it clear this record is not quite the same fare that Crush Fund has previously delivered. The band evokes the usual touchstone of online drama as Wendy Kya sneers, “one of us is showing symptoms of the internet,” but as the track opens up, all members join in on some stellar gang vocals insisting “you're gonna have to go.” It closes with a memory of childhood and alludes to what lies ahead for the trans youth, a declaration that “this is one of the last times home will feel like home.” It becomes apparent this is the beginning for a trans woman who is fleeing an unaccepting home to head for New York, as painful and difficult as that may be.  

Following the opener is a selection of three tracks which most closely align with the Crush Fund we’ve known so far – salacious and drama-obsessed. A highlight is the track “OPEN SECRET,” which dials up the paranoia and petty drama to eleven. The joyfully saccharine whistles at the beginning bring Crush Fund together as DIY’s most sardonic cheerleaders. The synth takes center stage, providing the most danceable melody on the LP as the track lays bare the frustrations with rumors and drama in online trans spaces. Yet it's clear that Crush Fund feel a gravitational pull toward messy drama, maybe even a reverence, as infuriating as it may be. Each of these tracks provides the perfect push pit soundtrack; they’re simply too fun to believe these girls truly hate the drama they sing about. 

Shifting their focus to more traditional emo fare, Crush Fund penned two excellent songs about heartbreak, “ILY IHY” and “BURN IT ALL.” “ILY IHY” is a standout, with a bouncy, anthemic guitar melody and a chorus designed for the heartbroken fan: “I love you, I hate you, I miss you, no fuck you.” This track also previews what is to come later on this record, as Kya puts her capacity for absolutely crushing vocals on display, layered over a breakdown that makes this reviewer want to crowdkill someone. 

Continuing to show their range, the sullen (and intentionally lowercase) “the dream” marks a tone shift. The gang vocals disappear. The instrumentation is stripped down to a lonely acoustic guitar. The lyrics are deeply haunting: “the public parks are being watched by quiet men with guns.” The song closes, warning the listener, “if you wait too long, your body will forget the dream it had.” And suddenly the dream is over, as immediately following this is a three-song run of hardcore tracks, delivering intense tonal whiplash as the album drives into the tragic core of trans existence.

There is no subtlety here. “SHOOTING II” begins with heavy feedback and a rising growl as Kya roars “I will never feel safe in public again!” Immediately the song transitions to “FFS” and its slow, tension-filled drum beat, the kind that signals to any hardcore kid that it’s time to absolutely fuck shit up. Suddenly, the lines “Forever for our sisters, forever for our hearts, forever for the ones we loved and the ones we lost” break through, screamed with such intensity that you hope Kya was able to recover her voice after. The track then opens wide, the guitars crashing down, imploring the listener to start dancing in their room. “SHOOTING I” explicitly names what has wrought so much pain and horror on the members of Crush Fund, referencing the 2022 shooting at the Colorado Springs queer club, Club Q, in which five people were killed, and 25 were injured. 

It is here that Crush Fund diverges from the drama-obsessed stories of the modern trans woman. They (correctly) recognize that the role of a trans punk band is to get loud and get angry about the endless hate that trans people endure. This year alone, at least 36 trans people that we know of have lost their lives in the United States, either as a result of murder or taking their own lives. 

Bringing the listener down from the intensity of those three tracks is the album closer, “bloody nose.” A friend of mine talks about how being trans is a series of small humiliations. Crush Fund understands this, with the refrain of “every bloody nose you get is unique.” Trans people are always being hurt. It is being misgendered at the store, it is being forced to use a deadname, it is being stared at in public. And despite this, you will always find trans people “sucking clotted blood out between [their] teeth.” Through every bloody nose and every injustice, trans people must find a way to dust themselves off and soldier onwards. 

Photo by @Ashtray_angels

GO provides the soundtrack for the modern trans woman navigating life. The woman who feels enveloped in beef, obsessing over Twitter posts and who said what about who. The woman who has her heart torn out by a messy t4t relationship. The woman who has to be suddenly and brutally reminded that she is a member of a highly oppressed group of people who are targeted on the regular simply for existing. Crush Fund deftly moves between all of these emotions. They give trans women a space to mosh, to get out all of their pent-up frustration toward a world that simply wants to see them fail. I have never seen such an overwhelming display of energy, both joyful and wrathful, than seeing them play at Liberation Weekend earlier this year.

After fighting through all of the trials and tribulations that trans people must deal with, gritting their teeth through the pain, the album closes on what is perhaps the greatest tragedy for many trans people. Relating back to the opening track “GO,” Knox sings “I cracked, and I called home to no answer.” When dealing with the everyday horrors we face, we can’t return home to safety. There is only the ability to go forward. 

Caroline Liaupsin is a DC area radio host and musician. She’s live every other Tuesday from 2–4 PM EST on WOWD-LP bringing you the hottest new DIY tracks, interviews with artists, show previews, and features on the world of DIY in DC and beyond. When she’s not too busy she writes biweekly DIY show previews and other things on her substack. She also plays bass for a trans cowpunk band thisdogllhunt.

The Process is the Reward: A Conversation with AP Lewis of American Sacred Music and Fig On Wrist Records

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Photo by Amanda Killian

The more folks I have the joy of meeting in the scene, the more sunbeams of warmth and kindness filter into my life. One such sunbeam has been AP Lewis, the person behind Atlanta-based DIY label Fig on Wrist. Though they’re only a few releases deep, Fig on Wrist is slowly carving out a distinct niche in the DIY scene with heavy music releases that include artists such as Ameokama and Meatmark. The label champions physical releases and stocks a selection of cassette tapes on their Bandcamp, both for their own roster and on behalf of other bands. I recently had the privilege of calling AP and sitting down for a chat, where we had a wonderful conversation about what makes music “heavy,” the shared millennial experience of discovering Christian rock, and the camaraderie that makes DIY special. 

SWIM INTO THE SOUND: Where did the name Fig On Wrist come from?

FIG ON WRIST: I had a cat who passed away named Fig, and I have her paw print tattooed on my wrist. She had kind of a tragic life, and I was on tour for most of it in a previous band. I got her in October of one year, and she passed away that Christmas Eve. She was with my partner for most of that time. It felt really horrible that I missed that time, and doing this felt like the best way I could honor her. She was a really sweet baby.

SWIM: I'm sorry for your loss. That's a really beautiful tribute to her. And how did the label start after that?

FIG: I developed a passion for operating my own label after I had a bad experience on the one that my old band was on. I wound up doing a lot of the work that the owner should have been doing, but that was a blessing in disguise because I learned I loved doing all that stuff. So when that band came to a natural conclusion, I was like, “What's my next endeavor going to be?” That was the beginning of all of this.

SWIM: Who else is involved?

FIG: Everything is about 90% me. I run a recording studio, I do the mixing and mastering, and I do graphic design. There's also a PR element that I have two very close friends help me out with as “staff writers,” Patrick and Spike. The three of us talk every day, figuring out who we want to write about and what's inspiring us. Even though I'm doing most of the music-centered stuff, it feels very much like I couldn't do it without their support.

SWIM: That makes sense. I feel like running a label in any capacity can't be a one-person operation, so having a team like that is really cool. Do you have certain subgenres that you focus on?

FIG: So far, it’s mostly post-rock and post-black metal kind of stuff, but it’s basically a smörgåsbord of whatever I'm interested in at any given time. We only have three releases under our belt at the moment, and two of them have involved my own project, American Sacred Music. The band has two splits: one with Wounds of Recollection, who employ that post-black metal sound, and another with Ameokama, who is primarily an industrial artist. The third is the Primal Cuts demo by Meatmark, who are a great noise rock band. My only stipulation is that it has to be art that I believe in. We could put out a country record, and I'd be fine with it as long as I found something moving in the music.

SWIM: Do you feel like that differentiates you from other DIY labels, or have you noticed that's the general mindset of your contemporaries?

FIG: When I think of bigger independent labels, they're more like this. If you think of labels like The Flenser or Run For Cover, they have their niches covered. But what I’ve discovered is that, on a DIY level, you’re usually working with who you're already friends with. I feel that I see a lot of genre-specific labels, like someone is putting out the screamo records, and someone is putting out the alt-rock records, or hip-hop, or whatever. I come from a metal background, but there’s already a lot of people doing that in my circles. So the fact that I'm leaning more into an “esoteric” roster, for lack of a better word, differentiates Fig On Wrist a bit from other labels I know. I like “pretty” music and things that are not traditional heavy metal, but that’s not all that unique these days.

SWIM: I’m sure the splits you’ve released so far have been with folks you share a mutual admiration with. What drew you to those artists initially?

FIG: I'll start with Wounds Of Recollection. They’re sort of an anonymous project, but essentially it’s spearheaded by the same individual, who just goes by Annos. They have a few different bands that they operate, one of which is called The Blood Mountain Black Metal Choir. I got hold of their music and loved it, so I shot them a DM about it. We struck up a friendship, and eventually, when I started working on Fig on Wrist, I approached them about doing a split together. It carries weight within this community to have them co-sign their name on something they had never heard just based on our friendship. I was so floored that they were willing to do that because it really helped me get this label and my own music in front of other ears.

FIG: Then there’s Ameokama, which is a project by a woman named Aki McCullough. We had crossed paths through both of our old bands and ended up in the same green room, eating dinner together at a show. She was super kind, so afterward I cold emailed her and was like, “Hey, I'm starting this new band and label. Would you want to do a split?” Just like with Wounds Of Recollection, I had nothing out at the time, but she was willing to cosign with me as well. It was crazy to get to have my name associated with someone so respected so quickly.

SWIM: I think a lot of what I appreciate about DIY, or the underground music scene at large, is that people are so willing to take risks and just go for projects just because of friendship or because it is interesting or new. That's something that I really treasure about the community.

FIG: It's very special. I know we're both listeners to Jeremy Bolm’s The First Ever Podcast, and something that he always talks about is a great thing about hardcore - which I’m translating to DIY in general here - is that you're only a few steps away from your heroes. First of all, those are inspiring words as is, but second of all, it's 100% true. Sure, I was buying music from these people before I knew them, but all it really takes is putting in the effort. In some cases, you can wind up collaborating with folks that you really admire. 

SWIM: What bands and artists inspire you? Whatever comes to mind first.

FIG: Offline, we spoke about a mutual love of Deafheaven. I got into them my senior year of high school, and they just changed my life.

SWIM: I remember reading in a different interview that you said it was Sunbather that you first listened to, right?

FIG: Yeah, I was 18, and I thought I knew everything about music. I subscribed to the Deathwish Inc. newsletter, and they put up the pre-order for Sunbather. I had a little money from mowing lawns, and I had no idea what it sounded like, and I just thought, “This seems really pretty and if Jacob Bannon says it's cool, then yeah, I'll buy it.” When it finally showed up, I put it on and I’d never heard anything like it.

SWIM: What's your favorite Deafheaven song?

FIG: Gosh, well I can tell you my favorite record is New Bermuda. That one really sticks with me. But I think “Shellstar” is my favorite song, which is the opening track from Infinite Granite. There’s something with that vocal layering that really hits me. I always tell my partner that I don't understand why they're not the biggest band in the world. They can do stuff like that, and then they can do all their heavier stuff. It's crazy. 

SWIM: “Heavy” music is such a massive generalization for the genres that would fall into Fig On Wrist’s category, but how do you personally define it? Do you find the term “heavy" to be subjective?

FIG: It's all semantics, and it's all silly, but I think “heavy” music is different from “metal,” if that makes sense. Mount Eerie is a heavy band, even though it's one man with an acoustic guitar. Grouper is a heavy artist; you can't listen to her sing on Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill and not think that that's a heavy work of art. To be honest, I don't really care about metal and hardcore. I just care about interesting art. Sometimes those things fall into that distinction, and sometimes they don't. From a broader cultural perspective, some folks would say the “stuff with the screaming” is “heavy” music, or the “stuff with the double bass,” or whatever. But I like the phrase “heavy music” a lot more than I like “metal" or “screamo" or “hardcore” or whatever.

SWIM: I think a lot of people will immediately think of bands like Knocked Loose, or classic hardcore bands, or whatever screamo is popular right now when it comes to “heavy.” But I like that you brought up Mount Eerie because it is crushing and emotionally heavy to listen to that music. Keaton Henson is a really heavy artist for me, too. “Small Hands” is totally a heavy song. It's so sad, but sonically, not really “heavy” at all. Do you think that “heavy” music can become objective, and is there a way to define how it does?

FIG: I don't know that it can be fully objective. I think there's too much gray area in how people process and interpret pieces of art. I don't know if that can be objective at any point.

SWIM: How did you get into what you define as “heavy” music?

FIG: I want to preface this by saying that I am not a particularly religious person now, but I was raised in a religious home. I was very fortunate to have a youth pastor who was in a popular band. He introduced me to bands on the Tooth & Nail record label samplers like Hawk Nelson and Thousand Foot Krutch.

SWIM: That's a crazy throwback because Hawk Nelson was my introduction to heavy music. Letters To The President is the album, and “Things We Go Through" is the song for me. I can trace my love of heavy music back to that song.

FIG: They were my first favorite band! That was like fifth grade for us, right? I got the You Can’t Handle the Tooth CD sampler, and it had Underoath, Norma Jean, mewithoutYou, Emery, and all these Christian bandsbands.

SWIM: I feel like all of those bands were the gateway for so many millennials to get into heavy music, especially if you grew up in suburban America in any capacity. I appreciate a lot of them. I actually got to see Underoath a year or so ago when they were touring the anniversary of They're Only Chasing Safety, which was really, really cool. You bringing up Hawk Nelson is blowing my mind right now.

FIG: It's funny, no one I know has ever heard of them. It's like how, as an adult now, I'm always asking people, “Have you seen the movie Cheaper by the Dozen? They're the house party band, and I know you saw that movie.”

SWIM: If you had the ability to release music by any artist, and had all the resources available to you that you needed, who would you choose?

FIG: One of my favorite musicians, who I should have mentioned earlier, is the hip-hop artist Billy Woods. I worship his entire output. He does a lot of soundscape-rooted stuff, and I would love to somehow be involved in that aspect and contribute to the soundscape. I love sampling things, I love eerie noises, and if I could just be like, “Hey man, do what you will with these sounds, just let me get involved,” that would be incredible. And as far as poetry goes, he's a beautiful lyricist. It's something that I think can make sense to someone that's not already into hip-hop just as much as someone who is.

SWIM: Do you have a day job on top of the label?

FIG: I prefer to keep it vague, but I'm in the construction industry. Monday to Friday, nine to five. In my spare hours, I work on the label and my own music.

SWIM: That's pretty common nowadays. It’s only a rare few in the underground that get to do any of that exclusively for a living. Everybody I know uses their day job to fund their various projects.

FIG: Obviously it would be such a privilege to get to do art all day and still pay the bills, but I certainly don't know anyone that gets to do that. However, I'm fortunate enough to have a job that lets me chase my dreams when I’m off the clock.

SWIM: Looking over everything that you do as an artist, what is your favorite thing to create?

FIG: What I've recently learned about myself is that I just like the creative process on its own. I honestly don't feel all that satisfied when I finish things; I’m happy just developing. Maybe I'm on a run, and I get a song idea, and the dopamine starts hitting because I think of all the pieces of it coming together, and then I have a piece of art to work towards. That planning process, and everything that goes along with it, is really what gets me going. There’s so many possibilities as to what could happen and what shape the art could take, and I get that same high from almost all creativity, whether it's art for a friend's band, or printing a run of tapes, or making my own song. It's so satisfying to feel busy and creative, and even though it's not the most important thing in the world, you feel like you're contributing to some sort of community at that moment, even if it's only ten people. That's an addictive feeling for me.

SWIM: I relate to that strongly as an artist myself. There's something so satisfying about watching the pieces come together. The process, especially if you're collaborating, feels really cool. I don't think I've ever heard anyone articulate it as well or as succinctly as you did.

FIG: Thank you. You can credit that one to my therapist. We talked through it on Tuesday afternoon.

SWIM: So much can be credited to therapists. Shout out to my therapist as well. The next question is just something fun I like to ask everyone, but what is your coffee order? Or if you're not a coffee person, what do you like drinking in the morning?

FIG: If I'm going to a shop, I love a hot Americano. Give me like a splash of oat milk, unless I know you're like the bee's knees. If it's a trusted shop, then I'll go black. But if not, give me a dab of oat milk. But just black coffee at home.

SWIM: I respect that. Do you have a home brewing setup?

FIG: Yes, I have an automated pour-over machine. It’s super sick, and I wanted to stop destroying the environment with pods and take control of my own coffee situation. The brand is Technivorm, I think.

SWIM: That's really cool. I've never heard of an automated pour-over machine before! My folks got a Technivorm Moccamaster, just like the regular coffee machine growing up, so I'm familiar with the brand. The coffee that those things put out is phenomenal. Really, really good.

FIG: I would go to my bandmate's house in this old math rock band I was in, and we'd practice there. It was every Thursday, and I would be like Yogi Bear coming up to get the pie because I would smell him brewing this pour-over coffee. I'd be like, “Bro, you wanna make me a cup?” And then eventually I wound up with my own machine.

SWIM: I want to get more into home brewing. I'll do a pour-over or a French press, but I want to get better at it. I'm not weighing my grounds or calculating water ratios or anything. I'm just kind of letting the vibes lead, which is not a recipe for success. I'm going to see if Technivorm has other equipment.

FIG: Yeah, totally!

SWIM: What are some of your hobbies outside of music?

FIG: I’m a big runner. That’s still music-related in that I've listened to a new record every single day since 2016 while I run. That's my time to clear my thoughts and log what new art I'm putting in my body for the day. Outside of music, I love to bake. I love to spend time with my partner, which isn't quite a hobby, but it is a lifestyle. I’m a movie guy, good movies, bad movies, whatever. I just like watching things. I collect rescue dogs because, surprisingly, they just keep showing up! One of them is named Rosie, and she’s technically a bully, not a pit bull, which I learned was a whole separate thing. My partner found her on the side of the road, fully emaciated, and we wound up keeping her. If you look on the label's Instagram, Rosie is kind of the label mascot now.

SWIM: That's so sweet. I'm glad you saved her and that you're giving all these dogs a good, loving home. We always brought shelter pets home when we could. My dad could not be trusted in an animal shelter; he would always come home with an animal, which was really endearing. At one point we had like 10 or 11 cats.

FIG: That sounds like a dream. My partner has to police me because I will bring home a new one whenever given the chance.

SWIM: Does your interest in film influence your music at all?

FIG: Yeah, I love Possession, the 1981 film. That's a really big one for me as far as art movies go, things that are a little higher-brow. But if we're getting “hell-yeah-movies” mode, I love Hot Rod, My Cousin Vinny, and Goodfellas. I'm always taking notes, no matter what I'm consuming, whether it's music or film or books. I keep a little notebook where I'm always jotting down the way other people use language and arrange words in a way that my brain wouldn't have naturally thought of. It could be an episode of a sitcom, and something just hits you. There’s inspiration everywhere. I love my high-art bullshit, but I also love Hot Rod. It’s as perfect as Possession to me.

SWIM: And what literature do you really enjoy?

FIG: A wide gamut; I'm a big fiction guy. I like to get lost in stuff. I love Cormac McCarthy, Stephen King, and Clive Barker. I like darker novels than I do darker movies.

Also, I love good poetry. I've been reading some of Phil Elverum's work recently—everything he does moves and inspires me in a crazy way. Mount Eerie is just a project that has moved me as I've aged. 

SWIM: What new projects and releases will Fig On Wrist be putting out?

FIG: I can’t announce specific things right now, but what I can tell you is that we are in talks of reissuing the discography for a really, really cool grind band that are friends of mine from my touring days. 

In addition to that, there's gonna be a song called “Fig On Wrist” by my project, American Sacred Music. It's going to be kind of a launching point for the American Sacred Music project. I recorded a lot of music last year and have things in the bank, and I can release them at will. It's a heavier sound that is closer to my last full-time band. There were demos that never got used, or that became jumping-off points, and this feels like an introduction to where I'm more interested in going musically. It’s a long-form song with lots of drones and clean vocals and acoustic guitar, but also sludgy bass stuff. It feels like the most unique representation of my interests. It’s really, really special to me and I'm gonna make a 20-minute short film to go along with it. It's the most work I've ever put into anything. So that one's going to be very cool, at least to me, when it comes out. 

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

Stars Hollow – Kind of Hoping | Album Review

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Self-Released

Being a DIY band is difficult. Being a DIY emo band is somehow even harder. Despite the razor-thin margins, countless hours spent cooped up in a van, and a career-stalling pandemic, Stars Hollow have managed to make it over a decade by creating a distinct blend of post-hardcore and Midwest emo that combines meaty screams, twinkly guitar parts, and emotionally crushing lyrics. The group’s latest effort, Kind of Hoping, is also their last: a fully realized and completely self-released record that is riffy, loud, and deeply introspective. It is a true swan song, as after this weekend the band will have played their final show and will be put to rest. Even if this weren’t the case, each track of this record drips with a sense of finality that asks you to look at the life you’ve lived and decide if it was the one you wanted.

Throughout their discography, Stars Hollow have consistently written around themes of loss, struggling to find acceptance, and the cyclical nature of trauma. That’s no different on Kind of Hoping, a 35-minute album meant to take you through the kind of mental health episode where you feel like you are falling, just hoping that someone will be there to catch you. By the time you reach the final track, you have been asked to reflect on the nature of your very existence in a way that inspires growth and makes you feel like, even if nobody is there, that you can catch yourself. 

Photo by Anthony Scanga

To put Kind of Hoping into the broader context of Stars Hollow’s entire discography, this record doesn’t necessarily feel like a new era for the band, but rather the culmination of something they’ve been building since their first EP. It all began with Tyler Stodghill, the group’s singer, lead guitarist, and our primary point of view as the audience. The project began as a three-piece but was a rotating cast for the first couple of years before eventually settling in with Andrew Ferren on drums and Em Bussanmas on bass and backing vocals. However, when it came to creating this final album, it became necessary to add a fourth member, and Louie Barlaw (Tiny Voices, Endswell) joined the band to add additional depth to the guitar parts. 

On the band’s debut, I’m Really Not That Upset About It, the trio were blending bouncy emo riffs with raw screamed vocals. This expanded into an even more Midwest emo sound on 2018’s Happy Again, with Stodghill’s vocals sounding much cleaner and more refined. That EP also served as something of a breakthrough for the band as they honed in on powerful hooks that immediately sounded like they were destined to be screamed back by a bunch of folks in a sweaty moshpit in someone’s basement. 

Things really started to blow up for the band with “Tadpole” in 2019, a loud and heartfelt song about wanting to change. Stars Hollow has always been penning strong, deeply emotional lyrics, but this was the first time you could hear the sound of community behind each word, and that came to life as the band toured relentlessly, including a jaunt across the country with fellow emo band Origami Angel. All of this came before their first record, I Want To Live My Life, dropped in 2021 right in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. This release window meant the band never got to properly tour on this LP they’d been writing for years.

Three years later, Stars Hollow picked themselves up and dusted themselves off with In the Flower Bed, an EP which showed another side of the band with songs like the title track, which eschews screams entirely as the band sings about trying to move on from the past and understand that they are worthy of the space that they take up. It was In The Flower Bed that finally helped me accept my non-binary identity and know that I am allowed to be who I am – that I can kill who I was to become something new. I identified with the record so much that I took the line “I want to kill who I was back then” and made it the title of my poetry chapbook. It changed my life and made me jump at the chance to cover their last record, Kind Of Hoping.

Stars Hollow has always meant a lot to me because I can consistently listen to any song in their discography and find some part of myself reflected. I hear songs like “Catch Me” or “Flip Phone” and relate to their messages of hope in the face of pain and loneliness. “Catch Me” is incredibly relatable for anybody who has always reached out for others, yet never had someone willing to grab them as they fell. The instrumentation adds to this feeling as it begins with Stodghill wailing through some distorted guitar static that adds a sort of underwater sound to each word. It eventually opens up into emo-fueled twinkles and bouncy riffs that would have even the most tame concertgoers ready to grab the mic and scream their heart out.

“Flip Phone” recognizes that pain is a privilege and the fact that any of us feel anything is a cornerstone of humanity. The track starts a little slower, building from a single repeating guitar riff into a bouncy drum pattern that lies under one of the few sections of vocals on this record that aren’t screamed. This song explores the idea of having gone through trauma and pain and wanting to reach out to anybody near you while simultaneously being afraid of actually accepting hope and love. Lyrics like “I can’t stand it, I can’t handle the things you could do to me” highlight that when you give yourself to anybody, you are putting yourself in the palm of their hand where one squeeze would shatter you into little glass pieces. Yet despite that, you still need to love, and this song ends with maybe the most powerful lyrics on the entire album as it fades out with “I’m just like you / All and nothing / I am searching / For all in nothing.” There is something distinctly human about accepting that you have to continually drop your shield and open yourself to pain in order to finally break the cycle that you’re stuck in.

Four tracks into the record, lead single “Casper” begins a run that departs from the post-hardcore influences, leaning instead into a Turnover-inspired dark shoegazey sound. The song is named after Stodghill’s cat, who sadly passed away before this song was released. Everybody at some point in their life believed it would be so much easier if you could just live the life of your pet–this song is for those people who just want to get away from the pain of existence. On the Beers With The Bands podcast, Stodghill described it as a “coworker song” that anybody could enjoy as it departs from the traditional Stars Hollow post-hardcore screams. 

With this album, Stars Hollow have created a space where it’s okay to struggle and, in doing so, remind you that you aren’t alone in your feelings. The song “Play Pretend” begins through my headphones, and I am back again sitting in my childhood bedroom practicing my smile so nobody looks past it to see the lack of light in my eyes. This song is also a bit of a departure from Stars Hollow’s traditional sound as it leans more pop-punk but is still reminiscent of Armor For Sleep and other post-hardcore bands. It carries more clean vocals than other tracks and has a high-pitched guitar playing throughout the entire song, almost like a siren that gives a strong sense of urgency, amplified by the steady drumbeat pounded out by Andrew Ferren.

A similar emotion hits me during “Blue Heron,” and I realize that I have been trying so hard for so long to, as the lyrics put it, “make the best of broken wings.” I think we all want to be better, to wake up every day and feel like we are where we are meant to be, and that feeling is omnipresent across the album. Stars Hollow asks you to look at your life and make the best of it, not in spite of the parts that suck, but because of them. This is one of the louder tracks on Kind of Hoping, and it has a plodding guitar that makes the meaty screams from both Stodghill and Em Bussanmas stand tall despite the soundwall around them. It is a perfect moshpit song that will have emo kids around the world dancing, especially with its pauses toward the end that feel like you’re being punched in the brain as the band expertly punctuates explosions of sound and screams with silence for a nice little beatdown passage to close things out. 

The third song that departs from that post-hardcore style is “Taunt,” which leans heavily into a more emo sound. Even when the song opens up, it remains gentle and sounds exactly like the feeling of depression. For me, “Taunt” is the eye of the storm, which fits perfectly as the midpoint of Kind of Hoping. 

Entering the final stretch of the album, “Ult” begins with a spoken part that wouldn’t feel out of place in a La Dispute song before it explodes into a wall of sound that threatens to drown out the wails of both Stodghill and Bussanmas. This song sticks out to me because I am a “survivor,” and I have always felt so unattached to the word even though, by definition, it's true. I feel like I am stuck carrying around baggage that nobody cares to learn about. Nobody looks at me and sees the past, and it leads me to being consistently invalidated for my experiences, and it means so much to hear that I am not the only person on earth who feels like this.

Stars Hollow doesn’t give you answers but rather closes the album with questions on “Over.” I’m not sure if the band knew this would be their final release when they were recording it, but, regardless, this track has a strong sense of finality to it. The music is slower and more intentional than almost all the rest of the record. Throughout the closing track, listeners are asked to think about how they have lived their life. The most impactful questions for me are in the second verse when Stodgehill asks, “If you could feel the things you never felt / if you could guarantee you’d still be held / what would it change about the way / you hold your weight?” This song, like all things, inevitably ends after all the lyrics pass. The instrumental plays out until that too fades and you are left with nothing other than the sound of your own breathing. 

Photo by Anthony Scanga

After all the reflection this album asks of you, it is worth asking if you are on the path to becoming who you want to be. Even though all my bad decisions and tough moments play “over and over and over again” in my head, I don't regret my mistakes and the pain that I have felt because it led me to this moment telling you about some songs I love. This album makes me want to be a better version of myself and gives me a hope I always fear that I will lose. 

Coming into this review, I had a lot on my mind and have since moved halfway across the country on my own. I was struggling to make changes and accept that some things must be temporary. A lot of that feeling went away when I sat in my living room and listened to this record for the first time. I finally felt seen for the first time in a long time. 

This band’s final act is going to inspire a generation of artists to pick up a guitar and start exploring their feelings on a notepad. Even if those people never play a show or record a piece of music, that exploration is inherently good. The fact that this band was able to survive as long as they have while the members led full lives is an incredible act of fortitude and goes to show that you can have a life in music without making it your entire life. 

Stars Hollow now must go into the same flowerbed that they once sang about as their time comes to an end–however, from the corpse will grow gorgeous flowers that will remain for future generations. The lessons and memories will forever be etched into the same dirt in which they are buried.

Ben Parker is a writer, poet, and student affairs administrator located in Colorado. They have been a minor niche internet celebrity, performed with multiple of their favorite bands, and been lucky to have made friends across the country.