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.

Getting Loud About The Quiet with Josaleigh Pollett and Jordan Watko

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Photo by Josaleigh Pollett

Who’s your favorite musical duo? Lennon and McCartney? Becker and Fagan? Morrissey and Marr? For Salt Lake City-based musician Josaleigh Pollett and their collaborator Jordan Watko (AKA Crowd Shy), the answer to that question is simple: the one that they formed together. They say this not in a conceited or self-grandeurizing way, but in an extremely compassionate, heartfelt, and mutually appreciative way. Those same qualities are the ones that define their latest project, If I Let It Quiet, releasing tomorrow via Audio Antihero.

The pair began working together in 2020 with Pollett’s second LP, No Woman Is The Sea, and garnered further attention from the indiesphere with 2023’s In The Garden, By The Weeds. In the last six years, their musical relationship has evolved into an unbreakable symbiotic bond that persists even with a 14-hour time difference between Pollett’s native Utah and Watko’s new dwellings in Japan. I conducted my virtual conversation with them from my home in Illinois, and of the almost two hours we spent together across our three time zones, Pollett and Watko spent a majority of it talking about each other as much as their music, sentiments that were never better confessed than at the very end of the call...

The themes of emotional, physical, and spiritual distance are explored in a number of different ways throughout If I Let It Quiet, although the duo views the separation as less of a challenge and more of a resource.

“It’s made us get a lot more intentional,” observes Pollett. “When we made the last record, we were spending time on it regularly. But because of the nature of a long-distance friendship, even without the creative partnership element to it, you can't just be like, ‘Maybe I'll see you this weekend,’ and then it magically happens. Now, it’s, ‘What are you doing next week on Wednesday? I mean, my Wednesday morning, but your Wednesday night. I will send you a Zoom invite.’ And you have to do that just to hang out across the ocean. I think it was really helpful that right after Jordan moved, we weren't making a record yet; we were prioritizing our friendship first.”

They continue, “When Jordan lived in Salt Lake, every Saturday we would get together, and we would go get breakfast, and then chat for four hours. Then maybe work on some music. Nobody wants to sit on a Zoom call for several hours without an agenda. And my day job is work from home, too, so I was like, ‘Jordan, I love you, but I don't want to get off my Zoom call day job and then hang out on a Zoom call with you for four hours after that.’ So we have to do all of this shit, condensing our close friendship and creative partnership, in just an hour or two each time we talk. We have to prioritize the friendship, stay connected, stay close, understand each other, and then also be very open to an entirely new way of creating something, because what does our music look like or our collaboration look like when we don't have that breakfast and four-hour therapy hang where we talk through what happened to us that week? We had to have a plan in place because we didn't have limitless time. It was a really interesting experience because of that.”

From a production angle, Watko describes, “From my perspective, the big thing was that we both knew the long-distance thing was gonna be possible. Just given how we had worked together in the past, which was a lot of back and forth and working through these songs together and then apart, and then coming back together, and then apart again. Before the move even happened, our mantra was like, ‘If we're gonna blow this up, let's blow it up. Whatever needs to change, let's change it. Let's do whatever needs to happen.’ Specifically, the biggest change from working together in Salt Lake versus working long-distance was that I felt early on that I missed having air in the recordings. So much of the record is about distance, and I felt it was important to keep the air in as much of the recordings as possible. The biggest change for me was relying a lot less on synthesis and MIDI instrumentation, and a lot more starting from real audio. Whether it was field recordings or scratch tracks from Josaleigh, then throwing those in through a lot of different effects to make them sound a little more synthesized. I think it did make a difference that there was more of a human element in the production of this record.”

If I Let It Quiet is far from the first internationally recorded album, but it may be the one that hides the players’ separation the best that I’ve heard. Pollett and Watko have made their most blended and seamless record yet entirely on their own continents, and they were set up for success from their previous work together.

Pollett explains, “I think it really benefited us that this move, and this adjustment that we had to make for the distance, happened after we'd already been really close and worked on two records together. If this would have been our first record, there would have been no fucking way. We had already been building our friendship in a vulnerable way that allowed me to let Jordan into the lyric writing process. We've been building that trust for years.”

Speaking further on their tenacity, Pollett says, “I knew from recording and writing In The Garden, By The Weeds that there are so many things that I was precious about, but that I could have done so much better. I trust Jordan so much to be able to tell me that something's not working, or to brainstorm what could look differently. It took six years of hanging out together for me to feel comfortable enough to really accept that from Jordan and truly know that it makes our work better together.”

Watko has also had to push himself as a producer being in unfamiliar territory. “Living where I am definitely influences what I’m doing now,” he says. “This has been my chance to use a lot of my own field recordings from the city. I think I've got three or four different ones of our busy street taken from the 14th floor of our apartment building. You get all these cool reverberations, especially the samples I used on “Yasaka, Natsu” of a parade that happens every summer right by us. In some ways, it's an interesting mix of peacefulness and cacophony, more than anything I experienced in Salt Lake. Those have worked their way onto the record to some degree.”

Pollett shares in and about one of my favorite tracks on the record, “Escape Routes,” which features the standout production advancements from Watko. “I've felt so incredibly proud of that song,” they say, emphatically. “The production feels so deeply unique and special. When I listen to it, I don't know anything else that sounds like it, but it feels so connected to both of us. It was one of the first ones we started writing for this record; I actually had written the initial demo for it before Jordan moved. He was trying to be very sweet by giving me enough time to emotionally prepare, but for months I was out of control and would cry and shake him whenever we’d see each other. When I showed the song to Jordan, I was in this interesting space where the move was still two months away, but obviously I couldn’t really do anything else about it. There was all this stress and anticipation, and I was really trying to keep all my fits from getting to him. I just felt like a disaster because I love him so much and I want to be supportive, and I want to be like a safe place for him to talk about his moving stress without me sobbing every time. “Escape Routes” came out of that space, and Jordan said it was one of the first times he’s ever seen himself in my lyrics. It was resonant for both of us for drastically different reasons. I even felt like I was trying to write it from his perspective.”

Watko follows, “There was so much anxiety when we were working on that one that ended up coming out in the production. It kept getting increasingly anxious and frenetic. I was trying to recreate the sickness we were feeling, but at some point towards the end, I wanted to highlight the optimism that also existed. But anxiety in general is certainly one of the throughlines on the entire record.”

“We are super intentional about sequencing and themes,” Pollett says further about those throughlines. “When Jordan came back to play Kilby Block party with me last year, we spent so much downtime noodling on song ideas, and were able to pull a concept together. We had finished “Escape Routes,” “Radio Player,” and “Repeating,” and we had a chunk of ideas for other things. We were able to talk through, in person, how things could feel thematically, and how they could be connected and flow for a record. There’s distance, and doubt, and anxiety, and relationships, and the record is very authentic to us because it's what we were living in. The themes were revealed to us after some time, but they were also created by us.”

Photo by Kyle S. Ford

Pollett and Watko’s creative partnership stands out among the slew of bedroom-pop singer-songwriters you can find on Bandcamp at any given moment, and they’ve achieved record after record of truly one-of-a-kind music. I was curious if that happened to them naturally, by accident, or some mad-scientist level of self-awareness in their lab.

“We’re both perfectionists to an extent with our music,” says Pollett, “but sometimes I do feel like Jordan and I are on a different level at certain moments. I usually know sooner than him, but then maybe two weeks later or two months later, he’ll feel the same.” From a lyrical standpoint, Pollett feels, “There are so many times when I go back and look at a song and think, ‘what was I talking about?’ ‘What did I mean?’ It won’t be until years later that I'll realize how much sense it makes. Lyric writing, to me, is a weird, intentional job, but also alchemy. I love when I don't really know what it's about or if it doesn’t mean anything grammatically. Maybe the assumed meaning is something totally different. I love writing as nebulously as possible, but with a certain amount of specificity. I can get my feelings out, but it can be a blank slate for those feelings. I can come back to a song that I wrote ten years ago, apply it to a completely different situation now, and still connect to it. Meaning is so subjective, and I never feel like I have to figure it out.”

Watko says, “We definitely overthink things a lot. Even talking about when you're onto something, that first 25% of working on a song has a lot of uncertainty. And then the last 25% is us trying to figure out if we’ve made all the right decisions. The bulk of the middle of the process is when it can feel like we have it, but I often need Josaleigh to rein me in. I have a tendency to overcook things.”

When the team tries to figure out how Pollett’s lyrics and vocals will mix with Watko’s production, it’s a collective effort across the LP. Pollett describes, “Prior to working on this record, we had a pretty concrete process. I would write a melody on guitar and some lyrics, then send it over to Jordan. He would spend some time with it, thinking through some production ideas, and then we would come together a little bit more and work through the more granular details together. With this album in particular, it was a little bit more collaborative from the get-go. We'd really build out the song structure together, and Jordan was so much more involved in the lyric writing and editing with me too. Which is hilarious to think about because we did it from way farther away this time.”

Watko agrees with the irony and continues, “It was fun to dig into these scratch takes that Josaleigh would send me in their infancy, and it allowed us to work through more arrangement decisions together. This record felt more informed by both of us, and I think we both got to do what we each do best: Josaleigh as a songwriter, and me getting to create some fun sounds with what they sent me.”

…I chose an absurd but intentional penultimate question: “Josaleigh Pollett, what is your favorite thing about Josaleigh Pollett?” This was their answer:

“I probably would have used to say that it was being able to process the world around me through writing songs. It’s always just been how I get through big feelings, hard times, joyful times… I'm so grateful to have this tool that is always present and accessible and something that I can use to navigate whatever the fuck is happening in my life. But honestly, now it's my creative partnership with Jordan. I feel so deeply blessed — and I don't use that word because I'm not a religious person whatsoever — but it feels insane to me that I've had so many relationships in the past where it’s either platonic, or romantic, or creative, but it feels so otherworldly to have this platonic love in this creative partnership that inspires me to be a better person, to grow the craft that I care about, and also to like the music that I'm creating more, and to be a part of something that I truly believe in.

I would still probably be making music, writing, and recording songs if I hadn't met Jordan, but I certainly wouldn't be thinking that other people should listen to them. What Jordan and I have is so special. When I hear one of our songs, it sounds like our friendship. I talk all the time about how my favorite bands are the ones that, when you go see them live, you can tell they fucking love each other. If you can tell that they don't give a shit about each other and they're just on the stage to play the music or whatever, that’s rarely gonna resonate with me. I've always coveted that, and I don't feel like I have to anymore because I have that with Jordan. I believe in what we do so much, and can feel how much we love each other in the music.”

Josaleigh Pollett: talented songwriter, loving friend, mind reader. My final question for them had already been answered: “What is your favorite thing about Jordan Watko?” They got to the place I was looking to guide them towards, but they were already there waiting ahead of me. Both Pollett and Watko didn’t need the follow-up, or any additional clarification. Because when I asked Jordan Watko what his favorite thing about Jordan Watko is, he matched Josaleigh’s freak without missing a beat:

“It's the same answer. I've forever been tinkering with things in my own space, and I wouldn't trade that for anything, but Josaleigh has an ability to connect to people in a way that I feel so lucky that I get to be in the orbit of. It’s opened my world up so much; the fact that I've been able to meet, share, and collaborate with so many other people through Josaleigh is the joy of my life. I know you asked what my favorite thing about me is, but that’s it. I feel really lucky to have people that want to work with me, as a human being and as a musical collaborator.”

It’s this humble and considerate partnership that is at the core of the record, where you can’t talk about Josaleigh Pollett’s vocals and lyrics without also talking about Jordan Watko’s production and composition, worldwide distance be damned. If I Let It Quiet proves no strong relationship can ever be broken, and is a testament to their determination to release the art that matters to them more than anything, showered in the audible love that they’ve worked so long to grow. So listen to this record with your best friend, whether they’re in the car with you in your hometown or they’re on Zoom half a world away. And most importantly, don’t let your feelings towards them quiet.

Logan Archer Mounts once almost got kicked out of Warped Tour for doing the Disturbed scream during a band’s acoustic set. He currently lives in Rolling Meadows, IL, but tells everyone he lives in Palatine.

Riley! – To Live and Die in the American South | EP Review

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Pure Noise Records

When explaining the peculiarities of the Southern identity, Flannery O’Connor wrote: “Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.” The freakish nature of the South is all-encompassing, one that swallows you whole rather than sneaking up behind you. It’s a region of endless mourning and gregarious myth. Frightening at times, apologetic in others, uncomfortable always. In their latest EP, To Live and Die in the American South, Riley! attempts to make peace with the anguish their home has wrought. 

Texas’ inclusion in the South has always been hotly disputed by those hailing from the Deepest parts of the region. They claim it’s too Western, too different from the culture found on South Carolina’s patios or in Georgia’s sunrooms. I have always disagreed with this perspective; Texas has the same ghosts in the attic as the rest of the South, the same violence as Louisiana, and the same mountains as Tennessee. I bring up this debate because Riley! is from the Rio Grande Valley, a place at the tip of Texas’ hooked end and near the same Gulf that borders Mississippi and Alabama, a place where the South legitimately meets the West, and To Live and Die in the American South connects them both. 

Beyond this connection, emo, a genre more classically found in the mid-Atlantic or the Midwest, is not necessarily the approach most musicians would utilize to encapsulate the feelings of decay and distress within the American South, but Riley! makes a staggering case for changing the tune. For years, Riley! has toiled away in the remains of the 5th wave emo scene, frustratingly stuck as an ‘if you know, you know’ band. The excitement of their last album Keep Your Cool on Counter Intuitive Records, turned Riley! into one of emo’s most reliable collections of Road Dogs, thanks to near-constant touring. Yet their success keeps climbing, on To Live and Die in the American South, an EP produced by Phillip Odom, the band breaks itself wide open through a raw examination of the complicated relationship the trio has with their home.

The first song on the EP, “Roll for Initiative,” begins with a question, “If I died right now, would I still haunt this house, or would it just rot with my body when I’m put in the ground?” It’s a question that veers the album directly into the literary territory of the Southern Gothic, a genre centered around inspecting the grotesque hauntings of the South. Vocalist and guitarist Ryan Bluhm answers the question for themselves: “I think I’m meant to live and die here, and there’s no way out.” This feeling of dread is threaded through every song on the EP. The conceit of the song, firmly entering it into the Southern Gothic, is Bluhm’s admittance, “There’s nowhere else I’d rather die.” It’s the heart of the genre, a disgust for home infused with an unshakeable feeling of belonging.

Cesar “Izzy” Izaguirre and Kris Gallardo’s rhythm plays “Roll for Initiative” out, leading into the quieter “Another Round of Radical ‘Ritas, Please.” The rot felt in the prior song returns, but instead of the secrecy of experiencing misery in private, this song puts those feelings in front of an audience. Tades Sanville of Hot Mulligan, a writer contending with similar topics of self-hatred and grief, joins in over Izzy’s pounding drums. 

Across this EP, Riley! utilize an arsenal of familiar voices with similar expressions of introspection to deepen the emotionally wrought work. On the next track, the deceptively upbeat “Two Bucks,” a song about feeling useless, one of the angriest, most suspicious voices in the Emo world appears: Eric Egan of Heart Attack Man. It’s an unguarded, honest song; Bluhm and Egan agree that they are both just ghosts. Gabe Wood of saturdays at your place has long studied the impact of his own actions in song, making him the perfect pick for “Backseat Bartender.” Across Bluhm and Gallardo’s intricately woven riffs and basslines, Wood and Bluhm beg someone to crawl into their head and find what’s wrong. 

The final song of the EP, “73 Summer,” catches Bluhm in a moment of grief. For a record contending with the wretchedness life can inflict, it only makes sense to end on the aftermath of death. The band gives the questions within the lyrics plenty of room to linger, creating a specter looking back. In that same quote about the Southerner’s natural predisposition to identifying a freak, O’Connor added that “Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. They cast strange shadows, particularly in our literature.” The ghost Bluhm is speaking to is made present by their words and the song's ferocity. The shadow may be strange, but it’s familiar.

The final bit of the O’Connor quote referenced throughout all of this is the notion that “It is when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our essential displacement that he attains some depth in literature.” Riley! achieves this in 17 minutes on To Live and Die in the American South. The admissions and frustrations put to song on this EP breathe familiarity into feelings of freakiness, making them whole. Riley! may feel tied to the American South and all of the internal strife it creates, but this is the place that made them, for better or worse. 

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