Twisted Teens – The Holy Cross Tigers | Album Review

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Sub Pop Records

Sometimes it is easy to forget how important other people are to your own survival. It is easy to get so wrapped up in your own shit that you forget you can ask for help. At least, I know I can lose sight of that sometimes. But when I’m listening to Twisted Teens, I’m grateful for everyone I know. 

After first contact with Twisted Teens, many people seem to have the same reaction: a need to share the band with anyone who will listen. For good reason too, their orange-hued self-titled debut is one of those records that, when it is over, you won’t be able to shut up about. Take the chorus on the semi-self-titled opening salvo “Twisted Teen” or the hard stop in the middle of a guitar solo at the end of “Twisted Teen.” Sorry, I suppose I should clarify: you will be a convert before the first song even ends. You won’t even need to hear the whole record to know you have at least one person in your life who needs to hear this. 

I personally caught the Twisted Teens bug after the hosts of Punk This Week spoke about Blame The Clown, the band’s green sophomore album, when it finally hit wide release earlier this year. What instantly struck me about Blame The Clown is how laid-back it sounds. Each of the record’s 12 songs feels loose, as if you are hearing them played for the first time, like the band is following their impulses wherever they may lead and recording it directly to tape. Luckily, every impulse is the right one. I was playing my roommate “Not Real” the other night and was so excited for her to hear the moment in the middle of the song when an iPhone alarm goes off and Twisted Teens frontman Caspian Hollywell responds: “You hear that alarm? / it means it’s time to wake the fuck up.” That could be the stupidest thing I have ever heard, and yet it is perfect! I love it! 

Twisted Teens bassist Sonya Badigian explains the band’s philosophy well in a recent interview with Nina Corcoran in Pitchfork: “Everything is deeply funny, but it’s not exactly a joke.” On “Not Real,” Hollywell is singing about the psychic damage of eliding yourself in pursuit of ease. As a trans woman, I am deeply familiar with this tradeoff and am constantly haunted by the consequences of this gambit. I can laugh at the alarm because it seriously is time to wake up. “Not Real” is a piece of power pop perfection, and the rest of Blame The Clown, from the circumcision ripper “I Operate” to the kiss-off “Circus Clown,” is full of sublimity for those with ears to hear. 

What makes this band’s feat on Blame the Clown even more impressive is how quickly they followed it up. In the second week of July, they announced, and days later released, their blue album, Florida Water Blues, a darker counterpoint to the often-jubilant Blame the Clown. There are still jokes, but the predominant mood on Florida Water Blues is one of feeling a slight detachment from your surroundings. “Hand Me a Cigarette” finds Hollywell yearning for a path through life that feels true. On the album closer “Sun Go Down,” he sings about how he “can smell situations about to go south” and describes that desolate feeling of the bar lights coming up, revealing you haven’t escaped the world with one night of fun. “Sun Go Down” is mournful, but that’s the thing: it wouldn’t be sad if it wasn’t so god damn beautiful. And life is beautiful thanks to those around you, isn’t it? Hollywell obviously loves his community, as you can feel on the title track when he yells out for Ramon “RJ” Santos to “focus on where your spirits are” and for Mel Billiard to “make ‘em quake” with his guitar solo that follows. “Florida Water Blues,” and every other Twisted Teens song, wouldn’t be what they are without the fingerprints of Santos and the rest of the communal Teens. 

Not a band to ever leave their audience settled, when Florida Water Blues was announced, there were already rumblings about a forthcoming maroon album. A maroon breakup album, even. Alright, here is where I play my hand and reveal that since the last Twisted Teens album, I broke up with my girlfriend of eight years. This review of The Holy Cross Tigers is going to get a little personal essay-ie, but The Holy Cross Tigers invites it. 

The lead single, “When We First Met,” is an ode to the intoxication of early love. When Hollywell sings “we used to blow up the spot arm and arm together,” I’m reminded of a moment eight years ago when, at the very start of our relationship, my ex and I went out to dinner with my friends. I thought we played it cool, that, while we obviously were in love, we could still spread our attention to our friends… that is, until our waitress pointed out that we hadn’t stopped holding hands since we sat down. We stopped holding hands a couple of years in. I’d reach for her as we walked side by side, but pretty quickly she’d detach if she even let me reach her. 

But when that memory comes up while listening, it isn’t tainted by all the hurt that came after. That’s because “When We First Met” is a full-tilt rocker, the kind of song that refuses to give you space to ponder what it brings to mind. It’s the perfect example of the second half of Badigian’s quote from earlier: “The point is to get everyone to dance, then to realize something, then go back to dancing.” In that, the band doesn't stray from the garagey roots and roll sound that made up their last three albums. The focus is still on blown-out guitars, a mix of programmed and live drums, Santos’ tasteful console steel playing, and Hollywell’s hoarse yelps that somehow go down smooth. And fuck yeah, because Twisted Teens’ sound is downright fun. 

They really do know how to get you dancing. Even “I Spend My Time Crying,” a song about, well, it’s in the title, is one I want to hear on the dance floor, pressed up against someone new. I want to jump up and down at the climax of “Figure It Out” when the steel moves from a supporting character to leading a free-flying melody. That steel guitar will always be the defining trait of Twisted Teens. The band wouldn't be anywhere near as interesting as they are if Santos weren’t behind Hollywell’s syllable-cramming verses on “Look In The Mirror” or writhing and wilting around the melody of “Every Flower.”

When the Teens do stray from their familiar sound, they end up writing their most beautiful and unsettling song. While “Sun Go Down” ended Florida Water Blues on a reflective acoustic note, “Darker The Night Is The Brighter I See” is a haunting acoustic piece. The band joked in their Pitchfork profile that, when they signed to Sub Pop, they had to put a grunge song on the album. “Darker The Night…” was the result of that impulse and is Twisted Teens’ version of “Something In The Way,” a massive comedown of a closer. I can’t listen to “Darker The Night…” without being held wrapped by the warbly chorus supporting Hollywell and the heavy strums of his guitar. The song starts with a distorted recording of people joking about whether they are being recorded or not, and that sets the mood entirely. Up until the end of the record, you could almost believe Hollywell is over this relationship, but there is just something about his delivery that doesn’t fully sell it. 

On “Be An Angel,” when Hollywell declares “I’m not angry / I’m confused as why I’m knowin’ you so long,” I think about all the times I’ve told friends I’m over it while knowing full well I’m pissed. This tension is set up explicitly on the opening track as he sings about yarrow, a flower that used to be used in medicine, before “wallow[ing] in bloody business.” The mask slips entirely on “Darker The Night….” When Hollywell starts singing, and the chatter ends, it is like watching someone slip away from a party, the idea of any company more harmful than lonesomeness. In his corner, he sings about the duality of hope: you only need it in the darkest of times.

As I slept on my ex’s couch, I thought I had destroyed my life. Dead broke, with nothing guarding me from destitution, I still got up every day with the dream of someday being in the light. Of finally having the room of my own I'd wanted for so long. It helped that friends crawled out of the woodwork to demand I sleep on their couch, volunteer to help me move, buy me a slice of pizza, or just lend an ear to vent. It didn’t strike me that it happened—I knew I had good people in my life—but the sheer quantity of them. I didn’t know I had that many good friends. That large of a community. With no community, where would I be? That’s why this album is named after the high school in Hollywell’s beloved town. The Holy Cross Tigers is an ode to the people you see every day and who keep you going. The Holy Cross Tigers is about the people you do it for. 

That is why it is important to note that The Holy Cross Tigers isn’t just a breakup album. Two of the record’s best tracks focus on Twisted Teens’ other perennial topic: doing the right thing. “Lock and Key” tells an on-the-ground story of a snitch giving it up for the police while “Armed With A Vision” takes a more poetic course to discuss moral clarity: “and this vision is a gun fired on confusion.” Across all the songs in Twisted Teens’ discography that address living truly, confusion is the root of the problems. It even stretches back to Hollywell’s time fronting Blackbird Raum when the gang vocals chant “they’re shooting the wolves from helicopters / can you believe that?” Our world has grown increasingly complex and has divorced us from the things that matter most, namely being a good person and a member of your community. “Armed With A Vision” is a rallying cry to not let confusion determine your life and pull you away from your fellow man. 

Breakups are deeply destabilizing events, even when they are “mutual,” like mine was. I’m sure the same is true for Hollywell. Maybe that’s why he constantly sings about being a good person and doing right: he’s trying to live up to what his community has given him. Hell, that might be why Twisted Teens prompt such dedicated proselytizers: people resonate with that need to be good in their bones. What else are you supposed to do with that urge but share?

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

Tommy Oeffling – Neighbors | Album Review

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22Twenty

There are many ways for an artist to excel, but there’s something particularly alluring about those who can be described as “prolific.” Speaking logically, I understand that songwriting is a craft that requires dedication. I understand that most people who are good at it got that way by consistently putting in the work. Some artists though—the ones that really intrigue me, the ones that truly earn that prolific label—seem to extend beyond this. It’s just tough for me to look at someone with an output like, say, Robert Pollard, and not think there’s some sort of metaphysical connection at play. It’s impressive enough when someone makes one good record in their entire life; the ability to make multiple within a period of months borders on alien.

That said, volume of work by itself means nothing. We live in an attention economy where cranking out content is key to success and recording music has never been easier. Sometimes it feels like people are just putting material out for the sake of putting it out. Within the world of indie rock specifically, the canonization of Alex G’s Bandcamp days seems to have sent droves of college students scrambling for cheap audio interfaces with hopes that releasing many records in quick succession might send them down the road to semi-superstardom paved by their hero. At this point, Alex G is the most aped musician this side of MJ Lenderman, and as much as I love his music, overexposure to that style has made my hackles go up whenever a record’s selling point is that it was recorded in a bedroom. 

I say all this to tell you that I was somewhat suspicious when I first came across Tommy Oeffling. By all appearances, it seemed this self-recording one-man slacker rock band who put out seven records in four years would be fully cut from the mold I’d recently soured on, but I gave him a listen anyway, and I was totally wrong. There’s no doubt that Oeffling is influenced by Alex G, but his latest release, Neighbors, makes clear that he’s no imitator, with the influence serving as a jumping-off point rather than a blueprint.

This is perhaps most apparent on “How to Age Gracefully,” a nine-minute mid-album cut that flies by thanks to its effortless traversal of moods and tempos. Early in the song, we hear one of the main things that sets Oeffling apart from others in this kind of bedroom-rock space: he’s not afraid of clean vocals. As he enters, the intro’s leisurely guitar lead falls away, leaving him front and center over low organ, plodding bass, and acoustic guitar chords that are so soft they’re barely even there. The addition of Oeffling’s deep voice to this already low-end-tilted tableau could easily turn the whole mix to mud, but its raw presentation, paired with his delivery, does the opposite, and he pops out of the speakers. Even when the lead guitar comes back to sit alone at the high end of the register, it never feels like it’s competing with his voice, which remains the song’s focal point. There is certainly a “slacker” quality to the way Oeffling sings, but he never crosses the line to full apathy; because of this, his voice can carry a lot of weight, giving him tons of freedom with the rest of the arrangement.

After this placid beginning, “How to Age Gracefully” moves through a two-minute instrumental crescendo, steadily growing in speed and volume until we’re spat out into the next passage, where the song becomes a more straightforward dual-guitar rocker. When Oeffling’s vocals return, the presentation is a touch different; his voice isn’t totally lo-fi or washed out, but it moves in that direction, with saturation that feels like a subtler take on the vocal processing of earlier Strokes records. As much as I loved the first section’s more natural vocals, the added edge fits here, and it’s cool to see the way that Oeffling, in his role as both producer and performer, is able to shift gears so effectively.

The penultimate song, “Roy’s Accordion,” is another track whose general palette and approach really impressed me. The start has a sort of bossa nova-tinged Jack Johnson vibe, with Oeffling's unprocessed voice once again shining through. It’s a minimal arrangement with warmth in its simplicity, and the sparse sonics allow little touches, like the snaps we hear in the background, to make a big impact. At the end of the first verse, a descending guitar line cuts into this warmth, pairing well with a wistful quality Oeffling adds to his voice as he sings “I’ve spent many moons with you / I’ve spent half my life with you / I’ve been trying not to use.” This interplay, where warmth gets cut by doubt, repeats itself a few times until we get to the song’s finale where we finally get our ears on the promised accordion. It’s used sparingly, but does its job well, leading into one of my favorite instrumental sections of the record. 

When Oeffling does deploy that more straight-up lo-fi sound I initially expected would dominate the record, he’s equally impressive. I know I said earlier that I’d grown a little sick of this bedroom-rock sound, but the way it’s used on Neighbors, as part of a bouquet rather than the sole flower, makes it feel fresher. When the crash cymbals and fuzzy guitar bleed together on “Psycho,” I can’t say it sounds anything other than great, and as much as I loved the exposed vocals discussed earlier, hearing Oeffling’s voice saturated almost to the point of clipping delivers its own kind of magic. 

Album closer “Grab Your Cameras” is another track where cymbals and guitar meld together perfectly, this time paired with a ferociously rolling snare that gets you out of your seat. On these more washed-out songs, the cymbals really steal the show, something attributable just as much to Oeffling the producer as it is to Oeffling the artist. When you work independently as he does, wearing both of these hats, one of the biggest dangers is that nobody is there to tell you no. In that scenario, it’s easy to take what is initially a cool sound and drive it into the ground or spend hours adding unnecessary layers to songs that do no favors to the final mix. There’s none of that here; the artist is able to tame himself without stifling his expression—no easy feat.  

After listening to Neighbors, I went back and explored the rest of Oeffling’s catalog. Having enjoyed the new record, I wasn’t necessarily surprised to find that I liked his other work, but I was surprised by how good he was from the jump. In Oeffling’s early releases, I expected little more than traces of raw talent waiting to be discovered, but instead I found great song after great song from an artist who seemingly emerged almost fully formed. Neighbors is certainly more polished than what came before it, but when I listened to songs like “out of tune again” from hand-in-hand or “fresh to death” from secret knowledge of backroads my takeaway wasn’t “this has potential”; it was “this is awesome.” And the thing is, I’ve barely scratched the surface. Beyond Oeffling’s deep catalog of solo records are collaborative projects like jumper seat and PRIVATE SCHOOL, plus scores of demos and one-off singles; it seems like music just constantly flows out of the guy. 

I went into this review fairly suspicious and came out the other side converted. Oeffling is the real deal, one of those artists whose musical ease boggles my mind. Maybe the most exciting thing about this realization is that I doubt I’ll have to wait long to hear what he does next. Even if I do, I can’t complain; if he’s making records like this at his current pace, imagine what he’ll do if he stews for a year or two. It’s too early to say that Oeffling is the second coming of Robert Pollard (we’ll need to check back in another 40 albums or so), but I don’t think I’d be off base in saying the two are cut from the same cloth. Both seem to write songs as easily as others write diary entries, and for both I believe that the praise these songs bring is secondary to whatever they feel while they’re creating. That’s why Oeffling hits for me where similar acts haven’t: his volume of work is driven by personal desire rather than a quota or some understanding of what a musician in this day and age is supposed to do. He’s an artist rather than a careerist, and as long as he stays on that path, there’s a lot of great music ahead of him. 

Josh Ejnes is a writer and musician living in Chicago. He has a blog about cassette tapes called Tape Study that you can find here, and he also makes music under the name Cutaway Car.

Greg Freeman – All Set The Bone Review

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Transgressive Records

Barely a year after Greg Freeman stormed onto the scene with Burnover, the ascendant indie bard of New England is striking while the iron is hot with his ambitious new album All Set The Bone. After the warm reception of Burnover and an energetic, buzzy tour, he set out on a solo journey through the Southwest to write his third album. Freeman spent months walking in the desert, playing guitar, and dealing with an “inhuman” confluence of life events - a combination that quickly bore creative fruit. All Set The Bone teems with the same urgency that defines his first two albums, taking Freeman’s heart-on-sleeve, dynamic Americana to raucous new heights and punishingly bleak lows. Though it feels cut from the same cloth as the rest of his catalog up to this point, Greg is testing the boundaries of the band’s sound as the turbulence of his life is channeled into something shaggier and rawer.

While he carried some of Burnover’s key elements into this new era, such as the plinky piano and emotive horns, the production on All Set The Bone (courtesy of John Congleton) feels much closer to Freeman’s first record I Looked Out. His latest effort shirks the polished tightness of Burnover’s writing and production in favor of a first-idea-best-idea approach that Freeman wields to great effect, churning out excellent songs like the lead single “Indu” in 20 minutes while sick and alone in the desert. Despite the looser approach to genre experiments and sharp changes in energy and song structure, this is a rock record through and through. Each track adds a new flair to the sprawling 67-minute album, but there’s less emphasis on maintaining a sonic throughline as Freeman attempts to capture the chaotic reality of modern life.

If labeling Freeman’s music as “alt-country” already felt reductive, this third record complicates that identity even further with a collection of 13 meaty tracks that span a wide spectrum of rock music. Opener “Cahokia” is a textbook Greg rocker that seamlessly blends the nerve-fried and the euphoric, with a chorus that begs to be sung and lyrical imagery that reflects Freeman’s view of our downtrodden, isolated world. From there, we roll into “Totaled,” which is the rowdiest thrasher of a track that Freeman has ever put to record, capturing the signature noisiness of his live show. The staccato stabs of “Culture” and the spare wailing of “Withdrawn” add to the rawness of the record’s first half and establish a track-to-track dynamism that borders on whiplash.

By the middle of the album, you’ve already heard several different versions of what this band can sound like, and that variety continues on the centerpiece and crown jewel of the album, “Loser’s Prize.” It’s a song that contains all Greg’s multitudes, as it almost breezily flips between the hooky anthem, the western-ish jam, and the noise rock blowout. More than any other track, it captures the band’s rowdy live energy and emphasizes the breadth of its arrangement with well-placed sprinkles of keys, strings, and backup vocals. Despite its presentation as a solo project, All Set The Bone is anything but. Almost a dozen players are credited on the album, ranging from the expected drums, bass, and guitar to keys, sax, trombone, trumpet, accordion, and violin. “Next to Nothing” is another testament to the band’s versatility, as they oscillate between a piano rock groove sesh and a noisy, freak folk instrumental. The lyrics are equally mercurial, rolling from a classic emo declaration, “I don’t wanna be here right now,” directly into a growling punk nightmare:

They’ll stick you in the dog food factory
With a mouth full of teeth like piano keys
Working for a man you will never ever see

It’s a thrilling twister of a song that sets up the album's phenomenal final stretch, with a bit of Neil Young worship in “Costs” and the crooning banjo ballad “Bury Me The Shovel” making what might be my favorite 3-track sequence of the album.

I’m still struggling to quite put my finger on what All Set The Bone actually is, and that isn’t a bad thing. While I hear bits of the 90s in the production style (Pavement, Pixies, Time Out of Mind Dylan), there are singular qualities that make Freeman’s music stand out - the barroom band vibe, his signature high vocal register, and clever lyricism that is at once earnest and wry. Even if all 13 tracks don’t converge on a particular sound or theme, Greg is refining a sonic identity that is increasing in scope by continuing to delight and devastate in new ways. All Set the Bone is the sound of him and the band experimenting a bit, working out a few exciting new ideas without too much concern for perfection. This sort of looseness, paired with this level of quality, seems to reflect a promising state of creative freedom for the project. After spending some quality time with the album, that liberty to experiment starts to feel like an antidote, a coping mechanism, and, undeniably, a relief from the hectic reality it reflects.

Parker White lives and works in Boulder, CO where he moonlights as a music writer. When not attending local shows or digging for new tunes, he’s hosting movie nights, hitting the trail, or hanging out with his beloved cat, Reba McEntire. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram @parkerdoubleyoo, and you can read other stuff he’s written over on his Substack.

more eaze – valley and structure | Album Review

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Thrill Jockey

In my dreams, I inhabit a world that has become reassuringly familiar over my thirty-odd years of sleep. I often return to the same three landscapes. One is a large room, wood-paneled and crowded, where I often encounter friends, or at least memories of them. The next is a vast mountain landscape, stretching beyond the tree line, sickeningly sheer cliffs dropping into millions of acres of granite. The last is my favorite: a deeply verdant and misty hill region, threaded by a road that never leads me to my destination, no matter how long I sleep. There is strange comfort in these landscapes - relief in the repetition of whatever pattern my unconscious brain is tracing. I feel similarly about music, finding myself consistently drawn to minimalist works. The thrum of the music’s predictability brings me comfort, cocooning my ears with a beautiful structure of rhythms, patterns, and notes. 

Because of this, I expected that valley and structure, the latest release from composer Mari Rubio, would immediately capture my minimalism-loving ears. Mari releases music under the name more eaze, both solo and with a rotating group of musicians behind her. I’ve greatly enjoyed her body of work over the years, watching with admiration as the worlds she spins with each new release build upon themselves in delicate, haunting webs. When I reviewed one of more eaze’s recent albums, sentence structure in the country, I commented on the otherworldly aspect of the music - it felt surreal, even dystopian, merging nature with machines. This effect is certainly also present on valley and structure, but in a distinctly different way. Instead of a darkly alien dystopian atmosphere, I sense vast open spaces, eternal fields of waving golden grass, and mirages that taunt from an indistinct horizon. A cloudless sky screams silently above, empty and infinite and possibly too blue. It’s a different brand of dystopia: everything is so perfect, so clean, so empty, that it cannot be anything but unsettling. The tie between these two albums is clear, not only in name but also in theme: whispers and fragments of sentence structure float through valley and structure like leaves in a breeze. It’s a brilliant concept, further tying more eaze’s worldbuilding into itself in a deeply satisfying way.

The album opens with a track titled “they tried to shove me in the structure,” featuring a deftly plucked guitar line that loops and drives forward incessantly. It’s accompanied by warm string swells that alternate between joy and unease, captured in a continuous dance. As I wander the golden grasses of this album’s landscape, I see the first sign of life in the terrible blue sky above: a hawk and a sparrow whirling in dizzying spirals, fighting over territory. The sparrow is relentless, but the hawk evades her, and their struggle traces a Möbius strip in the sky. A thin layer of strings hum in my ears as I watch them, and I notice the guitar’s arpeggios have started to lead away from the home key. However, the tension eases slightly as the rhythmic playing returns to the familiar notes of the opening chord progression. The hawk, realizing it will not be able to outsmart the persistent sparrow, breaks the loop and disappears into the endless azure ceiling. The sparrow has avoided the structure. Radio feedback crackles in my ears, and I realize I am not alone. 

I look around me and catch a glimpse of something metallic on the wavering horizon. The next track, “what’s wrong with the structure?” begins to play: a solo violin enters, bowing a precise string of notes that resemble a technical exercise. Its eerie quality is heightened as another violin joins, harmonizing in various intervals, and the music begins to melt together as a wind instrument adds to the arrangement. There is a faint clatter of voices and static layered behind the instruments, the piece whirring from one ear to the other until, at last, the guitar joins in. Dreamy whole-tone progressions create a blurry atmosphere - I notice a piano fading in and out, the deep thud of a bass, and even the shimmer of a distant synth organ. The silvery chords match the glint of the structure on the horizon I am walking toward. It flickers like a mirage, but the closer I get, the clearer it comes into focus. 

As I mentioned earlier, I am deeply drawn to minimalism for its sense of familiarity and the comfort I find in repetition. This same hypnotic quality is present throughout valley and structure, especially on track three: “once you say yes to the structure, you never get out.” An intensely rhythmic violin melody opens the track, paired in unison with guitar and bass. As I trudge towards the monolithic silver building on the horizon, I am reminded of an album that drives in a similar way. “Different Trains,” I muse silently. It’s one of minimalist composer Steve Reich’s best works. A moving, captivating, and powerful piece of art, I love its texture and depth. I find more eaze employing her own gifts of textural writing here, the instruments whirling around each other, mirroring their melodies in a method so contrapuntal that it feels damn near Baroque. The building is closer than ever, yet I have never walked so far. Everything comes around to itself in the end - modern music sounds Baroque, and the hawk is conquered by the sparrow.

I notice that the music has not stopped playing. Pleased, for I don’t want the song to end, I note that it’s exactly 20 minutes and two seconds long. 20:02 - a delightful numerical palindrome. Another Möbius strip of sorts. Around the eight-minute mark, “once you say yes to the structure, you never get out” slows, skulking back into the only shadow on this planet: the one cast by the building, its darkness a gash across endless miles of golden wheat. There is no whirling melody now, just sustained strings and the occasional comment from the piano. A low, dull humming fills the air as I find myself at the base of the building. There are no windows and no doors. It is hot even in the shade, hotter than it was under the eternal blue void. So I wait as brass and guitar offer their nervous harmonies. I hear a soft voice humming beneath the strings, though I’ve not noticed any company. The air grows heavier as the seconds pass, and the music plods now, no longer hiding in the shadows, but pulling itself along under the blazing sun. I notice the hawk has returned to the sky, whirling in spirals that draw closer to the ground with each rotation. The music has become frantic, and I find my heart beating in my hand, staining my palm red. On the horizon, the grasses dance with anticipation, and the violins follow in a fierce ostinato. I am weeping without knowing it. My heart is no longer a heart; before my eyes, it becomes the sparrow. And then the building opens with a scream – 

– and swallows me. “i’m in the structure.”

This is my favorite song. A heartwrenching melody, sung by an invisible entity, echoes in my ears as I am borne up, up, up to the top of the building. Major one to minor six chords, I note. It’s the same progression as my favorite song of all time, “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen. I am still weeping, tears coursing silently down my face. I do not know why. The violin wounds me, so beautiful that I ache with every note. The sound of waves crashing surround me, filling my ears with pressure as though I were underwater, but I am dry and surrounded by light. I am at the top of the building now, and I still hear the voice singing to me: "I’m content to be the void that collapses time and space / tracing out the melodies, replacing / tones / the faceless friend somehow never alone / blanketed by tastes.” I know these lyrics, for they are the same ones used on “The Producer,” a track from sentence structure in the country. Hearing them on this album, in an ethereal new setting, is like greeting an old friend. I am in the structure, and have only just entered the structure, but maybe I have always been here.

Time bends, and cold air burns my lungs without warning. I am on top of the monolithic building now, and there is no visible way to leave. “how can we get out of the structure” is the final track on valley and structure, and the only means of escape for the listener, and for me. The plucked, near-percussive rhythm at the beginning mirrors my heartbeat as I contemplate my options for escape. I sense that I am not alone: I turn slowly and behold something more than light but less than solid. I am briefly reminded of the Eldil of Perelandra. So this has been the source of the singing, the melodies, the driving life of this strange planet. As the music begins to deepen and build, the ever-present piano weaves through the top and then the bottom of the melody like a bright blue thread. Harmonies begin to melt into dissonance, and as the chill of the thin air cuts through my clothes, I hear the more-than-light being start to sing. The music is disintegrating slowly, beautifully, but the driving rhythm never falters. The light atop the structure is all-consuming, growing with each breath, and a honey-sweet breeze carries the sound of victory. I too am light, more than light, and I watch the structure sink into the golden grasses. Suspended in air, I spiral higher with the hawk and the sparrow. The entire planet vibrates with joyous melody, and I – I am singing too.

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 @brittajoes.

wakelee – Under Construction Forever | Album Review

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Wax Bodega

I never have the right words to say. Being a writer comes with the expectation that I should know what to say and that I should have the right words, but for the people who matter most, I seldom do. In his 1982 novella, The Body, Stephen King wrote, “The most important things are the hardest things to say.” This sentiment has stuck with me like gum on the bottom of a shoe, largely because I related so closely to the protagonist, Gordie Lachance, an offbeat kid with an affinity for writing and familial trauma to boot. In the wake of his older brother’s unexpected death, Lachance and his group of misfit buddies set off to find a dead body in the woods, seeking small-town acceptance for locating a missing boy. Throughout the coming-of-age tale, our narrator struggles to put his feelings of isolation, grief, and parental neglect into words. 

As an adolescent, this is largely expected; however, no one prepares you to carry that loss of words into adulthood. Frustratingly, it almost gets harder to say what’s on your mind as feelings, relationships, and life become increasingly complex. Even when it comes to things we feel strongly about, often once we try to put them into words, they fall flat. On their new LP, Under Construction Forever, the Brooklyn-based indie unit wakelee grapple with this perpetual struggle to find the right words in the most difficult circumstances.

wakelee are a group that lean into the nostalgic idiosyncrasies of life. This is evident even in their band name, which comes from a park in New Jersey where twin brothers Alex and David Bulmer grew up playing baseball. Although they eventually became high school benchwarmers, the yearning remained, and they decided to channel their energy into music. After playing in a handful of different bands throughout high school and college, Alex and David enlisted Elliot Shiang on bass after a chance meeting at a party in New York. What emerged was wakelee, a project with an eclectic mix of influences that ebb and flow seamlessly, proving the trio to be anything but a run-of-the-mill emo unit.

Photo by Gabe Drechsler

The group’s 2023 self-titled album features tracks like “Mood Rings” and “Texas” that draw on Pingrove and Macseal, while 2025’s Doghouse EP keeps those same emo foundations but also pulls in influences ranging from The Story So Far to Tyga and Korn. The group flexes this wide range of inspiration throughout that EP, crafting emo/pop-punk bangers like “mildlyinteresting” before switching to the alt-rock vibes of “Gary's Outcome” just a few songs later. Doghouse catapulted the trio from another passing NYC band to one that not only commands but deserves attention.

Under Construction Forever is wakelee’s first release with a label, the band now backed by the eternally tapped-in Wax Bodega. On their sophomore LP, the trio embrace their assorted tastes, resulting in one of the most exciting emo-adjacent releases in quite some time. Brisk album opener “Sundial” clocks in at just under two minutes and finds Bulmer grounding the listener in his reality, “Shaking / all my thoughts turning physical.” The introductory track finds the group dipping into some of their most aggressive material thus far, with the above lyrics screaming in on a red carpet of cymbal crashes and guttural bass lines. The song tackles the difficulties of owning up to your shortcomings at the end of a tenuous relationship as Bulmer sings, “In a different timeline / I’d have it all laid out / I know it’s my fault / I’ve been hanging on to you for so long."

The lead single, “Joyce Kilmer Service Area,” named after a rest stop about halfway between New York and Philly, is a polished pop-punk heater where the co-production from Zach Aumueller and Chris Freeman (Hot Mulligan) shines through. Debuting the first d-beat in a wakelee cut, it’s a song packed with family gripes and fast-tempoed instruments that mirror the lyrics’ palpable frustration. The song depicts a snafu where Bulmer’s unidentified relative seemingly forgot to meet him at the aforementioned service area, and he rebuts: “You’re forever slipping in an absent-minded mode / So I’ll stay home now / There’s little left between us / And I guarantee that you know it hurts me so bad.” Under Construction Forever forwardly mulls over blood-related barriers that tend to harbor lifetimes of pent-up resentments when left untended. 

Being plagued with familial dissonance is an overarching theme in The Body as well, which, if you haven't figured it out yet, also served as the inspiration for the 1986 film Stand by Me. Yes, the same film that features one Davie “Lard Ass” Hogan, who transforms a pie-eating contest into a puke-induced revenge fest. Despite the occasional absurdity of King’s writing, he eclipses it with truth-laden prose that sticks with readers for an eternity. Lachance feels largely invisible to his parents, who are in the depths of grief following the loss of their first-born. Much like the iconic story-turned-film, Under Construction Forever seems, at least in part, to be a cautionary tale about unresolved grief. On the mid-album cut “Box Fan,” Bulmer compares ever-present grief to the constant hum of a box fan, one that never goes away but simply becomes less noticeable over time. “Well, I know this went south / But I can drive there / A subtle distance / That’s always kept us apart,” he musters after the screeching tremolo of the bridge. 

Both “Decision Tree” and “Box Fan” put forth this concept of intentionally placed distance, both physical and hypothetical, that is woven throughout the LP. It’s here where Bulmer recognizes: “I tried to measure all the distance / There were signs I just missed them / Every thought is a misstep.” wakelee’s use of metaphorical gaps between loved ones aligns with the overall theme of an awkward barrier where words fail to adequately penetrate. “Decision Tree” traverses complicated feelings in relationships (familial and romantic alike) in which words could never define the brooding resentment, guilt, and longing that fester. Musically and lyrically, the track finds the band at the top of their game with pensive instrumentation and devastatingly catchy vocals that will bring tears to the eyes of even the most stoic of individuals: “There’s so much left to say, but I can’t get it out.” 

Summoning Worst Part Ever-esque vibes, “See It Now” immediately follows and finds wakelee licking their wounds while attempting to articulate complex feelings. With stripped-down lyrics and instrumentation, this song captures what happens when reality crushes romanticism, as the guilt-fueled song sheds lyrics like, “Should’ve had your back when I swore that I’d be there / I still wear your Crocs around the apartment.” In a vexed attempt to put complicated emotions into words, it confirms that oftentimes our expectations of how things should sound, or how situations should play out, are rarely as embellished as we imagine.

The album’s second single, “Statue,” certainly embodies emo elements, but leans more into alternative rock influences while the lyrics bring the family discourse to a head. Detailing trivial arguments with a forgetful relative, like forgotten passwords and inherited lower back pains, Bulmer sings, “One day we’ll gather to spread your ashes all over the ground / And it’ll be hard not to think about where things went wrong.” A few tracks later, the numbing feeling strung throughout the Aphex Twin-inspired “080808” further captures the convoluted mess of feelings that come with the loss of a loved one.

Under Construction Forever's closing tracks, "Open Ended" and "Glitterbox," tie the album up quaintly, as the band recognize their flaws whilst showing themselves some grace. Bulmer compares his destructive rumination to an oversteeped bag of tea, wonders why water is his number one enemy, and acknowledges that he’s “under construction forever,” before repeating “get used to it.” wakelee wrestles with the troubling realization that we rarely live up to who we expect ourselves to be, our loved ones are often not who we need them to be, and life tends to violently veer off the roads we desperately want to stay on. 

In an interview with SPIN, the band says of the album, “There’s the angle of anger, and ‘you shouldn’t have done this,’ and then there’s the angle of ‘I wish I said more. I wish I listened to you more,’ or realizing that you aren’t that great of a person.” Life is chock-full of what-ifs and should-ofs that we absolutely will dwell on if allowed to. Stephen King's assertion that “The most important things are the hardest things to say” also doubles as a recognition of things left unsaid. As acknowledged throughout this album, there's so much that wakelee (and I) would say if only we could find the right words. 

Brandon Cortez is a coffee, football, and music nerd from Texas. He’s on Twitter @numetalrev.