Hater's Delight – 2024 Edition

/

Back by popular demand, Hater’s Delight returns for one last ride through the depths of 2024. While we retired the column for most of this year, by the time December rolled around, the Swim Team realized there was more than enough material to constitute a roundup of our collective displeasure. 

If you’re just now joining us for the first time, Hater’s Delight was a recurring micro-review column we ran throughout 2023 intended to be a space where our team of Swim Into The Sound writers could vent about the things online, in music, and in culture that got under our skin. 

Each writer gets a paragraph to bitch about their chosen topic, then, once we expel the Haterade from our systems, we all go back to loving music and enjoying art. Speaking of which, if you’re more in the mood for some positivity, check out our staff’s favorite albums of the year or our 2024 Song Showdown to see what we actually enjoyed this year. Swear it’s not all bad vibes. 

Enough being tempered; let’s get into the hatred. From the bland and banal to the offensive and insulting, let’s take a look back at all the things we’d prefer to leave in 2024. 

Zach Bryan’s Waste of a Great Idea

My litany of grievances with Zach Bryan is long. From the credible accusations that he’s a manipulative and abusive boyfriend to the fact that his head looks like a LEGO, the sin which warrants the below column is Bryan’s penchant for making the most mealy-mouthed milquetoast records and giving Country music a worse name.

The roll-out for Zach Bryan’s The Great American Bar Scene set the tone. Bryan announced that “select cuts” from the album would be played in “23 bars across the country that embody the spirit of American culture.” From Iron Horse Saloon in Oologah, Oklahoma, to Saratoga Lanes in St. Louis, Missouri (a bowling alley that still allows cigarettes inside), the selected bars represented a sort of divey blue-collar cash-only vibe.

Direct references to real-life bars and the inclusion of background noise like pool balls clacking are pretty much as far as the Great American Bar vibe goes—and the din gets quickly abandoned after a few tracks. If the goal was to create an album that tells a story about “Real Americans” and the watering holes at which they gather, this album is not quite that. If the goal was a collection of a few too many tracks with a loose thematic rubber band around them, that’s closer.

Sonically, The Great American Bar Scene is an overstuffed collection of Zach Bryan’s signature sound: mid-tempo meandering with brushed drum shuffles and the occasional Stom-Clap-Hey chorus. It’s mumbly SaddBoi low-energy background music with maybe one or two genuine upbeat foot-tappers. At 19 tracks and over an hour, the album is far less Happy Hour and far more Marathon Bender–and the hangover is just as bad.

This type of low-effort and lower-interest bullshit is not surprising coming from Bryan. What is so galling and frustrating is that he wasted a fun, exciting, and interesting concept like “an homage to dive bars” by just dipping back into his signature deflated sound. Sure, every great bar needs some dirgey sad bastard music, but there’s just nothing here worthy of slugging shots to. For an album that set out to honor the Great American Bar, one would expect more Molly Hatchet and less Damien Rice. Americans pine to link arms with their fellow barflies and scream catchy choruses together. Unfortunately, The Great American Bar Scene sounds more like silently sipping neat gin under a naked lightbulb.

So, on top of being a bad boyfriend, Zach Bryan also squandered an amazing opportunity to make a kick-ass saloon classic. And for that, may Merle and Waylon never forgive him.

Caleb Doyle – @ClassicDoyle


AI-Generated Album Art: Every Day We Stray Further from God’s Light

While my 2024 bingo card didn’t include Tears for Fears releasing a new album, it certainly didn’t include them releasing an album featuring abysmally ugly AI-generated cover art (if you can even call it art). An astronaut? In a field of sunflowers? What is this, 2011? You’re telling me that NONE of you had a throwback photo, concert shot, or a starving artist you wanted to commission? Pretty embarrassing for them. 

Even worse, the band doubled down on their decision and defended it online. It was cringe-worthy to see, especially considering that “Mad World” is one of my favorite songs of all time. You will never be able to convince me that AI art is a better option than hiring a living, breathing, feeling human being to create something for you. “But it’s so convenient! Computers are forever! AI is shaping the future!” SHUT UP! As the modern sage Caleb Hearon said, “The beauty [of mortality] is that the cup runs out.” Impermanence is part of being alive. It is part of the human experience. It is part of creating art.

Tears for Fears’ decision is sloppy, distasteful, and thumbs its nose at the very essence of being an artist of any kind. And you know what? I like Gary Jules’ cover of “Mad World” better anyway.

Britta Joseph – @brittajoes


Katy Perry Explaining Satire 

 
 

“Girlboss Shit!” exclaims the demon that sits on my chest at night as I try to fall asleep. It’s referring to a video of Katy Perry rising from the ashes of the crumbling institution of the American Brain to explain the concept of satire to the mouth-breathing masses. Dressed like an oiled-up construction worker projecting the simulacrum of sexuality, Ms. Perry lets us know that it’s okay, she’s not being serious about sexuality and femininity. Or maybe she is? Either way – it’s satire! You dumb fuck. You mushy-brained numbskull. How could you think for a second that she believes this or doesn’t believe it? Whatever “It” is. The inscrutable politics are a statement on… women? I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. As she stands in front of a line of silent, sexualized Black women, Katy Perry says something about the male gaze before retreating to her trailer to write a lengthy defense of her producer/notable rapist Dr. Luke before going to vote for Republicans to execute unhoused people in the streets of LA. Sorry, honey! That’s satire. She’s like the white Paul Beatty or the American Coralie Fargeat. 

As America was sweating through the designer-drug-fueled heat of Brat Summer, Katy Perry was busy constructing her own world. It’s a Woman’s World, you see. And we’re lucky to be living in it. Eagle-eyed fans might have noticed that this Woman’s World was filled with imagery stol– uh, borrowed – from other women. Women like Arca – whose transhumanist iconography Katy claims as her own “idea of feminine divine.” But the beauty of Katy Perry’s world is that everything is fair game. Interestingly, as Katy explains in this video, her ascension to the divine requires the literal smashing of Black working-class women. What happens to them? Doesn’t matter! Girlboss Shit! 

As our handle on nuance continues to slip day by day, it’s heartening to know that there are people like Katy Perry out there, doing the lord’s work by loudly exclaiming that you can project your own meaning onto them. The lack of perspective is the point.

As I am finally about to drift off to sleep, I hear a sincere-sarcastic whisper in my ear: “You go, girl.” Thank you, Demon That Sits On My Chest, that means a lot. 

Joshua Sullivan – @brotherheavenz


The Insurmountable Greed of Taylor Swift

Look, I like Taylor Swift a lot. I’ve been following her career and enjoying her music for well over a decade now. According to last.fm, I’ve racked up nearly 2k plays on her music. Last year, I snuck a bottle of wine into my local theater to enjoy The Eras Tour on the big screen. Five years ago, I went as Lover-era Taylor Swift for Halloween, complete with a glitter heart around my eye and a blonde wig atop my head. I’m laying all this out because, again, I like Taylor Swift. That said, she hasn’t exactly been on a hot streak lately. While I was initially on board with “Taylor’s Versions” as a concept and loved that she was reclaiming her work, after she butchered my beloved 1989, the sheen started to wear off. Then there was the middling Midnights and, this year, the insipid Tortured Poets Department. To me, the 16-song base version was bland enough, but then one day later, Swift dropped a 31-song version of the record, effectively turning it into a double album that brought TPD to an unwieldy two-hour runtime. If that wasn’t enough, she spent the year dropping 36 different variants of the album, sapping her audience of all disposable income, and keeping other artists from reaching #1 on multiple occasions in a way that feels more strategic and insidious than accidental. Shrewd business moves aside, this just seems like pure gluttony on Swift’s part, and all this for what’s easily her snooze-worthy album. The worst part is that it worked. Her tour made billions of dollars, her janky-ass book is a best-seller, and diehard “auto-buy” Swifties lined up to buy each version in droves, so what incentive does Swift have to change? It’s art as consumption carried out to its logical extreme. This is no longer about the music or even the artist; this is about owning all the things you possibly can. This is the type of greed they talk about in the bible.

Taylor Grimes – @GeorgeTaylorG


Being Shamed For Using Apple Music By Spotify 

 
 

It’s funny how every year, on the first Wednesday after Thanksgiving (it’s an official date, people), Spotify users take the opportunity to brag about their “in-depth” Spotify Wrapped and subsequently use that opportunity to exclaim how much better they are than Apple Music users. To an extent, sure, Apple Music doesn't have the most advanced UI, and the streaming service is only linked with Apple products, but come on. When compared to Spotify, Apple Music pays about double per stream, has much better audio quality, and, to my knowledge, doesn’t add any of their in-house AI monstrosities onto their own playlists. But sure, go ahead and talk about how you had a bubblegum-house-daydream March or whatever while you post Taylor Swift in your top five artists for the fifth year in a row.

Samuel Leon – @sleonpics


Stan Culture: Internet Feudalism Without Sick-Ass Trebuchets

I think we’re done here, y’all. I think it’s time for some internal accountability. I think it’s time to emulate the love and light that you so loudly claim to absorb and bathe in from your faves. It’s time to osmose some humility and grace from that single you’ve been stream farming. In the last decade or so, I’ve watched a simple dig at people who take their love for artists too seriously morph into a wild, uncountably headed hydra that has wreaked real-world havoc on innocent people with dissenting opinions. Frankly, it serves no one and nothing. Acting as a roving band of marauders for someone you basically treat as a liege lord has become so unrepentantly weird, heinous, and toxic that if it becomes a psychological diagnosis in like 10 years, I wouldn’t be surprised. I am begging you to decouple from centering a person who doesn’t know you exist and not to use your redlined dopamine receptors as your compass when acting on your punitive impulse to act against people who critique or vocally express distaste for someone who creates subjective art. I know I’m painting with a broad brush here, and that’s unfair to those stans who are actually normal people who understand how to react to another human being on the internet. But we neeeeeeed to start really pushing back for all of us, baby.

Elias Amini– @letsgetpivotal


Internet Irony-Poisoning at Concerts

Photo credit: King of the Hill, me

I'm going to keep this short. I'm going to keep this sweet. Take off the cowboy hat at that show. Don’t wear a shark costume to the gig. Don’t bring a Nintendo DS to a concert for the sole purpose of holding it up for a grainy picture. If any of this was funny, it was funny in the IRL meme-saturated days of, like, 2017. I just checked my calendar, and it says it's December 2024. It's embarrassing, and I’m telling you this because I love you. I really love you, and I want you to put the sarcastic approach to everything you love down. Like...why are you wearing that costume anyway? Because it’s ironic? Because you’re being sarcastic? It's not like it's comfortable, and now you’ve committed your whole night to what? Being a banana? Do you just want someone to take a picture of you, post it online, and say you’re funny? Post it online and say you’re funny? Does everything have to be a joke to you? Do you have to be the center of attention constantly? Can't you just enjoy yourself? Are you scared of being earnest for two seconds? Is this music so brutally honest to you that you have to wear a big, funny hat about it like weird armor from Amazon dot com? And now I can't see the stage, jackass.

This also applies to sarcastic pit-starting, filming yourself crowd surfing, and most Lightning McQueen merch at MJ Lenderman concerts this fall. 

Caro Alt – @firstwaveemo


Hater-dazed, Psychedelic, Mood-core, Genre-Identifier Daylists 

At the beginning of 2024, people would head to social media to share the latest daylist Spotify had generated for them. Suddenly, descriptions like “soccer-pilled, high school senior, emo afternoon” and “piano-keyed, dandelion-farmed, folk evening” began to appear everywhere. At first, the genres seemed like a fun way to let an evil corporation roast you with nonsense. And then, it became inescapable. Clueless-closet, rainy 90s, grunge-core afternoons bled into fork-in-socket, indie-haze, orchestral rock nights. The one consistency? None of these words were ever in the Bible. 

The entire thing was a way to monetize a larger trend in music: the subgenre-ization of subgenres. It was no longer enough to be shoegaze. It had to be doomgaze or countrygaze or something else entirely. This trend in categorizing wasn’t new, but the hyper-specific approach seemed to take on a meteoric rise with the constantly generated playlists. Let me be clear: I'm not against breaking genres down a bit further than the typical labels of “rock” or “hip-hop” or “indie folk.” Categorizations are necessary when searching for new bands or recommending beloved artists, but at the end of the day, Spotify’s method was total nonsense. It served as their way of forcing a feeling of fomo by creating something new that wasn’t necessarily good or coherent. 

So, if you need me in 2025, you can find me shaking my fist at the cloud-core, sleeper-heavy, frustrated morning sky. 

Lindsay Fickas – @lindsayfickas


Disheveled Alt-Mullets on Men

 
 

Once upon a time, mullets were mock-worthy. Now, they are everywhere, on all types of people, worn to widely varying degrees of success. But the one strain that really pisses me off is the wannabe-Mac DeMarco mullet. You know the one: greasy, unkempt, worn by a guy who is 85% likely to have a trust fund. The guy who is cosplaying being a slacker with a dose of feigned childishness. Despite being so Quirky and Goofy, he is somehow too cool to talk to you at the local indie rock show. His girlfriend is a lithe, oddly successful ceramicist. Like every other dude with the exact same scraggly, unwashed cut, he can't be burdened by society's onerous male attractiveness standards. He and his ilk are pioneers in an aesthetic that no one before them has ever tried: irony. What better way to show you are too cool to care than a purposefully ugly haircut? Well, I see right through you. The shag doth protest too much.

Katie Hayes (Wojciechowski) – @ktewoj


Drake Lawsuit

What happened to the game I love? Drake, coming off an embarrassing defeat at the hands of Kendrick Lamar in the Great Rap War of 2024, is now suing his own record label for cooking the books with “Not Like Us,” the song that dealt the final blow. I understand wanting to go after the evil empire of record labels; they’re all corrupt, so it’s the right act but the wrong messenger. Let me get on my Al Pacino Devil’s Advocate horse real quick, for argument's sake, and say the books were cooked; Drake benefitted from this same foul play for years on end from this same record label. When the result finally doesn’t go his way, he throws a temper tantrum. 

In 2001, Nas rapped about Jay-Z “being 36 in a karate class,” he wasn’t taken to court for slander accusations. There was no opening testimony from Jay-Z speaking to a judge, “Well, your honor, I was actually 32, and it was a taekwondo class.” He took his loss on the chin and kept making great music. Drake needs to take a page out of every other rapper’s book by taking the loss and moving on. Lose with a little dignity, why don’t you? And I like Drake, so this is coming from a place of love like a concerned cousin. But damn…. even Ja Rule didn’t even go out this pitiful.

David Williams – @davidmwill89


BRAT-Overdose

No record had a bigger cultural impact in 2024 than Charli xcx’s BRAT. When Charli began painting the town lime green with her wildly successful album rollout, BRAT felt like the culmination of a decade-plus of pop music experiments. After years as a poster girl for Pop’s Middle Class, a hero to funemployed twinks, and “the ‘Boom Clap’ Girl” to your coworkers, Charli made what could in some ways be considered the anti-pop star pop album. On BRAT, she sings about her inability to fit into the mold occupied by more conventional and commercially successful pop artists, the pressure to compete with other musicians who occupy a similar niche as her, and her admiration of another cult pop hero who was ahead of her time before her life was tragically cut short. 

As a young woman in a creative field who is lucky enough to be friends with many other young women in creative fields, the songs on BRAT resonate with the part of me that knows well what it’s like to be brimming with both pride and jealousy for a friend’s talents, or to stand around nervously sipping my drink instead of networking at a party where I feel glaringly out-of-place. I love BRAT in the same way that I love getting a text from a confidant that reads, “can i be a total bitch for a minute?” It’s the Hater’s Delight of pop records!

Brat Summer was fun at first. When “360” first dropped, I played the video on a loop each morning while getting ready in the morning for a week straight. I dashed from a BRAT listening party to a Wild Pink show like a true Gal About Town. The coolest thing you could be was a girl with thick, curly hair, a wardrobe full of black clothing, and a resting bitchface—I was in my element. 

I loved Brat Summer up until the infamous “Kamala IS Brat” tweet and Charli’s subsequent breach of niche containment. Don’t get me wrong, it’s wonderful to see Charli get her flowers after all this time. The album really is that good! And so are the remixes! But something shifted when lime green became the unofficial color of the DNC. Now that Kamala was Brat, everything was Brat. And if everything is Brat, nothing is. 

If you’ve been on the Girls ‘n Gays side of the internet this year, you’ve probably heard of the term “khia,” which, first of all, put some FUCKING respect on Khia’s name—“My Neck, My Back” is a banger! And second, the line between “khia” and “niche” is thinner than Gabbriette’s eyebrows. Is that C-list pop girl khia, or is she a cult hero? Who among us wouldn’t love to be Carly Rae Jepsen-famous—a one-hit wonder to the general public, the People’s Pop Star to those who can truly appreciate her brilliance? Maybe being everything to everybody is overrated and being “famous but not quite” is actually where it’s at.

Runner-Up: I wrote about this for Paste a few months ago, but can we all please agree to be more normal about Chappell Roan in 2025? I don’t think people realize how jarring it is to go from being a fucking camp counselor in suburban Missouri to being one of the most famous pop stars in the world in just a couple of months. That’s a massive change, and almost no time to adjust to it; you’d probably be yelling at photographers too if you were her. 

Grace Robins-Somerville – @grace_roso


Enemy Of The Music Business

Everyone’s an easy target. I could write about how I still don’t understand the post-Lana Del Rey underperformance of Billie Eilish, or the post-Lady Gaga third-rate cabaret flamboyance of Chappell Roan, or the promotion of underage alcoholics who get their news from TikTok of Olivia Rodrigo, but they all make children’s music for children, so what reason do I have to be mad at them? I could write about how the new Foxing album is for kids who were too smart to join theater but too dumb to take calculus, or how the new Vampire Weekend album is for people who criticize jam bands and hippies but listen to music more void of substance than the worst selling Dick’s Picks concert release, or how the new Tyler, The Creator album is for people who think about thinking about maybe one day having a deep thought on culture or society but never actually get there and instead try to tell me what the highlights are on Vultures, but I’ve never bought my girlfriend’s dad a shirt he hated that he can’t return, so that’s not really worth my time. I could write about how Jack White has stumbled and failed to reach the same immediacy of The White Stripes ever since the band broke up and only ends up becoming a Tim Burton reject version of Prince, which frankly is more of an insult to Prince, or how Green Day has been canonized as dad rock for fifteen years, releasing songs that sound like they discovered their sons’ diaries with introductory knowledge on anarchy, and how they look like washed up Social Distortion tattoo havers telling their grandkids about a hip band from back in their time they used to listen to called Green Day, or how Kings Of Leon transitioned from being a cocaine-fueled, cousin-kissing, southern rock Strokes spinoff into a band that hardly qualifies as music, now putting out albums that are even less noticeable than the Goodwill new age cassettes I bought last week, but if you think any of these bands still qualify as rock music, then there’s nothing I have to offer you. I guess enjoy the new Rian Johnson mystery movie next year? Some artists just aren’t for me (Clairo), some artists I will never understand the hype for (St. Vincent), and some artists I think objectively make shit from a butt (Father John Misty). But I’m having a way better time lately defending music others are criticizing than hating on music others are praising. Is this progress? Am I growing as a person? I’ll be 30 in 2025, and maybe it’s a sign I can’t spend all day online tweeting (blueskying?) at people about how they’re braindead simpletons for enjoying Fontaines D.C. or MGMT. I listened to almost 500 new releases this year, so trust me that I’ve earned the haterade I regularly drink and spit out, and the reality is that I listen to more music I like each year than music I don’t. But come the fuck on, you people actually think Beyoncé made a worthwhile country album and not just another bland pop-rap album with slide guitar? Please.

Logan Archer Mounts - hate mail can be directed to:
1122 Boogie Woogie Ave, PO Box 42069


Pitchfork and the Record Economy

For the last ten years, I’ve had Cindy Lee’s Act of Tenderness in my Discogs wantlist. You know why? I’ve been a fan for that long–I just can’t (and don’t) buy every single album whenever I want it. Some records get prioritized, and others remain on the wantlist until the mood strikes. Since Cindy Lee was relatively niche and their records were always around the $20 mark, I figured I had all the time in the world. Then, the worst thing possible happened–critical acclaim. 

Now, I am fine that Cindy Lee is finally getting some money, and I’m more than happy that Cindy Lee is gaining new fans–I’m not that kind of hipster. What sucks, for me, is the vinyl record economy and how Pitchfork inadvertently affects the market.

^Not this type of hipster.

240% increase of Cindy Lee’s 2020 record.

On April 12, 2024, I went to Pitchfork dot com to see the glowing 9.1 Diamond Jubilee “Best New Music” review for Cindy Lee’s 3xLP opus. And because I am a nerd, I immediately went to my Discogs wantlist to snatch up copies of Cindy Lee albums I had wanted yet neglected to buy for years. The flipping had already begun. What were once $20 records had already doubled in price by 2023. Now that Diamond Jubilee was deemed worthy of everyone’s attention, the prices of Cindy Lee’s previous albums had doubled again. As the months went by, the cost of Act of Tenderness just kept rising–recently selling for $112 in November.

“I hate you, Discogs record flippers. You suck the joy out of my favorite hobby. You don’t deserve my money at all!” I say as my cursor hovers over the Add to Cart button. Click.

Russ Finn – @dialup_ghost


You’ve been homogenized.

PICTURED: The recommended songs for the playlist exercise outlined below. Is this exploring?

Log into Spotify right now. Make a new playlist. Go ahead and add a couple of songs you love most. The ones you feel epitomize you and your taste. The kind of song you only hear once in a lifetime. For me, it was these. When you’re done (nine or ten is all you should really need), scroll to the bottom of the page and peek at the recommended songs section. What do you see?

Now for the interesting part. Take a screenshot, send this column to a friend, and have them repeat the exercise. If their taste is anything like yours, compare notes. What do you see?

The same fucking songs. Every goddamn time. No matter the vibe or the current content of the playlist– it could be entirely The Shaggs, and the algorithm would still serve up “Waiting Room” or “Grave Architecture” in an effort to serve some binary command such as “SATISFY CUSTOMER.” It makes a mockery of the discovery process, the magic of digging through stacks of fanzines or flipping through the “alternative” section of your local record store and finding something worth more than solid gold. It removes the chance of real connection beyond the surface level–that feeling of true resonance when the right song plays on the college radio station, on the bar’s jukebox, in your friend’s kitchen at midnight, at the show with five touring bands.

What’s worse than the automation of emotion is the automation of industry. Records are a novelty, and the stores that sell them rarely have the funds to invest in selling local bands’ records or lesser-known national bands. What they do have in abundance is sixteen crates full of Taylor Swift and Charli xcx, the canonized indies’ 30th-anniversary box sets, and some secondhand Stax albums ignored in a corner. People are losing their jobs in vinyl pressing plants, record labels, stores, venues, and even talent scouting to the encroaching online music industry. It’s all been relegated to social media campaigning, Ticketmaster queues, Christmastime Amazon orders, massive overseas factories dedicated to replicating Brat green–and even to a recommended section dedicated to homogenizing your taste.

Face it, we don’t explore the way we used to musically. Our society has accepted the idea of algorithmic control part and parcel, making the jobs of money-grubbing executives easier every day. As consumers lose their say in the music industry, we’ll be left with absolutely nothing. We’ll be living in a cultural desert, completely surrounded by inflatable dolls of pop stars gushing water–and there will be nowhere else to drink.

I hope Daniel Ek is next.

Michaela Doorjamb  – no applicable Twitter


Unsportsmanlike Conduct

Pictured: racks on racks on racks OR my crush fund

When Pity Sex’s first set in New York since 2016 back in August ended, I clapped for approximately one second before sticking my arm straight out, begging for a setlist. The band handed out two of their three setlists and walked off. I left my arm stretched as their crew came out when some college kid got on stage and grabbed the remaining setlist. At that moment, I felt shame for the sport. 

The thrill of getting a setlist is in being chosen by the crew or the band to get this coveted piece of paper. The joy of showing one off comes from the fact you may not have gotten it. My most beloved setlist is from the first time I saw Crush Fund because I asked for it, and it spawned a deep relationship with the band. By getting on stage to grab a setlist, you cheated not only the setlist, but yourself. 

At the secret Jeff Rosenstock show at Baby’s All Right last year, a friend grabbed one off the stage for me while John DeDomenici was reaching for it to give away, and I got embarrassed. Embarrassed enough to give it to the person next to me who didn’t mantel the stage? Not a chance in hell. 

If you’re getting on stage, it should be to jump off IMMEDIATELY (when there are enough people to land on), not to cherry-pick the setlist.

Lillian Weber – @Lilymweber

Tonight I Will Be Your Entertainment: The Ascendancy of saturdays at your place

/

Photo by Ty Benson

“If [saturdays at your place] is what the future of emo looks like, we’re in safe hands.” That’s what Taylor Grimes concluded when he crowned always cloudy as one of the best releases of last year. The trio dropped their star-making EP at the onset of 2023 and have spent the following two years touring relentlessly, building a grassroots fandom on the back of a very small but promising body of work. From “tarot cards” hitting streaming highs to retrieving stolen gear from evidence lockers and selling out their first headlining tour, 2024 has been a banner year for saturdays at your place, and 2025 is looking even better as anticipation builds for their next move. We sat down with a few of the band’s recent tourmates to hear in their own words what makes saturdays special, but before that, a bit of a history lesson. 

The genre’s newest superstars are from Kalamazoo, Michigan, making them, yes, true Midwest Emo. The trio is comprised of Esden Stafne on bass, Gabe Wood on drums, and Mitch Gulish on guitar, with Stafne and Wood sharing vocals duties across their discography, lending the band a nice range as they bounce from one perspective to another. Their debut album, something worth celebrating, came out in 2021, and the group has seemingly been working nonstop ever since, touring everything from basement shows to Hot Mulligan concerts. Sonically, they lean more into the traditional side of second- and fourth-wave emo (if you believe in that sort of thing), taking cues from twinkly progenitors like Pictures of Vernon, Their/They’re/There, and Camping in Alaska while putting their own distinctly gaze-y tinge on the sound. Like all new emo bands at this point, they’ve received plenty of comparisons to groups like Modern Baseball and Remo Drive, but that just scratches the surface of s@ypdom. 


We're Getting Off to a Rough Start

saturdays at your place first hit my radar on some random winter weekday in 2023 the same way a lot of people found them—a joke about their pronunciation of the word “tarot.” The band’s breakthrough song is incredibly catchy, with an immediately recognizable intro, a thumping bassline, and play-by-play lyrics about a Classically Emo Scenario: having a weird time at a house party—great stuff with a very strong start. Around the one-minute mark, the gang vocals kick in and shout, “They’re pulling out the tarot cards!” like an announcement (or a warning) (or a threat) yelled over the music at the aforementioned party. 

The joke comes from the way “tarot” is said. While lots of people seem to say the word as if it rhymes with “arrow,” saturdays at your place hit the "ro" hard, kinda like how you would pronounce “throw.” My understanding is that it’s a regional accent, but emo music listeners are very online, so the song made pretty much immediate waves on TikTok, Discord, and Twitter (to this day) because that line stuck out in such a charming and memorable way. 

Author’s note: This is the part where I admit that there is nothing I hate more than when I’m at a party and everyone decides to start playing a game or doing a secondary activity. I like chatting with strangers over music and generally hanging out. I think starting a secondary thing usually kills the vibe. If any of my friends are reading this, I am not talking about you. I loved it when you pulled out a board game at your party and had a lot of fun learning the rules of Catan at 11 pm.

Two years and eight million Spotify streams later, it's easy to see “tarot cards” success in real-time at any show the band puts on. Even listening to the studio recording, you can almost feel the finger-pointing reaction of the crowd when Stafne reasons, “Well, your friends don’t like me / I don’t like me too.” It’s obvious that someone is going to crowdsurf over the bridge’s “and when the lights go down / I don’t want to leave this house.” In fact, former tourmates Riley! said it’s their favorite song to see saturdays perform live because it's a fan favorite, and the band can command the room with it. I really like the song, too; I think it’s perfectly shy and maybe even cute. I especially like the line at the end, “Well, will you stick around if I do? / I think I found a part of me beside you.” 

Okay, so it only makes sense here to try and describe why people care so much about always cloudy. I mean, the EP has only six songs, how much could the band realistically tear through in 18 minutes? I had the same question. Turns out the answer is it’s just really loud and cohesive and earnest.

Photo by Ty Benson

What’s good about “tarot cards” being a launchpad of sorts is that it's a song that really introduces the band. Even the notion of talking to some unnamed person makes the band name make more sense—is this stumbling partygoer the person whose place you’re at on Saturdays? It makes you double back to start the whole thing from the beginning. The rest of always cloudy follows this kind of crowded hallway feeling. It's sweaty, buzzing, frustrating, overwhelming, and a little overheated from trying to wear winter clothes in a packed house while half-buzzed off three warm Miller Lites.

“future” kicks the EP off on the miserable final thoughts of their first album (discussed later), with frustrated lyrics burying themselves under a particularly dancy beat that gives each member of the trio a chance to shine. The groove of “future” extends into “fetch,” which leads into “tarot cards.” To me, the following track, “hospital bed,” is the spiritual sequel of “tarot cards”—kind of like the next morning after a wrought party experience, all mixed with a vibe I can only describe as Carpoolian. After is “it’s always cloudy in kalamazoo,” a song that needs a crowd as much as the crowd needs it.

The EP ends with “eat me alive,” a four-minute closer that's constantly colliding into itself with two distinct halves: one slow and laced with self-inflicted cruelty and another that’s fast and turns the blame outwards. It’s also my favorite. The song starts with the fuzzy dirge before Wood’s drums come in, loud and miserable. The first two minutes feel almost like the waves in the album art are washing over you as Wood lets the more complicated parts of himself crash ashore. The song builds and builds before breaking entirely. Wood speeds up his drumming and spits out one of my favorite lyrics on the EP, a strangled accusation, “You prepare me for a meal / ‘cause your friends / eat me alive.” saturdays at your place is not a band about mending relationships or even necessarily apologizing, they look at a scene from all angles, and, as much as they critique themselves, they aren’t afraid to level blame at others as well. Amidst a pummeling build, Wood flips the cards and reveals, “Saturdays are the worst for me too / I'll do anything to get you out of my room.” Actually, this one contributor on Genius can probably explain it better than me:

 
 

The album concludes with the assurance that “In time, memories will fade / I promise everything in the future” before looping back into the first track and starting again. It is a perfect six-song collection about feeling bad, feeling good, going back to feeling evil, just hanging out, and trying to figure out what you mean to someone.


Well, Will You Stick Around If I Do?

It’s genuinely refreshing to see people so excited about something new again. It should be news to no one that emo has a real nostalgia problem. Whether it's as blatant as When We Were Young Fest or as underhanded as people insisting that whatever Foxing album they heard first is their best one, it’s an irritating bias. I think saturdays at your place managed to unintentionally fulfill a nostalgic niche and satisfy a craving the scene had for ultra-catchy Midwest Emo. I think about how when I first listened to always cloudy–the house show atmosphere of the songs immediately dragged me back to the days of Modern Baseball and their music videos for songs like “The Weekend” and “Your Graduation.” It was instantly familiar in a way that other contemporary emo songs can’t quite achieve. In other words, it’s clear that the members of saturdays came into their own during that particular era of music, but they aren’t stuck in nostalgia. In fact, they seem to be actively combating it by working with other new emo bands as they collaboratively construct a cohesive scene.

saturdays at your place just wrapped their third tour of the year, each outing sharing the stage with other rapidly growing emo acts. They started the year on the Wax Bodega Tour with a stacked lineup of Ben Quad, who is taking over the world; Carly Cosgrove, who is maybe one of the best live acts you can catch (I reviewed their latest album); and Arm’s Length, who is clearing a path for these upcoming legends. When we asked Ben Quad about this, they said, “That tour felt like we were doing something important for the genre.” We agree. A couple of months later, saturdays at your place headed back out on the road as support for Prince Daddy and the Hyena’s summer tour with tapping superstars Riley! and Carpool (I also reviewed their latest album). This fall, they toured with Carpool again, with the midwest emo-revivalists TRSH and Dudes Rock connoisseur Harrison Gordon in tow. It doesn’t even end there because Origami Angel announced they’re taking saturdays on tour with them to the UK in Winter 2025. Phew. That felt like constant name-dropping, but it’s their actual reality.

Photo by Emily Harrington


But If You Get to Know Me, I'll Get to Know You

Beyond their EP, saturdays at your place has released one album, something worth celebrating, and a three-way split with SHOPLIFTER and Summerbruise called That’s What Friends Are For. 

Author’s note: While you may know that Mitch Gulish joined Summerbruise last year, did you know he’s in the music video for “With Friends Like These, Who Needs Empathy?” Thank you Mike for bringing this to our attention.

I guess this is the part where I speak very frankly. For a very long time, I didn’t care about saturdays at your place very much. I don’t know if y’all remember the state of DIY emo during the pandemic and directly after when touring started again, but it was really rough. I love a lot of the projects that came out during the time, but they were standouts in a total cesspool. Many previously exciting artists had serious accusations leveled against them, there were tensions between bands and band members, and several musicians just gave up and left music entirely during the nightmarish era. I found it hard to truly get excited about anything new, so I didn’t. As a result, when saturdays at your place released their first album in late 2021, I just ignored it. 

It wasn’t until I saw that random “tarot cards” joke a couple of years later that I gave them any time of day. This was after some of the misery of 2020-22 diy emo spaces had subsided, and notably, for one of the first times in a minute, I had seen people thoroughly geeked about something new. 

Photo by Ty Benson

One thing made very clear moments into “first of all” is that Gulish is a very good guitarist. In fact, a lot of the band’s debut album seems to be built on how good of a guitarist he is, with a couple of songs being guitar-led instrumental tracks or featuring extended guitar solos with his constant, complex, twinkly riffing. Elsewhere, songs like “existential shred” pad the release with lyric-less riffing, and I find it genuinely cool that they added these to their debut album. (Author’s note: as I was writing this, the band posted this Tweet encouraging listeners to “just skip all of the instrumentals,” so they seem to disagree, but I like ‘em.) At the time, especially after the popularity of particularly wordy emo artists like Origami Angel, many emo bands felt the need to fill in that same space with lots of lyrics. They don't. This album is proof.

Two years later, saturdays’ first contribution to That’s What Friends Are For is “pourover,” which has legitimately gotten stuck in my head at least once every week since its release in late 2023 (and you should check out their acoustic version with Counter Intuitive Records). Then there’s “forever,” which is easily one of the band’s most experimental songs as they break away from the fairly rigid rules of Midwest Emo and deploy a robotic vocal distortion on Wood’s voice. It makes the song more melancholy and distant. I consider saturdays at your place a fairly upbeat band, but this is the lowest they’ve ever dived in their discography. It acts as the symbolic ending of the split, the emotional endpoint. I look forward to hearing more of this grim experimentation on future projects. 


Can We Change the Conversation?
Can We Make It About Me?

Obviously, with only 19-ish songs to their name, this is a relatively small discography, but that means it’s more accessible to new fans. saturdays seem to have gamified the streaming algorithms that be; their songs have wound up on major editorial playlists on services like Spotify, spreading their music even further than imagined. This is at least partially responsible for their about 200,000 monthly listeners on Spotify (for reference: heavy hitters in the scene like Prince Daddy and the Hyena or Oso Oso are tens of thousands of listeners under that). 

To get a sense of this whirlwind rise to emo fame saturdays is experiencing, we reached out to Ben Quad, an up-and-coming band from another niche music scene who blew up at a similar time and also sold out national tours. In one word, Ben Quad described the experience as “wild.” They referred to tangible things like busier inboxes and new management but focused specifically on the fandom side. “Our audience is definitely a lot broader now, too. There’s also a lot more die-hard fans at our shows, which is something foreign to us. We have multiple people a show flying across the country to see us, and that absolutely blows my mind.” This experience, going from small house gigs with friends to sold-out club shows with fans in just a couple of releases, seems to mirror the trajectory of saturdays at your place and leaves the future of emo music open and sprawling.

While I can’t speak from personal experience, from observation, gaining such a quick notoriety can either drive your project into super-popularity or doom your reputation, kind of like a false start. In the case of saturdays at your place, it seems to have done the first thing. From my perspective, the minuscule mispronunciation in a great song seems to have launched the band into emo stardom and resulted in an instant classic. The enthusiasm for this band is tangible. Don’t believe me? Let’s talk about their live shows.

Photo by Ty Benson

2024 started, as mentioned, with the Wax Bodega tour. My tour date was in a cramped new club, and for the first time ever in the venue, I was struggling to catch a glimpse of the stage – it was just so packed and rowdy. When we asked Ben Quad about that tour, they said, “There wasn’t ever really a sleepy show because saturdays were there to get the crowd riled up from the start.” While I had seen saturdays before, that was the first time I really experienced that frenetic energy in action, and all for the opener.

Over the summer, saturdays shared a stage with Riley! who has a similar rowdy fanbase. When we asked about that crowd, Riley! said, “If you could boil it down into one word, energetic doesn’t even begin to explain it.” Carpool was on that same tour, and Stoph Colasanto described the crowd as “ravenous” and detailed how the audience was climbing over itself to get closer and closer to the band, a sight I experienced myself.

Carpool just wrapped up the always cloudy tour with saturdays and witnessed firsthand the band’s shift from a support slot to a headliner. Colasanto said that as the headliner, saturdays went all out. “They brought out all the bells and whistles, and it was genuinely fun to watch every night.” Ultimately, the experience “was a literal party but the type of party that’s all-inclusive and for everyone. It was cathartic.”

Outside of the performances, the fervor around the band had started to change, which can be summed up in one of Colasanto’s observations – that every single day of the tour, fans were lined up outside the venues early to get front spots for the gig. As someone who has stuck around DIY emo corners for several years, I find it hard to picture this happening in such a small and, at times, insular genre, but it absolutely is. 

We interviewed a lot of bands for this article, and one thing became abundantly clear very quickly: this is all just so much fun. Mike Newman of Summerbruise recalled, “Their excitement about every single crunchy-ass aspect of touring really renewed my appreciation for what we get to do.” Riley! added to that sentiment and said that touring with saturdays this summer was a blast – “we truly could not have asked for better tourmates on that run.” Ben Quad continued that train of thought and said saturdays were “one of those bands we instantly connected with as soon as we met them.” From Colasanto’s perspective, “It’s really special to see something so real and organic continue to grow and to get bigger, and for it to happen to saturdays just makes my heart so happy because they deserve everything in this world and more.”

Photo by Ty Benson

So, it’s all gas, no brakes for saturdays at your place, both physically after this year spent as road dogs and emotionally as they connect with a bigger audience than ever before. When it comes to what’s next, saturdays at your place talked about working on their next album during their latest tour. This record will be one of the most highly anticipated releases of the year and the first since their split with SHOPLIFTER and Summerbruise in 2023. Coming up even sooner is their holiday show with Ben Quad, Worry Club, Summerbruise, and Palette Knife. We asked Summerbruise about the show, and Newman’s excitement was tangible: “My favorite shit as a kid was watching the bands I loved who were legit friends goofing off together on stage, and this lineup is stacked with some of my all-time favorite goofers.” 

Like I said earlier, emo has a nostalgia problem, and I pity people who sit out just because they assume the stuff they grew up on is superior for whatever reason. I am so excited, genuinely, that this generation of listeners have a band like saturdays to be a fan of, a buzzing genre to enjoy, and an exciting scene to be part of.

The larger impact of saturdays will be reverberating around the Emo World for years. People will pick up the guitar because they want to play like Mitch, or they’ll start singing in a garage band because of Esden and Gabe, and when asked about their inspirations, saturdays will be first on their lists. I also think about Kalamazoo and how exciting it is for a band from a small scene to get this big. I think about how their attention will translate into people discovering new bands and how Kalamazoo will be intrinsically tied to the emo music of this era. Stoph Colasanto put it best:

“They’re a true testament to what it means to be DIY and care about your scene, community, and hometown. That’s something that really resonates with me — talk to Esden about Kalamazoo, he fucking loves it. It's his favorite city in the world. That shit gets me so hyped up. To see a DIY band from a smaller city or town get national attention and to use that to lift up their hometown and their community means a lot. Even as an outsider, I just get so stoked for Kalamazoo and for what saturdays is doing for it.”

“Anyone who has ever been in the proximity of that band knows that they are the future.” That’s what Ben Quad said while replying to our first question about saturdays at your place, and I think they’re absolutely right. Since 2023, I have seen saturdays at your place four times, and while this essay is not a concert review, I can’t emphasize enough how good they are live and how fun their performances are. Whether saturdays is headlining or supporting, the whole crowd knows the words to every song, thrashes around to every guitar solo, and the crowd surfs through their entire set. People are excited, and I am too. So, like we said, if saturdays at your place is what the future of emo looks like, we’re in safe hands.

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

Mount Eerie – Night Palace | Album Review

/

P.W. Elverum & Sun

It’s been about a month since Night Palace dropped, and I barely have my arms around it. Over the course of 81 minutes, legendary singer-songwriter Phil Elverum covers a lot of sonic and thematic territory. Black metal, motherhood, loosey-goosey indie rock, songs based on poems, poems based on songs, and Marxist property theory are just a few of the topics Phil examines on his sprawling new album. There’s a 12-minute spoken word track, a 58-second lullaby for his daughter, and an autotuned song about talking to a fish. It’s a complex listen.

Night Palace’s multifaceted nature stems from Phil’s attempt to reconcile many different pieces of his psyche, the world that he inhabits, and his rich artistic history. Since The Microphones’ free-flowing cult classic The Glow Pt. 2 landed him at the top of Pitchfork’s Top Albums of 2001, his 25-year stint as one of indie’s preeminent singer-songwriters has been marked by pendulum swings. One project is quiet, literal, and sincere. The next? Noisy, distorted, and atmospheric. In his words, this album is about finding as much connection as possible between all these versions of himself and all the contradictions we inhabit. It’s about creating continuity between our collective past and the present. Between the domestic and the spectral. The analogical and the objective.

In his attempt to locate this elusive nexus, Phil crafts a collection of songs that play out like the album-to-album oscillations of his discography in miniature. The opening track, “Night Palace,” features a hefty dose of contemplative verse and the studio experimentation that defined the early Microphones stuff - an air organ run through heavy distortion that blankets the composition with a thick, staticky haze. “Huge Fire” loosens things up with an electric guitar and a warmer arrangement to complement Phil’s lyrics about the all-encompassing sensory act of building a giant bonfire. It’s also the first of several references on Night Palace to Phil’s favorite symbol over the years - the powerful, dynamic force of the wind. At age 23 on tracks like “I Want Wind to Blow,” the wind was a way out for Phil, an escape from the claustrophobia of modern urban life. Now, at 46, the wind is not something to pray for but rather a powerful, beautiful, and destructive inevitability. It’s not strictly any one of those things; it represents the confluence of all those things and more.

The wind and other environmental symbols that appear throughout Night Palace represent an easing of Elverum’s commitment to a hyper-realistic songwriting approach after the passing of his wife Genevieve and the release of his devastating (and best-selling) 2017 album, A Crow Looked At Me. “Broom of Wind” is a perfect example of Phil loosening those self-imposed restrictions by allowing the poetic to coexist with the realistic within the very same song. It’s a stroke of concise songwriting brilliance that harmonizes his early inclination towards the natural metaphor with his late-period literalism, referencing a zen poem of the same name and conjuring a homey, solemn image of Phil sweeping his kitchen every morning. “Sweeping with an old broom / whose straw keeps chunking off / for me to sweep up” is both a relatable domestic frustration and an iteration of Sisyphusian myth rolled up into one short and sweet verse. Night Palace is full of such instances - the ordinary made cosmic.

As the album stretches on, seemingly into infinity, Phil inhabits just about every pocket of his sound that he’s ever explored. “Blurred World” is one long, gorgeous verse about worsening vision and pissing outside that recalls the vocal choir heavily featured on his 2005 album Singers. On the hilarious and poignant “I Spoke With a Fish,” we get another taste of the autotuned wackiness of 2013’s Pre-Human Ideas. Phil’s frequently cited Stereolab influence has never been quite so clear, in both sound and subject, as it is on “Non-Metaphorical Decolonization” and “Co-Owner of Trees,” two krautrock jams about nativism and the strange concept of land ownership. Though many of these ideas are familiar, it’s not quite right to call them retreads; a couple decades of experience imbues these words and sounds with new life, and their unconventional sequencing accentuates just how unique each one is. Every time I listened, a new handful stood out, and I suspect the same thing will happen again and again as I revisit.

There’s an entire dissertation to write unpacking each of the verses and sonic vignettes in Night Palace’s 26 tracks. This record - possibly even more so than many of Phil’s works - should be treated as a primary source text rather than an airplane novel. It’s a snapshot in time that means something different to its author and audience today than it will in a year and a few years after that. It should be listened to, read, discussed, and relistened to again. In that way, it can be a nexus of temporal perspective for you in the same way that it was for our old friend Phil.

Parker White is a tech salesperson moonlighting as a music writer. When not attending local shows in Atlanta or digging for new tunes, he’s hosting movie nights, hiking/running, 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.

A Place For Owls – how we dig in the earth | Album Review

/

Broom of Destruction Records

A Place for Owls open up their stellar sophomore album, how we dig in the earth, with “go on,” an acoustic ballad that crescendos into strings, keys, and gang vocals. Lead singer Ben Sooy’s voice is gentle–but not weak–in conveying the general human problem of not being okay at all. This first track is perfectly indicative of the 45 minutes of humane intimacy and tenderness found throughout the record, the strengths that separate APFO from both their influences and their peers.

Once “go on” reaches its peak, “hourglass” roars in with thick, crunchy guitars, crashing cymbals, and Sooy’s beating, bleeding open heart. The song tells the story of his and his partner’s miscarriage presented in momentous, wall-of-sound emotional rock that is textured and carefully layered. It sounds like the color of a densely wooded forest during the first chill, with the warmth of a cabin just a few steps out of reach. It is here that I imagine myself feeling the love Sooy has for his partner, their unborn children, and the life they are building together. Every grain of sand in “hourglass” is the sound of love vying against the unexpected, harsh realities of life.

Without losing the established solemnity of the album, “broken open seed” is as much fun as it is a reflection on the endless nature of waiting for sunlight, the bloom and blossom of oneself.

A broken open seed, imagine me
Lying 'neath the ground all covered in leaves
The very voice of earth
That groans beneath the dirt
When everything's asleep
Everything's asleep
Everything but me

I’ve listened to enough emo music to have developed a keen ear for spotting the quiet-loud dynamic range utilized in many of the genre’s songs. It is a trope of emo that I love, but also one that is expertly subverted on “broken open seed.” One can easily imagine a version of this song that begins quietly, slowly watered with thunderous guitars, and blooms into a headbanging conclusion. Yet APFO go against my ear’s expectations and land in a quiet place to spread their message of love and support for one another. Being themselves is APFO’s superpower.

In contrast to the hooky synths of its predecessor, “huston lake” is another simple and direct ballad reminiscent of the first half of “go on.” Every time I’ve listened to this album, I tear up on this track. I can’t tell you if it’s because I’m a sucker for soft piano and haunting lap-steel guitar or if it is for how beautiful and cathartic it is for me to hear someone let go so enthusiastically when all I do is strive to maintain control in my own life. Perhaps I’m still processing whatever traumas I’ve faced, but I prefer to give grace to Sooy, Nick Webber, Daniel Perez, Ryan Day, Jesse Cowan, and co.: they inspire a release through sparse instrumentation that brings listeners closer to the divine.

At the center of how we dig in the earth lies the one-two punch of “a tattoo of a candle” and “desmond hume.” The former is full of sing-along melodies and the most optimistic lyric I’ve ever heard: “draw your breath in / hope is a weapon.” (I’m already considering a tattoo of that lyric, and the album is not even a month old.) If one follows the extended network of APFO and their Holy Fools, then it is no surprise that they are genuine people who ultimately believe in the beauty of life, community, and love. This authenticity shines through in “tattoo’s” chorus, using specific details to communicate universal feelings:

I'm smoking cigarettes with Daniel
A tattoo of a candle
A flicker and a fade
And everything has changed
I don't need another reason
It's just another season
The leaves will fall and fade
And everything's the same

As “a tattoo of a candle” winds down, “desmond hume” continues the band’s streak of Lost references and ends the A side of the album on an appropriately somber, contemplative note. Evoking the quietude of “go on” and “huston lake,” Webber plays piano and Sooy picks a guitar while reflecting on the death of a stepfather who never really understood him or his complex relationship with his mother. 

Along with the solemn devastation inherent in multiple levels of grief, what stays with me in “desmond hume” is the metaphor of spirits in Sooy’s backpack. At the onset of the song, he calls them American Spirits, identifying them as cigarettes. After processing some of his grief throughout the track, the second “Spirits” lyric becomes something else to me. Sure, they are his comfort in times of distress, but they are also the hauntings he carries with him, always just a light away from springing to life.

In “haunted,” Sooy becomes the spirit. Layers of acoustic and twinkly electric guitars accompanied by a lone trumpet isolate his vocal, emphasizing the loneliness he sings about. When Elliott Green and the full band join, APFO enter full-cathartic-anthem territory, foreshadowing the album’s closing track.

It’d be remiss of me not to discuss “help me let the right ones in.” As an avid Jimmy Eat World fan, Sooy knows the importance of the last song on an album. It is the final statement of the record as an artifact. What thoughts and feelings are left with the listener when all is said and done? Not just that, but the last song must put a ribbon on all that’s come before. Unsurprisingly, APFO stick the landing. “help me let the right ones in” is the call to action after an album of grief and gratitude through the lens of elevating tremolo-picked guitars, pounding drums, and a buoyant, thumping bass. If the beginning of how we dig in the earth is green in its earnest descent into catharsis, the end is a dandelion, Coldplay-colored yellow basking in the warmth and intimacy of love, friendship, family, and the acceptance of change.

Brooklyn native Joe Wasserman moonlights as an English teacher when he’s not playing bass in the LVP. Find more of his writing on Substack.

Haley Heynderickx – Seed of a Seed | Album Review

/

Mama Bird Recording Co.

Did we take a wrong turn somewhere? This is something I’m sure everyone has thought at some point in their life, whether that’s in relation to a big life decision such as a move or career change, the direction of a relationship, or something as simple as a literal wrong turn while driving. As a person who grew up in the Information Age, with every global horror and consequence of full-throttle late-stage capitalism beamed directly into my brain, that question becomes haunting and so much bigger than myself. I know for a fact I’m not alone in that torment. If there’s one idea that much of my favorite art from 2024 explores, it would be that kind of existential dread: a cocktail of emptiness and anxiety that can only come from living day-to-day in a world that’s seemingly spiraling more and more out of our control. 

This year, I’ve heard everyone from Vince Staples to MJ Lenderman struggle to find meaning, let alone happiness, in modern times. On “Seed of a Seed,” the lead single and title track off of her long-awaited sophomore album, Haley Heynderickx is in the midst of this same search for contentment. “Cause we all need a sense of lore sometimes / Like I need a silent mind / In a consumer flood,” she sings in one of the verses, the swaying guitar pattern tracking the whole song, joined by a forlorn cello. She wonders if her parents and her “parents’ parents” knew any better before quickly concluding that they couldn’t have. Seed of a Seed is an album concerned with a great many things, but the thought that Heynderickx returns to over and over is this idea of cycles and history and how to reconnect with nature and serenity when we’re caught up in systems far outside of one person’s control. Maybe we took that wrong turn a long time ago…

For the unfamiliar, Haley Heynderickx is a Portland-based singer-songwriter whose debut album, I Need to Start a Garden, has netted her a devoted following in the six years since its release off the back of its enchanting take on indie folk. Where many of her peers blend folk with indie pop and rock influences from the 90s and 2000s, Heynderickx seems to draw from a much older well of inspiration, with mid-20th century folk and jazz chief among them. I remember catching her road test new material while opening for Lucy Dacus on her 2022 jaunt through the Northwest and feeling transported to the late 60s, wondering if this is what it felt like to stumble into a New York bar and watch Joni Mitchell hone now-classic songs.

It should come as no surprise to anyone who has had the opportunity to hear Haley Heynderickx perform in the past two years that Seed of a Seed finds her doubling down on her classic influences while bringing them into the 21st century. “Gemini” begins the album in a place of anxiety, with Heynderickx channeling Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” as she attempts to push down the part of herself railing against all the mundane anxieties of daily life. Nothing is spared, as everything from phone addiction and ignored messages to aimless spending and annoyed strangers get namechecked in a storm of distractions. Each repetition of the guitar motif is underscored by a rising tension until she finally relents to that voice and all the instrumentation joins in what may as well be the musical transcription of a deep breath. 

Regardless of how in vogue her influences are, the strength of Heynderickx’s songwriting is undeniable, as evidenced by “The Bug Collector” off of her debut eventually going viral on social media platforms like TikTok years after release. In that song, she gently removes insects from sight out of love for a panicked partner, but on Seed of a Seed, she has turned her attention to the bugs themselves. “Redwoods (Anxious God)” sees Heynderickx cutting through a forest of whimsical imagery straight out of a mythological fable, repeating a message she received from a pebble: “Humankind is getting lost / Not even little bugs want to talk with us.” The harmony between man and our neighbors is blocked by an impossibly high barricade centuries in the making. It’s a sentiment that risks coming off as hippie preaching, but the childlike wonder captured in both the imagery and plucky performances puts even someone as terminally online as myself right there with Heynderickx. With each infectious refrain, I imagine dancing among the eponymous redwoods and yearning to hear their wisdom, only for the final line to bring me crashing back to civilization. 

Elsewhere, “Mouth of a Flower” ponders the hierarchy of the world, tracing the life cycle from a hummingbird drinking a flower’s nectar to the various ways that humans have taken from the environment and each other. Once again, it’s easy to imagine this inducing some eye rolls in the hands of a less compelling writer, but Haley’s tone is never accusatory. There’s so much beauty in the give and take between man and nature, but also an underlying concern about how imbalanced these exchanges have become as our consumption continues to expand. Flourishes of cello and electric guitar inject extra moments of color into the song, but the former sours towards the end, its chugging rhythm twisting the core refrain, “And we take, and we take, and we take,” into something unnerving. 

These moments of tension may underscore the themes of overstimulation and imbalance, but it’s well worth noting that the experience of listening to Seed of a Seed is so far from either. I only stress them so heavily because it’s easy to get swept up in just how beautiful the vast majority of this record sounds and miss those hints of darkness. Haley Heynderickx pulls a kind of magic trick on the listener with this record. She and her band are able to conjure up their own archaic and grandeur sonic environment so casually that the appeal seems simple to anyone tuning in, but there is a meticulous craft behind it all. Their attention to detail is infectious. Every production choice, each slide of the trombone or pluck of a guitar string, sounds perfectly designed to make you appreciate the nearest patch of green in your vicinity. 

On “Gemini,” this manifests as her “pull[ing] the fuck over just to stare at purple clover off the highway,” kickstarting a series of interrogations into what really matters in her life. Seed of a Seed feels like it’s constantly trying to bottle that moment of realignment of the self and give it to the listener – a plea to value what is in front of us rather than striving for what isn’t. Nowhere is Haley more transparent about this endeavor than on “Sorry Fahey,” where she ponders the correlation between learning to appreciate the little things in life and the trials of adult life. It’s both achingly earnest and playful in a way that’s fast becoming a signature of Heynderickx’s music, full of musical twists and turns, as well as the songwriter lovingly admonishing her cat for being an asshole. 

Maybe to be an adult
To know your body keeps score
Is when you start to appreciate
Start to really appreciate

That you could call your Pa
Or a friend
And not bail on
The thing next Tuesday
Cause it’s a new day
It’s an offering
It’s a kettle
Making you tea
Ginger

It’s this that acts as the key to Haley’s outlook. Finding peace and purpose as an act of gentle protest is an idea that flows throughout the record. “Tell me truly, what is your dream? Tell me truly, is it the city life?” Heynderickx probes on the magnificent single “Foxglove,” asking the listener to reconsider what they need to be happy with in this life. The daydream may die, but that doesn’t mean fulfillment goes with it. That idea has followed me ever since I made my way through Northwest Portland alongside my partner one recent evening. As we walked by all the locally owned storefronts as they closed down for the night and the autumn wind blew through the trees, I felt her chilled hand in mine and was overwhelmed by an increasingly rare sense of contentment. My mind flickered back to the title track’s mantra: “If I get lucky / Maybe a glass of wine / If I get lucky /Maybe a hand next to mine.”

More than creature comforts or even the majesty of nature, Seed of a Seed imparts the importance of community to its listeners. After all, if people are responsible for the messes we find ourselves in, maybe it’s people who can help untangle that same bundle of stressors and fears. Viewed through this lens, that choice of title seems even more clever. We are all products of our environment and those who came before us and, by extension, their environments and the choices they’ve made. We are caught up in an impossibly sprawling tapestry of these people’s choices, which can be terrifying to think about. How can positive change ever be enacted with so many moving pieces out of our control and at odds with one another?

But there’s beauty in this idea, too. On the album’s unassuming closer, “Swoop,” Heynderickx directly reckons with her own family history and how she wound up in the station she finds herself in. She recounts her grandmother’s immigration from Hong Kong and the birth of her mother before visiting the former’s grave, settling into a sense of belonging at her place within this lineage. It’s a perfect punctuation after the wistful “Jerry’s Song” chronicles the shared experiences of a tried-and-true bond. In that song, she compares herself to clay and her subject to limestone amidst a flurry of memories, a different blurred image coming into focus with each listen. A cheeky line about splitting a sandwich in “divided America” feels prescient in hindsight, but it only highlights Haley’s belief in the power of little things. That tapestry already has so much conflict and innumerable clashing threads, so maybe the most anyone can do at the individual level is to be kind and generous to those immediately around them. It’s slow work, but if enough join in, something beautiful could be woven into the piece. 

I’ve had the privilege of seeing Haley Heynderickx again in the last month, almost two years since those opening slots, and with a full band this time around. It was a full circle moment to have songs I’d first heard in a live setting performed after becoming familiar with them for the purposes of this review, but more than any particular song they played, it’s an interaction with the crowd that keeps crossing my mind. In an interval between songs, an audience member asked if Haley had managed to start her garden, to which she ruefully admitted she hadn’t, citing limited living spaces and her touring schedule. Her trombonist, Denzel Mendoza, was quick to reaffirm by gesturing to the room and calling either the music, the moment, the audience, or a mix of all three “her garden.” It was a genuinely sweet exchange, and you could tell it meant a lot to the singer to think of it that way. Even if she hadn’t considered it before, Seed of a Seed is a product of that mindset: ten songs meant to sow the simple joys of nature and companionship into the brains of all who hear them. If we’re lucky, it will reap a bountiful harvest.

Wesley Cochran lives in Portland, OR where he works, writes, and enjoys keeping up with music of all kinds, with a particular fondness for indie rock. You can find him @ohcompassion on Twitter, via his email electricalmess@gmail.com, or at any Wilco show in the Pacific Northwest.