The Timeline-Altering Shoegaze of Total Wife

Photo by Sean Booz

Shopping for vintage clothes is a hobby that I treat more like a sport. Whenever I find myself researching the best places to find garments of the past, I feel like a star quarterback studying game tape. It’s both about the thrill of the hunt and that feeling of discovering a diamond in the rough that’s been repeatedly passed over by onlookers who didn’t realize what they were missing.

Today, shoegaze bands are a lot like going vintage shopping. There are so many different iterations and variations of homogeneous items from the past, but by being patient and dedicated, you will come across that timeless piece if you know exactly where to look. Insert the band Total Wife.

The Nashville experimental shoegaze duo is centered around the creative partnership between Luna Kupper and Ash Richter, though when they play live, their ranks expand to include a bassist, a second guitarist, and a drummer. The group is signed to Julia’s War Recordings, the Philadelphia-based record label founded by Doug Dulgarian of They Are Gutting a Body of Water, which is pushing the genre forward with some of the most exciting music in the underground from Her New Knife, Joyer, Bedridden, and now Total Wife. What makes Total Wife an unmistakable hit is their fearlessness. Both Kupper and Richter create art that feels like it could only have come from them and them alone. Their new record, come back down, has a DIY aesthetic both musically and visually that feels fresh, exciting, and unique to everything else that’s out there today.

Total Wife craft songs that would not only fit in on the radio in 1991, but also feel future-proofed for 3001.  Let’s start at that first extreme with tracks like “peaches” and “second spring,” which are good enough to make any My Bloody Valentine devotee blush with excitement. It’s a wet dream for any fans of that style of music; both Kupper and Richter are true students of the game, as evidenced by the way they’re able to slather on countless waves of distorted guitar tones that mend and mold depending on the mood of each song. There’s a sharpness and respect to their craft in how they are able to achieve such a specific sound while also molding their guitar tones into their own entity. It’s an impressive feat considering a shit ton (for the record, I consider a “shit ton” to be the unofficial highest measure of the metric system) of bands that are currently trying to achieve the same sound.

Elsewhere on the same record, we get a taste of what I imagine music will sound like eighty years from now. Songs like “ofersi3” and “internetsupermagazine” are sharp left turns into a combination of breakbeats, hyperpop, and hard techno that inspire Jersey Shore-levels of fist pumping where the speed gets turned up to infinity. The decision to veer into this type of rapid-fire sub-genre expedition feels so fresh, vital, and needed in today’s shoegaze landscape. The result is something I imagine people might listen to while flying to work on their jetpack.

I love it when bands try to test the limits of what musical lengths they can achieve. Total Wife’s reverence for the past while creating music that feels so future-forward makes them one of the most exciting projects I have heard all year. The most exciting part is that the music on come back down has constructed an endless number of doors, each offering different possibilities of where the band could take their sonic excursions next.

I got to chat with Total Wife over Zoom, where we talked about Halloween costumes, first-ever concert experiences, and a sado-masochistic moment on stage in Pittsburgh that potentially left a fan lost in another dimension.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length


SWIM: You just finished touring for your latest record. How did it go? 

LUNA: Yeah, it was really fun! All the shows were fun, we love our friends, and there were some really late drives this time, but we made it out. We were doing a lot of late-night driving. 

SWIM: Do you have any fun playlists to keep you going when you’re driving at night?

ASH: It’s up to the driver. Whoever’s driving gets to choose.

LUNA: It gets a little manic at times. I feel like it’ll get into nightcore remixes and shit to keep us wired. 

SWIM: I read a lot of Stephen King, so whenever I hear the word “manic,” I’m instantly brought back to his work for whatever reason, which leads me to my next question: Are you all excited for Halloween this year?

LUNA: Yeah! We usually have some kind of Halloween show plans, but we don’t this time. There’s one like a couple of days after, but yeah, we have to figure it out. We were The Matrix last year, and that was great. 

SWIM: Was anyone Neo or Trinity? 

LUNA: We were more vague characters within the Matrix universe. Our own Matrix characters. 

SWIM: Do you guys remember your first Halloween costume? 

ASH: The first one that I remember was when I did The Wizard of Oz with my family. I was the Scarecrow.

LUNA: I was a pile of leaves. That’s like my first memory. Being a pile of leaves, just a suit with a bunch of leaves attached to me. [laughs]

SWIM: What was your first-ever concert memory?

ASH: I saw Van Halen in 2007 with my dad for my birthday. 

LUNA: My first show was in 2012, and I saw Connor Oberst at Carnegie Hall, which is a crazy first.

SWIM: Both of you have crazy fun first shows. Do you remember the first show you guys saw together? 

ASH: That’s a good question. I feel like it was the Flaming Lips. We’ve known each other for a really long time. But yeah, they were on tour with Tame Impala in 2013, I think, and The Flaming Lips were opening, so that was cool. 

Photo by Sean Booz

SWIM: I really love the guitar textures on come back down, they sound so lush and beautiful. Is that a style you guys developed over time, or is there a particular era of music that you were influenced by to achieve that type of sound? 

LUNA: We’ve always made dense, layered stuff, usually with guitars and synths. The guitar just became more natural and sounded more organic. Just adding more and more guitar layer textures until it was only that. I think it comes from listening to a lot of nineties music and early 2000s stuff over time. 

SWIM: I get a little My Bloody Valentine type of vibes, Loveless, which is my type of stuff. It was done so expertly, in my opinion.

I was watching an interview with Pete Davidson, and he was talking about how Adam Sandler is seven years ahead of everyone in fashion, and I thought it was really funny yet accurate. So, to bring it back to you both, I was listening to “ofersi3,” which sounds like it’s a hundred years ahead of where everyone else is right now. When I imagine what people in the year 3000 will be listening to, it’s exactly that. How did you come up with that song? 

LUNA: [Laughs] Thank you. The whole first half is just a couple classic breaks that I distorted to create different notes. It’s not any crazy processing other than chopping audio files super tiny to make them tonal. Over time in the song, each beat gets fragmented further and further until they’re tonal and then end up creating different sounds. Those sounds then get chopped up for the second half and mixed in with some of the vocal samples taken from an old Elliot Smith cover that we never finished.

SWIM: Was this a time-consuming process to create, or did it come fairly quickly to you? 

LUNA: It was pretty fast. It kind of had to happen all at once because of this one unfolding thought, and I felt like I had to see where it went in that moment or else it wouldn’t be true to itself.

SWIM: Both of your styles are so unique. Did that develop over time? Were you always outgoing and willing to express yourself, or did it mature over time?

ASH: I think it was always pretty unique. When we were younger, we were just trying really hard to be weird at the cost of something listenable.

I think being daring and bold has kind of always been in our repertoire of songwriting. 

LUNA: Yeah, but it feels like recently, with this album, and maybe for a couple of years, it felt like enough time had passed that we’ve been doing this, so as long as we stay true to ourselves, whatever we do would sound different. Also, not trying to sound like anyone else. For a while, you’re just inspired by other musicians and trying to learn how to sound like your favorite bands until you have your own mix of whatever you’re trying to do.

SWIM: Did it take a while for you to find your own voice, or was it a quick process?

ASH: I think we always were doing something that was our own voice, but our influences were just so solidly there. I felt like we had to learn how to write songs first before we could sound like ourselves. We’ve been focusing more on the songwriting and structure, then adding all the personality to something that’s already true to classic songwriting. 

SWIM: When you’re on stage, do you feel you’re able to get your personality across to the fans while performing? Do you feel you’re able to be your true, unfiltered self up there, or does it help to get in the mindset of a different character, similar to an actor?

LUNA: I’m curious to see what your response is going to be. [laughing while talking to Ash]

ASH: I try to lock into the songs themselves in my performance and really think about what I’m saying, ‘cause the majority of what I do on stage is just singing. Then I have like a few samples I play as well, which are leads.

So, to give my best performance, I usually focus really hard on how I felt when I wrote the words to the songs and try to embody the truest version of that me. 

LUNA: I had to learn how to be fully comfortable and myself on stage, ‘cause at first, I was pretty nervous about that stuff. We’ve been recording in a studio for so long, so I had to be the calmest version of myself, which at first was impossible, but I figured it out. So yeah, I feel comfortable with it.

SWIM: I have to ask about a recent show in Pittsburgh where you played an over twenty-minute extended noise jam at the end of the song “make it last.” I read an article Eli Enis wrote, which, I have to quote him here, saying that this instance “felt like a sado-masochistic ritual” and potentially left a 19-year-old man named Carl in another dimension after what he had just witnessed. Can you please describe whether this usually happens during your shows, or was this a one-off kind of thing?

LUNA: Yeah, we always do that. [laughs]

ASH: It’s not necessarily supposed to be sado-masochistic. [laughs]

LUNA: It’s funny to see everyone’s different reaction to that. It’s a thing that happens, and the audience gets to experience it however they want. 

ASH: The truth is that we’ve done it in so many different ways, and everybody has a completely different reaction to it. We’ve done it differently in different places, and sometimes it feels like that, I guess.

LUNA: It’s interesting ‘cause people will, I find it either very aggressive or very soothing, which, I think, we’re trying to go for soothing. It’s something I want to exist only in the time it exists, so it’s hard to talk about, but, yeah, it’s definitely supposed to create a oneness with everyone there. I hope it is meditative for some people, you know? 

SWIM: Do you have a favorite part of touring? 

ASH: Honestly, getting to perform every night is my favorite part. Whenever we have a night off, I’m relieved in part, but also a little bummed. I really enjoy the experience where we’re basically just playing all these local bills with people who are active in their own scene. That is really cool to see how other scenes function because we’re so used to Nashville at this point. Yeah, it’s cool to be inspired by the different ways every scene uplifts itself and try to bring that home. 

SWIM: Do you guys like to explore the cities you visit on off days? 

ASH: Yeah. Sean, who plays drums in Total Wife, he’ll usually look up something on Atlas Obscura on an off day, and we’ll go to a cool cemetery or something.

LUNA: It’ll just show you oddities in whatever city you’re in. Just like weird, strange things that you can usually find for free, stuff that you wouldn’t find on Google or Apple Maps if you typed in ‘local attractions.’ 

I obviously love the music part of tour, but didn’t realize that touring so much meant that you’re just traveling all the time, which is really good for my brain in a way that I didn’t expect. The way it removes you from the cycle of your everyday life puts you outside of your head for a second, and then you can come back into it. It really does something crazy to my brain that I need. The road can definitely be soothing for different people, like just to travel and whatnot.

SWIM: You both have created a really distinct visual aesthetic —from the album cover art to the music videos —is that a collaborative effort between you two? 

ASH: I feel like we just have been making a lot of stuff for many years. For example, need-based flyers for shows. Art for promotion and stuff like that. When I was younger, I kind of overthought making art, and I thought if I’m not some classically trained artist, then what’s the point of making anything? But basically, I started using collage when I couldn’t draw what I wanted. I just had all these conceptual ideas and collages that really lend themselves well—combining concepts and just mashing up imagery together. 

A lot of the art is collaborative; we kind of just pass it back and forth. 

LUNA: Yeah. It’s a lot of passing back and forth with that stuff, or just making art alongside each other. Just snap reactions to this will be cool; that’ll be cool for that. Also, kind of accumulating different ideas and collages over the years, like Ash said. This project has always been both musical and visual. I think all of our output is just put into Total Wife. 

SWIM: How fulfilling is it to tag-team visual mediums, stuff other than music, together? 

ASH: Oh, yeah. It feels impossible to imagine not working together. Just because of how long it’s been, it’s such a long, growing process where we’ve worked through a lot of artistic disputes and refined the art we make, using each other as a sounding board. 

SWIM: Do you feel you operate creatively differently now than when you first met? 

LUNA: Totally. We were just trying to work out how we wanted to make stuff and had no end goal. We still kind of don’t, but it’s much easier to finish things now. 

ASH: I feel like we’re much more sure when we’re giving our opinions. We used to know what we didn’t want versus what we did. That helped because it helped us refine ourselves, but it took a while to sort out what exactly felt like us.

Neither of us started with any music theory knowledge or any real background in songwriting. I was in and out of bands, but I never learned to play guitar until last year. 

SWIM: Has your songwriting become easier for you now than it was 12 years ago? 

ASH: Definitely, yeah. It really started with recording just to have recordings, make songs, and have sounds. And then we were slowly making songs, which was kind of the reverse. 

Photo by Sean Booz

SWIM: What do you all have planned for the rest of the year? 

LUNA: We just have one more show planned. We’re doing so much touring and the album rollout. We’re both really excited to get back in the studio.

ASH: Yeah, so we’re just taking a little break from shows. 

LUNA: We have a bunch of songs written, and the next album has about like ten Pro Tools projects for new songs. That’s been in the sitting stage for so long because this was the first time we decided to do anything with the release other than just upload it the second we had the masters. 

SWIM: Is there gonna be a tonal shift with your next project?

LUNA: Honestly, not really. I would like to hear what people think, because in my mind, a lot of these songs could have been on this most recent album. 

Starting an album while the other one is being finished means each new record half sounds like the last one. So I think that’ll probably be the case with this one. It’ll be like half of the ideas I wanted to finish up on the last thing, half new stuff, and further trying to mesh everything and sound less disjointed.

SWIM: Is there anything else you all wanna talk about or bring up before we sign off?

LUNA: Nashville is awesome. There are a lot of cool bands here, and I'm just always trying to rep that. There are a lot of weird and fun bands out here, a lot of cool music that you wouldn’t expect.

SWIM: Who are some bands people should know about from Nashville? 

LUNA: The members of our band all have their own projects. Celltower and Make Yourself at Home. I play in another band called Melaina Kol. There’s just all these great bands. Sour Tooth, they’re amazing. 

SWIM: With you both living in Nashville, have either of you seen Haley Williams walking around?

LUNA: Yeah. She comes to the bagel shop I work at. 

SWIM: Oh, no way. 

ASH: I wanna meet her so bad. 

LUNA: She’s sweet, actually, which is nice to know. She’s a sweetheart. Thank goodness. 

SWIM: Thank you again for taking the time. I really appreciate it, and I hope you both have a wonderful day.

Luna and Ash in unison: Thank you! You too! 


David is a content mercenary based in Chicago. He’s also a freelance writer specializing in music, movies, and culture. His hidden talents are his mid-range jump shot and the ability to always be able to tell when someone is uncomfortable at a party. You can find him scrolling away on Instagram @davidmwill89, Twitter @Cobretti24, or Medium @davidmwms.

Vagabonds – Going Somewhere? | Single Review

Self-released

I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop my whole life.

We sprouted in the shadow of Golgotha, all of us tender shoots withering, competing to see who could muster up the most self-loathing. We thought guilt was virtuous. If we filled our proverbial shoes with rocks and kept on walking, maybe we could be worthy.

Every time I think I’ve broken the cycle, it catches me — this nagging sense that my luck is going to run out and some kind of karmic retribution is going to come crashing down. It’s hell, but it’s familiar, a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy that kindles dread and chokes out dreams, rinse and repeat. I’ve looked for relief in a lot of different places over the years, but how do you outrun your own mistakes?

The new song from Vagabonds, the longtime moniker of Michigan’s Luke S Dean, is one minute and 18 seconds of smoldering release, a panic room on fire, and a feeling I know too well. Even the title scans as taunting: “Going Somewhere?” it sneers, insinuating the impossibility of escape. It’s one of the most propulsive and urgent Vagabonds songs to date, driven by greyscale washes of dimed-amp feedback and a chorus of despondent vocals, somewhere between Control-era Pedro the Lion and the emogaze dirges of Greet Death.

The track is Vagabonds’ first since The Pasture & The Willow, a meditative chamber-rock epic and one of my favorite records of 2023, and the contrast between the two releases is stark. “Going Somewhere?” comes and goes as quickly as your heart dropping when you miss a stair that isn’t there in the middle of the night. It’s a form of rock song that’s tricky to execute well, the kind that catches you off guard with its brevity and makes you want to run it back immediately.

In a meta sense, by simply recording and releasing this snapshot of a shame spiral, Luke has interrupted a cycle. In their own words, “I’m releasing it now, not as a part of any specific album or as a part of any ‘cycle’ or ‘era’ but to break my own bad habit of sitting on songs years before putting them out.” As increasingly broken and bleak as the music industry feels right now, the ability for artists to release music whenever and however they want remains one of the coolest parts of DIY to me, and I’d like to see more bands doing this sort of thing for songs that don’t have a home on records. And while there isn’t even a sliver of light in this song’s subject matter, there is liberation in expressing it. An ancient text said it well: “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”


Nick Webber lives in Denver, CO, where he makes music with his friends in A Place For Owls and under his own name

Destiny Bond – The Love | Album Review

Convulse Records

It was late December 2023, and I was sleeping on my friend’s couch, watching over her cat, Gremlin, while she was away for Christmas. My girlfriend was back home in Kansas, so there was no one to miss my side of the bed being filled. I haven’t gone home to Kansas for the holidays since I started transitioning because I prefer the isolation of the empty city to the suffocating panopticon of blood. 

I left my phone playing Violent Treatment’s year-end episode in the living room as I brushed my teeth. I had spaced out because they were focusing on records I already knew I didn’t care for, but still wanted to hear voices talking about something. I came out of the bathroom and heard someone say, “This is for all the trans kids,” and scrubbed back in the episode to hear them talking about the band Destiny Bond. 

The Denver-based hardcore band makes records that beg people to connect. On their debut record, Be My Vengeance, vocalist Cloe Madonna vows allegiance to everyone that the ruling class tosses aside. That record’s title comes from “The Glow,” an anthemic promise that we collectively will be the light that guides each other out of the dark. Hearing that, alone over the holidays, was exactly what I needed. 

Destiny Bond’s sophomore album, The Love, begins with a heartbeat. A needed reminder of where all this shit comes from. The rest of opening track “Destiny Song” doubles down on everything that made Be My Vengeance an instant hit: melodic guitar parts, lyrics valorizing interconnectedness, and a rhythm section so propulsive it feels they’re trying to make you lift off. This time, Madonna fills her vocals with swagger from the very first line: “I’m bound to you / you’re bound to me / baby we’re bound by / destiny.” We’re bound together in the face of our lives being treated like jokes, or as Madonna puts it on the lead single, “now you use my, my / my peace as a punchline.”   

Destiny Bond doesn’t just write songs that beg for collective solutions to terminal problems; some of the band’s best tracks are the ones where they point the finger at themselves. On “Lookin’ For A Fight / Done Lookin’” Madonna sings a reminder to pause, recognizing that reacting out of fear might just cause more pain to someone she loves: “I gotta stop myself / before I react again this time.” Earlier in the record on “Free Me,” she spirals into a desperate battle with depression while Adam Croft’s jackhammer drumming pounds into your brain like the repetitive thoughts our narrator is stewing in. 

As the chorus of “Fix” attests, “being human doesn’t need fixed.” Every time a stranger on the street stares at me with judgement for my performance of femininity, every time a family member calls me by my deadname, every time a new piece of legislation gets passed limiting access to trans healthcare, I think about the other lyric that makes up the chorus: “get a fucking grip.” It is a finger pointed at every bigot in the world, all the racists, all the homophobes, and all the genocide deniers. It shows that real peace comes from letting go of invented problems that aim to divide and distract us from the strength we can find coming together in the face of those in power. 

But half the time I listen to “Fix,” it also feels like that line is pointing at myself. Every time I have questioned my right to claim womanhood because of deeply internalized transphobia, I have to pull myself by my collar and yell, “Tell me why you’re so scared to accept the things you haven’t chosen?” 

Immediately after “Fix”, album closer “Don’t Lose Control” cuts off every thought of an anxious mind. Madonna and her band chase after the listener on the verge of a breakdown. Each verse races ahead as Madonna acknowledges concerns and vulnerabilities but meets them with comfort and care. Then, when you expect a chorus, the band hits this synchronized moment that feels like floating as Madonna shouts “the only way not to lose control” right before the band plummets back to Earth on the next verse. It is an instant of outright beauty and, almost, calm. After a record designed to get the pit moving, “Don’t Lose Control” ends on a note of grace.

What I leave the record thinking about is what Madonna sings on the classic rock stomper “Can’t Kill The Love,” her plea to “Stop searching for gold / start looking for what feels right to hold.” When the record ends with that heartbeat coming back, it feels like holding the band’s collective heart in my hands, and it feels good. It feels good because holding each other feels right. 


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.

Broken Record – Routine | Album Review

Power Goth Recordings

I wake to walk my dog, then hop on a Citi Bike to duck and weave my way through four miles of unforgiving New York traffic to get to work. My previous subway commute started to wear me down, usually taking about an hour pending whatever ongoing construction or repairs were happening or if someone had jumped on the tracks. Interruptions were few and far between when I was a kid, though. Taking the train didn’t feel so rote then; I genuinely enjoyed the solace and consistency, the rattle and hum through the tunnels. Now I have neither solace nor consistency, and the fare’s gone up, so the pre-established routine I once appreciated has morphed into something soul-crushing. I might as well spend more money I don’t have on a Citi Bike membership so I can have some joy commuting on nicer days.

I’m 32 and wholeheartedly understand why people have midlife crises. I’d be grateful to have one someday instead of living through one every few years due to my country and the world at large, but I don’t feel like my life has that kind of runway. I don’t think I ever have. I’m not aiming to be all doom and gloom, but everything feels pretty fucked across the board. The majority of people I know are struggling and disconsolate in some way. Those who aren’t mostly stay quiet in their privilege like White Demon, the taunting creature on the cover of Broken Record’s third album, Routine.

Routine understands the tedium of regular oppression. The 30-minute record is a tight, speaker-blown emo album that makes my daily rage feel validated. Vocalist and guitarist Lauren Beecher has a preternatural skill for putting words to the emotions I feel, even immediately on the opener “Drag,” where she sings, “I don’t know if I can keep up / I don’t know if I’m alive.” A grinding bass from Corey Fruin maintains a booming rhythm that urges the listener to keep pushing forward against Beecher’s woes. It is in this dichotomy of defeatist lyrics set to energetic, catchy music in which Broken Record thrive.

No Vacation” pummels with power-pop nihilism. The guitars drip with distortion and grit, yet the melody cuts through with an endless hook that exists in spite of the chorus’s despondency: “It has to get worse before we can rest / It has to get worse / Locked in a cycle forever and yet / It has to get worse.” I loathe how relatable these lyrics are because I feel naked before them. They can align with anything in my life: work, school, relationships, behavioral patterns I fall into, and probably even more that I’ve yet to unearth. Evoking this kind of reflection in art is a challenge in our attention-split world, but Broken Record manage to give me a therapy session in less than two minutes.

In my review of Broken Record’s sophomore album Nothing Moves Me, I implored the band to lean into their slow and heavier side. I’m not going to say they wrote “What Always Happens” explicitly for me, but I’m not not saying that, either. A singular rhythm guitar and Beecher’s vocals introduce the track before drummer Nicholas Danes leads Fruin and guitarist Larson Ross to join the fray in a cathartic, crushing wall of feedback that brings the final third of the song to a transcendent conclusion. Any other band would have taken more than five minutes to achieve this, yet Broken Record execute this movement in a track shorter than the majority of the new Taylor Swift slop.

Aside from second-wave emo reference points like Sunny Day Real Estate, Broken Record aptly fill the void left by the scene’s white whale, Title Fight. “50% Sea” and “Knife” feel like they could stand with the best of Shed. Additionally, by blurring the lines between power-pop, post-hardcore, grunge, and shoegaze, Broken Record prove themselves to be timeless torchbearers of alternative rock music. Nowhere is this more clear than on “Nervous Energy,” Routine’s longest track at four and a half minutes. There is a humble confidence in the musicianship that guides listeners from one note to the next, showing the attention and intentionality that Beecher and co. exacted in the studio under the tutelage of engineer and producer Justin Pizzoferrato. The band wrote an album that is mean, lean, and truly themselves: a unique blend of the music they maintain obvious reverence for.

It would be remiss to not discuss the singular stark note of optimism off Routine. Album closer “A Small Step” ratchets up guitar heroics with soaring leads that underline Beecher’s final points. She sings of individually changing an otherwise unrelenting world, offering a glimpse of hope: “I can’t escape the world around me / but I can try to move it along.” What sticks out, though, is the only repeated refrain on the track: “Forever is whatever / All I need is someone like you by my side / to let me know that I’m all right.” Broken Record craft an album as dark and down as Routine, but choose to end on a message of love. Yes, this is a concept oft repeated, but it is worth noting its placement in the sequencing. blink-182 sings the same sentiment when pining for girls on “Going Away to College.” When Broken Record do it, they’re declaring love is greater than the everyday horrors we have to face.

Although Routine might be a challenging listen due to the material’s logical pessimism, the songs are a reflection of me (and, I imagine, many others) in a broken mirror. While I adore the way these songs sound in melody and tone, as well as the catharsis they deliver, I struggle with the weight of the image they present before me. Genuinely good and worthwhile art does not necessitate no work on the audience’s part, though. Fortunately for me and all their other fans, Broken Record offer comfort, solidarity, and understanding in their indictment of the world.


Joe is an all-purpose creative from Brooklyn, NY. He loves reading, writing, and playing the bass almost as much as he loves his dog. Every now and then, he discovers another reason to love Jimmy Eat World more deeply. Check out all of his work here.

Thanks! I Hate It – Scatterbrain | Album Review

Take This To Heart Records

I haven’t been doing well. Frankly, I don’t think any of us have been. Burnout nips at my heels like a dog. I meet my own bleary gaze in the mirror each morning, blinking until the light hurts my eyes a little less. I follow the same routine, finding some small comfort in its familiarity: mediocre coffee scooped into my French press, damp hair in a towel, concealer and blush pressed into my sheet-marked skin. I pick an album to soundtrack my commute, hesitating between an old favorite and something new. I decide to try the new album. And so goes the day: a series of choices, ever the same, varied only slightly by my responses to them. 

Scatterbrain, the sophomore album from Central California rockers Thanks! I Hate It, speaks directly to the burnout and dissolution we’ve all been wrestling with. Poignant lyrics sung by vocalist Sam Hogan are braided with glittering hooks and immaculate fills, melding the band’s fifth-wave emo sound with sharp insight on navigating millennial adulthood. For the most part, Scatterbrain iterates on the band’s excellent (and under the radar) 2023 LP Lover’s Lane. Throughout the record, guitarists Ryan Jansky and William Loomis ignite the songs with prickly Midwest fireworks while bassist Joel Chandler and drummer Ryan Loomis pack catharsis into every moment of the instrumentals. Their discography is filled with tongue-in-cheek song titles like “Meatwood Flack” and “Disney Bland.” In true emo tradition, they’re goofy and lighthearted names that offer no hint of the emotionally weighty lyrics beneath.  

This theme is continued on Scatterbrain: the opening track is titled “LeatherFACGCE,” a clever mash-up of the fabled Texas Chainsaw Massacre killer and an emo-favorite alternate guitar tuning. An immediately catchy drum groove and tightly winding guitar riff draw the listener in as Sam sings, “Water doesn’t heal everything / But today we can forget about the past / Iced tea and lemonade / You hate it when I try to dig around in your head.” The track speaks of a relationship that the speaker refuses to give up on, even though they acknowledge it’s getting more difficult to do so: it feels one-sided, with Sam singing that, “I’m doing overtime to let you know what’s on my mind / but oxygen gets harder to find.” 

The captivating hooks and energetic, yet honest, lyricism continue onto “Sunrise Over Mt. Doom,” which is one of my favorite tracks on the album. I love Lord of the Rings (Aragorn fans, rise up), and on first listen, the title of the song immediately got my attention. Over classic pop-punk chord progressions and melodic earworms, Sam admits that they’ve been whiling the days away unproductively. However, this honest confession is tinged with hope, looking ahead to a brighter future despite the current bleakness.

I spend my time on the wrong things
Mostly unemployed
I wait to see what tomorrow brings
Oh what else can I avoid?
And I know I know
It’s not gonna last forever
And I know I know
It gets better.

In The Lord of the Rings, Mount Doom is the volcano in Mordor where the One Ring was forged. The parallel of the song title is clear: Mt. Doom is a dark and hopeless place, full of foreboding, but a sunrise shining above it is a symbol of hope. Samwise says to Frodo in The Two Towers: “But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it'll shine out the clearer.” And so both Sams are right: it will get better from here.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned how intertwined boundaries are with peace. I am a (mostly) recovered people pleaser, but getting used to putting my health and time first has been a journey. I still have to mentally work myself up to saying no to someone, even when I know I’m burned out. On lead single “Butterfly Tattoo Effect,” T!IHI tackle this subject, commenting that “I don’t want to waste time / I don’t want to ruin my life.” Saying yes to everything and everyone is more destructive than anything – if all your time is spoken for by others, your life isn’t really your own anymore, it’s theirs. Sam sings that “I never felt the future / Mattered till I got a chance to make it myself / So I say / Oh well / For once, I learned how to say no.” As I traverse my third decade of living and make my future, I’ve finally learned to say no too. 

Sometimes, though, setting those boundaries leads to resentment from people who liked you only because you said yes to them. The album’s closing track, “Tonight’s the Night You Fight Your Dad,” is an honest examination of such a relationship: Sam admits that, “I think you like me better when I’m being a sponge.” Standing up for yourself to a family member or friend is never easy. It’s a relief to passively take criticism or arguments instead of pushing back. Honesty can feel like you’re a salmon battling upstream, facing a waterfall that threatens to crush you. But living itself is a relentless experience, and peace exists only because it is the opposite of conflict. Facing these difficult conversations can be done graciously, and loving people with whom you disagree is a part of life. Sam notes, “I still like being around you / I don’t let it bother me too much / I’m careful in the way that I’m receiving your love.” Sometimes, self-preservation can look like holding the ones you love at arm’s length.

Later on Scatterbrain, the energy briefly mellows on “Detractor Supply.” A soft and thoughtful opening leads into a satisfyingly dense atmosphere, building the end into a sudden explosion of circle pit energy – the band fakes a quiet ending, then blasts into a joyous chorus of gang vocals and furiously precise drumming from Ryan Loomis. “Break it up and break it down / We’re gonna turn this life around / There’s no more wishing, no more wanting / No more patience, no more longing.” It’s a powerful and emotive moment: my skin pricks with goosebumps and I yell along to the lyrics with all the air in my lungs. T!IHI prove they can move the listener with more than just poetry. From razor-sharp tempo changes to tawny harmonies, the band communicates emotional highs and lows throughout the entire album. Not only is it gorgeous, it’s damn impressive, too. 

It’s supposed to rain in a few hours. The sky is ominously cast in deep grey, and I can smell the water on the breeze. My shoulders feel a little less heavy. Perhaps there is some relief in routine: one foot in front of the other, a series of choices to make. Even the familiar can be sacred. Scatterbrain is a relatable and beautifully comforting ode to being human and finding the light of hope in our darkest seasons. I close my eyes and let the first few raindrops brush my face.


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.