Half A Decade of Speaking It Into Existence: An Interview with pulses.

On It Wasn’t Supposed To Be Like This, the Virginia-based post-hardcore act pulses. tackle the idea that we must make the most of difficult circumstances, that those hardships make us who we are and ultimately can lead to great things. I’ve never shied away from speaking about how pivotal pulses. were to my introduction to DIY, leading me to a music community that I’ve been able to foster through them. Over the past five years, I’ve been lucky enough to grow close to this band and celebrate their impact along with other fans, but around this time back in 2020, as an unforeseen pandemic was altering our lives forever, all I knew was a single called “Louisiana Purchase” and the album it was released on. 

To celebrate five years of Speak It Into Existence, I sat down with pulses. frontmen Matt Burridge and Caleb Taylor, drummer Kevin Taylor, and bassist David Crane to discuss the album's creation and what makes it so special to not only the band but also those who found them through it. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

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SWIM: How are you guys doing?

MATT: Solid. We practiced. David tracked some stuff. It's been cool.

CALEB: It's been a day.

KEVIN: [Laughs]

SWIM: Yeah, I worked earlier today, so I’m pretty fried.

Thank you for being here! I had this kind of epiphany earlier this week where I wanted to start doing these interviews, and I was like, “Well, pulses. is kind of where I started getting into my DIY interests and Speak It Into Existence (specifically), so it makes sense to go back and revisit the album.” 

Before we dove into the album discussion, I was curious what everyone had been listening to first.

KEVIN: It's funny. I feel like I'm not listening to anything. It's the weirdest time where I'll listen to stuff in really quick bursts, and then I won't listen to stuff for like three days. It's odd. 

SWIM: Yeah, I always have a weird complex like, “I’m not listening to enough music right now and definitely not enough new music,” so it’s nice to hear that other people are the exact same way. Nobody’s listening to new music constantly; it’s just whenever it happens.  

KEVIN: Yeah, Sleigh Bells had a record that came out that was good. Scowl’s record is pretty good. The new PinkPantheress song is really good. 

SWIM: [Heaven knows] was so fucking good, I’m excited for more from her!

KEVIN: Listening to the [Callous] Daoboys singles, they're all pretty good. The new Skrillex album was pretty good. 

MATT: That new Deafheaven is really good. I feel like every year and a half, when I'm having writer's block, I watch all the “making of  John Bellion" videos that he does, ‘cause he used to film the entire process of making a song and then edit it down to like ten minutes or whatever, and those get me feeling creative. His music is either terrible to me or really good. 

I discovered Model/Actriz today. I'm really late on that, but they're really good. It's like dance-punk, post-punk. The new singles sound like live band versions of deadmau5 songs. It's crazy. 

CALEB: Yeah, I've been lacking on newer stuff. I get overwhelmed pretty quickly with things, and lately, my time listening to music has been while I'm working or doing something else. So sometimes I'd rather give my focus on new music, like give actual focus on it and check it out. Especially if I'm working, I don't want to listen to new music to analyze it. I want to listen to something that makes me feel good, because I feel terrible while working. [Laughs]

Recently, I've been revisiting and re-listening to things I may have missed or previously listened to to gain new context. I listen to the first Foals record a lot. 

One I revisited that I haven't listened to in a while was Bad Rabbit's second album.

SWIM: They’re very good! They’re super underrated. 

CALEB: Absolutely. I love their first album a lot, and that stays in rotation. American Love and their EP, too. 

MATT: Relient K is one that I just saw pop up! One of my hottest pop-punk/emo takes is that Mmhmm is one of the best pop-punk records of all-time. 

SWIM: “Be My Escape” has one of the best pre-choruses in punk rock music. 

CALEB: Yeah. The other day, while I was working, I listened to four of their albums. I went in reverse order. I started with Forget and Not Slow Down. That one's a sleeper. I actually like that album a lot. 

MATT: I was going to say, you’re a Relient K oldhead. [Laughs]

David: I'm going back through The Acacia Strain discography. Slow Decay is honestly one of their best albums, and it's a pretty recent release. Some of their back catalog is really good, too. 

MATT: It's like beatdown, fucking super heavy.

David: Humanity's Last Breath is also really good. They just put out a new song. 

MATT: You’re the metal representation in our listening. [Laughs]

SWIM: Yeah, gotta keep things balanced. 

SWIM: So, somehow, Speak It Into Existence is turning five this week. 

David: That five years was fast as hell.

[All laugh]

SWIM: Time is a really fucked up vaccuum, especially since Covid. I think everybody who listened to that album when it came out is having a lot of feelings about it, but how are you guys feeling about that album turning five?

MATT: It’s weird. I feel like I don't listen to it, but I need to. I'll probably listen to it on the day or around the day, because I usually do that with each of our releases as they gain a year. I like parts of it more than others. I remember when we put out Speak Less, I was like, “I don't have a favorite of the two,” and then now I'm like, “Oh, I like Speak Less way more.” But I still like them both. Then there are a lot of people like you, that we've met on Twitter, who found us through [Speak It Into Existence] and have become really close with us off of that. So I hold it in a special place ‘cause it did things for us, but I don't listen to it much anymore, and we don't play a lot of it ‘cause it was super technical for all of us.

SWIM: Yeah, a lot of it is very shreddy. [Laughs]

MATT: Yeah, and trying to multitask doing that is hard, so we play the hits and that’s it. 

CALEB: It's funny, I don't remember a lot of it. I feel like I have pushed out so much of that time, because we were working on it, primarily, my senior year of college, and that was not a good year. [Laughs]

I still remember when we put it out; I had a lab assignment due the same day, and I was working on it up until like midnight. I was just like, “All right, fuck this. I'm just gonna take whatever grade, I don't feel like working on this anymore. Let me celebrate the album release.” I still passed that class, and that was the last thing I needed to graduate, so yay for me, but definitely a weird time. Obviously, I'm always gonna be incredibly proud of it. I like a lot of the songs for it. Like Matt was saying, I like where it got us. I feel like that was the thing that established us in a lot of ways. I feel like bouquet. established us in our local scene, and then it got out somewhat, but Speak It Into Existence is where things started to expand past the local scene, and we were really starting to do some things. Still proud of it.

MATT: Even with the pandemic and everything, I think that might have helped it, honestly, ‘cause it was like within a month and a half of it starting. 

CALEB: Yeah, nobody had shit to do.

MATT: Yeah, and nobody was dropping other than like a couple bands, but a lot of people were postponing their stuff, and we were like, “We've waited too long,” because that record took so long to make.

CALEB: “It's not like we have any marketing backing behind it or anything, so we can release whenever we want to.” [Laughs]

SWIM: Yeah, I remember around that time, before listening to “Louisiana Purchase” and this album, so much of my listening was just commercial music/non-DIY. It took my oldest brother and my friend Jack being like, “Yo, check out this single,” and that really was the start of it. I remember thinking, “Oh, these guys did this all by themselves. How do you do that? What is this process?” I recall that being the thing that stuck out for me. Hearing a song like “Louisiana Purchase” and just how professional it sounded to me – how polished – and my mind breaking a little. The fact that people can do that without being on a major label.

MATT: That's cool, because I feel like you and Will [Full Blown Meltdown] are like the two people that I know that are the most on top of DIY music now. So it's cool that we were kind of the start of it. 

SWIM: Was he one of those early adopters as well?

MATT: I knew [Will] before he was doing FBM, because Will was Sam's brother's friend from high school. So, I think we posted that we were in Frederick or something, and then he messaged them and said, “Yo, I'm literally in this hair salon with my wife and she's getting her hair cut, come by.” I met him and we literally just sat there and talked. We were writing Speak Less at the time, and I was just like, “Oh yeah, we're putting out some stuff soon that sounds like Orchid and Satia. Then we kind of bonded over that. Now, I always joke with Sam every time I interact with him, I'm just like, “It's so funny to me that I talk to him more than you do now, and you’ve known him since you were a child.” [Laughs]

SWIM: Will is definitely the DIY hype man. He’s the kind of guy you want talking about your stuff. [Laughs]

MATT: Yeah, he's all over it. But that's cool, ‘cause we recorded it right here. Literally, I was sitting in this exact spot with my laptop. 

CALEB: This was a guest bedroom at the time, too. So, there was a bed here.

MATT: We would finish at like three or four in the morning, [Caleb] would go upstairs ‘cause he still lived here at the time, and I would sleep on that bed that was in here. [Laughs]

SWIM: What’s it like having that connective tissue still to all of your recordings? Being in such a different place as a band, five years removed from that album, and doing it in the same space?

MATT: I don't think about it much, because it looks different in here now, you know what I mean? It's Kevin and Caleb’s house. I don't know if they think about it more that way, but it's a different room to me now. 

KEVIN: It's very odd. I don't really think about it much. Not that I live here right now, but we've been here for like, what, 20 years, Caleb?

CALEB: I think we moved here in 2002, yeah. 

SWIM: It’s been your folks’ home for that long.

KEVIN: Exactly. I guess it's just another piece of me growing up here. It doesn't register to me as a difference for the band. It's just like, “I used to have a twin-size bed and now I have a queen-size bed,” you know? You don't think about those changes, so I feel like it kind of stays the same.

SWIM: This is The pulses. Studio and it keeps evolving. 

KEVIN: We shot “Untitled” in here, from the bouquet. era. We shot parts of “Bold New Taste” in here. We'd done those live stream recordings, but for me, they're all like somehow in a different room each time, but also in the same space. Different pieces of the same puzzle. It's weird. 

CALEB: I think it grows with us. Funny enough, I was tracking drums for new Followship music, so that was the first time I was recording them here, and it was so funny, ‘cause they were somewhat geeking out. Like, “Oh shit, this is where y'all recorded the ‘I Drink Juice’ video! This is right here! Oh, this is where y'all did this!” And I'm like, “Yeah.” [Laughs] 

Again, I don't really think about it in that way, ‘cause this is just the basement I grew up in. I was telling [Followship] even, “This is my whole life, my whole childhood, everything was here in this basement,” you know? They walked in and were just like, “Oh, you got the Rock Band drums graveyard.” We had all the New Year's parties with kids on the block here. It's just grown with us, and now it's the studio.

MATT: It's every room down here, too. You even go into the bathroom and you're like, “Oh my God! This is the bathroom from ‘The Message Is Clear’ video!” [Laughs]

SWIM: It’s becoming a pulses. museum. 

CALEB: Honestly.

SWIM: I always mix up the timeline, because when I think of pulses., it’s obviously the current lineup with Matt in it, but what was the timeline with Matt joining and Speak It Into Existence coming out?  

MATT: I joined in 2018, so [pulses.] put out “The Appetizer” and “Jecht Shot” like three months after I joined. They had me go ahead and record a second guitar on “Jecht Shot.” Not for “The Appetizer,” but I'm on “Jecht Shot.” That's my first thing, but it's just guitar. Then we started working on the album and didn't put anything out, just played a lot of shows. I didn't do vocals on that record. The lineup had changed before the album came out. So I think that's why a lot of people get confused with it, ‘cause we put it out and it was like, “Okay, but this isn't me, but I'm gonna be doing it from now on.” Since then, it's just been the four of us doing everything.

CALEB: I remember we had a number of songs already written for the album when Matt joined. 

MATT: It was “Sometimes Y,” “Exist Warp Breaks,” “Mount Midoriyama.” “Olivia Wild” you had started. “Don't Say Anything, Just RT,” I think you had started.

“Graduation Day” [too]. 

KEVIN: That one's old. 

MATT: Yeah. I just added parts to all of those. Then we wrote “Plastiglomerate” and “Louisiana Purchase” first. Which is wild, ‘cause they ended up being the singles. The title track was gonna be for Speak Less, and then we were like, “This will be a good opener. We'll make it longer and fill it out.” Then we wrote “Good Vibes Only (Zuckerberg Watchin’)” because we needed a pop song. It was almost the whole thing they had the instrumentals at least started for, then we wrote a couple core ones together.

SWIM: You touched on it a little bit, but how do you think lockdown and Covid affected the album, how it was released, and people’s relationship to it?

MATT: I think people attached to it because they were just not doing anything, so that helped. I think that helped it spread a little bit, because, realistically, if it wasn't Covid, we would've played a bunch of local shows and it would've probably not had as strong of an initial connection with people.

KEVIN: Didn't [Dance Gavin Dance] have an album that came out later? 

CALEB: Yeah. That was the whole thing. [Laughs]

MATT: Later that month, I think. 

KEVIN: Yeah, ‘cause we were trying to beat it. We had to drop it before…

CALEB: Afterburner.

SWIM: Oh, god. 

KEVIN: Yeah, because if we dropped it after, no one was gonna care. So we rushed it to get the album out before them, and I honestly think that helped a lot.

SWIM: Do you regret not having a song in Spanish on Speak It Into Existence?

[All Laugh]

KEVIN: Honestly, I'm glad we don't for a number of reasons.

CALEB: If we did, we would actually have a native speaker on it.

MATT: If we did it now, we would get a feature that speaks Spanish. Andres or somebody who speaks Spanish. [Laughs]

SWIM: Yeah, you have no shortage of connections who could do that. 

MATT: Not trying to Google translate my way through a verse.

KEVIN: As we've always said, there's just such a tumultuous relationship with that fucking band and I do think the fact that we dropped it before [Afterburner] was helpful. I feel like people listened to [Speak It Into Existence] and had their moments with it. Then [Afterburner] came out and the fact that it was weaker for a lot of people, they were like, “Oh, well if you don't like that shit, listen to Speak It Into Existence!” Then people suggested us more, and it got around that way. 

MATT: People still liked that genre, so there was a fan base for it. Whether we were part of it or not. 

KEVIN: Yeah, there wasn't any animosity. 

MATT: Yeah, it wasn't as big of a deal then, but I still remember when we started getting reviews, one of the big ones was like, “Oh, ‘Exist Warp Brakes’ is like ‘Don't Tell Dave’ ‘cause it's like a funk thing!” And we were just like… stupid! [Laughs]

KEVIN: Yeah. “Dumb, but we’re just gonna let it rock,” because at the time, it wasn’t as annoying yet.

CALEB: I still remember back then, we were already trying to move off from it and were feeling that internally as the record was coming out. Especially because of how much time passed between us finishing it and when it came out, it was like, “I'm a different person now.” I think that album had the most time between us recording it and it actually coming out. That was the first album that we tracked ourselves. We started tracking it at [Matt’s] place. 

MATT: Yeah, at my old apartment in West Virginia. 

CALEB: I think we started with tracking guitars for “Louisiana Purchase” and “Exist Warp Brakes.” It was during that snowstorm, so it was like January 2019. And then we didn't finish tracking it all the way through until August?

MATT: We were almost done, but we were like, “We have to put out something,” so we dropped “Louisiana Purchase” in December. We were done, but I know we were waiting on two features that took a while. [Laughs] 

We finished around October, then, because it was before the tour.

CALEB: Well, the tour was in September.

MATT: Oh, I guess it was August. It’s been over five years now, I can't fucking remember. 

KEVIN: I wasn’t going to comment on any time thing, because I don't fucking remember. [Laughs]

MATT: I thought I remembered touching up things, but maybe I'm just thinking ‘cause we were writing Speak Less at the same time, and we were still doing that.

CALEB: I was still editing things, and I'm pretty sure we did one of those things where we got the master back for the record and then we put it out like two weeks later, which is something you shouldn't do, but we did it like twice. Three times, probably. I'm pretty sure we did that for bouquet. Especially ‘cause at that point it didn't matter. We were just a local band. I think we did it for Speak Less, too. Anyway, to go back to the original point. [Laughs] 

We were in a different headspace. We were already writing Speak Less, so by the time Speak It Into Existence came out, people were like, “Oh, y'all wanted to do this sound. It's like Swancore,” and I already started to move away from wanting to do that, by like 2018, 2019. But I'm not gonna get rid of songs, we still like those songs. I’m still happy with it. I don’t know, it's interesting. [Laughs]

SWIM: I think some people might be under the impression that when bands write albums it’s like, ‘Okay, we’re going to sit in a room, we’re going to bang out these eight to twelve songs, and it’s all written at the same time,’ and I think especially in DIY spaces and music creation in general, you guys are pulling from different places, seeing what works. So, you’re very different people for different songs, rather than like an entire album.    

MATT: Yeah. I mean a band with a label and a budget, it's like, ‘Okay, we're gonna take two months and go write and record this record.’ We can't do that. We get together once a week and write songs. Luckily for future things, it's been going very fast recently, which has been really cool. But yeah, Speak It Into Existence and Speak Less took such a long time ‘cause we were just chipping away at it. Then recording takes even longer, ‘cause you can't just take two weeks or a month and sit in the studio. 

CALEB: Even as an example: today, we were tracking a song for bass, and it's like, “Oh, we got X amount of songs we want to do,” and then this one song took like three or four hours to track. It's like, “Well, that's it for the day, we'll figure out another day we can get together next where people can take time off.” You're gonna spend eight hours a day, like a normal job, in the studio each day. It'll be like, “We'll come back to this tomorrow!” And it's like, “No, I'll see you in a week and a half. Maybe.” This is the first time we've seen David in like two months, ‘cause you know, life happens. 

SWIM: You gotta prioritize music over those fires, David. Priorities.

[All laugh]

MATT: No, but it's been cool now. I think we're in a groove right now, which is nice. It takes a long time and a lot of work to make an album, and I think you’re bound to be – by the time it's coming out – a little bit over it. Especially in a DIY band, because it takes so long.

CALEB: But then also when it comes out, and then people actually respond to it well, then it gets re-contextualized. It’s a weird thing. I saw this very recently again, where somebody was mad at a band for being like, “I don't like this anymore!” You can still like it, but they're a person too, even if they created it! 

I know going into the release, I was like, “I like this, but I'm changing as a person. This represents who I was a year ago, and I feel disconnected from it.” But then, when it came out, people started liking it, we started playing the songs live, and I was like, ‘Okay, now I have re-contextualized it all. I love this.’ Especially particular songs. I will always love playing “Louisiana Purchase.” I'll always love playing “Exist Warp Brakes.” So, all that hurt I had prior is gone now for that aspect of things.

SWIM: That makes a lot of sense. Any lasting thoughts on the album turning five? Anything you want to throw out there?

CALEB: I'm glad that we still exist five years later, you know? That's always something to be grateful for. Speak It Into Existence was named after that, in a way. We said we were gonna do a second record, so we're gonna hold ourselves to it and we're gonna make it happen.

It Wasn't Supposed To Be Like This is also, in a way, a statement of, “We're still existing, we're still creating music, and we're grateful to do that.” You can take the title in a positive or a negative way. We weren't supposed to start this band in 2015 and still be going 10 years later off of nothing, really. I'm grateful to still be at it and still be feeling even more inspired than ever before.

MATT: You got any plugs, Kevin? You're usually the plug man.

KEVIN: I don't really have a whole lot of plugs. In terms of Speak It Into Existence, it's still out on vinyl, still got CDs. I want to do another tape run, but money, you know. So, outside of that, we're working on new music. We're working on old new music and then we're working on new new music. So old, new music should come out sometime this year. New, new music should come out next year, most likely. 

CALEB: And then new versions of old music, in a live way, will come even sooner–

KEVIN: In the form of a live album that we did celebrating 10 years of a band with friends and shit. In the form of possibly a DVD, if I can figure that out.

MATT: Oh, I didn't even know you were gonna do that!

KEVIN: So, there's your scoop. [Laughs]

SWIM: Nice! Well, I got the exclusive one, thank you!

KEVIN: Always. Every interview has to have an exclusive drop.

That's about it. Got a couple of shows. They're fests, they're far apart.

MATT: We're spending all this time on new music. So, festivals, that’s what we got.

SWIM: Well, as a fan and someone who found you guys through Speak It Into Existence, thank you for that album. Love that you guys are still here and doing it. I appreciate y’all coming on for this first interview!

KEVIN: Absolutely, thanks for having us.

CALEB: It's fun to talk shit over a mic.

[All laugh]

SWIM: Love you guys, thank you!

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Ciara Rhiannon (she/her) is a pathological music lover writing out of a nebulous location somewhere in the Pacific Northwest within close proximity of her two cats. She consistently appears on most socials as @rhiannon_comma, and you can read more of her musical musings over at rhiannoncomma.substack.com.

Adventures – Supersonic Home | Album Retrospective

Run For Cover Records

Supersonic Home, the first and only album by Pittsburgh rock band Adventures, turns ten years old today. I’ll admit part of me feels silly even sitting down to write about this record because its appeal feels entirely self-evident. It’s hard to imagine someone putting this album on in 2025 and not immediately getting swept up in its brightly colored pop-punk grandeur. Because of that, if I can get even one or two people to hit play on this record, then I’ll have done my job. 

In many ways, this is perfect rock music and an unbeatable arc for a band to have: a couple EPs, a couple splits, one full-length, and then calling it a day to let that body of work speak for itself. Granted, the members of Adventures have since found more success in other projects, which makes their discography a bit of a time capsule, but I suppose that self-contained nature is at least some of the appeal.

Just to set the table, Adventures were a five-piece rock band from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The project began with three members of metalcore act Code Orange who obviously wanted to make slightly softer, more straight-ahead rock music. Due to the sizable overlap in members, Adventures is sometimes viewed as an offshoot of Code Orange, but other than the occasional shout here and there, it’s near impossible to hear any connection between the two. 

Despite the disparity in genres, it makes total sense to look back and see how Adventures spawned. Initially known as “Code Orange Kids” before shortening to just “Code Orange” in 2014, the members of Code Orange had been (perhaps unwittingly) thrust into the northeast scene. Even though they were making spine-crushing metallic hardcore, they also put out music on Topshelf Records and (somewhat famously) shared a four-way split with Tigers Jaw, The World Is a Beautiful Place, and Self Defense Family. This adjacency to “scene” music placed them within reach of labels like No Sleep and Run For Cover, two titans of the 2010 indie-emo sphere who wound up helping Adventures release their music. 

The band’s early EPs, 2012’s Adventures and 2013’s Clear My Head With You, were centered around moody melodies and Reba Meyers’ despondent wail. The lyrics were surprisingly emo, expressing feelings of inadequacy and adolescent frustration. Occasionally, things would peak in a scream or a slow-bobbing breakdown, but for the most part, these were very emotional and overwrought songs, slathered in a solid layer or two of grungy distortion. 

By 2014, Adventures were moving a bit more strategically, shifting labels, partnering with peers, and staking out a sound right at the peak of the “soft grunge” explosion. At the beginning of the year, a split with Run Forever marked the group’s final output on No Sleep. By October, a split between Adventures and Pity Sex instantly solidified the group as part of Run For Cover’s Shoegaze Canon, something I could really only place in retrospect. 

In February of 2015, Adventures released Supersonic Home onto the world, offering a ten-track exploration of the interpersonal that still sounds as fresh today as it did ten years ago. When I was still a dumbass 21-year-old emo (as opposed to a dumbass 31-year-old emo), the band that Adventures reminded me of most was Tigers Jaw, specifically any key-board-heavy song where Brianna would take lead vocals. Today, I hear a lot more second-wave emo in these sounds, with clear nods to early Jimmy Eat World and (perhaps imagined) evocations of bands like Saves The Day, The Get Up Kids, and The Promise Ring. 

In contrast to their early EPs and splits, Supersonic Home moved into a much less angsty territory. The music was still as open-hearted and confessional as those early songs, but the choruses were sharper, and the instrumentals were more driving and muscular. While Reba Meyers was still the primary singer, vocals were now much more of a shared effort, with Kimi Hanauer clearly coming into her own in the few years since their first output. Together, their vocals entwined over upbeat instrumentals that sit somewhere between 90s alt-rock and modern pop-punk. This was baggy shirt, flannel-clad rock shit for sure, but it also feels like music made to be held on a compact disc. 

If you want an ideal setting for a listen of Supersonic Home, I recommend waiting for the first sunny day of the year and going for a walk with this playing on your headphones. Maybe it’s just due to its February release, but I’ll always associate this album with the beginning of the year, often reserving it for one of those first days you can wear shorts (or at least shed your jacket). There’s nothing quite like stretching your legs, feeling the sun on your skin, and letting the sounds of Supersonic Home flow through you. I genuinely feel fortunate that this has been something I’ve been able to return to year after year for the last decade without tiring. 

From second one, it’s impossible not to get wrapped up in that opening drum roll on “Dream Blue Haze.” After four minutes of building and building, how can you not want to belt along “Your Sweetness” by the time that final refrain rolls around? 

Looking at the lyrics for a song like “Heavenly,” it’s amazing how far the band can go off so little. The verse is literally ten words, yet the outpouring at the end of the song when Meyers belts “He’s a swarm / he’s a swarm / I am unforgiven” is as hard-hitting as any breakdown Code Orange ever concocted. 

I could name practically any track off this album and burrow into its brilliance: the awestruck “Longhair,” the charged-up “Absolution, Warmth Required,” the bouncy closing title track. Throughout every one of these songs, the band casts an energetic blue-tinted spell on the listener, whisking them away into a hand-crafted, watercolored world like the one seen on the cover or in their music videos. Throughout it all, Reba and Kimi maintain a beautiful interplay, trading vocals, harmonizing, and adding a soft compassion to every song that bounces off the punky guitars beautifully. 

While part of me is sad that we never got anything more from this project, the collective hour of music we got from it is worth it. Probably for the best that the band didn’t keep returning to the well and diluting it with redundant music and touring, after all, their day job in Code Orange was calling the entire time. I guess what I’m saying is sometimes it’s better to know when to throw in the towel and put a period at the end of everything. To that end, I’ll leave you with the Wikipedia description of their vague-at-best ending, which never fails to make me laugh.

The Enduring Life of the Burnout 3 Soundtrack

Twenty years ago, on September 8th, 2004, Burnout 3: Takedown was released on the sixth generation of consoles. Burnout 3 is an arcadey racing game designed around boosting, driving as fast as possible, and knocking opponents off the road as you race towards the finish line. In its purest moments, you’d find yourself flying down busy streets at triple-digit speeds, trading paint with other racers, sparks flying as you attempt to smash them into walls, pillars, and oncoming cars. Not only is Burnout 3 one of my favorite games of all time, but it also has one of the most formative soundtracks of my entire life, filled with infectious pop-punk and early-aughts shredding. 

Depending on what kind of household you grew up in, a new video game was a big deal. In my family, a new video game was a special occasion typically reserved for birthdays, holidays, or months of scraping together hard-earned allowance money. Maybe that’s why, when my mom purchased Burnout 3 for me on a whim in 2005, it has stuck with me to this day.

When you’re in middle school (as I was in 2005), a new game is worth its weight in gold, and a good new game is worth the world. In the summer of 2005, I was only 12 years old with two younger brothers who were still in elementary school, so I wasn’t allowed to own Halo, Grand Theft Auto, or any other “Mature” games. Luckily, Burnout 3 was only rated “Teen” due to “mild violence and mild language,” two asterisks my mom could apparently get behind. The game was also a year old at that point, so it was also probably discounted to hell, which didn’t hurt. 

I still remember this purchase because it was so unexpected. I asked my mom if I could buy a used copy of the game, fully expecting a ‘no’ as the answer, but even then I knew shooters had to shoot their shot. Much to my surprise, she responded with, “Sure, why not?” and bought the game on the spot while we were out running errands. I carried the case home, placed the disc gently in my Xbox, and my life was never the same. 

Not only is Burnout 3 a great game, but it’s a great game with a great soundtrack. My music taste at that time centered almost exclusively around my dad’s music or stuff I had picked up from friends. That meant lots of AC/DC, Aerosmith, Zeppelin, and Foo Fighters. That was all well and good, but on the cusp of my rebellious teenage years, I was looking for something to make my taste my own, and I found that in Burnout 3.

When you boot up Burnout 3, you’re greeted by a series of logos followed by a montage of car-smashing gameplay set to The F-Ups’ snotty pop-punk anthem “Lazy Generation.” As my pre-teen brain absorbed the flashy visuals of speeding cars and the immensely catchy chorus, something inside me clicked. This shit ruled.

After the intro, I proceeded to the main menu and finally took control of a car as I played through the game’s tutorial. Soon, the sounds of No Motiv’s “Independence Day” blared from the speakers of my TV as I sped down the streets of some wooded Californian town. My blood pumped, my pupils dilated, and my brain was on fire with dopamine, all while high-energy pop-punk scored the scene. 

Years later, I look back on Burnout 3 as an oddly formative discovery in my musical history. That soundtrack – while very frosted-tips, chain wallet, mid-aughts – led me to a genre of music that I didn’t even know the name of at the time. By the time I was in high school, I’d come to consciously conceive of what “pop-punk” was, but by that point, the genre had all but fallen out of favor in popular culture. Before I knew about subgenres, my pre-teen brain could barely grasp the connection between these songs, other than the fact that they were fast-paced and made me want to drive a digital supercar like an absolute hellion. 

Even now, two decades later, I still revere many of these bands on a very genuine level. I mean, who can say no to Jimmy Eat World and New Found Glory? I still go absolutely bonkers for “C’mon C’mon,” “Hot Night Crash,” and “Saccharine Smile,” all songs I wouldn’t know if it wasn’t for this game. This soundtrack also gave me my first brush with scene-shaping bands like My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Yellow Card, and From First To Last. 

Listing these groups out in 2024, it’s almost impossible to conceive of any piece of media where they’d all fit together. You’ve got Franz Ferdinand, Motion City Soundtrack, and Rise Against, all of which are spun by Stryker, the game’s in-universe DJ who comments on races from the comfort of his studio at Crash FM. While this feature of “in-universe DJ” would be adopted in countless future games (usually to more annoying degrees), it gave the world of Burnout some sense of believability and treated these songs with more reverence than just another thing that would play during a race. Framing the songs through this omnipresent disc jockey made it feel like they were being played intentionally by a real person, or at least that’s how it felt to my dumb little 12-year-old brain.

It's worth noting that Burnout 3 wasn’t just pop-punk; you had some harder metalcore stuff like Atreyu, straight-up punk like The Bouncing Souls, legacy bands like the Ramones, and at least a few bands from the UK scene like The Futureheads. There is also a surprising amount of Vagrant Records representation from groups like No Motiv and Reggie And The Full Effect, but my adoration for those bands and that label is another post entirely. 

Two decades down the line, I’ll still boot up Burnout 3 once in a while whenever I have access to the old Xbox 360 at my parent's house back in Portland. Ironically, because of music licensing, the game isn’t backward compatible with current consoles, meaning the only way to play it is on the original hardware or (at best) a decade-old Xbox 360. As a result, Burnout 3 is left to be eclipsed by its more accessible sequels, Burnout Revenge and Burnout Paradise. While those games probably served a similar purpose to people a few years younger than me, Burnout 3 will always be “my” Burnout of choice, and even though it’s a bit harder to play, luckily, I can always throw the soundtrack on and relive the glory days of Takedowns and spectacular crashes.

Self Defense Family – Try Me | Album Retrospective

Deathwish Inc.

“Children are gonna be pissed by this, but… yelling ‘all the dumb cunts they get what they want’ for a long time… it’s hard for me to even listen to.”

“It should thrill you!”

When people say “band X or album Y” changed their life, it’s easy to be skeptical. Not because it’s impossible to believe that a piece of music could do that, but it is a lofty claim that gets thrown around so much that it’s become its own meme. I’m sure the critical-yet-charismatic Patrick Kindlon would dislike me saying so, but Self Defense Family’s 2014 album Try Me is one of those life-changing albums for me. The album celebrated its tenth anniversary back in January, and it felt crucial for me to look back on it, given the indisputable impact it had on my 18-year-old brain.

A brief history: Self Defense Family was once called End Of A Year and first formed under that name in New York in 2003. That first iteration of the band released one demo, three albums, and a prolific amount of EPs and singles starting in 2004. In 2011, they briefly rebranded as the verbose “End Of A Year Self Defense Family” before finally landing on just Self Defense Family before the year was over. This change, alongside finding a new home at legendary punk label Deathwish Inc., re-established the band as a somewhat unclassifiable alternative outfit amongst a sea of emo and post-hardcore bands of the time. To me, they are the perfect kind of musical combo: their influences are heavily worn on their sleeves (Nick Cave, Lungfish, and Silkworm, to name a few), but they don’t sound exactly like any of them, nor any of their contemporaries. The same could be said for the doom-metallic-hardcore quintet Twitching Tongues or the ever-evolving, all-angles-of-punk rockers Ceremony. 

Since becoming more “popular” (as popular as an intentionally anachronistic band can be), Self Defense has garnered a cultish, deeply devoted following, and it’s very easy to fall deep into that hole. Vocalist and lyricist Patrick Kindlon is the only constant member, joining up with a rotating cast of regulars and one-off players whenever they’re available. Because of this, the group is ripe with side projects and associated acts; Kindlon himself is perhaps even better known for Drug Church than he is for Self Defense these days, and other members have been a part of bands like Aficionado, Militarie Gun, and PONY. 

My first exposure to Kindlon was at a Drug Church show in October 2013, opening for now-defunct New Jersey emo duo Dads. They played just four songs, and the other half of the set was filled with prolonged, involved stage banter from Kindlon. I was impressionable, on the verge of a melodramatic high school breakup, and desperately seeking something against the grain that spoke to my sensibilities. That Drug Church set delivered precisely what I needed, and after diving into their music throughout the following weeks, I discovered Self Defense. At this time, they were about four months shy from the release date of their full-length debut under their new name, and I couldn’t wait to hear it.

A wonderful surprise hit just before the turn of the year when Try Me began streaming early ahead of its physical street date. It’s one of a handful of times I remember exactly the experience of hearing an album for the first time. Alone over winter break, late at night in my bedroom at my mom’s old house, taking in a collection of songs that was absolutely unlike any I’d heard before. Everything about Try Me to someone who doesn’t know the roots sounds insane, from the lo-fi production to Kindlon’s signature bark-speak vocal delivery and the repetitive nature of both. It’s also a record that caused me to Google search unfamiliar lexicon, starting with album opener and catalog hit “Tithe Pig.” I was freshly eighteen and had no fucking idea what a “tithe pig” was, or what “tithe” was for that matter. Then, there’s the second track, “Nail House Music,” where Kindlon spins multiple variations of its core lyric: “I found you in the witch elm. Who put you in the witch elm? What man dares to put his hands to me?” Again, I go, what the fuck is “the witch elm?”

On a laundry list of things I didn’t know prior to hearing this album for the first time is the album’s conceptual star, Angelique Bernstein, known publicly as Jeanna Fine. Much of the lyrics on Try Me are inspired by interviews Kindlon conducted with the former adult film actress, which are included in two 20-minute segments on the album, simply titled “Angelique One” and “Angelique Two.” Depending on whether you have the CD, streaming, or vinyl version of Try Me, these interviews appear at different moments in the tracklisting. The digital versions have them interspersed, the first after the initial five songs and the second after the final four songs. The vinyl is a double album, with one disc worth of songs and one disc worth of interviews, each disc housed in die-cut sleeves featuring high-quality pin-up portraits of Fine. 

Most of the time, I prefer the vinyl listening experience, but that’s only because nothing will match up to the very first time I listened to the album, having no idea what to expect with these pieces. I knew nothing about the album’s concept before listening, so when “Angelique One” began and I saw its runtime, I thought I was in for some post-progressive Mars Volta type shit (speaking of bands I spent a lot of time Google searching terms from). What I got was the first half of a captivating and emotional peek into a sordid life at the end of the 20th century, cutting and traumatic, bold and vulnerable.

A good time is often not the resonating feeling on a Self Defense release, whether Kindlon is singing about his own life or someone else’s. Try Me’s first single was “Turn The Fan On,” a dark lament that would probably be buried on the B-side for any other group. In a fan-filmed performance from Poland, Kindlon describes the song as simply “a bummer.” It’s an extremely tough song lyrically; the raw details are unclear, and the tone is truly unsettling: “A patch of grass outside the clinic. His wife’s at home, she’s gone ballistic. He places lips to palm, he starts crying. Finger to temple, he’s sobbing.” “Apport Birds” is about Kindlon’s dog dying, an unfortunate feeling many of us know, and he spares no grim notion about it. “It’s not like you to go without me. It must be lonely there without me. I understand the pull of religion when there’s a loss that won’t stop itching.” One song earlier, “Mistress Appears At Funeral,” which features lead vocals by frequent Self Defense collaborator Caroline Corrigan, reveals the details of an affair in humanity’s most inopportune setting. “Dressed in black, I’m ready for mourning. Show ample thigh to keep it sporty.” / “I kneel at my man, I take my time. Estate is theirs, but this is mine. Wife looks up, she finally sees unpleasant mirror, the miserable me.”

When Kindlon’s feelings aren’t masked in metaphors, they come directly and without interpretation. “Fear Of Poverty In Old Age” is the album’s prime example of this: “Feel dumb once, feel dumb again. Ring finger cut off your left hand. Ugly lisp, frustrated stammer. Wrong time again,” and the blunt chorus, “partnership is security, promise me.” The most “punk” that Try Me gets, a term Kindlon actively resents, is the 10-minute closer “Dingo Fence.” It’s a simple anthem: “Do you live nearby? Let’s go to your place now. All the dumb cocks, they get what they want. All the dumb cunts, they get what they want. All the dumb cops, they get what they want. If you’re happy, I’m happy.” Kindlon’s voice strains over the track’s duration by the end, where it culminates in a quiet coda. If basement krautrock was a subgenre, it’s Self Defense’s bag and only their bag to occupy.

The influence of Try Me on my life, my way of thinking, and my way of absorbing music cannot be overstated. It gave me a sense of identity when I had none to latch onto. It felt like Self Defense was my little secret band that only I understood after years of feeling alienated from my closest friends at the time. I actually convinced my high school journalism teacher to let me review it for the newspaper the month it was released. I went back to the same venue I saw Drug Church at just months before to see Self Defense perform with Pity Sex. I skipped my last day of Senior year to get in my friend’s band’s touring van to Bled Fest in Howell, Michigan, so I could see Self Defense again, and began the arduous process of collecting every piece of vinyl End Of A Year and Self Defense Family ever released (yes, I completed the mission). It was a fun challenge finding ways to explain to my family that “avant-garde spoken word hardcore” was my new favorite genre. 

Self Defense’s band activity has been a bit less frequent since Drug Church’s popularity has risen, and admittedly, some of the newer, singles-based SDF material doesn’t strike the same chord with me as their mid-2010s output. But that will never change how Self Defense affected me in more ways than one, and revisiting Try Me ten years later, it still has the same chokehold on me. Even as I typed out lyrics here that I’ve had memorized for a decade, or gave a close re-relisten to the emotionally gripping interview segments, or played the record at home that I’ve heard across four different turntables in six different bedrooms, Try Me remains a one-of-a-kind album that should be essential listening for those yearning for something new in their musical rotation. In Kindlon’s own words, the final three of Try Me’s liner notes: “Enjoy or don’t.”

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

Children Will Listen, or 20 Years of Sung Tongs

Domino

Within five minutes, I was crying. In 2018, I found myself at the Vic Theatre in Chicago, ensconced in the energy of 1,000 people, all watching two guys, freshly in their 40s, play an album they had made 15 years earlier. Nearly every piece of writing about Sung Tongs, the fifth studio release from the band we now know as Animal Collective, expounds on its sense of childlike play, its wide-eyed naïvety wielded as a torch that guides Avey Tare and Panda Bear through the forest. It’s an undeniable piece of the record; the decision to revisit it in performance over a decade later was an attempt to simultaneously flatten and enliven its impish reputation.

For a band so succinctly defined by their apparent refusal to grow up, Sung Tongs stands as the pinnacle of a narrative that threatened to swallow a far more interesting group in the quicksand. It was one thing to hear someone a few years your senior singing, “You don’t have to go to college,” like a friend’s older sibling pushing against the world’s expectations, but it’s entirely another to hear it coming from someone old enough to be your dad. It turns out their belief hadn’t been shaken by the passage of time. Instead, it had settled in as wisdom. Sung Tongs was a funhouse mirror for uncertain youth rather than an ode to childhood, leaning into mystical, almost infantile wonder without losing grasp on what is real and set in front of you by the forces beyond us.

“Visiting Friends,” the album’s diffuse centerpiece, translates the aching gaps in memory into ambient beauty, long-chewed holes dotting every inch. Bubbling up from a dark cave, frustration and anxiety sink into the guitar strums, relentless and carried by inertia. It only becomes more difficult to remember drugged-out summer days, where time could lose its meaning for an afternoon or weekend. Friends shrink to specks of dust, caught in a weary web. Dappled joy eventually burns your forearms. The bog of Dave Portner’s processed vocals, words jutting out like humid grass, echo the yearning of a kid in an aging voice. “We were visiting mine,” he repeats, atmosphere humming and crackling, trying to recall feelings of freedom, taking it to heart after all these years. It stands to reason that Wolfgang Voigt’s verdant psych-ambient was cited as a key influence, recalling a sense of wandering beneath trees of recollection and wilfully getting lost.

Sung Tongs wasn’t the first Animal Collective release I heard — it was probably the third or fourth after the seismic legacy-defining Merriweather Post Pavilion and the gorgeous, shrieking meltdown Feels — but it’s the album I’ve sung along to the most. For a long time, it was the only album I could mimic and harmonize with, alone in the car with a CD player. It was my companion on heavy-lidded commutes, occasionally hungover, knitting together a world that would enliven and encourage. Howls, chants, screams, whispers, and words collage into an indistinguishable stream, a confluence of color merging into the same great whooping river. It was instinct to become a tributary. Without diminishing the splattering influences of minimalism, campfire songs, freak folk, and even the Grateful Dead, Sung Tongs is an album centered on voices. Beyond the referential surface (titles such as “The Softest Voice” and “Mouth Wooed Her”), all it took to convince me was the transcendent melange of “Winters Love.” Four songs into the record, Portner and Lennox “pulled that boy out of a box” and made her sing. That boy wasn’t actually a boy, but the same voice emerged. 

Two howling kids from Baltimore probably weren’t the best vocal instructors, unless you were attempting to evoke strange cooing calls heard deep in the woods. Fortunately, solitude eliminated any shame or inhibition; the cracks and squeaks melted in with Avey and Panda, whether I knew how the melody started, ended, or connected between. Beyond any enjoyment of the music itself, running through another playback became an opportunity to continually discover the joy of using my vocal cords and relitigate my relationship with the sounds coming out. “Leaf House” starts with gasps and Noah Lennox’s ululation at its most elastic and ends with meows. From root to soaring branches, their voices invite the creation of a choral jungle, a three-minute warm-up before the show, and you wouldn’t dare to be left out.

An old video features all four (eventual) members of the band with obscured faces, either masked or gazing downwards, seated in a rapturous circle and howling. The desire to obfuscate everything other than the sounds they made is at its clearest. Even a decade later, unmasked and performing the album in full, “Winters Love” became an audience sing-along, filling in the gaps and layers of harmonies unattainable by a mere duo. Who needs multi-tracking when you have a thousand-strong choir at your beck and call? The entire crowd had inscribed each bark and every moan on their hearts and needed no conducting. Rapture became reality in the raising of our voices.

Three years after Sung Tongs, Animal Collective sang of believing in magic and dying on “Peacebone.” If their fatal flaw was faith in the supernatural, present or past, then we’ve all been resurrected. Flailing through first (or second) adolescence is an exercise in discovery, feeling the world around you, and making all kinds of sounds. You have to go beyond the shroud to make your way forward. Death wasn’t permanent, but the magic was.

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Aly Eleanor lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she writes, records, sends emails, and more for Ear Coffee, a DIY podcast and media “entity” that she co-founded. Her writing can be found online, underground, at home with her rats, or @purityolympics.