Rapt – Until the Light Takes Us | Album Review

Start-Track

There’s plenty of music that’s designed to pull you into the past, but it’s rare that I find myself truly transported. I don’t mean this as a dig; I’m just saying that pastiche—even when well done by an act like The Lemon Twigs—is identifiable as pastiche. Listening to these kinds of referential artists is a bit like being on an amusement park dark ride; it’s fun to suspend disbelief and let a certain guitar tone conjure up images of the 90s in your mind, but finding out what you’re listening to was actually made in 2023 by some kids in Ohio is usually no more surprising than the lights coming on to reveal that you’re not actually in The Hundred Acre Woods. 

In Rapt’s Until the Light Takes Us, I found something different. Here we have a record that actually does transport me to the past, not because of any sonic hallmarks or tips of the hat, but because it legitimately feels haunted. This feeling grabbed me early on in track two, “Attar Of Roses,” where Ware sings, “The angels wept for a thousand days / For cities of blood had passed by their wings / Attar of roses paved the waving fields / A city was formed when they fell from the hills.” It sounds like the recounting of an old legend by someone who was there for its inception, the kind of tale you’d hear sung by a medieval bard. Even when the stories take a more personal bent, they sound like they’re coming from a village of old, like on “Fields of Juniper,” where we hear, “And there stood a cross in the center of town / It’s shadow lay heavy across the stone walls / You took my hand and said you’d climb / So I’d see you as a martyr that lived in our time.” The conviction with which Ware spins these tales is both eerie and appealing; it had me hanging on his every word. 

As far as instrumentation goes, the nylon string guitar is Ware’s weapon of choice throughout the record, its soft arpeggios the perfect timbre to wrap itself around his yarns. Though the guitar plays well with others, like when the piano joins in on “A Theory Of Resistance,” it really shines when it’s left to stand on its own next to Ware’s voice. In these moments, when the record is at its most barebones, its intimacy reminds me a bit of 70s singer-songwriters like Labi Siffre, a quality that always makes my ears perk up. 

That said, I really enjoy the track “Making Maps,” where we get to see a full-band version of Rapt that is a bit more contemporary in its sound. Its contrast in style from the rest of Until the Light Takes Us makes for a great palette cleanser, and it features what is probably my favorite lyric on the whole record: the devastating line “My cousin died in the morning / He didn’t even feel the sun.” It’s so simple but so affecting, bringing forward thoughts of the coldness of death and early mornings in a way that made me shiver when I first heard it.

The way that everything comes together on Until the Light Takes Us is beautiful. When I say it’s haunted, I want to be clear that I don’t mean it’s the sort of thing that might give you a fright in the night; what I’m getting at instead is that the work feels so timeless and discusses death so intimately that it’s impossible for me to look at it and not see an otherworldly gleam emanating off of the whole thing. It feels like a record made by someone with an actual connection to the metaphysical world, not just someone who philosophizes about it. To have the gift of that connection—be it real or perceived—shared with you through the music is a very special feeling, and it’s one that sat with me long after the last song had stopped playing. 

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

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.

Cryogeyser – Cryogeyser | Album Review

Self-Released

Millennial culture is back like it never left. The kids of the late 90s and early 2000s–now considered the Y2K era–are all grown up with jobs, bills, and the stresses of adulthood. I’ll raise my hand for all three of those, and we all cope in different ways. Regardless of your age or what generation you may find yourself in, there’s something undeniably alluring about revisiting shows that take you back to a time when it was just you and your friends watching your favorite TV shows without a care in the world. This is what I like to call entertainment comfort food. 

When we watch reruns of shows that activate our inner child, everything from the theme songs to the needle drops instantly inject peak nostalgia into our veins, transporting us back to a past version of ourselves. This brings me to Cryogeyser’s self-titled sophomore album, which is sure to scratch any nostalgic itch you may have for the vibes of yesteryear. I’d be willing to bet a lump sum of money (preferably not my money, but someone's money) that vocalist/guitarist Shawn Marom is a big fan of shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dark Angel, or Charmed. 

In 2019, Cryogeyser’s first album, Glitch, was a solid debut from the group. Their music was painted on a canvas dream-pop throughout, but behind those lush textures, the lyrics hid an impending doom. This is most notable on the song “Waiting,” which reminds me of the final scene from the first Terminator film where Sarah Connor finds herself driving from a sun-soaked desert into the eye of an imminent thunderstorm.

Cryogeyser’s self-titled record is more interesting, pushing their sonic scope to new heights far past those found on their debut. Whether this change is coming through the newly refreshed and solidified lineup or just the natural process of getting older, their maturation is evident. The addition of Zach Capitti Fenton on drums and bassist Samson Klitsner has cranked up the dial full-blast with colossal riffs track after track. If Glitch is like driving down the sunlit California coast in a flashy convertible with the top down, Cryogeyser is like being in the same sports car, only this time, you made a wrong turn and have found yourself flying at breakneck speed past abandoned buildings, run-down impound lots, and seedy-looking characters. 

Album opener, “Sorry,” is a sonic knockout punch that would even leave Rocky Balboa woozy. The song is a fusion of grunge, shoegaze, and dream-pop rolled into one ball of awesome. Marom’s melodies instantly captivate, making it one of their best and an easy choice for the album’s lead single. Marom said about the track, “Sorry is the song that plays at the pool party your ex is at.” I hope my exes aren’t listening to music this high quality. 

Mid-album highlight “Mountain” is a tag team effort from Marom and Karly Hartzman of Wednesday, harmonizing in tandem about the after-effects of a broken relationship. Both singers sound at home over the distorted arrangement of guitars. This got me thinking that there should be more team-ups in the indie music community. We got a stellar one last year with Waxahatchee and MJ Lenderman, and that was one of the best songs of the year! Now, I’m not asking for every artist to have a Wu-Tang-like feature list on albums because that would devalue the point, but if done in moderation, the songs get elevated to feel more special, like with “Mountain.”

Maybe it’s just because they’ve toured together (multiple times), but Cryogeyser reminds me of a West Coast version of Wednesday. Both bands excel at turning their versions of shoegaze into a grimy, dirty, distorted trademark sound. Instead of the alt-country allure of Down South that Wednesday is now known for, Cryogeyser lean into the sonic landscape of their sunny, vibrant home in Los Angeles. Regional music is finally making a comeback!

Cryogeyser are also purveyors of 90s culture with their cascading waves of grungy distortion. “Cupid” (a song aptly titled for the record’s Valentine’s Day release) has an authentic alternative-rock fuzz that would make Dinosaur Jr. proud. Between the melodic chorus and scuzzy guitars, “Blew It” left a lasting impression on me, making it a compelling late-album peak. With a Lance Bangs-directed music video, there’s no doubt in my mind that “Stargirl” would have been a massive hit on MTV’s Alternative Nation. It’s a song that takes you on a journey about the isolating damage that grief does to one’s body. Marom sings, “I’m eating it fast and eating it well / My stomach feels full, and I’m going through hell.” Things progress to a fiery conclusion with cascading waves of grungy guitar distortion that will leave you slack-jawed. 

“Fortress” has a timeless classic rock-fueled pop edge. Marom’s intoxicating vocal harmonies remind me of Celebrity Skin-era Courtney Love. A couple of tracks later, “Blue Light” has a retro television show theme music quality with lyrics about self-discovery and a tidal wave of dreamy pumped guitars. It feels like I’m watching a lost episode of One Tree Hill or, for the real heads out there, The O.C. 

Throughout their self-titled record, Cryogeyser encapsulate a brooding yet blissful ambiance, setting the tone with a dreamy type of grunge sonic structure on “Sorry” all the way to the tear-soaked trip hop closer “Love Language.” It’s a kind of mood that leans heavy on nostalgia, which meshes well with the reflective nature of Marom’s lyrics, looking in the rearview mirror on past decisions or relationships. I think it’s a brilliant move, harkening back to the past sonically while coming to grips with lost times. Cryogeyser created a soundtrack for us to return to whenever the present is overwhelming, the past seems confronting, and the future seems uncertain. As the trio blur those time frames together, things somehow only manage to become more clear. 

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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.

The Laughing Chimes – Whispers In The Speech Machine | Album Review

Slumberland Records

There’s a part of me that still thinks a goth is the coolest thing you can be. It’s not even something that I particularly identify with or feel a strong pull toward, but to me, there’s nothing more fascinating than the person in the corner with the swoopy black hair and an extraneous leather belt. 

While it’s easy to see how a crush on Sam from Danny Phantom could segue into the emo investments and highlighter-colored hair of my late-Aughts scene period, I often kick myself for taking so long to arrive at an admiration for this type of music. I look at the discography of a band like The Cure or The Jesus and Mary Chain, and I see nothing but decades of consistency. I also look at the number of bands they’ve influenced, like Mogwai, Beach House, and countless others, then wonder why it took me until my mid-twenties to develop an appreciation for goth and new wave.

Perhaps I was apprehensive because it felt ingenuine to be drawn to this aesthetic as a relatively stress-free, well-off kid from a suburb of Oregon. Goths were something I saw in movies and TV shows; even by the time I was a teenager, the music felt like an ancient text, and for me to adopt that style would have come across as nothing but hollow. The reason The Cure can make an album as phenomenal as Songs of A Lost World more than 40 years into their career is because that’s who those people are at their core. Robert Smith has always been that bitch. 

The same thing goes for jangle-pop acts like R.E.M., who, in my estimation, have near-spotless discographies and have always sounded effortlessly cool, even when they were still greasy, pimple-faced college kids. It makes total sense then that I’d hear an album like The Laughing Chimes’ Whispers In The Speech Machine and be drawn in like a fly to honey. 

Despite sounding like an album you’d pick off the shelf of an English record store in the mid-80s, The Laughing Chimes hail from southeastern Ohio, lending their blend of post-punky dream-pop a sturdy midwestern foundation. It’s a trip to think about these four making such gothy works from Athens, Ohio, of all places, but anyone who’s visited that part of the country can attest to the imposing industrial abandon that marks your days. I imagine it’s actually quite similar to the drab places where this music often emerges like London or Scotland, but what does my Pacific Northwestern-ass know?

Whispers In The Speech Machine starts by whisking the listener straight up in a pitch-perfect jangle riff that serves as the engine for most of the record’s 28 minutes. It’s easy to get drawn in, nodding along to the delay-drenched guitar lick of “Atrophy” as Evan Seurkamp’s dreamy vocals float by. You’re liable to soon lose your place in time and space as The Laughing Chimes move you from one scene to the next with a studied precision. Just like the washed-out half-exposure on the album cover, things start to feel half-real and overgrown, an amalgamation of physical places and hallucinatory visions constructed from half-remembered locales. Was I really here, or was it just something I saw in a movie? Why does that building look so familiar? Who are all these people that I feel like I should know? 

Though it feels scant, these eight songs have the exact right elements: the aforementioned arpeggiated guitar paired with driving, cool basslines that link up perfectly with Quinn Seurkamp’s effervescent drumming. Despite being prominent in the mix, the vocals often feel more like a vibe-guiding suggestion than a critical element–it’s just as easy to get sucked up into the gorgeous swirling guitarwork and driving rhythm section as it is the wraithy lyrics surrounding them.

Some songs like “Country Eidolism” retreat into more retracted acoustic-guitar-led pensivity, which the band knows to quickly chase with a high-energy burst like “Cats Go Car Watching.” Through all these lush instrumental explorations, the Laughing Chimes remain locked in on their gothy inspirations. A playlist of songs that influenced the LP reveals not only expected suspects like The Cure and Bauhaus but more modern touchpoints like Alvvays and early-career R.E.M. 

Up until the final moments of “Mudhouse Mansion,” you’re likely to remain under the band’s witchy spell until its final reverb-soaked jangles have come to a rest, at which point, you’ll be hopelessly dumped back into the real world with all of its horrors and pains. The transportive nature of Whispers In The Speech Machine is one of its powers, no doubt, but the band’s harkening back to this older style of music also serves to show us how far we’ve progressed (or flatlined) in the previous decades. If the contrast feels stark, then the music is doing its job.

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.

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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.