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.”

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

The Beths – Straight Line Was A Lie | Album Review

Anti

It’s no secret, at least to The Beths, that human experience isn’t linear. The New Zealand pop rockers are far from the first to make this observation: Buddhist philosophy talks about Samsara, the cycle of birth, death, and existence that’s fueled by desire. Also called “the wheel of suffering,” Samsara can theoretically be escaped. But don’t ask me, or The Beths, how!

The band’s fourth album, Straight Line Was A Lie, kicks off with the title track, a treatise that hinges on the admission, “Guess I’ll take the long way / ‘Cause every way’s the long way.” Crunchy guitars circle around a verse and bridge; no chorus, just a recursive mantra. The fuzz gives way to sweetness on “Mosquitoes,” the second track, showcasing the soft side of frontwoman Elizabeth Stokes’ voice and songwriting. Throughout the song, she reflects vividly on a flood that wrecked her favorite local creek, grappling with impermanence and loss in the process. However, the reflective moment soon gives way to the up-tempo drums and thrumming bass of “No Joy,” a nod to The Beths’ power-pop past. On it goes throughout the track: fervor and tenderness, slow and fast, light and dark, back and forth, around and around. Indeed, as the album’s title forecasts, there is absolutely no straight line to be had here—and in light of life’s complexities, why would there be?

It’s not easy, making sense of *gestures to everything* All This. I won’t waste too many words talking about how much sorrow there is and how futile it all feels. Everyone I know—I am not even exaggerating—is reckoning with some kind of impossible misery right now, even if it’s just the struggle of surviving in this nightmare country. As for myself—well, I’m trying to move forward, to move on, but my life feels like it ended in 2023, and that cruel year just won’t loosen its awful grip on me. In fact, it’s lately felt like the more I thrash, the tighter it digs in. Perhaps if I knew how to loosen up, lighten up, I could shake off some of the pain. Three steps forward, two back, instead of the other way around. Salvation comes from letting go; otherwise, you’re stuck. Like the title track says: “I thought I was getting better, but I’m back to where I started / and the straight line was a circle, yeah the straight line was a lie.”

It makes sense that to be light and free, holding onto nothing and no one, would solve this problem of suffering. Like, I get why the Buddha said that. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t feel practical for me, a person who loves to get attached to everything.

In the album’s penultimate song, “Ark of the Covenant,” Stokes reckons with her dark side over brooding chords and an urgent drum tempo. “If I go digging, I’ll never stop,” she frets, worried that introspection will only lead to deeper misery. Is there a way to excavate these cursed artifacts safely, to sap them of their power? 

In the wake of The Beths’ beloved third album, Expert In a Dying Field, Stokes was prescribed antidepressants. She sought a way out of life’s difficulties; what happened instead was that she stalled out: unfulfilled and unable to write music as creatively as she had before. Slowly, though, she and her bandmates pushed through, and the process itself (and all its extrapolations into their personal relationships) became the subject matter. “So you need the metal in your blood,” a chorus of background vocals chants in the album’s second single, “Metal.” 

Stokes said she and the band intentionally avoided keyboards on Straight Line, a move that proves crucial to the album’s success. With her bubblegum voice and the band’s easygoing melodies, an Alvvays pastiche could have been an obvious route, but, as illustrated throughout the album, the band wasn’t interested in taking any shortcuts. Instead, they turn the dial up on bouncy bass riffs, lively drums, and chiming guitar tones that almost sound like a harpsichord on “Roundabout.” We get caught in these recursive riptides, yes, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t press forward, continue hacking through the jungle. 

Grit is the key to Straight Line Was A Lie. “I wanna ride my bike in the rain / I wanna fly my kite in the hurricane,” Stokes sings in the middle of the record on “Til My Heart Stops.” So you found yourself back where you started, or stuck in a rainstorm. What are you going to do about it? Perhaps for some of us, the response to suffering isn’t to fade out, but to double down. And that doesn’t have to mean the toxic kind of clinging that fuels Samsara; conversely, it might mean deciding what’s actually worth saving in the midst of life’s wreckage. 

Nowhere is this wreckage more evident than “Mother, Pray For Me,” a crushing choice for a pre-album single and my favorite song on the record. It’s not easy to sit with the paradox of a loving but difficult relationship, much less put it into words, but The Beths have done it here. “I cried the whole time writing it,” Stokes says, though in the spirit of the album, her persistence paid off. Softly underscored by organ chords, she offers up six verses and a bridge asking for the seemingly impossible. Despite the song’s title and mantra, it’s not her own salvation that she seeks. The bridge goes:

I called off the search
For evidence of an after
Decided I'm fine without
Forever is this right now
But one day, if you arrive
Just send me a small sign
I don't need the proof of place
Just tell me you got there safe

If there’s a heaven, a nirvana, it’s in what we share with those we love. It’s not a destination we arrive at; it’s a prayer we say for each other again and again. 

Before her final entreaty to her mother’s intercession, Stokes confesses, “I never know what to say anyway.” I disagree. I think she’s hit the nail on the head.

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Katie Hayes is a music writer and karaoke superstar in Austin, Texas. She is from there, but between 2010 and now, also lived in Lubbock, TX, Portland, OR, and a camper. Her life is a movie in which her bearded dragon Pancake is the star. You can check out her Substack here, and some of her other writing here. She’s writing a book about growing up alongside her favorite band, Paramore.