more eaze and claire rousay – no floor | Album Review

Thrill Jockey

In the backrooms of my memory, redwoods and oceans blur into deep snow and summits, each shining like a precious stone. I guard these collections of memory like a sullen dragon, unwilling to lose even a moment in these sacred landscapes. One of my favorite places is central California’s Mono Lake region. The sparseness of its sweeping high desert plains, dotted with the few trees brave enough to weather its arid seasons, brought me to tears the first time I experienced it as a child. There is power there, barely concealed in the violent crags and glacial scars, yet there is softness in the surrender of the earth to its own weaponry. I am enchanted by tide pools – each a miniature universe, easily disrupted by the swipe of a careless hand. The gentle starfish and hurried hermit crabs bear no burdens, suffer no cares, and allow the whims of the tides to carry them to the next microcosm that fate deems they ought to inhabit. As a young girl, I would ponder the little creatures as they seemed to regard me with a similarly curious gaze, humming to myself as the icy waters of the Pacific lapped at my rosy feet.

I sense the same reverence for place in more eaze and claire rousay’s brilliant new release, no floor. Through the five tracks of their collaborative EP, there runs a feeling of deep, almost holy, nostalgia for rural America. Having grown up rurally myself, I have an appreciation for the odd beauty that comes with such a youth – the dilapidated grocery stores in lonely strip malls, scattered livestock farms, sprawling meadows, and brilliantly starry night skies. There is a charm to it that is distinctly American and unique to each region of the country. As more eaze (mari maurice) and claire rousay hail from Texas and Canada, respectively (both equally barren places), there is a specific feeling to this LP - not like country music, no. It is the feel of vast plains of emptiness, waving fields of golden grass, and shimmering heat mirages on roads that lay straight for miles. It is the incomprehensible loneliness of living twenty, thirty, or forty miles from the next town and experiencing the paradox of both isolation and overwhelm. It is the great grief of loving a place that you know you have to leave – unwillingly divorcing a part of your very being. That is the feeling of no floor.

maurice and rousay have already made a name for themselves both individually and collaboratively as producers and composers, each with an impressive (if not daunting) body of work. While their previous output proves their talent in the electronic, ambient, and hyperpop genres, no floor sees the two powerhouses working together in an entirely new way. According to the composers, no floor is an ode to a specific set of third places like bars where they spent time together over the course of their youth. The duo humorously refers to them as “pillars of our debauchery.” Third places are socially necessary and would include anywhere that people can foster a sense of community outside of the home (the first place) and work (the second place). They are a tragically diminishing commodity for today’s young people as the world rushes towards a seemingly inevitable digital existence. I have favorite third places - the library, concert venues, museums - and I cherish making memories in them with people I care about. An entire album dedicated to the places and evenings whiled away by rousay and maurice is a beautiful, tender tribute to youth.

Photo by Katherine Squier

Each track on no floor is a living, vibrant collage of whimsical created sounds, supported by rousay’s delicately sparse guitar work and maurice’s pedal steel. The use of shimmering, warm strings throughout this LP captured my heart immediately, as I have a soft spot for them in my own work and find that they lend incomparable emotion. The opening piece on no floor is called “hopfields,” and the locale in question is an elegant brasserie in Austin. The track opens with a plucked guitar, joined by swells of pedal steel and crackling static in the background. My ears feel as though they are cocooned in angora as the music relaxes and evolves over the course of eight gentle minutes. One can easily picture soft conversation over glittering cocktails as humming synth and an achingly beautiful string line paint a warm, blurry picture. In the background, one hears something akin to a train whistle, and I imagine that I can feel the rumbling of steel wheels as I lean back in my chair and close my eyes.

The third track on this release is even more specific than the first, zooming all the way in to depict “the applebees outside kalamazoo, michigan.” Instead of feeling safe and welcoming like “hopfields,” “applebees” has a distinctly eerie, almost sinister, aura. Though the track opens in a warm and inviting way, it quickly transforms into something entirely different: odd glitches and low, brooding strings create a feeling of unease. The composers mention that they stopped at this particular Applebee's during a tour, and their unfamiliarity with the area comes through the piece as sliding pitches that lead to uncomfortable, though brief, dissonances unsettled me and gave me the unnerving sense of being watched. “applebees” could very easily soundtrack an A24 thriller – beauty juxtaposed against something deeply, viscerally off. Though the piece is strange and otherworldly, I am drawn to it for those very reasons. It is compelling and stands out in the tracklist like a desolate truck stop in the middle of the night-time desert, haunted and glowing fluorescent.

“kinda tropical” is less specific in title, though just as exact in sound. The second track on the album (and also my favorite) is littered with wonderfully charming glitches that skip and stutter throughout. This cacophony of synths is supported by tenuous strings that fade in and out, sometimes violently swelling to a fever pitch before disappearing like snowflakes on skin. This track sounds like how my favorite landscapes feel - sparse, vast, and gorgeously compelling. Though this is the most minimalistic work on no floor, it is nonetheless stunningly evocative. As a devotee of the American minimalist genre and its composers, I love works that contain multitudes of emotion and storytelling through repeated motifs, sounds, and rhythmic textures. “kinda tropical” proves how effective this style of composition can be: less is more here.

With the release of no floor, more eaze and claire rousay have once again surpassed their own standards and broken their own molds. This LP is magical and mysterious, a pristine sketchbook of connection during the tumult of youth. It is a glorious and eccentric tribute to the otherworldly element of rural living and the transformative power that third places hold. In the past, I have found collaborative releases to come across as forced, an arranged marriage of sorts, but no floor proves that artistic union can be found between artists – and that it is an incredible thing when done well. 

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.

Pictoria Vark – Nothing Sticks | Album Review

Get Better Records

I keep forgetting my headphones. The snow finally melted here in DC, so I’ve been going on lots of walks, but I keep forgetting my earbuds in my other jacket or purse. I always notice when I’m halfway down the block, and I always decide it’s not worth it to turn back. That means I’ve been going on quiet walks lately. These walks are usually in the evening, at a time when I watch the streetlights turn on while I’m still far from home. I love these walks. The sidewalk is just uneven enough that I can’t look at my phone without risk of tripping, so I don’t. It’s one of the only times of day I feel truly lost in the sounds of my street, neighborhood, and city. I’m aware of every song playing in every bar I pass, what time the birds stop singing, and that one annoying car alarm. I usually spend these walks lost in thought, thinking about last year, the future, and writing this review. Pictoria Vark seems to be on the same walk with me.

Pictoria Vark’s sophomore album, Nothing Sticks, takes Victoria Park’s ongoing, contemplative self-awareness up a notch as she explores both the uplifting and grueling sides of such ruminations. It’s been almost three years since the Chicago-based artist released her acclaimed debut album, The Parts I Dread. Much like her new record, Park’s debut was similarly introspective, weighing her loneliness, her anxieties about the past, and her focus on making music. However, due to the passage of time and her ascendancy as an indie rock darling, Park’s introspection has expanded, widening to look at her life on the other side of that previous worry. Written over Park’s pulsing heartbeat bassline, Nothing Sticks is a pensive indie rock collection that invites listeners to reconcile with, well, how nothing sticks.

The album begins with a dirge as a rolling drumbeat melds with Park’s bass tone through the introduction of “Sara.” It’s a somber melody that turns from concrete to atmospheric and back again over and over, with each clash scaling further and further up. Park’s bass leads the charge as a trumpet overpowers the drum’s steady rhythm. The song falls back, and a guitar croons. It surges again, blanketing her vocals in a balanced cacophony. Park was inspired by environmental sounds and describes this weaving brass encroachment as reminiscent of “a high school marching band in the distance.” 

After establishing the stakes with this introduction, Park rewinds with “No One Left,” a song where shuffling reversed audio is balanced with a guitar digging deeper and deeper as Park sings a repeated admittance, “I think I could love you.” From there, “San Diego” captures her biggest sound yet, thanks to the use of a string section, which has a bright and romantic effect. This elevation leads to “I Sing What I See,” Park’s first song on the album contending with her experiences performing. Much like lights on stage or the roar of a crowd, the song engulfs her.

The song I have been singing the most under my breath is “I Pushed It Down,” which begins with a bare beat before adding a guitar strum for the chorus. A symphony suddenly sparks around the minimalist sound, and a violin becomes a second voice, complementing Park’s as it ducks and dives around her words. The song has a starry quality that winks and waves as Park sings the melancholy refrain, “I pushed it down.”

“Make Me A Sword” sits at the heart of the album. Heart meaning that it’s the center of the project, the most vulnerable, and the place the titular sword is likely aiming towards. In the song, Park confronts both herself and her music career head-on, contending with the relationship she has with her coping mechanisms and her onstage presence. Lyrics paint Park in different roles: a Sisyphean character, a court jester, and even a knight as she grapples with understanding her coping mechanisms and letting them go. Lyrics like “Make me a sword to point against me, I’ll be your shield if it protects me” illustrate this two-fold dynamic over a rhythm that would feel familiar coming out of a basement at a house party. It's a song that dances with multicolor lights and buzzes with warmth.

“Make Me A Sword” fades, and the distorted “Lucky Superstar” begins. This is the album’s loudest track, with a fuzzy and almost haunting feeling as Park repeats “big, blue heart” over an ever-crashing, scratchy crescendo. “Where It Began” follows on an opposite note, delivered with a kind of stripped-down melancholia. It builds like the pressure behind your eyes right before you cry. The album as a whole starts to slow before “We’re Musicians.” In the final track of the album, Park’s bassline bops to a beachy tune, throwing out defeating lyrics like “thank God for good days and bad luck” or “your eyes don’t crease when you smile at me” before drowning the words in total shred.

When describing this album, Park explained, “Everything we want to last, whether it’s a relationship, a moment, a career, or a way of life, will come to an inevitable end.” And like she suggests, this album has to end too, so, with the sound of endlessly crashing waves, it does. 

Nothing Sticks isn’t reassuring, but it’s not dooming either. It's a normal statement that comes from years of consideration and, therefore, is perfect for applying meaning and reflection. The point of this album isn't to get lost in these contemplations but rather to accept the need to let them go. So I am going to keep going on my long walks, and I’ll still be meditative sometimes or whatever, but maybe next time I’ll remember my headphones.

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

Weatherday – Hornet Disaster | Album Review

Topshelf Records

One of my many quirks as a music listener is my obsession with Album Of The Year. For those unfamiliar, it’s essentially Letterboxd for music where users can log and rank whatever they’re listening to. Since its inception, the website has become synonymous with music nerds and Fantano worshippers, as only a fanatic would go out of their way to log something on a site that looks so objectively archaic. I make this sound like it's a bad thing, but the website has helped me discover tons of genres and artists that I never would have known about otherwise, including DIY artist and songwriting extraordinaire Weatherday. 

There’s hardly much known about Swedish songwriter Sputnik, and their music is, by all accounts, considered inaccessible to most popular music listeners. However, I think that answers the question of how they got so popular right there. The production is unpolished to the point where it feels like you hear the buzzing of hornets, the mess of the world around them. In this case, what keeps “unpolished” from turning into “bad” is the heart at the center of each of these songs. Polishing your heart too much can sand off the ability to actually use it and feel it, and boy, does Weatherday use their heart in this record.

It’s been almost six years since Weatherday’s debut full-length, Come In, which brought many of Sputnik’s character creations (including cover art icon Agatha) into a vast musical landscape of blazing guitars and drums. Since then, Weatherday has teamed up with Asian Glow for a split EP in 2022 and embarked on multiple tours throughout the USA with the likes of Michael Cera Palin, Newgrounds Death Rugby, Oolong, and countless other DIY acts. In the course of this process, Sputnik wrote over 70 new tracks and ended up using a mere 19 of them to construct Hornet Disaster, a 76-minute musical odyssey filled to the brim with an expansion of sounds while staying true to the DIY nature of their artistic process.

There was a moment during the creation of the record where Sputnik knew that “The album was going to be about hornets… It just made sense to me.” You can hear those hornets straight from the titular opening track, where it takes three seconds for you to get slammed with high-pitched guitars and fast-moving drums before the track bursts into a guitar solo. “Hornet Disaster” feels like the type of music you would hear over the speakers of a dive bar, but on a more intelligible level. It’s a fantastic way to start the album and far from the only moment where the hornet motif makes an appearance. 

The first leg of this album is quite compact, breezing through the first four songs in less than ten minutes. After the opener, we get more lead-guitar-focused punk sounds with “Meanie,” a track that has Sputnik screaming “HARDER” and “MEANER” as if they have to feel everything before they feel anything. There’s a change into a more delightful Midwest emo type of track with lead single “Angel,” including the hilarious line “like an angel in the shape of an angel,” which has been stuck in my head since I first heard it. The opening few seconds of “Take Care of Yourself (Paper-Like Nests)” offer two firsts on the album: a moment of reprieve from the buzz of cranked-up guitars and a line in Swedish translating to “I’ve always taken care of myself.” It doesn’t last too long, as it immediately blasts back into emo rock sounds and lyrics in English, with the harrowing titular lyric, “When you say things like ‘What the hell’ / what I hear is ‘Take care of yourself.’”

At this point in the tracklist, something I’ve noticed is that all of the subdued moments at the beginning of tracks almost immediately give way to something more explosive, which takes away from some of the potential shock and awe of the instrumentation. However, for “Hug,” a track tackling themes of fulfillment in life and the pain accompanying that lack of fulfillment, it feels more like a gradual build than a complete switch. The musical catalyst is dramatic yet potent, “You thought that you’d feel something by now,” Sputnik repeats, eventually giving way to animalistic screaming, transforming a track that starts as an embrace into a suffocating bear hug.

For all of the pulsing energy within this album, there are quite a few moments of calm, mainly towards the back end of the record. The track “Heartbeats,” which served as the second single, is the most lowkey song on the record to this point and the closest you get to a ballad, with plucky guitars and little claps accentuating the end of the verses. It’s whatever the Weatherday equivalent of a pure love song is. Then there’s “Aldehydes,” which kicks off with spiky guitars and static in the background before transforming into a washed-out section with beautiful strings. That track is a much-needed change of pace from the electricity shooting out from “Nostalgia Drive Avatar” minutes before. 

There are some moments throughout Hornet Disaster that are downright violent, most pertaining to the symbol of blood. Take the aptly named “Blood Online.” At first glance, the song is structurally akin to what you would hear on a typical verse/chorus/verse track, however, during the bridge, the lyrics shift into a nightmarish depiction of Sputnik typing on their phone with blood on their fingers and an overdriven guitar blaring through the speakers. There’s also “Chopland Sedans,” with multiple references to the idea of disaster and even more mentions of blood, along with a depiction of Sputnik cutting their lips with a knife. 

Weatherday weaves together multiple motifs throughout the gargantuan hour and fifteen-minute runtime, which helps everything come together lyrically. Circling back to the title, hornets are found throughout the record in cuts such as “Tiara” and “Blanket.” There’s also the idea of speaking in cursive, which is mainly detailed in “Blanket,” but it also arises in “Chopland Sedans” and “Cooperative Calligraphy.” The motifs end up creating a narrative and structure towards this otherwise sprawling record, condensing some of the core themes into singular words to make the listening experience more unified.

Towards the back end of the record, Weatherday invites listeners into multi-phased journeys that feel less like songs and more like a traditional three-act film script. The track “Nostalgia Drive Avatar” feels like looking back on a slideshow of film photos you took and watching your life flash before your eyes, with lyrics about Sputnik reliving the life that isn’t theirs anymore (“Could it be nostalgia or am I just fond of my memories” really got me good.) There’s also “Agatha’s Goldfish (Sparkling Water),” with an engaging instrumental passage towards the middle of the song and receding vocals that fake out the listener before slamming back in with the chorus.

Other highlights include “Green Tea Seaweed Sea,” one of the more cinematic cuts on the album, which kicks off with a slower acoustic guitar portion and introduces a beautiful flute before once again breaking it all down. The track “Pulka” sees a massive switch in the Weatherday formula, as the track is entirely in Swedish, with lyrics translating to a depiction of a sleigh ride and the joys of Swedish winter. “Pulka” feels integral to Sputnik’s identity, specifically their childhood, considering how passionate this song feels compared to even the other boisterous tracks. There’s also the final track on the album, “Heaven Smile,” which ditches the guitars entirely in favor of an electronic focus that eventually turns into a chaotic reprise of “Ripped Apart By Hands.”

While Hornet Disaster plays to its strengths with emo-centric guitars and lyrics, there are quite a few moments where Sputnik switches up the formula in some way, and most of the time, they succeed in their experimentation. To some, this record may seem like a product of reckless abandon or a collection of swings from a DIY artist. However, upon closer inspection, listeners find calls of a dreamer who finally possesses the words to express their emotions without purely hiding behind fictional characters. It’s hard to deny the growth and ambition within Weatherday’s newest venture, and it’s even more fun when you embrace the world they have created.

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Samuel Leon is a writer, photographer, and overall average Brooklynite. They love to cook one pan recipes and photograph performances of all shapes and sizes. Hit them up at @sleonpics on Instagram if you want cool pictures or have any good recipes/music recommendations you would like to share.

Michael Cera Palin – We Could Be Brave | Album Review

Brain Synthesizer

A little over a year ago, I went to a Michael Cera Palin show and saw the band play an unreleased track called “Murder Hornet Fursona,” which blew everything I’d previously heard from them out of the water. It was the kind of song that I wanted to listen to again and again, and I became very excited at the prospect of the album it was going to be on. As time passed, I started to wonder if my memory of the song’s excellence (or my anticipation for its release) might be overblown; maybe I had just been under the influence of the good vibes that night, or maybe the recorded version wouldn’t live up to what I’d seen. With We Could Be Brave now in hand, I’m very happy to report that those fears were unfounded. “Murder Hornet Fursona” is, in fact, an incredible song, and We Could Be Brave is an astonishing record–a natural progression on all the thrashy emo-punk that came before it. 

We Could Be Brave is MCP’s first release since the 2021 one-off “Bono!! Bono!!,” and it’s their first ever LP, coming a full decade after their debut EP Growing Pains back in 2015. Over those ten years, the band has garnered a rabid following and a ton of respect in the scene (their cover of Sheryl Crow’s “If It Makes You Happy” has been particularly canonized), which means that there’s been an enormous sense of anticipation for this record. With this anticipation comes a fair amount of pressure, but if MCP felt that, it’s not apparent in the work. Though longtime fans of the band will undoubtedly be pleased with what they hear on We Could Be Brave, it doesn’t feel at all like fan service; instead, what we have is a collection of songs created with a strong, often furious, viewpoint by a band who clearly believes 100% in what they’re doing. 

Photo by Spencer Isberg

The headline for me on this one compared to what we’ve seen previously from MCP is that it’s just way, way bigger. Some of this has to do with the size (going from a couple loosies of and fifteen-minute EPs to a 50-minute LP), but much of this has to do with the production, which boosts and cleans up what’s needed while keeping the raw edge that makes MCP a great live band. Too often lately, I feel like people are applying too much sandpaper to their mixes, the end results are the sonic equivalent of this smooth PB&J, and I was very happy not to find that here. Elements like the guitars on “Gracious” and “Crypto” are allowed to be not just big, but straight-up noisy, and the record is all the better for it. 

A lot of what I love here is exemplified by “Murder Hornet Fursona,” the track that got me so hyped for the record in the first place. The first thing that popped out to me when I could finally listen closely to the song was Jon Williams’ bass, which has just the right amount of saturation for its slides to pop through and hit you while still allowing for smoothness on the longer walking lines. This choice is illustrative of the mixing throughout the album, which always seems to know just where the line is to sound full without being overbearing. I also love the kind of talk-singing style we get from Elliott Brabant in the first verse, with dense lines coming out with a percussive force.

This photograph is a misprint
A psychographical error
Uncanny valleys hold distance
What do you see looking back at you?

At this point, the song feels sufficiently big, but as it moves onto the next section, it grows even larger as another distorted guitar joins the fray. Though that guitar falls away again in the second verse, all the remaining instruments are more frantic, with Brabant now screaming, “If you are what you eat, I’m more man than you’ll ever be.” 

As I continued to listen through We Could Be Brave, I found that my ear was again and again drawn to the bass. One place this happened was on “Gracious,” where the bass starts with a fairly simple walking line under country-sounding guitars before a breakdown takes us back into more familiar emo territory, the bass simplifying to support heavy distorted guitar chords and thunderous drums. After this, the guitar breaks into more hectic arpeggios, and the bass joins in, feeling very much its equal in the ensuing dance. It’s nice to see a bass player get noodly with a guitarist instead of just fading into the back, and it makes for such a fun listen. I also loved near the end of “Despite,” where there are some really sweet-sounding lines higher up on the neck, which are a little bit reminiscent of Mark Hoppus on “Carousel.” 

The way that Brabant’s vocal style shifts throughout the album is another big highlight, bouncing from singing to talking to screaming without missing a beat. Though their voices are pretty different, it reminds me a bit of Microwave’s Nathan Harvy, who you can count on to sound like multiple different people throughout a song’s runtime. One place I noted this in particular was “Tardy,” where a screaming section is followed by a sick vocal harmony around the song’s midpoint, all totally seamless. If I had to pick one flavor of Brabant’s voice that I like best though, I would go with the way it soars out on hooks, particularly “Wisteria,” which was the album’s first single. Great song, great vocal performance. 

I want to be clear that earlier, when I described a section of lyrics from “Murder Hornet Fursona” as dense, I didn’t mean it in a derogatory way. Those lyrics, and a good chunk of the words throughout the record, are packed so tightly with syllables that noting their density feels like the best way to describe them; it gives a lot of the lines this really cool and distinct rhythm. For example, there's this line on “A Broken Face” that goes, “An unsteady diet of / What this crime yields and on / Sweat drips to grease the wheel, churned for drying tongues.” These aren’t stock emo lyrics, and they’re also not just literary for the sake of being literary; the way that the actual words themselves sound gives as much of a payoff as what they mean, and it’s something I don’t usually notice in the genre. If this was all the result of our ten-year wait, I’ll gladly wait another decade to hear what MCP will do next, though hopefully, we won’t have to wait quite that long. 

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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.

Star 99 – Gaman | Album Review

Lauren Records

I have pretty lofty ambitions for my life, but if you asked how I plan to accomplish them, I wouldn’t have a clue what to tell you. I actually don’t know how to make a plan, to tell the truth. If I don’t have an external stimulus pushing me toward a goal, I’ll stay motionless and stagnant. I’ve sat on a health scare for two years because I think I can make my appointment tomorrow. The fact that I moved across the country has nothing to do with my long-standing desire to live in New York; instead, my life here is owed to my driven girlfriend. The first time I read Conversations With Friends, I put in my Goodreads review how much I identified with the apathetic Francis. When I started rereading it, I hoped I’d prove that read to be foolish, but when I got to the end, I just felt ashamed of how much more like her I was after four years. No, I don’t like that about myself either. 

The lyrics on Gaman, Star 99’s sophomore album, aren’t that self-disparaging, but the sense of longing for love and hope for a better future they evoke is apt for someone in their mid-20s to belt along to while driving through a suburban town they dare to dream of escaping. That’s how I felt driving through my Kansas suburb, screaming along to Sunchokes, a clear Gaman antecedent that I had on repeat after I moved home in the wake of COVID. Lest you think I’m being dramatic, it’s all in the title. Gaman, the term, comes from Zen Buddhism and refers to enduring the worst with dignity. Gaman, the album, encapsulates the feeling of discontent I get from The Worst Person in the World; unbearable dissonance between external expectations and your internal world. This isn’t new ground for the band; after all, their debut, Bitch Unlimited, did have the lyric “but I don’t know how to talk to / people that buy houses.”

The first time I heard the lead single “Kill,” my brain instantly connected the track with the opening sequence of Legally Blonde. Something about the melody or that opening line sparked a connection with the brilliant decision to pair a montage of Elle Woods with Hoku’s perfectly ironic “Perfect Day.” The character of Elle Woods is even fit for a Star 99 song, as she is determined to make her own place within a structure that doesn’t want her. 

The most I ever felt disconnected was during my freshman year of college. I’d decided to go to the community college, a 20-minute suburban drive from my parents’ house, in the midst of struggling with my assigned gender, while all my closest friends went to state schools together and made fun of my fake college experience. The only one who I felt like loved me unconditionally during that time was my dog, Stevie. When I hear “Brother,” I’m filled with that desperation again in the chorus recounting commonly aired ads “for work injury lawsuits / turn cash into gold.” At the time, I was terrified of turning into the “hometown beauty now that everyone’s gone,” as described in “Emails.”

A lot of those friends are back home now with mortgages and spouses. I know that lifestyle would never work for me, but I still feel uncertain when I consider the fact that they spend less a month to own their home than I do renting my closet of an apartment. That’s why my favorite lyric from the album is on the song “Pacemakers,” the simple and efficient cry, “I don’t know how to be happy, I just / know how to make it work.” 

I’ve thought all my life that escaping home would be enough, but making peace with yourself is an everyday struggle that requires hope you’ll do it right and grace to accept you’ll fuck it up sometimes. That acceptance is all over Gaman, most notably in the beautiful chorus on track two: “Every time we go to bat / we perpetuate ourselves / again and again.” It’s a beautiful reminder that we’re all just like “trees trying to be a forest because / that’s all they know,” it’s only natural to feel discontent when we fail to make our forest. 

Gaman isn’t just wallowing though, these songs are fucking fun. “Pushing Daisies” charges forward like the best pushpit starter and then dips into a tension-building bridge as Thomas Calvo repeats “If calling back is too hard,” before launching back into the roiling verse. “Gray Wall” may have some of the most nostalgic lyrics, but the trip-hop drums, harmonica, and acoustic guitar refuse to be mournful of what’s past. 

What makes all the unbearable mental turmoil worth it, when “they won’t build statues of me” and when “my life won’t be biographied,” is those small moments. That love between a girl and her dog. Seeing a pack of cigarettes that makes you remember those quiet moments smoking with someone who’s not around anymore. Biking to a friend’s house without telling anyone where you’re going. Put more simply, “But I love you so much, and I am so lucky.”

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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 Instagram and Bluesky @lillianmweber