Bedridden – Moths Strapped To Each Other’s Backs | Album Review

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Julia’s War Recordings

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the high-voltage film franchise Crank, starring my favorite action star from across the pond, Jason Statham. You all know these films, right? If not, the story revolves around Statham playing a hitman named Chev Chelios whose final job goes awry, only to wake up the next day poisoned by some sleazy-looking henchman. The kicker is Chelios only has an hour to live unless he keeps an ample supply of adrenaline flowing through his body as he searches for the antidote. Each antic to keep his blood pumping gets crazier than the next. Does he pick fights with the police? Of course. Doing hard drugs? Ok, we’re getting there. How about taking jumper cables to the testicles? Yep, that’ll do it.

So I was thinking, what if Statham didn’t have to do these death-defying stunts to stay alive? What if there was just something like an album that assisted our hero’s adrenaline in a safer, more controlled way? There was a thought: how about some fire-invoking music that Chelios could continuously play in his earbuds to keep his heart rate up? Enter Moths Strapped To Each Other’s Backs, the debut LP from the Brooklyn-based shoegaze band Bedridden. After an impressive showing with their 2023 EP, the group hones in on sludgy guitars turned up to max power and dizzyingly catchy choruses, proving an instant recipe for a great album.

Frontman and guitarist Jack Riley leads the charge with heavy-handed, fuzzed-out guitars and songs that fly around like a blur. Riley has a strong support system in the form of Wesley Wolffe (guitars), Sebastian Duzian (bass), and Nick Pedroza (drums), who collectively steer Bedridden’s signature thumping sound toward something gargantuan. The band comes at you in tidal waves of hard-hitting power riffs that are one part lo-fi, one part grungy, and will instantly blow you away. It’s easy to imagine that Riley and Co. might have had a poster or two of Kurt Cobain on their bedroom walls growing up. The band’s frenetic energy is reminiscent of that same vitality I hear whenever I listen to Nirvana’s debut, Bleach.

Riley writes brutally observational lyrics about the nuances of life and the uncanny interactions that can come from the most unexpected places. Some of the exchanges from afar read like Larry David-esque plot points like in the thunderously-seething “Chainsaw,” which is about Riley getting hot under the collar at their new roommate’s fixation with wanting to buy a lamp. I hope it was at least a lava lamp. The trashed-up opener “Gummy” finds Riley both drunk and high on an MDMA gummy, rejecting the continuous advances of a co-worker. Both songs are examples of the absurd situations life sometimes puts us in. Riley turns these experiences on their head by confronting them directly in these songs.

There’s also a jagged rawness that lives within the lead single, “Etch,” a gloomy-grungy rager that opens up like a mid-90s Hum song and finds Riley unspooling lyrics about pulverizing someone snooping into his life. “Philadelphia, Get Me Through” depicts a night of drunken debauchery in the City of Brotherly Love while dealing with the pain of a dead-end relationship. The song climaxes with monstrous, gorilla-pounding guitars that surely will blow your speakers out. Riley isn’t afraid to let out his anger in these songs, taking the pain from his everyday life and thrusting it on the bevy of guitars at his disposal.

“Heaven’s Leg” is a hot tub time machine of a song taking us back to the glory days of early 90s alternative rock. Here, we have mountainous walls of layered guitars paired with angsty, in-your-face lyrics about an interaction gone wrong with a pastor who lost his leg. The song is a hit in every sense of the word and should be a mainstay on KROQ radio if there were any justice in the world. I’m reminded of Siamese Dream-era Smashing Pumpkins when I drop the needle on “Heaven’s Leg,” and that’s one of the highest compliments I can ever give. 

Bedridden are an incredibly energetic shoegaze band that brings the heat of their fuzzy power chords with the hopes of blowing everything and everyone off the map. The band’s knife-edged sound has a future to be an exciting new voice within the subgenre that should entice everyone to keep up with their next moves. Moths Strapped To Each Other’s Backs is a buzzy debut that isn’t front-loaded nor back-loaded but fully loaded with nonstop shoegaze bangers that keep the party going from sunset to sunrise.

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.

Ribbon Skirt – Bite Down | Album Review

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Mint Records Inc.

In 1980, Vince Clark and Andy Fletcher formed a band called Composition of Sound. Their music wasn’t really gaining traction, and they became a bit embarrassed about their name. It was stuffy, slightly dull, and didn’t fully connote their sound. They attended a synthpop concert, a burgeoning genre in the UK in the years after cheap synthesizers hit the market, and were inspired to make a sharp change in style. With that shift, they decided it would be a good time to ditch the name, and they landed on borrowing the title of a French fashion magazine – Depeche Mode. We’ll never know if Composition of Sound’s change in style would have taken off without the name change, but shortly after becoming Depeche Mode, their ascent to stardom began to take shape. 

Though their previous moniker, Love Language, was nowhere near “Composition of Sound” levels of generic-sounding pretension, Montreal rock band Ribbon Skirt, led by vocalist/guitarist Tashiina Buswa and guitarist Billy Riley, are following a similar path with a new name and a darker, more dynamic sound. “We needed a little bit of a refresh,” the band describes one of their last shows as Love Language in the Summer of 2024. “Billy came up with [Ribbon Skirt], which is kinda funny.” Tashiina’s Anishinaabe heritage inspired the new name - one that conjures her native identity and the tapestry of influences that inform the band’s new direction on their debut album, Bite Down. Ribbon skirts, worn by women of several native American tribes, could be seen as a means of continuity between the ceremonial and the everyday. Similarly, the band uses this new project to bridge their native identity with a contemporary rock aesthetic.

Photo by Ani Harroch

The band is working overtime as they usher in the Ribbon Skirt era. I had a special opportunity to speak with Tashiina and Billy at the tail end of this year’s SXSW, where they played nine shows in four days. “It’s crazy how insane it can make you feel,” Tashiina says as she describes the feeling of playing a show for a crowd of two people on the same weekend that they played in front of hundreds. After spending a couple of months with Bite Down and admiring the work that the band is putting in, I feel confident that they’ve played their last show in front of a single-digit crowd. With a fresh name, some new collaborators, and several years of experience under their belts, Ribbon Skirt have put together a collection of tracks that will be very difficult to ignore. 

The album’s opening track, “Deadhorse,” sets a moody tone with a 45-second introduction of drums and effect-laden guitar, unfolding and laying the song's foundation before the vocals come in. Lyrically, “Deadhorse” establishes a few of the album’s core themes: occupying space, feeling invisible, and getting stuck in unwanted cycles. Mentions of “standing beneath the cross” and “rolling away the stone” evoke biblical imagery that highlights Tashiina’s presence as an Anishinaabe woman in our current context, both in her compulsion to call upon a higher power and call out the deficiencies of modern Western culture. “Cellophane,” Bite Down’s lead single, follows with a similarly moody, post-punk ambiance and an extra sticky hook. Her clever combo of desperate plea and biting critique continues with an evocative cry of “save me, white Jesus,” comically calling out the same imperialistic veneer intended to obscure native identity.

When I spoke with the band about their organic songwriting partnership and process, they outlined an intuitive workflow. Most of the time, they get into their jam space until Billy lands on a guitar part he likes, and then Tashiina writes a vocal melody. “We hit the nail on the head over and over again until something happens… the songs are pretty barebones, and then we build them out in the studio. It’s a pretty long process,” they say with a smile that acknowledges the challenges but also communicates pride in what they’ve created. Ribbon Skirt’s process doesn’t sound easy, but the results are diverse, polished, and highly dynamic.

After a strong start, the following two tracks, “Off Rez” and “Wrong Planet,” make up my favorite one-two punch on the entire record. “[“Off Rez”] had so many different lives,” says Tashi. “It still didn’t really end up where we wanted it to… I think at some point, you just have to let go of it.” Hearing that about one of my favorite songs on the record was hard to fathom. “Off Rez” represents a more defiant shift in tone and features some of my favorite lines on the record as Tashiina playfully mocks who other people think she should be. The line “they want 2000s Buffy Marie” references the famed singer-songwriter who was recently stripped of several cultural recognitions after a 2023 report revealed that she had fabricated the Indigenous ancestry on which much of her musical identity relied. 

When I asked them directly about reconciling native heritage with Western musical culture, Tashiina said, “We’re a rock band…I think it’s important to take up space in places that you wouldn’t normally find indigenous people.” Ribbon Skirt don’t seem interested in engaging with tokenization; they’re letting the music speak for itself. “Wrong Planet” is in contention for my track of the year, as Tashiina’s performance here takes the best parts of 2010s post-punk sprechgesang and Courtney Love’s low register screaming. The vocalization about two-thirds into the song that leads into an explosion of pure catharsis is the most memorable moment on the record - one that I cannot wait to experience live when they (hopefully) come to Atlanta on the tour they alluded to this Fall.

Side B of the record is just as strong as the first, with a handful of daring sonic experiments that find the band exploring the farther reaches of their sound. “Cut” is a second-half gem with a fresh instrumental palette - acoustic guitar, subtle strings, and a buoyant piano section. “Look What You Did” comes close to spunky indie pop à la Wet Leg or English Teacher. “41” has a healthy dose of autotune, and “Earth Eater” wraps things up with a seismic closer that the band wisely chose as the final single leading up to Bite Down’s release. It’s all wrapped up in a tight 36-minute package that keeps things fresh and exciting the entire time without giving anyone genre whiplash - it all makes sense within the new identity that the band is cultivating.

Over the course of these nine tracks, Ribbon Skirt set out a few different possible paths forward in the post-Love-Language era  – all of which excite me for the future of the band. In an indie landscape that feels oversaturated with nervy post-punk and playlist-friendly shoegaze, Ribbon Skirt have made something that feels relevant without being overdone. Whether it was the renewed energy brought by the name change or simply the culmination of years of hard work and experience, Tashiina and Billy have crafted their best project yet, and I fully expect to see Bite Down covered as one of the most exciting debut albums of 2025.

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.

Glare – Sunset Funeral | Album Review

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Deathwish Inc.

Music nerds love to talk about tone. As a failed musician myself, I’m obsessed with a great tone despite never being able to achieve one in any of the bands I’ve been a part of over the last fifteen years. I could write a novel’s worth about records with great tones, like the futuristic post-punk frenzy of Wipers’ 1981 seminal sophomore LP Youth Of America, the thick smoked-out sound of Acid King’s 1999 stoner rock masterpiece Busse Woods, or the crystal-clear shimmering production of Porcupine Tree’s 2005 contemporary prog cornerstone Deadwing. It’s one thing to have an album full of great songs, but when the songs actually sound great and everything is dialed in just the way it should be, the listening experience is that much better. That is the case with Sunset Funeral, the tonally impressive debut album from Texas alternative rock group Glare.

The old adage of bands having their entire lives to make their first album is Glare’s call to arms: for eight years, they’ve been slowly churning out singles and EPs, starting with 2017’s Into You and 2018’s Void In Blue, both successful initial projects that have garnered millions of streams since their release last decade. In 2021, Glare returned with Heavenly, their most substantial offering thus far but still not completely reflective of the band they’ve become. Their eleven-song output that precedes this new album is but a blueprint, a test run, a work in progress, the calm before the Sunset. These new eleven songs that make up the band’s debut LP are explosive from top to bottom and result in some of the biggest-sounding independent rock music I’ve heard in the last year and a half. This is a windows-down with the car radio cranked type of album, a get-a-call-from-your-landlord-to-stop-making-so-much-noise-during-“quiet-hours” type of album, a blissed-out blast of ‘90s alternative reignited for the modern era.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: the band name Glare, the album name Sunset Funeral, the dreamy pastel photo album cover that goes with it, and the track names therein like “Chlorinehouse” and “Different Hue” all make it very obvious what this band is all about: thickly layered guitars, vocals so washed in reverb you could shower in them, and a general reliance on big, atmospheric rock that lets them sit comfortably with contemporaries like Downward and Prize Horse. The band and album scream modern shoegaze (or, blech, “nugaze”), but they scream it with such confidence: a big pedal energy attitude of ‘This is who we are, this is what we do, and we’re going to do it as well, if not better than anyone in the monsoon of bands filled with former emos who discovered the classic run of Dinosaur Jr. albums.’ Additionally, Glare further sets themselves apart from everyone else with their tone expertly dialed in on each element. It’s one thing to get the guitars just right in a shoegaze band: that’s the part most people focus on, but Glare has clearly spent the time to make sure every member’s instrument is showcased in a noticeable way. Perhaps the strongest of them is the drums, which have one of the clearest and most thunderous sounds on a modern record of this style that I’ve ever heard.

If you heard any of the Sunset Funeral advance cuts — the sweet and groovy “Guts,” the full-force rocker “Nü Burn,” or the overarchingly thematic tone-setting album opener “Mourning Haze” — you already got a taste of Glare’s perfection of their genre. It’s not always common for a band to deliver an entire project that lives up to, and in some cases exceeds, the power of its singles, but that’s only part of what makes this album feel so special. As soon as I turned on “Mourning Haze” for the first time, I couldn’t believe how great it sounded for a first song, with its room-filling volume and a power that I’ve rarely heard matched this decade. There are only about twenty seconds of relenting when “Kiss The Sun” comes in next, until it bursts into another bright headbanger, riding the line of melody and heaviness reminiscent of influential bands like Torche and Hum.

Sunset Funeral is an album that feels so good to be lost in; its pacing is such a perfect rhythm that it’s easy not to notice that you’re halfway through the tracklist by the time “Nü Burn” begins. Glare seamlessly weave their way through every moment of this record, even down to the instrumental interlude “Felt,” which builds up to “Nü Burn” just as breezily as it winds down from “Chlorinehouse.” The soft closer “Different Hue” glides along so smoothly that it sounds completely natural leading back into “Mourning Haze” if you start the record over again. I love finding great three-track runs on albums, like “Begin The Begin” -> “These Days” -> “Fall On Me” on R.E.M.’s 1986 alternative classic Lifes Rich Pageant, or the semi-suite of “Closer You Are” -> “Auditorium” -> “Motor Away” on Guided By Voices’ 1995 landmark lo-fi odyssey Alien Lanes. You could throw a dart anywhere on Sunset Funeral and get a great three-track run, which I suppose makes the entire album a great eleven-track run, a rare feat in 2020s emo-adjacent music.

In a style that can often be monotonous or too heavy-handed in its ‘90s worship, Glare stands atop the slew of guitar rock bands with finesse, grace, and panache (pardon my French). Whether it’s on more relaxed tracks like “Saudade” and the almost-eponymous “Sungrave,” or on any of the bombastic singles, the band breathes new life into shoegaze with every second of Sunset Funeral’s runtime. It’s one of the tightest debut albums I’ve heard from a new band this decade, and possibly even on a longer timeline than that. I have no doubt that by 2030, Sunset Funeral will be talked about the way we talk about Nothing’s Guilty Of Everything, Title Fight’s Hyperview, and Turnover’s Peripheral Vision, and for my money, I’d put it above those last two for sure. Get sucked in by the sunset, Glare is here.

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.

Babe Rainbow – Slipper imp and shakaerator | Album Review

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p(doom) records

I was a freshman in college the first time I heard Babe Rainbow. I have a relatively blurry view of my life up until this point, but for some reason, this memory is clear. Driving around my hometown on a school break, one of my friends pulled a classic “Have you ever heard this?” and put on “Johny Says Stay Cool” off the Aussie psych-rock trio’s self-titled debut. We drove to nowhere in particular, and let the song play at least 15 times, paying attention to something new each go around. At that point in time, my Tumblr-ified “indie” alternative music taste hadn’t prepared me for something so light and quippy and fun. The congas, the warbly falsetto vocals, the whole “breathe in / breathe out” motif. It floors me to think that my early adolescence was exclusively soundtracked by gut-wrenching songs like The 1975’s “Sex” or Halsey’s Room 93 EP (real ones know that was her peak) when there was music out there that felt like the sun was shining down on you. 

Babe Rainbow have stayed in my rotation ever since that drive around Long Island suburbia. As I’ve grown, they have, too; traveling the world, exploring new ways to approach their sound, and bringing on a rotating cast of collaborators. Now, just past their tenth year as a group, Babe Rainbow are going back to their roots—in more ways than one.

Their first album since 2022, Slipper imp and shakaerator sees Babe Rainbow using everything that was so irresistible about their self-titled and reimagining it through all of the sounds and styles they’ve absorbed over the last decade. But before even giving the album a listen, I had to answer one question: What exactly is a slipper imp and shakaerator? All those letters strung together didn’t feel like English. At first, I thought it was some Australian slang, but after doing some research, I found that it’s actually a farming tool. A plow. A specific brand of plow. The Bunyip Slipper Imp and Shakaerator was a new, stronger kind of plow meant to cut through the harsh Australian terrain. 

What the hell, sure. 

An early ad for the Bunyip Slipper Imp and Shakaerator

It seemed random until I was reminded that the members of Babe Rainbow (Angus Dowling, Jack “Cool-Breeze” Crowther, and Elliot “Dr. Love Wisdom” O’Reilly) lived in the macadamia orchard of an avocado farm as teens. Talk about literally going back to your roots. The title makes it all a little concept-y, serving as a signal that the music underneath it will feel like the group coming home to their psychedelic surf rock sound. 

It’s probably self-evident, but Babe Rainbow have never been ones to take themselves too seriously. I saw the group last October at the Brooklyn Bowl, where they kept letting the audience know how grateful they were to be playing in this half-bowling-alley, half-concert-venue in Williamsburg. I swore Dowling was gonna fall off the stage from spinning around so much. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out he was mid-shrooms trip during their set. They continually returned to the fact that they’re just some surfer bros from Byron Bay, as if we already couldn’t tell from their thick accents, luscious blond locks, and overall hippie disposition.

Babe Rainbow exist in the same ecosystem as psych-rock groups like Allah-Las and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, but they take it to an entirely different level, leaning even further into what Dowling refers to as “the powers of the Rainbow,” which may or may not include the powers of magic mushrooms. 

Gizz leader Stu Mackenzie has played a major role in Babe Rainbow’s story. He acted as their guide into the Aussie scene, producing their breakout self-titled debut. Slipper imp and shakaerator is Babe Rainbow’s first album on KGLW’s independent label, p(doom), and Mackenzie is back at the helm as a producer, while also catching a few features in the tracklist. Their long-standing relationship speaks to the hyper-collaborative ethos of the psych-rock scene, and definitely helps Babe Rainbow get even weirder with it (if that’s even possible).

Slipper imp and shakaerator opens with the deep-fried, phaser-heavy, ultra-funky “What is ashwagandha,” using a gritty spoken word intro to guide listeners into the seemingly endless layers of surfy guitars, thick basslines, and echoey flute. It gave me the same fuzzy feelings I got the first time I heard “Johny Says Stay Cool,” and that told me everything I needed to know about the album in its first four minutes. 

That breezy, sunshiny psych-rock is present throughout the whole album, with the tracklist branching off into different renditions. Single “Like cleopatra” has an ‘80s funk-meets-disco lean, complete with all the ‘do do do’s you’d expect. Reverb-heavy guitar riffs, echoing synth passes, and some literal beeps and boops make it feel like you’re flying away in the spaceship the group is singing about. “Apollonia” takes an instrumental turn, with acoustic guitar dripping in reverb and some sci-fi synth swells that create an eerie dissonance. The guitar patterns sound like the exact middle ground between Spanish guitar and Indian sitar. The track is hypnotic and sneakily moving and has slowly become one of my favorites. It’s a moment where Babe Rainbow turn their quintessential sound on its head, reminding listeners of all the other influences they’ve picked up over the years. Putting the acoustic guitar and flute through similar effects as the synths creates an entrancing mixture of analog and digital, something else the group seems to love to explore. 

Aussie rock shaman and longtime friend of the band Stu Mackenzie offers up some of his classic blown-out guitar textures on “When the milk flows,” a mid-album track that feels like it could soundtrack a round of Mario Kart (and I say that extremely complimentary). Some signal tones and French spoken-word lead us in, giving the illusion of a flight preparing for takeoff. The background synth sequences play with that in-transit sense of urgency, building tension with the sheer tempo, letting the vocals (texturized with a vocoder) double down on that build, then exploding through the fuzzy, Gizz-esque electric guitar passes. The track eventually goes into a half-time break, creating an undeniable groove that eases all of the tension before fading out. 

The following track, “Mt dub,” creates a circling psych jam that sounds like a mixture of the funk of FKJ and the hypnotics of Good Morning. The vocoder returns on the opening lines, “The islands recommended for its dazzling rocks / Superbloom / Underwater rainforest / Rock and roll pours from the record stores / Welcome to the golden age sleep traveler,” this time sounding oddly similar to those on Kacey Musgraves’s “Oh, What A World.” On this trippy, laid-back groove, Babe Rainbow chose to remind listeners of their inherent powers in the hook “You’re underestimated, you’re more loved than you know,” with vocals that weave themselves through the same spiraling jam as the orchestral synths and persistent bass. 

If nothing else, the boys of Babe Rainbow use Slipper imp and shakaerator to once again profess their love for all things hippie and good. Single “LONG LIVE THE WILDERNESS” is basically asking listeners to sit down and smell the roses (“You’re living your life too fast”) and trust that nature will guide them where they’re meant to be, even if that ends up being a golf course (“I’m so green on the back nine”). When we take our guard down and let the Earth, Sun, Moon, and stars take us away, all we have to do is enjoy what’s around us and be ready for more good to come. Dreamy closer “re-ju-ven-ate” is a beachy, almost-instrumental akin to Khruangbin, another band in Babe Rainbow’s sphere of psychedelic surf rock. Its few lyrics concisely sum up Babe Rainbow’s entire ethos for the past decade: abundance for everyone. 

Slipper imp and shakaerator sees Babe Rainbow at their best: weird, surprising, and unabashedly themselves with little to no filter. Their years of travel and cultural exchange proved fruitful, giving Australia’s most eccentric trio new ways to harness their psychedelic powers into one wholesome, homegrown, kaleidoscopic trip. 

Cassidy is a culture writer and researcher currently based in Brooklyn. She loves many things, including but not limited to rabbit holes, Caroline Polachek, blueberry pancakes, her cat Seamus, and adding to her record collection. She is on Twitter @cassidynicolee_, and you can check out more of her writing on Substack. 

Great Grandpa – Patience, Moonbeam | Album Review

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Run for Cover Records

Back in January, I told my partner that 2025 needed to be a year of deliberate change in our lives. We’d been living together for more than a year, and while we were comfortable, there was a complacency creeping in that neither of us were ready to accept. A string of events during the last quarter of 2024, ranging from personal reckonings with identity and loss to constant political anxiety, made me realize that something had to change, and our routines were all we had power over at that moment. I began applying to different day jobs again, they started making art in their free time, I rekindled my love for creative writing, and began the arduous process of teaching myself how to play the acoustic guitar that has been burning a hole in our wall. Now, even as many of our surroundings are the same, we are different. 

If there’s one thing that Great Grandpa would know about, it’s metamorphosis. The Seattle five-piece began in the mid-2010s by playing the brand of grungy indie rock synonymous with their hometown, but their first two studio albums saw them gradually sanding the noise off their sound. What was uncovered was a dynamic band whose tastes spanned all of indie rock, with 2019’s excellent Four of Arrows running the gamut from fuzzed-out emo to misty-eyed folk, all tied together by Al Menne’s ever-expressive voice. Then the pandemic hit, and all of that was put in jeopardy. It was unclear if Great Grandpa would still exist as lockdown sent its members on diverging paths. After years spent apart and some beautiful solo records, the quintet came back together to record starting in 2023, with Menne plainly stating upon the release of lead single “Kid” last year: “Time passed, and I missed my friends.” Patience, Moonbeam sounds exactly like what it is – five people who love each other dearly, reconnecting and bonding for the first time in years. It’s a fun, unpredictable, and bold exchange of ideas that reflects the experience of each contributor. 

There is a new sense of sharing the load that makes the record refreshingly light on its feet. While songwriting has always been a collaborative process for Great Grandpa, guitarist Pat Goodwin contributed the lion’s share of the lyrics on previous records, particularly Four of Arrows. Patience, Moonbeam, by comparison, features a few songs written entirely by Menne and drummer Cam LaFlam in addition to Goodwin’s own contributions, and it gives the songs a freewheeling feeling even as darkness looms in the background. Synthesizers, strings, banjo, and walls of electric guitar all play their role under the paradoxically cozy and adventurous alt-country umbrella that many of these songs fall under. 

“Ladybug,” the first side’s playful high point, puts every bit of that spirit on display. Menne’s hook is warped by vocal effects and a thick synth lead before settling into a jangly jaunt full of winking pop culture references. It’s easy to imagine Menne beaming as he sings “Father of the ladybug, dressed like Donald Glover on the GQ cover” in the playful pre-chorus. Even in moments where it’s clear the band are having a blast, they’re never afraid to let their guard down. The levity of “Ladybug” sells the yearning in the bridge harder than straight-laced melancholy ever could, turning it into something of a thesis for Patience, Moonbeam. As everyone sings, “Semitones are the distance between lines / All I think about is you sometimes, all the time,” I can hear just how much these five friends missed making music together. 

Immediately after, “Kiss the Dice” uses its brief runtime to send up the shifting perspectives that come with lived years. “I used to kiss the dice and roll / Now I’ve got a steady word,” hums Menne, relapsing into uncertainty as the outro fills out, “Do you think that that is worth something?” Even as he’s learned to take charge and lean into the changes life brings, that sting of anxiety never fully goes away. For as morose as their previous album could get, there’s a weariness to moments on Patience, Moonbeam that can only be the result of how much the five-piece has grown up over half a decade. The quiet strings in the intro of the opener, “Never Rest,” echo the nighttime air on the cover art, with the moon parting clouds as the song begins to evolve. First, the drums ground the dreamlike piece in a lush acoustic ballad before slowly erupting in an electric finish. 

European treks and phone calls in the track’s lyrics make meaning feel elusive until Pat Goodwin’s own voice chimes in with Menne’s for the last line: “Coming son, the winter has its dark hum, how can I retain some sight?” The doubt hanging over the track stems from his and bassist Carrie’s new role as parents – after all, how good will your guidance be when you’re actively figuring this life thing out yourself? “Junior” picks up that thread, painting a scene of a family feud and troublemaking between farm boys. Pigs are maimed, dogs are shot, and “light crimes” are committed, all from a concerned but compassionate father’s perspective. Menne dips into his lower register many times throughout the album, but nowhere is it as striking as the way he embodies the titular Junior’s reckless antics in a distinct twang.

He went swinging with a young man’s wiles
I saw him twirling and punching wild

For all the wonder and wisdom Patience, Moonbeam offers in the first half, the most powerful revelations lie in side B. “Doom” acts as a sort of centerpiece, drip-feeding tech-induced anxiety with images both dystopian and apocalyptic. “Violent screens,” “cardboard meals,” and “stocks on a good deal” are contrasted with the thrills of connection as the band alternates time signatures in the verse and chorus. The record’s most cathartic release comes in the reprise of a hook from an earlier song, “Emma,” complete with a titanic riff that gives any other song in their catalog a run for its money. All the elaborate scenery is abandoned for the blunt, spit-out observation, “It’s funny how I need you, damn / It’s perfect when I leave you, damn.” 

These twists and turns mimic life’s own trajectory. I said at the start that I was taking more action in my own life, and while it has been productive, it’s also quite difficult! For every little victory, there’s a backslide or regression - a moment of frustration with practicing guitar where you wonder if it’s even worth it, an exciting opportunity that disappears almost as quickly as it emerged – but this, too, is part of the process. Great Grandpa understand this all too well as Patience, Moonbeam ends with the single that ushered the band’s return, “Kid.” It’s a power ballad complete with heart-wrenching piano, a soaring guitar solo, and plenty of strings, but it’s the lyrics that drive everything home. Written in the aftermath of the loss of the Goodwins’ first pregnancy, mourning hangs over every inch of scenery, making the mirrored conclusions in each chorus come off as not just sincere, but genuinely life-affirming.

All good things in time define their meaning
And fold sweet ends into their mouths

All dark things in time define their meaning
And fold sharp ends into their mouths

Grief, growth, and change: these are not one-time events, but a constant process that we are always undergoing. We can choose to struggle against the ebb and flow and be lost, or look for patterns and ride the current to safer waters. In Great Grandpa’s case, they were lucky enough to be led back to one another. “Task,” a seemingly autobiographical tale of reunion and cooperation, sums that gift up perfectly. It opens on the line, “Saw you at the party we called you by your new name / You had changed, but the heart of you was still the same,” sweetly and succinctly supporting Menne’s gender transition before getting to the heart of the band’s bond. He sings about several “perfect kind(s) of song” before his bandmates join in for the outro of, “Won’t you tell me what my task is?” Sometimes, a little help from your friends is all you really need.

Wes Cochran is a Portland-based writer, worker, and music listener. You can find them @ohcompassion on Twitter, via their email electricalmess@gmail.com, or navelgazing their way up and down South Portland.