knitting – Souvenir | Album Review

Mint Records

When you don’t know who you are, it’s easy to let the world drown out the part of your brain that can tell something is wrong. You know the corner of your mind that whispers things you’d rather ignore, don’t you? The one that questions if the gender you were given is the right one. Or if you hurt that loved one. Or if you need a new job or new friends or a new city. It is so quiet compared to the noise from outside, that’s just what happens when you need repression to keep yourself alive. But no matter what happens outside you or how much you actively try to silence that nagging feeling, it will always linger. That voice is all over Souvenir by knitting. 

knitting first appeared as the bedroom project of Mischa Dempsey in 2021 with their self-titled Bandcamp tape before expanding into a full band for 2024’s Some Kind of Heaven. That record demonstrated how, even with more minds contributing to each track, Dempsey’s writing could still grow more insular. Their sophomore album, Souvenir, has an even narrower focus on Dempsey's perspective, and the result is a record of patient indie rock capable of subtle devastation. 

The core of these songs is Dempsey’s singing, a solipsistic murmur that crawls through the mix like that whisper in your ears. Even when the music rises, as we hear on the chorus of lead single “I Want To Remember Everything,” their voice remains steady, untroubled by the emotional turbulence around them. Dempsey’s voice is emblematic of the philosophy that underpins these songs, one that they explain plainly on the chorus of “Sunrise,” in which they sing, “I’m trying everything to reach / Another version of me beneath / Layers of static and latency / I’m underground, and I need relief.” Figuring yourself out is a Sisyphean task to begin with, but when your entire emotional world is engulfed in external complicators, that task becomes less about getting the boulder to the top of the hill and more about finding the peace to keep it in place. Or as Dempsey puts it on “Here Comes,” “on and on the world spun / and shook me up.”  

One of my favorite songs on Souvenir is “Shuffle,” for how Dempsey grapples with the difficulties that come with realizing you need to move from passivity. The opening lines “told me / to go easy on myself / I said I’m not sure where to start,” are, for a girl who has avoided therapy for years, far too relatable. How do you unwrap all the layers of repression? How do you address the fears of something bad happening when “we were laughing / with reckless abandon”? That fear comes up again on “I Wasn’t Fully Cooked,” a song built around Dempsey asking if their existence is anything but a tree falling in a forest with no one around to hear it. Is your pain still valid? Can you even claim to be a person when no one acknowledges you? Those are the questions you ask when “[you] can only see / with the aperture of a child.”

My other favorite song here is “Sequel.” The first verse into the chorus sounds so seductive as Dempsey coos that they know assistance is an option, and that not every problem can be fixed alone. The rest of the song captures how hard it is to pretend like you don’t need help. My favorite moment is when they switch up from “if I called, you would come” in the first chorus to “I am not so innocent” in the second. 

When Souvenir closes on “Exit Desire,” Dempsey is alone. After a record spent swaddled in the mix by their bandmates, it all ends with Dempsey singing, “‘cause I know I gotta leave, but I’m not sure where to go” with nothing but a single guitar and the occasional synth. Throughout its runtime, Souvenir vividly documents the difficulties of prioritizing yourself, and it ends with the greatest challenge of all: that we’ll never really know which way to go. But that is the beauty of life; there is no right choice except the one that you believe in. If you’re searching for some path or a reason for life, Souvenir can help you extricate that voice. If you’re still ignoring that whisper, these songs can help you hear what you need.   

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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.

Emperor X – Unified Field | Album Review

Bar / None

Emperor X, real name Chad Matheny, is an incredible example of how algorithms fail us. Look anywhere in his discography and be amazed. Uncategorizable, extremely versatile, massively talented, and underplayed. Seriously, you could pick any work from his Bandcamp and be treated to a completely new idea that doubles as a masterclass in DIY music. Until today’s release, my favorite work of Emperor X was his EP on transportation infrastructure improvements, although his 10,000-Year Earworm to Discourage Settlement Near Nuclear Waste Repositories was a strong runner-up. If we all lived our lives half as intentionally as this guy does, we very seriously might solve our problems.

In addition to being a long-time musician in the indie-punk-emo-DIY scene, Matheney is an accomplished producer and oversees a jazz club in Berlin. Earlier this year, he produced Brian Sella’s debut solo album (reviewed right here by yours truly), and both bands hit a five-date run of shows together in March. The two originally toured together way back in 2013, laying the groundwork for this rekindling over a decade later. In one final tidbit, when Emperor X and Sella announced their respective albums, they dropped their first singles on the same day. On both LPs, you hear fully actualized artists wielding years of sharpened talent and percolated thought.

Unified Field is devastating, exhilarating, and ultimately hopeful. The majority of the album was written and recorded in Ukraine, spurred by what Emperor X calls an “aesthetic emergency.” In the release announcement, he explains, “I had a strong instinct that the record would come out better, and be more meaningful, if I did it with my friends who also lived their lives under fire.” It’s safe to say that instinct was correct. This album is one of Matheny’s most produced public-facing works and comes at a time when we need clear, strong voices in art and the world.

Before talking about the tracks, we’ve got to talk about the album title. Emperor X says the name “Unified Field” is a loose reference to David Lynch and Transcendental Meditation. It’s important to point out that the album is bookended by songs named “Unified Field” and “Also Unified Field.” In the first, Emperor X brings us into the scope of this work and in the chorus insists “in the unified field / materials collapse / into a unified field / materials collapse.” In the final song, we hear a portion of the opener, but without Emperor X. This last song is the world we leave behind, the echoes of our impact in life. 

Matheney uses “unified” in the sense of being globally connected, having a shared future on this planet, and eventually being reduced to the same raw materials. It took me a lot of listens to internalize why that’s important to the album, but ultimately it boils down to the pointlessness of conflict. Seriously, we are more technologically advanced than we’ve ever been before, more “productive” than at any time in human history, and more entertained than at any point in the past. And still, we fight, we militarize borders, and we underreact as we slip into more extreme climate change. To me, that’s what this album is about—that slip, that apathy, that impending destruction. More than that, it’s about the possibility to change, to rally together, and to encourage one another. All of that AND awesome instrumentation—what a bargain.

Photo by Carly Hoskins

When Lynch evoked the idea of a “unified field” in Twin Peaks, it was used to emphasize two things: one was the Greek idea of the muses—revelatory thoughts brought to individuals seemingly from nowhere and nothing, much like Dale Cooper’s sometimes ridiculous investigative methods. The other is the balance of light and dark. Lynch was told by a “scientist” that these concepts are intrinsically related to quantum fluctuations in a field permeating the universe, which anyone can reach through meditation courses at the low, low introductory price of $1,000. That “scientist” was Dr. Chris Hagelin, who, despite having serious mathematical proficiency and a legitimate work history, believes you can literally connect your mind to this field and influence the world by meditating. What Emperor X is singing about is something different. You can tell because the refrain “In the unified field / materials collapse” uses some language that doesn’t appear in Lynch’s public remarks. 

Right about here, I should mention I’m graduating with my Ph.D. in experimental particle physics this fall. In popular culture, when someone says “The Unified Field,” they’re typically referring to a theory of everything, i.e., a single equation that governs all fundamental particles. That’s what Transcendental Meditation is about: paying some bizarre company to teach you how to connect your mind to that equation. If you can’t tell from my tone, that equation doesn’t exist, and they’re using scientific language to grift. 

The idea of everything coming together is beautiful and has broad artistic license, but it is extremely difficult to test. If you want some more science background, you can check out my blog post here. The part of that artistic license that Emperor X is using is indistinguishability (unification) at high energy. At the end of “Feeling Nothing,” we get the line “hold my hand as we vaporize / feeling nothing.” This preoccupation with destruction and technology is interwoven with religion, responsibility, and citizenship throughout the album. Some examples include: being gifted a religious icon, burning a passport, staring at screens, mistaking radio signals for the voice of god, and on and on.

In the lead single “Praise Jesus! Hail Reagan!” Emperor X uses this fiery energy to call out the zealotry of pseudo-religious churchgoers who unthinkingly rebuke the teachings of their prophet in favor of Reagan’s beliefs. Improvements in technology, such as radio, television, and the internet, have made it easier to spread all kinds of messages, including propaganda. This has led to, among other types of grifters, televangelists running pay-for-salvation models of remote worship. Transcendental Meditation follows this same model, and the main message isn’t for anyone to actually do anything, because, as Emperor X sarcastically sings in an adapted worship song, “my feelings bear the weight of moral sanction / and that all we have to do / is praise Jesus, spread the gospel.”

An important component of Emperor X’s presentation is his sense of humor, found in the mocking guitars of “Ostrich Toss,” the premise of “Pissing with the Flashlight On,” and the browser game accompanying “Superbus.” I personally can’t get further than the WFMU stage, but I keep trying because I love the lo-fi instrumental version of the song that plays in the game. In the actual song, I’m like 90% sure the piano you hear at the end of Superbus is the exact same one used at the end of Well I Mean. Together with “Cybertruck,” these songs transition the album from religion into technology and the human cost of it all.

SCREENSHOT OF SUPERBUS GAMEPLAY

On “A Mouthful of Increasingly-Dangerous Substances,” we get drowned in two ways. First by ever-stronger toxins, and then by rising water levels. None of this should be easy to swallow, yet year after year, we let glaciers melt and sea levels rise. In some ways, climate change would be easier to deal with if it weren’t so gradual. If the water weren’t boiling so slowly, maybe more of us would try to hop out of the pot. 

Emperor X describes tracking this song while vacationing in the Netherlands: “In idle moments, I found myself imagining what creeping sea level rise in a country that has always been half underwater would bring, and I began to believe with both hope and nausea that humans would adapt. There will be chaos and death along the coastlines and in the floodplains, but also something like a new normal in the lucky places that were prepared with bikes, dykes, windmills, and power pylons that could absorb the impact of the rising brine.”  

The hope and nausea that Emperor X describes are evident across the whole album. It’s difficult to see how bad climate change has already gotten and to know how much worse it will get if nothing changes. But what do you do with this knowledge? Who do you turn to? How do you put this anger into something that makes the world better? The rising lake in this song connects very neatly to the stock market in the following track, because market output is currently directly connected to global warming (thank you, industrial revolution and data centers).

Photo by Akhil Kodamanchili 

“Line Go Up Line Go Down” is a biting, scathing, acid-boring critique of all of us, everyone. Everything in the world could fall apart tomorrow, and half of the American public would still try to go to the office. This track perfectly captures the public apathy at our own destruction, guided by the waxing and waning of the stock market. “To the middle of the Earth,” we will let business leaders destroy the world if it seems to be the will of the market. As a U.S. public, we are too polite. France whips our ass at protesting, and it’s because their government understands that its people hold the power, not corporations. We—you and I personally—need to shout as loud as Emperor X. This is the answer to the question asked in the previous song. We are not powerless, “not me, not her, and not you.”

Following up that political dirge with a palette cleanse, "Ostrich Toss” is my favorite track on the album. Silly as it may seem on first pass, if you pay attention to the dialogue, it’s not really lighthearted at all. The song starts with roommates bickering about climate change and has a really cute mocking guitar in the chorus: “If you’re so mad, what are you gonna do about it?” Among the roommates’ escalating aggressions, one brings an ostrich home, and the other throws it off the roof. A week later, we realize the ostrich is the main character, setting a car on fire and driving the two terrified roommates together. The best lines of the album are “THE THINGS YOU BUILD ARE USELESS / AND THE THINGS YOU BURN ARE GOOD / YOU PUT YOUR FAITH IN CONCRETE / WHEN THE WORLD IS MADE OF WOOD.” The all-caps come from the liner notes, giving the ostrich the voice of an almighty entity as opposed to an animal, because it’s a stand-in for Mother Nature. We talk about global warming as though it will end the world, but really, all it will end is human civilization. The Earth does not care whether you, I, or any society lives to see tomorrow, and one can easily view global warming as the Earth sweating out an infection. In the infinite complexity of the natural world, the ostrich says, “I CHOOSE NOT TO DESTROY YOU / I CAN SEE THAT'S WHAT YOU WANT / AND MY FORGIVENESS WILL ANNOY YOU / SO I FORGIVE YOU / FUCK YOU / FUCK YOU.”

This album makes me feel cataclysm and optimism. Despite this, I don’t hear any alarmism in Unified Field, just an honest artistic reaction to a heating world straining under “market forces.” There is as much global conflict today as there was during World War II. Part of this album is a relief valve for the frustration of waking up to new conflicts, new propaganda, and new lost futures. The other part is hope—the hope that we, as a species, are smart enough to read the past and predict the future. If we keep going like this, destruction is our future, but we have the choice for something else. And it is as simple as a choice. I’m not saying quit your job, abandon your family, or sell everything and find a bunker. I’m saying make a choice to do good in your community. The only control we have is in our communities, so you damn sure better be using it. Emperor X has been leading his own revolution for decades, and this album is an invitation to start yours.

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Braden Allmond is a particle physicist and emo music enthusiast. He anticipates graduating from KSU in December with his Ph.D. in experimental high energy physics. When he isn’t writing his thesis, he’s data-scraping articles and books about emo music, making tables and graphs to interrogate and understand the genre.

Josaleigh Pollett – “Like a River” | Single Review

Audio Antihero

I was a wistful teenager in an era when being a wistful teenager all but required getting really into The Postal Service. During this time, I came to love the band’s story just as much as I did their sound, often fantasizing about the magic I might someday unlock working on music with a far-off collaborator. Then, I gave it a try. It was not magic. It was downloading a new version of Logic. It was receiving Sampler files with no sample. It was looking up how to roll back to an older version of Logic. It was, in short, excruciating. 

If nothing else, the experience left me with a deeper appreciation for artists who are able to excel while collaborating over long distances, which is one reason I’ve been very keen to hear Josaleigh Pollett’s new album, If I Let It Quiet. The record finds the Salt Lake City-based Pollett working with collaborator Jordan Watko under unfamiliar conditions, the pair now separated by a sea following Watko’s relocation to Japan. Though I doubt adapting to this situation came without growing pains, there aren’t any to be found on their newest single, “Like a River.” Pollett and Watko are perfectly in sync, with spaced-out synth percussion and swirling samples wrapping themselves around acoustic guitar and raw vocals in a sublime combination.

Because Pollett’s voice creates such a strong, engaging focal point, there’s plenty of room for the rest of the production to shift and play around without the song becoming disjointed. There are moments where the mostly clean lead vocal almost glitches to become part of the electric peripherals, but you always get snapped back out of the cyclone. The start of the fourth verse is particularly great, where one of the track’s more expansive soundscapes falls away to give us a pulsing bass rumble as Pollett sings the album’s title lyric, “If I let it quiet / Who am I if not my thinking?” It’s a mesmerizing moment, like having all the stage lights pulled save for one spotlight set on a masterfully delivered soliloquy.

These sectional shifts are perfectly timed and bring with them a sense of drama and gravity. All of it is impressive in its own right, but knowing that Pollett and Watkins were able to get on a wavelength like this while half the world away from each other is really incredible and only increases my anticipation to hear the rest of the record, due out this time next month.

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

Piebald – Tales for the Rages | Album Review

Iodine Recordings

Like most music fans, I’m equal parts fascinated and excited when a band I love reunites. The mind races imagining all the interactions and decisions that brought these individuals back to one another; you can’t help but wonder what the impetus was for this kind of reformation. Of course, the cynical answer is “money,” but the romantic side of me likes to imagine there’s something more profound at work; a sort of cosmic tether that keeps these people coming back to each other and creating art together. When it comes to Piebald, a punk band from Massachusetts who only ever, at most, enjoyed a modest hit on MTV and college radio in the early days of the aughts, you have to take money out of the equation. I say this with a heart full of love, but Piebald are not putting out their first album in nineteen years because it’s a goldmine. 

Luckily, Piebald have always been a band who tell it like it is; their decision to make “Still On The Couch” both the album’s lead single and opening track tells you everything you need to know right outta the gate. As the title suggests, things start from a place of complacency – fused to the refuge of the sofa either out of fear or an over-abundance of comfort. Given that this album was recorded, as the press material puts it, “slowly, honestly, and stubbornly over six years” from 2019 to 2025, it’s entirely possible that this is also meant to capture some of the home-stuck energy of the early pandemic years when we had nothing to do but be on the couch. Regardless of the exact intention, we’ve all felt that pull to remain unchallenged and unimpeded in the comfort of our safe space, and I think any healthy person knows how important it is to break out of that. 

“Still On The Couch” is a sub-two-minute rocker that expertly sets the stakes of the record, justifies its existence, and acts as an official re-introduction to Piebald’s brand of hyper-articulate punk rock. The group takes this lethargy we’re all prone to and convert it into an optimistic burst of energy that makes you want to fling your front door open and get out into the world. They accomplish this primarily through the track’s boppy road-ready riff, but it ends up feeling like an expert-level jujutsu move the way these four flip defeatist self-sabotage into something actionable and fun. When you put those two possible paths next to each other, the choice couldn’t be more clear. 

After forming in the mid ‘90s, Piebald released five awesome albums, a fuckton of splits and EPs, then put the band to rest via a Myspace bulletin if that helps you place us in time at all. Outside of some recent anniversary reissues and a jokey Christmas 7”, the band hadn’t put out anything official since 2007’s Accidental Gentlemen. Long intermission short, the band reunited in 2016 for a bunch of tours, and it sounds like they’ve been stockpiling scraps of ideas since then, slowly building these tracks up and nurturing them until they took the form of Tales for the Rages. 

The record’s second song and second single, “This Thing Is Old,” speaks to this gap most explicitly, addressing the elephant in the room: we’re all getting up there. As a band comprised mostly of 40-something-year-old dudes, Piebald’s primary audience isn’t too much younger. I personally got into Piebald at the tail-end of high school when Rise Records bound together all of the group’s early work and demos into a three-volume collection, and even I have grey in my beard at this point! I guess what I’m saying is that anyone still listening to (or making) this type of music at this age is here for one reason: because they fucking love it. 

While it might be tempting to write a song like “This Thing Is Old” and take a “woe is me, my body is falling apart” approach, lead singer Travis Shettel chooses to mark the passage of time in a more positive way through the books, records, shirts, and other meaningful art he’s exchanged with friends over the years. Rather than explicitly name these things in a cheap play for nostalgia, the lyrics keep things general, opting instead to point to the decades of friendship and connection that they represent. This is, obviously, immensely relatable to any punk past 30 whose shelves are lined with friends' CDs and closets are packed with band shirts that fit a little too tight. It’s a smart way to address the nearly two decades that have passed since we’ve last heard from Piebald, and it helps sketch out the life that has unfolded between records. 

The song’s second verse also bears the album’s title and, over the course of a few lines, transforms what could just be a blanket invitation to let loose and reminisce into a genuine mission statement that offers a justification for why Piebald and why now. In a syrupy-sweet voice, Shettel sings, “Telling stories as if they were alive / Worn grooves and pages / Epic tales for the rages.” Using this way in, Piebald continue to set the stakes and invite the listener to rise to the occasion with them. “The hardest person responds to the softest voice / We have obligations to future generations / We weren't made for these times / These times weren't made for us.” There’s your reunion rationale right there. 

Beyond contextualizing the record’s title, this song also features an emphatic guitar solo, a punchy chorus, and a puppet-centric music video. Everything consistently rocks, and as the band invites the listener to “feel the wind inside the heart,” it feels downright cynical to deny them that request. This thing may be old, but that doesn’t mean it’s decrepit, at least not yet. 

After two songs about the traps of lethargy, consumerism, and nostalgia, “Used to Good Advantage” offers the most blunt assessment of where we find ourselves in 2026. Here we join the band as they try to get to the bottom of what turns our neighbors from normal, empathetic humans into short-haired businessmen who only have slimy verbal gymnastics to offer. The thrust of the song finds Piebald articulating what it feels like to find out you’re the bad guy, or at least trapped as part of an evil machine that you never even signed up for. They turn this into a clear call to action with a set of the album’s most overt and uplifting lyrics:

If rules can be destroyed by truth
Then they should be
All power to the student, the worker, and those who aren’t free

This becomes a recurring theme throughout Tales for the Rages as the group talk openly and honestly about the plight of the working class. This isn’t necessarily new for Piebald (after all, their biggest song is a hooky plea for worker solidarity) but it feels more pointed than ever on Tales for the Rages. They may be musicians, but the members of Piebald are in this with the rest of us. They see the exceptionalism that leads to nationalism. They know what it’s like to be treading water financially, to live in a country where our taxes are used to murder, to be wary of cops and landlords and billionaires. The press material puts it beautifully: “They’re not giving a lecture, just trying to make sense of everything like everyone else, but with guitars.”

I’ve been talking a lot about the lyrics because, just like every other Piebald record, they’re presented front and center, but Instrumentally, this record sounds incredibly tight. Obviously, there are the aforementioned high-flying guitar theatrics from Shettel and Aaron Stuart, but there’s also Andrew Bonner and Lucian Garro, who sound incredible holding down the rhythm section. Together, their bass and drums give each song a natural center of gravity that the group can easily return to, but they also have lots of fun little breakdowns and flourishes they get to throw in the mix. It’s refreshing to hear such a shaggy combination of indie and emo rock. Each song feels distinct, with lots of little moments that will grab you, whether it’s a specific lyric or a fist-pump-worthy riff – which is exactly what every other Piebald record has felt like. It all comes across a bit Weezer-esque and at times, maybe a smidge of Saves The Day, but also feels like the clear older brother of groups like Michael Cera Palin. This is all catnip to a dude like me, and meant to be a compliment as much as a comparison. 

Even as Piebald hack their way through the world of abject poverty that capitalism breeds, they still manage to navigate these ideas in funny ways, whether it’s lines like “My retirement plan is dying in the class war” or actively undercutting the very thing they’re participating in. While music can sometimes feel like a mere frivolity in the face of our potentially dismal situation, it’s also a source of delight, catharsis, uplift, and community. Plus, it’s only a dismal situation if you resign it to that. The cover is accurate: these are bright and multicolored reflections culled from a world that tries its absolute damndest to sap the light and joy out of everything. It’s nice to see an album that believes in change, improvement, and betterment. After all, what’s the defeatism and cynicism going to get us besides defeated and cynical? 

Before you even reach the midpoint of the album, it becomes clear that Piebald got back together because they actually have something to say. While some of the lyrics can come across a little heavy-handed, it’s worth being explicit about where you stand, lest you be misconstrued as an impartial fence-sitter. It’s also so much more interesting than being non-descript. This all struck me in a similar way to the Algernon Cadwallader album from last year, in that both records come from super-celebrated decade-old scene staples who broke up but eventually came back, matured, hardened, and refined. In both cases, the bands managed to remain true to their original sound while also becoming more explicit and vocal about where they stand. Piebald have always been political and outspoken; it makes sense that they’d be even more so in 2026. 

In true Piebald-ain fashion, they also make these points in the funniest ways, with just enough pop culture references sprinkled throughout. In one track, they evoke LMFAO by singing with utter remorse, “Party rock just makes no sense right now…” One song later, they’re directly quoting Tupac, and a few tracks after that they’re name-dropping Voltaire. It takes all kinds.

Tales for the Rages is an album lovingly packed with meaning, motivation, and memories that Piebald not only proudly packages up and puts on display, but directly involves the listener in. There are so many quotable lyrics, bits of genuinely good advice, and catchy-fun choruses scattered throughout this record. The final kick in the pants comes at the end in the form of a poignant 40-second song that feels so beautifully Piebald and is too good to spoil by quoting here. 

As many music fans have learned time and time again, just because your favorite band is reuniting doesn’t mean it’s going to be good. In the case of Piebald, some combination of time away, years of creative percolation, and good old-fashioned friendship seems to have resulted in the perfect conditions for another great record. While some artists participate in the rat race of dropping an album every year or two so they can tour, Piebald appear to recognize the sanctity of the creative process and are opting to be as thoughtful as possible. 

I look at this band and see an inspiring model for how to move forward. I’m only in my early thirties (turning 33 next week, thank you very much!) and so many weird, fucked up things have already started happening to my body. I’m scared to think of how they could compound with time, and I’m doing everything I can to combat that decay. Some of that is physical, but over the last few years I have also come to realize how much of it is mental, too. It’s so important to have friends and riffs and actual perspectives about things going on in the world. It’s important to voice those things so people know you’re standing with them. After all, isn’t that why so many of us started going to shows or getting involved in our local scenes? To be a part of something bigger and find other people that feel like “our kind of people”? Tales for the Rages proves that journey is a lifelong process, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Widemouth – No Gasoline | Album Review

Urban Scandal Records

I have been meaning to buy a chair for my patio for months. I moved here last summer, and almost a year has gone by with nothing to sit on while I stare at the stars besides the steps to my neighbor’s apartment or the hood of my car. I like the idea of having a patio chair, though. Somewhere I can exist while listening to slow, syrupy music on my speaker at a reasonable volume. Somewhere I can bask in the hotter days while mosquitoes buzz around my ears. Somewhere I can watch the trees rustle at night. Maybe I’ll even get a table too. But after all this thinking about my own patio, I never thought about getting a second chair. That is, until I listened to No Gasoline by Widemouth.

For several years, Mak Carnahan and Jamie Eder have been toiling away in Chicago, writing song after song about growing up, growing into yourself, and how friendships bend and curve with all this growth. While they released Well, a twangy EP about a similar subject in 2024, No Gasoline is their debut album, with these same concepts paradoxically tightened up and everflowing. 

This album will undoubtedly receive comparisons to the works of the current steel indie stars. These comparisons to people like Phoebe Bridgers, Katie Crutchfield, or Karly Hartzman won’t necessarily be wrong, but Widemouth makes the sound their own. The band points themselves away from Wednesday’s fuzz or Waxahatchee’s clarity, instead opting to build a minimal sound within the expansive space that alt-country provides. With the help of producers Jack Henry and Sam Genualdi, all attention is on Carnahan’s and Eder’s harmonies as they ruminate on the quietest moments of friendship.

PHOTO BY Bella Peterson

No Gasoline begins with familiarity and a lot of names: Meme’s paintings, Frances smoking, Christian gone, Rachel, your family, you, me, and her. As the listener, it is up to you to conjure images of these people while you take in the opener, “I Wish You Passed On a Little Anger.” The brushstrokes Meme painted, the steps that Frances is smoking on, whatever Rachel said to irritate us, and the emptiness that Christian left behind. By being so personal so immediately, Widemouth trusts you with their private reflections. As Lily Mitchell’s drums build, the observations turn more personal, something you could only bear to whisper: “I know you hate her / I know you dream about being choked out on the mattress / I wish you passed on a little anger / I just feel sorry / you’re getting older.” Both searingly specific and purposefully vague, the music swells as the song ends, leaving you with your hands outstretched as you desperately try to learn more about these people too.

As the pensive “Pinecone” shifts to “Hotel Pool,” the restraint Widemouth shows through the album briefly unwinds, unearthing the careful fragility that this project balances on. Part of weaving together moments of friendship is that it requires equal reflection on yourself. Amongst whispered voices and steadfast strumming, Carnahan’s voice wavers as she sings “no open tongue,” and again when she sees “no future, no intent.” The music matches these brief moments, the instruments breaking away from the haunted sound of the melodies to collide with each other while Carnahan and Eder sing, “blame your hands blame yourself / what’s the matter I can’t tell.” The song trips over itself, as one does when trying to outpace yourself, outpace your past, in an attempt to find a truer version of you.

Of all the songs in the album that teeter on the edge of an unstoppable misery, “You & Your Girlfriend,” spirals directly in. Not every memory of your friends is a good one, something Carnahan roils over as she sings “I think you said you loved me, but I really don’t know at all / you just sat up back to the wall, and you cried / hands on your temples / that’s what I recall.” It’s a plain memory, one so bleak that it’s shrouded in potential mismemory, but Carnahan knows she’s remembering this right. Eder takes over on the next verse, “you told us your girlfriend was not a good person / with fear in your eyes like a dog on the fourth / none of us knew what to say / drove into town in the morning for groceries.” These lyrics are stark, barren in their simplicity. Carnahan and Eder conjure an immediate closeness between these characters, but one so close that the fear of conflict hurts more than helps. It’s a song about whispered confessions left to linger heavily and uncomfortably in a dark but loving air. 

After Eder’s voice joins Carnahan’s to ask, “Remember when you lost it?” in “The Water,” the titular song on No Gasoline arrives, carrying the cry of Sam Genualdi’s steel guitar. “No Gasoline.” A track that immediately envelopes the listener in a dimly lit atmosphere. The tension of the album–the friction caused by years of memories, secrets, and promises—had to break somewhere, and it turns out that's right here, only a few songs away from the end of the LP. Carnahan’s voice builds and builds as she croons “no gasoline / fourteen degrees” before demanding a promise and an apology from someone she loves. Despite the agonizing demand, she and Eder end on a hopeful note: “my last lonely winter / from what I can tell.”

After “Cattle,” the album ends on an instrumental reprise of “Pinecone” accompanied by the clatter and chatter of O’Hare’s bustling hallways as people desperately try to make their connections. A fitting button for an album quilted together by names and places and reflections on the unsaid complexities of building relationships with one another. 

Summer is basically here with warm nights and loving friends. I need to buy two patio chairs.

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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.