OK Cool – Chit Chat | Album Review

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Take A Hike Records

I’m the kind of music fan that does a lot of wishcasting, but I feel like I rarely see my wishes come true. For example, every year I claim that we’re going to get new music from Paul Westerberg, and every year I’m wrong. Whenever there’s a mystery slot at a festival, I say that it’s going to be a Jets to Brazil reunion, and every time it’s somebody else. Things just don’t ever pan out how I hope. Well, that is until now. I’m happy to report that I finally got one. I finally got my wish.

Before we go on, I need to give you a little backstory. In 2021, I started going to local emo shows here in Chicago, and I came across this band, OK Cool. Off the bat, I really liked them, a fondness largely indebted to their track “Five Finger Exploding Heart Technique,” which stuck with me more than any other song I’d come across in my early days of exploring the scene. In the years since, OK Cool have put out a handful of singles and EPs, and though I’ve enjoyed all of these releases, one thing I will say is that the band haven’t really strayed too far from their established brand of wobbly off-kilter emo. On the one hand, I get it—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it—but on the other hand, something in the band’s recent live shows has had me wondering if they might excel with a slightly different approach. 

This thought came to me after seeing the band’s cover of “Say It Ain’t So,” which has become a setlist staple as of late. While the song’s intro and verses don’t actually stray too far from their usual lane, the chorus, more forceful and power chord driven, showed me a side of OK Cool I hadn’t previously realized I wanted to see. It got me wondering, what if OK Cool made music that sounded more like that? A little more forward momentum, a little more oomph? It became something that I craved. And now, with their debut record Chit Chat, we have it. It’s exactly the record I’d been hoping for, and it’s a total level up. 

Perhaps the best example of what I’m talking about is the album’s lead single, the tough to accurately type “Waawooweewaa.” It’s a song that wastes no time, shooting forward from the jump with more energy and drive than we’re used to seeing from the band. There’s a ton of confidence in their approach, and the song rocks as a result. One thing I particularly like about this big start is that it allows for contrast down the line. There’s a moment about halfway through the track where things fall away, leaving us with a spacier section that’s more typical of OK Cool’s sound; though we’ve heard the band like this many times before, it feels fresher here, the contrast putting things into a new context. As things pick up again and Bridget Stiebris sings “I wish I could say fuck it, and walk out into the lake,” we get some real edge in the vocals, further elevating things in a way that’s super satisfying. 

Though its pace is less frenetic, “Jeans (I Get It Now)” is another song where Chit Chat’s tight, forward-moving songwriting really comes through. What particularly sticks out to me is the Bully-esque backing vocal accents that punctuate the line “I feel the same” whenever it comes around, an addition that’s small on paper but does a lot for the song. Also of note is the midpoint guitar interplay, which is maybe my favorite instrumental section on the whole record.

While “Waawooweewaa” and “Jeans (I Get It Now)” showed me a side OK Cool I’d been hoping to see, mid-record track “Loop” stood out with an approach that took me totally by surprise. Built on a base of piano, soft toms, and acoustic guitar, “Loop” finds the band painting from a totally new sonic palette. The understated approach to instrumentation on the track leaves room for a super compelling vocal melody, and I was left more impressed than ever by Stiebris’ voice; I would love to hear more stuff like this from the band in the future.     

All of these effective touches are illustrative of OK Cool’s maturity; though I don’t think there’s ultimately a right or wrong way to approach the timing of one’s first record, Chit Chat shows the benefit that comes from a band living with themselves for a while before making the jump to an LP. This isn’t a band that finally has enough songs to meet some sort of arbitrary length requirement; this is a band that knows both what they want to do and how to execute it, and the whole record feels complete as a result. 

Beyond this track-by-track fidelity, Chit Chat benefits as a whole from some great choices in sequencing. The last two songs, “Fading Out Forever” and “Last,” work particularly well in conjunction, helping to close the record out strong. In some ways, “Fading Out Forever” actually reminds me of “Say It Ain’t So” — in particular, the contrasting character of verse and chorus — and it features my favorite OK Cool hook to date. In the last twenty seconds or so, the song winds down in a way that’s completely unexpected, acting as a perfect off-ramp to the closer. The way that the opening guitar and vocal pairing of “Last” hits post-“Fading Out Forever” is just perfect, and the song is 100% made stronger by its placement. 

As the final note of “Last” rang out and I reflected on Chit Chat, I immediately wanted to go back in and listen to it again. Like I said before, it’s a total level up; more focused and more realized. It’s exactly the record that I had hoped OK Cool would make. As a listener, you need to accept that artists won’t always evolve the way that you want them to; you can’t lose sleep over every change in direction that doesn’t fit your taste. Ultimately, how a band progresses is not about the listener; it’s about the band. With this said, sometimes the stars align and a band grows exactly the way you, as a fan, had hoped they would, and when that happens, you just have to bask in it. There’s nothing better. That’s what's happening here with me and Chit Chat, and it’s a record I’m so happy we have.  

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.

Pacing – PL*NET F*TNESS | Album Review

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Asian Man Records

In her essay “The Flesh, It Makes You Crazy,” critic and philosopher Becca Rothfeld compares the body horror in David Cronenberg films to falling in love with her husband, writing that “the apartness of this person and this person alone is transmuted into injury. Desire is one cataclysm that renders us alien in our bodies.” Rothfeld is specifically referring to her sexual desire for her husband, but that desire to merge extends beyond the realm of fleshly pleasures. Every time I have fallen in love with someone, romantically or platonically, I’ve wanted to know everything – to be brought into the folds of my beloved's mind. On her second official LP, PL*NET F*TNESS, San Jose anti-folk artist Pacing has collected a series of songs about straining against the boundaries of bureaucracy, iPad screens, and death in search of the kind of connection that feels like a merging of spirits and bodies. 

Pacing is the project of Katie McTigue, who, after a series of singles and a mixtape, released her debut album in 2023, the impeccably titled real poetry is always about plants and birds and trees and the animals and milk and honey breathing in the pink but real life is behind a screen. real poetry is an album full of songs about an anxious mind trying to survive. The gorgeous “The Attic / Ghostbusters” sees her fantasizing about turning into a ghost so she can’t take up any space. When she does try to take up space on “Live / Laugh / Love,” she demonstrates the feeble bravado of anxious artistic folks crumbling with the perfect line “If you don’t want to be my friend / I don’t blame you that’s probably smart / but if you don’t like this song / why don’t you just rip out my heart.” 

PL*NET F*TNESS continues those anxious threads with its lead single and title track, where we find McTigue cleaning up her father’s affairs after he’s passed, specifically struggling with turning his phone back on “‘cause I don’t really wanna talk to anyone who knows you better than I do.” McTigue sings with such haunted desire from the perspective of company policy that requires in-person membership cancellation, but it also sounds like her struggle to let go. “Pl*net F*tness,” the song, is the perfect distillation of what makes Pacing such a compelling project; as McTigue mixes bright, upbeat instrumentals with her expressive voice, singing laments over her inability to call her doctor or face the clerk at the gym. 

“Pl*net F*tness” is just one example on this record that demonstrates why McTigue is one of our best chroniclers of modern disconnection. That schism is obvious when she sings “Sometimes the best part of my day is being in the car” on the jangly new wave “Nothing! (I wanna do).” Backed by fellow San Jose rockers Star 99 on “Love Island,” McTigue derides the banality of interpersonal office relationships, singing, “everyone is talking past each other / and not saying anything,” and that throughout the day, “I never talk to anybody who I wanna talk to.” It is all the sucky shit we have to deal with every day that makes it worthwhile when you do get to talk to your best friend and slip into that easy flow about your favorite shows or sex dreams and insecurities, as highlighted on “Things we bought tickets for.” When my best friend was in New York for work and we got to see each other in person for the first time in two years, it was such a relief to slip back into that patter we had established when we met in freshman year of high school because it meant we still loved each other despite the distance. 

How McTigue incisively illuminates interpersonal innate understanding through minute interactions is one of her greatest strengths. Despite hearing the Jeff Rosenstock-esque “parking ticket song” already on this years songs mini album, the line about McTigue and her husband laughing together after she freezes up over a forgotten parking ticket is one of the most euphoric moments on PL*NET F*TNESS. McTigue paints a picture of the non-judgmental intimacy we all want out of love with this anecdote, an example that love isn’t in the big gestures, but in showing your fleshy underbelly and trusting it will be held gently. The other line that gives me a similar feeling is on the fingerpicked first half of “True Crime / birthday song,” when McTigue sings “I never think about these things / like did I lock the door / when you're there / because I know you did.” The sense of ease and peace these lines evoke is the same as I felt when a friend recently told me that when they’re around me they feel comfortable, confident, and at ease. As an anxious woman, uncomfortable everywhere, it was the best compliment I had ever received because that is how I feel around them.

The other thing about McTigue is that she is a decidedly funny songwriter. Take, for example, “Mastering Positional Chess,” where McTigue sings about a parasocial relationship with a chess YouTuber and her declaration that “I’m very reasonable.” McTigue is full of quippy one-liners from “you say you need space / well I hate space / I think it’s a waste of / tax dollars” on the opener to her proclamation that, “I’m on Strike! / Mentally!” on “Love Island.” It is also inherently amusing to repurpose Mr. Rogers’ lyrics from a song about kids not needing to worry about getting sucked down the drain of their tubs and set them against a disquieting instrumental, interpreting them as about a cult leader. “Never Go Down” could have come across as a silly bit, but it is my favorite track on the record because it is a gorgeous statement of belief in someone (even if they are a cult leader), that I could imagine on mixtapes between young lovers. 

On PL*NET F*TNESS, Pacing presents a vision of intimate relationships as a panacea for societal malaise and personal anxiety. When there is nothing you wanna do, Pacing is here with some suggestions. 

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 @lillianmweber.

Pretty Bitter – Pleaser | Album Review

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Tiny Engines

Washington D.C. is covered in monuments and artifacts — libraries dedicated to preservation, tours through important memorials, documentaries that weave the past together, and constant conversations about what D.C. used to be like. The whole city is a nostalgic town, drenched in continuous reminders of what stood there once upon a time and what histories remain. I propose it’s time for a new monument in D.C. — a dollhouse.

For Pretty Bitter’s new album, vocalist Mel Bleker and bassist Miri Tyler spent the past year decorating a dollhouse by hand. The final structure depicted on the cover is a colorful two-story home where each room looks lived in: the bed isn’t made, the refrigerator door is swung open (running up the dollhouse’s electricity bill and pissing off the doll roommates, I’m sure), and a bong sits abandoned on the living room table. The dollhouse is also full of smaller details: a real Pretty Bitter poster is pinned to the bedroom wall, a second, tinier dollhouse is tucked away in the attic, there’s a wine glass dropped on the kitchen floor, and the album’s title is scrawled on the bathroom wall: Pleaser.

Pleaser is the sophomore album from D.C.’s hometown heroes, Pretty Bitter, a band that I have had the honor of seeing countless times over the years I’ve lived in the city. If there’s one word I would use to describe them, it’s unflinching. There’s a resiliency to their music and a playful stubbornness to their attitude that I have watched them exude in every space they occupy. Their latest release triumphantly carries that confidence as a dreamy pop album that demands to be dissected – a perfect amalgamation of dance rock, synth-driven disco, bubbly ballads, and spunky emo centered around the clarion call of vocalist Mel Bleker.

“The Coroner's Song” opens the album with bleak table setting and tragic lyricism, like Bleker’s lingering “I didn’t die to prove something, I just thought that there was more.” One track later, the lead single “Thrill Eater” is where the lyric’s unexpected, and at times grotesque, imagery starts to antagonize the otherwise upbeat sound of the band. Against the pluck of a banjo and the thick strum of a bass, Bleker asks the haunting question, “What happens to a body when it’s scared?” followed by a sharp “What is your ailment, is it fixable in kind?” their voice slicing through the short syllables of “kind.” In the chorus, Bleker promises, “I can be your thrill eater / Broken bone baby  / With a splinter for a spine.” This lyricism is the gravitational center of the album, an instrument of its own as Bleker’s voice cuts through the sparkly and rhythmic sounds of the band, creating a texture of its own.

“Thrill Eater” is also where the title of the album comes into play. Bleker offers to be “your thrill, your pleaser” but begs this subject to “take as much as you want / as long as it’s not mine.” Pleaser is a really charged word. There are some sexual connotations and some pathetic connotations, but I think the first inclination is to think of a missing first word — people. A People Pleaser. In Bleker’s lyricism however, the songs deal primarily in the aftermath, leaving the pleaser without people and reconciling that loss. Time forces the pleaser to move forward alone.

From there, the album shifts into the ethereal “Outer Heaven Dude Ranch,” where Bleker proclaims “Time isn’t a fighter, but it will get its way / I’m getting older every word I say” over Jason Hayes’ endlessly emphatic cymbal crashes. From there, the group keeps the energy high, moving into the similarly relentless beat of “Tommy Deluxe Goes Hollywood,” which blends D.C. post-hardcore guitar feedback with the return of former bandmate Zack Be’s banjo.

If any line has stuck with me, it’s the unimpressed way Bleker sings “If it’s a joke, I didn’t get it” on mid-album cut “Cardiac.” The performance of these consistently raw lyrics varies throughout the album, while some songs use Bleker’s kind voice to undercut the menacing lyrics; other songs, like “Cardiac” or the following “I Hope You Do,” have a very direct and conversational tone. This makes the heart-thumping declarations all the more salient, like on “I Hope You Do,” where the lyrics lay out, “They will make from our ruins a monument, a reminder to ourselves that worship does not keep any temple from falling apart.”

Evan Weiss and Simon Small produced the album, and their co-production shines through the entire project, but especially in the back half as the band’s trademark synth bubbles and bursts through the violent yet fantastical “Bodies Under The Rose Garden,” and the unsuspectingly tragic 90s alt-rock track “Letter To Tracy In Her Bed.” 

While the band has rearranged a bit since the creation of this album, the lineup has solidified with Kira Campbell joining on guitar and Ekko Astral’s Liam Hughes on keyboard; their live shows remain a must-see performance. This summer, Pretty Bitter played both the inaugural Liberation Weekend and returned to Faux to obsessed crowds. When I hear songs like “Textbook,” where each part is so clear, all I can think of is the perfect harmony that the band works in live, each member in lockstep with a contagious smile.

Photo by Bailey Payne

The album ends on an extended leitmotif, “Outer Heaven,” which calls back to its twin “Outer Heaven Dude Ranch.” However, instead of using the refrain “Time isn’t a lover in the way it likes to play / I’m getting older every due I pay” like the initial song, “Outer Heaven” finishes the album on “Time isn’t a bandage / If you send it away / I will not abandon myself today.” This final song feels like stepping out of your own darkness and stretching into the sun. 

I’ve spent a lot of time deciding what this album, something so dense and bright, is about and what it means. I’ve thought about the dollhouse on the cover, something crafted with love, care, and time. I thought about Bleker’s exposed lyrics tied to the band’s dancing beat. I thought about how fuck-you-fun their shows are. And this has brought me to deciding that Pretty Bitter wants you to make that unbreakable promise with them: I will not abandon myself today.

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

Greet Death – Die In Love | Album Review

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Deathwish Inc.

As an artist, there are seemingly two paths you can go down after your first couple of records: either you shake things up and go in a new direction, or you become more of who you are. When you try something new, you take the risk of falling flat on your face after taking too big of a swing, but you also might connect and break through to an entirely new audience. When you refine yourself, you hazard turning your work into a trite carbon copy of itself, but you also might succeed in adding layers of nuance to your art. Flint, Michigan’s Greet Death opts for the latter on their third album, Die In Love, tinkering with their established gloomgaze sound by folding in new elements and enhancing what was already there.

On their debut, Dixieland, co-lead singers and songwriters Logan Gaval and Harper Boyhtari were making loud and lean songs that alternated between hard-charging alternative rock and dour slowcore. 2019’s masterwork New Hell saw the addition of Jim Versluis on drums and was a focused improvement on Dixieland as the songs were longer, heavier, and most importantly, shreddier. New Low, the rare EP that’s vital to a band’s discography, contains elements that range from Neil Young-esque country (harmonica included!) to speedy, sometimes radio-friendly shoegaze. 

But it’s not just in their sound that Greet Death has changed, in the time since New Hell, they’ve grown from a three-piece to a gang of five adding Jackie Kalmink, who serves a dual roles as bassist and producer, as well as Eric Beck on guitar, resulting in a richer sound and fuller approach to their music. It’s also important to mention that, in the time since their last release, Harper Boyhtari came out as trans, making it impossible not to recognize how both she and the band are growing more comfortable in their skin. And now, Die In Love finds the band deepening their craft, resulting in their most balanced effort and an album that displays all of their talents in equal measure. 

Right out of the gates, Greet Death send a message with the title track “Die In Love,” a fantastic blend of shoegaze sirens and indie pop which finds Logan Gaval stating the album’s intent loud and clear, “Find someone, die in love.” In the past, labeling this band as “misanthropic” would not have been much of a stretch, given songs like “I Hate Everything” and “You’re Gonna Hate What You’ve Done,” but with this album, Gaval and Boyhtari are now exploring the bliss of love. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of their trademark misery, but their new stance on life is “we’re all gonna die, might as well love someone before I do.” Boyhtari closes the album with a similar sentiment on the tender acoustic ballad “Love Me When You Leave.” Like many of Boyhtari’s best songs, the track is built around vivid characters; people grappling with the uncertainty of life, what they wish to make of it, and whether or not any of this is really worth it. Ultimately, the song’s conclusion is a simple but bold request as she sings, “Leave a sign for me / love me when you leave.” Regardless of how this all shakes out, keep me in your heart and cherish the memories we share.

Greet Death has always peddled in life’s ugliness, but on Die In Love, they're highlighting the fact that for life to be ugly, it must also be beautiful. On the sexually charged simp anthem, aptly titled “Red Rocket,” Gaval brings new meaning to wanting to be someone’s dog by capturing the feeling of being so horny that you might die, listing the macabre desires of climaxing. If telling someone “I could bring your fork to socket” isn’t romantic, then I don’t know what is. 

Boyhtari’s richly detailed “Country Girl” sidesteps the sentimentality of nostalgia in favor of the melancholy present in the past. Throughout the song, she combs through memories, picking out images of death like burnt churches alongside the comforts of seeing horror movies in the theater. Then, there’s the lead single, “Same But Different Now,” a five-minute ripper where the group displays some of their pummeling material to date. The track crescendos to an incendiary mix of charging riffs as Gaval shrieks, “We’re different now.” It’s a fascinating moment in the band’s discography because it holds the glowering moods present in much of their work, but they’re also pushing their sound into the red, culminating in something that resembles the more aggro side of Foo Fighters’ rawest songs.

Even though Boyhtari and Gaval trade vocals between songs, it is clear that Greet Death is a cohesive unit. When their two voices entwine on the final minutes of the record, there’s a beautiful sense of balance and completion. You realize that, ever since their first release almost a decade ago, even after all the sonic pivots and lineup shifts, Greet Death has always been these two people coming together to create something beautiful and crushing and honest. As the band has expanded physically and sonically, their sense of self has only become more realized. On each passing release, the band grows with intentionality, and on Die In Love, they have achieved their purest form yet by being true to who they are.

Connor is an English professor in the Bay Area, where he lives with his partner and their cat and dog, Toni and Hachi. When he isn’t listening to music or writing about killer riffs, Connor is reading fiction and obsessing over sports.

Smut – Tomorrow Comes Crashing | Album Review

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Bayonet Records

Look, Smut kick ass, plain and simple. Tomorrow Comes Crashing is the band’s third studio album, which puts the Chicago-based quintet back into the muck, returning to the sludgy sound of their debut. It’s a type of album where, when I hear the songs, I get a feeling that the band knows exactly who they are at this point and are firing on all cylinders toward that actualization. The group recaptures some of their original DIY aesthetics while also incorporating new tricks they’ve learned along the way.

Smut’s previous record, How the Light Felt, sifted through the intricacies of 1990s dream pop and alt-rock, with more of the songs erring on the dreamy side of things. They smoothed out the rough edges found on their debut for an enjoyable second entry in their catalog–it was as if The Sundays had a lost album that was discovered in an abandoned storage unit and finally made its way onto streaming services.

Tomorrow Comes Crashing has similar elements to their previous records but now includes monstrous eruptions of distorted rock that bring the band to an apex of their sound. Vocalist Tay Roebuck, guitarists Andie Min and Sam Ruschman, bassist John Steiner, and drummer Aidan O’Connor tap into the sonic influences of their predecessors to create 34 minutes of pure rock ecstasy. The first step to achieving this sound was to enlist Aron Kobayashi Ritch as the production assistant, who turned the volume up to max power, giving the songs enough electricity to make Ben Franklin blush. Ritch has been on a hot streak of his own this year, with credits on the recent albums from Momma, Bedridden, and Been Stellar.

The single, “Syd Sweeney,” is something I could easily imagine on a 90s episode of Beavis and Butthead with them shaking and gyrating on their couch while watching the music video in between calling each other “fart knockers.” The song has all the ingredients of a certified banger, from the fuzzed-out 90s guitar riffs to the sludgy thrash metal outro, accompanied by some expert wailing from Roebuck. Not only can you throw your neck out headbanging to the track, but dig into the lyrics, and you’ll find a message about the objectification and stereotypes of women in art. A-list actress Sydney Sweeney is the namesake evoked as the shining example of being uber-talented in her own right yet still viewed solely as a sex object by some. For me, the sign of a talented band is when you can combine engaging music with lyrics that convey a distinct message that holds meaning for the artists.

What stands out to me throughout Tomorrow Comes Crashing is the voice of Tay Roebuck, who has an incredible range, accompanied by an unpredictable Tasmanian Devil-like energy. Her versatility is evident across the album; you can hear someone go through all the emotions, from a yell to a cry to a plethora of blood-curdling screams. On the 90s-inspired ballad with an edge, “Dead Air,” Roebuck’s voice rides the wave of crisp basslines with such effortless ease. A few tracks earlier, on the explosive, twisting metal riff opener “Godhead,” she belts a horror movie-like yowl that offers a thrilling, speaker-rattling moment. 

There’s a lot of fun to be had on the in-between songs, “Burn Like Violet” has guitar riffs you would hear in an 80s action movie scene. When I hit play on that song, I can just imagine a shredded Patrick Swayze in a bar fight throwing a jabroni onto a table, sending them through a bevy of glass mugs. “Spit” is a rough and rowdy song laced with chunky metal riffs and the perfect amount of fuzz. Each track also hosts an intoxicatingly catchy chorus that makes me just want to keep hitting repeat nonstop.

“Ghosts (Cataclysm, Cover Me)” is the band tapping back into their dream pop sound, which, by the evidence of their second record, they are entirely at ease revisiting that brimming well of inspiration. The song has a moody, Gothic feel, accompanied by hauntingly executed echoes of Roebuck, making this a staple track that should be on everyone’s Halloween playlist this fall.

The realization of the trials and tribulations a band encounters while trying to live out their dreams is the focus of “Touch & Go.” The mid-album cut shows the things people don’t see beyond the shows, like flooded basements ruining your gear or inhaling burnt coffee in Anytown, USA, and having to manage your van breaking down while trying to make it to the next gig. The will it takes to persevere in your aspirations of becoming a full-time musician is harder than ever these days. Smut are well on the way to achieving their dreams by relentlessly evolving their sound to newer heights with each album cycle. The record itself is pure, unadulterated fun, but what separates this group from the pack are the detailed lyrical messages behind the kick-assery. While Tomorrow Comes Crashing feels expertly timed as a summer release with red-hot, sizzling guitar riffs and thunderous choruses, that depth beneath the surface is liable to keep drawing listeners back, rewarding them for many seasons to come.

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.