The Faux 8 Diaries

Have you ever seen that video of a guy dancing alone at a music festival? It’s broad daylight in a wide-open field. Some people sit scattered around on blankets, but there he stands, dancing all alone, waving his arms like a wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man, grooving out in the truest sense of the word. Eventually, another guy wanders over and starts busting out his funkiest moves, and all of a sudden, this shirtless dude who was standing off by himself is now dancing with someone. Then another person joins in, and three is a crowd. Shortly after that, another couple of people come up, then a group of three. Soon, the mass is growing too fast to count. By the end of the video, people are running towards the crowd, eager to join the actively expanding dance floor. That’s what Fauxchella feels like.

For the uninitiated, Faux (fka Fauxchella) is a DIY/emo/punk music festival in Bowling Green, Ohio, organized by the now-defunct house venue The Summit Shack. While the first two incarnations were hosted at The Shack, all of the following Fauxchellas (plus a few seasonal offshoots) have taken place at Howard’s Club H, a 200-cap dive bar with two stages, $3 PBRs, and $2 shots. Hell yeah. Previous iterations of the fest have included the likes of Origami Angel, Ben Quad, saturdays at your place, Michael Cera Palin, and so many goddamn more. I’m not being hyperbolic at all when I say that it’s basically heaven on earth if you like fast music and guitar tapping. 

If you’re interested in learning more about the history of Fauxchella and The Summit Shack, a couple of years ago, I conducted a long-form interview with Conor Alan, which serves as a retrospective of the festival in all its iterations. There’s also a big recap I did on Fauxchella VI, complete with lots of video footage of different sets.

This June, I made the 12-hour drive up to Bowling Green for Faux 8, because this was one I could not miss. First and foremost, this was set to be the last Fauxchella at Howard’s, given that the fest has long outgrown the confines of the dive bar’s charming sticker-covered walls. Musically, I was excited to catch sets from old faves like Equipment, Summerbruise, and Kerosene Heights. There were also many bands on this year’s lineup I was ecstatic to catch for the first time, like Waving, 95COROLLA, Fend, red sun, and Keep for Cheap. On top of all this, the lineup for day two felt like a miniature sequel to Liberation Weekend, featuring the likes of Pretty Bitter, Ekko Astral, and Home Is Where

Home Is Where

Since I just published a big write-up on Liberation Weekend, I wanted to do something different for Faux and not just go through the lineup band by band. Swim was also tabling the event, slinging shirts, totes, lighters, and cool little zines, so I knew I’d be too busy to realistically catch every set. Instead, I brought my trusty digi cam and tried my best to snap pics of every set and merch spread, plus some cool portraits of band members. Esteemed members of the Swim Team, Josh Ejnes and Ben Parker, were also on-site, so you’ll find their thoughts on each day below, plus some other surprises. 

Thanks to Conor, Ellie, Jake, Mike, Sergei, Trey, Nick, Jacob, and all the people who make it possible to put an event like this together. It truly takes a village, and it’s been an absolute blessing to join in and be a part of it. Faux forever. 


Faux[DACTED]

Before we get any further into this article, we should address the name of the festival. While the previous seven iterations of the fest were named “Fauxchella,” this year’s iteration was unceremoniously re-titled “FAUX 8.” That’s because, back in April, The Summit Shack received a cease and desist from AEG, the second-largest ticketing company in the world, and, notably, the purveyors of the Coachella music festival. Despite the fact that Coachella is the name of a place, despite the fact that the fest is named after a joke from Workaholics, and despite the fact that “Fauxchella” is a 200-person music festival happening halfway across the country at a college town dive bar in Ohio, AEG still felt the need to sic the lawyers on ‘em. 

The Crowd for FinalBossFight!

In the end, Faux 8 played out exactly like any other Fauxchella would, and nothing sizable changed aside from a knowing gap in the posters that were amended to read “FAUX       8” with a big blank spot. A good handful of the bands poked fun at this from the stage between songs, calling attention to how absurd it is that the people running the $600-a-head Influencer Music Festival were getting litigious and using intimidation tactics on a defunct DIY venue. While I’m glad Faux continued unabated, to me, this just feels emblematic of the way that these giant companies will crush, mangle, and intimidate anyone they can if it means a few extra dollars. The fact that they seemed to take so much glee in threatening a zero-profit emo festival, it’s no wonder why live music is in such a bad spot. Fuck you and your $15 beers. 

Alright, that's enough preamble, let's get into it. 


Josh & Ben on Faux 8: Day One

In all honesty, my specific memories of Faux 8 are few and far between. Edibles are partially responsible for this, but a bigger factor is that—at least for me—enjoyment of an event like Faux comes from surrendering to the experience as a whole rather than latching on to any particular moment. When I try to file things away in my brain for later, I often miss other stuff that’s happening right in front of me, so I prefer instead to just let everything wash over me. One benefit of this approach is that when I do remember something distinct, it means a little more; the imprint a result of organic impact rather than personal diligence. 

The thing that stuck with me the most throughout the first day of Faux 8 was how good the sound was; it kind of didn’t make any sense. Over the two days of the festival, more than 40 bands played half-hour sets in rapid succession, a schedule that doesn’t accommodate typical load-ins or soundchecks. On paper, this should be a recipe for frequent technical issues and a poor mix, but everything sounded great. I’m not even grading on a curve here because of the circumstances; the average Faux set sounds better than what you’d expect to hear at your local venue’s regular shows. I think that this high-quality sound production is an underappreciated element of what makes Faux sets so special. Shout out to Jake Pachasa and Mike Seymour, absolute killers on the boards. 

Boyclothes

There are so many bands out there that I mean to listen to but don’t. I’ll see a band come across my feed, I’ll pull up Tidal to check them out, and then bang, the doorbell rings or my dog needs to go to the bathroom. By the time I come back to the computer, I've forgotten what I was doing, and suddenly I’m listening to the Menzingers for the thousandth time. FinalBossFight! were a frequent victim of this pattern for me; they just kept falling through the cracks. Watching their set on day one of Faux, I felt like an absolute fool for not checking them out sooner; they were so good and 100% in my wheelhouse. A few songs in, I was thinking about how their stripped-down approach to pop-punk kind of reminded me of Joyce Manor, a thought that was immediately followed by their killer cover of “Five Beer Plan.” It was very serendipitous. FBF! are now a band that will forever be in my regular listening rotation, thank you Faux for the introduction.

Another day one highlight for me was Bottom Bracket, a Chicago band I’d listened to a few times but had never managed to catch live. Their set was a way more arresting performance than I was expecting. I can't fathom how someone can play guitar like that and sing so well at the same time. Their set was at 7 pm, which is where I found myself starting to feel the fatigue of the day, but they snapped me right out of it. Good bands I enjoy; great bands send a jolt through me, and Bottom Bracket firmly sit in the latter camp—very cool stuff. 

One of the things I was most looking forward to at the fest was Carly Cosgrove’s performance. This was my first time seeing the band since the release of The Cleanest of Houses Are Empty, and I’ve so badly wanted to yell “You, old, dog, you old dog, you, old, dog, you old dog, you, you old dog, you old dog, you!” in a room full of people since first hearing the record. I finally got to do it at Faux, and it was just as magical as I imagined. Tough to beat seeing a band with a no-skip discography live—great way to cap off the night.
– Josh Ejnes

I am foolishly the kind of person who sees the opportunity to spend a total of 24 hours inside a small dive bar in Ohio and thinks, “How can I spend as much of my time as possible there without leaving?” On day one, I am proud to say I left only once, and that was during the much-earned hour-long break built into the schedule. Even then, I only went next door to a little deli for a chicken sandwich and some waffle fries that were better than they needed to be.  

The real reason I wanted to spend so much time at Faux was not just because of the incredible line-up of bands and absurdly cheap drink prices, but because Faux 8, much like all years prior, is really built on such a small and niche community that unites yearly to dance and drink $3 beers together. Nothing from the day stands out more to me than going around and seeing people from the internet who I have been aware of for a long time and was finally able to meet. 

There is also something really special about attending a festival and being able to get in a moshpit with the same people that you paid money to see. The band members are all running around and taking time to see the sets. It is very rare anymore that you go to a major show and get to actually talk to the folks who are the show. It is one of the things that makes Faux feel like a giant DIY family reunion. 

Bee’s Faux Bucket Hat

There are two bands that I want to take time to talk about, and the first is Later Gator. The Indianapolis emo outfit delivered an incredible side-stage set, despite being in a challenging position, immediately following Topiary Creatures and preceding Bottom Bracket. I was at the first-ever Later Gator show, and to have seen them grow from what they were to a band that can fill the room for a Faux set is incredible. Guitarist Jonathan Bayless and his ability to wield both a guitar and trumpet at the same time is nothing short of wizardry. There were two different covers that the band performed: one was “Higher” by Creed, and the other was a spontaneous, improvised cover of “We Are Young” by fun. that materialized after Bayless broke a string. This band kept the room moving, and it was incredible to see. 

The other band I need to mention is Strelitzia, the Arizona-based math rock group who put on what had to be one of the most special performances of the entire Faux weekend. The band rarely gets out of their home state, let alone all the way to the Midwest, so getting to see them come out and play songs off their 2024 album Winter was nothing short of astounding. I sat there at the front, thrashing around and sobbing the entire set. All I can truly say is if you have the opportunity to see this band, take it, because they are better than anybody could ever tell you.
– Ben Parker


Merch Mayhem

Ever since my first Fauxchella six years ago, I’ve viewed merch as an essential part of this festival’s identity. Bands travel from all over for this fest, many already on tours routed to or from Bowling Green just for Faux. This means that almost every band has merch with them, and at this scale, you’ll never know what you’re gonna get. Free stickers? You bet your ass. Hooters logo rips? Sure, why not. Crocheted alligators? Obviously

Tucked in the back corner of Howard’s main room, spread across two pool tables and half a dozen other surfaces, you will find a packed corner of all the best emo finery you could want. Most bands had shirts and stickers, some of which were custom-made just for this fest. Others offered vinyl records, CDs, tapes, lighters, tapestries, friendship bracelets, and toothbrushes. Several of the bands provided free earplugs, Narcan, drug test kits, Plan B, leftist literature, and wallet-sized cards about how to talk to ICE, as well as other harm-reduction supplies. It was impressive to see all these merch spreads and the infinite ways that artists create beyond the music you hear on the record. Here is a gallery of merch spreads, all photos taken with permission from the bands.
– Taylor Grimes


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Caro’s Warped Tour Report: Day One

Hi Taylor, Josh, and Ben! It’s Caro, and I am on the ground and reporting not-live from that national embarrassment happening in D.C. You know, the first stop of the 30th Anniversary of the Vans Warped Tour. 

The first thing I did was follow a guy smoking a cigarette and wearing a Memphis May Fire hoodie because I thought he would know where the gates were. He didn’t. But, thanks to my bloodhound navigational skills and a giant sign that said “ENTRANCE HERE,” I found the doors. When I approached the security check, they were blasting “Can We Just Get High?” by Carpool. Honestly, I thought I was imagining it for a second, like a desert mirage, heat psychosis already setting in, but it was real and it rocked. It was finally time to take my first steps into the very big parking lot where this was all going down and start paying $18 per tall boy White Claw all weekend. 

The day started with D.C.’s own Origami Angel performing in the first hour slot on one of the main stages to a giant crowd. They played a fuck-this-shit-up version of “Dirty Mirror Selfie” and a “Love Sosa”-infused “Doctor Whomst”. I want to make it clear that people went off for our hometown heroes.

Photo by @realkayls

Publicly, I wrote an article last year about the ascent of saturdays at your place as one of the pillars of contemporary emo — you should read it — so I felt pretty clever when they were announced for Warped Tour. Privately, I’ve had a list on my phone for the past few years called “bands that deserve to have Warped Tour re-invented so they can play in a parking lot at 2 pm,” and saturdays has been on that list since 2023. Hang my byline in the rafters because guess where I was standing at 2:35 pm. Also, why did the founder of Emo Nite walk by me?

saturdays were playing on one of the smaller stages, not the one sponsored by Ghost Energy, not the one sponsored by Beatbox, not the one sponsored by Vans, and not the other one sponsored by Vans. This corner of the festival hosted smaller artists with looser genre affiliations (think local bands like Angel Du$t or legends like Fishbone) and rowdier crowds. In this slice of paradise, saturdays kept the audience locked in through fast jams like their Blink-182-ish “pourover” and the more anthemic songs like “it’s always cloudy in kalamazoo.” The founder of Emo Nite walked by me again. When the band launched into their Certified Emo Classic, “tarot cards,” the crowd reacted accordingly, launching crowdsurfers towards the stage

After saturdays, I walked over to the Vans Left Foot Stage to scope out the crowd and watch Chiodos. Taylor, Josh, and Ben, I am here to say that there were fewer Elder Emo shirts than you would think. I’m assuming that you picture everyone here wearing something like that, but honestly, of the annoying apparel, it’s pretty evenly divided between Elder Emo shirts, Make America Emo Again hats, and It Was Never a Phase patches, but overall, it just wasn’t a lot of people. Everyone else was wearing band shirts or getting a sunburn in tank tops. Also, Chiodos ruled.

Historically, the Vans Warped compilation CD has never cost more than $5, and Smartpunk collaborated with the festival to keep this tradition alive. They also worked with Warped to do a series of less-formal sets under a tent in the middle of an alley of vendors. On Saturday, they showcased local bands like American Television and The Dreaded Laramie, as well as the cannonball-ish local band Combat. Many reading this may remember Combat’s bombastic Faux performance last year, so imagine that, but at literal Warped Tour. They rocked the fuck out, took requests from audience members like Ryland Heagy and Esden Stafne, and started a thrashing moshpit with passerbys from the Sublime and Cartel crowds. 

Photo by Combat

I want to end with this begrudging Day 1 thought: I know it’s easy to be dismissive of the Warped Tour revival. Like I know the jokes write themselves and it’s easy to pick apart, but believe me, your field reporter, the crowd was consistently fucking hyped. For the most part, everyone here paid a lot of money to hear good ass music and good ass music is what they found. Minus Ice Nine Kills.
– Caro Alt


Josh & Ben on Faux 8: Day Two

Trading card trading floor

Went into day two of Faux more tired than I would have liked. I bought a Deal or No Deal DVD game for the trip, sort of as a gag, but my friends and I actually ended up getting quite addicted to it, and our sleep suffered as a result; despite this, I was able to power through and watch some great sets. An earlier-in-the-day favorite of mine was Palette Knife, a late addition to the fest, who had the side stage absolutely rocking. Felt similarly about them as I did Bottom Bracket: how can you play like that and sing like that simultaneously? Doesn’t feel like it should be possible. “Jelly Boi” is one of my favorite emo songs, and I loved hearing it live. Definitely going to be catching Palette Knife next time they’re in Chicago. 

Pretty Bitter’s set at Faux 7 was one of the best of the weekend, so I was super stoked to see that they were on the lineup again for Faux 8. I felt like last year the band didn’t fully get the hype they deserved (partially due to a tough mid day timeslot), so I was really happy to see so many people dancing and singing along as they played this year; it seems like they’re a band whose fanbase is growing exponentially, which I couldn’t be happier to see. Through their set, the band’s new stuff mixed in seamlessly with the old, culminating with an all-out performance of the incredibly hooky “The Damn Thing is Cursed,” which brought the house down. Everyone in Pretty Bitter is a great performer, but at Faux 8, I found myself particularly drawn to their drummer, who was smashing those things and doing all sorts of stick spins and tricks—rockstar stuff, love to see it. 

Pretty Bitter, Pretty much killin’ it

This brings us to my favorite set of the festival: Fend. I don’t think I’d even heard of Fend heading into Faux, and in all honesty, I had intended to skip their set to catch some fresh air before Summerbruise played. As I started to walk by the side stage, the band’s sound pulled me in like a tractor beam; they were unlike anyone else at Faux. I’ve been listening to their record, Disc, pretty much continuously since I got home, I just can’t get over their vocal melodies. Honestly, I wish I had more specific things to say here, but their set put me into a stupor of sorts; my reaction was visceral in a way I struggle to describe. I guess it was kind of like the first time I had Nerds Gummy Clusters and my brain was firing off in ways it hadn’t in years, the result of elements I’m familiar with being put together in a combination I can’t effectively deconstruct. They just sounded awesome. Listen to this band. 

The last day two act that I want to shout out is Leisure Hour, who closed things out on the festival’s side stage. It feels like Leisure Hour have been touring nonstop lately, and their reps on the road are paying off. The band was already great when I first saw them in Chicago last October, but since then, it seems they’ve leveled up even further. The crowd reaction during their closer “jenny” is probably the most hype I saw people get all night, they absolutely owned the space.
– Josh Ejnes

Smash is still a Faux tradition

Much like my peers, I went into day two with little to no sleep. I also overheated on the way in because my friend and I chose to walk the 20 minutes to Faux from the hotel. This was also one of the few times during any fest that I was willing to miss any of the sets, as I was down the road from Howard’s with many Faux attendees for the No King’s Day protest. It was powerful to be there with friends and band members as we all chanted and felt the spirit of protest. It was beautiful, as many Bowling Green locals were out and the streets were lined. I am certain that, of all the things that happened during the weekend, this had to be the most important.

Upon arriving at the festival, I chose to spend my day wandering around and taking time to meet people while passively viewing most of the sets. You kind of hit this realization that you are surrounded by people you won’t see for at least a year, and all you want to do is bask in that community. I took the time to meet the people I was terrified of, such as Mel Bleker from Pretty Bitter, with whom I have developed a friendship over the years on Twitter due to the nature of us both being poets. It led to a beautiful and surreal moment where we were both able to complement each other’s writing and connect as humans. I also got to go with my friend, who had never seen Summerbruise, over to their merch table and talk to Mike, who called me the “Michael Jordan of attending Summerbruise shows.” Being in moshpits and always having a group conversation to walk into is exactly what Faux is about. 

Keep for Cheap

There were many sets from Day Two that I loved, and the first I wanted to touch on is Echo. This is a fascinating band as it is essentially just Summebruise flipped around with the drummer, Stanli, taking over vocals and leading the band. They began with a magical cover of “Shooting Stars” by B.o.B. This stood out to me because I had spent the time walking into the fest joking about the concept of a band playing this song on Twitter. The rest of the set was filled with some fun-filled, ass-throwing emo music that had the kids moving early in the morning, as it was many of the protest group’s first set. 

Another one of the sets I wanted to highlight is Tiny Voices. This set was always going to be different as their vocalist was unable to make the fest, and Luke Ferkovich (Kule, Endswell) was filling in on the mic. The crowd for this set was absolutely raucous and filled the main stage room. I was right at the front, and early on, I got forced onto the stage from the crowd pushing forward, and not once was I able to get off. It is a testament to this band that even without their vocalist, they were able to put on one hell of a show. Half of the vocals were provided by the crowd, as a beautiful cacophony of mic grabs took place repeatedly throughout the entire set. At one point, Luke even went into the crowd and got the whole room moving. It was the kind of set that jumpstarts a band’s momentum, à la Combat at Faux 7.

Jesus was in attendance

The pinnacle of the day for me was getting to see Summerbruise for the 12th time. They are a truly special Indiana band and one of the few things I feel pride for in my home state. This was a strong four-piece Summerbruise lineup, which couldn’t be a full-band set as Mitch Gulish was at Warped Tour playing with saturdays at your place. Summerbruise played all of the hits, and the first moment that stuck out was during “Dead Daddog 20/20” when the entire crowd overpowered vocalist Mike Newman, who broke down into tears on stage. It was a beautiful moment that was well-deserved by a band that has been a mainstay in the Faux lineup over the years. Outside of Equipment, Summerbruise is the Faux band. This group inspires community and supports each other in a way that not many others do. 

Summerbruise was also able to debut their recently released track “Never Bothered,” which really took off at the bridge as around six different band members rushed on stage to grab the mic for backup vocals through the end of the song. The set concluded as many Summerbruise sets do, with Mike introducing “Bury Me at Penn Station” as a song for the community and the people who make these shows worth it (despite it being about his wife). However, this performance was a little different, as Frederick Loeb of Dear Maryanne came onto stage to play guitar, allowing Mike to spend the end of the set in the crowd, connecting with people in a way he usually can’t due to his dual role as a guitarist and singer. Beautiful set from a fantastic band.
– Ben Parker

Summerbruise


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Caro’s Warped Tour Report: Day 2

Hi Taylor, Josh, and Ben! I respawned in Parking Lot 6 and am once again live from the Bam Margera Look-Alike Convention. The Hot Topic Conference on Reviving Wallet Chains. The Consortium of People Who Loved Illegally Drinking the Original Four Loko. Vans Warped Tour Day 2. And I am here to see motherfucking Carpool. This bit was sponsored by Ghost Energy. #DRINKGHOST

Warped Tour has an infamous no crowdsurfing rule. Obviously, it’s a joke rule that was historically ignored, but that didn’t stop Kevin Lyman and Co. from putting up the old “you mosh, you crowd surf, you get hurt, we get sued, no more Warped Tour" signs. What they didn’t have a sign against was bands jumping into the crowd. Enter Carpool.

Carpool - Photo by Alec Pugliese

Carpool ripped through heaters like “Come Thru Cool,” “I Hate Music,” and “Thom Yorke New City” (thank you again for playing that), but everything came to a boiling point for “The Salty Song” when Stoph Colasanto jumped the barricade to join the crowd, turning the pit into a party. It has long been the belief of this site that Carpool fucking rocks, but this was the pinnacle so far. The only way for Rochester’s rowdiest crew to go is up. (And if you haven’t checked out Pretty Rude’s new album — fix that.)

Now, Taylor, Josh, and Ben, I don’t think anyone I’ve ever bought old band merch off of has ever performed on a festival main stage, but then Eric Egan walked onto the Ghost stage, so I guess I can cross that one off. I know a lot of y’all have watched Heart Attack Man’s rise and might have even caught them at Faux last year, but did you know they also played in 2018 pre-Fake Blood? It’s all pretty cool and even cooler to see a lot of people came to Warped explicitly for Heart Attack Man. 

God bless the state of Oklahoma. That’s all I can think when Cliffdiver starts up. I’ve seen them a lot over the years, but every time I catch them, I can’t help but get completely lost in their positivity and zest for life, despite it all. Like a couple of bands this weekend, Cliffdiver discussed how monumental it felt to be performing at Warped, and it genuinely did feel like an event. After all, how could you not feel important and joyous when Cliffdiver is playing “goin’ for the garbage plate”?

Cliffdiver - Photo by Caitlyn McGonigal

Between Bri Wright’s stage banter and Joey Duffy’s FUCK ICE shirt, Cliffdiver spent a lot of time addressing the political state of things. If you missed the news, Trump held a military parade for his birthday in the city, flooding D.C. with violent dipshits and that tension made its way over to the Festival Grounds of RFK Stadium. All weekend, artists addressed the state of everything: The Wonder Years spoke about trans youth, ICE, and Palestine while Dan Campbell wore a FREE GAZA shirt, Big Ass Truck gave a speech about what they hate, Meredith Hurley from Millionaires wore a Protect Trans Folks shirt, and Buddy Nielsen from Senses Fail addressed the history of sexual assault this festival festered and used his time to advocate for Palestine. This doesn’t even include all the other artists, such as Origami Angel, Scene Queen, Pennywise, Motion City Soundtrack, The Suicide Machines, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Magnolia Park, Combat, sace6, and Fever333, and MORE who also dedicated time in their sets to using their voices to advocate for change. This also isn’t even including all of the political conversation happening in the crowds, which largely expressed similar sentiments to these bands and responded with support. 

The MVPs of the whole weekend are easily Leisure Hour, who played Fauxchella Saturday night and dipped down to D.C. to play the Smartpunk tent on Sunday evening. Not to mention that their load-in at Warped Tour was literally through the crowd since they weren’t playing a formal stage. Rock and fucking roll. And I concur with Josh, go listen to “jenny.”

Rain had threatened the entire weekend, and the storm was finally unleashed as Kerosene Heights was taking the stage after their drive from Bowling Green. That didn’t stop anyone from partying; in fact, it got everyone even more excited. I was stopped several times through the set by people passing by to ask who they were, all to which I replied, yelling, “KEROSENE HEIGHTS FROM ASHEVILLE.” It was just so fun. It’s kind of what this is all about, you know?

Kerosene Heights - Photo by Alec Pugliese

My final thoughts? I think there’s a temptation to get into an us (very cool music listeners) vs them (nostalgia-obsessed poser) mentality. Because yes, the whole Elder Emo thing is grating, but this was also the first music thing I’ve been to where someone was wearing a Pg. 99 shirt — which is objectively some of the most authentically Elder Emo you can get. My point is that on the ground, it didn’t matter; we were all already there, so there was nothing left to do but have fun. I’m immensely proud of all the new bands that got spots to play the festival and I would be lying if I said I didn’t love seeing the old shit too. I literally almost waited in line to meet Levi Benton from Miss May I.
– Caro Alt


Taylor’s Portraits

Grabbing portraits of bands was something I wanted to do at Liberation Weekend, but I never quite worked up the courage to commit to fully. Because I knew the bands and the space better at Faux, I was much less shy about asking band members for a quick picture whenever the opportunity presented itself. Most of the time, I was operating on a simple “one and done” philosophy, snapping one pic and saying “cute” or “sick” and thanking the band. I’m incredibly proud of how some of these came out, and I hope I can continue to take many more pictures of band members in this capacity.

If you haven’t seen it, we've just launched a Photography wing of this website, featuring photo recaps of concerts. I plan on doing a Faux 8 photo recap at a later date, so more of these to come.


Faux 8: Honorary Day 3

While Faux 8 was only a two-day fest, a daytime Sunday show at The Swarmyard, a local BG DIY institution, acted as an unofficial continuation of the festivities. The lineup consisted of Decatur, Illinois folk rocker Marble Teeth (who we profiled earlier this year) and Equipment. When I showed up at The Swarmyard a little before doors, a group was forming across the street already a few dozen strong. By the time they started letting people in, it was clear the basement would not fit everyone comfortably or safely. Instead, everyone poured back out into the street and assembled at the front of the house for two front porch acoustic sets. 

Marble Teeth beguiled with his talky acousti-folk setup, playing guitar, harmonica, and CRT TV. At the beginning of each track, Caleb Jefson would select a song off a custom-made DVD menu, which would provide the beat as he sang and played guitar. He wove through songs off his early LPs Cars and Park, 2023’s top 10 times i’ve cried, as well as some new material that Jefson teased as part of an EP coming out on July 4th. 

Marble Teeth

After Marble Teeth’s set, Nick Zander took the mantle of the front porch for an all-request Equipment set. Occasionally joined by Penny and Ellie, the group rocked through a one-of-a-kind three-hour set, playing everything from embarrassing cuts off their 2015 demo to the then-just-a-few-days-old “espresso lemonade.” It was a staggering thing to take in deep cuts from every era of this band as Zander shredded and sang with Springsteen-like endurance. The crowd sang along whenever words were forgotten, and Zander was more than happy to provide the crowd with fun backstory and lore about nearly every track. 

The afternoon set was a beautiful and unique experience that will sadly act as the last from the Swarmyard, as the venue was forced to shut down following this show. Much like the AEG C&D, this feels like an overreaction and overreach; the last drops of life being squeezed out of a passionate group of people putting on shows purely out of love. That said, if I know anything about Jacob and Beautiful Rat Records, it’s that this energy will not go away, merely be diverted to other projects. Plus, if there’s any way to close up your house venue, it’s hard to beat a massive, mega four-hour show headlined by hometown heroes like Equipment.
– Taylor Grimes

Equipment


Some Closing Thoughts

Six years ago, I attended my first Fauxchella because a few bands I liked were performing. I figured it was worth the 90-minute drive down from Detroit to see Origami Angel, Stars Hollow, and Charmer. It turns out that “worth it” doesn’t even begin to capture the experience. I came away from Fauxchella III more inspired and enthused about music than I’d ever been in my life. As I sat eating Rally’s on the hood of my car after the gig, I found myself in absolute awe at the type of communal experience that was possible outside the confines of a traditional music festival experience. To me, this realization goes part and parcel with my Pacific Northwestern ass experiencing authentic Midwest DIY culture for the first time, amazed that people could throw shows out of their living room or basement, not to mention the ability to support and interact with bands directly, as opposed to strictly over a merch table (if at all). 

After attending Fauxchella III, I came back to Bowling Green for DIY Prom, then (on two separate occasions) made a 12-hour drive up from North Carolina just for Fauxchella. It wasn’t lost on me how silly it was to travel so far and take time off work for a festival happening in a college town outside of Toledo, but the lineups were too specific and too tailored to my tastes. It was like someone took my last.fm charts and turned them into a festival lineup. How could I miss that?

This year at Faux 8, I spoke with a couple who had traveled up from Mexico specifically for this festival. I was pretty amazed and said, “You guys probably traveled further than anyone here.” These were words I wound up eating mere hours later when I was talking to another group who had traveled from Alaska for Faux 8. 

On the second day of the festival, I found myself out back chatting with members of Keep For Cheap and Fend when Autumn Vagle said, “Minnesota needs something like this,” referring to Fauxchella’s tight-knit sense of community and impressive artistic draw. Similarly, at one point in the night, I was catching up with Jael Holzman, frontwoman of Ekko Astral and one of the people who spearheaded Liberation Weekend. She cited Fauxchella directly as an inspiration for how a festival like this can and should run, saying that watching Faux over the years was proof of concept that they could do something similar in DC. The result of that inspiration was an incredible festival that raised nearly $40k for the trans rights advocacy collective Gender Liberation Movement. That’s inspiration in action.

With next year’s venue still an unknown, any future Faux will look undeniably different. There will be no more Fauxchella as we’ve known it, but hopefully, there will be Fauxchellas sprouting up everywhere as people take this energy and inspiration back to their home scenes. Fauxchella itself isn’t special. It’s not the venue, the lineup, or even the people running it; what makes Fauxchella special is the community. It’s all these people coming together for two days of music and friendship and $3 beers. What makes Fauxchella special is you.

It feels poetic that Conor Alan, the person organizing most everything related to Fauxchella and the Summit Shack, had a baby on the literal day before Faux 8. As Conor steps into the role of father, it feels as if his other baby is now finally old enough to go off and live on its own. The format of this festival is something that can (and should) be replicated in every music scene across the country. And hey, maybe the first version is just a bunch of local bands and comedians performing in a garage, but keep at it, and who knows how big it could become? Who knows how many people will travel from other states and countries to be a part of your scene? What I do know is that you won’t find out until you start.

Fauxchella, as it has existed for the last near-decade, is gone, but in its place will come another Fauxchella in a different place run by the same people. Then another Faux-like festival with a different name, run by a completely different group of people. Then maybe even one in your hometown. Faux is more than just a music festival; it’s an idea, and ideas can be replicated, shared, and built upon. This is yours now. 

Fauxchella Forever ∞

Swim Into The Sound’s 15 Favorite Albums of 2024

This year frightened me. Too often, it felt like things could turn on a dime at any moment. I’m talking about that sudden, drop-in-your-stomach type of worsening that is both abrupt and disorienting. There were also moments where it felt like everything was gliding along effortlessly: complete bliss, total contentment, and unadulterated happiness, if only for a short bit. 2024 was a year of bouncing around, saying “yes,” and trying to follow my gut. Quite often, it led me to some beautiful moments. 

This year contained some of my greatest personal strides, painful lows, and profound revelations. I experienced strife in my career (both internal and external) for the first time in like a half-decade. Over the course of 2024, this job wound up contorting my heart and warping my brain in really painful ways. It was uniquely distressing, but I’m free now and on to better things, which is all that matters. On a more light-hearted note, I also kept a mustache all year, so that felt like a real marker in my life. This year, I saw Sufjan on Broadway and got to take in Niagra Falls with my own two eyes. I saw 36 immaculate concerts and listened to a ton of incredible music. Oh, I also made a documentary with my buddy about a sick-ass band. That was pretty rad. 

I don’t want to blather too much, but I do want to speak genuinely. I have felt more love and support this year than ever before in my life. Love from people who follow or write for this blog, love from friends and colleagues, love from people out on the street just passing by. I think it’s important to feel that love, recognize it, and spread it around as much as you can. I got fatter and happier and hairier and sillier and closer to who I want to be as a person. In those moments where I fell catastrophically short, I tried to take them as lessons of who not to be. I’ve felt an immense amount of appreciation, growth, and progress this year, and that’s only because I’ve allowed myself to open up and feel it. It’s really scary, but I swear it’s worth it. 

Anyway, let’s talk about music. 

This year, more than any other, the title of this article feels like a misnomer. In previous iterations, I’ve questioned what this publication’s “album of the year” truly means, but now that we have a sizeable team of writers, each with their own favorites, it’s evident that “Swim Into The Sound’s 15 Favorite Albums of 2024” is really just “Taylor’s 15 Favorite Albums of 2024.” In other words, this is a hyper-subjective list because it’s all from one point of view. 

As I sat down to list out my favorite albums of the year, there was a clear tendency to lean toward the genres that seem to be my “beat,” meaning emo, punk, shoegaze, and indie rock. I listened to a ton of music this year, but I won’t pretend I listened to everything. As such, this won’t be the most diverse AOTY list you’ve seen all season (it contains albums from Gleemer, Gulfer, and Glitterer), but it will be the most singular because it’s all from the mind of one weird guy typing this into his soon-to-be-revoked work laptop from his childhood bedroom. These are the albums that stuck with me all year and made a difference. In some cases, they’re weeks-old releases that have already connected to something deeper. Regardless of how long they’ve been in my life, these are pieces of art that I’ve found refuge and understanding in–collections of songs that make me feel seen and heard; it only makes sense to hold them up so others can hear them as well.  

To circle back to the beginning of this intro, it feels like we (collectively) have experienced several Events™ this year that have acted as drop-of-the-hat paradigm shifts. From presidential elections and assassination attempts to an avalanche of regressive policies, “natural” disasters, and forever wars that turn into forever genocides, there’s a lot to be upset about. With the rise in fascism, racism, and every type of phobia in the book, I think there’s been a lot of forced introspection, admission, and reconciliation over what’s happened in the last 360-some-odd days. I’m sure you had a few moments like that in your own life, and I’m sure that we’ll have many more in the coming year. To that end, at the onset of 2025, I’d love to be more explicit about where we stand: trans rights, free Palestine, healthcare + clean water for all, and defund the fucking police. 

I want Swim to be a safe space for writers, artists, fans, and people to discuss things they love. To that end, let’s get the fuck into it and talk about the music that has soundtracked my year. As always, I hope you find something here to love because, at the end of the day, that’s all we got. 


⭐️ | CarpoolMy Life In Subtitles

SideOneDummy Records

I want to start this off with an album that feels like it’s on a secret third plane of AOTY existence: My Life in Subtitles by Carpool. This is a loud-ass, real-ass rock album. I’m talking guitar solos, vocal acrobatics, infectious moshpit choruses, piano balladry, the whole package. This album has shaped my year more than any other after spending all of 2024 with it and spending three days on the road with the band in an attempt to capture their amazing live show. It resulted in a 17-minute documentary and accompanying two-part essay. It’s all very DIY and scrappy from my heart, and it was infinitely fulfilling to create. I want to do more stuff like it. 

If you want to know what record was truly indispensable for me this year, it was My Life in Subtitles. The rest of this is a numbered list, but Carpool had to start it off. In my Google Doc, it’s actually denoted with a “★” bullet point rather than a number, so if those 8k words linked above aren’t enough, I hope that star tells the rest of the story. 

Read our full review of My Life In Subtitles here.


15 | GleemerEnd of the Nail

Other People Records

Even though it’s only a couple of weeks old, the new record from Gleemer has utterly floored me. The band has been iterating on a particular strain of shoegaze for three albums, plus a couple of EPs and adjacent projects, but pivot to something with distinct character here. On End of the Nail, the Denver group sound nothing but authentic. As you would expect from a cover like this, these are dark and frustrated songs that openly grapple with feelings of dissatisfaction and pain. There are still moments of dreamy shoegaze distortion, but there’s also a grungy emo edge that pairs well with Nick Manske’s cool-guy deliveries. This record sounds like your brain throwing itself against the walls of your skull, thrashing around until it either reaches a conclusion or tires itself out. There are individual phrases and riffs that land like punches in a back alley fight, but it all coalesces into an immensely satisfying listen. 


14 | Glitterer Rationale

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How much can a band realistically fit into 21 minutes? When it comes to Glitterer, it turns out quite a lot. Rationale takes the once-solo project of Ned Russin and transforms it into a collaborative full-band effort where all the pieces gel together in a swirl of bass, keys, and disaffected bellows. Just like his tenure in Title Fight, Russin utilizes his signature shout and melancholy strum to evoke a powerful reaction from his audience, but this time, his creations are honed into finely pointed tracks that often hover around the one-minute mark. From the reclusive abandon of “I Want To Be Invisible” to the synthy strut of “Plastic” and the utterly heartbroken “No One There,” it’s astounding how much catchy relatability Glitterer is able to fit into these one-minute slices. Occasionally, they might leave you wanting more or waiting for a resolution, but after a while, you realize that’s preferable to overstaying your welcome. 


13 | see through personevery way of living

Klepto Phase

For a good few years, see through person had exactly six songs to their name. Throughout chariot and sun, the trio fleshed out their own thrashy brand of emo punk built on jittery guitar slashing and Robin Mikan’s passionate wail. The songs were immediate, electrifying, and constantly circling around some deeper truth. On every way of living, that truth comes to bear with a record about self-discovery and trying to experience every way of living you possibly can.

While this process includes everything from moving across the country to experiencing fallout in your old friend groups, the most interesting moments on the record are the ones where Mikan writes openly about her exploration of gender identity and subsequent transition. We’re placed right there alongside her as family members use dead names and awkward small talk devolves into feeling out of place. This is all scored with jagged, ever-shifting instrumentals. Between Robin’s Fall of Troy-level heroics, you’ll hear Nikolas Kulpanowski’s bodyslamming bass and the bouncy dodgeball snare of Ethan Thomas. These are restless songs that exude an awkward, compelling, anxious energy. While see through person are tied to the emo music scene, their debut leans far more into mathy post-hardcore than anything else, an apt way to capture the frustration and elation that comes when you look inward and honestly ask yourself who you are. There’s a lot of feeling unheard, silencing yourself, and lonely reflection, but the band harnesses everything into these outpourings that are pure catharsis to hear. The inscription, written in emphatic all-caps, at the bottom of the album’s Bandcamp page summarizes things far better than I ever could, reading: “IN A DREAM YOU SAW A WAY TO SURVIVE AND YOU WERE FULL OF JOY. EVERY WAY OF LIVING.” 


12 | Heart to GoldFree Help

Memory Music

With soaring vocals, glimmering guitars, and a beefy rhythm section, Free Help is a pitch-perfect punk rock album. Press play on any of these ten songs, and you’re guaranteed to hear something hard-hitting, fist-balling, and filled with forward momentum. Outside the sturdy instrumental work, there’s an impressive economy of writing at play here: choruses where seven words are stretched across two bars, and it all works beautifully. There’s frustration and anguish, commitment and confidence, powerful strides, and meager progress. This is music for when you’re surrounded, overwhelmed, and backed into a corner. Shout it out.

Read our full review of Free Help here.


11 | Ben QuadEphemera

Pure Noise Records

Sometimes, I question where else there is to go for Ben Quad. The Oklahoma group’s debut was my favorite emo album of 2022 in a way that seems hard to top, yet they’ve seemingly spent every moment since then on the fast track toward world domination. The band spent 2024 ripping sold-out gigs on multiple nationwide tours, all while covering peers and fourth-wave forefathers alike. By the fall, Ben Quad signed to Pure Noise Records and released Ephemera, venturing into the world of screamo with effortless mastery. It’s not like this post-hardcore pivot was too much of a surprise. It turns out 2022’s “You’re Part of It” wasn’t just a Piebald-referencing one-off; it was merely the first entry in a larger vent session that appears to have been a long time coming. With a list of influences that range from Underoath and Norma Jean to Youth Novel and William Bonney, there’s no question that these four know their shit, synthesizing two decades of metalcore and skramz into a cathartic five-song collection to help listeners air out every ounce of anger and frustration they feel towards the people that hold us down. There’s no more waiting for things to fall apart; it’s time for action, and Ben Quad is ready to soundtrack every motion. 


10 | Bedbugpack your bags the sun is growing

Disposable America

Anyone who has driven across the country can attest to how monotonous it can be. Hours upon hours of shooting straight down the highway with expanses on either side punctuated by gas stations and rest stops. While that’s often a repetitive experience, it can also be meditative and downright sublime. There are grandiose moments of beauty where the highway seems to stretch out to infinity and you feel connected to everything. That sense of wanderlust is precisely what the first full-band album from Bedbug aims to capture. Pivoting from their humble bedroom pop origins to something that more resembles Modest Mouse with midwest emo riffs, pack your bags the sun is growing is a sprawling release that looks off into the horizon, ever-searching for that glint of heaven. The crazy part is they actually manage to embody it on at least a few occasions.  

Read our full review of pack your bags the sun is growing here.


9 | This Is LoreleiBox for Buddy, Box for Star

Double Double Whammy

Box for Buddy, Box for Star twangs to life with “Angel’s Eye,” a saloon-ready duet between an alien and a cowboy who fall in love in which bandleader Nate Amos sings both parts. An ambitious concept, but merely the opening salvo for a project like This Is Lorelei. Throughout the rest of the record, there are alarm clock wake-up noises, autotuned Steely Dan namedrops, music box breakups, and earnest Elliott Smith homage, all amounting to one of the most inventive, fun, and free-wheeling records I’ve heard all year. Despite the impressively diverse range of instrumentation and ideas, these are pop songs designed to be immediately enjoyed and endlessly returned to. After a string of numbered EPs and one-off singles, Box for Buddy, Box for Star arrives fully formed with a spirit of boundless exploration. This one’s for the losers, for the reformed stoners and ex-burnouts who realize there’s still more life to live. It’s affirming in the way all great music should be.

Read our interview with Nate Amos here.


8 | Ben SeretanAllora

Tiny Engines

Just to establish the backstory: Allora was recorded in Italy back in 2019. Ben Seretan, flanked by Nico Hedley and Dan Knishkowy, ripped through the LP in three sweaty summer days, creating a piece that’s endlessly reaching out for the divine. The whole thing starts with “New Air,” an 8-minute expedition that opens with a guitar solo before a lyrical refrain that repeats and circulates until it takes on a meditative quality. It prattles forward like a song by Wilco or Yo La Tengo, settling into a groove and gradually building to something hypnotic and transcendental. Beyond that, there’s post-rock ramble, synthy spirals, dust-caked exaltations, and modern hymnwork. The whole thing is explosive and expansive, with one powerful movement after another. 

In the excellent album bio by Caleb Cordes of Sinai Vessel, he explains that there was a period of time when Allora was simply known as Ben Seretan’s “insane Italy record.” While that’s a funny way to pitch an album, the more apt articulation is found in its name: Allora being an expressive Venetian catchall that translates to “at that time.” While Cordes lays out what “that time” meant to the people creating this album, it’s impossible not to think about the infinite times that lay ahead: all of the people who will pick this record up and discover it in the coming years, all the times over the past months I’ve ventured into Allora and found something different within its walls. No matter when or where you come to this record, I can assure you that it’s ready to meet you in the present until ‘this time’ becomes ‘that time.’

Read our full review of Allora here.
Bonus points for having one of the sickest tie-dye shirts I’ve seen all year


7 | Merce LemonWatch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild

Darling records

After an eventful summer zipping from the West Coast to New York, Chicago, and Rochester, I spent a month at my parent’s house back in Oregon. Just about every day, I’d get off my aforementioned soul-contorting job, sit in the backyard, and stare at the sky while listening to Merce Lemon. Some days, I would read a book or indulge in a backyard beer; other times, I would just sit and listen and breathe. It became a centering ritual for me, guided by songs like “Backyard Lover” and “Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild,” which proved to be wellsprings of empathy and beauty at a time when I needed them most. As a full-length experience, Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild is naturalistic and gorgeous, penned during a period when Merce Lemon was living off the grid gardening, farming, and sleeping outside as she looked inward to ask herself what she really wanted. The resulting album approaches the world with a sort of folksy reverence that makes you appreciate every atom of your surroundings. There are lyrics of birds and blueberries and mountains that tickle the sky’s belly. It’s a big, beautiful world, fleshed out even further by a standalone single and split of Will Oldham covers, all of which collectively prove that wonder is an infinitely renewable resource and beauty is always there, hiding in plain sight, so long as you’re willing to look for it. 

Read our full review of Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild here.


6 | Oso Osolife till bones

Yunahon Entertainment LLC

The fifth full-length from Oso Oso is a compact and unfussy indie rock album about how life continues even after the unthinkable. It’s littered with truths from the very first line, “I love you, but life is a gun,” acknowledging the soaring highs and painful lows of day-to-day existence. Whether he’s relaying charming dirtbag anecdotes, meditating on the passage of time, or memorializing the loss of a loved one, Jade Lilitri manages to make everything sound buoyant, with an unshakable brightness shot through every beat. There are anti-love love songs going toe-to-toe with actual love songs, because you can’t have one without the other. After nine tracks of these naturally occurring rises and falls, album closer “other people’s stories” questions exactly what it is we’re all doing here: “other people's stories got me feeling bored / yea, other people's stories aren't like yours / look at all the people, looking at their phones / with how much time left? life till bones.” It’s a series of lines that directly address the uncomfortable truth lingering at the center of it all. Like every other Oso Oso track, Lilitri delivers it with a smirk and a riff before jettisoning off to whatever’s next, acknowledging the bad and holding onto the good while knowing that neither are permanent. 

Read our full review of life till bones here.


5 | Charli xcxBRAT

Atlantic

2024 was the year Charli xcx became inescapable. A fair bit of that is internet echo chamber, but as someone who’s followed the pop star since she was on the periphery of the charts a decade ago, it’s been surreal to watch her ascend the ranks of Spotify’s top 500 and fully establish herself as a household name. BRAT is more than just a collection of really good pop songs; it’s a genuine event-level album seeded by feverish singles, bolstered by hot girl music videos, and chased with a remix album that brought new definition to every track. There was a sold-out tour, countless magazine covers and interviews, plus a whole damn season shaped by the vernacular and attitude of Charli. There was a bottomless supply of hot looks, silly dances, and sleazy parties, each with their own dizzying ripples of discourse, but I suppose that’s how you know you’ve made it. This resulted in seven Grammy noms, a #1 album in the UK, and unparalleled cultural impact–one that feels increasingly remarkable in the ever-splitering landscape of 2024. The impressive part is that, despite how vast and multi-faceted its impact, BRAT still felt true to Charli. The record is catchy, dancy, exhilarating, cunty, fun, raw, tender, and honest. I guess that’s the true magic of pop stars: living an existence that’s larger than life which normal-ass people can still relate and aspire to, then make their own. 


4 | MJ Lenderman – Manning Fireworks 

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At this point, I think even MJ Lenderman is sick of hearing about MJ Lenderman. I alone wrote like 3k words about his breakthrough Manning Fireworks, and this year was home to a bit of oversaturation for the Asheville rocker as he was subject to countless interviews, think pieces, magazine covers, profiles, and general writing. I’m reticent to add even another paragraph onto that tally with this blurb because sometimes it’s just not that deep. Lenderman makes hazy, funny, groovy indie rock that pulls inspiration from slacker greats of the 90s while simultaneously nodding to classic rock mainstays of the decades before that. MJ modernizes these influences and puts his own spin on things as he weaves tales of pathetic fuck-ups, dead-end wasters, and people who are too scared to try. It’s all delivered with a surprising amount of empathy and humor that makes these cautionary tales go down easier, plus a number of knockout riffs that make you want to hoot, holler, yelp, and wail. “She’s Leaving You”? Generational. “Joker Lips”? That’s a tasty lick. “Wristwatch”? I’ll never look at houseboats the same again. If I had one hot take to level at Manning Fireworks, it’s that the back half ventures into territory that doesn’t always land as hard for me, but even then, we have the masterful “Pianos” as a consolation. Despite all the hay that’s been made of Lenderman’s output this year, Manning Fireworks just plain rocks, and I’ve never had a bad time when I throw this record on. Lenderman is an artist who makes me hopeful for the future (both of music and in general) because I think his best work is still ahead of him.

Read our full review of Manning Fireworks here.


3 | Wild PinkDulling The Horns

Fire Talk

Dulling The Horns is a disorienting album about the impermanence and beauty of life. Its lyrics are a beautiful Rorschach Test of observations, phrases, and memories filtered through the eyes of bandleader John Ross. Recorded live in-studio, the album still retains the wide-set heartland rock lens found on previous Wild Pink releases, but cakes on layers of dirt and distortion that gives everything a much more compact, classic rock feel. The lyrics are abstract and difficult to parse, but that makes them all the more alluring as you attempt to peer into the album’s inner workings. 

Everything buzzes and crackles with an excitable energy that shakes off the darker expanses found throughout 2022’s ILYSM. Instead, Ross and co. opt to bask in the light that comes from a million miles away because, as he explains, “we get a little every day.” Whether they’re recounting sports esoterica or retelling the story of “Lefty” Ruggiero before throwing to a crunchy shoegaze riff, everything flows with a sort of dreamlike logic with its own internal reasoning. All the while, there are folksy truisms strewn throughout, helping ground things between incendiary guitar solos, pedal steel weeps, and disintegrating fuzz. Dulling The Horns feels like a car console CD destined to be sandwiched between Tom Petty and The War On Drugs as it sits primed for cross-country road trips and short jaunts all the same. As Ross poses questions like “How can there be / Really nothing in between / That big-ass moon and me?” he places the listener alongside him, prompting them to ask the same questions as they wait to get swept up in the next riff.

Read our full review of Dulling The Horns here.


2 | GulferThird Wind

Topshelf Records

Given their decade-plus discography of mathy punk, midwest mastery, and monumental splits, it’s tempting to call Gulfer an emo band, yet everything on their fourth LP points elsewhere. Aptly titled, Third Wind sees the band set off from a fresh crossroads as guitarist/vocalist Joseph Therriault takes on principal songwriting duty. There are still glimpses of the band’s previous stylings strewn throughout, but for the most part, these are poppy indie rock songs with Rube Goldberg-like math-rock guitar riffs. It’s proggy but simple, with choruses that still manage to stick in your head despite the ornate instrumentation. There are left-field decisions that make each song feel distinct, like the winding whammy bar riff on “Cherry Seed” or the pummeling breakdown of “Too Slow” that expends all of its energy halfway through the song. 

On tracks like “No Brainer,” the band hammers the same phrase over and over again as the instrumental rages around them, meanwhile, they take the exact opposite approach on songs like “Prove,” stretching the song’s title into an elongated “prooOOooOOooOOoo-ve” over some intricate guitar tapping that does my midwest emo heart good. There are love songs alongside reckonings of climate change and tales of exacting burnout-fueled revenge on an uncaring boss. It’s all assembled in a bleeding highlighter package of turquoise, yellow, green, and blue–an expired film strip that still manages to capture snapshots of absolute awe. 

A few months after the release of Third Wind, Gulfer announced they were calling it quits, but not before dropping LIGHTS OUT, a five-song collection that only serves to further emphasize how high of a level they were operating at. While they’ll be forever missed, there’s no denying thst Gulfer went out on a high note. Bands should be so lucky to have a last album as good as this.

Read our full review of Third Wind here.


1 | WaxahatcheeTigers Blood 

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I’m not sure what Tigers Blood is about, but it’s stunning. The sixth record from Waxahatchee captures the beauty of life in sun-dappled snapshots like a shoebox full of old polaroids or a night spent reminiscing with a long-lost friend. This is all run through with an undercurrent of delight and despair that feels true to life, a reminder that, while these events have passed, we can still appreciate and honor them for what they were. The songs are lush and elaborate, framed by sturdy drums and bass, splotches of banjo and slide guitar, plus additional guitarwork and occasional background vocals courtesy of MJ Lenderman. Pretty as it all sounds, the album is about people whose fire burns out at midnight. It’s about people who are beaten down, broken up, and bored. It’s about modest ways of life and individuals who are perpetually “Right Back to It” in the most Sisyphean sense. 

Details come from allusions to the Bama heat and locks on doors that cost more than the beater parked out front. Much like 2020’s Saint Cloud, everything is still centered around Katie Crutchfield’s ironclad voice and poetic observations, but on this record, they take on a slightly more ragged alt-country tinge. Through the smoldering twang, a picture emerges of a humble, attainable lifestyle of living within your means, counting your blessings, and being thankful for what you have.

While the cover for Saint Cloud saw Crutchfield in a flowing blue dress perched atop a Ford with a truckbed full of roses, the cover for Tigers Blood sees her standing underneath a rusted-out neon sign. She’s wearing blue jeans and flannel over a red bikini top, plus a “KC” trucker hat that obscures her face as she stares down at the grass beneath her feet. The back cover of the vinyl focuses in on a snow cone, flush red with Tigers Blood dye–a simple pleasure in the final act of the good old days. A small consolation, but one we ought to indulge and find comfort in all the same.

Swim Into The Sound's 2024 Song Showdown

(Editor’s Note: for maximum impact, please read this introduction in your best wrestling announcer voice)

Folks, it’s been a long, emotional year, but it’s all been building to this: Swim Into The Sound’s 2024 Song Showdown. This is a knock-down, drag-out, no-holds-barred, bare-knuckle brawl for the title of 2024’s best song. Many a hope and dream will be shattered today as only a single, shining beacon of collective agreement can be awarded the fame, the fortune, and the title of Swim Into The Sound’s 2024 Song Showdown Champion.

36 songs enter, only one leaves. These tracks are ready to hop in the ring to see who comes out on top. It’s a royal rumble of epic proportions, and we’re getting the privilege of watching it unfold live right here, right now. So grab your popcorn, listen along, and enjoy as the greatest artists of the year go head-to-head for your entertainment.


36 | Linkin Park – The Emptiness Machine

Coming back from your lead singer’s death is a challenge that few bands have undertaken without alienating their audience. As such, Linkin Park’s first single with new vocalist Emily Armstrong, “The Emptiness Machine,” had a lot to prove. Cleverly, this one starts with bandleader Mike Shinoda taking vocals, reminding fans that this is still the Linkin Park they know and love before Armstrong comes in half a minute later to make her first impression. It’s an introduction that works for me; impactful as if to say that, although things will be different now, it’s all being done in honor of the legacy that’s been established. Throughout the song, you can feel that it was written eight years ago, intended for the late Chester Bennington, and it lands as a reminder that death need not be the end of all things good.
- Noëlle Midnight


35 | HiTech – SPANK!

I’ve mostly listened to NTS Radio this year and have fallen in love with it. I’ve had a lot of fun learning about house, techno, and all the subtle subgenres. “SPANK!” is the ghettotech hit of 2024 and represents all of what I’ve been listening to most of my days this past year. It is sticky, manic, and, above all, a perfect embodiment of modern electronic music.
- Kirby Kluth


34 | Charli xcx – Girl, so confusing featuring Lorde

Easily one of the most noteworthy collabs of the year, Charli xcx and Lorde linked up to work it out on the remix of this mid-album BRAT cut, and things were never the same again. Perhaps it was hearing Lorde over a synth-pop beat for the first time in years, perhaps it was hearing these two speak honestly about the way society pits women against each other, perhaps it’s just a humanizing look at two of my generation’s greatest popstars, but “Girl, so confusing featuring Lorde” made me weepy, and I think that’s beautiful.
- Taylor Grimes


33 | Katie Gavin – Inconsolable

MUNA’s frontwoman takes a breather from windows-down, upbeat, synthed-out queer anthems to deliver a tender and thoughtful 90’s-ified solo effort. Among the many highlights, “Inconsolable” elevates Gavin’s unshakeable vocals (and violin playing) on a cloud. “We’re from a long line of people we’d describe as inconsolable. We don’t know how to be helped. We’re from a whole huddle of households full of beds where nobody cuddled. We don’t know how to be held” has lived in the front of my brain since the moment I heard it.
- Caleb Doyle


32 | Charli xcx – 360

The conceit of Charli xcx’s “360” is simple: everywhere you turn, there she is. For an entire season of 2024, that was true. BRAT achieved an omnipresence seemingly unachievable in our fractured cultural landscape, and outside of all the post-post-irony and the chartreuse low-bit memes and the wilted coconut trees, its success came from the fact that it’s very first track is just that good. Impeccably produced (by A.G. Cook, Cirkut, and Easyfun) and tonally potent, its synthetic bounce and infectious melodic pattern - so sugary, so sour - destined it to be stuck in the heads of seemingly everyone with a pulse. It makes you wish pop weren’t so damn ephemeral, but I guess that’s also what makes it so Julia.
- Rob Moura


31 | Magdalena Bay – That’s My Floor

We all know it’s been a year for Mag Bay: a TikTok explosion, a Grimes feature, a Jimmy Kimmel spot. They seem to be getting a whiff of the Tame Impala treatment as far as psychedelic rock-meets-hyperpop is concerned. While “Image” is the single getting all the attention, I’d argue the song of the year is tucked away on the Imaginal Disk B-side. Equal parts prog rock grit, psych jam, and pure electronic soundscape, “That’s My Floor” brings together everything wonderful about Magdalena Bay and ties it all up in three and a half iconic minutes. It’s a song that can soundtrack everything from the first day of grad school to the ride home from a tougher-than-usual therapy appointment (confirmed through personal experience). Also, for what it’s worth, Album Cover of the Year.
- Cassidy Sollazzo


30 | Kabin Crew – The Spark

The last quarter of this year has been so abysmal and apocalyptic that some people may have forgotten that a group of Irish schoolchildren composed one of the most joyous and uplifting grime rap songs of 2024. Created as part of the Rhyme Island Initiative, celebrating the National Day of Youth Creativity, “The Spark” is a two-and-a-half minute b a n g e r, with several kids getting a few bars each that could go toe to toe with any underground posse cut this year. Lines like “If you’re proud of who you are and what you do, shout it” and “I create my own way of feeling super slay” feel like evergreen mantras we could all use in our lives these days.
- Logan Archer Mounts


29 | Foxing – Hell 99

Few moments in music this year have been as electrifying as the first ten seconds of “Hell 99” by Foxing. The track is a downright hardcore rager from the St. Louis indie rockers, a bone-jolting pivot that they pull off beautifully as the members excavate all their pain and frustration with the current millennia. Ultimately, nothing captures that cocktail of dread and dismay better than screaming along, “FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!!!”
- Taylor Grimes


28 | Rosali – Rewind

In its best moments, love erases every regret, worry, stressor, and annoyance. It feels like you can time travel through your life and off into the infinite unknown. For five minutes, Rosali captures that very feeling on “Rewind” with high-flying vocals and a beautiful chorus that encases love in amber and traps it in the groove of a vinyl record. 
- Taylor Grimes


27 | Superchunk - Everybody Dies

"Everybody Dies" dropped all the way back in January, and after a year of listening to great new releases, I still haven't found a better-sounding chorus. It's a track that shows Superchunk aren't just relevant for their influence; they're still right in the thick of things, consistently proving themselves to be one of the best guitar bands going. Julio Franco-type longevity. Long live Superchunk.
- Josh Ejnes


26 | Blood Incantation – The Message

If you’ve participated in any online music community in the last five years, or you’re just a big old nerd like me, you’re at least tangentially aware of Blood Incantation. If not in name, then at least by their now iconic unreadable logo, one of the best of the modern death metal era. The Denver progressive death metal band seems to turn more heads with every new release, and their latest Absolute Elsewhere is no different. Anchored by two 20+ minute, album-side-length, multi-movement tracks, Blood Incantation cements their place as master purveyors of their craft. Absolute Elsewhere’s second half, “The Message,” has everything you want, from blistering metal passages to David Gilmour-inspired swells, and it’s all topped off with a collaboration with Tangerine Dream’s current lineup. You can listen to it broken up into three chunks, but I guarantee once Part I begins, you’ll be convinced to finish the whole piece.
- Logan Archer Mounts


25 | Ok Cowgirl – Larry David

Ok Cowgirl start this song with the couplet “Everything is fucked / To the left to the right,” and that’s a phrase I found myself coming back to time and time again throughout the back half of the year. With production from Alex Fararr and a video that sees the band members donning gray-haired bald caps, “Larry David” spins everyday frustration into something more good-natured because if we can’t laugh, what else is there?
- Taylor Grimes


24 | Kendrick Lamar – Not Like Us

From the over-the-top costumes to trash talk, hip-hop and wrestling go hand in hand. The great rap war of 2024, Kendrick vs. Drake, ignited an unbridled jolt of electricity to the genre. Sparking one of the most celebrated diss song finishing moves of all time in “Not Like Us.” Kendrick, with sharpshooter-like precision, lyrically assaulted the biggest brand name in hip-hop with a vicious anthem that made his opponent tap out almost instantly from humiliation. The cultural impact, plus the overall entertainment of the song, became sweet chin music to my ears. 
- David Williams 


23 | Combat – Stay Golden

Maybe I just live close to Baltimore. Maybe my keys are on a Text Me When You Get Back keychain. Maybe I am biased because I reviewed the damn album, but for the love of god, how many times do I have to say it? Broken-hearted kids don’t party like their parents did in the 90s!!!!! Combat utterly tore out of the gates with the titular single off their album, Stay Golden. This is a cartoon tornado of a song, a total jangly rush that feels like space and time are ripping apart around me. It’s an immediate anthem for jaded Gen Zers like yours truly and an absolute barnstormer at any live gig (this is me telling you that you have to see Combat live). And if you don’t listen to me, that hurts, but at least I still got my Black Flag t-shirt.
- Caro Alt


22 | Truman Finnell – Palm of Thorns

I love all forms of weird, vaguely unsettling media, from Wes Anderson’s films to Ray Bradbury’s short stories, and “Palm of Thorns” by Portland artist Truman Finnell fits neatly into that niche. The song paints a visceral image of meeting someone in an orchard, highlighting the rotten fruit on the ground “writhing with larvae” as it starts to “move on its own.” The music is a skillfully woven blend of delicate acoustic guitar, field recordings, and elements of genres such as ambient, folk, and skramz. Each listen reveals another layer of the strange, fantastic, and eerie world of Truman Finnell - and I simply can’t get enough.
- Britta Joseph


21 | Merce Lemon – Will You Do Me A Kindness

Suspiciously left off Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild, Merce Lemon released “Will You Do Me A Kindness” as a standalone single early on in the year, perhaps because she knew the six-minute track was a meal all its own. This song signaled an immediate level-up from Merce’s previous work, a naturalistic indie rock update, complete with a guitar solo that incinerates me every time I hear it. Point the sun right into my flesh, baby. 
- Taylor Grimes


20 | Merce Lemon – Backyard Lover

To a dude like me, the backyard is a holy place. I spent most of the summer back at my parent’s house in Oregon. I’d get off work, sit in a big, red Adirondack chair, crack a book, stare at the clouds, and enjoy a smoke or a beer while listening to Merce Lemon’s singles. It was a calming way to unplug from work, center myself, and reflect on the day. The slow-simmering build and searing guitarwork of “Backyard Lover” proved to be an utterly transfixing way to score these moments of internal peace. The backyard is abundant, and so is the world.
- Taylor Grimes


19 | Geordie Greep – Holy, Holy

On August 10th of this year, Geordie Greep announced the split of black midi with an unceremonious series of comments on an Instagram livestream: “No more black midi / It’s over / Over.” Ten days later, he released “Holy, Holy.” Recorded in Sao Paulo with an impressive cast of Brazilian musicians, Greep’s narrator puts on the guise of a swaggering womanizer. He’s a confident man! He’s a regular here, but he’s well-traveled and debonair! He fucks more than he breathes, and the whole world knows it, too! And then, over the jazz-rock, salsa-inflected, horn-dense instrumental, he draws back the curtain in a litany of instructions and entreaties to his unnamed partner. Can you kneel down all night so I look taller? Would that be all right? Can you meet me in the bathroom, he pleads, can you put your hand on my knee? “How much will that cost? How much will that cost?” 
- John Dietz


18 | Lily Seabird – Waste

Blessed with an Adrianne Lenker-like timbre and the heft of a shoegaze superstar, Lily Seabird taps into some immortal melody with “Waste,” crafting a colossal and crushing track that never fails to mystify me no matter how many times I listen to it—a lament for the ages.
- Taylor Grimes


17 | Jimmy Montague – Here Today (Without You Tomorrow)

Jimmy Montague’s effortlessly complex and effusive arrangements rarely sound as cool as they do on “Here Today (Without You Tomorrow).” With a propulsive piano pushing it forward, the song feels like running through an endless series of hallways, sure that each new door will lead to some sort of resolution. Like Royal Scam-era Steely Dan, this yacht rocker takes on an ominous tone as Mr. Montague chases – or runs from – a long-distance breakup. This song is so good that I don’t even mind that it has a wah-wah guitar solo – and I fucking hate wah-wah. 
- Joshua Sullivan


16 | The Civil War in France – Maybe Next Time…

Chiptune isn’t nostalgic for me. I have no memories of Pokemon Silver's soundtrack, despite it being my first video game, because the volume on my Gameboy was always off out of fear my dad would tell me to shut it down. Today, when I want to play Halo, I ask my girlfriend if it’s okay because I don’t want to make her put in headphones, deprive her of access to the TV, or make her go to the other room. I have never wanted to be in the way of someone else’s desires, even if it deprived me of what I wanted or needed. It’s why I relate to Evangelion’s Shinji and why “Maybe next time…” from The Civil War in France’s There You Are ! is one of my favorite songs of the year. When Eva Hammersla screams, “So maybe I’ll try harder to be a better person / so maybe then I’ll be, I’ll be happy with me,” I want to turn back time and raise the volume slider for little Lillian. Maybe then she’d advocate for herself.
- Lillian Weber


15 | Jeff’s World – Someday

You ever spend a day scrolling through the digital morass, watching the soulless husks that run the planet bloviate, fuck things up, rinse and repeat? You ever feel that gnawing feeling you’re powerless to stop it all? Appetite waning, thoughts racing, not enough beer in the world to drown the endless flurry of sounds and images fighting for your attention? Sometimes, the only solution is to let it all out, and on “Someday,” Jeff’s World offer up three minutes of primal scream therapy. For what it’s worth, I hope the Kool-Aid served at the end of the world is blue. 
- Jason Sloan


14 | Carpool – Thom Yorke New City

“That’s why I try to keep the bottle half full” is a perfect summation of Carpool’s mixture of sad-sack neuroticism and unabashed sentimentality. “Thom Yorke New City” rounds out their excellent LP My Life In Subtitles, wraps up everything you know about Carpool so far, and hints at the shape of ‘pool to come with its dime-turn structure. Extra points for the blissed-out post-rock bridge, reprising the opening track to give a sense of distance traveled. It also just rocks real hard. 
- Joshua Sullivan 


13 | Florist – Riding Around In The Dark

“Riding Around In The Dark” effortlessly arrives partway through I Saw the TV Glow, rising like the moonglow reflected off neon pink chalk caked on the driveway. Emily Sprague and company summon the brief apocalypse of twilight, faces coming and going, burbling electronics shrouding gentle strums. There’s a glum mundanity to the way they sing of the world’s end, blushing with awe and fear. Without changing up their familiar naturalism, Florist still conjure vibrant, nostalgic sounds.
- aly eleanor


12 | MJ Lenderman – Pianos

“Pianos” might be the saddest song MJ Lenderman has ever written. The track was included as one of the 136 that make up Cardinals At The Window, a benefit compilation whose proceeds go to Hurricane Helene relief in Western NC. Released just a month after Manning Fireworks, it’s unlikely that Lenderman planned to release this song so soon, but truth be told, I’d take “Pianos” over just about any song on that album’s B-side. Sonically, it’s a somber, slow-walking reflection that builds to a searching, meditative guitar solo. Structurally, the song’s 8-minute runtime harkens back to the laid-back ramble of Lenderman’s self-titled album. Essentially, he gives the listener enough time to ponder, wander, freak out, have an epiphany, cry, and then gently return to earth with a newfound direction. 
- Taylor Grimes


11 | Fontaines DC – Favourite

Did you know I could claim the dreamer from the dream? Hot off the panting, Korn-inspired, anxiety attack that is “Starburster,” Fontaines DC released “Favourite,” another experimental single off their new album, Romance. This time, instead of capturing a new sound, Ireland’s hottest rock band tried to capture a new feeling. Originally 12 verses but cut back to 4, “Favourite” is an attempt at a truly endless love song. It’s trancey, it’s circular, and it’s as desperate as it is sentimental. They swear up and down that they didn’t want to create the next “Champagne Supernova,” but would it be so bad if they did? I’ve listened to it like 200 times, according to last.fm. 
- Caro Alt


10 | Ther – a wish

I have a sincere hope that godzilla isn’t the final album from Philadalephia’s Heather Jones. Their faith-damaged introspections and gorgeous wordplay find a noisier yet no less ornate home on “a wish,” the first track and lead single. It’s a pristine encapsulation of a wandering mind, hopeful and determined to field whatever the dawn may throw at us.
- aly eleanor


9 | This Is Lorelei – Dancing In The Club

I love songs about dancing. I love songs with inventive instrumentation. I love Nate Amos, better known as This Is Lorelei. “Dancing In The Club” was the first single released for the first genuine This Is Lorelei album, and I can’t think of a better introduction to the project. A song about fucking up, being a loser, and giving all your diamonds away. Infinitely relatable.
- Taylor Grimes


8 | SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE – 1/500

I was hooked on SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE’s “1/500” immediately upon hearing the opening notes – a looping intro that segues into hypnotic layers of guitar and pulsing drums. Compared to the rest of their catalog, “1/500” is a fairly straightforward indie pop song, but many of the band’s signature touches are present and help the track stand out. The often-anxious delivery of vocalist Zack Schwartz and abrupt starts and stops from the rhythm section are contrasted with loud, catchy melodies. There’s an almost sinister tension underlying the music, and at times it pierces through the traditional elements with dissonance or the sudden absence of noise. I believe one of the marks of a great band is the ability to write accessible pop songs while staying true to their sound, and SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE does that and more here.
- Nick Miller


7 | bonus – Lose

I checked out “Lose” back in February because of a tweet claiming that Bonus sounded like an emo version of Liquid Mike. I was initially dubious of the claim (despite the poster’s clarification that he wasn’t on some bullshit), but it was very accurate. I’ve had “Cuz I’ve been waiting for so long for you to let go” playing repeatedly in my head ever since. I think the term “rips” has been a bit overused lately, and propose that this song be put in the dictionary as the prime example of what rippage really means. Going to make a supercut of skate clips and Pavel Datsyuk highlights set to it, which I assume will make my phone explode. Just thinking about the guitar sound gets me so hyped. Great song. 
- Josh Ejnes


6 | Cheem – Charm Bracelet

The monarchs of Nu-Pop Cheem came out swinging with their second single of the year, “Charm Bracelet.” Equal parts bubbly fun and heavy-hitting hooks, I can't think of another song from this year that pulls me in quite like this one. Every time I hear the buttery production and seemingly endless sonic layers, I find myself smashing the replay button before the song is even finished playing. Cheem has this natural ability to meld together the warm feelings of nostalgia with the effortlessly cool swagger of the cutting edge, and “Charm Bracelet” is the shiniest example of that marriage. Running short of even two minutes, “Charm Bracelet” proves you don't need a lengthy song to make a lasting impact.
- Ciara Rhiannon


5 | MJ Lenderman – She’s Leaving You

“It falls apart. We all got work to do.” Brother, ain’t that the truth. The lead single to MJ Lenderman’s breakthrough record isn’t just great because of the humanity that hides at its center; it’s great because it delivers that revelation in one of the best choruses I’ve heard all year and then tags it with a rockin’ guitar solo for good measure. Its story is a universal cautionary tale of selfishness and love gone wrong, the exact type of thing that goes down easier when it’s delivered in a Trojan Horse of 90s-influenced slacker rock. 
- Taylor Grimes


4 | Ethel Cain – For Sure

If you were to look at me, round glasses, black jeans, and corduroy button-up, you’d probably guess (correctly) that American Football’s self-titled record really did a number on me in high school. It’s clear the same can be said for Hayden Anhedönia, better known as Ethel Cain, who transforms “For Sure” into a transcendental 10-minute slowcore sprawl that allows even more beauty to seep through the cracks. While that sounds like a far walk for a simple Midwest Emo song, it recontextualizes the work of both artists, exalting a tale of uncertain love into a territory that’s more holy than it has any right to be.
- Taylor Grimes


3 | One Step Closer - Leap Years

One does not simply drop a song on February 29th just to let it drift away in the winds of time, especially when “Leap Years” is about just that. One Step Closer brings a whirlwind of throttling instrumentation fit for a mosh pit and passionate lyrics with a special co-writing credit from the legendary Mat Kerekes, complete with a fantastic tempo shift during the outro to take the song home. There’s really nobody crushing the melodic hardcore game like One Step Closer.
- Samuel Leon


2 | Braino – Unkind

Who doesn’t love an underdog story? “Unkind” is one of six total songs this LA group has ever made in their short, sporadic life, and it’s one of the best things I’ve heard in 2024. It is a beautifully gentle composition of uncomplicated piano and guitar, coupled with soft percussion and layered vocals—A.K.A., indie as all hell. The song is a constant internal monologue, with unhelpful thoughts taking up space and the feeling of losing ground after a positive change. I think we want to believe that we can wake up one day and be different, but the reality is it takes months or years to train ourselves to be more like our ideal selves. This song is a gorgeous lullaby to rock yourself to sleep to, placed somewhere on your journey after a backslide into nasty habits and just before a brave step forward.
- Braden Allmond


1 | Waxahatchee – Right Back To It

“Right Back To It” is timeless. Featuring a spellbinding banjo, classically confessional Crutchfield lyrics, and complete with an MJ Lenderman feature that frames the song as a loving (possibly treacherous) duet, it already feels like this melody has been in my life for decades. The music video is just as serene as we watch the two alt-country superstars float down the river in a pontoon boat, serenading the world as it passes by. This is the type of song that makes me happy to be alive, the type of chorus I’ll be singing for as long as I’m kicking around, the kind of art other musicians spend their entire lives working towards. “Right Back To It” is four and a half minutes that will live for eternity. 
- Taylor Grimes

I Hate Music Part 2: Four Days with Carpool

Click here to read Part 1. Read on to learn what it’s like touring with Carpool.

-1-

When Josh and I first met Carpool at Richmond Music Hall, there were lots of jitters on both their side and ours. The two of us were worried (or at least conscious) of how well we’d assimilate into the group, making sure to stay out of their way and not cramp their style, allowing the members to be as natural as they could while knowing a camera might be pointed toward them at any time. On the band’s side, this was the first show they had played together in almost six months and the beginning of the biggest tour they had ever been a part of. Opening up for emo legends like Free Throw is a blessing and a pressure, but Carpool were ready to deliver. 

That night, I saw the band take the stage and witnessed the same spectacle that poured out of them at Fauxchella just a few months prior. They ripped through a 25-minute set of old and new material alike, stacking fresh singles like “Can We Just Get High?” and “No News Is Good News” up against old favorites like “Whiskey & Xanax” and “The Salty Song.”

Gradually, I watched the band win the crowd over more and more with each song, which was a trend I noticed at all three shows. The beauty of a song like “Can We Just Get High?” is that it’s dumb and straightforward, but because it’s dumb and straightforward, that also means it’s catchy as hell. Pretty much anyone can hear that chorus once, get it, and join in before the second one is even over. 

With the first song, I’d notice lots of head bobbing, swinging hips, and nodding along. By the second song, a few people might be finger-pointing or filming short clips on their phones. By the end of the set, at least a few people would be headbanging, thrashing around, shakin’ ass, and screaming along. It was beautiful to watch this transformation happen each night with completely different crowds of people; it felt like I got to watch the genuine power of rock music happen again and again. 

Left to right, Carpool is Stoph Colasanto (Lead Vocals, guitar), Torri Ross (Vocals, Bass), Alec Westover (Drums), and Tommy Eckerson (Vocals, Guitar). Photo by Abby Clare.

Even though there’s an entire documentary showcasing Carpool’s live presence, it’s worth breaking down a little bit here. Just like in the band’s music, Stoph Colasanto is happy to fill the role of charismatic ringleader. He has a yowling, scratchy voice that defaults to a scream but can also stretch and hit a beautiful high note whenever he needs to serenade. To give you an idea of fits and vibe, I saw him rock a David Cone Jersey, black leather cowboy hat, and vintage Hamm’s work shirt across our three shows. 

On the opposite end of the stage, you have Tommy Eckerson, a classic rock guitar god with natural-born solo wizardry and a clear admiration for the greats. He can belt it out when he’s on lead vocals like on “Crocodile Tears,” but more often than not, he is happy to just hit the occasional backup vocal so he can focus on his impressive guitar tapping skills. Tommy dresses in classic single-color outfits like James Dean; he might have a chain or sunglasses on, but not in a flashy way. 

Between them, you have Torri Ross, an Arizona-born bassist who bounces across the stage like a pinball, busting out a high kick and nailing every note along the way with an infectious grin. At one point, Tori said someone compared them to a character from Guitar Hero, so that’s the level of icon we’re working with here. Tori is also a knockout vocalist; their presence makes the band sound even more full, and their delivery during the bridge of “No News Is Good News” would regularly get stuck in my head for hours after each show. 

Behind them all is drummer Alec Westover, a fellow Pacific Nortwesterner who apologized in advance if he was ever a bit of a “space case.” The two of us pretty much immediately spoke the same language, as I also share a rainy-day pensiveness, which means I’m often content to sit back and observe as opposed to being the center of attention. He was usually fitted in another DIY band’s merch or a hoodie with a sports team on it. It was amazing to watch him shift into performance mode each night, busting out 30 minutes of pretty relentless drumming, knocking out every mathy twist and turn of a song like “Whiskey & Xanax” with absolute precision. It was bonkers to watch him hammer out something like that and then find him minutes later backstage chilling like it was no big deal. 

Together, I watched these four rip through the same 25-minute set three times over, and each night, it was nothing short of captivating. The setlist consisted of the same eight songs: they’d kick things off with the two-note nod-along “Can We Just Get High” and then hit us with a Carpool Classic in the form of “Whiskey & Xanax.” From there, the band would wind through songs off each album, with a couple pulled from their recent EP for good measure. If the crowd played along, they’d be treated to a cover of “Teenage Dirtbag,” a nice little throwback that allows for a unique form of participation as half the members of the crowd remember the lyrics in unison, eventually building up to that cathartic cry of “OH YEAH!!! DIRTBAG!!!” 

It’s a wonderful note to end on a non-canonical song because it feels like a fun way to let people know what you revere as a band without taking everything so seriously. In the past, Carpool has put “My Own Worst Enemy” by Lit into a similar spot at other shows, but I could see any Sum 41 or Third Eye Blind slotting in there if the band ever needed any more rowdy 90s alt-rock crowd-pleasers to cap off the set with. On a similar note that I want to include here for completeness sake, I still maintain that Carpool’s cover of “Soak Up The Sun” should have been a bigger deal than it was; that thing is a work of art with an amazing video to match. Regardless, Carpool nailed their Wheatus cover and walked off the stage to raucous applause and maybe even a few new converts. Based on the amount of vinyl I saw the band singing that night, it’s safe to assume people were excited to go home and listen to the new record. 

Behind the scenes, the band was already abuzz with an infectious, if not slightly shitposty energy. Throughout most of our time together, Stoph radiated a charming and hilarious front-person energy, indulging in plenty of dirtbag antics but still keeping everything fun and good-natured, much like Carpool’s music. 

The band members already had an ongoing bit, singing the chorus of Lonestar’s 1999 hit “Amazed” back and forth to each other whenever there was a brief lull in conversation. They’d affectionately refer to each other as “cousin,” a term that felt recently re-popularized thanks to The Bear but, in Carpool’s case, felt steeped in the fact that most of the band members still work in the service industry. At one point after their first set, Stoph turned to me and, over his shoulder, offered, “Cousin is gender-neutral,” a surprisingly open-minded logic for something that just felt like an affectionate auditory tick. There’s also “cro,” a portmanteau of “cousin” and “bro” that served a similar purpose. 

Later on in the run of shows, the phrase “Stand on Business!” would take on a life of its own, eventually becoming a universally positive affirmation you could use to respond to just about anything. Just ripped a set? Stand on business. The green room has the exact flavor of Gatorade you like? Stand on business! Hearing someone bark that out and mentally nodding along in affirmation became a shared language. 

Once the concert wrapped up, Carpool spent a good chunk of time slinging shirts, signing vinyl, and snapping pics with fans. We were only an hour or so from the album’s midnight release, so we hung around the bar long enough to celebrate with the band when My Life In Subtitles officially dropped. The vibes were immaculate; Carpool’s first set of tour went off without a hitch, and the record they had spent years working towards was finally out for the world to hear. We celebrated an adequate amount, but eventually, we all packed up and headed north toward New Jersey, where we had an off-day before show #2.

-2-

After a full day of driving, our “off-day” in Asbury Park was more like an off-night. We arrived at the Airbnb around 6 pm after navigating through the utter hell that is the DC highway system. I’ve driven across the country multiple times, so I’m no stranger to long road trips, but that specific drive reinforced how much of tour is just spent packed in a car getting from one city to the next. It’s a lot of gas stations, rest stops, and fast food. You take vegetables where you can get them and get good at constructing a queue of music and podcasts long enough to stretch across multiple hours. By the time we rolled into Jersey, Carpool already had pizza on the way and YouTube up on the flatscreen TV in the shared living room space. The group flipped from the Gel Audiotree to goofy music videos and, at one point, wound up sparking (mostly ironic) a group sing-along to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.”

I already had some idea of who Carpool were as people before this, so I wasn’t too worried about anything dramatic or salacious happening during my time with the band. Even still, I was wondering if things would ever get tense or “real” once we were all out on the road together. The closest we ever got to some Behind The Music-style drama was when the band’s manager, Danny Doyle, learned that Tommy ordered from a jerk chicken place without him. This restaurant was apparently a bit of a tradition any time the band visited Asbury, but Doyle was only (jokingly) a little put out that Tommy ordered without him. That exchange, the cold and calculating betrayal at the hands of Tommy, was about the closest the group ever came to rising tensions.

A tender moment between Stoph and Alec

After long enough, Carpool, plus myself and Josh in-tow, moseyed a few blocks down to Georgies, a gay bar, in search of karaoke. While we didn’t find an open mic, I quickly discovered that Torri and Dan were absolute pool sharks as I watched them each go on six-ball hot streaks, sinking multiple billiards into the bar’s only pool table. 

We wound up hopping to another bar that actually contained multiple other bars, a needlessly complicated way to cram several distinct vibes on top of each other. My night almost evoked that one Lady Gaga clip, except it was bar, bar, another bar. At one of these bars-within-a-bar, I wound up chatting with Jake Trieste and Frankie Mancini, two of Stoph’s high school friends who were in town from Rochester just to watch the band perform the following night. They were more than happy to tell tales of putting up with a younger version of Stoph and how it felt like he had eternal senioritis, even back then. “Teachers thought he wouldn’t do shit, but look at him now, he’s following his dreams,” Jake laid out at one point. While I was already privy to Eyes Wide Shut, an (admittedly bad) post-hardcore project featuring members of Carpool and calicuzns, Jake was the first to inform me of Stoph’s high school rap project, something I’m still hoping I’ll be able to get my hands on at some point, if the files still exist at all. 

That night, I ended up having some pretty in-depth discussions with most of the band members. At one point, Tommy and I were embroiled in a conversation about our shared reverence for classic rock, specifically Van Morrison. He informed me how this admiration for that older style of rock music influenced his approach to songwriting for the new LP, and I could totally hear it. The proggy guitarwork at the end of “CAR” and the fiery solo at the end of “Can We Just Get High?” made total sense when placed in a lineage of boomer rock I inherited from my dad. 

Similarly, Alec and I were both from Oregon, a fact I didn’t know until I saw him sporting a forest green University of Oregon hoodie. Bonded by that shared upbringing and mutual appreciation (or tolerance for) rain, the two of us got deep talking about the creation of Subtitles and how it compared to the band’s previous work. He explained his role as drummer and how the instrumental parts for some of the songs on this record took shape long before the lyrics were in place. 

The group communally discussed their shared appreciation for Bug Jar, a 200-cap music venue in Rochester that the band has played so many times they might as well have their name engraved on the rafters. In fact, this July, Carpool will be playing two triumphant nights at Bug Jar, celebrating the release of My Life In Subtitles. The first night will be a set of Carpool classics, covers, and songs the group never plays anymore, while night two will be a full album playthrough of Subtitles for the ravenous hometown crowd. With support from legends like Equipment, Carly Cosgrove, Del Paxton, and Cheap Kids, these shows are gonna be a Carpool summit for the ages.

Carpool Album Release Shows

In a telling moment, at one point, I overheard the band talking to a table of patrons as they were hunting for a lighter. Upon learning that Stoph and Tommy were in a band, they asked what kind of music Carpool made. “Good luck playing Wonder Bar if you’re not a ska band,” one of them warned, “This is a ska-only town,” he said with the most serious grimace one can manage while still talking about ska. 

Knowing how averse everyone is to the “emo” label, my ears perked up to hear what the answer would be. The two band members shared a knowing look before Tommy said, “You wanna know what the actual answer is? Real scumbag rock.” The labels of “punk” and “emo” encapsulate so much yet feel so limiting, especially for a band that just put out a record as diverse and varied as My Life In Subtitles

That same night, your boy made a rookie mistake of Taking Too Much. While I’d been cautious to monitor how much I’d imbibed on night one, on night two, I wasn’t drinking at all. Instead, I decided to help stimulate New Jersey’s blossoming dispensary economy. I started the night off with a little baby joint to myself as we were on the way to Bar #1 and felt fine. Actually, if anything, I felt leveled out after a day's worth of travel in the car. My mistake came at Bar #2, where I went back for seconds, cheefing on a $10 pre-roll of Jersey weed that sent me into an actual panic attack by the time we’d reached Bar #3. 

The band had decided to leave the second bar in search of a casino, something that we quickly learned does not exist anywhere in Asbury Park. Instead, the band was stopped by Joey DiCamillo of NJ emo band Straight Jacket Feeling. “There’s no casino in Asbury Park,” he laughed towards our group, “Come on in here and grab an espresso martini.” At this point, I was so deep in my head that I was sure it would be my last night alive. I pulled Stoph outside, muttered an exchange that was probably as confusing as it was incoherent, and walked back to the Airbnb, fully freaked the fuck out. Not exactly my finest moment. 

While that was an all-time embarrassing moment in my life that happened in front of a band I’d long admired, I wanted to include it here for accuracy’s sake and also to illustrate how sweet and kind-hearted the members of Carpool are. By the end of the night, Tommy, Alec, Josh, and I were huddled around a patio set in the backyard of our Airbnb talking (unironically) about the brilliance of the Goo Goo Dolls, and I could feel my anxiety dissipating by the minute. I apologized to Stoph the next day, and he assured me it was okay; Carpool, if nothing else, are a band that understands the experience of getting too high and freaking out; that’s the content of about half their songs. 

-3-

The next day, the group filed into Wonder Bar for a stormy Asbury Park soundcheck, then proceeded to play one of the best gigs I’ve seen all year. The room was electric, with plenty of the band’s childhood friends and old roommates embedded at various spots in the sold-out crowd, plus a glut of New Jerseyans ready to cut loose on a Saturday night. The band played through the same setlist, but this time, Corey from Free Throw joined the band on stage for their Wheatus cover and set the room ablaze. People crowdsurfed, shouted along, and shared the mic, all for the god-damn opener

Photo by Abby Clare

After the show packed up, the remainder of Carpool and their friends migrated down the boardwalk to a discotheque blasting 70s soul classics, and the group danced the night away in a moment that felt more than celebratory. For me, it felt like everyone had forgotten about my embarrassing faux paus the night before, getting too high and getting weird, but for the band, it felt like genuine revelry. They had just played an incredible set, signed a bunch of vinyl, and were out dancing with some of their oldest friends. As we were collectively shakin’ our booties to Diana Ross, it really felt like the credits could roll at any moment. 

But there was one more show to play. 

After some post-dancing Taco Bell and unwinding with a one-two punch of the Wednesday Tiny Desk and the Elephant Gym Audiotree, the gang called it a night because we all had to be in Pittsburg the next day for the final show of this leg of the tour. 

-4-

In the Steel City, the gig, once again, unfolded in a similar way, with the band winning over portions of the crowd minute by minute. Between songs, Stoph kept talking about how each track was actually inspired by Mean Girls 2 and were all somehow directly tied to the Tina Fey Cinematic Universe. It was also revealed that “Whiskey & Xanax” is actually about the Lizzie McGuire Lego set that got stolen from Stoph when he was in 5th grade (Genius annotators, you can quote me).

Before we all went our separate ways, Stoph, Josh, and I snuck off for a mediocre dinner at a local Schwarma place. We wound up having a surprisingly involved conversation about movies, but it eventually circled back to music. At one point, Stoph talked about how grateful he is to be around such talented musicians, referring to the rest of his band. He spoke about the difference between being an elite musician who can play something flawlessly versus being a band with personality. Ultimately, the three of us agreed that a balance between those two things is the sweet spot, and we unanimously decided that, after watching three consecutive shows, Carpool sat squarely at that intersection. 

Photo by Abby Clare

At the end of this, it was bittersweet and mostly sad to watch the band’s Honda Odyssey pull off into the sunset on the way back up to Rochester for a week off before going back on tour, but I felt like I had been a small part of something incredibly special. 

Josh and I made a brief pit stop to catch Origami Angel close out the Don’t Let The Scene Go Down On Me’s 17th-anniversary showcase, rounding out an already-emo weekend with a heaping helping of dorky pop rock (positive). 

The two of us checked into our Airbnb, and weirdly, all I wanted to do was listen to Carpool. I listened to all of Nasal Use and My Life In Subtitles before going to bed and found myself loving the album more than I ever had. After seeing the band live, I could pick out Torri’s vocals floating through the upper end of the mix. I could spot Tommy’s guitar wizardry after watching him cast the same spells night after night. I could hear Alec’s study drumming holding everything together, the silent assassin murdering every fill and propulsive hit. I could hear Stoph’s voice, literally and figuratively, across each song and every word as I read along with the lyrics and did the public service of uploading all the words to Genius. Maybe all I needed was six months of listening to this album before it clicked. Maybe all I needed was to watch this band play a couple of these songs live to “get it,” or maybe I had just absorbed so much of Carpool’s energy that I started to feel admiration by proxy. 

-reflections-

I think you do something like this (I.e., join a band on the road) out of love but also because it teaches you something about yourself. If it’s not already abundantly clear, I love Carpool: the band, the music, the people, and it was an honor to essentially feel like part of the group, even for a few days. I set out to capture this band as best I could and try to tell their story at what felt like an important inflection point in their career; to try to capture and convey what I love about them to an audience that’s completely external to all of this. 

I genuinely believe this band possesses something special, and that’s evident in the footage we captured for this documentary, the music they painstakingly put to record, and the way that these people navigate the world and interact with each other. You can see it in the fandom they’re building, the merch and videos they’re making, and the connections they’ve fostered. Everything is considered, and nothing is half-assed. Nobody is doing it quite like Carpool.

This entire trip, the final lines of Erotic Nightmare Summer kept floating through my head: “Carpool is a band about sharing smiles with friends.” As I watched the members bounce across the stage each night, nailing every solo and sticking every high kick, it was impossible not to absorb some of that jubilation.

So sure, I did this because I adore Carpool and wanted to show what it’s like to be a young rock band ramping up to release the most important record of their lives. And, despite my initial reservations, I do think My Life In Subtitles is a great album, it’s a giant, challenging, wide-set record where no two songs sound the same. The scope is ambitious, the songs are unlike anything the band has done before, and that’s a good thing. My experience with this album, listening to it on and off for months, has unearthed a level of depth I never expected during that first listen on the Metro North. At a certain point, creating a “grower” is a true test of a band, and that’s what Carpool have done with their sophomore album.

In talking to all these people- fans, friends, the touring bands, and even the members of Carpool themselves- pretty much everyone had a different favorite song from My Life in Subtitles. I think that goes to show how varied and diverse this record is. 

Photo by Abby Clare

Sometimes, you reach a point in life where you just have to throw yourself into something full-force and see what happens. This whole experience of joining a band on the road, interviewing people, taking notes, filming things, sitting in on soundchecks, and spending an extended period of time immersed in a pre-existing configuration of people was all new to me. Sometimes you overshoot (or fly too close to the sun), but even when you do, you learn something about yourself. 

In fact, I think that’s largely the story of My Life In Subtitles as an album: the three-act structure of Dirtbag, Meltdown, and Reclamation feels like a universal truth in some ways. You’ve got this unrepentant scumbaginess in songs like “Can We Just Get High?” and “Open Container Blues,” whose upsides are self-evident. Then you’ve got the middle of the album, which covers everything else: romance (Crocodile Tears), recklessness (Kid Icarus), shitty jobs (No News), questioning who you are (Taxes), questioning organizations (CAR), and the crushing weight of capitalism (throughout). Yet all of this is speckled with glimmers of hope. Despite its title, a song like “I Hate Music” is still a nuanced mediation of the love Carpool has for tour life. They wouldn’t be doing this if they didn’t love it. 

Much like “Don’t Start a Band” by Short Fictions, a song can be a biting commentary and a love letter because sometimes you can’t have one without the other. You can’t criticize something without loving it, and vice versa. In Carpool’s case, I think it’s clear that this band loves the music they’re making. Just look at their on-stage presence or who they are as people. When you’re performing songs as catchy, inventive, and high-energy as these every night, who can blame you for having a great time while doing it?

But this overarching structure of living like a degenerate, fucking up, licking your wounds, and then trying again with better intentions feels like an appropriately large thing to articulate. This feels like a process we all must go through ourselves at some point. 

Even disregarding some larger narrative, My Life In Subtitles is a collection of feelings and experiences laid bare for the listener. It feels like a scrambled collection of ups and downs, highs, lows, and just plain frustrations of life. In Stoph’s case, he argues that if his life were a movie, it would be a pretty shitty one… But I think that’s how everyone feels, isn’t it? “Who would want to watch THIS?” Fuckin’ terrible show. 

If that is indeed the top-level takeaway from this record, I think it’s funny that my reaction to it was to double down in the opposite direction. To hear an album’s worth of songs about how unglamorous and shitty and fucked up life has been for the members of Carpool, then to want to join them on the road to capture more of that life. If it’s such a terrible show, why am I so drawn to it? Why do I want more? Why do I keep coming back to this record and this band? I think the answer is right there in the subtitles.

Poster by Hallie Kanter

I Hate Music Part 1: An Abridged History of Loving Carpool

When Chris “Stoph” Colasanto sent me the new Carpool album back in November, I had never been more excited to open a Dropbox link in my life. I’ve been a music geek forever, and even though this blog is nine years old, it never fails to blow my mind when a band I love sends me their music. 

On a surface level, it’s cool to hear an album early before the rest of the world, but on a much deeper level, it means a lot when an artist trusts you with their creations. That also extends to labels and PR people, but when it comes directly from a band member like this, it truly means the world. 

In the case of Carpool, the punk rock four-piece from Rochester, New York, the group had become a quick favorite of mine over the course of 2020. In a year that was crushing, demoralizing, terrifying, and destabilizing in its own uniquely hellish way, Carpool’s music offered me a brilliant ray of optimism that cut through the darkness. 

The whole thing started with a premiere for “Come Thru Cool (Punk Ass)” that I wrote in early May. We were two months into being sequestered in our homes, and everyone was starting to get a bit of cabin fever. I took the single because it sounded like a fun thing to work on, plus the track was a fucking rager. The screamed vocals evoked equal parts Prince Daddy and Every Time I Die, which was a combo I could fully get behind. I also loved how the song churned into this heavy metal tantrum but still managed to have super catchy verses. 

I didn’t think much about Carpool for the next month until the release of Erotic Nightmare Summer on June 5th. I gave the album a listen. Then another. And another. Gradually, I found myself drawn to the record on a pure, unthinking, gravitational level, and the whole thing became muscle memory. Didn’t know what I wanted to listen to? Throw on Carpool. Driving around the winding mountain roads of Denver? Throw on Carpool. Running errands between my apartment, the dispensary, and the grocery store? Throw on Carpool. It became omnipresent and comforting in the best way possible.

Erotic Nightmare Summer ended up soundtracking my year in a way I never could have predicted. The album’s 30-minute run time made the whole thing a breeze that I could slot into my day at any point. The record had an infectious vibe with flashy guitarwork, tight instrumentation, and heaps of hooks that I eventually got pretty good at singing from the comfort of my car. 

Much like the band’s first collection of songs, Erotic Nightmare Summer is still an album steeped in emo stylings, including lots of guitar tapping, group chants, silly samples, and a lyrical run-down of fucked-up behavior. It’s easy to discount “emo” as a descriptor for an almost infinite number of reasons. The genre has had many lives, revivals, periods, and shades, so it means a million things to a million different people, especially when talking to fans from different generations. No matter who you talk to, there’s bound to be a diminutive undercurrent when the word rolls off the tongue. Describing Carpool as an “emo band” sells them short because, even on this first record, they’re more than that. Lyrically, Erotic Nightmare Summer isn’t afraid to delve into heavy topics like addiction, mental health, and failing relationships, but the band navigates these topics in a catchy way that makes them go down easy. It’s actually a very multi-faceted album, even though your average person would probably listen to it and call it punk or, worse, “screamo.” 

Regardless of how you personally view these ever-blurring genre lines, one thing gradually became clear to me by the time December rolled around: this was my favorite album of the year. I had spent too much time with Erotic Nightmare Sumer for my answer to be anything else. 

2020 was a shit year for a lot of things, but I was grateful to have music there guiding me through the good and the bad and the incomprehensible alike. There may have been prettier albums out that year, like Saint Cloud, and even albums that felt more important, like Fetch the Bolt Cutters, but ultimately, I found myself pulled towards Erotic Nightmare Summer for its simplicity. Turns out that when the world is falling apart, the main thing I want is a hook I can sing along with and some riffs I can thrash around to. 

Fast forward a couple of years, and I’m in a completely different place than I was in 2020, thank god. I was still living in Denver but found myself in an exciting new relationship with someone from New York. The long-distance thing was new to both of us, so it was hard, but it felt like we were in it together. We were honest with each other every step of the way and generally found that the beauty and love we felt in this partnership outweighed the pain of being separated by almost two thousand miles at any given time.

A long-distance relationship like this also meant lots of flying; she’d come out to hang with me in Denver, and I’d return the favor, visiting her out in New York. We went back and forth like that for months, with whirlwind week-long visits punctuated by month-long stretches where we’d talk on the phone almost every night. It was hard, but this relationship felt special enough that it was all worth it. 

Sometime in July of 2022, I got a text from Stoph with a link to a new EP from Carpool titled For Nasal Use Only. I excitedly loaded the files onto my phone and spent the back half of the summer familiarizing myself with the five-pack of new offerings from the band. Specifically, I would throw this EP on during many of these long flights to visit my girlfriend out on the East Coast. Songs like “Tommy’s Car” felt like they perfectly articulated the type of love, commitment, and desire for self-betterment that I was feeling at that time. Obviously, the EP’s one overt love song, “Discretion of Possession,” hit that spot too, but as a whole, this collection of songs felt like a shockingly accurate depiction of where I found myself in this new relationship, including all the worries and possible fuck-ups that come with it. 

It’s also worth noting that I had access to these files with zero other information: no album art, no tracklist, and even a misspelling of “Discresion,” which is now a stain on my last.fm account forever. I listened to the songs in the sequence I imagined the band would place them in, but I would also sometimes just let them run in alphabetical order. It led to an interesting relationship with the EP where this pit-stop in the band’s discography morphed into an interactive piece that shifted from one listen to the next. The songs became abstracted in a cool way, but no matter what order I played them in, they all still hung together as a fun-loving 15-minute excursion that built out the exact type of hookiness I loved on Erotic Nightmare Summer.

I still vividly remember playing “Everyone’s Happy” when my girlfriend and I were dogsitting for a friend in New York. It was months before the song would become publicly available, and it felt so special to be walking around the streets of Brooklyn chanting the song’s coda quietly to myself while walking to get a bagel. I know Rochester and New York City are very different things, but I still felt the power of the Empire State flowing through me.  

By the end of the summer, Carpool had officially reemerged with “Anime Flashbacks” as a lead single, and I was beyond excited to see the public’s reaction. I liked the song a lot, but its heavy addition of synth felt like a wary step away from the all-out rock we heard from the band on their debut LP. Again, receiving music early results in this interesting phenomenon, which almost places you alongside the band, wondering how these songs will be received. 

2023 was largely a year of planning for Carpool as the band prepared to drop their sophomore album, My Life In Subtitles. They brought on bassist/vocalist Torri Ross, who brought an excitable, rambunctious energy to the band’s live performances, along with some killer backing vocals, rounding out the group in the best way. With this new lineup solidified, the band took to the road, performing up and down the country, cutting their teeth on the classics and testing out new material alike. They played an hour-long battle set at Fauxchella VI in Ohio, and after seeing this incarnation of Carpool’s lineup, all I knew was that I wanted more. The band’s battle set saw them facing off against Summerbruise, another perennial favorite of this blog, which resulted in an elated 60-minute stretch of my life that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. 

Even without a new record, 2023 continued to be a pretty eventful year for Carpool. They went Ridiculousness-level viral when this video of Stoph puking while playing a gig spread like wildfire on Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter. The band even found a bootleg screen-recorded version that had its own millions of views exclusively from within a Spanish Facebook page. The group ripped a flu-game-style set at Fest 21 in Florida while members of the band were under the weather, and I know it just constantly sounds like Carpool is constantly sick, contagious, or puking, but they had a lot of normal gigs too, like this one at a skatepark in Milwaukee, that looked like the set of a damn movie. Perhaps most importantly, by November, the band signaled their next level-up when they signed to SideOneDummy and dropped the first single of their new LP. Everything was in motion. 

When Stoph sent me a text with the new Carpool album back in November, I had never been more excited to receive a Dropbox link in my entire life. I clicked on the link, and my eyes skittered across all 12 song titles, mind racing with what each could contain. I pressed “download” and started to do my favorite thing: edit metadata. I converted the WAV files to MP3, dragged them into my iTunes library, and synched my phone as if this access could be revoked at any moment. I didn’t even have the album art, but I had the new album from fucking Carpool months before most of the world, and with great power comes great appreciation.

I didn’t want to just half-attentively throw this album on in the background while I worked; I wanted my first listen to be intentional and meaningful. I tend to have this problem with artists I love where I’ll wind up waiting weeks, months, or even years to listen to their newest material because I loved their last project so much. For example, I’m a big Wonder Years Guy, and that love definitely extends to Aaron West, solo material, and pretty much anything Dan Campbell touches. I loved the first Aaron West album so much that when the group released their follow-up in 2019, it took me a whole month to work myself up to listening to it just because I wanted to experience it under the “right circumstances.” 

Carpool had released my album of the year just a few years prior, so this new LP wasn’t something I was going to treat lightly. I wanted to make sure that whenever I sat down and hit play, I’d have enough time to make it to the end. I wanted to put my phone away and listen undistracted, fully absorbed in the music, to take it all in at once. 

Photo by Bridget Hagen

My Life In Subtitles sat on my phone for a week or two until I found myself up in New York for Thanksgiving with my girlfriend’s family. The day before Thanksgiving, she and I woke up early and raced to Grand Central Station to take the Metro North up to Connecticut where the rest of her family was spending the holiday. It was my first time visiting the iconic train station or taking a train out of the city, and my little West Coast brain was just taking in the swirl of activity: college kids traveling to visit their families in other states, people with laptops and real adult clothes getting work done on their commute, various couples watching as the world raced by outside the window. 

Like many of my New York Firsts, this train ride quickly became a core memory. After we had made it out of the city and into the (slightly) more pastoral scenery of northern New York, the cabin began to settle in and quiet down. With over an hour left in the trip, I decided that this would be the perfect time to venture into Carpool’s new record. 

I pulled out my phone, popped in my AirPods, and hit play on My Life In Subtitles. Then the craziest thing happened. I only kind of liked it. 

By this point, I had already heard, written about, and loved the lead single “Can We Just Get High?” but the rest of the album didn’t quite connect immediately. I remember firing off an excited message to Stoph when Cliffdiver’s Briana Wright popped up on “Open Container Blues,” a text that simply read “Cliffdiver!?!?” which I meant to intone like the Tiffany Pollard Beyoncé meme. I remember my brain doing backflips when I heard the “OOH OOH OOH” at the end of “I Hate Music,” but other than that, the album played out, and nothing grabbed me quite like any of the songs off Erotic Nightmare Summer. Weird.

At first, I dismissed this as a one-off experience. Deciding to tie my first listen to such a novel trip might have been too ambitious. Sure, this first impression on the Metro North was memorable, but maybe not the best way to experience an album for the first time. I gave the record a few more spins throughout December and the new year and gradually came to an interesting conclusion about the arc of the album. After listening to it enough times, I began to view My Life In Subtitles in three acts:

  1. A beginning stretch starting with the introductory title track and winding across the first two singles through “Crocodile Tears.”

  2. A more pensive middle stretch starting with “Done Paying Taxes” and ending with “No News Is Good News.”

  3. A leave-it-all-on-the-floor final act starting with “I Hate Music” through the end of the record

For a while, I straight-up didn’t like this middle stretch of the album. The songs were sadder and slower and felt far away from the peppy pop-punk shreddin’ of the band’s prior work. At one point, I even took the time to make a reqesuenced playlist, combining my favorite songs off Subtitles and Nasal Use into one album-length experience that flowed in its own way. It wasn’t that I outright hated any of these songs; I was just toying around with them as individual pieces in a way you do whenever you’re a deep enough fan of anything. 

I’d throw on the new Carpool album once every week or so throughout the new year, continuing to digest it, and each time, I’d find little moments that would jump out to me: lyrics or instrumental bits that would land differently than the last time I heard them. I still viewed the album in these three acts and still generally liked the first and third better than the middle, but that ebb and flow gradually just started to feel like part of the journey.

I suppose I can cut straight to the chase and say I actually like the album a lot more now, especially after seeing some of these songs live. A comparison that at one point felt astute to me was lining up these two Carpool albums with Nirvana’s last two albums. Much like Nirvana stacked hook after hook on Nevermind, Carpool backed a bunch of rockin’, cheery(-sounding), sing-along hooks against each other. Then, much like Nirvana got darker, angrier, and a little more writerly on In Utero, Carpool have created something that’s more challenging, engaging, and interesting than a record full of hooks. 

On My Life In Subtitles, the band takes you on this winding overview of their life, which is also your life for the entire duration of the record. They absorb you into this world, make you invested in their journey, and then deposit you off safe and sound with a beautiful little piano loop. This experience is broken down in loving detail through this blog’s own review, one I actually didn’t write but am in total alignment with from an editorial standpoint. I really do think the album is brilliant in a lot of ways, from the songwriting and the instrumentals to the design and packaging to the multitude of music videos they were able to create in the lead-up to its release. Everything culminates in one big, swirling 40-minute monument that acts as much as a document of a life as it is a document about life. 

That brings me to the real core of this piece because, in March, I joined Carpool on the road for four days, catching the band’s first three shows of the year and their album release on Friday, March 22nd. Of course, this was a dream come true. To be able to take time off work and follow a band on the road is something I would never have imagined in the early days of this blog, and I was only able to achieve this through covering a band, engaging with their work, and developing a relationship with them that felt like it was built on mutual admiration.

I didn’t let on about my initial reservations about the album; I still enjoyed it and didn’t want the band members to think I was there for anything else. I believe in Carpool and felt grateful they would open their band up to me in any way, so I asked them, and they said yes the same day. Fucking awesome. 

I enlisted the help of Joshua Sullivan, a local friend, filmmaker, and musician in his own right who knew how to work a camera. At the time, Josh was actually in the process of finishing up his own feature-length film, all shot, edited, and released DIY, which was a scale and ambition I admired. The two of us had already spent a few long nights nerding out about music, so I knew he’d gel with Carpool, too. On March 21st, we drove up to meet the band in Richmond, Virginia, for night one of the tour. We were officially on the road with Carpool.

Click here to watch the full tour documentary and read part 2 of this essay.