March 31, 2025

The Best of Q1 2025

March 31, 2025/ The Swim Team

In 2025, I think it’s become clear to pretty much everyone how nefarious the tech industry is. All the major social media platforms are owned by oligarchs, actively pushing narratives that benefit them, silencing dissent, and forcing users into isolated echo chambers of a uniquely hellish making. AI-generated slop has proliferated every corner of the internet, from braindead comment-generating bots and nonsensical recipe introductions to a snowballing quantity of deadening content designed to keep you scrolling forever and ever. Every move is being tracked, reported on, and sent back to some advertiser who’s going to try to squeeze another couple of pennies out of you for a new-and-improved dish soap tailored specifically to you and your ideals.

In a way, it’s a hell of our own hyper-customized making, but also one we’re utterly helpless to as the current of technology transfers power further and further up. It’s fascinating and frustrating to have watched the internet evolve from this place of wonder and near-limitless potential to an ad-sponsored wasteland where only the rich and the stupid survive.

To that end, I’ve never found it more important to log off and experience the real world. To touch grass and stare at water, to keep my nose in a book and my head on the positives. When I am logged on, I try my best to seek out things made by real people. I’ve found great comfort and camaraderie in newsletters, music, and the carefully considered creations of friends. It’s never been more important to be intentional about the things you interact with. To question the recommendations of the algorithm and ask, ‘Who is this benefiting?’ because, more often than not, you’ll find that it’s something terrible if you follow that chain for long enough.

Jesus, I didn’t mean for this to be such a bummer. This is all a long and slightly dour way for me to say that I see a great deal of worth in genuine recommendations from real people, and that’s exactly what this round-up offers. Part of me dislikes that I instituted a quarterly cadence for recapping our favorite new releases because it makes me sound like a dumb business bro. Stocks were down in Q1. Feeling bullish on alt-country. Sell all your ownership in shoegaze. That’s just not how music works. The title of this article might seem silly, but honestly, it’s just a way for us to make a case for our favorite releases of the year so far in hopes that you find something new to enjoy.

Sure, we’re only a few months into 2025, but the dedicated crew of music geeks that make up the Swim Team have found no shortage of records to love. It’s a fast-moving world, and we want to help you keep up by giving you something new and fresh to obsess over. Every Friday, I find about a dozen new records I want to listen to, and I almost never get to them all, but that ever-elusiveness is part of the game. You find a bunch; you love a few. What follows are 18 recommendations from 18 of our writers. That’s 18 records made by real people that are worth your time and effort and money and love.

Fuck your algorithm, trust your heart. Thanks for being here.

Anxious – Bambi

It feels like whenever I’m writing a Swim Into The Sound “Best Of” entry, it’s for some band on Run For Cover. I'm still not sure if Bambi is my favorite record of the year (the new Cloakroom, Spiritbox, and Art d’Ecco are fantastic), but it's certainly the one I've gone back to the most, thanks to its unique blend of indie-rock and emo inspirations. It's hilarious to listen to this mostly melodic record and think about how, just five years ago, I was watching Anxious open for Knuckle Puck and had to actively avoid stage divers and crowd killers. That's not to say you won't find those in 2025, but with songs like “Some Girls” and my personal favorite, “Jacy,” in a tracklist like this, nestled alongside “Head & Spine,” you get the best of all worlds. This is the sound of a band maturing, and not in a bad way.

– Samuel Leon

Caroline Rose – year of the slug

When I think of Caroline Rose, I picture the cover of LONER, which depicts a vacant-eyed Rose staring off into the middle distance with a mouth crammed full of cigarettes like that one file photo of Homer Simpson. That album was one of the best releases of 2018: a red-washed indie rock release packed with wildly inventive songs, fun music videos, and an excess of personality. I liked 2020’s Superstar a fair bit, but by the time The Art of Forgetting came out in 2023, it felt like something had been lost in the equation.

year of the slug scales things back in the most wondrous way, reminiscent of that free-ranging invention I first fell in love with back in 2018, even though it sounds much different. Self-recorded entirely through Garageband on their phone, most of these songs are sparse and simple, featuring only guitar, vocals, and Rose’s uncanny knack for uncovering a melody. There’s some ornamentation: the occasional multi-tracked vocal, drum loop, or piano dirge, but in comparison to Rose’s previous albums, everything is paired back in a way that’s striking and remarkably catchy.

When announcing the album, Caroline Rose posted something of a mission statement, outlining their desire to live life more slug-like. Through these constraints: self-recording, self-releasing, avoiding streaming services, exclusively touring independent venues, and pairing things back to the absolute bare minimum, Rose has created an immaculate and inspirational collection of songs that stand on their own as a testament to pure, artistic creativity. Thank you, Uncle Carol.

– Taylor Grimes

Cloakroom – Last Leg of the Human Table

When our editor put out the call for Swim’s Q1 roundup, I ran to claim Cloakroom’s Last Leg of the Human Table as fast as my fingers could type. This moving, variegated album has had me and my colleagues buzzing since its release – its vast emotional depth and intensely satisfying density have proven that Cloakroom just keeps getting better. The opening track, “The Pilot,” is a soaring and spacey anthem that I unabashedly claim as my favorite off of the album. Heavy without being overwhelming or cluttered, I’m calling it now as the song of the summer. Though Last Leg of the Human Table stays true to the band’s shoegaze-y, self-described “stoner emo” sound, the album also proves Cloakroom’s range with the thoughtfully strummed “Bad Larry” and the wistful interlude “On Joy and Undeserving.” When I need a hit of pure dopamine, I’ll be cranking Cloakroom at max volume with the windows down.

– Britta Joseph

Coheed and Cambria – The Father of Make Believe

When it’s a Coheed and Cambria release year, I tend to make the joke that no other album stands a chance. This is mostly because Coheed has been my favorite band for well over the last decade, and that’s just the expectation at this point, but there is always the fear in the back of my mind that this will be the album of theirs that doesn’t resonate for me. Fortunately, this is not the case with the band’s (somehow) eleventh studio album and the third act of the Vaxis saga, in which Coheed comes back stronger than ever, delivering possibly my favorite of the three. The hints were all there, but realizing this was secretly a third Afterman record not only satisfied the part of me that loves referential themes but produced some of my new favorite Coheed experiences like this album’s acoustic slow burn “Corner My Confidence.” The Father of Make Believe reminds me exactly what I adore about this band, specifically in bringing back their epic, album-ending suites, as well as continuing to lock in their tried and true formulas, arresting rhythm section, and grandiose, operatic sequencing. Despite alluding to the eventual ending of the band in their new pop ballad “Goodbye, Sunshine,” I truly hope Coheed continues to produce these kickass, sci-fi epics for as long as possible.

– Ciara Rhiannon

Denison Witmer – Anything At All

I really hope Denison Witmer finally gets his flowers. Witmer’s been making thoughtful and contemplative folk songs for almost 30 years, and I’ve been a fan for almost 20. I saw him play the student center at my Christian college in the year of our Lord 2005; he played simple solo folk songs about sleeping, dreaming, and longing, and I was never the same.

Anything At All was recorded and produced by Witmer’s longtime friend and collaborator, Sufjan Stevens. Sufjan is only credited as a featured artist on two of the ten songs, but his voice and musical fingerprints are everywhere. Witmer’s writing seems to focus mostly on the intersection of the mundane and the divine: trying to be a good dad and husband, working in the garden, planting trees, dealing with self-doubt, questioning what sort of life we’re living and what sort of legacy we’re leaving, reconciling the smallness and the existential largeness of middle-aged domestic life. Maybe it’s the fact that I turn 40 this year, but honestly, these are the sort of songs my soul longs for. It’s good shit! If you like Anything At All, check out 2020’s American Foursquare and 2005’s Are You A Dreamer?

– Ben Sooy

Fust – Big Ugly

In a world full of new artists that you NEED to know about, the simple solution to the glut is to look to North Carolinian photographer and musician Charlie Boss, who seems to be best friends with some of the most important musicians of our day. Charlie’s work introduced me to the Durham, NC band Fust, and for that, I am forever thankful.

I only moved to the South three years ago, but gah-lee, if Fust’s Big Ugly don't make me feel like I was born with a Mountain Dew in each hand. Aaron Dowdy’s writing about the South spoke to a newcomer like me in ways that caught me off guard. Big Ugly guides me down through kudzu-covered hollers and helps to remind me just how beautiful it is down here. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about “Spangled,” the lead single and lead track of the album, which takes you soaring down dotted highway lines and over dilapidated buildings, all while the structure of the song itself steadily turns into an Appalachian free association. Big Ugly goes on to oscillate between Springsteen-style power ballads and sharp songs of yearning. It is an album of beauty, humor, and truth-telling. If I could have any superpower, it might be to have whatever Fust band leader Aaron Dowdy has. It might just be better than flying.

– Kirby Kluth

Jaye Jayle – After Alter

Evan Patterson is already underway ruling my first quarter listens in 2025, most recently with Power Sucker, the new Young Widows album and the band’s first in eleven years. On top of that, there’s After Alter, the latest offering from his solo project Jaye Jayle, which kicked off the year with a thunderous punch back in January. It’s a heavy and dynamic release that continues Patterson’s tradition of recontextualizing sludge metal into the singer/songwriter realm, channeling the more intimate moments of artists like Nick Cave, Neurosis, and Swans. The rhythmic drones of tracks like “Father Fiction” and “Doctor Green” are emotional and entrancing, dark ballads for doomful druids. After Alter’s final moments are introduced with a seven-minute rendition of The Beatles’ “Help!” done in a way only Jaye Jayle can do and doesn’t sound out of place with the rest of the record at all. It’s one of Patterson’s finest works to date in an already prolific catalog worth celebrating.

– Logan Archer Mounts

Men I Trust – Equus Asinus

I think a lot about how Christopher Nolan had Clémence Poésy, who appears in one sequence of Tenet to “explain” the time-bending mechanisms of the sci-fi spy masterpiece, tell the Protagonist and audience: “Don’t try to understand it. Feel it.” Tenet is a vibes movie, one to ride with and luxuriate in, one to let the craft wash over you and feel it rip you away.

Men I Trust’s albums are vibes records. They lure you in with sultry, lounging grooves, but on Equus Asinus, the songs are full of aching. Aching to feel like you did before, aching to return. These aren’t the sweet dreams that earned dream-pop its genre tag; these are the dreams of Twin Peaks. So close to being reality, but with one glaring, off-kilter element that knocks you off balance. It’s in the warm creak of the piano on the closer, “What Matters Most.” In “All My Candles” questions of what our time even amounts to. In the mud, we come with and come from. In the melodramatic instrumental on “Paul’s Theme,” which would fit perfectly over Shinji psychically breaking in the back half of Neon Genesis Evangelion. One set of lyrics repeatedly asks in French: “Little man, what do you want?”

You feel it too, don’t you?

– Lillian Weber

Midcard – Sick

Growing up in a no-stoplight town in Montana, my world was saturated with the podunk culture of rural life in the American West, so I denounced country music on principle, opting for my version of things that felt rebellious (pop-punk, metalcore, screamo, etc.). It’s only been in the past several years that I’ve had a redemptive journey with twangy music by way of country-tinged emo rock, and Midcard from Austin, TX, is one of my favorite bands doing it. I’ve been a fan since “BMI” made me cry real tears in 2023, and this new EP is my favorite thing they’ve done. The southernness is apparent, but there’s not even a hint of affectation in these indie punk songs that land somewhere between the last couple Hotelier records, early Manchester Orchestra, and 90’s alt-rock in the vein of Everclear. What hits especially hard for me are the lyrics, tender and pissed off in equal measure, often flirting with cynicism, with plenty of wit and passion to cut the acid. There are gang vocals, tappy emo riffs, dudes yelling, “Woo!” before guitar solos, panic chords, an all-time great diss about “very publicly misunderstand[ing] The Catcher in the Rye,” and none of it feels anything less than earnest. Rock music.

– Nick Webber

Oldstar – Of the Highway

Back in February, Oldstar’s Zane McLaughlin posted on the band’s blog about recording Of the Highway and said, “Oldstar went Hi-Fi, is what the critics will say, all three of them.” Well, I’m a critic, and I am here to say they went Hi-Fi, and it’s fantastic.

Even with a full band, a new home in New York City, and a real-deal recording studio, the melancholia of Florida’s Oldstar still weaves through the album. The band deals in lyrical storytelling, with McLaughlin recalling conversations or tall tales, all over songs that lean into a country twang (“Wake Me”), alt-rock fuzz (“Nail”), or blend both seamlessly (“Alabama”). Oldstar is a band that I wanted to make a huge album, and I am so happy they did. It’s getting warm again, so go find a chair outside, crack a beer, watch the sunset, and listen to this.

– Caro Alt

Pink Must – Pink Must

Pink Must, the collaboration between Mario Rubio, aka more eaze, and Lynn Avery, two of the most delightfully eclectic musicians in American experimental music, is straightforward. Well, in a way. What started as a process of sending demos back and forth, trying to make a grunge album, eventually clicked into place once both relocated to New York City. Two specialists in pulled-and-stretched compositions united to craft an album of AutoTuned alt-rock songs. What sets Pink Must apart from potential pastiche is total commitment and earnestness. Exploratory tendencies aren’t sanded down; they are poured into the space permeating these songs, surrounding warbled poetry, guitar riffs, and mirage-like full band grooves (everything was recorded and performed by Rubio and Avery). Six-minute lead single “Himbo” unfolds into ambiance and guitar strums, only slightly hinting at its creators’ oeuvres. Pink Must is one of the year’s best rock albums, inverting tropes, sounds, and expectations and making something special, making something unique.

– Aly Eleanor

Pyre – This Is How We Lose Fullness

I, like many of us, have been waiting for the album of 2025 that feels like it will help me soundtrack all this absurdity. Cloakroom certainly has done a great job, but when I finished my first listen of This Is How We Lose Fullness, a very frantic energy that had been pinging around my bones and muscle finally seemed to have dissipated through and out of me like Hawking radiation, but for bad vibes. Pyre’s potent blend of screamo, hardcore, and emo mechanics create an invisible latticework of gyres and pulleys, riffs seizing guitars, vocals drawn to bass thrums, drums propelling gang vocals like a moonshot. Force as we know it and (barely) understand it exists in This Is How We Lose Fullness; its inexorable pull, push, and grasp all feel so physically present that you’d think the album was actually shaking you. From the vile clarion call of the album opener to its final quieting death rattle, Pyre have nailed the feeling of our current doomscrolling existence while you urgently battle your growing need to claw at your face from the madness of it all. But hey, you know what they say: A body for the pyre, pile it on and get on with it.

– Elias Amini

Rose Gray – Louder, Please

This one’s for all my fellow pop princesses out there. My brats, my partygirls, my club rats. Lovers of all things Charli XCX and Tove Lo.

Rose Gray’s Louder, Please honestly had me at the album cover – something about the harsh lighting, the face-melting scream on Gray’s face, the beach, the red hair. She charmed me even before the first song. I was then pleasantly surprised to see that the image on the cover completely matched the vibes of the music upon hearing the thumping club banger opener “Damn.” The East Londoner (and Harris Dickinson’s long-term girlfriend? Okay queen, go off) channeled her underground rave roots throughout her sophomore album, mixing EDM and dance-pop with anthemic hooks to create a record that feels like one big, whirlwind night out. B-side sleeper “Everything Changes (But I Won’t)” is already primed to be my top song of the year. Gray’s vocals are the perfect mix of detached and all-consuming, making her songs that much more enticing. And she was certainly citing her sources: songwriting credits include the guitarist for Cobra Starship, Ryland Blackinton, on “Angel of Satisfaction” and synth-pop “Pop the Glock” queen Uffie on “Just Two.” The season change makes this the perfect album to add to your hot summer rooftop pregame playlist.

– Cassidy Sollazzo

Saba and No I.D. – From the Private Collection of Saba and No I.D.

I’ve listened to many great albums this year, but none had me running it back over and over and over again like this one; I probably listened through the full thing about six times the day that it dropped. When people talk about No I.D. these days, a lot of focus is put on the way he’s mentored and influenced other artists, and though that is a huge part of his legacy, I feel like more needs to be said about the fact that he’s still one of the best producers in the game. The beats on this record wrap themselves around you; you can live in them, and they stand up alongside almost anything else in his impressive body of work. Pair that up with Saba, one of Chicago’s greatest storytellers, laying down some of his best verses since Care for Me, and the result is just a beautiful record. The features are all great too, particularly MFnMelo on “Westside Bound Pt. 4,” an absolute gem of a track. I know that I mostly write about emo music, and the people reading this are probably primarily emo listeners, but even if rap isn’t something you listen to regularly, I’d implore you to check this one out (that goes double if you’re from or live in Chicago). Anytime two titans like this link up, it’s a blessing, and though it’s still early, it’s tough for me to imagine anything else coming this year that can top this one. So happy that we have this.

– Josh Ejnes

Tobacco City – Horses

Chicago’s Tobacco City is alt-country in look alone, with mustaches, rattails, and arms full of tattoos, but when the music starts, they deliver pure Conway and Loretta. They are as swingin’-doors a saloon band as Merle Haggard’s Strangers. There’s nothing really “alt” about it; their country sound is authentic and captivating, and their melodies and instrumentation are as unique as they are antique. Horses, their second LP, is more distilled country than their first, and the band has built on that original sound. The songs are airtight, and the lyrics are true 21st-century Americana—strip malls, late-night diners, and struggle. The heroes of the album, without question, are the dual harmonies of bandleader Chris Coleslaw and Lexi Goddard, as well as the pedal steel stylings of Andy “Red” PK. Coleslaw has a classically deadpan-style country voice, like Waylon Jennings or Jay Farrar. Goddard’s heavenly voice laces and loops around like Emmylou Harris or Miranda Lambert. When their voices meet in harmony, they reach a truly ethereal plane. Red lays down pedal steel somewhere between Jerry Garcia on Workingman’s Dead and Lloyd Maines on Anodyne—and he joins Wednesday’s Xandy Chelmis as a titan of the Pedal Steel Moment.

– Caleb Doyle

The Tubs – Cotton Crown

The best export to come out of Wales since Gareth Bale, jangle pop quartet The Tubs have created an album that has already made a permanent home in my rotation for 2025 and further. The songs are packed to the brim with energetic, uptempo guitar strokes to circumvent the melancholy, glum lyrics of vocalist Owen Williams. Williams’ deep, love-scorned voice is a soothing siren that comforts you while he spills his guts out about lost relationships and the tragic, untimely death of his mother. Cotton Crown is a fascinating case study in successfully masking the deeply personal lyrics of Williams that oftentimes venture into darkness with a bright, sunny disposition of music. “Narcissist” and “Strange” will have you feeling like Otto Rocket while surfing on nonstop waves of jangle pop guitar strings. Cotton Crown doesn’t possess a dull moment in its brief twenty-nine-minute runtime. The Tubs have the energy of a spiked Celsius drink with the passion of a grief-stricken poet, making this an instant favorite of mine.

– David Williams

wakelee – Doghouse

Brooklyn indie-emo trio wakelee appeared to me in a particularly ferocious doomscrolling session on TikTok. The band’s video snuck in a substantial three seconds of screentime before I swiped up to feed my ever-insatiable brain rot. However, in those three seconds, the unit introduced some of my favorite music of the year thus far. Doghouse, released on February 7th, is the band at their most confident and commanding.

Ironically, the song that piqued my interest during that fateful doomscrolling bout was track one, “mildlyinteresting.” Starting inquisitively with a hazy arpeggio, the jarring, fat guitar chords kick in before the captivating opening verse strikes. The track explicates vocalist/guitarist Alex Bulmer’s (and clearly my) noxious dependence on being online. The song will not only have you returning for an ungodly amount of repeat listens but also dwelling on all the times you shut the blinds and sought strangers’ advice on Quora.

Equally as catchy but largely less upbeat is the ensuing track, “Bangkok.” Following the same arpeggiated intro as the initial track, it’s here that wakelee takes a much more reclusive and introspective route. Driven by melancholic vocals and guitar melodies, the track paints pictures of leaving relationships with wounds. Hemorrhaging and haunting, Bulmer musters, “It’s not fair, I wish that you could be here.” The rest of the EP is just as fantastic – from more delicate, pensive tracks like “Doghouse” to the alt-rock-dunked anthem, “Gary’s Outcome.” Combining aspects of acts like Remo Drive, Pinegrove, and oso oso, wakelee’s Doghouse is required listening in 2025.

– Brandon Cortez

YHWH Nailgun – 45 Pounds

It’s rare to find a new release that genuinely opens your mind, expanding possibilities of what’s viable within a genre, but YHWH Nailgun do just that on 45 Pounds. Between Sam Pickard’s frantic drumming and Zach Borzone’s delivery that falls in a liminal space between whimpers, grunts, and screams, the rest of the band is left to inject whatever jagged pieces of melody they can. The result is 20 minutes of some of the strangest punk music I’ve heard in my life. Guitars and synthesized noise echo in response to each hollow drum fill, like sheet metal crumpling in response to the hits of a hammer. The individual components sound mechanical, but together, they twitch in ways that feel disturbingly lifelike. As Borzone sputters out seemingly every fear, delusion, or revelation that crosses his mind, a soul makes itself known. Is it pretty? Almost never. Do I dare look away? Not on your life.

– Wes Cochran

March 31, 2022

The Best of Q1 2022

March 31, 2022/ Taylor Grimes

We’re officially a fourth of the way through 2022 (or at the end of “Q1,” as those in the ~industry~ call it), and we’ve been blessed with an absolute glut of incredible new music. In lieu of the monthly roundups we did throughout 2021, I’ve been keeping an ongoing thread of my favorite releases over on Twitter which has helped me keep up on the neverending supply of new music. Now that we’ve crossed this natural beat a quarter of the way through the year, I figured what better time than now to sit down and take stock of my favorite albums released thus far? Here are ten outstanding records from the first few months of 2022 that have already managed to leave an impression on me despite our relatively short time together.

Anxious - Little Green House

It’s easy to listen to Anxious and compare them to Title Fight. Ever since the Pennsylvanian rock group unceremoniously dissolved in 2015, people have always been searching for the “next Title Fight.” While that comparison is ultimately meant as a compliment, Little Green House feels like so much more than superficial worship of a bygone era. If anything, I find myself comparing this band to Adventures, a short-lived yet highly-influential pop-punk side project with just the occasional tinge of hardcore.

Little Green House opens with a flat-out ripper in “Your One Way Street,” a song that kicks off with a killer drum fill and charges forth with a muscular chord progression. The vocals vault from a heartfelt croon to a full-throated scream, eventually falling into a beautiful harmony for the chorus. It’s a two-minute sample platter of everything the band has to offer, wrapped in immaculate production and a self-assured presentation. The hits keep coming with the spring-flavored “In April” and the poppy “Growing Up Song.” Side A closer “Wayne” is a mid-album pit-stop before the raging “Speechless” drops the listener back into the full-throttle embrace. Choices like this lead to the album’s peaks and valleys feeling very well-placed, all of which resolve with a gentle landing on the closing track, “You When You’re Gone.” Little Green House is a fantastic debut that’s clean, catchy, and feels as if it came straight out of the golden age of Run For Cover.

Band of Horses - Things Are Great

Pitched as a return to form, Things Are Great not only evokes the folksy indie rock of the first two Band of Horses albums but also stands on its own as a pleasant, laid-back excursion for the modern age. It’s the musical equivalent of a soft reboot where you don’t need to concern yourself with the official canon, studio rights, or any other needless behind-the-scenes details. All that matters is the collection of ten songs that sit before you and how much they rule.

Back in November, I lamented how often Band of Horses gets lumped in with terribly-aged “Hey Ho” Lumineers-type music while also arguing the deeper virtues of Everything All The Time. Maybe it's just because that deep dive is still fresh, but I can see multiple obvious parallels between the band’s first album and their latest. You’ve got a few free-wheeling singles in “Crutch,” “Lights,” and “In Need of Repair” that coexist beautifully alongside slightly more heady stuff like “Aftermath” and lackadaisical porchside kickbacks like “In The Hard Times.” Things Are Great is everything I could want from a Band of Horses record, and it feels like this release could genuinely stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the group’s first couple of LPs, even if it still feels like the newer younger brother.

Beach House - Once Twice Melody

Look, do I really have to sell you on a new Bach House record? I obviously love the band, but you know exactly what you’re getting into here. A 90-minute affair split into four parts released over four months, Once Twice Melody is the type of album you can throw on and fully submerge yourself in. From the anthemic title track to the trap-drum “Pink Funeral” and the hypnotic “Over and Over,” there’s more than enough to sink your teeth into here. Once Twice Melody is a gold and glossy wonderland perfect for late-night smoke sessions, mid-day make-outs, and everything in between.

Black Country, New Road - Ants From Up There

I can’t remember the last time I heard an album like Ants From Up There… In fact, I may have never heard an album like Ants From Up There. The second LP from Black Country, New Road was preceded– and nearly overshadowed –by the news that lead singer Isaac Wood was departing from the band mere days before the album’s release. While this certainly shifted how Ants From Up There was received and interpreted, I can’t think of a better note to end one’s career on than this collection of songs. This record is heartfelt and heartwrenching, finding a group of young creatives at various crossroads in their personal and professional lives. The lyrics are poetic and abstract yet hit upon extremely personal struggles. The songs bend and wind in unexpected ways, expanding and contracting under the weight of their own anguish and celebration.

I wrote about this record (in my own incredibly abstract way) back when it was first released, and in the time since then, it has become symbolic of so many things to me. Closely tied to what is now a fully-fledged relationship with someone I feel incredibly lucky to know and love, this album means more to me than I can possibly put into a few-hundred-word blurb. This album speaks to me in ways that I never knew I needed and now represents something much bigger than the songs found within its walls. I love this record, I love my partner, and I feel lucky to have these memories and emotions tied to a single work of art so concretely. Much like the album itself, these feelings are bigger than any one song or sentiment. Ants is an insurmountable work that brushes up against the inarticulable in a way that has helped me understand my own life and love on a deeper level.

Camp Cope - Running with the Hurricane

It’s been four years since How To Socialize and Make Friends, and I am glad Camp Cope is back. Captivating as ever, Running with the Hurricane centers around the trifecta that made the group’s prior work so compelling; Georgia Maq’s iconic voice, Kelly-Dawn Helmrich’s bouncy basswork, and Sarah Thompson’s steady drumming holding everything together. It’s a triad that has driven this band apart from every other pier in their field and resulted in some of the most distinct output in the indie/emo sphere.

Running with the Hurricane follows similar beats as previous Camp Cope LPs, buoyed by the stunning opener “Caroline” and the explosive, rolling heartland rock of its title track. The band winds through relationships, strife, and loss throughout the intervening seven songs, eventually landing on the cathartic “Sing Your Heart Out,” which I am man enough to admit that I openly sobbed to. Camp Cope is a band unlike any other, with a voice and a sound as outspoken as the members themselves. It’s good to have them back.

Carly Cosgrove - See You In Chemistry

An iCarly-themed emo band. That’s the elevator pitch for Carly Cosgrove, and odds are you will either balk at that or be sold immediately depending on your age and tolerance for committing to the bit. While the band’s schtick is funny and novel, the good news is (beyond their song titles and the occasional veiled reference), your enjoyment of this album is not dependent on your knowledge of mid-aughts Nickelodeon sitcoms.

Going into this record, my main concern was the same with most emo LPs: will I like this for a full 40+ minutes? This genre is so entrenched in EPs, singles, and splits, and it’s pretty common for that bite-sized energy not to translate into a full-length record. I’m happy to report that Carly Cosgrove nailed it, though. Like any good emo band, the opening track “Sit ‘n’ Bounce” ignites with crowd-churning midwest guitar taps and clap-inspiring kick drums which immediately brings the energy up to a 10. Over the course of its 43-minute runtime, the band lays confessional and hyper-relatable lyrics about anxiety, mental health, and living in extremes over dynamic and ever-shifting instrumentation. See You In Chemistry is excellently sequenced, superbly written, even sticks the landing with an 8-minute closing track, a feat for any band, much less one this young. The result is an energetic and youthful debut that’s affable, affirming, and firmly committed to its vision.

Chastity - Suffer Summer

Much like Dazy, Chastity is a one-man project concerned with fuzzy grunge riffs and utterly immaculate hooks. Holding equal reverence for both Smashing Pumpkins and Jimmy Eat World, Suffer Summer is an album composed of breezy pop-punk tracks that gradually melt, giving way to the heaviness of reality. Each song boasts an earworm chorus, often in the form of a single infinitely-repeatable phrase, making it easy to belt along. Tracks like “Pummeling” feel as if they could have wormed their way into an early-2000s movie soundtrack right alongside the likes of heavy-hitters like “All The Small Things” and “The Middle.” Once the listener has acclimated to the sunnier sound of its first few songs, Suffer Summer takes some unexpected half-steps into neighboring genres and heavier topics, offering a fulfilling journey in just 34 minutes.

Cloakroom - Dissolution Wave

Due solely to when it was released, Dissolution Wave essentially acted as the definitive close to my Obsessive Shoegaze Winter. I was in a dark place for a few months there, and this record felt like the perfect way to finally find closure and pull myself out of that spiral. A high-concept album pitched as a “space western in which an act of theoretical physics wipes out all of humanity’s existing art and abstract thought,” Dissolution Wave bears all the fuzzy, wobbly, soul-crushing riffs you can hope for from a shoegaze act as legendary as Cloakroom. There are catchy cuts like “A Force at Play,” bleary stoner rock tone on “Fear of Being Fixed,” and even some woozy countrygaze on “Doubts.” Despite its sky-high concept, Dissolution Wave remains an accessible shoegaze LP that offers an excellent case for the best of what the genre has to offer.

Drunk Uncle - Look Up

Look, I can’t help it; I love that tappy shit. There’s something about my brain where it hears good midwest emo and releases a truckload of dopamine without fail. Does that sound goofy and extremely on-brand? Sure, but who am I to question it? Luckily for myself and others like me, Drunk Uncle brings the riffage in spades on their debut album. Released on the legendary label Count Your Lucky Stars, Look Up already had all the makings of a classic emo record before it even dropped.

The album kicks off with a bouncy jostle and full-throated caterwaul. The tapping begins almost immediately, which, when paired with these remorseful wails, fills the Marietta-shaped hole in my heart. The sound remains remarkably consistent from the clappy lead single “Depakote” to the arid “Blue Skies,” but things take an unexpected electronic ascent mid-album. The band wanders from heartbreak to pensive ambient stretches before resolving tenaciously on the album’s horn-adored title track. It may be a modest 33-minute album from a band with a goofy name, but Look Up is pretty much everything I could ever want from an emo record. There’s no doubt in my mind that this album would be viewed as a classic within the genre if it had been released ten or even five years earlier. If there’s any justice in this world, Look Up will find its audience and eventually achieve that status in due time.

Proper. - The Great American Novel

The Great American Novel is a tome in album form. A densely-packed 15 tracks clocking in at just under an hour, the third LP from the Brooklyn-based indie rock group acts as a dispatch on life in America. Firmly rooted in its creator's perspective as a trio of Black creatives existing in primarily white spaces, this album is an unflinching dissection of everyday life in a country that alternates between indifference and outright objection to your existence.

This album is a sharp synthesis of countless vital topics, and a huge part of what makes it such an exhilarating listen is how wide-set the scope is. Songs navigate everything from the music industry and masculinity to meaningless sex and complicated family trees, all in concise and compelling ways. Amongst these topics, the band also weaves a throughline of heavier, more complex subjects like systemic racism, the prison industrial complex, and the idea of identity and belonging. These are all inextricable facts of life for the band members of Proper, which is reflected in these songs in a beautifully heartbreaking way. Musically, the range of genres on display is just as diverse as the lyrics, with sounds stemming from a baseline of emo-flavored indie rock but stretching to shreddy heavy metal guitar, pitch-shifted spoken word passages, pissed-off beatdown vent sessions, and System of a Down-style political takedowns. Somehow, The Great American Novel lives up to its name; an impressive, diverse, and powerful document that offers an essential perspective on topics that can sometimes feel too big to broach, much less compartmentalize into a single song.

February 17, 2022

Cry On, Space Cowboy: Cloakroom's 'Doubts' Sings the Sorrows

February 17, 2022/ Connor Fitzpatrick

Have you ever heard a song so affective that it ruined a band for you? It’s the sort of song that infiltrates every fiber of your being and sinks its claws deep into your soul. It becomes a fascination as you play it on repeat or skip straight to it. You feel that the song was made only for you. Anything else from the artist, no matter the quality, is rendered meaningless because you have this one song, and for you, that is enough.

I have this relationship with Cloakroom’s “Doubts.” The penultimate track from the Indiana stonergazers new album Dissolution Wave leaves me breathless with each lesson. It’s a relatively simple song, four short verses, a couple of short breaks, and a gentle guitar solo that plays as the music drifts to a close, but it’s how the band puts it all together that makes “Doubts” so special. Cloakroom are masters of texture, and they put their skills on display here. Negative space is filled with pristine guitar chords, and while infrequent, each strum is purposeful and emotive. A low, purring bassline provides warmth as a patient drum pattern crackles in the background. All of this is befitting of the album’s space-western concept as Doyle Martin’s lyrics feel like the slow-moving thoughts of an astronaut floating away in the ever-expanding universe.

I find the song chilling, and I believe it is the most beautiful thing Cloakroom has recorded. Maybe I’m too close-minded, but I don’t need anything else from the group. That’s not to say that I don’t think their bone-crushing riffs don’t do it for me, but when I put on “Doubts,” there’s nowhere else in the world I’d rather be than in those four minutes.

As I realized that I kept returning to the song, I tried to puzzle out why. Each time I listened, I found myself getting hung up on this brief guitar motif trying to think of what it reminded me of. After a week of it looping in my head, I realized that it’s reminiscent of a melody in “Goddamn Lonely Love” by Drive-By Truckers, a song with which I have a similar relationship. Now, I’m accusing Cloakroom of being copycats, but I can’t unhear what I’ve heard. In fact, I’m thankful for this great-minds-think-alike moment because the two songs have so much in common beyond some short melodies.

Like “Doubts,” “Goddamn Lonely Love” is a wistful yet gorgeous tune. Jason Isbell might sing his blues with more gusto than Martin, but both are blue nonetheless. These songs traffic in sorrow and regret more than they do in outright pain and misery. Upon this revelation, it became clear to me that much like “Goddamn Lonely Love,” “Doubts” is tears-in-your-beer music. It’s the kind of song destined to play over the speakers of a gloomy bar while a sad cowboy huddles over his third round of a beer and a shot combo. This, my friends, is very much my shit. While I may be just another city boy, I routinely find myself sympathizing with depressed plains walkers. Like these melancholic rancheros, I am not inclined to divulge my feelings. Healthy or not, I know I can always find solace in the company of songs like these.

I have no idea if Cloakroom intended to link themselves to crestfallen troubadours such as Isbell, Jason Molina, and the unimpeachably dolorous Townes Van Zandt, but this style of music fits them so well. They’ve hinted at their appreciation of this brand of song with covers of Songs: Ohia and Tom Petty, but this feels like their first true foray into downtrodden cowpoke-dom. Their interpretation of the tradition is earnest and done without pastiche. With “Doubts,” the band has hit upon something timeless, which is why I can, and will, listen to it forever.

Connor lives in San Francisco with his partner and their cat and dog, Toni and Hachi. Connor is a student at San Francisco State University and is working toward becoming a community college professor. When he isn’t listening to music or writing about killer riffs, Connor is obsessing over coffee and sandwiches.

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