The Best of November 2021

A strange thing happened when I sat down to look at my list of albums and EPs that were released this November… Nothing really grabbed me. Sure there were a few big albums and some deep cuts for mega fans, but nothing that I felt compelled to cover in a monthly roundup. That’s no fault of the artists, more a byproduct of the music industry combined with my declining desire to “keep up” with new music at this time of year. Things tend to grind to a halt around the holidays, and I’m brave enough to admit that I’m more checked-out than I have been all year. 

Interestingly, when looking through my monthly Spotify playlist, there were a lot of singles that came out in November which I enjoyed, so I’m pivoting this (probably) final roundup of 2021 to focus on my favorite songs that were released over the past month.

Greet Death - “Your Love Is Alcohol”

Deathwish Inc.

I simply cannot stop listening to Greet Death. Seriously. Almost every time I’m ****** and don’t know what I want to listen to, I’ll just throw on this playlist and let their discography roll from the top. “Your Love is Alcohol” is the newest single from the band, following the awesomely dour “I Hate Everything” from a couple of months back. It’s still unclear whether these songs are building up to a full LP or are just one-off singles, but either way, I’m consuming them voraciously. For the most part, both songs drop Greet Death’s trademarked fuzzy shoegaze riffs and swap that distortion for something the band is describing as “Blackened Post-Alt-Country.”

Given its title, the band’s latest song could easily veer into hyper-unoriginal “your love is a drug” type territory; however, Greet Death deftly avoid this hackneyed sentiment in favor of something far more ownable. The track features a laid-back lounge singer soundscape led by a gorgeous piano and acoustic guitar. There’s a nice little harmonica solo, a cool reversed effect on the drums, and lyrics that hinge on pain and abandonment. It’s literally everything I want from my music. Greet Death forever.

Glass Beach - “orchids (playlist version)”

Run For Cover Records

In 2019 Glass Beach released their unforgettable debut album. Packed with songs of community, longing, and Christmas lights, the first glass beach album is a landmark record that sits at the intersection of emo and electronic music. The band’s debut has (rightfully) garnered a fervent fanbase over the last two years, but there was one problem; “orchids,” the album’s epic closing track, ends with roughly 30 seconds of meditative silence, and some fans didn’t like that. Early on in November, the band joked that their second album would “be the first album but with no silence at the end of orchids and silence added to the end every other song.” It quickly became a meme reinforced by fans and the band alike. Soon after that, the group dropped “orchids (playlist version),” an identical version of the 2019 song but with no silence at the end. Simply revolutionary. This, of course, led to further jokes, but also a good reason for the non-diehards to revisit the band’s first LP. Is it cheating to include what’s essentially a two-year-old song on a roundup of new releases? Maybe. Does that make “orchids” slap any less? Absolutely not. 

Caracara - “Hyacinth”

Memory Music

If there were any justice in the world, Caracara would be lauded with the same level of reverence as emo gods like The Hotelier and TWIABP. Sure they’re only 1.5 records deep into their career, but man, those 1.5 records we have so far are fantastic. Throughout their 60-ish minutes of recorded music, the band expertly wields remorseful emo sentiments over arid indie rock instrumentals for firey emotional outpourings. Songs like “Better” deserve to be as iconic as tracks like “Your Deep Rest” or “The Night I Drove Alone.” Caracara’s songs wind from natural wonder on “Crystalline” to left-field Foxing-style instrumentation on “Prenzlauerberg.” It’s evident that the band has depth, talent, and artistic vision; it’s just a matter of finding their audience and unleashing their sound upon them at the right time. The group’s newest single, “Hyacinth,” reassembles all of Caracara’s distinguishing elements for a bite-sized three-minute re-introduction to the band as they plot out their long-deserved indie rock domination.

The Wonder Years - “Threadbare”

Hopeless Records

The Wonder Years have been my favorite band for over a decade now. I’ve written about this love at length before, but that ten-year figure speaks for itself. Whether through the main band, solo projects, or some combination of the two, this group has released something substantial every year for the last decade, making them an immensely rewarding group of creatives to follow. Back in 2008, The Wonder Years released a song called “Christmas at 22,” which (as the title implies) talks about the holiday season from a fresh-faced, youthful perspective. In that song, the band talks about house parties, seeing childhood friends during the holidays, and subsisting on frozen pizza. Now, over a decade later, the group has released their second-ever Christmas song in “Threadbare.” It should come as no surprise that this one-off single reflects the decade-plus of maturity that the members have built up in the intervening years. Now discussing their families and loved ones with the reverence of wisened family men, “Threadbare” is a touching release that feels more like getting a holiday card from an old friend you still love but don’t talk to nearly as often as you should. 

Guitar Fight From Fooly Cooly - “Pyramid” 

Self-released

Last year, Guitar Fight From Fooly Cooly racked up a placement on our 2020 AOTY list for their debut album Soak. Featuring jittery instrumentals, tappy guitars, and skull-crushing breakdowns, Soak was a fun, energetic, and youthful emo record that genuinely feels like a torchbearer for the true spirit of the genre. This month, the group released “Pyramid,” a one-off addendum to last year’s impressive output which bears many of the same qualities. There’s shreddy guitar, gnashing bass, and snare that sound like a fucking dodgeball. It’s bouncy, fist-balling fun that culminates in a hardcore breakdown that will undoubtedly set off every live show the band puts on for the end of time.

Floating Room - Shima

Famous Class

I lied; this roundup won’t be all singles because Floating Room released the awesome Shima early on in November, and I simply have to write about it. Throughout this four-track EP, the Portland-based dream rock group helmed by Maya Stoner wafts from punchy punk rock to swaying shoegaze with ease. Whether penning love songs or bowling the listener over with raw emotions, Shima is a breathtaking 11 minutes of music. The heart of this EP comes at the end with “Shimanchu,” a blistering 3-minute song about feeling ostracized and tokenized in almost any given community. The band describes this track as both “a paean to Stoner's Uchinanchu heritage and a retort to the condescension she faces daily as an Asian American woman.” It’s a ferocious, catchy, and compelling song with a vital message (and a fun music video) that has already begun to find its audience.

Carly Cosgrove - “Munck”

Wax Bodega

When I first uncovered Carly Cosgrove, the band felt like a revelation. An iCarly-themed emo band? What a perfect four-word pitch. I may have been just-too-old to ride the iCarly Train, but I respect any group of creatives that can find each other, bond, and create art over such a specific shared interest. After cultivating their audience with an EP in 2019, and a double in 2020, “Munck” seems to be the launchpad lead single for the group’s yet-to-be-revealed upcoming full-length album. Both sonically and lyrically, “Munck” feels like the closest thing I’ve heard to a band picking up the baton laid down by Modern Baseball in 2016; an incredibly promising emo rock cut by a group of young creatives who are staying true to themselves. Here’s where I’d sneak in an iCarly reference if I ever watched the show, so I’ll just leave this here instead.

Wild Pink - “Florida”

Royal Mountain Records

Whenever an artist warns, “this song really picks up around the seven-minute mark,” I am in. Some people may hear that and tune out, but as I’ve recently discovered, that’s extremely my shit. The newest single from Wild Pink is a woozy nine-minute epic that also doubles as a perfect cap to a busy year. After dropping one of 2021’s first serious AOTY contenders in February, the New York-based heartland rock outfit has since released an EP, covers, collabs, and even a live album, all within the last 12 months. I loved them all, but with each release I thought, ‘surely that’s it,’ then lead singer John Ross found another way to breathe life back into the world of his particular blend of indie rock Americana. In what is surely the capper to a banner year for the project, “Florida” acts as a long and winding thank you to a year spent together. 

Quick Hits

For the sake of completion regarding November, we also had some excellent reviews from guest writers this month about the new releases from Snarls and Delta Sleep which I heartily endorse. 

Greet Death – I Hate Everything | Single Review

New misanthropy anthem just dropped!

Michigan shoegazers Greet Death have returned with “I Hate Everything,” their first single since 2019’s New Hell. The track is more of a changeup than a curveball; gone are the soul-crushing of the guitars and bass of their previous songs, in their place are gently strummed acoustic chords and faint drum patterns. There’s still a sick guitar solo, but even it feels restrained in comparison to the soaring solos of songs like “You’re Gonna Hate What You’ve Done.”

When I listen to “I Hate Everything,” I can’t help but think of “Crush,” the penultimate song on New Hell. Both tracks have an almost pop-like quality while still featuring some of the band’s most dour lyrics. “Crush” is a tranquil little diddy propped up by a gorgeous slide guitar motif as Logan Gaval sings of a heartbreak that has him fantasizing “different ways [his] body could die.” Sonically, the song is soft and gentle, yet lyrically, the content is nothing short of arresting. It serves as a sort of palette cleanser for New Hell, priming the lister for the punishing ten-minute title track that comes in its wake. 

Much like “Crush,” “I Hate Everything” doesn’t need to be loud to make itself heard. Sam Boyhtari acts as the song’s storyteller, laying out the mundane existence of a functioning depressive. Boyhtari’s lyrics and delivery sound like Andy Shauf making a Songs: Ohia record; clear and conversational, but incredibly dark. He’s getting wasted on Thursdays, sitting in meetings, and taking pictures of dead birds on the street. It’s a sad and lonely life, but in many ways, it’s not too different from what a lot of people are going through. Being depressed doesn’t make someone unique, but everyone’s depression is unique to them. You can traverse through a seemingly normal life and still be in immense pain; it’s not an either-or situation.

I know my analysis of the song might feel like a lot, so I want to make it clear that I love “I Hate Everything.” I love Greet Death’s colossal sound, but what makes their music truly special is that it is so validating. Life really fucking sucks sometimes, and Greet Death get that. As of now, it’s unclear if this track is the precursor of a new album or if it’s just a one-off single, but either way, I’m excited to see the band tweaking their sound while also remaining true to the sound of their previous releases. Not only are they tinkering with their music, but with their lineup as well. “I Hate Everything” sees Jackie Kalmink entering the fold as the band’s bassist and recording/engineer of this song, officially turning Greet Death into a four-piece. I don’t think the band has completely abandoned their loud shoegaze sound, but it’s clear that even without crushing guitars, Greet Death will always be heavy.

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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.

Follow him on Twitter or Instagram.

The Relatable Suffering Of Greet Death

When most people think of Flint, Michigan, one thing typically pops to mind: the Flint Water Crisis. They know it’s a depressed town in the midwest that has uncovered larger systemic issues. A city that has been failed by its own government, whose people have been left for dead because of extreme income inequality and poverty. I’ve been to Flint once, maybe twice, and I can confirm that there’s a reason it’s become symbolic for all those things. It’s no fault of Flint; they are a symptom of capitalism. A casualty of corporate greed sucking the life out of the towns that once aided to capitalistic gain, now drained and discarded.

Greet Death is a shoegaze band from Flint, Michigan, and they embody this same type of deep-seated betrayal, bitterness, and sorrow in their music. But like any other citizen of Flint, Greet Death aren’t content to just give up and lie down; they are going to continue, they are going to create, and they are going to persevere. Not only that, they are going to thrive and live to tell the story. 

The type of profound misery found in Greet Death’s discography isn’t unique. There are songs of heartbreak and hard decisions found in everything from emo to Americana. What makes Greet Death different is how they translate that sense of lumbering existential dread into their instrumentals. The type of heaviness that the band experiences in life is carried over into their production, their lyrics, and their song structures. This isn’t some over-the-top stoner rock heaviness where the bass is fuzzed-out because it sounds good to a college freshman doing bong rips; in Greet Death’s case, heaviness is the only way to do these stories justice. 

The group combines this distorted, shoegazey instrumental bed with the unique vocal stylings of bassist Sam Boyhtari and guitarist Logan Gaval. Helmed primarily by Boyhtari, his soft, higher-pitched croon provide a nice counterpoint to the heaviness of the band’s instrumentals. It humanizes the tracks in a way that makes the dense fog feel slightly more bearable. Meanwhile, Gaval lends a bit of a clearer more ‘poppy’ sensibility to the band… poppy only in the sense that, when compared to everything else, the songs that Gaval sings are downright catchy by comparison.

Take all of these elements and place them over the sway of Jim Versluis’ consistently impressive drumming, and you have Greet Death. Together the band has released two albums, a 7", and an Audiotree live, all amounting to exactly two hours of dense, smoky, riff-filled music that captures a sense of dread unlike anything I’ve ever heard. 

I use the word ‘dread,’ but even now, after multiple re-reads and edit passes, don’t think I can find anything better. Greet Death’s music is at once sinister and foreboding yet comforting and ritualistic. There’s a sense of something cataclysmically evil lurking just on the edge of your peripheral vision, yet your eyes can only fixate on what’s right in front of you. The songs are dark, moody, and crushing, but they also possess this sort of magic that keeps you coming back. They aren’t catchy in a singalong way, but they embed themselves somewhere deep within your psyche and keep you coming back for more. 

Anyone familiar with the shoegaze and dream-pop genres will likely know exactly what I’m talking about. The same way that Slowdive is peaceful yet existential. The same way that Hum is warm yet morbid. The same way that Mazzy Star is relaxing yet sorrowful. It’s that mix of contradicting feelings that both captivate and confuse. 

Greet Death is part of a new class of shoegaze acts integrating unique stylistic elements in order to flesh out corners of the genre that were previously unexplored. Bands like Holy Fawn, Gleemer, Narrow Head, and Clearbody, all of whom are taking cues from different genres and melding them into the shoegaze sound to increasingly-impressive effect. Greet Death is taking more inspiration from stoner rock and post-rock, two genres very near and dear to my heart, so it would follow that the music from the Flint natives clicks with my brain particularly well. 

When I first heard Dixieland, the band’s debut, I’ll admit I wasn’t all that impressed. I knew the band was part of the Michigan DIY scene, one heavily populated with dime-a-dozen emo bands, so honestly, I was probably just surprised to not hear guitar tapping within the first few seconds. My turning point on the band came in 2019 when they released New Hell and it made its way onto my album of the year list within the space of about one month. 

Throughout 2020 New Hell has been an album I’ve returned to on an almost weekly, sometimes daily basis. It has become a comfort album, one that I can rely on and call upon at any time. I can come into New Hell in any emotional or mental state and emerge on the other side completely changed. 

What first drew me to New Hell were the other, more familiar sounds that I heard in the band. There was a folksy Alex G-like twang on “Let It Die,” there was stoner rock riffage on tracks like “Strain,” and these elements proved familiar enough for me to give the band a second chance. From there, I began to fall in love with characteristics unique to the record, the molten guitar solo on “You’re Gonna Hate What You’ve Done,” the deliciously fuzzed-out tone on “Strange Days,” and the hypnotic lyricism on “Entertainment.” The band caps it all off with an epic ten-minute closing track that explains the album’s namesake and wades the listener off with an instrumental bed that twists and winds to its inevitable conclusion. In the final minutes of the album, the band pairs Boyhtari’s singing with Gaval’s screams, mirroring each other over a towering riff that’s nothing short of soul-destroying. It’s one of the best closing tracks I’ve ever heard and wraps the album up in such a compelling, emotional way that’s both thought-provoking and motivating. 

I soon realized the album’s power. Every time I hit play on the record, I began to recognize the almost-tangible effects it had on my surroundings. No matter what environment I listened to the album in, New Hell was a record that poured out of the speakers and eventually grew to permeate every corner of whatever room I found myself in. The songs creaked, rumbled, and reverberated, bouncing around the walls of my brain and leaving me emotionally-drained in their wake. Now, this might not sound fun, but this is exactly what I want from my music sometimes. 

After dozens of relistens to New Hell, I ventured back into Dixieland and discovered that, unexpectedly, the band’s debut carries the same heft as their sophomore effort. There’s a different wrapper on them, but the nine songs on Dixieland hit the exact same fold of my brain as the nine found on New Hell. Songs like “Bow” use the same lyrical device as “Entertainment,” repeating one phrase over and over again until it morphs from poetic to hypnotic. Meanwhile, “Black Hole Jesus Christ” is probably the most dynamic track on the album, gradually shifting from reverb-laden soundscapes and ballad-like deliveries to an ascending post-rock instrumental that beckons you to join it over at the edge of the universe. Best of all, both “The Waste” and “Cumbersome” are hulking, monstrous seven-minute tracks that act as tentpoles for their respective sides of the album. These songs gradually carve their riffs into your head and leave you to wade through the emotional wreckage once they’re over. 

After multiple listens of Dixieland, I found myself reevaluating the two records as part of a larger oeuvre. I began to believe that they are actually connected in some way. Obviously, they’ve come from the same minds, but perhaps there’s a deeper connective tissue between these two records than I previously realized. 

After my many, many, many relistens to New Hell, I've crafted a defined opinion on the album, more explicitly on its thesis. Greet Death don’t strike me as the type to over-explain their songs. In their Audiotree session, Gaval explains the surprisingly nonchalant origin of the album’s title, specifically, a shitty retail job where things were always going wrong, which led his co-worker to joke that ‘every day is a new hell.’ While that anecdote explains the origins of the album’s namesake, it’s a far cry from explaining what the term means to the band or even within the context of the record’s nine songs. This is all a long-winded way of me saying that everything from here on out is solely my interpretation of Greet Death’s music and what the band is trying to say.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder - Netherlandish Proverbs (1559)

The cover of New Hell reminds me of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s work, specifically Netherlandish Proverbs and The Triumph of Death. I know between me using the word ‘oeuvre’ and name-dropping 16th-century renaissance painters, your Pretentious Douchebag Alarm is probably going off loud as hell, but I promise all of this will make sense soon. 

These paintings (as recently popularized by the Fleet Foxes and It Came At Night, respectively) are mid-sized hyper-detailed oil paintings that depict, in a word, chaos. Netherlandish Proverbs is meant to offer literal illustrations of Dutch-language proverbs and idioms; these include people on fire, someone slaughtering a sheep, and (what appears to be) a twisted form of inter-species fellatio à la that one shot from The Shining. Meanwhile, The Triumph of Death is a more brutal and straightforward painting meant to literally depict hell on earth. In this painting, the skies are filled with smoke and adopt an orange hue. Armies of undead skeletons are funneling the last few surviving humans into some sort of torture chamber while others mutilate, brutalize, and otherwise torment the corpses of the recently deceased. These paintings are both brutal in different ways. For example, one is a quaint rustic town scene that becomes more twisted and disturbing the longer you look at it. The other is just outright violent and spiritually unquieting.  

Pieter Bruegel the Elder - The Triumph of Death (1562)

To me, the cover to New Hell created by Liam Rush achieves the same effect. It’s a twisted, violent, disorienting mix of human bodies and demon forms. The humans are either curled up helpless or screaming in agony as sadistic demons rip hearts from chests and cleave bodies in half. There are skeletons, serpents, fire, and fangs. It’s a detailed, ornate, gold-tinted depiction of literal hell, much like The Triumph of Death. Still, there are telltale signs of the earth we know scattered throughout the carnage; a cop car on fire, a radio tower, a factory topped with smokestacks. These are all references to lyrics within the album but also serve as remnants of the world we know hidden beneath the more immediate layer of damnation.  

While there is some degree of interpretive flexibility within the record, for the most part, it feels like the band is taking this name and applying it more loosely. The “New Hell” they talk about in the album is different for every listener. Sometimes it’s an emotional hell, sometimes it’s a physical hell, sometimes it’s literally just the biblical hell. At least that’s what I get from it, and that’s what makes New Hell an excellent record: these songs and their meanings, are different for everyone who listens to them. 

By contrast, Dixieland takes many of these stylistic cues mentioned above but applies them to a more grounded environment. The songs are still lofty, lumbering, and even metaphorical at times, but they are firmly rooted in the band’s lived experience growing up in Flint. According to the Pitchfork review, Dixieland gets its name from a flea market in the band’s hometown. This is foundational in the album’s creation and the band’s observations of their surroundings, but it also acts as a stand-in for any number of abandoned midwest towns that have been left to rot by our government and society. 

Dixieland is depicting a different type of hell, one that the band was born into, has lived through, and continues to exist in. It's a hyper-specific and grounded depiction of their environment; the music is merely the result of that environment, the band's best attempt at formulating the feelings of their world into a song.  

That is why Greet Death appeals to me on such a deep level. Not only does the band borrow the sludgy tones and grandiose song structures of genres that I already love, but they depict a feeling and an emotion that I’ve only experienced while living in Detroit. They capture this sense of hopelessness, of abject sadness, of the oppressive indifference of reality, and they do it better than anyone I’ve ever heard.

In other words, New Hell is a metaphorical version of hell that can be interpreted as literal, while Dixieland depicts a literal type of misery and torment that feels biblical. They’re two sides to the same coin, both using varying degrees of interpretation and metaphor to pack their message in. Both albums use the same type of slow, brutal instrumentation to batter the listener with riff after riff, forcing them into understanding this type of sadness, first through sympathy on Dixieland, then later by empathy on New Hell. They are two records that work together towards a collective understanding of humanity, suffering, and divinity. The band is able to juxtapose these external elements of everyday sadness with a deeply-understood internal sorrow, and I feel like I have a better understanding of the world as a result. 

PHOTO: Kris Herrmann

Swim Into The Sound's 20 Favorite Albums of 2019

Music moved too fast for me in 2019. Last year I listened to over 450 new releases and wrote reviews for nearly one-quarter of them. This year I listened to less, I wrote about less, and felt more out of the loop than ever before. I still managed to make it out to a ton of concerts, kept a long-running list of new albums, and discovered some cool stuff along the way, but I’ll be the first to admit there’s a lot that passed me by in 2019. 

In addition to my lack of exploratory listening, this was also a year of “good-to-great” for me. Not only did this year lack a unanimous critical darling (I refuse to acknowledge NFR), there wasn’t even one breakaway album that I heavily connected with until about halfway through the year.

For some reason, once summer rolled around, things really started to pop off, and an avalanche of new albums led to what honestly felt like a new phase of my life. This mountain of new music, combined with moving across the country (again) this time to Denver, really made 2019 feel like multiple years packed into one. 

I may have listened to less “new” music than ever before, but last year taught me that’s an exhausting endeavor to undertake. Instead, this year I found myself discovering albums that I loved and burrowing I to them like a security blanket. Most of the albums you’re about to read about connected with me immediately upon first listen, but also went on to become something that I could return to often. Instead of listening to a critical darling, thinking ‘this feels important,’ and returning to it very few times, this year I listened to what I wanted to, and I think this list reflects that. That means this list has a more narrow scope than any previous album of the year list I’ve ever published on this site, but it feels true to me and true to my experience this year.

These are the albums that soundtracked my year. Not only that, these are the albums that made my year. That made me feel welcome. That made me feel grounded. That made me feel at home, even when I was thousands of miles away from my friends and family. These are the records that I listened to and saw a piece of myself in. These are my favorite releases of 2019. 

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20 | King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Infest the Rats’ Nest

As is the case with most people, my first foray into music was hyper-uncool. Aside from digging through my dad’s CD collection and mindlessly consuming whatever was served up to me on VH1, the first albums I ever spent my own money on were Motörhead’s Ace of Spades and Anthrax’s Attack of the Killer B’s. One of the first new records I ever purchased was Black Tide’s Light from Above, which retroactively, wasn’t particularly “cool,” but makes sense in the grand scheme of things. Given this early childhood brush with various forms of heavy metal, it’s easy to see why Infest the Rats’ Nest feels like an album tailor-made for me. 

I’ve never been a big King Gizzard guy, I respect the high-concept albums, the hustle of releasing five albums in one year, and the overall energy of the band’s live performances, but it wasn’t until this year that that band finally created the album I’ve been waiting for them to make. Featuring red-hot guitar licks, boisterous, driving rhythm sections, and snarling heavy metal vocals, this is Gizz’s heaviest album to date. It’s a mix of speed metal, stoner rock, whacky 80’s hair metal, and borderline-prog all rolled into one. It genuinely feels like the band took that first collection of CDs on my middle school iPod Mini and modernized it in the best way possible. It’s a goofy album, but that’s kind of the point. The band is at their best when they’re not taking themselves too seriously or trying too hard, and Rat’s Nest comes off as an effortless love letter to the albums that my entire musical taste is built off of. 

19 | Bon Iver - i,i

Three months before Justin Vernon began to tease Bon Iver’s newest album, I published a career retrospective that hypothesized the band’s discography had only gotten stranger and more removed from reality as it went on (in a good way). I’ve come to love it all, but this newest record proved that once you travel far out enough, the only direction to go is back. If 22, A Million was Justin Vernon as a glittering meteorite far off in space, then i,i is the sound of his soul returning to earth. Blending elements of all the band’s previous releases, i,i takes pieces from the group’s folk, baroque pop, and electronic phases and combines them all into something that ties a neat bow on the band. It’s holistic and fulfilling, the long-awaited conclusion to over one decade of heartbreak and growth. If this is where Bon Iver decides to call it quits, then it would be a satisfactory finale. 

18 | Charli XCX - Charli

There are few things more cliche than a music journalist invoking the phrase “future of pop” when talking about Charli XCX. The reason that phenomenon has become so widespread is because it’s hard to listen to Charli’s music and place it anywhere on the musical spectrum that currently exists. It sounds like pop; it’s approachable, singable, and incredibly-well produced, but it’s also glitchy, bassy, and laden with so many other genres that it genuinely feels like the near-future amalgamation of all pop culture. It’s the re-introduction to the monoculture, should we be so lucky. 

Charli finds our would-be pop princess of the future actualizing herself (and her music) in a way that she never has before. Charli XCX songs tend to be about one of two things: partying, or the comedown. Aided by a star-studded lineup of musicians, Charli makes some of her most poppy (“1999”), emotional (“Thoughts”), and hard-hitting (“Click”) music to date. There are choruses worthy of a Taylor Swift album alongside bars worthy of a Young Thug mixtape, and in that duality lies the raw power of Charli XCX.

17 | Heart Attack Man - Fake Blood

Earlier this year, Heart Attack Man’s guitarist, lead singer, and social media mastermind Eric Egan made headlines when he posted a (normal, average, nothing-out-of-the-ordinary) orange beanie on eBay and racked up a bid of nearly 100k dollars. This meme-worthy auctioneering move brought the band to the attention of traditional music publications and earned them swaths of new listeners (myself included). When they released their sophomore album Fake Blood several months later, it immediately became clear that the band is good at a lot more than generating headlines. 

Taking a guitar-first approach to pop-punk, the group crafted eleven immaculate tracks that are somehow catchy, moshable, touching, and personable, oftentimes all at once. Songs like “Fake Blood” and “Out For Blood” lean heavier into the catchy pop side of things sounding like they could have come straight off a late-90’s alt radio station. Meanwhile, deeper cuts like “Cut My Losses” and “Sugar Coated” find Egan bearing his teeth and spitting bile at whoever finds themselves unfortunate enough to fall within his crosshairs. Personal favorites “Rats In a Bucket” and “Crisis Actor” are riff-centered singalongs that feature addicting hooks, biting commentary, and even a reading of the Miranda Rights that manages to sound heavy as fuck. Fake Blood feels like the best example of what pop-punk can achieve in 2019; a perfect mix of studio polish, well-paced energy, stellar songwriting, and just the right amount of heaviness sprinkled throughout. It may be 17 on our list, but if there were an award for the most crowd-hyping, guitar-shredding, hard-hitting pop-punk record, then this would be number one.

16 | Field Medic - fade into the dawn

I first discovered Field Medic in a freak playlist accident, and have been deeply in love ever since. Combining Bob Dylan-esque deliveries, jaunty folk ditties, boombox-led bangers, alongside some of the most poetic love songs I’ve ever heard, Kevin Patrick Sullivan offers a hyper-modern take on folk music. fade into the dawn was on my radar from the moment it was announced and somehow did not disappoint my exceedingly-high expectations. Featuring a similar spread of folk to country to borderline-pop, Field Medic’s 2019 record offers an escape from the normal into the extraordinary. While some songs provide far-off musings of the future, most of the tracks simply offer unique perspectives of everyday events and relationships. Whether it’s the life of a touring musician, body art, or the unknowable other, Kevin Patrick Sullivan has once again proven himself adept at reflecting the human condition within the space of several beautiful minutes. On top of all this, album closer “helps me forget...” is one of the most beautiful things I’ve heard all year and was only narrowly edged out by The National and Slaughter Beach, Dog as my favorite song of the year. 

15 | Greet Death - New Hell

Listening to New Hell is like casting a spell upon yourself. From the moment you hit play on the record, its energy will pour from your speakers and will grow to permeate every corner of whatever room you find yourself in. The songs creak, rumble, and reverberate, bouncing around the walls of your brain and leaving you emotionally-drained in their wake. It’s not a fun listen by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s an emotional outpouring, and that can be rewarding in a different way. From the folksy (Sandy) Alex G-like “Let It Die” to the heavy-as-shit borderline-stoner-rock shoegaze found on “Strain,” the record is varied and masterfully-crafted. There’s an impressive range of moods on display here, each one a different shade of downbeat but also adorned with shimmering gold and silver accents that add some brightness to the otherwise overwhelming darkness. And while New Hell is one cohesive piece overall, each song also has special moments that make it feel unique from the others that surround it. There’s a molten guitar solo on “You’re Gonna Hate What you’ve Done,” there’s crushing fuzzed-out riffage on “Strange Days,” hypnotic lyricism on “Entertainment,” and the band caps it all off with an epic ten-minute closing track. New Hell is a dark, moody, and morose album with transitive properties so strong that it’s impossible to come out of your first listen the same person.

14 | Future Teens - Breakup Season

I’ll start this off by saying that I absolutely despise the fetishization of sadness. Even worse than that, the memeification of sadness (tweeting “listening to the new Mount Eerie and crying, brb” or something along those lines). If that’s how you get your sadness out, then go for it, but more often than not, it feels like people idolizing the wrong thing and emulating “sadness” for the sake of internet points… well, this got off track quickly. The point is that Future Teens’ sophomore album Breakup Season feels like real, genuine sadness in a way that isn’t overwrought, performative, or played-out. There were probably sadder releases to come out this year, but where Breakup Season excels is that it feels like a version of sadness that’s true to me. It’s not overtly sad (in fact, it’s often pretty catchy and upbeat), but the feelings are real, the experiences are shared, and that takes guts. 

“Happy New Year” is a dynamite slow-burn opener that allows for Amy Hoffman’s voice to shine like a diamond. “Born to Stay,” “Emotional Bachelor,” and “Frequent Crier” are all peppy sing-along emo tracks that zero in on specific elements of living with depression with hyper-realistic and confessional slice-of-life observations. By the back half of the album, the group has turned their gaze outward to their relationships with the people around them. “Swiped Out” tackles what an average relationship looks like in the era of smartphone dating, and “Heavy Petting” is a cleverly-written love song about the time when your pet feels like the only constant companion in your life. Breakup Season captures and articulates a specific brand of struggles for the mid-to-late-20-something, and that’s what makes it particularly affecting. The fact that it’s all catchy as hell is just a bonus.

13 | Mannequin Pussy - Patience

I once heard a theory: every band name is bad, it’s just a question of whether or not the band’s music makes up for it or not. Think about it. Mom Jeans is a bad name, but their music is good. DaBaby? Terrible name, but his songs bang. Even The Beatles, one of the most revered musical groups of all time, has a name that’s based on a terrible pun. While that observation was mostly a joke, I can’t think of a better example of this theory than the punk phenom Mannequin Pussy. The band has weighed in on their own name, even offering to write coworkers and moms letters explaining the meaning behind the name, but for those not easily swayed by “bad” words, the music more than speaks for itself. 

Patience is, at its core, a breakup album; 25 minutes of anger, resentment, and recovery that come in the wake of a major emotional turnover. My friend described lead single “Drunk II” as “a war crime,” and he couldn’t be more right. The song strikes a perfect balance of sneering punk anger, real-ass emotions, and a hook that’s catchy enough to climb the Billboard charts (if there were any justice in the world). Much like the band’s sophomore effort, Patience is a short burst of hooky, well-envisioned, and incredibly-polished punk music. There’s a perfect spread of fast-paced thrashy scream-along ragers alongside catchy and approachable love songs that your mom might even be able to tolerate. The record moves fast, hits hard, and leaves you wanting more, the way that all great music should. 

12 | 100 gecs - 1000 gecs

As is I’m sure was the case with most people I hit play on 1000 gecs not knowing what I was getting into. I think out of everything I’ve listened to this entire year, 1000 gecs was the only record to truly surprise me. And I mean shock me. Comprised of musicians Laura Les and Dylan Brady, 100 gecs is making music that needs to be heard to be believed. The two musicians have a ravenous appetite for (and adoration of) music, and 1000 gecs is a solidified effort to display it. 

On this record, you’ll hear PC music, dubstep, bubblegum pop, hip-hop, grindcore, pop-punk, house, ska, and dozens more. The most obvious connections to draw are artists like SOPHIE, Sleigh Bells, BROCKHAMPTON, Crystal Castles, and maybe even some Breathe Carolina… but even that long list of genres, artists, and influences fail to capture what 100 gecs sound like. The duo is deconstructing not only pop music, but pop culture. This is what Lil Aaron was doing when he combined leaned-out autotuned trap and pop-punk. This album is jittery, jumping between genres, sounds, phrases, and ideas within seconds. It’s blindingly-bright fun, and if you’re a fan of any one of those genres, you’ll likely find something to glom onto throughout the album’s 25-minute running time. 1000 gecs is a record in its own class and of its own world. 

11 | The National - I Am Easy To Find

The National have become masters of the pivot. Their discography is fluid; each album flows easily from one to the next with the band only making minor changes and gradual shifts. Over the course of decades, the band has managed to make each record sound just different enough that every new release feels refreshing yet familiar. They ease fans into each new era with strong singles, they know how to close a record, and they put on a hell of a good live show. There’s a reason they’ve become the de facto father figures of the indie rock circuit because they’re one of the most consistent bands in the industry. 

The pivot the band made on I Am Easy To Find sees the group shifting the spotlight away from lead singer Matt Beringer and his iconic voice towards a cast of female singers. Released alongside an accompanying 27-minute film by Mike Mills, I Am Easy To Find is part album part visual art piece. The film depicts one woman’s life from birth to death, all set to songs from the album. We see her first breath, first love, her first fight, her first child. Everything. It’s a gorgeous, goosebump-inducing black-and-white narrative that is nothing short of captivating. The album tells a similar narrative over the course of it’s one-hour running time, but its crowning achievement comes in the final three minutes with “Light Years.” The song is an achingly-gorgeous piano ballad that also happens to be my favorite song of the year. It’s a wonderful and meditative message that ties the record up with a neat little bow and sends the listener off into the night thinking about what they had just consumed. It’s beautiful, painful, and ever-changing, much like life. 

10 | Vampire Weekend - Father of the Bride

While I do consider myself a fan of Vampire Weekend, I have what I like to call an “on-again, off-again” relationship with the band’s discography. I arrived at their self-titled record years after everyone else, and the only song I still find evergreen is the fast-paced (but admittedly basic) “A-Punk.” Meanwhile, I believe Contra is a near-perfect indie rock record, while Modern Vampires of the City is mostly over-cooked and only has one truly great song on it. When Rostam left the band in 2016, people (rightfully) thought Vampire Weekend might not be long for this world. His production and instrumentation had become so synonymous with the group’s sound that fans wondered how they would ever continue without one of its most pivotal founding members. Turns out the answer, after a six-year gap between albums, was to smoke a ton of weed, retreat into nature, and get really into the Grateful Dead.

Preceded by a perplexing album cover that broke the band’s longstanding visual aesthetic, lead single “Harmony Hall” set the tone (and expectations) for this album early on in its release cycle. Opening with an acoustic guitar, serene lyricism, and a melody that echoes The Grateful Dead’s “Touch of Grey,” this song let fans know early on whether they’d be into this new era of the Vampire Weekend or if they should tap out now. There’s something equal parts cringey and endearing about a bunch of ultra-white Ivy League graduates trading in their polo shirts and boat shoes for tye-dye t-shirts and Birkenstocks, but the music speaks for itself. “Bambina” is a bouncy auto-tuned Contra-level cut, “This Life” is a fast-paced ass-shaking track, and the Steve Lacy-assisted “Sunflower / Flower Moon” are as danceable as they are musical, offering a groovy late-album one-two punch. Meanwhile, closing track “Jerusalem, New York, Berlin” is a pensive Modern Vampires-esque send-off that’s lovingly-constructed and precious. And if you need any proof that the band can actually live up to the jammy-inspiration of The Dead, then look no further than any of this year’s Austin City Limit’s performances where the group shows they can skillfully take one of their base songs and blow it up to extraordinary and psychedelic proportions. Father of the Bride is proof that sometimes change is for the best, and sometimes your best is yet to come. 

9 | Charly Bliss - Young Enough

The innate power of Charly Bliss lies in how genuine each member of the band is. While they first made a name for themselves in indie/pop-punk/alt music circles with 2017’s Guppy, this year’s Young Enough is a step up in nearly every imaginable way. Still bearing Eva Hendricks’ piercing and unmistakable vocals, the band’s newest effort takes the power-pop found on Guppy and infuses it with a hearty helping of synth, resulting in a record that feels accessible and honest with just the right amount of bite.

The album walks a fascinating and addicting line between throwback synth-pop tendencies and hyper-modern rock songwriting. Electronic drums keep time in between distorted guitar stabs on “Capacity,” slow-building guitar and basslines build to an explosive finish on “Young Enough,” and “Hard to Believe” sounds downright Pixies-esque in its foundation. This album, combined with October’s follow-up EP Supermoon, paint the picture of a band with a fully fleshed-out vision and an unapologetic approach to their music. Young Enough is an album that radiates strength, even in its weakest moments, and that’s the kind of energy we could all use more of in 2019. 

8 |  Knocked Loose - A Different Shade of Blue

Confession time: I first listened to Knocked Loose in October of 2018. Partially because I had aged out of the hardcore phase of my high school years, but also because I had somehow confused them with Knuckle Puck for literal years. So imagine my surprise when I listened to Laugh Tracks and heard something as decidedly not-pup-punk as Knocked Loose. Needless to say, Laugh Tracks is a spectacular album that quickly became my go-to when I needed some angry hardcore music. While it’s a well-constructed release, Laugh Tracks it also very much feels like a “debut album,” so I was ravenously curious to see how they would follow that up on their sophomore release, especially now that the band had garnered a massive following.

A Different Shade of Blue is pure emotional catharsis. “Mistakes Like Fractures” is bone-crushing. “Forget Your Name” will rip your ribcage open like a shotgun blast. “A Serpent’s Touch” should come with a fucking warning label. The album is 38 minutes of nonstop, punishing riffage, violent breakdowns, and vitriolic lyricism. It’s moshpit-initiating, fight-instigating hardcore, and this record made it clear why Knocked Loose has become the gold standard for the genre.

7 | Prince Daddy & The Hyena - Cosmic Thrill Seekers

It’s easy to make a great first album; it’s the culmination of years of hard work, a lifetime of creativity, and countless hours of blood, sweat, and tears. For these reasons, the Sophomore Slump is a very real thing, yet Prince Daddy & The Hyena managed not only to subvert this phenomenon; they vaulted over it in style. It’s one thing to make a good sophomore album, but the decision to make the follow-up to your breakthrough album a three-act concept piece based on a bad acid trip filtered through the lens of The Wizard of Oz is next-level insanity. 

Cosmic Thrill Seekers is a 40-minute excavation of the soul, accompanied by all the fears, insecurities, and manias that come with it. Beginning with“I Lost My Life,” the album throws the listener headfirst into Kory Gregory’s raspy singing voice as he recounts the beginning of his acid-fueled tale over an acoustic guitar. Things really open up on “Lauren (Track 2),” where the band launches into a hard-charging riff that blends punk and emo into a finely-distilled fusion of the two genres. The songs flow together flawlessly, quickly guiding the listener along fast-paced crowd-churners, grungy pop meditations, and even upbeat dance tracks. Cosmic Thrill Seekers is an album packed with intricacies, scattered thoughts, and self-referential melodies. Songs fold in on themselves, pulling back language and chord progressions used on earlier songs. On top of all this, the closing track loops perfectly back to the beginning of the album, making this an endlessly-relistenable release that circles the listener right back to the start of the adventure. These elements all combine together for a rewarding and slightly-high-concept emo record that has its own dream logic and internal rhythms. It’s wandering and wonderous, charming, thrashy, and endearing. 

6 | Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties - Routine Maintenance

The first Aaron West album, We Don’t Have Each Other, was the story of a man blindsided by divorce. Grief-stricken and confused, Aaron fled south on an impromptu road trip to Georgia in order to find himself, or at least some answers. Bittersweet, the following 7” recounted the story of his return to New York, and found our hero facing the memories of the relationship that he had left behind. 2017’s Orchard Park was a one-off single that offered a brief update on Aaron’s life in the form of himself and his mom spreading his father’s ashes. This year, the newest update to the Aaron West saga arrived in the form of Routine Maintenance, and it’s one of the albums that made me feel most consistently this year.

It’s worth mentioning that this story, the downfall of Aaron West, is all a fabrication, a character study helmed by Dan Campbell, the frontman of The Wonder Years. Much like his main band, Campbell lends his poetic songwriting and emotional voice to Aaron, but the fact that he’s been able to create this character and relationships that feel so realized and lived-in is nothing short of an absolute artistic achievement.

While it would have been easy to make Routine Maintenance about Aaron meeting someone new, falling in love, and getting over his previous relationship, we all know that real life doesn’t work that way. Instead, the latest record finds Aaron at a crossroads. He takes his band on the road, finds some success, and then suddenly, his brother-in-law passes away. By the end of the record, Aaron is living with his mother, sister, and his nephew Colin under one roof in New Jersey. Aaron is helping out around the house, taking Colin to school, and doing the best he can to fill in the role of a makeshift father figure. It’s in the album’s final moments that it’s title Routine Maintenance makes sense. Because sometimes life isn’t about getting better, it’s about helping other people get better. It’s about doing what you can, carrying the weight, and doing minor upkeep in the name of making the world around you a little better.

5 | PUP - Morbid Stuff

Life isn’t miraculous. It’s not a movie, and it’s not a pop song, hell, it’s not even a commercial. There’s no justice, no resolution, and there’s definitely not a storybook ending… but that doesn’t mean it’s inherently bad. More often than not, life is just lots and lots of the same thing, and that’s a different kind of evil. Life’s not out to get you; it merely bides its time until you fall prey to it in one way or another. This unchanging and unflinching indifference of life often makes one fantasize about the end of it, if only because it’s the last significant change we have left in store for ourselves. Struggling with (and raging against) that monotony of everyday life is exactly what Morbid Stuff is about. 

Coming off their genre-elevating sophomore album The Dream is Over, Pup’s third album is filled to the brim with throat-shredding group chants, cutting lyrical honesty, and fist-balling riffage. The album opens with an anemic guitar lick that sounds like it’s being played from the top of a mountain for onlookers below. Lead singer Stefan Babcock quickly undercuts this propulsive energy as he enters the fray and snottily explains how he was “Bored as fuck / Sitting around and thinking all this morbid stuff / Like if anyone I’ve slept with is dead.” These morbid curiosities pave the way for full-throated group chants and rocket-like drum beats that eventually fizzle out into a defeated lullaby ending, a perfect crash course for the particular brand of unhappiness that PUP deals in. As a whole, Morbid Stuff feels like an incredibly democratic creation, with each member getting chances to shine from one song to the next. There’s cynical, biting songwriting on “Kids,” moshpit nu-metal breakdowns on “Full Blown Meltdown,” and even enough room for a one-line guest feature from Eva Hendricks of Charly Bliss on “Free At Last.”

Morbid Stuff lies at an odd intersection between pop-punk and full-on punk. The band has a knack for making these incredibly-catchy and energetic songs that are ripe for singing (screaming) along with, but there’s also enough of an edge to them that they’re rowdy, sweaty, and cathartic in a live setting. It’s like Speed; these are songs you can sing along to while in the car, but it feels detrimental to the artistic experience if you’re shouting along while going any slower than 50 miles per hour. Best consumed while flying down the highway or packed into a room with 500 other sweaty fans, Morbid Stuff is not for the faint of heart — it’s for the ones with the pissed-off, fed-up, raging hearts.

4| Oso Oso - Basking in the Glow

In the past few years, the lines between emo, pop-punk, and indie rock have become so blurred that we’ve almost looped back around to using the word “emo” as a slur. As artists continue to experiment with mixing these sounds into one big genre-fluid cocktail, nobody did it better this year than Jade Lilitri of Oso Oso. 2017’s Yunahon Mixtape was a near-perfect emo album, packed with more hooks than Nevermind and some of the best bridges in the game. Last year’s two-track single offered a tantalizing glimpse at where Lilitri was taking the group, and 2019’s Basking in the Glow represents the fully-realized potential of that emo/indie sound.

Songs like “the view” and “basking in the glow” are some of the sweetest and poppiest tracks I’ve heard all year with choruses that shimmer and lyrics that are ready for emo kids’ Instagram captions the world over. And as you would expect with any emo-adjacent record, there’s also an impressive range of emotions on display throughout. The thoughtful “dig” is a spacy and meditative track with a Smashing Pumpkins-like fuzzed-out buildup, meanwhile “wake up next to god” is a fast-paced air-drum-inspiring banger featuring tight palm-muted punctuation. Basking in the Glow is (fittingly) a bright, sunny, and warm record with a constant underlying layer of unhappiness. It’s like a spoonful of honey; sugary sweet, beautifully-golden, and sticky enough to stay with you long after you first consume it.

3| Macseal - Super Enthusiast

Simply put, I don’t think there was a better crafted, better written, or better-performed album this year than Super Enthusiast. While Macseal made a name for themselves with Always Sunny name-dropping and hyper-compelling shout-along emo rock, they gradually did what all of us do and mellowed out. Last year’s four-track Map It Out saw the band leaning away from those guitar-tapped riffs and screamed vocals of their early recordings and into something more poppy and polished. This year’s Super Enthusiast sees the band completing that transition swirling together a mix of mathy emo and hyper-polished indie rock.

Super Enthusiast is picture-perfect emo. It’s not particularly midwesty, it’s not really screamy, but the band was able to take the best elements of all those disparate subgenres and combine them into something remarkably holistic and pure. The songs sparkle with crystal-clear guitars, immaculate bass, and pristine drumming. Other than the band’s slight sonic shift, one of the most significant changes from Macseal’s early work is the noticeably better production. Even the most slow-paced song on Super Enthusiast is lovingly-crafted, adorned with reverb, crisp background vocals, and a slow build of distortion. There are also some remnants of the band’s early sound on songs like “Upside Down Again,” which bears a floaty, dreamlike riff that’s probably my favorite of the entire year.

Super Enthusiast feels like the album equivalent of one of a freshwater lake. It’s wondrous, natural, and almost too pure for this world. As you look down from the snow-capped mountains and gradiented blue sky, you see the reflective surface of the calm water and feel at peace. The band is no longer comprised of emotionally-turbulent teenagers, they’ve grown up, developed, and evolved into people with different coping mechanisms than whining and watching Always Sunny. They still have problems, frustrations, doubts, and fears, but they have developed new ways of dealing with whatever life throws at them. They have an unshakable lust for life.

2 | Origami Angel - Somewhere City

This year I turned 26. This means that Wonder Years lyrics hit different now, but it also means that I’m (arguably) more of an adult than I was before. This year I also moved across the country (again), got a place of my own (again), and started a new job in a new city (again). I packed everything I owned into the trunk of my car and drove my ass from Michigan to Colorado over the course of a few days in late November. I fought through fog, snow, and freezing rain, but I got there in one piece, settled in, and moved into a new apartment all my own with a new job right down the street.

I guess all of that is an achievement worth celebrating, but this year I also did something else I’m proud of: I bought Gushers at the grocery store. They weren’t that expensive (or as good as I remember), but that purchase felt symbolic: a snack from my childhood bought with my own money for the explicit purpose of taking myself on a trip down memory lane. Somewhere City is an album about that.

Half concept album, Somewhere City finds Origami Angel weaving a tale of a mythical land where the fast food is abundant, and the Dr. Pepper flows freely. It’s a place where your childhood cartoons are always on TV, and the only commercials are from those 2000’s youtube nostalgia compilations. It’s an album-length early-twenties realization that things will never be the same, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try your hardest to recapture a small fragment of your past.

Since the beginning of the year, Origami Angel have been on a roll. Between splits, EPs, energetic live shows, and out-of-the-box promotion, the DC-based duo has rightfully made a name for themselves as one of the faces of emo’s fifth wave. Their music is catchy, smart, and hooks into a level of nerdy specificity that connects directly with my brain. This is all to say the band seemingly has everything going for them, but you don’t have to take my word for it, you can watch any one of their music videos, and you’ll see the glowing, joyous, communal spirit of DIY emo.

Which brings us to the album.

Released at the tail end of the year, Somewhere City is Origami Angel’s first full-length record, and the band pulled out all the stops. From a “nice touch” technical level, the album pulls off all the cool conceptual things I love; it loops from beginning to end like Cosmic Thrill Seekers, and it ends with a medley of every previous song much like “I Just Want to Sell Out My Funeral.” Most importantly, every song stands on its own as a one-of-a-kind creation, and I mean every song. There’s catchy riffage on “24 Hr Drive Thru” and “Doctor Whomst,” speed-metal breakdowns on “666 Flags,” and bouncy power-slide emo on “The Title Track.” Most uncharacteristically for the genre, the biggest throughline of the album is a message of overwhelming positivity and reassurance on songs like “Skeleton Key” and “Find Your Throne.”

Somewhere City is an unapologetically bright and youthful album. Despite the album’s multiple layers of conceptuality and its ARG rollout, Somewhere City is, at its core, 30 minutes of tight riffs and feel-good nostalgia that will send long-lost memories rushing back like a pack of Gushers. This one of the best emo albums of the year, one of the best debuts of recent memory, and will likely go on to be a formative album for thousands of music fans à la to Home, Like Noplace Is There, or Whenever, If Ever.

Somewhere City spans childhoods, generations, and emotions. It’s lovingly-constructed and musically-correct. It’s filled to the brim with fast-tapping riffage and already-iconic group chants. If you haven’t yet memorized every beat of this record, there’s still time to grab a ticket to Somewhere City, all you need is an open mind and a hungry soul.

1 | Jail Socks - It’s Not Forever

The best and worst part about running a blog by yourself is trying to decide your album of the year. Do you pick the albums that made the most significant cultural impact? Do you pick the most financially successful albums that dominated the radio and defined the year? Do you pick the consensus albums that show up on every other blog? Honestly, those are all background factors, because ultimately your “album of the year” should come down to one of two things:

1) The album that you thought was the “best” this year
2) The album that connected with you the most

Sometimes the first one makes sense — albums like Blonde and To Pimp A Butterfly that are undeniably great and well-crafted. Sometimes the second one makes sense, an album that hit you at the right time, spoke to you in the right way, and put words to the emotions you couldn’t articulate. For me this year, that was Jail Socks. 

Within the space of a calendar year, I went from not knowing who Jail Socks were to being a die-hard fan. I go into greater detail in the full review for It’s Not Forever, but for the sake of a quick recap; after discovering the band through a video making the rounds on emo twitter, I downloaded the band’s four publicly-available songs which almost immediately worked their way into my daily rotation. 

It’s safe to say this EP was easily my most anticipated release of the year. For my first listen, I sat down, cranked my speakers as loud as I could stand, and freaked out to every note alone in my house like I was a goddamn youtube reaction channel. But I wasn’t performing for a camera; it was one-hundred-percent genuine.

It’s Not Forever is punctual, a lightweight six tracks clocking in at a collective 20 minutes. It contains two re-recordings of songs from the band’s first demo and four new tracks. Even with its abrupt running time, this group of riff-obsessed teenagers from North Carolina managed to do more with one side of a record than some artists did with 60+ minutes this year. 

The EP starts off like a firecracker with fast-paced emo guitar tapping on “Jake Halpin.” That song bleeds flawlessly into “Parting Words” as the band strings the listener along with a breadcrumb trail of bouncy basslines, crashing cymbals, and anthemic group chants. Lead single “Poplar Avenue” is an energetic feel-good breakup anthem, and “Steering Wheel” is an impactful song of personal growth set to a background of cascading guitarwork and emotional vocals. It’s instrumentally-precise but emotionally messy, and that’s a dynamic I find myself endlessly enamored with. 

Everything on this EP simply works. It may not be all that accessible to anyone outside of the midwest emo scene, but it connected with me in a way that I find absolutely astonishing. Not only is this EP great on a technical level, but it’s also hard to overstate how important a role this band has played in my 2019. Jail Socks have been the soundtrack to my year. They’ve been the soundtrack to my time in Detroit, and the words to everything I’ve felt this year. They’re emblematic of a greater movement in emo music and symbolic of everything that 2019 has meant to me. When I look back on my time in the Midwest ten years from now, these are the songs that will pop into my head. 

Very few times have I found a collection of music that seems so specifically wired to my brain. Every guitar tap, bass thump, drum hit, and shout-along vocal lands. I’ve memorized every molecule of this EP because it makes sense to me on a higher level. It’s like someone took a corner of my brain, threw it into the studio, and then performed it back at me. It’s miraculous, and I hope that everyone reading this is fortunate enough to find their equivalent at some point in their life.