Swim Into The Sound's 12 Favorite Songs of 2023

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Our inevitable 2023 Album of the Year list is slow going, so as a writing exercise, I’m going to do some short little write-ups on a bunch of my favorite songs that came out this year. Believe it or not, in all my years running this blog, I’ve actually never done a roundup like this. I suppose I’ve always been daunted by other publications that can publish massive, genre-spanning 100-count lists of songs because they have an actual staff, but I am just one man. Instead, you get a hyper-biased recounting of my year through a dozen songs. I hope you love them as much as I do. 

1 | Militarie Gun - “Do It Faster”

It’s hard to believe that “Do It Faster” has only been in my life for ten months. From the now-iconic “OOH OOH” to the rockin’ guitar riff and unforgettable chorus, everything about this song feels like it was created in a lab to appeal to me specifically. Aside from single-handedly revitalizing the word “stooge,” this song is a wonderful little encapsulation of where this style of hardcore sits in a post-GLOW ON world. “Do It Faster” is a poppy rock song with an instantly transferable energy tailor-made for windows-down scream-alongs, your dumbest thrashy dance moves, and the strongest finger-point you have.


2 | Talking Kind - “Damn Shame”

“It’s such a damn shame I wasn’t / damn shame I wasn’t listenin’.” Not only is that one of the best choruses of the year, it’s also what you will be saying to yourself in a few years time if you sleep on this Talking Kind record. The solo outing of Pat Graham (of Spaynard and Big Nothing), it’s easy to see why “Damn Shame” was the lead single for his new project. It only takes a couple of listens before you find yourself effortlessly singing along to these words. Only Graham can make regret sound so catchy. 


3 | Bully - “Days Move Slow”

It’s been said before, but “Days Move Slow” sounds like it should be scoring the opening scene of a movie. In my head, I see Clockstoppers or Max Keeble's Big Move, the type of early 2000s kids comedy movie that could have only been made in the lead-up to the Iraq War. I see bleach blonde hair spiked to the heavens and a table full of breakfast food before our hero says something like, “Sorry Mom, I gotta jet, can’t miss the last day of school!” before grabbing his skateboard and running off to catch the bus. This song invigorates me in a way that very few ever have, and I’m more than content to live in that three-decade-old Nickelodeon-approved timewarp for two minutes and forty seconds with Alicia Bognanno as my guide. 


4 | Wednesday - “Quarry”

As a certified Wednesday freak, picking my favorite song off Rat Saw God proved to be a challenge. The obvious choice might be the titanic eight-minute “Bull Believer” or the lap-steel-led “Formula One.” There’s also the ultra-singable “Bath County” or the all-too-relatable “Chosen to Deserve,” and while I adore all those songs, “Quarry” eventually revealed itself to me as the song off the Asheville denizens fifth full-length LP. This track really has it all: depressed small-town imagery and hyper-specific personal details, plus it all builds to a joyous, swaying shoegaze riff. “Quarry” also has a vehicle-filled music video that, much like everything else in the Wednesday Universe, showcases the band’s penchant for cute, creative, and endearing art. Wednesday forever. 


5 | Greg Mendez - “Maria” 

In less than two minutes, Greg Mendez managed to convert practically everyone from a curious listener into a ravenous fan. The second single to Mendez’s excellent self-titled record, “Maria,” offers a harrowing tale of drug use and self-destruction, but wraps it in a melody that somehow feels timeless, as if it’s always been here. The instrumental is modest, just a guitar and drums, allowing Mendez’s voice to take center stage, presenting him as the heir to both Elliot Smith and Alex G’s throne. A cautionary tale turned into an immaculate bit of songwriting and artistry. 


6 | Ratboys - “It’s Alive!”

Channeling equal parts Rocky Mountain hiker and evil scientist, “It’s Alive!” is one of the most joyous songs of the year, a track that never fails to fill me up to the brim with optimism, hope, and light. Like the first warm day of spring, listening to the emphatic “It’s Alive!” is like stepping outside, feeling the sun's rays across your skin, looking up to a clear blue sky, and filling your lungs with a big puff of crisp air. In a way, this song channels a similar sense of naturalistic wonder as Ratboys’ own 2021 megahit, “Go Outside,” but swaps that song’s post-COVID anxiety with boundless optimism and happiness. A powerful feeling to have at the click of a button.


7 | Superviolet - “Overrater”

While I was late to the party with The Sidekicks, I was right on time for Steve Ciolek’s new project, Superviolet. As the lead single, “Overrater” had a lot on its shoulders: introduce the new band to mourning Sidekicks fans, get people geared up for the full record, and maybe even convert a few new fans in the process. As living proof of the third one, I can point to “Overrater” as the precise entry point for my fandom. The song begins with a pace-setting electronic beat but soon explodes to life in a fun-loving blast that feels like the music equivalent of breaking into a full sprint. Even as bullies surround us and insults fly, persistence prevails, allowing the listener to stride out the door with a fresh outlook and indomitable spirit. 


8 | saturdays at your place - “tarot cards”

At the beginning of the year, I had no idea who saturdays at your place were. Despite living in Detroit for a couple of years and digging deep into the emo scene, I was unaware of the talent amassing across the state in Kalamazoo. saturdays materialized over the course of the pandemic, emerging with a nine-song record in 2021 and segued that release into a No Sleep signing as well as an impressively realized EP, which they dropped at the top of the year. Having since amassed over 2.5M plays on Spotify, “tarot cards” is an undeniable emo song, boasting a god-tier riff, cathartic group chant, and tried-and-true lyrics of being awkward at a party. No wonder why this track has been subject to TikTok trends and dumb memes alike; it has the sauce to become a generational Midwest Emo song like “Two Beers,” “Death Cup,” or “Cinco De Mayo Shit Show.” Before I get too ahead of myself with hyperbole, I’ll slow down and look forward to screaming along to “tarot cards” for many more concerts to come. 


9 | Slow Pulp - “Cramps”

Yet another record that was hard to pick any one song from, the sophomore outing from Slow Pulp is chock-full of throwback indie rock that shines and shimmers like the light bouncing off a lake. While Yard was preceded by four absolutely immaculate singles, “Cramps” was the first out the gate and set an immediate high bar that signaled a level-up from 2020’s Moveys. Beginning with a powerful burst of drums, the band quickly locks into a shoegazy sway as lead vocalist Emily Massey sets the scene with snarling lyrics about wanting it all. The whole thing rockets forward for a sensible three minutes, complete with crunchy guitars, spry drumming, and a nifty little drop-out at the end to ease us down from the high-energy state. 


10 | Caroline Polachek, Charli XCX, George Daniel - “Welcome To My Island (Remix)”

While you might be surprised to see a remix on this list, it only takes one listen to understand why I love this pumped-up, electrified version of a Caroline Polachek classic. Sure, I liked Desire a fair bit, but throw some spicy Charli XCX verses in the mix and put it all over a club-ready beat? I’m IN. I’ll also cop to having the biggest crush on Charli XCX, so hearing her spit one of the horniest verses of her entire career always gets my heart rate up just a little. Barring my personal affinity for curly-haired party girls, it’s also cute to hear Charli write these lines of wanting a “white dress, countryside, house, and kids” over an instrumental that her (now) fiancée has made. That’s true power couple shit, and I love it for both of them. Throw all of that on top of Caroline Polachek’s anthemic opener, and you have a recipe for success that will soundtrack car rides, gym visits, and amped-up pre-game playlists from now until the end of time. 


11 | MJ Lenderman - “Rudolph”

Four drum hits and we’re off to the races. MJ Lenderman’s “Rudolph” kicks off like a celebratory firecracker with a swampy twang beat and the perfect amount of pedal steel. The first line goes on to confirm that, yes, this is indeed the Rudolph you’re thinking of. Lenderman bellows over his bandmates and his own fuzzed-out guitar, screaming of Lightning Mcqueen and making a self-referential call-back just a line or two later. Of course, there’s a sick guitar solo, and then they hit us with one more chorus because they’re professionals. They also give us that bouncy little four-note countdown one last time, and let me tell you, I can’t wait to break out my freakiest dance moves to that next time I see it live.  “Rudolph” is a perfect between-album entry to the MJ Lenderman canon, ending up feeling like a victory lap for both Boat Songs and a celebration of his signing to Anti- Records. The only thing I love more than seeing dudes rock is seeing dudes win.


12 | Talking Kind - “Pretty Flowers”

First off, yeah, I know what you’re thinking, ‘another Talking Kind song on this list??’ To which I say YES, believe it, It Did Bring Me Down is that good. On the mid-album cut “Pretty Flowers,” the stakes are set immediately in plainspoken words: “I bought some pretty flowers / I was going to drive to your grave after work / Instead, I pulled over and cried and cried and cried.” Basically everything is on the table from the outset, all wrapped in a melody anyone could hum along to. The rest of the song grapples with mortality and loss as Pat Graham belts an MJ-like chorus of “I'm still working it out. Yeah, baaaaaby, I'm still just working it out.” A minute later, our hero still hasn’t found a compromise as Graham sings, “I don't think I'm ready / I don't think I care if I'm ever ready,” then interrupting his own rhyme as he sings “spaghetti” and holds the last note like a piece of putty. It’s an absurd, hilarious, and endearing little non-sequitur to end the verse on, which was, up to that point, a pretty forthright meditation on death. He hits us with one more chorus, allowing the listener to either laugh at his joke or croon along, making for a fun little musical choose-your-own-adventure. It’s a heartwarming moment packed into the exact middle of this 3-minute gem that makes me appreciate the craft of songwriting more than I ever have before. 

Listen to a playlist of all these songs (plus some outtakes) above. Alternatively, if you want even more and would like to see all my favorite songs of the year in chronological order, check out this playlist. 

Ranking MJ Lenderman’s Wettest Songs

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While 2023 seems to be the year that Wednesday is poised to take over the world, last year belonged to MJ Lenderman. Around this time in 2022, my Boat Songs fandom was reaching an absolute fever pitch, timed almost perfectly to coincide with a four-day weekend, a wave of incredible weather, and a diet consisting almost exclusively of BBQ hot dogs. If there ever was a perfect confluence of MJ Lenderman listening conditions, it was last summer.

I’ve spent the better part of the last two years immersing myself in the discographies of both Wednesday and MJ Lenderman, including weird one-off tracks, contributions to compilations, and early releases they’re now too embarrassed to have on streaming. In absorbing MJ Lenderman’s body of work specifically, a shocking trend began to emerge: dude can’t stop singing about water. Swimming pools, water parks, boat trips, it’s all here. Let’s take a closer look at all of these songs and rank them for their summer vibes based on totally arbitrary measures. 

1. “You Are Every Girl To Me”

A huge water slide. Why isn’t everyone talking about this? And not just a water slide, but also a community swimming pool? Lenderman is really covering all of his bases with this song. Between the now-iconic Jackass reference and descending guitar riff that feels like shooting down a water slide, this track is absolutely overflowing with good vibes. A love song for the ages that also happens to get wet in a way that’s sensible and refreshing. 

Five Otter Pops (red) out of five.


2. “Infinity Pool”

A druggy and fucked-up monologue of a song that lands somewhere between Ween’s “Pollo Asado” and the lo-fi scramble of early Car Seat Headrest. In this song, the subject is shit-faced, the stars are out, and our narrator is on top of the world, so spirits are obviously high. This feels more like a falling-into-the-pool-fully-clothed scenario, but our hero seems unbothered by this development, content to take in the view of the city's night skyline and the exactly one thousand stars in the sky. In MJ’s own words, “It's a beautiful night, life is good.”

One Brandon Cronenberg-directed Mia Goth handjob out of one.


3. “You Don’t Know The Shape I’m In”

If there’s one thing MJ Lenderman is gonna do, it’s sing about a goddamn water park. One of my favorite non-streaming MJ songs, this track is an upbeat, sun-coated bop that opens Through The Soil II, a compilation for The Trevor Project featuring the likes of Wednesday, Faye Webster, and Julien Baker, to name a few. After a brief warmup, the track gets up to speed, and MJ sets the tone by singing about romantic separation, “Some say distance grows the heart / But I know sometimes we just drift apart.” Guitar still swishing beneath him, he goes on to make an uncharacteristic biblical reference, singing, “Everybody's walking in twos leaving Noah's Ark / And it's Sunday at the water park.” Hell yeah, brother, sounds like a great way to spend the last bit of your weekend. Does this lyric also imply that the animals on Noah’s Ark were having a good time out on the water? We can only hope. 

Two of every animal ever to exist out of two.



4. “House Pool”

Over the past year, I’ve been fascinated to watch “How Do You Let Love Into The Heart That Isn't Split Wide Open” climb the charts of both Wednesday and MJ’s “popular songs” chart on Spotify. Elsewhere on the 2018 EP, you’ll find a Smashing Pumpkins cover given new life on their 2022 covers album and the dreamy “House Pool.” On this track, the dirtbag duo cut straight to the chase, lamenting, “Stand at the edge / Of the steep end house pool / No diving pool for barbecue / No one swims / No one barbecues.” So you’re telling me there is a pool and a barbeque, but neither are being used? Truly a fate worse than death. Sidebar, but do we think this song fits into the MJ Lenderman Grill Expanded Universe? Discuss in the comments below.

One pack of tragically-untouched hot dog buns out of one.


5. “Six Flags”

While not a pool or a water park, the final track off Boat Songs opens with a woozy 90-second guitar riff and (most pertinent to this countdown) mention of a log ride. The song is sad, slow-moving, and lyrically sparse, giving the impression that this particular trip to a Texas Six Flags was not as jubilant as that dancing old man would lead you to believe. Even still, Mr. Lenderman explains that the log ride got him “dripping wet,” which, in the context of this article, means there’s enough water involved for me to consider. Minus one pont only because it’s a bummer.

Five flags out of six.

The Countrygaze Manifesto

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One time in 2009, I was sick as a dog. I was a sophomore in high school, and this was still a period before widespread smartphones or apps. The only sources of entertainment I had were my trusty iPod and a tiny little netbook laptop. It was a sunny spring afternoon in Oregon, and I was experiencing that delirious kind of sickness where your brain can barely function. I was bored as hell, but even in my stupor knew I had seen all that MySpace had to offer. Eventually, I found myself surfing Wikipedia, aimlessly clicking around various band pages in no particular direction.

I wound up on the page for Saves The Day, a band I had recently become enamored with, thanks to a particularly impactful Vagrant Records sampler. Wow, browsing the Wikipedia page for a band at 1 pm on a weekday, say what you will about me, but I have always been the same type of music nerd. I’m also the type of music nerd who just enjoys reading about a band, taking in as much history as possible in order to better understand them. Out of all the information on Save The Day’s page, the one thing that stuck out to me most was a pair of words in the band’s “genres” section: pop-punk.

I was in an exploratory mood, so I clicked on the link and what I found blew my mind. It sounds silly to admit, but it wasn’t until I was face to face with that Wikipedia article at the big old age of 15 that I realized my favorite type of music had a name. Pop-punk.

At this point, I was truly beginning to expand my musical taste; post-hardcore, grunge, indie, and metal were all seeping in around my strong foundation of classic rock adoration and Guitar Hero soundtracks. Underneath all of this was pop-punk. Seriously. Some of my first CDs were Sum 41, Good Charlotte, Simple Plan, and Green Day. I had spent my entire life listening to this subgenre, and I didn’t even know it. 

I was too young and musically dumb to see the bigger landscape of what music was. I grew up hearing “Who Let The Dogs Out” in every movie trailer and listening to “Drops of Jupiter” on the radio. To me, “In Too Deep” was the fastest and coolest thing I had ever heard. I didn’t know what genres were, much less something as specific as pop-punk. This was also before Twitter, Reddit, and message boards leveled the playing field on musical knowledge. Some of that stuff existed, but I didn’t know where to find it. I knew what I liked when I heard it, but I hadn’t realized that things like subgenres could lead me to other bands and scenes I would enjoy in the same way.

Editor’s Note: Both “Who Let The Dogs” Out and “Drops of Jupiter” are undeniable bangers. I’m only using them here as examples to provide context to my understanding of music at the time growing up and becoming musically conscious in the late 90s/early 2000s.

Fast forward another 13 or so years, and I am still the biggest music nerd you can imagine. I run multiple music blogs, have a Twitter feed clogged with hundreds of esoteric bands, and my iTunes library boasts an unwieldy 70k songs. This blog is a years-long testament to my musical obsessions, large and small. I’ve fallen in love with countless bands and embedded myself in more subgenres and scenes than I care to count. Over the past year, one of my most powerful obsessions has been with a semi-invented genre called Countrygaze. 

Countrygaze is exactly what it sounds like; a little bit of country, a little bit of shoegaze. This is best exemplified by groups like Wednesday and MJ Lenderman, also known as indie music’s favorite power couple. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that Wednesday specifically are the countrygaze blueprint, and Twin Plagues is a textbook example of what the genre stands for. Sure, other bands have played at this intersection before, but nobody has owned it or honed it quite like Wednesday. 

On the Bandcamp page for Twin Plagues, underneath the cute video for “Handsome Man” and the excellent essay by Hanif Abdurraqib you’ll find a basic but telling section; the tags. This is tucked all the way at the bottom, beneath the credits and the legal. In this section, Twin Plagues is self-labeled by the band as “rock, country-gaze, indie, lo-fi, shoegaze, and Asheville.” Spoiler alert, the full-circle moment in this article comes here because I felt the same way reading “country-gaze” as I did when I first read pop-punk. Are you kidding me, there’s a name for this specific thing I’ve been obsessed with for the past year? Thank fucking god. 

If you’re unfamiliar with shoegaze, this might be a good spot for a brief crash course. The genre was first popularized in the 90s by artists like My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive. Depending on who you ask, the term shoegaze could apply to everything from the more biting grunge of artists like Hum to the dreamier soundscapes of artists like Cocteau Twins. The usual signifier of shoegaze is the heavy use of effects pedals to create distorted riffs cranked out at an all-consuming volume that often overshadows the band’s own vocals. 

Over the past two decades, the shoegaze genre has maintained modest popularity, mostly in niche subcultures and heavy-adjacent music scenes. Bands have been making great records in this realm for as long as people have been making oversized pedalboard jokes.

Here’s where Countrygaze builds off of this foundation in a novel way. Wednesday’s lead singer Karly Hartzman never gets too dreamy on the vocals, but she also isn’t afraid to distort or modulate her voice. To me, that's an essential part of this fake subgenre. Many of the songs in Wednesday’s discography have shoegaze textures but keep the vocals a little more upfront. Lyrically, these songs could easily be mistaken for country on paper; they hinge on simple observations but ladder up to bigger topics like heartbreak, death, and other forms of loss. The band telegraphed this connection pretty heavily on their covers album from earlier this year which puts the likes of Gary Stewart and The Drive-By Truckers shoulder to shoulder with bands like Smashing Pumpkins and DIY shoegazers Hotline TNT. Take these influences, and you can see how a band would internalize them, then output an album like Twin Plagues or 2020’s I Was Trying to Describe You To Someone. 

Look no further than any of Wednesday’s music videos to understand what countrygaze looks like. In these videos, Wednesday play their songs in fields of dead leaves or empty K-Mart parking lots. Home videos exist alongside footage of tour life and cozy North Carolina living rooms. Nature is present and abundant but is often dotted with litter and dirty patches of snow connected by colorless gray highways. These videos are all beautifully shot, using earnest POV footage, and edited in a way that matches the songs perfectly. Heavy as the music and some of the themes are, most of these videos are also humorous and endearing, whether it’s clown metal face paint, Ring Pop props, or simply the sight of the members rocking out to their own riffage in the back of the van, they show a band loving the art they’re creating. If you want to know what countrygaze is, simply throw on a playlist of Wednesday music videos, and let it roll for an hour. 

As I sank deep into a Twin Plagues rabbit hole by the end of 2021, I started to put together a playlist of songs that fit this hyper-specific criteria. Fuzzy shoegaze riffs, a little bit of twang, and super simple lyrics. That’s the formula. Many songs out there have one or two of these things, but very few artists put all three together. Even Wednesday themselves sometimes drop the fuzz for classic country balladry like on “How Can You Live If You Don’t Love How Can You If You Do.” Other times, they drop the riffs for hypnotic lo-fi abstraction on tracks like the closing cover song “Ghost of a Dog.”

On the flip side, you have songs on Twin Plagues that read as complete and utter embodiments of Countrygaze. The shreddy, seesaw riff on “Handsome Man” paired with lyrics of overpasses, broken glass, and trashy family photos. One song later, the sight of a dilapidated fast-food restaurant forces Hartzman into an existential crisis. A woozy lap steel guitar soundtracks this internal struggle, eventually giving way to a torrential shoegaze riff that towers above everything that came before it. Choices like this give the songs a grungy loud/quiet/loud dynamic that encourages the listener to lean in only to be bowled over moments later by an overwhelming crush of noise. This shift also contextualizes the song’s lyrics, making them feel big or small depending on what Hartzman and company decide to prop them up against. Speaking of which, there’s a lyric on “Cliff” about putting a loved one’s ashes in a Dallas Cowboy urn, and honestly? If I were to distill this semi-fake subgenre down to a single line, it might be that one. 

In almost every case, these songs are small in theory but big in practice. The worlds are lived-in, often populated by modest people who are trying their best despite circumstances that are not always in their control. There’s truthfulness and relatability in how the band depicts these southern mundanities, making it feel as if you’ve lived the memories yourself in a dream or a past life. There are specific details and nouns that stick out, but there’s also a hot and oppressive southern haze that ties the whole thing together. That’s why I think Twin Plagues is the foundational record for this genre, because it wrote the playbook. This record is the canvas, and other bands are now beginning to play within it.

By the beginning of the year, I had declared myself fully “Wednesday-Pilled.” I had purchased all the band’s albums off Bandcamp, was taking excited selfies holding their vinyl, and slowly stitching together the tapestry of this wider countrygaze sound. I realized some of the more mellow stuff from Greet Death fit this category. I was talking to friends on Twitter about the novelty of this sound and discovering new artists in the process. Then-just released songs like “Kerrytown” by Big Vic, “Doubts” by Cloakroom, and “Q Degraw” by Wild Pink proved that this was an ongoing phenomenon and affirmed that this genre was something worth chasing down. 

I threw together a silly little Spotify playlist, and then the weather got warmer. By the time spring had rolled around, the term “Countrygaze” had largely slipped my mind. The weather was warming up, and I needed upbeat music to match the tempo. I was also at the beginning of an exciting new relationship, deeply in love, and happy with my life for the first time in a long time. I was ready to leave the all-consuming crush of countrygaze in a sadder section of my Spotify library. Then MJ Lenderman released Boat Songs. 

I had heard Knockin’ and Ghost of Your Guitar Solo the year before, but nothing had really connected with me outside of the latter’s titular instrumental. But something clicked with Boat Songs, and the record ended up soundtracking my summer. Maybe it was just something about that dumb hat or the charming thrill of hearing a man sing “Harris Teeter,” but the record delighted me. It also blew the doors open on Countrygaze by providing a distinct counterpoint to Wednesday’s particular brand of art school shoegaze. 

While Wednesday songs are often sweeping and poetic, MJ Lenderman's songs are folksy and goofy. They recount sports esoterica and romanticize wrestling. They hold sportstar Dan Marino and Disney's Toontown in equal regard. MJ Lenderman dares his audience to imagine a scenario in which they’ve bought a boat or tool around town in an SUV. He’s talking directly to the kind of audience who both relates with and wouldn’t mind belting along the lyrics, “I love drinkin’ too, yeah, I love drinkin’ too.” It’s basically the ultimate “Dudes Rock” music, but there’s also something deeper going on under the hood.

In contrast to the examples listed above, MJ also offers up a surprisingly deep philosophical probe on “Tastes Just Like It Costs” and stares down the loneliness of the universe on “Six Flags.” He also has a knack for writing lyrics that sound like they’re already colloquialisms. “Tastes Just Like It Costs” isn’t just a great chorus; it’s good advice and a cautionary tale. You get out what you put in; you pay for shit, ya get shit back; tastes just like it costs. 

At one point, near the tail end of Boat Songs, MJ takes a stab at articulating the feeling of love on “You Are Every Girl To Me.” In this song, love can be found in the vibrant colors of a community swimming pool and the simplicity of a birdfeeder. Love can also be found in small, heartfelt gestures like homemade dinners or buying someone a silly shirt. Ultimately, no lyric could be MJ Gospel more than the one found at the end of the second chorus when Lenderman sings, “Jackass is funny / Like the Earth is round.” Yes. We need more love songs about Jackass.

Another exemplary MJ Lenderman cut is “Someone Get The Grill Out Of The Rain” off Guitar Solo. The track is only a minute and 13 seconds long and doesn’t venture much beyond the conflict stated in its title. Someone left the grill out in the rain. MJ is gonna write about it. Halfway through the song, Lenderman lifts the veil and reveals what the song is really about.

“It'd be such a bust
That grill should rust
Precious memories are the ones
That suck
Just can't get enough”

At one point, my girlfriend and I were talking about MJ Lenderman’s lyrics, and we arrived at the conclusion that he’s adept at writing “a song about nothing that’s actually kinda about something.” Just look at that quote above from “Grill.” Sure it’s a song about a BBQ being left out to the destructive whim of mother nature; it’s also about a whole lot more. Similarly, a track like “I Ate Too Much At The Fair” is exactly what it sounds like. Again, the lyrics barely venture beyond the ones that make up its title but are presented in such a way that gives them an inherent deeper meaning. You can project a lot onto a song like “Fair,” but you could also just take it at face value as a song about eating too many elephant ears and feeling a little sick. That’s the beauty.

Through a detailed patchwork of originals and covers, Wednesday and MJ tackle things as commonplace as billboards, TV dinners, and trash fires. They take these everyday occurances and shift the listener’s perspective until those same concepts become holy. Together, Wednesday and MJ Lenderman offer two sides of the same Countrygaze coin. One brings big, towering riffs, and the other provides shorter, smaller slices. Both circle around the complex realities of life; they’re just approaching it from different angles. They are also dating, which makes this extra cute. They are the Countrygaze Couple we all wish we could be.

Most recently, bands of all shapes, sizes, and locations have been fleshing out their own corners of countrygaze. Wild Pink packed a wallop into their new album with the one-two punch of “See You Better Now” and “Sucking On The Birdshot.” Greet Death cooned “Your Love is Alcohol,” and no booze-based metaphor has ever hit the same quite since. Bands like Dialup Ghost have taken the lyrics in a radical political direction. In contrast, others like Spirit Was have leaned further into abstraction, melding equivalent but equally disparate genres like folk and blackgaze. Even albums from a couple of years ago, like Moveys and Empty Country, could now fall under this Countrygaze category retroactively. 

Exciting new groups like Big Vic and A Country Western have been adding their own artistic flare to these sounds, pushing the genre in artsy new directions that retain the distortion and the occasional hint of twang. Even Wednesday themselves show no sign of stopping; back in September, the band dropped an eight-and-a-half-minute bruiser called “Bull Believer,” and it’s already one of my favorite tracks from the project. That single (along with a signing to Dead Oceans) signaled a fruitful new page for the fake little genre that could.

The cherry that came on top of this avalanche of highly-specific tunes came when I found myself bored clicking around the Wednesday Bandcamp page a few days ago. I was reminded of the term ‘countrygaze’ and decided to Google it just to see what would come up. 

The top search result was the page for the Bandcamp tag, of which Wednesday’s discography sits prominently at the top. There are also a few artists underneath the core three Wednesday albums, including scoutmaster and Nash To Stoudemire (two Wednesday side projects) and one from an LA group called Grave Saddles. This group has released an EP, a single, and most recently, a 2022 Tour Tape proudly tagged with the “country-gaze” moniker. 

I gave the three-track release a listen, and much to my surprise, I found myself really enjoying it. Most of all, I couldn’t shake how perfectly all three songs fit within the “countrygaze” label. I love this little tape, and it’s got me excited to follow this band to see what they do next. And this is how Countrygaze becomes a real thing. 

Wednesday still feel completely out of reach for me (plus, nothing I write could ever stack up to this profile in Oxford American), but I recently became mutuals with Grave Saddles on Twitter and decided to take that connection as an opportunity to ask them about this genre. Based on the group’s releases, it seemed like they had been active since 2019, but it wasn’t until 2021 that they began using the “Countrygaze” tag on Bandcamp. I asked guitarist Chris Broyles what he thought of that descriptor, how the band arrived at it, and whether or not it was influenced by Wednesday.

Broyles explained that they threw the Countrygaze tag on that release because it seemed to be the most widely agreed-upon term for whatever this scene is. They had a band before this one that often got relegated to the umbrella “shoegaze” descriptor. The band admitted they “100% lifted the tag from Wednesday” but also view that subgenre as one part of a larger movement called post-country. In the band’s own words, post-country is “essentially country songs or the essence of country songs that forego established conventions or instrumentation.”

The band traces their interpretation of this term back to Arthur Miles’ “Lonely Cowboy” in 1929, a song they jokingly called “proto-post-country” and view as an outlier in the country music canon. They say this scene begins contemporaneously with Acetone and their catalog, observing that “if there seems to be one common thread across a lot of these countrygaze bands, it’s that we’re all big Acetone fans.” 

Conversely, I asked Big Vic’s lead singer and guitarist Victoria Rinaldi what she thought about the “countrygaze” label. She feels like, if anything, the term fits Girl, Buried, but only retroactively. While Rinaldi is a fan of Wednesday and Lenderman, she says that Big Vic recorded the bulk of their record before Twin Plagues had come out, so Wednesday didn’t have much of a direct influence on the album. She also says the Americana tinge present on “Kerrytown” specifically came from her love for Wilco and Silver Jews. 

As captured in playlists by two of the movement’s figureheads, you can see everything from Acetone and Vic Chesnutt alongside droney shit like Earth and Sparklehorse as well as grungy 90s rock staples like Sunny Day Real Estate and Dinosaur Jr. Looking at that list of influences, it’s hard not to be excited by the promise of this genre. It feels like we’re on the precipice of something fresh, exciting, and truly unique. Wednesday and MJ have been setting the speed and the tone for what Countrygaze could be, but groups like Grave Saddles are running with it full force. 

Most of all, I’m excited to see where Countrygaze goes next. If the internet has proven anything, it’s that it has the power to make genres like this into legitimate scenes of interconnected artists all collaborating and building off each other. We’re coming off a banner year from the Wednesday/MJ Camp, with both artists having released fantastic full-length albums to increasing coverage and acclaim. With Wednesday poised to drop another record in the next year (on the same label as Phoebe Bridgers, Japanese Breakfast, and Mitski, no less), it feels like we’re only at the beginning. The future of Countrygaze is as wide and open as the rolling landscape of a classic country song. Strapping in and watching this scenery pass by has already been one of the most thrilling discoveries of my music-listening career. Where things go next is anyone’s guess.