December 27, 2024

Swim Into The Sound’s 15 Favorite Albums of 2024

December 27, 2024/ Taylor Grimes

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

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

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

Anyway, let’s talk about music.

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

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

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

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

⭐️ | Carpool – My Life In Subtitles

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

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

Read our full review of My Life In Subtitles here.

15 | Gleemer – End of the Nail

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

14 | Glitterer – Rationale

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

13 | see through person – every way of living

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

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

12 | Heart to Gold – Free Help

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

Read our full review of Free Help here.

11 | Ben Quad – Ephemera

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

10 | Bedbug – pack your bags the sun is growing

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

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

9 | This Is Lorelei – Box for Buddy, Box for Star

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

Read our interview with Nate Amos here.

8 | Ben Seretan – Allora

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

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

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

7 | Merce Lemon – Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild

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

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

6 | Oso Oso – life till bones

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

Read our full review of life till bones here.

5 | Charli xcx – BRAT

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

4 | MJ Lenderman – Manning Fireworks

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

Read our full review of Manning Fireworks here.

3 | Wild Pink – Dulling The Horns

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

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

Read our full review of Dulling The Horns here.

2 | Gulfer – Third Wind

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

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

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

Read our full review of Third Wind here.

1 | Waxahatchee – Tigers Blood

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

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

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

August 19, 2024

Oso Oso – life till bones | Album Review

August 19, 2024/ Jason Sloan

Oso Oso maestro Jade Liliti has spent the better part of a decade establishing himself as the purveyor of emo’s sunniest, most indelible hooks. The Hotelier’s Christian Holden–a longtime friend and tourmate–once compared him to Winnie the Pooh, so it’s a little jarring when his fifth record under the Oso Oso moniker begins with the bleak admission, “I love you but life is a gun.” That first song, “many ways,” is the kind of intro that Lilitri has never quite attempted before; it’s plaintive and embryonic, crackling with auxiliary piano and swells of feedback, segueing neatly into the jaunty “the country club.” A quick spoiler: the gun never goes off, but by the time lead single “all of my love” rolls around, it’s in possession of a woman named Annie, and she’s pointing it directly at him. I wouldn’t blame you if you were too busy grinning ear to ear at the Rembrandts-style handclaps to notice that the lyrics are actually about falling OUT of love; the ebullient chorus soothed Lilitri’s dog, too.

life till bones was never going to be a particularly cheery affair. Looming over the album’s ten tracks is the death of Tavish Maloney, Lilitri’s blood cousin, musical collaborator, and closest friend. He passed shortly after working with Lilitri on the tracking of sore thumb, which was subsequently released largely untouched, a monument to their lifelong friendship, frozen in amber. The songs on that record were freewheeling and often silly, soaked through with LSD and lined with weird experimental flourishes; brilliant but scattershot. With a few more years in the rearview, life till bones hones in on the aftermath.

The cavernous absence is most starkly addressed on the bloodletting “seesaw,” where Lilitri ruminates on the reality of losing a loved one. It’s a difficult listen, almost like a confessional we should not be privy to. The final refrain, wherein Lilitri cleverly splices the title in two, lays bare the aimlessness of moving forward: “The seesaw I saw balance in me / Now that balance is gone, I don’t know what I see.” A couple songs earlier, the more upbeat “stoke” takes a slightly more resolute path, striving to “try to find a way / to keep all that at bay.” Lilitri may be coughing up smoke but the flame is “stoked” and, given his predilection for stoner-patois, I’m inclined to read it as a double entendre; the fire isn’t merely alive, it’s excited. Our memories of the deceased can be painful but also inspiring, even invigorating; reminders of how to live as they lived and keep their best qualities alive with us.

So, where do we go from here? What do we do when forced to carry on after losing everything we hold dear? Lilitri would seem to argue that we pour love out into the universe, unyieldingly. To return to that radiant “all of my love” chorus, the relationship in that song dissolves because he “can’t give you all of [his] love,” the implication being that anything less than that would be a waste. In the Oso Oso vernacular, love has always been the ultimate force, the “one sick plan” to save Lilitri from his own demise. But life till bones is the most clearly he’s articulated the corollary: there is no half measure. Anything short of total, life-altering, starry-eyed devotion simply won’t do. On the shout-along “other people’s stories,” he mourns failed romance and refuses to settle until he can find something comparable: “I can’t fall in love if it’s not with you / Cause other people’s stories got me feeling bored.” When that true, transcendent love is attained, it’s almost a benevolent funhouse mirror that lets Lilitri see his best self in the eyes of another. Or, said another way on the buoyant “skippy,” “I like when I’m with you I make the good choice instead.”

While life till bones might not be the most sonically ambitious Oso Oso album, it is certainly the most focused, almost iterative in its Frankenstein-style synthesis of Lilitri’s work to date. He nicks the snare-driven stomping groove from “dig” and speeds it up for “stoke”; he tactfully deploys sore thumb’s piano flourishes; he’s back singing of Annies and disasters around the bend; he upcycles an old demo into a beachy reverie. Often, when a songwriter’s repeated tics are visible enough to be articulated, it means they are spinning their wheels, but this is moreso the work of a master craftsman, a generational tunesmith confident enough to mine his own back catalog for inspiration. It certainly doesn’t hurt that this laser-focus is in service of some of the sharpest pop he’s ever penned, 29 straight minutes of minivan window-primed radio rock. Two of the songs were released in advance as singles, but for my money, there are easily five more that would have fit the bill.

The album takes its title from a line in the closer: “Look at all the people, looking at their phones / With how much time left? Life till bones.” It’s a pretty head-on confrontation of mortality, hidden at the end of a B-Side largely devoted to fawning love songs, and it’s indicative of what Lilitri does best. His phrases breeze by perfectly clipped, and the fleeting melancholy registers like an in-joke, a passing thought to be acknowledged but not dwelled on. Then—much like life, one might say–the album is over almost too soon. One day, we will all be reduced to bones. But it’s a funny thing about skeletons; when all the living flesh decays, they always look a bit like they’re smiling.

Jason Sloan is a guy from Brooklyn by way of Long Island. He posts mediocre jokes on Twitter and can be found occasionally rambling on his blog Tributary.

July 03, 2024

Summer BBQ Bangers Courtesy of Swim Into The Sound

July 03, 2024/ David Williams

The dog days of summer are officially here, which means for the next couple months, it’s time to make the most of the scorching temperatures and extensive sunlight; just don’t forget your sunscreen. The time is now to venture outdoors and embrace everything the summer has to offer, from outdoor festivals to walks around the park and ice cream excursions (save me a scoop of strawberry).

Here at Swim HQ, we firmly believe the best part about summer is backyard barbecues with your friends and family. There’s something about that grill smell combined with the warm weather and people you love that brings the summer together better than the macaroni and cheese your favorite aunt cooks. There’s only one thing that separates an all-day rager from a total snooze fest. Can you guess what that is? No worries, I’ll just go ahead and tell you it’s all about the music.

Music is the key component at any pool party, barbecue, or box social you have ever attended. The stakes get raised even higher during the summer because everything revolves around large gatherings of people outside trying to live their best lives in the heat. So, a perfectly curated playlist created by your own bare hands is the cherry on top of the sundae.

There's no better feeling than seeing everyone bobbing their heads and strutting their stuff to songs you painstakingly sourced from your streaming services. Setting the party off with an immaculate playlist in America is the equivalent of being knighted in England. The only difference is that people across the pond get medals for their achievements. What laws must we pass to get trophies handed out to people who can turn a party out with their musical taste? Imagine showing up to a barbecue holding three trophies from your musical dalliances; talk about an icebreaker.

I know what you're thinking: what makes for a good summer barbecue rock song? You can go a few different ways. The nostalgic approach is a surefire home run; go with a song everyone knows that brings back memories of yesteryear. Alternatively, uptempo pop-leaning rock is another genre that can't miss, music that is easy to digest while people are eating food that isn't so digestible. Lastly, if you want to show off your musical knowledge, sneak some underground bands into the playlist. What better feeling is there than seeing folks trying to Shazam the songs that you’re severing up off the queue?

The only “BBQ don't” is to avoid any Nu Metal, and I say that from personal experience. Heed my warning: if you play even three Limp Bizkit songs, a gang of bros will magically appear like Beetlejuice, breaking glasses and stepping on furniture while wearing backward caps. Instant mood killer, trust me.

Now that you know the rules of the game, it’s time to construct your playlist. Below, you will find some choice selects from our esteemed Swim Team. Feel free to use these songs as jumping-off points for your own backyard summer barbecue to set the vibes in the right direction and maybe even earn some bragging rights as a supreme music curator.

Nickelback – “Photograph”

I personally guarantee that more than 75% of BBQ attendees will pretend not to know the lyrics to this song, but I posit that Nickelback is the ultimate summertime guilty pleasure. Despite pushing 20, “Photograph” still sounds like just as much of a hit single as it did when it was first released. Plus, the song is the perfect conduit for classic BBQ conversations like ‘Remember when we went and did that thing at that place?’ and ‘Hey, what do you think Blank is up to these days?’ With the benefit of hindsight and time, these middle-school-joke songs have now become dad-rock classics. And even though it’s incredibly indulgent, the song is self-aware, reminding us that memories are meant to push us forward, not trap us in the past. Bonus points for giving a Canadian cultural export airtime at the USA’s birthday party.

Braden Allmond - @braden.allmond

Oso Oso – “all of my love”

It’s important to have a song at your BBQ with some quick claps in it. Clap-clap-clap. There’s a good chance your get-together will be made up of people you’ve met at various stages of your life, some of whom don’t really know each other. Giving everyone a chance to clap together will do a lot to build comradery/save you the headache of an awkward party. Not everyone will know this song, but because it’s short and very good, you can probably get away with playing it like five or six times over the course of a few hours; once repetition three hits, people should get what’s going on, and from there, you’re all set. Everyone will be clapping together (clap-clap-clap), laughing, and sharing stories; it’ll just be a good time. Getting a bunch of people together can be stressful, let “all of my love” do some of the heavy lifting so you can focus on the grill.

Josh Ejnes - @joshejnes

XTC – “Summer’s Cauldron”

Almost 40 years later, I’m still not sure why you’d release an album like XTC’s Skylarking in October. Beyond the sounds of bees and heavy humidity that open “Summer’s Cauldron,” the British band’s Todd Rundgren-produced masterpiece is essential dog days music. It might evoke walking through a wooded clearing at sunrise after taking mushrooms more than grilling brats, but it welcomes a warm weather mindset no matter when or where you’re listening. You don’t have to be lying in an English countryside field to appreciate “Summer’s Cauldron” — in fact, it proves just as potent out on the porch, soaking up Minnesota’s eclectic summertime. XTC’s dappled psychedelic pop shouts for the sun to join in the party, even while Andy Partridge sings of drowning “under mats of flower lava.” This is also how I would want to go.

Aly Eleanor - @purityolympics

D’Angelo – “Spanish Joint”

D'angelo's Voodoo is a hot, thick, sweaty, and bright delight for all five of your senses. The album is peak summer for me, largely due to my association of it with the Texas heat I was enduring when I first heard Voodoo, but also because of how perfectly the drums ooze along with D'Angelo's sighs and cries. “Spanish Joint” falls on the bright and hot side of my earlier sensory evaluation. The song bounces through plumes of charcoal smoke and screened doors with ease and is sure to have everyone within earshot head-bobbing along. “Spanish Joint” is the open-toe shoe that is sure to fit your summer backyard BBQ, and if it isn't, then please don't invite me.

Kirby Kluth - @kirbykluth

Switchfoot – “Meant to Live”

The pineapple is fresh off the grill, the jackfruit shredded and coated in sauce, and spirits are high. Suddenly, you hear it: the riff. Despite the arena rock energy of “Meant to Live’s” opening, vocalist Jon Foreman finds space between the larger-than-life instrumentation to softly tell of someone who feels as though the world is passing him by before building into a raucous, infectious plea of a chorus as he longs for something greater than merely drifting through life. Going into the bridge, Switchfoot briefly pulls the song towards a softer dynamic space as Foreman pleads for “more than the wars of our fathers.”

I take this song as a reminder that there’s so much work to do if we want to ensure we’re not fighting our parents’ wars and passing them down to future generations. It’s a call to action in the face of multiple genocides, civil rights being rapidly stripped away in America, and an election that seems as though it’s destined to make both of these issues worse no matter the outcome. I also take it as an invitation to remember that within the community that’s built and reinforced through the summer BBQ, we have managed to find part of the “so much more” that Foreman cries out for. The riff comes back. You get a second sandwich. After all, “we were meant to live.”

Noëlle Midnight - @noellemidnight

AC/DC - “Shot Down in Flames”

When in doubt, the Godfathers of Summer Barbecue Rock will never steer you wrong. You want something familiar and catchy when at a barbecue or party, especially in the summer. Something that casual music fans can latch on to for dear life and will get everyone to start tapping their feet uncontrollably. AC/DC checks off more boxes than an election form. From the chunky riffs, up-tempo music, and absolutely filthy guitar solos, they will have your party cooking with gasoline. “Highway to Hell” is the obvious choice here, but it’s incredibly too expected; that song has been played a kajillion plus 1 times to death. Instead, go with a song from the same album, “Shot Down in Flames,” it’s just as energetic and rowdy also, you still get that same jolt of electricity as “Highway to Hell,” but it feels light a slight flex by picking a deeper cut.

The good thing about AC/DC is that they have generational music, and Bon Scott’s raspy/high-pitched vocals pack a knockout punch that will scratch every itch in any generation. So fear not, kids today would be crushing hard seltzers all day under the scorching sun to this song. Say you’re with an older crowd, though, it’s an instant light bulb moment for them to reminisce about listening to them for the first time or hearing about how AC/DC was their soundtrack for all the youthful shenanigans they got into. Were your Mee Maw and Pop Pop rebels back in the day? Who knows? Let’s find out by putting on “Shot Down in Flames” to see what happens.

David Williams - @davidmwill89

Chicago – “Saturday in the Park”

Few records are worthy of making the cut for a summer BBQ playlist, but anything by Chicago is a non-negotiable add. Maybe my love for the band is driven by nostalgia or maybe it’s my unabashed love of wearing socks with my Birks. Either way, “Saturday in the Park” is a guaranteed success for the backyard bash you’re planning. Robert Lamm and Peter Cetera’s smooth harmonies, backed by chipper drums and warm brass, are impossibly catchy - before you know it, the whole party will be singing along: “Saturday in the park / I think it was the Fourth of July.” Hot dogs sizzle on the grill, the Miller Lites in the cooler are icy cold, and your new neighbors Tom and Barb just arrived with potato salad in tow. You’re wearing the “Kiss the Chef” apron that your brother-in-law gifted you for Christmas (you pretended to hate it, but secretly, you’ve been dying to bust that bad boy out). Like Robert said, it’s “a real celebration, waiting for us all.” Cheers!

Britta Joseph - @brittajoes

Petey – “I Tried to Draw a Straight Line”

From his raspy voice to his NASCAR enthusiast aesthetic, Petey feels like he belongs at a barbecue with a Miller Lite in a koozie. You look at his vintage tees and beaten-up hats and can instantly smell the charcoal lingering. While all of his 2023 album, USA, is ideal for flipping hot dogs, “I Tried to Draw a Straight Line” is the quintessential grilling song. On the surface, it’s charming background music with a dancey beat to which people nod their heads without even noticing. The lyrics are a stream of consciousness you can easily hear being spoken over the sound of sizzling beef. “Yeah, I’ve been kind of angry since the Kings lost to the Lakers in the Western Conference Finals.” These seemingly banal thoughts are interrupted by moments of sheer panic. “Why you looking at me like that? Are you wishing that I was dead? Am I making you feel uncool? Is it something that I said?” Later, he spirals as he goes from talking about tricks he learned in his childhood to wondering whether he deserves to one day be a parent. This is a millennial barbeque at its finest: Nathan’s Ballpark Franks, Boca Burgers, and existential crises. If no one has volunteered yet, I’ll bring some tomato salad.

Lindsay Fickas - @lindsayfickas

The Menzingers – “Bad Catholics”

It could be the religious background, the Irish heritage, growing up as a suburban white kid raised on rock and roll, or my penchant for consuming more alcohol than I should. Whatever the reason, The Menzingers are a band that have resonated with me deeply ever since my best friend showed me their song “Midwestern States” back in our early college days. Not only are they one of the best millennial American rock bands of our time, but there is something about their sound and identity that bleeds classic rock vibes, Americana, drinking too much, hanging out with your buds, and causing trouble. Given those qualifications, it would not be out-of-place to hear one of their more sunny, easy-going tracks blaring out of a waterproof speaker in a millennial dude’s backyard somewhere in Anytown, USA on a sweltering summer day. While just about any track off their 2017 record After the Party could fit the bill, “Bad Catholics” has been on my summer playlists since it first graced my ears. The straightforward riffs, steady pre-chorus, and sunny, danceable hooks create the best environment for cracking open a cold one in a beach chair that’s one light breeze away from breaking in half. Lyrics describing a church picnic and children running around with “orange soda mustaches” further elevate the spirit of the season in this banger that, once you hear it, is sure to make its way onto your own BBQ playlists this summer.

Ciara Rhiannon - @rhiannon_comma

MJ Lenderman – “You Have Bought Yourself A Boat”

“It's plain to me to see / You have bought yourself a boat.” Never before in the history of music have the stakes of an artist’s entire vibe been captured so accurately and so succinctly with the opening line of a song. With a charming North Carolina drawl and plenty of breezy twang, MJ Lenderman has been a staple of my summertime playlists for a few years running now. In fact, my love affair with Lenderman’s particular style of southern slacker rock ignited on July 4th of 2022 as I kept Boat Songs on a constant rotation throughout my entire four-day weekend while hanging on the Oregon Coast with my family. I came out the other side half hungover, buzzed on burgers, and with a newfound zeal for all things MJ. In the time since then, my adoration for his personable, everyman aura has only grown, amplified with each subsequent single and live album. While you might have thought I’d go with a more grill-based MJ song, the bright, summertime breeze of “You Have Bought Yourself A Boat” feels like the ultimate summation of feel-good grillin’. I’ll see y’all at the cookout.

Taylor Grimes - @GeorgeTaylorG

Funkadelic – “Can You Get To That”

When I started to brainstorm a perfect BBQ song for this prompt, my shortlist borrowed heavily from my dad’s music library (he’s the one who got me into The Hold Steady and Wilco and Steely Dan). But only one of those songs was one that my grill-enthusiast father once asked me to play at his funeral. That’s right, when my dad no longer has a life (or rather, when life no longer has him), he wants to go out to the bluesy psych rock grooves and shimmering harmonies of Funkadelic’s “Can You Get To That” (Bonus points if you also add Sleigh Bells’ “Rill Rill,” a track that brilliantly interpolates Fubkadelic’s timeless melody into futuristic electropop Americana.) This backstory might seem morbid, but at this point, I’m used to having the kind of parents who have no qualms about dropping their funeral requests into casual conversation. We only have so much time on this earth, so why not use it to grill some burgers? While you’re at it, why not throw on all of Maggot Brain in its mind-bending entirety?

Grace Robins-Somerville - @grace_roso

April 28, 2022

All Hail Oso Oso: The King of Bridges

April 28, 2022/ Taylor Grimes

I think I spent the first 25 years of my life not knowing what a bridge is. This is particularly embarrassing because I spent three of those years running a music blog. Obviously I had heard of bridges; I knew vaguely what a chorus and a verse were (the chorus was the repetitive singy part, the verse was the “story” part), but “bridge” was just one step deeper into music theory than I was able to comprehend. Turns out the bridge is the part at the end of the song where the instrumental changed and the artist essentially sings a new verse that doesn’t fit into the format of what came before. Oftentimes the bridge will throw to one more chorus before the end of the song and acts as a way for the artist to keep the track interesting while still giving you that sweet, catchy singalong part one last time.

That’s a pretty elementary explanation, but song structure is something that I didn’t even begin to comprehend until a quarter through my life, so I guess you get what you pay for. I open with this embarrassing anecdote not to flex my middle-school-choir-level of music theory knowledge but to acknowledge that music writing often has a bad tendency to throw around lots of technical terms assuming its reader knows what’s up. Sure, sometimes a concept is widespread enough that an explanation isn’t needed, and other times you can pick things up via context clues, but I’m specifically explaining the idea of a bridge upfront because I’d like to talk about one of the best bridge writers in the game: Oso Oso.

Jade Lilitri has been an entity within the emo music scene for over a decade at this point. Initially making a name for himself as the guitarist and front person for the cult pop-punk act State Lines back in the early 2010s, Jade’s musical ideas quickly spilled out into a solo project by 2014. Initially named osoosooso, this act soon bloomed from a side project to a fully-fledged band with the release of Real Stories of True People Who Kind of Looked Like Monsters in 2015. Now bearing a subtle yet confusing name change to “Oso Oso” along with more produced sound, Real Stories put Lilitri on the emo map, instantly solidifying himself as a standalone force within the scene with songs like “Track 1, Side A” and “This Must Be My Exit.” This popularity only grew with the release of the yunahon mixtape in 2017 and basking in the glow in 2019, both of which brought increasingly impressive tours and critical acclaim.

Each Oso Oso release features a barebones lineup with Lilitri on vocals, guitars, and bass, while Aaron Masih handles the drums. The touring musicians supporting Oso Oso have always been a rotating cast of friends and collaborators, but the project has primarily been a one-man operation helmed by Jade himself. It’s his band, his ideas, his vision, and his creativity that has led to a project with one of the most uniquely defined sounds in the entirety of the emo scene.

I’ll admit I got to Oso Oso late… like really late. I don’t know why I feel like I need to preface that when discussing my history with a band, but in this case, I feel it provides important context. Sometime in August of 2018, my life was on the verge of massive change. I was about to move from Portland, Oregon, to Detroit, Michigan, for a new job. I was not only moving away from home for the first time in earnest, but I was also moving all the way across the damn country to a state I’d never even set foot in. I was in a weird liminal space and feeling extra sentimental, to say the least. I was experiencing everyday life from a hyper-sentimental vantage point, thinking about how long I was about to go without seeing my family or petting my childhood dog. Every meal I ate and street I walked down felt like a bittersweet reminder that it might be the last time I experienced those things in months or even years. I was living from the perspective of someone whose life was about to be drastically different in a matter of weeks. That’s both a scary and exciting thing to have looming over your head.

Amongst all this weird in-my-feelings self-reflection, I was having an emo renaissance spurred by Gulfer’s Dog Bless and Mom Jeans’ Puppy Love. Those albums brought me back to the mathy emo shit of my high school and college years like Minus The Bear, Modern Baseball, and Into It. Over It. At this point, it was still summer, and the weather was beautiful in Oregon, if not waning just a little bit to the fall chill. I distinctly remember an evening mid-august doing dishes by myself after one of the last homecooked meals I would enjoy that year. I was scrubbing a pot free of the seasonal zest left behind from one of my Mom's world-famous Mexican dishes. Behind me, my MacBook Air sat on our kitchen island, Spotify pouring from the speakers. I had probably just finished listening to an album from some Counter Intuitive band, and Spotify had switched over to the usual auto-generated suspects of mildly-popular emo rock bands.

I shuffled from Mom Jeans to Retirement Party to Pet Symmetry at the whim of the algorithm. I didn’t hate it, but my hands were wet and soapy, so the queue was out of my control. Then it happened; I heard the energetic opening chords of “gb/ol h/nf” and was utterly transfixed.

I’d been listening to emo music for years at that point, yet I had never heard anything quite like this song before. I loved the laid-back, surfy tone, the borderline-stake punk tempo, the crisp emo-flavored guitars, and the even-keel singing. I enjoyed putting the puzzle together of what the song title stood for, and on top of all that, I was absolutely transfixed by the album cover of a dude wearing a shark head costume skateboarding through what looked like a restaurant kitchen or the underside of a music venue. Maybe I was just in a particularly-receptive mood, but the song struck a chord within seconds and made a case for itself over the remainder of its four and a half minute running time.

What really sealed the deal came midway through the song at two minutes and 33 seconds, where the instrumental bottoms out to just guitar for a moment as Jade repeats, “I love it, yes I do… oh no, I think I love them more.” Eventually, the bass and drums join in, gradually picking up the pace as the lyrics continue, “and I love you yes I do… uh no, no I’m not really sure.” Just as Jake croons the word ‘sure’ in about as high as his voice ever goes, the instrumental drops out, making way for a jagged barrage of emo instrumentation that’s synchronized but just a little too off-tempo to dance to. As this unpredictable section of the song jostles the listener around, it breaks just long enough for Jade to get out one more half-thought as he trails off with “don’t know…” before throwing back to the whiplash-inducing riffage.

This seemed like a fitting (if not slightly jarring) way to end the song, but much to my surprise, the track was only halfway over. After this skillful bout of jazzy emo instrumentation, the instrumental clears out once again, this time letting everything breathe and giving enough space for Jade to appear with his guitar and continue the story. Almost as if a cable was knocked loose during a violent mosh, the song continues with Jade strumming what sounds to be an unplugged electric guitar. As he brushes his pick over the chords, he sings,

Well, that rain cloud in your head
(it’s still raining)
The monkey on your back
(he’s still hanging)
And I’m stuck here, a waste, complaining to you
(always complaining)

Then, as if by some miracle, the power has been restored, the bass and drums re-emerge, joining the guitar in this new laid-back instrumental. Here’s where the song’s title is revealed as Jade sings, “so goodbye old love, hello new friend. This is where it ends and then begins again.” Soon the track incorrigibly picks back up steam once again, expending all its remaining energy on a bouncy outro and cleanly-executed guitar solo.

This mid-song fake out was a beautiful surprise, and unlike anything I was listening to at the time, especially in the emo space. I discovered “gb/ol h/nf” was a single with an accompanying song titled “subside,” which I immediately queued up, and I quickly grew just as infatuated with. While it was slightly less energetic and didn’t have a crazy fake-out ending, “subside” felt like a more downtrodden follow-up to its accompanying A-side. It was the emotional chaser to the youthful energy that preceded it. It was the mid-set catch-your-breath-moment before the band launched into another banger. The crazy part was, as stylistically different as these two tracks were, “subside” still bore a precise emo instrumental and mesmerizing melody wrapped inside of its deeply-feeling chorus. Where had Oso Oso been all my life?

Best bridges in the game. pic.twitter.com/Zr630wqEDo
— taylor (@GeorgeTaylorG) November 29, 2021

I spent the remainder of that year and the next slowly absorbing the rest of the band’s oeuvre, focusing primarily on the yunahon mixtape with a chaser of gb/ol h/nf / subside for good measure. This eventually spread to the band’s debut and culminated in fully appreciating the rollout of basking in the glow, which worked its way up to #4 on my 2019 Album of the Year list. What I discovered over the course of my yearlong flirtation with Oso Oso’s impeccable discography is that Jade Lilitri has a knack for writing incredible, engaging, and creative bridges.

So often, bridges can feel like an extra idea thrown in because it didn’t fit anywhere else on the album or, worse, a stopgap meant to lazily withhold one more chorus from you for just a few moments longer. In Oso Oso songs, the bridges feel necessary and reveal an additional layer of consideration to the core musical idea. The songs themselves are already catchy and engaging enough on their own, but the bridges that Jade writes often feel like an essential idea that’s both self-contained and fits within the world of the song.

Oso Oso songs are like ice cream. Sure, ice cream on its own is good, but you throw a great bridge in there, and it’s like getting a fully-loaded ice cream cone with all the fixings. It’s the difference between a good snack and a great dessert. The songs would work without them, but Jade’s bridges act as a cherry on top containing their own ideas, phrases, and instrumentals that all get stuck in your head just as much as the “core” song itself. It’s like a song on top of a fucking song.

Outside of “gb/ol h/nf,” the next time I took note of Jade’s superior bridge writing was with “Great Big Beaches.” Anyone reading this that’s already an Oso Oso fan probably sees that song title and can immediately call to mind both the song’s melody and bridge. That is the other brilliant secret of Lilitri’s songwriting: he often saves the song’s title for the bridge. That means the bridges not only stand on their own, but they’re often the most catchy and memorable part of the song. Once you’ve listened enough, this also means that you spend the entire song waiting for that cathartic, catchy release that comes in the final minutes.

In the case of “Great Big Beaches,” the track begins innocently enough with a handful of reverbed guitar strums, which lead to a cresting instrumental that rises and falls like ocean waves. The song builds and mounts until hitting its stride around the two-and-a-half-minute mark. As the guitars fall into this bouncy sway, multiple different vocal melodies soar over the top until everything clicks into place within the last 30 seconds where Jade busts out the song’s name over one of the most hard-hitting riffs on the album. It’s still bright and sunny and in line with what came before, but at a certain point, you know this instrumental offramp is coming, and you spend the first half of the song just looking forward to its arrival.

These same qualities can also be found in “The Walk,” which starts out with a minimal drum beat that establishes the song’s marching band-like cadence. Things pick up halfway through as the guitars overpower this sensible drum beat. Much like “Great Big Beaches,” things die down right around the three-minute mark before launching into a series of peppy pop-punk power chords. Aside from making me want to single-handledly start a pit every time I hear this energetic burst, it’s also accompanied by a lyrical catharsis as Jade belts, “I misinterpreted everything you saaaaid.” It genuinely feels like there’s something here for everybody, and this last little passage is basically less than a minute.

Going even further back into Oso Oso’s discography, you can find even more examples of this impactful bridge writing. On LP1, you’ve got “Where You’ve Been Hiding” and “Josephine,” and even on Osoosooso there’s “Para ’effin dise, Baby!” In almost all of these instances, Jade reserves the punchiest, most energetic burst of energy for the song’s final minutes. It’s like a long-distance runner who can finally see the endpoint off and knows they don’t have to sustain their power for much longer. Jade lets every instrument loose at once and allows the songs to expend all of their remaining drive in one final push.

Oso Oso already has one of the best, most recognizable discographies in emo/diy/pop-punk/whatever you want to call it. Nobody is making songs that sound like this, blending clean guitar work, catchy choruses, impeccable melodies, and energetic pop-punk instrumentals. You throw bridges into consideration, and it feels totally non-hyperbolic to say that Jade Lilitri is one of the most indispensable songwriters working right now. All I can say is thank you, Oso Oso, for teaching me not just what a bridge is but what a great bridge can be.

December 31, 2019

Swim Into The Sound's 20 Favorite Albums of 2019

December 31, 2019/ Taylor Grimes

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.

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.

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