Swim Into The Sound's Staff Favorites of 2024

Early on in 2024, I put out a call for new writers thinking that a small handful of people might want to join our team to write about emo music and under-the-radar indie rock. What actually happened is roughly 60 people applied, and I was overwhelmed for weeks sifting through all of these super thoughtful responses from incredibly talented people who wanted to be a part of Swim Into The Sound.

Over the course of the year, some of those people naturally dropped off or had other obligations come up, but a majority of them stayed on to write reviews, retrospectives, premieres, and interviews. This year more than any other, I felt a sense of community form around this silly little website as the self-dubbed Swim Team spent 2024 turning out one fantastic piece after another, lifting each other up, and shooting the shit in our Discord. It’s really amazing. 

I’m just some guy who writes about music online; all of these people who make up our team (including all the older writers who were on board before 2024) have set the tone, pace, and tenor for what Swim Into The Sound actually is, and that’s an incredible thing to find myself at the helm of. 

With all of these new people jumping on board, I had to be more of an editor than ever before, but it was all in service of sharing music we love. Over the past twelve months, we’ve published 128 articles containing a collective 170k words. That’s staggering to me. There were some stretches where we published an article every day for a week, and while that wasn’t entirely sustainable for me as an editor, it was thrilling to feel like a cutting-edge publication for a little bit. 

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m incredibly proud of these people and all their work. They’ve helped shape Swim into something far grander than I ever could have conceived, and it’s an honor to write alongside them, to edit their work, and to share it with the world. This has been a banner year for Swim Into The Sound, and I’m already excited to see where we collectively take things in 2025. 

Without any further blabbering or maudlin reflecting, I’d like to turn things over to the Swim Team to allow each writer to talk about their favorite album of 2024, plus any other secondary favorites they might have. Below, you’ll find 36 recommendations from 36 different people, an eclectic snapshot of what 2024 had to offer. You can also access every one of these albums in this Spotify playlist if you’d like to listen as you read or save them for later. As usual, I hope you discover something new and exciting here to love; I definitely have. 


Britta Joseph | Touché Amoré – Spiral In A Straight Line

Rise Records

Touché Amoré creates albums that feel like diary entries - entries that we, as listeners, are unsure we should even be privy to. The melodic hardcore giants’ sixth album, Spiral In A Straight Line, chronicles the grief and shock that accompany devastating change. The first time I listened to this album, I was sitting in my living room, tears silently streaming down my cheeks as each pain-laced line of poetry pierced me through the heart. Jeremy Bolm hands us a record capturing a new chapter in his life, allowing a moment of connection and humanity, though it comes at a great personal cost. Heavily referential, brutally emotive, and sonically challenging, Spiral In A Straight Line is a beautiful tribute to heartbreak.

Other stand-outs for 2024:

  • EP of the year goes to FlyOverStates’ Ghosts (a brilliant post-hardcore release that feels like it’s straight out of the early aughts)

  • Cover of the year goes to Anthony Green’s rendition of “Numb, But I Still Feel It (Live at Nomad)” by Title Fight (bittersweet and simple; I was lucky enough to hear this on his spring tour this year)

  • Song of the year goes to Truman Finnell for the haunting single “Palm of Thorns” (visceral, atmospheric, brilliant; an incredible piece of art)


Caro Alt
| Johnny Blue Skies – Passage Du Desir 

High Top Mountain Records

As I write this, I am standing in a sprawling crowd to see Johnny Blue Skies, a.k.a. Sturgill Simpson. People are craning their necks just to get a better view of the stage setup; everyone seems to be in flannel, and I waited in line for 10 minutes to get a beer. That’s how excited everyone is to hear his latest record and my album of the year, Passage Du Desir, live. It’s clear to everyone in this room that Sturgill Simpson is the closest thing current country music has to a legend. For five albums, Simpson has become a larger-than-life musician who blends the more traditional sounds with metamodern tricks, produces contemporary country staples, plays in other artists’ bands, and even starred in a Scorsese movie. For these reasons, Simpson had to kill Sturgill. 

Under the guise of an altar ego, Simpson created a new, stripped-down world for his latest album. Compiled during his time in Paris and recorded with essentially just a guitar and an amp, the record grapples with private love, mundane misery, and suffocating grief. One of Simpson’s strengths as an artist has always been making his guitar speak for him, and in just eight songs, Simpson’s musical compositions create his most heart-aching stories yet. I still lose myself in the depth of “Jupiter’s Faerie” and “Right Kind of Dream.” I’m finishing this write-up after the concert and was reminded how, in an interview about the new name, Simpson suggested that it’s easier to release vulnerable albums under a pseudonym. After hearing the crowd sing those same lyrics with him, it’s hard not to be moved by the window of vulnerability this album created for not only himself but all of us, too.

Other Stuff I Liked:
- Compilation Album: Cardinals at the Window: A Benefit for Flood Relief in Western North Carolina ft. Various Artists
- Live Album: Live at the Rio Market by Horse Rider
- EP: I’d Think I Know by Oldstar
- Song: “Favourite” by Fontaines DC


Rob Moura
| Haley Heynderickx – Seed of a Seed

Mama Bird Recording Co.

When I first acquired my Apple Watch, I spent almost a week in its possession. I only ever took it off to charge it. In between, I took remote pictures of myself like James Bond, downloaded more notes apps than I had words to fill them, and pulled the compass out to let it direct me north, which at the time was toward a billboard advertising airplane food. In the summer, my skin paled underneath the band, a pallid ring of flesh revealing itself upon every removal. One day, in the forest, a dime-sized hive blossomed under the aluminum carapace, and though the welt grew so itchy it seemed made of electricity, I still refused to take it off. Greater was my desire to have my steps tracked, proof I had taken them.

Haley Heynderickx’s Seed of a Seed is perhaps not the greatest album I’ve heard this year, but it is the one that has impacted my life the most. It is the one that offers the most kindness. Too many invisible voices insist on music - that which has been absorbed into a gummy hypnotizing media amalgamation shorthanded as “content” - as a distraction or a tool for someone’s avaricious intentions. Seed of a Seed is of a different breed. The guitar is gentle and hearty, and Heynderickx’s voice soothes like a poultice. It reminds me “to pull the fuck over, just to stare at purple clover off the highway.” Maybe it’s not a coincidence that my watch sits on its charger, dormant for over a week now: a parasite successfully pulled from the fold.

Bits and Bites, Faves and Craves:
- Jessica Pratt - Here in the Pitch (transcendental folk transmission)
- DoNormaal & Welp Disney - PALMSPRINGA (hip-hop from the chaos rift)
- Zookraught - VIDA VIOLET (clamorous queer dance-punk)
- Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven (heavier than heaven?)
- The Lemon Twigs - A Dream Is All We Know (scraping the ceiling of pop-rock pastiche)


Nick Miller
| Mount Eerie – Night Palace

P. W. Elverum & Sun

I don’t remember where or how old I was when I first heard one of Phil Elverum’s songs, but if I had to venture a guess, I would say that I was probably about 16, sitting at the desktop computer in my childhood bedroom. Since then, his projects Mount Eerie and The Microphones have become a recurring presence in my life, not exactly on repeat, but always around. Night Palace is the first new Mount Eerie album in five years, and while it was just released in November, it has instantly cemented itself in my mind as one of Elverum’s best releases.

Across the album’s 81 minutes and 26 tracks, Elverum covers familiar ground and explores new genres, including screamo on “Swallowed Alive” and straightforward rock on “Empty Paper Towel Roll.” The album’s lyrics cross equally vast territory, with standouts like Elverum’s imagined conversation with a fish on the aptly-named “I Spoke With A Fish” and a touching meditation on depression with “Wind & Fog, Pt. 2.” There are noticeable callbacks to his previous work, but none of it feels forced or corny. Instead, Night Palace feels more like a culmination of everything that came before it.

Other Favorite Albums of 2024:
- Manning Fireworks by MJ Lenderman
- YOU’LL HAVE TO LOSE SOMETHING by SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE
- Tigers Blood by Waxahatchee
- GNX by Kendrick Lamar
- Lived Here For A While by Good Looks


Russ Finn
| Callahan & Witscher – Think Differently

Post Present Medium

Throughout their careers, Jack Callahan and Jeff Witscher have released experimental electronic music under their own names or monikers, like Die Reihe and Rene Hell. On Think Differently, their debut album as the duo Callahan & Witscher, the two avant-garde musicians execute their ultimate musical experiment—pop accessibility. 

Think Differently is an experimental concept album about making experimental music. Callahan & Witscher duet on every song with back-and-forth auto-tuned choruses and dry, spoken-word tales about the struggles of being touring experimental musicians who share deeply personal art to an indifferent world. In “Boiler Room,” for example, Witscher tells the tragicomic story of the time he played his music at a Boiler Room set where everyone was expecting “techno DJs.” On “Columbus,” Callahan “bares his soul to thirteen people who he’ll never meet” at a show in a laundromat.

Callahan & Witscher couple their self-deprecation and ennui with late 90s and early 2000s pop-rock stylings. Sugar Ray, Beck, Linkin Park–it’s all there, mashed together with samples of Taco Bell bongs, dueling banjos, and a calculated use of “listen to this track, bitch.” Though the jokes never stop, it would be a disservice to call this a comedy album. Think Differently is funny in the same way hanging out with your best friends is funny–you’ll crack jokes but still make room to lift each other up and have serious discussions.

The album is loaded with humor and a persistent jadedness toward the music industry, but the album isn’t a bitter, irony-poisoned piece of juvenilia. Think Differently is a sweet album that challenges musicians and artists to never give up on doing what they love, and it’s the most fun I’ve had listening to an album in a long time.

2024 releases deserving more attention:
- Tinker Bell’s Cough by F.G.S.
- Twisted Teens by Twisted Teens
- The Circus Egotistica by Floral Tattoo
- Hope and Fear by Stella


Caleb Doyle
| Waxahatchee – Tigers Blood

ANTI-

Katie Crutchfield’s arc as a musician is well familiar to middle-of-the-country people like me who grew up on Martina McBride and Montgomery Gentry; we rejected country radio as teens by turning to indie rock and then let the hometown twang seep back in as we got older. Waxahatchee is bona fide 2010s indie rock royalty, and yet Crutchfield has had the bravery and curiosity to follow what’s felt good down the Americana dirt road. 

Tigers Blood is both an improvement on Saint Cloud from a song-writing standpoint and an evolution of her sound. Perhaps “evolution” isn’t the proper term; maybe we’ll call it a “leaning-in.” Sonically, Tigers Blood is full-bore alt-country rock. Crutchfield channels Patsy Cline and her beloved Lucinda Williams in her vocal performance and does not hesitate to dial up the twang. As for the rest of the gang: Brad and Phil Cook, Spencer Tweedy, and MJ Lenderman lay down backing tracks as strong as anything Buck Owens’s Buckaroos ever played.

Lyrically, Crutchfield’s themes feel warmly familiar with an added wisdom and an un-clenching that comes with the freedom of playing music she is comfortable with. This is still the Waxahatchee from Cerulean Salt, just with a glass of sweet tea on a screened-in front porch. It is fascinating to hear words like “didactic,” “reticent,” and “a paradox poetic” through the lens of Crutchfield’s Alabama-raised, Kansas City-steeped twang. The warm country tones are a deep comfort amid nakedly human lyrics about grief, self-consciousness, and trying to make love work.

Each track is a meal. From hopeful lover’s ballad “Right Back To It” (my front-runner for Song of the Year) to acidic lovers’ quarrel over a Byrds riff “Crowbar,” each song on Tigers Blood feels immediately familiar upon first listen. The sounds are timeless, and we can only hope this is just the beginning of the alt-country Renaissance.

The rest of my Top 5:
2. Rosali - Bite Down
3. MJ Lenderman - Manning Fireworks
4. Jessica Pratt - Here in the Pitch
5. Cindy Lee - Diamond Jubilee


Elias Amini
| girlsnails – california kickball

Self-released

Of all the records that came out this year, from sumptuous screamo delights to achingly delicious alt-country jawns, I never thought that girlsnails’ six-song mathy emo album-length EP would have the unshakeable grip on me that it does. I first broadly gestured towards my favoritism for the band earlier on in our Q1 Roundup, where I could certainly say I was excitedly picking up what they were putting down. Then, this year happened. I buried friends and family alike, I struggled with my own mental health, I lent what strength I could to my comrades and loved ones. Through all this, california kickball did something miraculous for me: it just made more and more sense. The grappling with oneself, your shortcomings, your longing, your aches and scrapes and bruises and fractures. Every warble of pain felt reflective of something in my life; each pining for release I saw as flickering images of passed-on loved ones. And as powerful or elated, or melancholy or crazy as so many other projects from this year made me feel, none made me feel as seen as girlsnails did. It’s wild how an album about struggling through love and bad breakups became my philosopher's stone for digesting and metabolizing a huge amount of grief. But I suppose that is the most remarkable thing about music, isn’t it? This alchemical quality to become what you may need at a given moment in time and have it basically change a piece of you in the process. How wonderful that a batch of songs about clunky, dissolving connections and abstract longing could give me such peace. I don't know what girlsnails has up their sleeve next, but I can only hope whatever wondrous form it takes that it makes itself a home for anyone willing to listen. 

Other releases I loved from this year:
- Obsidian Wreath by Infant Island
- We Have the Answer by Heavenly Blue
- Quarto Vientos Cinco Soles by Massa Nera and Quiet Fear
- Sweethearts, a split by Aren't We Amphibians and Just Let Me Go


Josh Ejnes
| Sinai Vessel – I SING

Keeled Scales

One reason that Sinai Vessel’s I SING hit so hard for me is that, at its heart, it is an incredibly angry record. Though it doesn’t display many of the sonic hallmarks you might expect from angry music (it’s not particularly loud, not particularly fast, not particularly explosive), the simmering undercurrent that drives things throughout is the kind only born from a battle between rage and resignation. It carries the anger of the overthinking and over-observant, a brand of emotion that hits close to home for me, especially this year. On first listen, I remember being particularly struck by the opening of “Challenger,” which starts: “Loved snow til you realized it’s / Rain that sticks to the ground / The weight prix fixe of consciousness / Does not fuck around.” There are so many lyrics like this where I felt equally seen and punched in the gut, always sung beautifully over masterful arrangements ranging in style from alt-country to bossa nova and heartland rock. There’s just so much that works here. It’s an amazing record that came right when I needed it, and to me, it’s the best of the year.

Other Releases I loved:
- Flesh Tape - Flesh Tape
-
bonus - was a dog
-
Bad Moves - Wearing Out The Refrain
-
bedbug - pack your bags the sun is growing
-
Ekko Astral - Pink Balloons


John Dietz
| Lucy (Cooper B. Handy) – 100% PROD I.V.

Ulyssa

If you listen to only one Lucy project from this year, make it this one. It’s a collaborative effort with producer i.v., who’s worked with a remarkable assortment of artists ranging from Shed Theory’s Tek lintowe to ambient folk musician Kaho Matsui. It’s hard to make any generalizations about the sound of Lucy’s work, mostly because he’s explored so many different styles and worked with so many producers, but 100% PROD I.V. feels truly unique. I’m struck by the sparseness of the songs, the fragility of the interlocking synth melodies, the way the MIDI guitar riffs and hi-hats complement Lucy’s double-tracked vocals.

One highlight for me is album opener, “Make My Bed,” kicking off with a bright MIDI guitar sound that features prominently throughout the project. Accompanied by an understated, smooth bassline, his lyrics flow back and forth between inscrutable couplets like “I used to think I would fall off / But the dog’s fur is so soft” and utterly sincere confessions: “I heard when you said / That things are gonna get better / That's why I wake up in the morning, and I make my bed.” Lucy’s writing and persona feel especially welcome now when a lot of songwriting seems to feel increasingly wry, tongue-in-cheek, or despondent. His Instagram features lots of little aphorisms like “If you’re reading this ur smart+lucky+loved” and “TurnUp - Tune Out - Drop In.” He ends many of his posts with “HMU ILY.”

As I continue to explore his massive discography, I’ve realized that maybe what I love most about Lucy is his long-running habit of interpreting pop songs, refracting tunes like “Beauty and the Beast” and “All You Need Is Love” through his unique brand of off-kilter pop. 100% PROD I.V. includes maybe my favorite example of this to date, a cover of 2000 chart-topper “Breathe” titled “Faith Hill.” A lesser, more cynical artist might use this as a chance to jab, poke fun, mock — but Lucy and i.v.’s stripped-down version of the pop country hit feels entirely earnest. MIDI guitar riffs and glittering synth lines give way to a sparse, trap-inflected drum pattern and Lucy’s double-tracked vocals as he croons, “I can feel the magic floating in the air / Being with you gets me that way.” 

Here are some other albums I really enjoyed this year:
- Endlessness by Nala Sinephro
- Here in the Pitch by Jessica Pratt
- The Cime Interdisciplinary Music Ensemble by Cime
- Cold Visions by Bladee
- Real Home by Kiran Leonard


Ben Sooy
| Pedro the Lion – Santa Cruz

Polyvinyl Record Co.

I’ve been tracking David Bazan’s music since the year of our Lord 2002, and his most recent record is, in my opinion, his best work. Santa Cruz is part three of five planned albums, each chronicling an era of Bazan’s childhood and adolescence. Bazan is kind and tender to his past self, his family, and all the complicated and heartbreaking things that happened to him. The magic thing about this record is how much of myself I see in Bazan’s story. Our childhoods certainly have parallels, but it’s not just the stuff we have in common. Like all great autobiographical storytelling, the more specific the story gets, the more universal it feels. 

On paper, a musical autobiography could have had self-indulgent, cringeworthy music-theater-bullshit energy, but instead, these albums feel like the rock music equivalent of East of Eden. In the same way Steinbeck’s book was tied to place and family history and the implications of how faith gets inherited, these records feel like that sort of literature. And the songs are well-crafted rock songs. Simply amazing.

Other albums that are very good: 
- Stay Inside - Ferried Away
- Elliott Green - Kintsugi 
- mealworm - mealworm 
- Sinai Vessel - I SING
-
Flight Mode - The Three Times


Lillian Weber
| Punitive Damage – Hate Training

Convulse Records 

When confronted with genocide, how close to your conditions does the other need to be for you to start caring? How close to you does it need to be before you do something? Will it take until there is literally blood on your hands? 

Punitive Damage’s new EP, Hate Training, grapples explicitly with these questions as they relate to the ongoing genocide in Palestine (“raze the strip, cleanse them / accept their fate, it’s how it is”), those with power who try and convince you what is happening before your eyes is fine (“my word is truth / so swallow the shit”), and those who willfully buy into the lie that their comfort doesn’t come on the backs of the oppressed (“find comfort in their chains / basic needs- a cause of shame”). 

Hate Training also serves as a rallying cry. The gang vocals shouting “I won’t beg” on the highlight “Humanity Upon Request” remind us that asking nicely of those who hate us to please, treat us with respect, will never work. In the face of genocide, we will not prostrate ourselves, we will not be told how brave we are for speaking up, we will make our own world possible. 

OTHER NOTABLES:
- Gouge Away’s excellent comeback LP, Deep Sage, is a comfort blanket.
- Black Button’s Internal Life is what my panic attacks sound like.
- Crush Fund’s New Fixation x100.


Cassidy Sollazzo
| Coco & Clair Clair – Girl

Nice Girl World

What other 2024 album has lines like “Write a hit song then I read a big book / I’m all about the lovin’ you can call me bell hooks” and “You’re a wannabe heartthrob, broke ass with no job / Grown ass Thingamabob, no TP at his spot”???? The answer is none of them. Only Coco & Clair Clair’s Girl, the follow-up to their 2022 breakout, Sexy. The term “sophomore slump” doesn’t even exist in the Atlanta duo’s vocabulary, with their lyricism wittier and nastier than ever, dripping in confidence and begging for confrontation. This album has lifted me from the depths of various breakdowns and depression pits like no other. When I hear the opening synths of “Martini,” I can literally feel my soul transcend to a different plane, and “My Girl” is the perfect song to strut (commute) to. Who else would have the sheer gall to make a synth-trap cover of CSNY’s “Our House”?? Two girls who do not give two fucks. 

Girl also gets points for being the only album I’ve ever sent in my group chat that actually ended up in everyone’s rotation. Now we’re all obsessed. My best friend crashed her car while blasting “Kate Spade” (the song the pair calls their ‘magnum opus’), having the type of listening experience God (Coco & Clair Clair) intended. I got to see the duo at Irving Plaza with said friends at the beginning of November, and it was the most I screamed, danced, and sweated at a show since my days riding the rails at One Direction concerts. This album is cunty, hot, brain-scratchingly synthy, and the best mood booster I’ve ever encountered. It’s helped me push past insecurities and quiet feelings of existential dread, it’s soundtracked pregames and girls nights, it’s the most likely thing to be playing through my headphones at any given moment, and it is my absolute favorite album of 2024.

Some other albums I’ve loved this year:
- Liana Flores, Flower of the soul
-
Doechii, Alligator Bites Never Heal
-
Shaina Hayes, Kindergarten Heart
-
Brittany Howard, What Now
-
Rosali, Bite Down


David Gay
| Water Damage – In E  

12XU

On one of their shirts, the band Water Damage describes themselves with the following mantra: “Maximal Repetition, Minimal Deviation.” In 2024, when there were so many things to be stressed out about, In E, an album that features “volume, repetition, volume, repetition,” became a refuge for me from the day-to-day pressures and an antidote to life’s complexities. 

Getting lost in a piece of art is a special experience. Whether moving as one with a crowd at a live concert or being completely enthralled by a character’s story in a movie theater - it’s rare when I get to turn my brain off and truly let go for a period of time. Each time I listen to this band, and this album in particular, it provides that escape. No matter what circumstance I am in at a place and time, I could always rely on “maximal repetition” and “minimal deviation” to at least get me through 82 minutes. I’m thankful and grateful for that, and that’s why it’s one of my favorite albums of 2024.

Some of my other favorites: 
- Stay Golden by Combat
- Dulling The Horns by Wild Pink
- Sentiment by Claire Rousay
- Pink Balloons by Ekko Astral 
- “Ghost” and “Soul Planet” from the 8/4/24 Phish show in Noblesville, Indiana


Logan Archer Mounts
| Mary Spender – Super. Sexy. Heartbreak.

Self-Released

At this time of writing, I have yet to finalize any placements for my favorite albums of the year, so I’m using this space to talk about what I believe will be the least-talked-about album that will likely land in my top 10. Mary Spender is a singer-songwriter from Bristol who I’ve been following for a number of years via her YouTube channel. She’s put out a handful of gorgeous singles like “The Great Wave” and “Primrose,” and last year saw the release of her double album Songbook, which she doesn’t technically consider to be her debut as all of those songs are strictly acoustic recordings. Turns out that it was a bit of an intentional teaser to Super. Sexy. Heartbreak. as almost all of the songs were originally included on Songbook

Her full band renditions of songs like “Getaway Sun” and “I’ll Stay Quiet” were absolutely worth the wait, acting as the culmination of years of growth as a musician and online personality. I still can’t quite nail down a particular style or subgenre to describe Spender’s music, which is part of the reason I love it. She’s cited artists like John Mayer and Suzanne Vega as influences, and there are certainly notes of what used to be called “adult alternative,” but her proficient guitar work puts her in an instrumental class adjacent to math rock and progressive-emo artists like Closure In Moscow, Delta Sleep, or The Reign Of Kindo. Her music is profoundly British, which is just another one of the many things I love about this album while having plenty of lyrical references to her time spent in Chicago and Los Angeles. All of that is accented by Spender’s beautiful, soulful voice, which she shows off strongest in songs like  “Church Bell” and “I Blame Myself.” Super. Sexy. Heartbreak. is one of the year’s most distinct singer-songwriter albums that everyone should be giving a chance.

  • The real AOTY was the friends we made along the way


Ben Parker
| A Place For Owls – how we dig in the earth

Broom of Destruction 

Once I learned of its existence, I knew that once how we dig in the earth was released, it would be my album of the year. What I didn’t know, however, is that this album would be something that would carry me through potentially the heaviest grief of my life. I have never felt more hope than when I listen to this album on repeat, and I have sadly had to come back to it far too many times this year. Each time the final notes of “help me let the right ones in” play, I am left sitting in the dark, listening to my own breathing and understanding that hope truly is a weapon. A Place For Owls have crafted an album that is full of heart. This record comes to you as a warm hug from a lost friend that, as soon as you touch, the memories flood back into your brain. 

Other Important Releases:
- Garden Home - S/T
-
Combat - Stay Golden
-
Excuse Me, Who Are You? - Double Bind
-
Barely Civil - I’d Say I’m Not Fine
-
Leisure Hour - The Sunny Side


Alex Couts
| Lifecrusher – In Death, We All Rot the Same

Side 2 Side Records / Inhumano Records

Blistering, relentless, and unforgiving. Lifecrusher’s 2024 effort In Death, We All Rot the Same is a 23-minute celebration of decades-old hardcore tradition, adored and interpreted with a fresh cultural lens. With the incoming tsunami of Sunami-style-rip-off-acts popping up around the globe, it can feel easy to put young hardcore bands in a box, but Lifecrusher is demolishing borders across Europe with friends at their side. The band conjures frenetic and participatory live shows with the likes of Deconvolution, XOXO., Wonderful World, and SLOPE, delivering 8KHC across Europe and next: the globe. If you desire the kinesis of formative acts like Cross Me, Soul Search, and Mindforce tied together with deep vocal incisions of Amygdala and Code Orange Kids, you should tune into Lifecrusher before they become the coolest band on the planet. In Death, We All Rot the Same is simply another stepping stone on that journey for Lifecrusher. 

Other notable releases: 
- State Power – Year of the Harvest
-
Wonderful World – Universal Tension 
-
Big Ass Truck – Big Ass Demo
-
Logic1000 – Mother
-
No Cure – I Hope I Die Here


Samuel Leon
| Knocked Loose – You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To

Pure Noise Records

With regards to having a metal album as your AOTY in 2024, is this a “basic” choice? Sure, but there is a reason Knocked Loose has gotten so much praise and sold out larger headlining shows than their contemporaries. Every second of You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To feels like a wrestling match between your listening device and the Oldham County quintet to see if they can successfully break your speakers. Songs like “Piece By Piece” and “Don’t Reach For Me” prove Knocked Loose is at the top of their game right now, and they have no plans of slowing down.

Honorable Mentions Include:
- Songs of a Lost World: The Cure
- Imaginal Disk: Magdalena Bay
- Glimmer of God: Jean Dawson
- All You Embrace: One Step Closer
- Self-Titled: Foxing


Kirby Kluth
| Memorial – Redsetter

Real Kind Records

Could you do me a favor? The next time I think about getting off social media, I need you to stop me and read aloud from Swim Into The Sound’s Staff Favorites of 2024. All of the potentially harmful effects of exorbitant screen time and my declining attention span have been completely outweighed by the time Lomelda’s Instagram Story told me she and her brother helped produce Memorial’s sophomore album, Redsetter, and that I should listen to it. My year has been one of deep grief and tremendous joy, and during all of the in-between times where the growth comes, Redsetter offered comfort and a leg for me to stand on. The whole album is coated in warmth. Jack Watts almost always sounds to me as if he is smiling while he sings. It's drums and finger picking provide a pattern to nod my head along to, and there are moments scattered throughout that give me chills and well up a momentum within me. Hannah and Tommy Reed’s fingerprints are all over this record, making Redsetter feel like a home from the first listen. They lent Memorial their sound in ways that work to deepen the record. Redsetter is full-bodied, endlessly kind, and my favorite album of 2024.

2024, according to Kirby:
- NTS Radio
- A slew of new-to-streaming The Sundays singles
- Big Nick - DOPE MUSIC
-
Hovvdy - Hovvdy
-
Nourished by Time - “Hell of a Ride”
- Faye Webster’s discography

Braden Allmond | Charly Bliss – Forever

Lucky Number Music

For reasons known only to my unconscious mind, hearing good power pop makes me philosophical and thankful for this century of human history. The third album from Charly Bliss is a good reminder to participate in your life–not to just wake up and shuffle to work, but to open windows and breathe with the world, to make time to watch the sunset, to learn constellations with someone you love, to ask your coworker how their kids are. This album is a reminder that the news cannot stop you from living your life. Fireworks in March, cowbells in an unsuspecting field, an indescribable cappuccino at 3 PM, a welcome-back-to-the-continent kiss, whatever makes your heart beat, you have to find and deliver yourself those experiences. I spent most of my year searching for comfort and found an infinite source here. Enduring brightness, childlike hope, teeth-hurting sweetness, teenaged desire, and unabashed happiness, Forever by Charly Bliss delivers all of this on every front.

Other 2024 releases I particularly enjoyed and think you should listen to:
- Ogbert The Nerd — What You Want (The only emo band from New Jersey)
- Knifeplay — Pearlty (2024 Remaster)
-
I Love Your Lifestyle — Summerland (Torpa or Nothing)
-
ANORAK! — Self-actualization and the ignorance and hesitation towards it
-
Lobby Boxer —Head Shoulders Knuckles Floor


Nickolas Sackett
| Sam Wilkes – iiyo iiyo iiyo

Self-released 

2024 has been a weird year for me, one awash with hues of pain, financial hardship, health scares, travel, and love. Since the day I chanced upon its serene shade of blue, iiyo iiyo iiyohas been a constant source of comfort that has soundtracked countless cooking sessions, sleepy drives home from my girlfriend’s apartment, and late-night Balatro sessions in bed. It’s strange that a live-jazz album I chanced upon flicking through Instagram Stories would eventually become so prevalent in my life- but then again, is anything so strange? If I asked a certain person, they might even tell me that the universe wanted me to find the album, that it was all preordained, and that there was no way I wouldn’t find it. Someone else might tell me I’m on that damn phone too much. Whatever your take is, iiyo iiyo iiyo is a wonderful recording of a brilliant show. It’s hard not to marvel at it all with music like this.


Brandon Cortez
| Macseal – Permanent Repeat

Counter Intuitive Records

The Long Island indie-emo quartet drops listeners into snapshots of nostalgia on their second LP, Permanent Repeat. Having built their success off of their 4th/5th-wave emo hits such as “Cats” and “Next to You,” Macseal lean into their hook-infested indie soundscape this time around. Even with a five-year gap between albums, they manage to pick up exactly where they left off, plus some. Track two, “Golden Harbor,” sets the stage for reminiscing as the listener is heaved through memories of the group's early days–all set to the backdrop of Golden Harbor Authentic Chinese Cuisine, nestled in Champaign-Urbana. I could write indefinitely about this album, however, I’d be remiss not to focus on the album’s titular track, “Permanent Repeat.” In my humble opinion, this song should be crowned as the group's magnum opus. Coming in at a just-right three and a half minutes, the song hits everything we’ve come to know and love from Macseal. Soft, emotional lyrics that all lead up to an unbelievably catchy chorus which is preceded by a jarring guitar solo to yoink the listener out of their perpetual yearning. Permanent Repeat has been just that; on an endless loop whenever I find the time. Even when the album is not sonically present, it’s the never-ending soundtrack to my daydreaming. A love letter to the way things used to, and could be, Permanent Repeat leaves listeners nostalgic for moments that haven't yet happened. 

Other 2024 favorites:
- Kerosene Heights - Leaving
-
Mini Trees - Burn Out 
- Ben Quad - Ephemera
- Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties - In Lieu of Flowers


Noëlle Midnight
| Better Lovers – Highly Irresponsible

Sharptone

Formed by three members of the now defunct metalcore outfit Every Time I Die, plus vocalist Greg Puciato (The Dillinger Escape Plan) and Will Putney (Fit For An Autopsy), Better Lovers’ debut LP comes out swinging, ensuring listeners know that nobody here is wasting time merely trying to recapture the past.

With Highly Irresponsible, Better Lovers deliver Southern-tinged metalcore that’s bursting at the seams with anger and accusations. It’s hard to listen to this record without thinking about how the end of ETID transpired, with vocalist Keith Buckley being abruptly removed from the band, ultimately resulting in a full collapse. From that context, we see Puciato screaming, “Can you believe you thought yourself sophisticated,” the alternating lyrics of “We all look blameless” and “We all look guilty,” followed a few songs later with “You want your flowers, but you threw out the seeds.” A narrative, whether intended or not, begins to form as we see what appears to be the pain of a bad breakup.

Musically, if you liked the Southern riffs that defined much of ETID’s sound, you’ll find yourself delighted by tracks like “Drowning In A Burning World.” Pair that with choruses brought to life by Puciato’s incredible alternation between a variety of vocal techniques to create texture that is all too often missing from mainstream metalcore releases. It’s hard to listen to this record without singing along to the impeccably written choruses and repeated vocal themes and frankly? I wouldn’t want to.

Some of my other favorites: 
- Santa Cruz by Pedro The Lion
- Leap of Death by Left to Suffer
- empathogen by WILLOW
- Winter by Strelitzia
- Prelude to Ecstasy by The Last Dinner Party


Aly Eleanor
| Kali Malone – All Life Long

Ideologic Organ

All Life Long is Kali Malone’s fifth “record,” roughly speaking both in terms of number and what defines a body of work. If you only focus on the big stuff, that could entail over 100 minutes of pipe organ drones, Éliane Radigue homage, three hours of sine waves, or even shoegaze. Her latest unfolds across a suite of melancholy, arranged for brass, organ, and voice — it’s a dense, dynamic chunk of liturgy that nevertheless holds a glacier’s worth of beauty within. As I revisit “No Sun To Burn” and “Fastened Maze,” once again greeted by the biting grasp of winter winds, it is easy to be struck by how heavy they sound. Malone’s compositions are weighed down by their stellar core, a glowing resolve frozen underneath the icy surface. All Life Long leans into the furrows of her electroacoustic eclecticism and produces the closest thing to what a minimalist could call a “crossover hit.” It holds the odd distinction of being my fourth favorite Kali Malone record while still being my favorite record of the year. Set aside some time to immerse yourself.


Nick Webber
| Apples with Moya – A Heave of Lightness on the Ground

Den Tapes

Apples with Moya found me nestled in the covers of a guest bed during the Minnesota springtime, slowly returning from dreamland. As I pressed play, I was casually familiar with the band as part of the Great Grandpa extended universe, but I wasn’t at all prepared to be swept away so dramatically in those 32 minutes laying next to my sleeping wife in the early morning light. 

A lot of what makes this record (and Great Grandpa) special to me has to do with the melodic sensibility; it feels rare to hear folks really going for it when it comes to writing compelling and catchy tunes, especially when “vibe” often seems to get more shine than songcraft in buzzy music as of late. LaFlam’s vivid and often mercurial lyrics land in captivating ways, oscillating between the impressionistic and the earthly, nestled in unabashedly gorgeous arrangements. Sometimes Sufjanesque, sometimes power poppy, always memorable, A Heave of Lightness on the Ground is an album shot through with humor, movement, bracing specificity, and revelation. It feels like the sort of music that can only come out of the Pacific Northwest, and it’s the only album I know of that name-checks both Pedro the Lion and Montucky Cold Snacks. To a guy like me, this stuff is magic.


Wes Cochran
| Foxing – Foxing

Grand Paradise 

Many 2024 albums have inspired me or brought me comfort, but none have lit a fire under my ass like Foxing. In the decade-plus since the release of their modern emo classic The Albatross, the indie rock quartet have amassed a cult following for frontman Conor Murphy’s expressive vocals and the band’s restless evolution. From the sounds of it though, all that hard work has left them exhausted and without much in the way of material gains to show for it. After one last swing for the rafters with their previous full-length, any and all guardrails came off on their self-funded, self-produced, self-titled, and self-released fifth album. The band makes hairpin turns between everything from disaffected dream pop to vicious hardcore, sometimes within the same song. The mix can go from perfectly balanced to completely blown out (I’ve probably done permanent damage to my ears listening to “Gratitude”), and each member has several moments across the record where it sounds as if they might lose control at any given moment. 

As someone “liked-but-didn’t-love” the band going in, I spent my entire first listen feeling like I had been sucker-punched. Not just at the sonic mayhem I was subjecting myself to, but the emotional intensity of Foxing. If I had to summarize the thematic crux of the album, it would be a crisis of faith - in music, love, your country, God, or anything else you’ve devoted a significant portion of your life to, only to realize you may not believe in it anymore. You’re forced to search for purpose again in an endless cultural vacuum of regurgitated ideas, view and sales counts, and just general suffering. It may sound like I’m describing the “feel-bad Album of the Year,” and on some level, I am, but no amount of words can describe how awe-inspiring and thrilling it is to actually hear that search on Foxing. After all, how many albums will I ever be able to say started a chain reaction that led to me picking up my guitar for the first time in more than a year and trying to create things again? 

Throughout a stressful final quarter of the year that included but was not limited to: my car being totaled, death and illness within my family, and the American presidential election, I caught myself repeating the refrain of “CONSTANT FATIGUE!” from “Hell 99,” but recently I’ve decided to literally change my tune. I’ve spent far too much of my life wallowing and waiting, and it’s gotten pretty old - it’s time to rally. To put it in Foxing’s own words: “Make your mother proud, you’ve got to sharpen those dead dreams.” 

Here’s some more music that made my 2024 that much more fulfilling: 
- Everything Everything - Mountainhead
-
Father John Misty - Mahashmashana
-
Haley Heynderickx - Seed of a Seed
-
Los Campesinos!, just Los Campesinos! as a band
- Magdalena Bay - Imaginal Disk
-
Mount Eerie - Night Palace
-
Vince Staples - Dark Times


David Williams
| Wishy – Triple Seven

Winspear

The Indianapolis five-piece cinched the title “Rookies of the Year” with their debut record, Triple Seven. The music is a love letter to their indie rock predecessors, creating a well-thought-out alternative rock experience delivered with the confidence of Larry Bird shooting jump shots in his backyard. The melodies are intoxicatingly addicting and will be swirling in your head for hours, days, months, maybe even years after first hearing them. “Love On The Outside” will have you in a Ving Rhames-like chokehold, packing a wallop of a chorus that somehow rises to match the stadium-level guitar riffs. If you’re not blasting the record at maximum volume that could potentially result in hearing loss or a surly neighbor, you’re not listening to it properly. 

Other albums that restored that feeling:
- MJ Lenderman - Manning Fireworks
-
Kendrick Lamar - GNX
-
Wild Pink - Dulling The Horns
-
Charli XCX - Brat
-
Ducks LTD. - Harm’s Way


Lindsay Fickas
| Hovvdy – Hovvdy

Arts & Crafts 

2024 was an odd year where I was constantly clinging to any glimpse of nostalgia I could find. I needed a reminder of a time when things didn’t feel as though they were marching steadily into darkness. I found it in Hovvdy’s self-titled release. The album brings a fresh take on an older sound, delivering songs that could have fit in comfortably on a 2011 indie folk album sandwiched between Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes. At times, the songs feel new and electric, utilizing effects and jaunty hooks to pull you in. Other times, they’re stripped-down and bare. If a John Steinbeck character pulled out a guitar around a campfire and played “Song for Pete,” I wouldn’t dare question the authenticity. And while many of the songs feel as though they’ve emerged straight from a Pitchfork Editor’s Pick 15 years ago, they never veer toward pretension, opting instead for full-throated sincerity with off-the-cuff lines like “Goddamn, I swear I will always love you.” It’s a warm and gorgeous record at a time I need it most. 

A few other favorites: 
- Foxing - Foxing
-
Ekko Astral - Pink Balloons
-
Friko - Where we’ve been, Where we go from here
-
Waxahatchee - Tigers Blood
-
A Place for Owls - how we dig in the earth


Ciara Rhiannon
| With Sails Ahead – Infinite Void

Self-released

Prior to this year, With Sails Ahead's discography had been a concise collection of singles and EPs that have each operated as a window into the influences and ambitions of the band, but we haven't seen the full magnitude of what they have been building towards – until now. Infinite Void is not only the first full-length album by With Sails Ahead; it is a testament to everything they have learned so far and the effort they’ve put in as a band. The work that goes into creating an album is intense, especially an album that accomplishes as much as Infinite Void – from its staggering instrumental range to its subtle references – all imprinted onto this record by each individual member. It’s difficult to think of many debut albums that are this technically impressive and ambitious straight out of the gate. You can genuinely feel the way this band collaborates and informs each other’s abilities across every single track on Infinite Void, and the result is one of the most staggeringly cohesive records I have ever heard.

Honorable Mentions:
- CLIFFDIVER - birdwatching
-
Zach Benson - Music For You And Your Friends
-
stop.drop.rewind - stop.drop.rewind
-
Hey, ily! - Hey, I Loathe You!
-
Eichlers - IKE WORLD
-
Ekko Astral - Pink Balloons


Joshua Sullivan
| MJ Lenderman – Manning Fireworks

ANTI-

Two weeks before the diluvian Helene radically transformed the town, I was visiting friends in Asheville, North Carolina. Manning Fireworks had just come out, and as we drove the Blue Ridge Parkway listening to “Joker Lips,” I found myself in deep gratitude – here is a record that feels like it was always with me and always will be. As I spent the ensuing weeks in horror of what close friends and family experienced during and after Hurricane Helene, the album became a balm – which might be surprising, given the content of the record. 

The fractured, predatory world of modern masculinity runs deep throughout MJ Lenderman’s understated, assured, and altogether brilliant album. The stories of cocksure failsons or manosphere marks update the cadre of fools found in Steely Dan songs for a new world. It’s a world that sets us up to fail, that dunks on us when we’re down – but was it the strong headwinds or the shorts full of sand that sank the bird in the end? This downtempo collection of double entendres, ending in a blissful seven minutes of meditative feedback, is a sanctuary for the soul, stuffed full of dumbasses and cowards. We laugh at them, but it can often feel like self-defense. Because, as Lenderman tosses off in the great “She’s Leaving You”: “We all got work to do.” The roads in Asheville are crumbled while the failsons continue to ascend. We all got work to do. 

Honorable Mentions:
Magdelena Bay – Imaginal Disk | Jimmy Montague – Tomorrow’s Coffee | Carpool – My Life In Subtitles | Color Temperature – Here For It | Mach-Hommy — #RICHAXXHAITIAN


Jason Sloan
| Climax Landers – Zenith No Effects

Gentle Reminder

Will Moloney has spent the better part of the 21st century as one of the New York underground’s most quietly influential figures; Bandcamp once crowned him “the Best Indie Rock Songwriter You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of.” Now, after twenty years and almost as many monikers, he’s perfected his blend of wry non-sequitur and shaggy grooves with the apotheotic Zenith No Effects. “Play It Cool” weaves defunct Brooklyn venues, superhero pornography, and Styx into an anthem for all those too weird to ever work a room. And I’m not sure there’s a better thesis for Moloney’s whole oeuvre than “Blessed by health and love and weed / Find the truth dialectically” from “Ad Hominem.” But the dual parenthetical bookend tracks are Zenith’s crowning achievements: a two-part tale of the Climax Landers literally riding in to save an oppressed city-state through the power of collective unity and rock and roll. In lesser hands, it would prove unbearable, but the winking delivery and Charlie Dore-Young’s buoyant bassline are too infectious to scoff at. By the time the album’s triumphant saxophone outro comes around, you’re right there with them, liberated and ready to seize your one chance to dance.


Joe Wasserman
| Young Jesus – The Fool

Saddle Creek

Young Jesus himself, John Rossiter sings like I’m the only one listening. His voice almost replaces the one that narrates my thoughts thanks to the intimate production on The Fool. With songwriting full of parables, I often feel like I’m sitting at the bar hearing an old-timer drop nuggets of wisdom that I have to parse through. All the while, though, I’m enraptured in their story. There is a yearning and mourning in Rossiter’s voice (e.g., “Rabbit,” “MOTY,” “Dancer”) that is hyper-specific in description, but universal in emotion. In addition to the impeccable arrangement, The Fool is sonically textured and layered. Despite an emphasis on naturalistic vocal deliveries, there are digital glitches, noise-gated distortions, and delays galore here. Somehow, it all fits together. Sure, you can name a few songs as singles with their hooks and accessibility, yet it’s the album as a whole that overwhelms me every time I hit play on “Brenda & Diane.” Thematically, The Fool offers a compelling, progressive look at masculinity in 2024. Rossiter laments love and family; you can hear his heart breaking and fighting to stay in one piece on every track. This is an album that is as fun as it is incisive and insightful. The Fool is ultimately just fascinating in its depth and rewards repeated listening.


Connor Fitzpatrick
| Christopher Owens – I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair

True Panther Records

I used to be neighbors with Christopher Owens when we both lived in San Francisco. After Girls disbanded and his solo career seemed to dissipate, I’d see him around from time to time. Sometimes he’d be playing his guitar, but more often than not, he was just another dude in the neighborhood. I wondered occasionally if he’d ever make more music, but eventually, it seemed as though things had moved on. But now he’s back after nine years with a new solo album, the breathtaking I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair. In many ways, this feels like a long-lost Girls album with its deep yearning, gorgeous melodies, and background gospel vocals. It’s a massive triumph from Owens as he sings about heartache, loss, and loneliness, but also about the beauty in life and that, through all of the hardships we face as humans, life moves on and is worth living. Owens is at the top of his game on the album, and his guitar solos have never been lovelier. The album ends with what might be the best song he’s ever written, “Do You Need A Friend,” a seven-minute colossus that climaxes with Owens lamenting how he’s “barely making it through the days” and “the loneliness is always the same.” It’s a harrowing listen, but his vulnerability is so powerful and defiant because, despite all of it, he’s still here with a song to sing.

Dishonorable Mentions:
- Fontaines D.C. - Romance
-
Rosali - Bite Down
-
Schoolboy Q - Blue Lips
-
Hurray For The Riff Raff - The Past Is Still The Same
-
Nap Eyes - The Neon Gate

Sinai Vessel – I SING | Album Review

Keeled Scales

A few months back, I read a book about the dialysis industry called How to Make a Killing: Blood, Death and Dollars in American Medicine. I went in knowing almost nothing about the subject and came out incredibly angry. This is often the price that you pay for learning things; you go from seeing strip mall dialysis centers every day without giving them a second thought to not being able to see one without gritting your teeth and thinking of the ways the people inside are getting screwed over in the name of profit. All because you decided to read a book. 

It puts you in a bind. There are so many reasons why it’s important to be informed about the world around you, but being informed can really suck. Oftentimes, it feels like fighting your ignorance comes at the cost of becoming a constantly incensed and insufferable person. The advice given to counter this is usually inadequate. You're told to remember that we’re all just on a big rock spinning in space, you only have one life to live, you can’t fight for others without keeping yourself well. All of this is true to some extent, but none of it really helps; at this point, we’ve all heard it so much that it feels cheap. In the end, we’re left with a latent anger bubbling beneath the surface as we try our best to live happy and fulfilling lives.

Sinai Vessel’s I SING is an album steeped in this reality. “Can't ride my bike at sunset down a nice street / Past beautiful houses without clenching my teeth / Rolling my eyes / Or imagining myself begging the owners for a chance of relief,” Caleb Cordes sings over soft chords and pedal steel on “Laughing” before continuing, “Suspicious that the circumstance / Has less to do with aptitude or failure to plan / And more with the cardinal sin of not being born to rich parents.” It’s a chunk of lyrics with real bite, delivered over a serene backdrop, driving home the feeling that the sentiment being deployed here comes from a long-building frustration rather than new or short-term anger. As the track continues, Cordes ponders on the failed promise of trickle-down economics before ultimately accepting, at least in the moment, a sense of helplessness where one can’t do much but just sit there and laugh. 

This kind of cursed awareness is also central to “Attack,” the album’s penultimate and most ambitious track. The song begins with a slow build, starting with just acoustic guitar, vocals, and a subtle ambient drone, and finds Cordes approaching the subject from a different angle. Both songs are about acceptance of the feelings brought by heightened awareness of the conditions around us, but where “Laughing” focuses on how this awareness can bring feelings of helplessness and madness, “Attack” focuses on how it can be a catalyst for growth. “This is my A.D. / Today, something dies in me,” we hear after Cordes decides to welcome in discomfort’s attack, “Something dies that needs to go / Something dies, I let it go.” 

Throughout “Attack,” the narrator’s progression is matched by the music, which very slowly ratchets up, first with piano joining in around the three-and-a-half-minute mark and then the full band finally arriving five minutes in. This climax, while satisfying, is big without feeling triumphant the way we often see in longer epics. We’re presented with growth, but the instrumentation makes clear that there isn’t necessarily salvation; it’s just a step forward. 

This kind of restrained arrangement is one of the things that makes the songs across I SING resonate so strongly. There are clear Heartland Rock influences at play, but where we might see a band like The Menzingers use this palette to paint pictures of the anthemic, Sinai Vessel instead takes from the genre’s more ethereal side. There is always something in the mix subtly ringing out to affix a glow around the rest of the track, be it the soft synth hanging back on “Birthday” or the long-ringing smooth-moving bass line on “Dollar.” Though it’s not a direct sonic comparison, there’s something about the approach that reminds me of the way Bruce Hornsby and the Range use piano and synths to create textures that make their songs about small towns and the people who live in them feel otherworldly. In the case of I SING, the ethereal nature of the instrumentation lulls you into the feeling of being lost in thought, priming you to look inside and reflect. 

So much of I SING is about the internal struggles inherent in dealing with the world around you, so when “Window Blue” starts with “Man, I would’ve been alright / If you’d been there every night of my life / Telling me to shut the fuck up / Man I would’ve been fine,” I cracked a smile. In my experience, the best tonic for the latent anger discussed to this point is community. Though you don’t want to build community with people who are constantly hand-waving away your feelings or concerns, there is a lot of value in having someone that will, in a friendly way, tell you to shut the fuck up when your neurosis begins to take center stage in your life. Actual human friendship and interaction can’t be replaced by self-regulation and advice read on the internet. It’s really poignant that the song on this album that offers the listener the most comfort is the one most focused on others. 

Best Witness,” the song immediately following “Window Blue,” further explores the comfort of friends by bringing us back down to think about the struggle we face when community becomes hard to find. Here, Cordes sings from the point of view of somebody struggling to find the kind of friends you make when you’re younger, observing, “Out here, here / I care for me best / Out here, here / I’m my best witness.” This type of solitude is tough to survive under; ultimately, connection and reassurance are needed from the type of connections paid tribute to in “Window Blue” with Cordes singing, “Sweet brother, can I call you? / I’m not doing well / Can you state the obvious? / Will you say you love me still?”  

Though nothing can replace the type of companionship pined after on “Window Blue” and “Best Witness,” there is something similarly comforting about having an album like I SING that so frankly addresses what it’s like living in this current moment as somebody coming out of young adulthood. So often, as I move through my day, taking in information about what’s going on around me and throughout the world, I begin to feel a bit like I’m losing my mind. When I see other people’s reactions to things, these feelings accelerate, and while this is all happening, more and more life responsibilities are popping up everywhere. I SING isn’t an album that says everything’s going to be alright, but it is an album that shows me someone else observing the type of things I’m observing and struggling in similar ways. It’s not a “you’re fine” record but a “you’re not alone” record, and right now, I think the latter is far more valuable. 


Josh Ejnes is a writer and musician living in Chicago. You can keep up with his writing on music and sports on Twitter and listen to his band Cutaway Car here.

Sinai Vessel – Tangled | Single Review

Self-Released

Wednesday… MJ Lenderman… Indigo De Souza. Within the last few years, the Asheville music scene has been absolutely overflowing with incredible art, and it’s time we talk about it. Having been to Asheville exactly once in my life, I’m sure it’s always been that way, but it wasn’t until recently that the town has found itself on the lips of every music blog and indie kid with a penchant for twang and slide guitar. Beneath the Dead Oceans/ANTI-/Saddle Creek tier of rising rockstars are lowkey hidden gems like Sluice and Broken Family – somewhere between these is Sinai Vessel.

Sinai Vessel is the formerly emo, now folksy indie rock band of Caleb Cordes and an artist that I’ve personally brought up in conversation with some of Asheville’s best. The project first wound up on my radar back in 2020 with the jaw-dropping LP Ground Aswim, which wound up being one of my favorites of the year. Even as an election and the pandemic suspended the world into a dizzying stasis, I found time to sit with Ground Aswim and find peace in its calming shores. Cordes, in turn, took the time to give his album the love it deserved. One Bandcamp Friday, fans were treated to a solitary track-for-track demo version of the album and, later, a 2019 live performance showcasing early versions of select songs. Both of these collections rendered the original album in a new light and, when played in proximity, let the listener in on both Cordes’ creative process and the evolution of these songs. Ground Aswim was immortalized on vinyl, cassettes, and a zine, all released independently, nothing short of a feat in the increasingly monopolized music landscape. One year later, Cordes made his final statement on this body of work with “Swimming,” a single-song coda that marked a definitive end to this sprawling collection of songs. 

At the end of 2021, Cordes released a handful of tracks on SoundCloud plainly labeled “LP4 Demos.” Expectantly sparse and surprisingly stark, these five songs offered a workshop-like glimpse at what was coming next for the project. By releasing these songs publicly, Cordes also continued the trend of letting the listener in on his songwriting process, this time seemingly as it was happening. Now, a year and a half later, we have “Tangled,” the first real taste of what the future holds for Sinai Vessel.

The track begins with a bouncy acoustic sway that feels like a natural extension of the guitar-based LP4 Demos we’ve already heard. The first thing this instrumental reminded me of was the bright, sunny tone of the last Hovvdy album, which wound up being an apt comparison when I learned that the song was produced and engineered by Bennett Littlejohn, known for his recent work with Hovvdy, Katy Kirby, and Claire Rousay.

Cordes wastes no time jumping into things, singing, “sitting around and waiting / waiting to get fired.” Whether fueled by self-doubt, the worry we’ve done something wrong, or just anxiety from the increasingly unstable teeter-totter of capitalism, this is a looming sense of dread we’ve all probably experienced at some point in our professional careers. It’s funny and apropos because this is something I’ve felt acutely in recent weeks as my day job has slowed to a crawl, and I’ve felt less productive than I have all year. Perhaps it’s just summer doldrums, but to hear such a specific worry reflected back at me felt very cosmic and well-timed.

The lyrics go on to depict the relationship between mind and body, talking about how one informs the other but can sometimes relay or retain the wrong thing. From there, the third verse delves into the messiness of modern communication and misinterpretation, while the final lines articulate a unique brand of self-inflicted paranoia. The back half of the song touches on this rush of topics and wraps up mid-beat in a way that leaves you on the edge of your seat, waiting to hear what comes next. Cordes offers no solution to these problems, at least not on this song, but “Tangled” sure does an excellent job of making the listener's worries feel heard. 

By depicting this messy web of concerns, both real and imagined, Cordes lets them all float out of his mind and into the ether. We live in an era of intersecting apocalypses, and sometimes it can feel like tearing yourself apart just trying to figure out what to focus on. No one person has all the answers, but we do have each other, and while these aren’t all problems that can be “solved,” the first step towards tackling any of them is to lay them all out, just as Sinai Vessel does over the course of these three minutes. We’ll figure out what comes next together.

Swim Into The Sound's 15 Favorite Albums of 2020

01 2020 Banner SM.png

I don’t think anyone could have predicted how 2020 would go. Back in January, we all seemed determined to enter the new decade with a renewed sense of optimism… but that fell apart pretty quickly. Within three days, the US on the brink of war with Iran. A month in, and Australia was on fire. Three months into the year, a global pandemic sequestered us all to our homes. Midway through the summer, the pressure cooker of police brutality, racial inequality, and an ever-worsening economic reality erupted into protests, rebellion, and long-simmering (long-deserved) unrest. Cap that all off with forest fires, near-miss asteroids, murder hornets, and a demoralizing election cycle, and you’ve concocted a perfect storm of anxiety, depression, and exhaustion that made each day of 2020 feel like its own special type of hell.

This was the year of the plague. It was the year of death. It was the year that everything became unsafe for everyone. The year that half of the country came out to protest police systematically killing our black brothers and sisters in broad daylight while the other half protested bars, barbers, and Disneyland closing. It was fucked. But I’m not here to complain.

As bad as this year was for pretty much everyone, music helped keep my spirits afloat. Music has always been a creature comfort for me (as I’m sure it is for many of you reading this), and that comfort was needed this year more than ever before. It’s not like music was more important than any of those things happening out in the “real world,” but it provided a constant outlet and distraction for me when I needed it most. What I’m saying is that I know this isn’t vital to the world, but it’s vital to me.

Music is always there, ready to reflect your feelings and quell your anxieties. Music is there to vocalize the things that you cannot, affirm the way you see the world, or get you to see it from a new perspective. It’s there to support and provide a sense of ease, even years after an artist has released it into the world. It’s an outlet for emotion and a fount for creativity. As an artist, there’s nothing like releasing your creation into the world and seeing it well-met. As a listener, there’s nothing quite like discovering another group of humans out there who can sum up your thoughts and experiences succinctly over the course of an album. It’s a symbiotic relationship, and that’s something we can’t lose sight of. Music is a blessing and a resource. As humans, music is something that we need to create and something that we need to consume, and it has never been more vital than this year. 

Whether they were a distraction or a reflection, these are the 15 albums that helped me make it through one of the darkest years of my life. 


15 | Touché Amoré - Lament

Epitaph Records

Epitaph Records

Lament is an album caught in the blurry middle ground of life. What happens after the death of a loved one? How do you handle losing family members to conspiracy theories or the cult of Donald Trump? What do you reach for when you need a reminder of love? Turns out the answer to all of these questions is you hire producer Ross Robinson and create one of the best post-hardcore records of the year. Lament possesses everything you would expect from a Touché Amoré record; there are throat-shredding bellows, whiplash-inducing blast beats, and beautifully poetic sentiments that speak to a larger human truth. There are also some unexpectedly great surprises: one of the catchiest songs of the year (with a bonus Julien Baker feature nonetheless), a soul-rendering duet with Andy Hull of Manchester Orchestra, and a confessional piano ballad to wrap things up. It’s an album that looks back on life with equal parts reverence and regret. The band seemingly knows that looking back is not inherently productive, so they spend just as much time looking forward out onto the great stretch of horizon that lies before them, questioning what comes next. In a year where music, life, and pretty much everything else that we consider remotely important felt suspended in stasis, what better time to pause, reflect, and collect ourselves for what’s to come?

 

14 | Deftones - Ohms

Reprise Records

Reprise Records

Like most other Deftones albums, I have no idea what Ohms is about. Sure, I could read interviews, take in reviews, or analyze some of the lyrics, but that would take away all the fun. Also like most other Deftones albums, Ohms bears the same intoxicating mix of Chino Moreno’s piercing screams and Stephen Carpenter’s sludgy riffs. These songs sway, lumber, and envelop the listener with heavy metal perfection. At a certain point, the lyrics don’t even matter because the emotion carried in these songs speaks for itself. There’s a weight to Ohms reflected in tracks like Pompeji, Genesis, and This Link Is Dead that is simply unparalleled by any other band in the genre. Any group that makes it to nine albums is doing something right, and Deftones have stuck to their sound faithfully and completely for three decades. That alone is worthy of praise. The band’s 2020 release comes off as well-rehearsed chaos. Ohms bears the full weight of the emotional spectrum, but, as usual, Deftones somehow manage to make it look easy.

 

13 | Seahaven - Halo of Hurt

Pure Noise Records

Pure Noise Records

If Reverie Lagoon is a warm, sandy beach with light glinting off the summer water and Winter Forever is… well, winter, then Halo of Hurt is the soundtrack to a cursed late-fall. From the winding knotty basswork to the haunted, witchy lyricism, this album practically oozes spooky energy. Fittingly released in November, Halo of Hurt is a dark and menacing record that takes cues from Brand New and the alt-emo of the early 2000s but modernizes it in the most impactful way. From second one, this record creeps forward with sinister intent. The band counterbalances this abject darkness with uplifting choruses and beguiling instrumentals that offer glimpses into something lighter. It’s an intoxicating combination that transfixes me every time I put the record on. It’s haunting, stark, beautiful, and inward. If it takes the band seven years between releases to turn out an album of this quality, then I say take as much time as you need. 

 

12 | Sinai Vessel - Ground Aswim

Self-released

Self-released

Whenever I write a review for an album, I always find it hard to cover again in the context of an Album of the Year list. First off, I feel like I’ve already said everything I need to on the topic; reviews are written to be comprehensive and delve into every aspect of an album. Second, how do I take an 800+ word analysis and synthesize it down to a single paragraph? Turns out it’s easy with Sinai Vessel’s sophomore album. The sentiment of my review still stands; Ground Aswim remains a beautiful, careful, meditative listen that points its listener towards the refuge of a calmer life, yet it’s also an album that evolves with you over time. 

From the whisper-quiet remorse of the opening track to the winding wonder of the closer, Ground Aswim is an album that changes each time I listen to it. There are pointed Oso Oso-esque cuts like “Shameplant” alongside songs of painfully emotive loss like “Guest In Your Life.” While the messages and lyrics of these tracks never change (self-growth and dying relationships, respectively), the topics shift depending on what you bring to them as the listener. They’re evergreen subjects that can always be applied to our ever-complicated lives. Depending on what you’re experiencing in your life at the time, these songs can sound completely different, and you’ll always take away something new with each listen. Ground Aswim is a record that poses a series of emotive prompts to the listener and leaves them enough space to fill in the blanks. It’s a beautiful, wondrous, and precious release that ponders, jangles, and reverberates its way deep into the ventricles of your heart. 

 

11 | Hot Mulligan - you’ll be fine

No Sleep Records

No Sleep Records

Now, I know what you’re thinking, ‘a white dude putting an emo band on his album of the year list, how original,’ but I swear that you’ll be fine is better than any of those descriptors would lead you to believe. Look no further than the opening few seconds of the record which kick things off with an aggressive drum line and a frantic bout of tappy emo guitarwork. It’s an all-out assault on the senses, a moshpit-inducing volley that immediately signals Hot Mulligan has ascended to a new level musically. That feeling of an artistic level-up is firmly backed up by the lead singles “Feal Like Crab,” “BCKYRD,” and “Equip Sunglasses,” each of which pair Tades Sanville’s whiny yelp with Chris Freeman’s emo croon. Other highlights include the overwrought “Green Squirrel In Pretty Bad Shape” and the electronic-drum-led “SDPS,” which ends up feeling like a spiritual sequel to “How Do You Know It’s Not Armadillo Shells?” These are songs that beg to be performed live in a room full of sweat-covered strangers who have memorized every word and know every beat. You may not know these people, and they may not know you, but you both know all the words to “OG Blue Sky,” and that is enough.

 

10 | Dogleg - Melee

Triple Crown Records

Triple Crown Records

Melee is an LP years in the making. After countless gigs, lineup changes, and onstage handstands, Dogleg finally revealed their energetic debut album to the world earlier this year on March 13th, just days before society ground to a halt thanks to COVID-19. Look no further than any videos on Twitter, the band’s own music videos, or this very blog for evidence that Dogleg is a band that thrives in the live setting. Robbed of that outlet, the world in which Melee was conceived of and created in no longer exists, and that hurts. Watching the group shred on Audiotree or smash household objects in a freezing Michigan garage is a nice substitute, but everything pales in comparison to being pressed up against a wall of strangers and friends yelling “I’VE BEEN. SET UP. YET AGAIN.” as the serotonin in your body spikes to unforeseen levels. 

Instead, Melee offers an alternate reality; it presents a world in which things didn’t go so far off the rails. An alternate reality where we could take in all of these shredding riffs, swinging bass lines, and agro drum fills in real-time together. This album captures the feeling of seeing Dogleg live better than any of the band’s previous recordings, and that alone is an achievement. We can only hope that we’ll all be back in that freezing Michigan garage again soon because that’s what I’m looking forward to most once this is all over.

 

9 | Guitar Fight From Fooly Cooly - Soak

Self-Released

Self-Released

Listening to Guitar Fight From Fooly Cooly is the audio equivalent of the let’s fucking goooo meme. Within two seconds of pressing play on Soak, you’re greeted with an infamous broken English Mario clip followed by a barrage of jittery emo guitar tapping and frantic drumming. As the band jostles the listener around with energy drink riffs, a flurry of gleeful Mario sound effects score your increasingly-elated emotions as your serotonin rises… and that’s only the first minute. Over the course of the album’s remaining 26 minutes, the group shepherds the listener from Kingdom Hearts samples to throat-shredding screams with skill and ease. The entire release is a free-spirited excursion that never takes itself too seriously. It’s like those nights you spent with friends in high school where you all just gathered at someone’s house and wandered wherever your collective desires took you. Maybe you went on a midnight McDonald’s run, maybe you went into a 7-Eleven with ten bucks and came out with an armful of Arizonas and sour candy, maybe you just stayed in and smoked weed on someone’s dirty couch… maybe you did all three. There isn’t much of a point to be made or a thesis statement to be had on Soak, but much like those high school nights, not having a point kind of is the point. 

 

8 | Bartees Strange - Live Forever

Memory Music

Memory Music

I’m going to come out of the gates swinging here with a bold claim that Live Forever is one of the most creative and confident records released this year. From the floaty introduction on  “Jealousy” to the screaming synthy “Mustang,” no two tracks are alike. Bartees Strange (born Bartees Leon Cox Jr.) culls together a wide array of influences and inspiration throughout the release, resulting in an album that’s always exciting and multifaceted. Songs like the leaned-out “Kelly Rowland” and the rapid-fire “Boomer” deploy contemporary hip-hop vernacular over indie rock instrumentation resulting in a combination that’s distinctly Bartees Strange. “Stone Meadows” is a mid-album highlight that hits with the same soaring emotive weight as a National song (fitting as he also released an EP of National covers earlier this year). There are deeper, more dissonant tracks like “Flagey God” and “Mossblerd,” which lean further Bartees Strange’s electronic tendencies. These interjections come across like uncontrollable bouts of Death Grips-like energy that exist primarily keep the listener on their toes. This is an album that could only be created by Bartees Leon Cox Jr., a collection of ideas, influences, sounds, and words that have been picked up across twenty-some years of hyper-unique learned experiences. It’s a musical melting pot that beautifully reflects the unique space in which creativity flourishes most. 

 

7 | Barely Civil - I’ll Figure This Out

Take This To Heart Records

Take This To Heart Records

For now. Forever. Those are the two sentiments that lie on opposing ends of Barely Civil’s horseshoe of a sophomore album I’ll Figure This Out. While the two states are connected in theory, the path from one to the other is messy and complicated. After all, how does one go from something as temporary as “For Now…” to something as definitive as “...Forever”? How does a relationship move from ‘this is my person for now’ to ‘I love you forever’? How does life go from ‘this is my situation for now’ to ‘this is my existence forever’? It’s staggering to think about how many events make up the space between those decisions, but I’ll Figure This Out does its best to articulate what that arc feels like. 

With this album, Barely Civil took the definitively midwest emo sounds they had explored on their debut album and fleshed them out to an immensely satisfying degree. Assisted by Christ Teti of The World Is A Beautiful Place, these songs shine immaculately, basking in the glow of one of fourth-wave emo’s most influential figureheads. There’s a foreboding riff on “Graves Avenue” that is shrouded in this unshakable diabolical energy. “Box For My Organs” boasts a shreddy guitar lick that throws directly to a catchy sing-along chorus. Most notably, I’ll Figure This Out sees the band mastering the art of the build, creating dynamic emo tracks that breathe, expand, and contract, all within the space of a few minutes. “North Newhall” is a slow-burn that ignites from a jolting guitar stab and works it’s way up to a soaring affirmation. “Hollow Structures” layers on hushed vocals, precious lyricism, careful drumming, and a remorseful trumpet that all build to a fake-out ending only to erupt in a barrage of instrumentation that ends up simmering back down to the exact same place as the start. In exploring the spaces between something as tentative as ‘for now’ and something as lasting as ‘forever,’ Barely Civil managed to craft something beautiful that will live on for the rest of time. 

 

6 | Haim - Women In Music Pt. III

Columbia Records

Columbia Records

One part Stevie Nicks, a pinch of Shania Twain, and a dash of Sheryl Crow. These were the ingredients chosen to create the perfect indie-pop record, and the result was Women In Music Pt. III. I’ll admit I’ve always been pretty lukewarm on Haim; they were never “bad,” but they never rose above “merely pleasing” for me until this year. Over the course of the summer, Women In Music wormed its way into my heart and became the soundtrack to my season of hiking and exploration. Aside from the throwback appeal, the other aspect that kept me coming back to the record was how catchy it is. “Now I’m In It” takes a warbly 1989-era Taylor-Swift electronic bed and pairs it with a rapid-fire vocal delivery that’s as catchy as it is impressive. “Summer Girl” packs the melancholia of Barenaked Ladies’ “Pinch Me” into a singable chorus about short-lasting love. 

There are also lots of risks for what’s ostensibly presented as a pop record. Mid-album highlight “All That Ever Mattered” pairs trappy hi-hats with haunting siren wails that are capped off by a solo worthy of the late great Eddie Van Halen. Meanwhile, “FUBT” takes the sentiment of Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Maps” but wraps it around a jangly reverb-laden guitar that allows Danielle Haim’s vocals to shine before the track makes way for a passionate guitar solo. In short, there’s lots to love about Women In Music, almost none of which I expected when I first went into the album. With just the right amount of nostalgia, love, heartbreak, and modern pop sensibilities, the Haim sisters were able to create a masterpiece worthy of absolute adoration.

 

5 | 100 gecs - 100 gecs and The Tree of Clues

Dog Show Records

Dog Show Records

Much like 9/11 or the OJ chase, everyone remembers where they were the first time they heard 100 gecs. Maybe you stumbled across a video on Twitter, or you saw a friend talking about them on Discord. Perhaps you saw an out-of-context pissbaby copypasta and decided to do some research. Whatever the case, your first listen to any song off 1000 gecs probably felt like a revelation, and you likely had a strong reaction one way or the other. With 1000 gecs and The Tree of Clues, the hyperpop duo has managed to make their world-shattering debut feel new again and usher in something visionary in the process. 

Whether it’s recontextualizing their songs in a live setting, getting a chorus assist from the likes of Charli XCX, or a Fall Out Boy/Chiodos team-up that completely rebuilds the track from the ground up, it’s incredible how fresh these songs still sound after dozens of listens. Over the course of the album’s 51-minute running time, the gecs allow their guests to explore hip-hop, noise-pop, and Crazy-Frog-esque EDM, all built off the foundation of last year’s debut. 

This record is a marvel of pacing, collaboration, and open-minded ideas. It’s essentially an album-length victory lap for Dylan Brady and Laura Les, who have brought a once-obscure and non-viable genre to the forefront of Twitter talk and Spotify playlists. Tree of Clues is obscure, obfuscating, and ever-changing in the best way possible. The record can radically shift sounds within a matter of seconds, which means it’s never dull. It’s like a shot of espresso injected directly into your veins; for some people, it will leave them fidgety and with a tense jaw, but for others, it will prove to be the exact sort of jolt they needed. Now that the duo has celebrated their win in style, the world waits with bated breath to see what they will do next because nobody is doing it like them. 

 

4 | Lake Saint Daniel - Good Things

Self-Released

Self-Released

Listening to Lake Saint Daniel is like looking at a painting. You stand in front of it, take it in, and eventually find yourself falling into it. This gravitational pull happens over time and occurs so gradually that you might not even notice how involved you’ve become in the piece until something snaps you back to reality. Good Things possesses this transportive power and focuses its message on the concept of youth.

Throughout the album, there are all these little reminders of things you used to do as a child. Things that you had forgotten about, ways of behaving and operating in the world that had once been so viable when you were half the size you are now. “Faking Asleep” hones in on the feeling of being a kid in the backseat on the drive home and pretending to be just sleepy enough that your parents have to carry you in. “Goodbye” fixates on the universal experience of being a kid, getting asked how old you are, and rounding up by a half year or a handful of months to seem more mature. Then, of course, there’s the beautiful cover of “Rainbow Connection” that takes the childhood classic and reimagines it to fit seamlessly within the world of the record. Daniel Radin has a knack for honing in on these universal yet hyper-specific experiences in ways that allow you remember them for the first time in years and love them once again in the process. Good Things makes you want to be a kid again but also acknowledges the reality that those experiences are forever lost to time. It’s a collection of gorgeous country-tinged lullabies for the restless, overworked, anxiety-ridden 20-something, and that’s something I desperately needed this year. This album is a reminder that there are good things in small things, no matter how far removed from them you are.

 

3 | Young Jesus - Welcome to Conceptual Beach

Saddle Creek

Saddle Creek

I can’t think of a single album from 2020 that had a more impactful first listen on me than Young Jesus’ Welcome to Conceptual Beach. This record had been on my radar for a while, thanks to the wonderful people over at No Earbuds, but I went into Conceptual Beach completely blind. My expectations were nonexistent, and that worked in the album’s favor. 

A vague concept album, Conceptual Beach seeks to depict the invented place that exists in lead singer John Rossiter’s head. In translating this mental refuge into music, the group utilizes everything from haunting autotune to fluttering woodwinds. Now a decade into their careers as a band, this record sees Young Jesus gracefully transitioning from emo act to flat-out indie rock, a transition many groups before have tried, but few have executed so masterfully. 

Fluctuating between aching Matt Berninger delivery, mathy Peaer instrumentals, and long stretches of jazzy post-rock jams, the band welcomes the listener to this auditory world and allows them to find their home within it. “Every record needs a thesis, needs a crisis, or campaign,” Rossiter bemoans on lead single “Root and Crown,” the record’s shortest song and (ironically) its thesis. This ballad comes after epic seven-minute builds, hypnotic repetitions, heavenly saxophone solos, and a wild whammy bar deployment. It’s a journey worthy of a Lord of the Rings movie, yet the payoff makes the entire expedition worth it.  

While the record’s first half is beautiful and unlike anything else I’d heard this year, what continues to blow me away about Conceptual Beach even now is the final suite of songs that close out the record. While the first five tracks boast skillful instrumentals, memorable choruses, and passionate deliveries, the last two entries swept me off my feet for a completely different reason. The 12-minute “Lark” follows the same format as some of my favorite songs of all time, such as “Like A River” by Sharks Keep Moving or “Goodbye Sky Harbor” by Jimmy Eat World. These songs establish a scene, build a story, then launch into long meditative instrumental stretches that allow the listener’s mind to wander and fill in the blank portions of the canvas with whatever they choose. Similarly, the 10-minute “Magicians” introduces a life filled with decisions and actions, then lets the listener fill in the gaps with their own life and experiences. 

Welcome to Conceptual Beach is depicting a world and a set of feelings that I never knew existed. I’ve found much solitude in this record, and I feel lucky I’ve had it as a realm in which to escape throughout the year. There is no other group making music quite like Young Jesus, and that’s reinforced with every molecule of this release. 

 

2 | Waxahatchee - Saint Cloud

Merge Records

Merge Records

Saint Cloud is perhaps the only piece of music this year to bring me genuine peace. Whenever it felt like the world outside was spiraling into chaos (a phenomenon I’ve experienced multiple times throughout the last 300-some-odd days), I turned to this album, and it brought me comfort the likes of which no other record could provide. Look no further than the album’s name or cover to experience the tranquil feeling of escaping into the mountains and basking in the warm glow of the sun in the back of your vintage Ford. Listening to Saint Cloud is like wrapping yourself in a warm blanket or finding yourself in the comforting arms of a lover. It is true peace.  

Album opener “Oxbow” begins with a resonant cymbal crash and a concave electronic beat that immediately commands attention. It’s a totally left-field way to open such a folksy album; this odd combination of sounds calls things to order like the three meditative bells that signal the beginning of a meditation. After this subversion, Katie Crutchfield commands the spotlight with a pastoral scene of settling and getting sober. This poetic and abstract journey leads to a repetition of “I want it all” that echoes the same sentiment as the opening track of Japanese Breakfast’s Soft Sounds From Another Planet

After this wholesome and homey introduction, the doors to Saint Cloud have been opened and, you have officially been welcomed in. The carefree soaring high notes of “Can’t Do Much” make way for the soft keys and remorseful delivery of “Fire.” Equal parts catchy, loving, and sorrowful, these songs possess a sort of earthy power that makes me feel deeply connected to the planet we call home. The record winds from one natural view to the next; “Lilacs” is delicate yet bouncy, waving in the air along with the summertime breeze. Meanwhile, other tracks like “Arkadelphia” spend their time depicting Crutchfield’s youth growing up in the south. 

Album closer “St. Cloud” flashes from different locations and perspectives in a way that allows Crutchfield to honor her father and connect herself to his essence forever. It’s a gorgeous, slow, and aching track that is almost too pure for this world. Much like the ten tracks that came before it, this song is just one step forward in the wholesome, naturalistic view of the world that Waxahatchee is offering over the course of the album. Saint Cloud is a beautiful peek into Katie Crutchfield’s mind that resonates with me deeply and calms my soul. I just feel fortunate we’ve been provided this escape in a year where we needed it so badly. 

 

1 | Carpool - Erotic Nightmare Summer

Acrobat Unstable Records

Acrobat Unstable Records

When I premiered the second single to Carpool’s debut album back in May, I had no idea I was helping unveil what would ultimately become my favorite album of the year. A virtually-unknown presence to me until 2020, Carpool is a DIY emo band hailing from Rochester, New York, who signed to the excellent Acrobat Unstable Records earlier this year and came out of the gates with some heat

Within the space of weeks, I went from ‘this is a fun band’ to ‘this record has defined my year’ because it feels like it was so tailor-made for me. Erotic Nightmare Summer brings together catchy pop-punk bounciness from my childhood, headstrong hardcore passages that take me back to high school, and tappy emo guitarwork that has become my go-to over the last few years. On top of this instrumental excellence you have Stoph Colasanto’s excellent writing and vocals that range from a Prince Daddy & The Hyena-esque yelp to emo softness in the vein of Macseal. Wrap all of this together and you have a collection of ten songs that bring together nearly everything I love in one place.

Opening track “Cruel Intentions” kicks things off with a slow simmer as a multi-tracked vocal line welcomes the listener to the record over a tapped guitar riff. Gradually, bass and drums turn up the heat as the lyrics become more impassioned, culminating in Colasanto’s trademarked sneer. Just as the track builds to a bouncy moshpit-inducing riff, things boil over, transitioning perfectly to “Whiskey & Xanax,” where a boppy glockenspiel is paired with a swaying emo riff equal parts danceable and moshable. I could probably write about every song on this album, but recognize album of the year write-ups are supposed to be somewhat succinct.

Whether it’s the snappy “Salty Song,” the biting “Beauty School Dropout,” the thrashy “Come Thru Cool,” or the heartfelt “Liquor Store Employee,” Erotic Nightmare Summer never makes a misstep. The fact that this record clocks in at a mere 30 minutes means it’s easy to return to and is infinitely relistenable. Erotic Nightmare Summer genuinely feels like a breath of fresh air in the emo scene; it wakes up my mind and warms my body like a good cup of coffee. Hearing these relatable topics tackled in such a laid-back yet energetic way may seem contradictory, but it’s also affirming because that reflects my own approach to life. As my leg bounces along with the drums and my mind pangs back and forth trying to keep up with the frantic guitar work, I somehow feel comforted. As I scream along to each verse and shout every chorus for no one but my steering wheel, I feel at peace. As I listen to Erotic Nightmare Summer, I feel at home. 

The 2020 Diamond Platters: Swim Into The Sound’s Ancillary End of the Year Awards

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Welp, it’s that time of the year again. Not the holidays, not Christmas, not Hanukkah, but List Season. Yes folks, it’s that wonderful time of the year where every other mainstream music publication stumbles over themselves to write compelling one-paragraph write-ups on the same 50 albums as every other blog.

Vindictive as I sound, I do have a strange affinity for List Season. I’m always curious to see what the critical consensus is and where my favorites rank among the lists (if at all), yet there’s something so off about the whole thing. A 3-page listicle of 50 different one-paragraph album write-ups has never felt indicative of the year. Sure, you can revisit the big hits, the 10 out of 10s, and the cultural touchstones, but the format itself is limited. A simple countdown doesn’t do the year justice. Where are the EPs and splits? Where are the weird headlines? Where are the cover songs? Where are the other formative musical events of the year that don’t fit into the album format? That’s why I created The Diamond Platters

Intentionally named to be as gaudy and opulent as possible, these awards are the highest honor that I, a music blog with impeccable taste, can possibly bestow upon an artist. Music sales, popularity, playing to swaths of adoring fans, those should all come second, because if you made it on this list, then you made it baby. 

Tongue-in-cheek sarcasm aside, this tradition began four years ago and was so well-received that I just had to do it again in 2018. That second iteration was less-well-received, but I thought ‘analytics be damned!’ and did it again in 2019 to relative success. These awards began as a way for me to circumvent publishing “just another” end of the year list. This is a look at the past 365 days in music through a unique (and sometimes hyper-specific) lens. These awards allow me to draw attention to the creations that may not get discussed on a typical publication’s end of the year list. Most importantly, it’s a way to celebrate the year in music without pitting artists against each other. Unique categories for the unique music listener, because not everything fits into a list of 50.


Best Acoustic Reimagining

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Winner: The Wonder Years “Hoodie Weather”
Over the course of the last decade, The Wonder Years have become a stalwart of the pop-punk scene. The band has aged gracefully into each iteration of their career, gradually shifting from energetic teenage goofiness to post-college listlessness and, more recently, morbid pathos. This year, the band released the second iteration in their Burst & Decay series, allowing them to revisit their old songs and update them in a way that feels more true to where the band members are today. The group’s acoustic reimagining of 2011’s “Hoodie Weather” merges these worlds together, taking a song about the restless touring of their early 20’s and rendering it in a pensive, more idyllic light. This rendition of the track retains the sentiment at the core of the original and feels like an update that looks back on the events with reverence provided by the distance of time. It’s a revisitation, but also an update. In a way, this feels like the way the song was always meant to be heard. It’s proof that the band still has more to say, even if it’s just saying it differently.

Runner-up: Future Teens “Swiped Out”
Future teens have always straddled the line between “emo band” and something more profound. They have achieved success by using many of the same struggles and stylistic choices as your average emo group but have managed to present them in a more mature way. With their Sensitive Sessions EP, the group revisited four songs from last year’s Breakup Season and somehow managed to make them even sadder. Hell, the band even managed to make Smash Mouth sound sad, so at this point, I’m pretty sure there’s nothing they can’t do. 

 

Best Album Art

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Winner: Vile Creature - Glory, Glory! Apathy Took Helm!
For an album that I’ve only listened to one time, the cover to Vile Creature’s Glory, Glory! Has stuck with me more than any other release this year. Capturing the heaviness and beauty at the heart of this sludgy release, this album art is simultaneously gorgeous and disturbing to look at. The cover both sticks with you and accurately indicates the exact kind of songs you’re about to take in. When flipping through vinyl at a record store, this cover is enough to stop any music fan in their tracks, and that means it’s a success on every level. 

Runner-up: Niiice. - Internet Friends
Looking at the cover for Internet Friends, you might wonder who some of these people are, but if you’re a part of the emo DIY circuit on Twitter, then you’d quickly recognize a majority of these faces. From Origami Angel to Stars Hollow and Short Fictions, this cover is a veritable Avengers Endgame of 5th wave emo. This means you can spend a majority of the album’s runtime combing over the front and back of the vinyl scanning for easter eggs while taking in songs about weed and depression, essentially the ideal way to spend an evening in 2020. 

 

I Miss Shows: Award For Best Live Album

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Winner: Aaron West & The Roaring Twenties - Live From Asbury Park
It probably goes without saying, but concerts were fucked this year, and that meant we had to rely on livestreams and live albums to fill that void. I was fortunate enough to catch a grand total of 6 shows in the two and a half months of 2020 that things were still open. Halfway through the year, Dan Campbell (aka Aaron West) released Live From Asbury Park, a one-hour album capturing two sold-out nights of energetic, folksy, Springsteen-inspired performances from the tail end of 2019. This record is everything a live album should be. There’s crowd interaction, jaw-dropping high notes, and gorgeous brass instrumentation. On top of all this, the live rendition of “Divorce and the American South” is one of the only songs to make me cry outright this year, so this record is worth checking out for that fact alone. 

Runner-up: Bon Iver - Blood Bank (10th Anniversary Edition)
I’m a longtime Bon Iver guy and seeing Justin Vernon treat the tenth anniversary of Blood Bank with such reverence warmed my heart. It’s not exactly a sizable release in the band’s discography, but still a memorable stopgap after the breakthrough success of For Emma, Forever Ago. Even though the EP’s tenth-anniversary release is essentially just the original EP plus a collection of four live tracks, the selection of songs taken from different locations across their 2018 tour makes it feel like a lot of time and thought was put into its presentation. Having (finally) seen the group in concert back in 2019, I can say that the selections on this release do an excellent job of bottling up the raw emotional power of these songs when rendered live on-stage. 

 

Best Sequenced Album

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Winner: Ratboys - Printer’s Devil
Longtime readers know that I’m a diehard supporter of short albums. I’m already a big believer in ‘less is more,’ but the longer an album is, the more opportunities there are for lulls and rough patches. While it may or may not end up on my album of the year list in a few weeks, there’s no denying that Ratboy’s third album is an immaculately-crafted work. It’s perfectly paced with peppy, upbeat tracks opening each side, long wistful passages right when they’re needed, and a wonderfully pensive closing track. In other words, this is a masterfully-structured release that hits all the right beats at all the right times. 

Runner-up: 100 Gecs - 100 Gecs and the Tree of Clues
Nine times out of ten, you could hand me a remix album and I’d throw it straight in the trash. Even for bands that I love, all a remix typically makes me want to do is stop listening to it and go turn on the original. There are some rare examples where a remix can elevate the original or cast it in a new light, but on 100 Gecs and the Tree of Clues, pretty much everything and the kitchen sink is included, yet somehow everything works. Essentially an album-length victory lap for the breakthrough hyperpop act, Tree of Clues sees the duo turning their eclectic 2019 album over to a host of collaborators and conspirators. These guests create ecstasy-fueled EDM bangers, hash noise rock assaults, and everything in between. Every song is different from the ones that came before it, which means there’s never a dull moment.

 

Remix of the Year

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Winner: 100 gecs “ringtone remix featuring Charli XCX, Kero Kero Bonito, and Rico Nasty”
When 100 gecs dropped their ringtone remix at the beginning of the year, I’d never experienced anything quite like it. The mix of Charli XCX’s PC Music pop, the brash bars provided by Rico Nasty, and the kawaii interlude courtesy of Kero Kero Bonito proved to be an intoxicating mixture that felt like falling in love. This remix takes an already great track and re-infuses it with that feeling of meeting someone you’ve fallen head over heels for. A powerful emotion to have bottled up in a three-and-a-half-minute song.

Runner-up: Origami Angel - Origami Angel Broke Minecraft
Once we all collectively realized that gigs weren’t happening this year, Origami Angel did the only logical thing and released a Minecraft-themed remix of their greatest hits for a livestreamed concert taking place in the same game. Despite the complicated and meme-like origins surrounding its release, I’ll never say no to new Gami, much less Gami with Lil John drops.

 

Best Hiking Album

Winner: Cory Wong - Trail Songs Dusk/Dawn 
On top of releasing one album with Vulfpeck and an album with the Fearless Flyers, Cory Wong also somehow found time to release a solo album in January, a live album, a jazzy piano record, a second two-part live album, and another solo album. On top of all this, he also managed to release a conceptual double EP at the peak of summer that (literally) walks the listener through two different halves of a hiking trip. The first release focuses on the sunny hike up the trail, while the second release captures the starry night spent around the campfire. As someone who got into hiking this year, I can’t articulate how beautifully Wong manages to capture the feeling of boundless exploration and wonder that one experiences on their way up a trail, as well as the sense of satisfied triumph you feel on your way back down. It’s a beautiful breath of fresh air that I can’t wait to revisit all winter long.

Runner-up: Empty Country - Empty Country
Empty Country’s self-titled release is an arid, jangly album that walks the line between emo, indie rock, and even a touch of heartland Americana. Much like Wild Pink, this is a band that fuses all of these sounds together into something fresh and accessible. Listening to Empty Country feels comparable to a lackadaisical stroll through a field, or the view from the top of a hill. 

 

Best Interpolation

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Winner: Dance Gavin Dance “Born To Fail” (Interpolating Tides of Man)
When I first heard “Born To Fail,” I was digging it. Then, when I heard Tilian quoting my favorite Tides of Man song a full decade after he first sang it, the song officially blew my mind. It never even occurred to me that a band was even ALLOWED to do this, but like everything else that Dance Gavin Dance does, they made it sound great.

Runner-up: Gleemer “TTX” (Interpolating Lesley Gore)
While the interpolation on “Born To Fail” is fantastic because of the reference track's mind-bending context, Gleemer's “TTX” is noteworthy for an entirely different reason. Here, the band interpolates Lesley Gore's “It’s My Party” and integrates it so seamlessly that the lyrics sound completely organic.

 

Best Music Video

Winner: Rico Nasty “Own It”
Every frame of this video is art. From the bikini-clad Hellraiser look to the babushka-adorned champagne tea party, “Own It” truly feels like Rico Nasty in her element. There are bright colors, triple-take costume designs, and animated in-your-face movements that come across as equal parts boisterous and calculated—a perfect, disorienting crash course into the world of Rico Nasty. 

Runner-up: Dogleg “Wartortle”
This seems like a safe place to admit that Clerks blew my mind when I first saw it in college. Not even a casual “blew my mind and liked it,” but an “I need to go sit by myself and think about that movie because it spoke to something that deep within me.” I’m a little embarrassed by that fact six-ish years down the line, but seeing Dogleg’s faithful recreation of the Kevin Smith classic in the music video for “Wartortle” made me feel a little bit better about my regrettably deep-rooted connection.

 

Best Music-Related Game of the Year

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Winner: Dikembe: The Video Game
I’ll admit this category was not entirely my idea but came from Dikembe themselves jokingly suggesting it on Twitter. Despite the artificial creation of this award, this is precisely what the Diamond Platters were made for. After all, how many other DIY bands have the brains big enough to promote their upcoming record with a platformer? Just one, and it was Dikembe.

Runner-up: Get To The Gig: The Chillwavve Records Video Game
In a similar vein, Get To The Gig from Chillwavve Records is a throwback RPG that finds its hero fulfilling the title’s promise and meeting a roster of DIY emo icons along the way. If that wasn’t enough, the “leaked” song at the end of the game made the entire journey feel worth it. Eat your heart out, Travis Scott Fortnite performance. 

 

Best Guest Feature

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Winner: Uwade Akhere on Shore
I may not have liked Fleet Foxes’ fourth studio album, but Uwade Akhere’s contributions are undeniably the record’s high points. In fact, the band places a lot of weight on her shoulders for an unknown talent. From opening and closing the album to contributing gorgeous melodies to the album’s best cut, it’s painful to imagine what Shore would have been without her.

Runner-up: Morgan Freeman on Savage Mode II
Morgan Freeman’s dulcet tones are pretty much the last thing you’d expect to hear when clicking play on the newest 21 Savage mixtape, yet on the sequel to 2017’s Savage Mode, they somehow manage to fit perfectly. From welcoming the listener to the album, giving a detailed explanation on the difference between ‘snitches’ and ‘rats,’ to closing the tape out with a reminder to “stay in savage mode,” it’s fair to say this release wouldn’t have been the same without him.

 

Best Cover Song

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Winner: Phoebe Bridgers & Maggie Rogers “Iris”
2020 was a banner year for Phoebe Bridgers; she released her sophomore album to critical acclaim and (relative) enthusiasm from long-time fans. She earned a slew of Grammy nominations, performed at Red Rocks, released her annual Christmas song, and had a seemingly never-ending barrage of attention-grabbing interviews. The arguable peak of Phoebe-dom happened when, during a particularly bleak moment on Election Day, she tweeted, “if trump loses I will cover iris by the goo goo dolls.” Not only did Trump end up losing, but Phoebe stuck to her word, releasing the song for only 24 hours on Bandcamp with all proceeds going to Fair Fight, an organization dedicated to fighting for free and fair elections. On top of all this, both Bridgers and Rogers earned their first Billboard Hot 100 with this cover based solely off of Bandcamp Purchases alone. The song itself is an absolutely gorgeous and heartfelt rendition of the late-90s radio banger, a genre of music I’ve found myself increasingly unironically drawn to over the course of quarantine. If anything, Phoebe’s version of the song only further solidified my belief in the earnest beauty that lies at the heart of corny songs from my childhood. 

Runner-up: Pelafina “Cardigan”
I’ll be honest. I have no idea how I stumbled across Pelafina, let alone became a follower of theirs on Bandcamp, but when I got an email announcing their Taylor Swift covers, I bought them without hesitation. TS finds the band revisiting two recent Swift hits, “Cardigan” and “Cruel Summer,” both of which the band casts in a new and loving light that’s both faithful to the source material while retaining their style as a band, exactly what a good cover should be. 

 

Headline of the Year

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Winner: “Scooby-Doo Is Going on Tour With Björk's Costume Designer
The fact that 2020 robbed us of this experience is nothing short of a national tragedy. 

Runner-up: “Sex Pistols star Johnny Rotten bitten by a flea on his penis after rescuing squirrels
Look, if I had to read this, y’all do too.

 

Porch Beer Album of the Year

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Winner: Routine - And Other Things
Porch Beers, a term coined by me and popularized with my two-follower Spotify playlist, is a subgenre of music characterized by jangly guitars, lackadaisical lyricism, and relaxed rhythm sections. It’s country-tinged indie rock that pairs flawlessly with a porch and a pink sky on a summer evening, and there wasn’t a release this year that captured that feeling better than And Other Things. Surprise announced in the last quarter of the year, this 17-minute EP brings together partners Melina Duterte of Jay Som and Annie Truscott of Chastity Belt for a collection of songs that feels as fulfilling as a full-length. As you’d expect from such a short release, the two waste no time jumping straight into it with “Candy Road” which sparkles like desert sand in the midday sun. The titular “And Other Things” is a masterwork of revelatory reverb. Meanwhile, “Calm and Collected” sends things off perfectly with an extended instrumental stretch that leaves just enough room for reflection while you queue the record up again and grab another beer. 

Runner-up: Kevin Morby - Sundowner
With songs like “Valley,” “Campfire,” and of course the titular “Sundowner,” Kevin Morby’s sixth studio album feels tailor-made for porch beers or long, reflective drives home. It’s laid-back, countrified, fresh air music that practically begs you to crack open a cold one, inhale some fresh air, and appreciate your surroundings.

 

Best Gothic Country Album

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Winner: Holy Motors - Horse
If someone were to ask me what Gothic Country is, I would simply show them the cover art for songs like Holy Motors’ “Country Church” and “Endless Night,” then I’d hit play on the band’s excellent sophomore album

Runner-up: BAMBARA - Stray
Swirling together a mesmerizing blend of gothic country and post-punk, Bambara’s Shadow On Everything was a dark horse entry in my 2018 Album of the Year list. Two years later, they’ve continued to develop that sound into a new release that’s haunting, unsettling, groovy, and even singable at times. 

 

Favorite Longform Piece I Wrote This Year

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Winner: The Stark Maximalism of Sufjan Stevens
Spoiler alert: sometimes I use these awards to re-promote some of my old articles. While it may seem like insular self-promotion, what better time than the end of the year to look back on some of my favorite pieces of writing? Literally the first article I published this calendar year, my retrospective on Sufjan’s Carrie & Lowell was a long time coming. Bringing together years of listening history, a live album, and a B-sides collection, I felt like I finally said everything I’d spent five years ruminating on. Not only that, I feel like I was able to articulate myself completely and beautifully, which is one of the most satisfying experiences as a writer. 

Runner-up: An Introduction To Post-Rock
Post-rock is a genre that’s gotten me through a lot of tough times. It’s scored countless hours of reading, writing, and creating for me. It’s a pretty specific but deep genre, which means it’s infinitely rewarding to get into. In this piece, I did my best to put the wordless power of the genre into several paragraphs, a task that proved to be both rewarding and herculean. Intended to serve as an entry point for someone new to post-rock, this post takes nine of genre’s best records and explains the differences between each so someone can jump in with an album that’s up their alley stylistically then (ideally) journey in deeper from there. 

 

Y’all Sleep: Most Overlooked and Underappreciated Release of the Year 

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Winner: Marble Teeth - Park
Do you like Slaughter Beach, Dog? What about Oso Oso? How Do you feel about Field Medic? If you responded positively to any of the above questions, then what are you waiting for? Press play on Marble Teeth’s Park immediately. While Cars weaved minute-long stories of high school football players, paranoid Pop-Tart connoisseurs, and lifelong love, Park ventures into more polished and personable territory. While Cars centered around acoustic guitar licks and simplistic electronic beats, Park favors a full(er) band approach that strikes at the heart of midwest mediocrity. Still centered around Caleb Jefson’s astute observations of the human condition, these songs sway forward in the most approachable and unexpected ways. There’s nothing quite like reveling in the world of awkward relationships, midnight dances, and Connecticut rest stops depicted in Park. This is a superb and lived-in release that is more creative, wondrous, and well-observed than almost anything I’ve listened to this year.

Runner-up: Fixer - Married
Portland, Oregon doesn't have much of a music scene because if there was any justice in this world, then Fixer’s sophomore album would have roughly one million streams by now. A lowkey indie rock release from the beginning of quarantine, this record is catchy, groovy, and immaculately produced. A literal shame that more people haven’t dug into these songs because this 25-minute release is worth its weight in gold. 

 

Best “Making Of” Documentary

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Winner: Glass Beach - the making of the first glass beach album
Have 90 minutes to kill and don’t feel like watching a movie? Well, it’s hard to beat the making of the first glass beach album. The perfect introduction to the emo-ish prog-ish indie-ish band, this feature-length documentary is up for free on Youtube and details (as you would expect) the creation of the band’s titular first album. It’s fun, it’s funky, it’s a journey. 

Runner-up: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Ratty
Have another 30 minutes to kill? Well, Ratty is a documentary from genre-agnostic Aussie rockers King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. This mini-movie details the creation of their thrash metal masterpiece Infest The Rats Nest, which wound up on our 2019 Album of the Year List. For a band as entertaining and musically diverse as King Gizz, this doc is a great peek behind the curtain into the psych rocker’s creative process. 

 

Best Cover Song Part II: Electric Boogaloo

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Winner: The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die “In Circles”
The World Is A Beautiful Place are emo legends. Sunny Day Real Estate are emo legends. It would only make sense that the two should meet at some point, and this cover bridges the gap between emo generations like nothing before. It shouldn’t be surprising that TWIABP does “In Circles” such justice, but they also manage to put their own spin on it that feels distinctly modern. It’s gorgeous and honestly just makes me want a full album of Sunny Day Real Estate covers. 

Runner-up: Dogleg & Worst Party Ever - go ep
It started, as many things do, with a tweet. Late November, Michigan punk band Dogleg pitted a fight against Florida emo rockers Worst Party Ever. Accusations were made, shots were fired, the gauntlet was thrown. This jokingly playful beef culminated in the two bands exchanging covers, all of which were collected in a split that warms my emo heart.

 

Most Triggering High School Metalcore Phase Flashbacks

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Winner: Mikau - Phantoma
This year I stumbled across a vinyl copy of The Word Alive’s debut EP Empire at a local record shop. I’m pretty sure I audibly gasped and quickly threw down however much money allowed me to leave the store with the record in-hand. If that reaction makes sense to you, then Mikau’s Phantoma is likely to spark that same corner of your latent 2010’s Hot Topic brain as it did me. There are chuggy riffs, crabcore breakdowns, and synthy interludes. In short, this is the type of band who would have signed to Rise Records in 2011 and raked in money by the thousands every summer at Warped Tour. Instead, we’re lucky enough to have them in 2020, where they can be appreciated for the nostalgic, lost art form that they really are. 

Runner-up: If I Die First - My Poison Arms
When I first stumbled across If I Die First on Spotify, I didn’t even know what genre they were. When I clicked play on My Poison Arms and was greeted electronicore in the vein of This Romantic Tragedy, I was immediately smitten. This EP would have fit in perfectly on my iPod Classic circa 2009, so I am legally obligated to love it with every molecule in my latent metalcore-loving heart.

 

Song of the Summer

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Winner: Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion “WAP”
Let’s just get it out of the way; “WAP” is a great song. The track is catchy, dirty, and sexually-liberating, which is all well and good, but what strikes me most about this cartoonishly horny hip-hop cut is the fact that it managed to be so pervasive despite a nationwide shutdown. I know there were (unfortunately) still people out partying this summer, but this song’s ability to spread through TikTok, Twitter, and various other social media is what really cemented it as an artistic achievement in the face of a distinctly non-WAP summer. 

Runner-up: Dababy & Roddy Ricch “Rockstar”
I know it was a quarantined summer, and having a hit song during this time feels like it comes with a giant asterisk. However, if your song managed to make its way to me (an uncool white guy in his late-20s), I can only assume it’s reached a level of cultural pervasiveness that is worthy of praise. 

 

Favorite Review I Wrote This Year

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Winner: Young Jesus - Welcome To Conceptual Beach
More shameless self-promo, this time in review form! While those earlier articles were longer-form pieces, my review for Young Jesus’ phenomenal fifth album is short, pointed, and poured out of me in one writing session. Sometimes the most challenging part of writing a review is just figuring out your way in. Young Jesus provided so many different ways in on their latest record, the problem became figuring out which one to pursue. Luckily, I feel like I did the album justice and spoke articulately to the statement that it’s making. 

Runner-up: Sinai Vessel - Ground Aswim
Much like my Young Jesus review, my review for Ground Aswim poured out of me over the course of one impassioned afternoon that I spent with the record. Also, much like the Young Jesus album, Sinai Vessel’s sophomore effort is a measured, precious, and relaxing album with a statement to make coming at a prescient time. 

 

Best Cover Song Part III: Return of the King

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Winner: Lucy Dacus “Lips of an Angel”
Apologies for three identical categories, but we got lots of great covers this year, and I want to talk about “Lips of an Angel.” Originally by the American rock band Hinder, “Lips of an Angel” arrived upon our earth in 2005 and is arguably the toxic masculinity anthem. There’s cheating, gaslighting, pleading, and everything else you’d expect to hear while listening to a shitty dude talk to his ex on the phone. Lucy Dacus takes the band’s cringy lyricism and re-frames it from a distinctly femme perspective that de-fangs the negativity and replaces it with a layer of deeply-felt beauty. 

Runner-up: SASAMI “Toxicity”
If you were to sit me down and just start connecting random artists to songs they’ve covered, I would never, ever, in a million years, have connected indie rocker SASAMI to System of A Down. I suppose given the band’s semi-ubiquitous prevalence throughout the early to mid-2000s, it’s unsurprising that an artist currently in her late-20s would have an intimate familiarity with the nu-metal group. What’s impressive is not only how incredible her cover sounds, but how drastically different it is from the original. Proof that a good song is a good song no matter what, and a good artist can always take a good song and make it sound even better. 

 

Greatest Addition to the Christmas Canon

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Winner: 100 gecs “sympathy 4 the grinch”
Back at the beginning of December, I mindlessly liked this tweet from 100 gecs and never gave it a second thought. It had never occurred to me that the hyperpop duo even could release a Christmas song. That was simply too awesome a combination of my tastes and interests to exist in 2020. We didn’t deserve it as a society. When the gecs dropped “sympathy 4 the grinch” less than 24 hours later, I was shook to my core. The perfect Christmas song. Finally. 

Runner-up: girl in red “two queens in a king sized bed”
As a man, I feel unilaterally unqualified to speak on the queerness of “two queens in a king sized bed.” What I will speak on however, is how beautiful, soft, and caring this song is. Pairing a piano with faint jingle bells and a pulsating drum build, this song is as loving, caring, and gorgeous as you’d want your lover to be. It’s gay as hell and Christmassy as fuck; what’s not to like? 

 

Most Impactful Beat Drop

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Winner: Beach Bunny “Rearview”
Complete candor: this song was neck-and-neck in the running for my song of the year, but just barely got overtaken in the homestretch. That said, it’s still one of my favorites of the year, and this list would have felt utterly incomplete without its inclusion. “Rearview” is a mid-album cut off Beach Bunny’s fantastic debut album. It begins simply enough; a gentle guitar paired with Lili Trifilio’s confessional vocals. As she pines for her unrequited love over the guitar, her strums gradually pick up energy, morphing into a more-pointed riff. In the last minute of the song, she lands on the track’s namesake and pauses for a moment, then proceeds to sing a simple rhyme over a cool bassline. “You love me, I love you / You don't love me anymore, I still do. I'm sorry, I'm trying / I hate it when you catch me crying” As these words emerge from her lips, a whirl of feedback tears through the track along with two drum hits that make way for the rest of the band. From there, the group introduces a towering riff that makes the listener feel like a speck of dust in their all-encompassing emotional oasis. It’s goosebump-inducing and possibly my single favorite moment in any song this entire year. 

Runner-up: Soccer Mommy “Gray Light”
Sophie Allison knows how to end an album. From the quiet “Switzerland” to the confessional and forlorn “Waiting For Cars,” this fact has been clear from the very outset of her career. But two is a coincidence, three is a pattern. Allison ends Clean with the soul-decimating “Wildflowers” which works its way up from a solitary acoustic guitar to an ascending electronic whir that feels like every emotion you’ve ever had lifting you up into the air like an alien tractor beam. “gray light” accomplishes a similar effect, winding up from a slow soul-crushing spacey electronic bed into a weird reversed electronic “snap” that commands all attention then sends the listener off on a dreamy Mazzy Star guitar slide. It’s bliss. 

 

Most Hypnotizing Bassline 

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Winner: Seahaven “Moon”
Seahaven made us wait seven years for this record, and honestly, the bassline on “Moon” alone makes that wait worth it. Placed in the skillful hands of Mike DeBartolo, this song sounds like it was made with the express purpose of winding around his knotty basswork. It’s dark, witchy, and downright spooky yet utterly captivating. I swear I could listen to just the bass on this song for the album’s full runtime. 

Runner-up: Thank You, I’m Sorry “Follow Unfollow”
Admittedly more energetic than “Moon,” “Follow Unfollow” from midwest emo outfit Thank You, I’m Sorry features a dynamic, bouncy bass that drives the song forward. As the bass, courtesy of Bethunni Schreiner, bounces back and forth, the listener is left to watch in awe, taking the track in like a tennis match, merely trying to keep up.

 

Find Your Throne: Award For Most Positive Song of the Year

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Winner: Cliffdiver “Gas City”
Positivity felt in short supply this year. Maybe that’s why songs like “Gas City” stuck out so much from the crowd. Cosmically affirming and infinitely singable, this single from the Oklahoma-based emo group also introduced the group’s new co-lead singer Briana Wright who brings a soaring quality to the song that makes it all the more uplifting. Also featuring the group’s usual mix of tappy emo, honest lyricism, and soulful saxophone, this song has become my go-to whenever I need a pick-me-up.

Runner-up: Guitar Fight From Fooly Cooly “My Friends Are My Power (Spoiler Alert!)”
Any song that opens with a Kingdom Hearts sample and throws directly into a moshpit volley of drums is a winner in my book. I won’t give away the “spoiler” here, but it’s well worth the 1:39-second listen.

 

Lose Your Throne: Award For Most Self-Deprecating Song of the Year

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Winner: Cheem “Smooth Brain”
I feel that “Smooth Brain” really captures the essence of this year well. Between quarantine, the election, and everything in between, I think I could have scraped my brain into a blender and turned it on high for 360 days straight, and I still would have kept it in better shape than whatever I ended up doing. Blending a Patrick Stump-like chorus with pained bars and a glittery instrumental, “Smooth Brain” is the real song of the summer. 

Runner-up: I Love Your Lifestyle “Stupid”
Sometimes everything just plain sucks. You are stupid, I am stupid, he is stupid, she is stupid, this whole thing is stupid. That’s almost literally the sentiment captured in “Stupid” by I Love Your Lifestyle. Built around a repetitive, building, earworm of a chorus, this is a song that sounds more like the things you mutter under your breath while working your retail job dealing with abject nonsense day-in, day-out. Truly an anthem for these stupid ages.

 

Best Posthumous Album

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Winner: Pop Smoke - Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon
Posthumous albums are inherently an uphill battle. You never know how much was created before the artist’s passing and how much was studio fuckery. While Pop Smoke’s death at the beginning of 2020 was an outright tragedy, Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon is nothing short of a triumph. From star-studded features, teeth-gritting bangers, and career-affirming assists, this record does everything right. There’s a diverse wealth of sounds, and Pop Smoke rarely feels overshadowed on his own release, which is an all-too-common pratfall of the posthumous album. Shoot For The Stars is already one of the best trap albums of the decade, it’s just a shame we never got to see Pop Smoke’s career flourish the way he deserved. 

Runner-up: Mac Miller - Circles
Mac Miller’s death at the end of 2018 came as a shock to pretty much everyone. Having spent a decade developing his sound from frat rap mixtapes as a teen to the jazzy poetry he released just a week before his death, Mac was a poster boy for artistic development on top of being an all-around great dude. Circles continues the sound that Mac was fleshing out on Swimming and ends his story in a satisfying place that offered fans some semblance of closure. 

 

Record Label of the Year

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Winner: Acrobat Unstable Records
At nearly every step of the way this year, I was amazed by the North Carolina upstart indie label Acrobat Unstable. Initially conceived as a way for labelmates Eric Smeal and Martin Hacker-Mullin to make tapes and merch for bands that they liked, this quickly ballooned from local acts to bands like Short Fictions and the Callous Daoboys. This year, the label helped release projects from the likes of Carpool, Charm, Acne, Ultimate Frisbee, and Thirty Cent Fare, none of whom I’d heard of before this year, but all of which blew me away. The label also released hundreds of vinyl records and helped bands like Hospital Bracelet, Jail Socks, Stars Hollow, and Origami Angel release merch and vinyl. If next year bears even a semblance of the label’s success in 2020, then we are in for a wild ride. 

Runner-up: Moon Physics
While Acrobat Unstable wins for turning me on to a constant stream of new music throughout 2020, Moon Physics earns their runner-up spot for positing a new way that a label can operate in this capitalist hellscape. Centered around monthly “drops,” this Tony-Hawk-inspired entity describes themselves as a “zero-profit, anti-capitalist” springboard for artists. In between dropping tapes, vinyl, and fingerboards, the label acts as an educational resource that also splits the profit of sales between the artists and local community organizations. An aspirational model that I hope sets the tone for a new decade of labels. I cannot wait to see what’s in store for the organization in 2021.

Honorable mentions to Good Luck Charm Records, Chillwavve Records, and Take This To Heart Records because each of these labels consistently dropped fire releases all throughout the year.

 

Came Out Swinging: Best New Band of 2020

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Winner: It Doesn’t Bother Me
You can say a lot of bad things about 2020, but at least it gave us It Doesn’t Bother Me. This Midwest emo project may have had the misfortunate timing of dropping their debut EP at the height of a quarantined spring, but the way I see it, that just gives them more time to rack up fans who will soon be screaming along to these songs in a sweaty Michigan basement. Alternating between catchy Mom Jeans choruses and You, Me, And Everyone We Know-esque vocal stylings, the band is more than equipped to create a string of iconic emo songs ready for Spotify playlists, emo mixtapes, and infinitely-bigger stages. Get hip now before they blow up. 

Runner-up: Blue Deputy
Blue Deputy didn’t exist before 2020, and now they do. That alone makes this year worth it. A creative (and romantic) partnership between Andy Bunting and Brody Hamilton, Blue Deputy explores the tender spaces of relationships that can only be observed as you’re living them. Look no further than the gorgeous double New Jersey / I Hate Steven Singer for two catchy emo-flavored bedroom pop songs that sparkle and glisten like the glitter on a freshly-uncapped gel pen. These two will do amazing things, and we’re lucky that 2020 allowed such beautiful songs as these into existence. 

 

Biggest Come-up

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Winner: Roddy Ricch
Roddy Ricch began the year with a chart-topping #1 song that fended off singles from both Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez. He contributed to the (*secondary) Song of the Summer with Dababy and tossed out features to the likes of Gunna, Pop Smoke, and Ty Dolla Sign. In short, it was Roddy Ricch’s year, unfortunately, the stars just happened to align for him on a really shitty year. 

Runner-up: Redveil
Within the space of one calendar year, Maryland-based Redveil went from an unknown Twitter rapper to one of the internet’s hottest upcoming artists. A baby-faced 16, Redveil created a mixtape that single-handedly made waves all over Twitter and garnered millions of streams, all before he was legally allowed to drive.

 

Best Revisitation

Winner: Into It. Over It. - Canada Sessions
I respect Evan Thomas Weiss as the face of Fourth Wave emo. I respect his output, I cherish his voice, and I love his dynamic autumnal album from this year. While I love and appreciate his body of work, nothing sits quite as close to my heart as 52 Weeks. That record was formative in my emo upbringing, and it makes me sad he’s “moved on” with albums that have had bigger hit songs. Nothing speaks to me quite the way “Basto” does. Nothing gets me singing quite like “A Song About Your Party.” Nothing feels quite as bile-filled as “Bullied Becomes the Bully,” and honestly, that’s a bummer. I had these songs all but written off until 2020 when Weiss released Canada Sessions, a short EP that saw him revisiting two different decade-old tracks off his breakthrough year of music. Obviously better produced than the original tracks, both “Embracing Facts” and “22 Syllables” absolutely shine in this new context, slightly updated to reflect Weiss’ more recent artistic leanings but still tapping into the same younger soul that created them. An affirmation and a celebration. 

Runner-up: The Fearless Flyers “Adrienne and Adrianne”
The Venn diagram of members between Vulfpeck and Fearless Flyers is almost a circle, and with four iterations of one song under their belt, Vulfpeck are no stranger to revisiting a tune. While I admittedly have a propensity for the band’s earlier instrumental EPs, I have grown to love the Fearless Flyers for the very same reason as Vulf; an abundance of proficient, funky, fun instrumentals. When I heard the sounds of an eight-year-old Vulfpeck deep cut coming out of my 2020 Fearless Flyers record, I just about lost my shit. It’s like putting on an old winter coat; fits like a charm. 

 

Best Deployment of a Harmonica

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Winner: Slow Pulp “Montana”
Essentially the end credits to Slow Pulp’s fantastic debut album, “Montana” is a laid-back and relaxing track that’s as easy as the rolling hills that the song seeks to depict. The song builds to a hypnotic repetition as lead singer Emily Massey pleads, “come on get out of my head,” and becomes fixated on the word “head,” singing it over and over until the song’s close. The deployment of harmonica midway through the track not only breaks the repetitive wave-like nature of the lyrics but feels like a stand-in for something larger than the piece itself, something spiritual I haven’t quite figured out yet. 

Runner-up: Field Medic “HEADCASE”
Kevin Patrick Sullivan (better known as Field Medic) has made his name as an outspoken and famously-mulleted poet, equal parts emo and horny. While the Bob Dylan comparisons can feel simultaneously on-the-nose and unfair, sometimes it’s a hard thing to avoid when one pairs acoustic guitar with harmonica this much. “HEADCASE” is a fast-moving Field Medic track where the harmonica comes in at just the right spot, punctuating a top-tapping chorus and capping off an array of confessional sentiments found in each verse.

 

Best Split of the Year 

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Winner: Arcadia Grey, Oolong, Guitar Fight From Fooly Cooly, dannythestreet - Fatal 4 Way Split
To some degree, many of the big bands from the 5th Wave Emo Movement have already revealed themselves to the world… However, if you were to ask me who some of the best, most promising upcoming bands in the scene are, I’d point you to this split. All harnessing the same jittery zoomer energy, this lineup features some of the best bands currently releasing music on the regular. From the moshpit-opening body dysmorphia found on Arcadia Grey’s “Braum” to the propulsive combo of tapping and screaming found on Oolong’s “Dippin Daniel,” I really believe there’s something for everything on this meeting of the emo minds. Guitar Fight From Fooly Cooly kicks their contribution off with a fist-balling Mortal Kombat sample that makes me want to start swinging the same way “2nd Sucks” did way back in high school. dannythestreet closes the rumble royale off with a glimmering earworm of a melody that leaves me hopeful for the next generation of emo acts. 

Runner-up: Snarls, The Sonder Bombs - A Really Cool Split
As previously established above with the Dogleg x Worst Party Ever split, I’m a sucker for bands covering each other’s songs. It’s cute and sometimes just makes sense in some cosmic way. A Really Cool Split from Snarls and Sonder Bombs sees the two Cleveland bands swapping songs to great effect on top of an acoustic rendition and a long-awaited pre-album single. It’s a loving little pit stop for both bands, one coming hot off one of the most underrated indie pop records of the year and the other ramping up to drop one of the best of 2021

 

Best Release From 2019 That I Didn’t Give A Fair Shake

Winner: Hovvdy - Heavy Lifter
By the time fall rolled in, it was simultaneously jarring and calming. Precipitated by the changing of the leaves and sharp snaps of fall temperatures, the fall season still managed to take me by surprise, but I’ll admit that quarantine has thrown off all sense of time. As I mentally relegated myself to the frigid wintertime, I found Heavy Lifter to be a perfect reflection of my mental state. Somewhat inward, a little bit scattered, and wholly comforting, I did not give this album the time of day back in 2019. Aside from the warming blanket of comfort, what I find more artistically impressive about this record is the way that it can make banal things like falling asleep to YouTube and free parking practically romantic in melody. Never again will I sleep on Hovvdy.

Runner-up: Orville Peck - Pony
While I had seen Orville Peck back in 2019 (his half-mask, half-tassel cowboy hat is hard to miss after all), I realized I had never actually listened to him until this year. Within seconds of hitting play on “Dead of Night,” I realized I’d made a grave mistake. Pony is a dark, mysterious country record centered around Peck’s smoldering baritone, which lends an air of genre-based familiarity. Aside from the record’s immaculate production, what makes these familiar genre trappings fresh is how Peck updates the topics to feel more reflective of our society as it stands. He talks candidly about queerness, drug use, and his own emotions, three things the country of yesteryear would never touch with a ten-foot pole. In other words, Pony represents a long-needed update to an entire genre that everyone is quick to write off; I’m just glad I got here when I did. 

 

Song of the Year

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Winner: Spanish Love Songs “Losers 2”
Seeing Spanish Love Songs live was one of the last concerts I went to this year, and (apparently) one of the last concerts I’ll go to for a while. I could focus on that lack of live music and dwell in a pit of despair, but instead, I’d rather focus on the freedom I felt that night screaming along to my favorite songs with a wall of sweaty fans. 

Losers 2” is easily my favorite song of the year. Centered around sharp lyricism and a cathartic build, this track quickly became an outlet for me early in 2020. It represents something bigger, something I may not experience for a while, yet experience every day. 

For roughly two minutes, lead singer Dylan Slocum finds himself displaced, revisiting former homes, dead relatives, and economic inequalities. Destined to die poor and wake up forever tired, Slocum has no choice but to continue. Third jobs enter the picture, but the larger scene of mortality and capitalism never fades. It’s a life that many millennials can understand. A life where nothing bad can ever happen because a single accident, a single diagnosis, a single unplanned event can throw your entire future into disarray. Minimum wages aren’t fought for by our politicians, but by mothers, forced to rideshare to demonstrations because they don’t have vehicles of their own. The entire thing paints this richly-detailed picture of a deeply-failed country. Of a failed generation. Of the world in which we currently exist. 

About midway through, the song transitions to the bridge and here’s the part that gets me every. fucking. time. Just as Slocum self-deprecatingly describes himself as a “walking tragic ending,” something shifts inside him. The instrumental cuts out to a single warbling synth note which makes way for the most poignant sentiment of the entire record. The bridge, which I’ll paste here in-full, is a pitch-perfect depiction of this stalemate between economic and emotional devastation.

So I'm leaving the city / Maybe the country / Maybe the earth
Gonna find a place of my own

Where the fuckups aren't cops / Patrolling neighbourhoods they're afraid of / And the rest of us won't burn out / Displacing locals from neighbourhoods we're afraid of

Now if we weren't bailed out / Every time by our parents we'd be dead / What's gonna happen when they're dead?”

There’s really nothing else I can say.

Runner-up: Mandancing “Johnny Freshman”
Mandancing released one of the most underrated emo albums of 2020. The record is packed with gorgeous slice of life tales of love, loss, and friendship. There are stellar performances, jaw-dropping arrangements, and earnest emo deliveries aplenty. Amongst an album that’s so consistently great, my personal peak comes at the tail end with the closing track “Johnny Freshman.”

This enigmatic and slow-moving song is centered around a dual vocal and instrumental build that both peak in the same cathartic way before whisking the listener off on a shimmering emo outro that’s reminiscent of some of my favorite songs of all time. “Johnny Freshman” borrows the same pleading sentiment as Julien Baker’s “Go Home” as lead singer Stephen G. Kelly belts “would you please come home?” over a near-bear instrumental bed. These pleas repeat and eventually culminate in a goosebump-inducing cry of the same phrase as the instrumental grows in scope, eventually consuming the entire track. For 90 seconds the guitar reverberates, the drums roll, and the bass shakes as the band plays out the same ascending chord strum dozens of times, lending the track this meditative quality that gives the listener time to think and reflect on the entire record they had just taken in. Simple masterful. 

 

Most Anticipated Release of 2021

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Winner: Jail Socks - Debut Album
Jail Socks had already created my 2019 Album of the Year, so it probably goes without saying that I’m feverishly anticipating the next moves from the fresh-faced No Sleep signees. Despite only having released a grand total of eight songs to the public, Jail Socks had become one of my favorite 5th Wave emo-ish bands by the end of last year. I still listen to It’s Not Forever on an (at least) weekly basis, so I cannot wait to see what the band does with their first full-length next year. 

Runner-up: Michelle Zauner - Crying In H Mart
My second most-anticipated release of 2020 isn’t an album, but a book. Crying In H Mart is the soon-to-be-released memoir by Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast. The book is based on, named after, and presumably in the style of her heartbreaking New Yorker article of the same name. Zauner, who was also the winner of our 2017 Album of the Year, has a beautiful way of navigating words and emotions in a manner that cuts directly to my soul. I’m sure Crying In H Mart will be nothing short of a crushing read, but that’s exactly what I want, and exactly what I need.