The Best of Q1 2024

Today means something different to everybody. To some, April 1 is a fun day for goofs and gags; to others, it’s just another day we have to pay rent. To obsessive music writers, today marks the official beginning of “Q2” 2024. I know that makes me sound like a business bro or some hotshot market analyst, but I’ve found increasing validity in breaking up the year into four even chunks like this. Not only does this cadence make me more mindful of the passage of time, but it also acts as the perfect vantage point to look back and take stock of what has happened over the last few months.

Whenever I talk to people, even the biggest music nerds, a common sentiment is the feeling that it’s harder than ever to “keep up” with new music. I agree, but I also think that feeling means you’re putting too much pressure on yourself. Every week is an avalanche of new music, and it can be overwhelming to keep up with. Throw in the constant stream of new singles, music videos, tour announcements, splits, interviews, podcasts, and month-long album rollouts, and it’s no wonder why fandom can start to turn back on itself and feel like a job. 

I’m of the mind that if you’re feeling that pressure, you need to reframe your relationship with music. New music will always be there, and you can’t possibly listen to everything. We here at Swim Into The Sound are passionate music geeks. We love sifting through press releases and keeping track of album cycles. We make playlists and try our hardest to check out new music each Friday. Sometimes, we take a month off, but it always comes back to our obsession and love for music in (hopefully) equal measure.

What follows is a collection of our staff’s favorite albums from the first three months of 2024. Each writer has selected one release that they’ve been gravitating towards, all in the hopes that you will find something new to love or check out. Thanks to a massive influx of new writers, our team, and our taste has never been so diverse. You’ll see everything here, from throat-shredding heavy metal to laid-back lounge fare, twinkling emo, and pastoral indie rock. Go check these records out, save a few, and check them out in your own time. No matter how well you’re staying “up” on the new stuff, we hope you find something here to adore as much as we have. 


Cheekface – It’s Sorted

Self-released

As a Cheekface superfan, It's Sorted is not exactly the album I wanted… It's better than that. I think I wanted them to keep making the same irreverent indie rock album that made me fall in love with them (Emphatically No.) over and over again until it stopped hitting the same. Cult followings of indie artists can be a bit like stubborn children who don't know what's good for them. Instead, Cheekface gave me new things I didn't know I wanted: shiny pop productions to go with the big pop hooks, big vocal stacks, Metallica worship, a surprisingly vulnerable acoustic(ish) moment, and, "wait a minute, did you just trick me into liking ska?" Believe it or not, It's Sorted is the band's most cohesive record yet. The songs explore themes of identity in a country where we are often defined by our jobs (or something like that). While the production often takes wild creative liberties in different directions, it is always with purpose that serves the song (producers of songwriters, take note). The qualities that make Cheekface Cheekface are alive and well on It's Sorted. If anything, they are flexing (Mandy Tannen's basslines really are their largest muscle, haha) that Cheekface has gotten even better at being themselves. Ever since I found out that frontman Greg Katz has a degree in philosophy, I have been joking that Cheekface is like a modern Socrates. The band never really tells you what they think explicitly, but their lyrics will make YOU think, whether you like it or not. And I do.

Katie McTigue - @pacingmusic

Read our review of It’s Sorted here.


Faye Webster – Underdressed at the Symphony

Secretly Canadian

After a stint of TikTok virality that seemed to be handpicked by the Algorithm Gods themselves, part of me wondered if a Faye Webster pivot was on the horizon. I was painfully aware of the primarily teenaged crowd watching the show through their phone screens at Webster’s Brooklyn Steel show last October and was curious if there was a part of Webster (or the Business Folk backing her) that wanted to lean into this demo to take advantage of the moment. Luckily for us, that’s not the way things rolled out. 

Webster’s Underdressed at the Symphony sees a seasoned jazz pop veteran lean into the niches that make her great—trance-like jazz interludes and conversationally quippy lyrics—while also widening her sound through heavy synth leans, vocoders, and lyrical repetition. The record is a collection of songs about losing yourself (“Wanna Quit All the Time”), finding yourself (“Feeling Good Today”), and what happens in the in-between (“eBay Purchase History”). Webster paints a picture of her ever-changing state of mind while simultaneously leaving listeners enough room to fill in the blanks for themselves through vague enough lyrics and uncrowded instrumentation. Webster’s lyrics feel like you’re a fly on the wall of her internal monologue: half are things she’d say out loud, and half are thoughts she keeps to herself (two of my favorite lines being “And I’m looking at you talk like okay / Your eyes are so pretty by the way” on “eBay Purchase History” and “I’m feeling good today / I ate before noon / I think that’s pretty good for me” on “Feeling Good Today”). Webster packs this record with things that shouldn’t go together but do: cutesy-bop interludes, jammy synth loops, full-blown orchestras, existential crises, a Lil Yachty feature, and that classic almost-Hawaiian guitar tone we all know and love. Truly something for everyone from the reluctant queen of mellow pop. 

Cassidy Sollazzo - @cassidynicolee_


Flesh Tape – Flesh Tape

Power Goth Recordings

Flesh Tape’s self-titled record was the first thing that I bought on Bandcamp in 2024, and it’s endured as my favorite release of the year so far. It’s great, noisy guitar rock music that makes me wish I owned bigger speakers. Since this cassette came through in the mail, I’ve been listening to it front to back nearly nonstop while playing Madden, letting the massive wall of distorted guitars take me away as I throw interception after interception. I have some stuff from Nothing and Hotline TNT in a similar rotation, and I think Flesh Tape fully stands next to them as a band in that lane. In particular, the back half of this record is incredibly strong, with “Catalytic Converter” and “Sunny” landing as my two standout tracks.

Josh Ejnes - @JoshEjnes


Friko – Where we’ve been, where we go from here

ATO Records

Recently on Twitter dot com, I saw Jordan Walsh say that the new Friko album, Where we’ve been, where we go from here, would fit seamlessly with the early 2000s Saddle Creek catalog. As I’ve listened to this album over and over and over, I haven’t been able to get that comparison out of my head. The Chicago band’s frontman, Niko Kapetan, channels all the best parts of a young Conor Oberst’s urgency, loquacity, and recklessly wobbly vocals. At the same time, drummer Bailey Minzenberger drives the songs forward with fervor and no shortage of delightfully messy cymbals. Clever time signature changes keep tracks like “Crimson to Chrome” and “Get Numb To It!” fresh where so many folky-emo bands have stumbled into monotony, and the lullaby-like “For Ella” and “Until I’m With You Again” follow haunting piano melodies down to the band’s tender core. While Friko forge a sound undeniably all their own, strands of my youth’s bygone styles have tied this comforting, chaotic record up as my favorite so far this year.

Katie Wojciechowski - @ktewoj

Read our review of Where we’ve been, where we go from here here.


From Flowers to Flies – We Built This Machine

Broken Windmill Music

It’s only natural to occasionally wonder where the people you went to school with ended up. I often think back to my time attending my alma mater, Sonoma State University, and the people I walked the halls of our music building with fondly. To my surprise, earlier this year, I discovered that three of those classmates, along with another friend, started a band together and released one of the most engaging and complex records I have heard thus far in 2024. Across every second of its uninhibited 45-minute runtime, listeners can expect prog-rock sensibilities, improvisational brass solos, scream vocals, variations of the Dies irae (to my absolute delight), and so much more. When a handful of incredibly skilled, dedicated music majors get together in a studio, the end result is, unsurprisingly, one of the most versatile and detailed rock-fusion records you’ll ever hear. Jam-packed with subtle references to their countless influences and overlapping eras of music, We Built This Machine stands as a brooding, genre-fluid experience from the heavy-hitting newcomers to the DIY music scene, From Flower to Flies. 

Ciara Rhiannon - @rhiannon_comma


glass beach – plastic death

Run for Cover Records

plastic death is a summer album. Who cares that it was released in January? This is the perfect soundtrack for a June evening, driven with the windows down while blasting this beautifully rambunctious album. The opening track, “coelacanth,” has my heart as it features a wonderful piano accompaniment, but the following tracks, “rare animal” and “commatose” are equally compelling. glass beach has done a fantastic job of expanding upon their previous album’s sound by pushing their technical and creative abilities, challenging the listener as they lead you through an hour of rhythmically complex and harmonically lush music. Whether you enjoy post-punk, shoegaze, fifth-wave emo, or an even more niche internet genre, plastic death offers all that and so much more.

Britta Joseph - @brittajoes

Read our review of plastic death here.


girlsnails – california kickball

Self-released

In a year of highly anticipated releases, the debut LP by girlsnails stood highest among them. After stumbling across their 2019 self-titled EP last spring, I was immediately enraptured and impatiently awaited what was next from the Surrey/Vancouver, BC band. Delivering equal parts math rock and emo, the album leans into those genres but also plays loosely at their edges. The vocal work and albums’ mathier moments feel like a cross between Laufey’s stylistic jazz melodies and the more technical pieces of the American Football discography. With papercut penmanship, the band embraces a confessional diary-style lyricism that veers gently into abstraction more than once as the earnest pangs of regret peal in almost crystalline purity. Whether it's the tumbling finger dynamics and clear, lilting vocals on “ramune” or the immense instrumental builds and vocals runs on “say square,” california kickball is a run of just quality, occasionally anthemic, and frequently beautiful, jazzy, mathy emo that’s just as technically impressive as it is pleasant. For long walks where you can see your breath or half cloudy days spent lying in the grass, girlsnails has you covered. 

Elias Amini - @letsgetpivotal


Glitterer – Rationale

Anti-

I’m a little shocked to say that Glitterer’s third record, Rationale, is my favorite of the year so far, given I was never a Title Fight girlie. These songs sucker-punch punks with pop perfection. My favorite track, “No One There,” smuggles one of the best hooks of the year under the guise of a vocal cord-straining shout of the title. Not only are the songs catchy as hell, but the hooks are full of probing questions about how best to exist around each other. From the incredible one-two of “There I was again / making everything about me in the end,” which opens the album, to the life-affirming “this is what I’m supposed to do / nothing else I know is true / ‘cause passion is arbitrary” on “The Same Ordinary.” If you’re craving pit-stirring shout-alongs, Glitterer has you covered.

Lillian Weber - @Lilymweber


Gulfer – Third Wind

Topshelf Records

I’m starting to get the sense that emo music isn’t the coolest genre in the world. It's embarrassing, unsustainable, and not a label that many bands lean into or wear with pride. When I first discovered Gulfer back in 2018, Dog Bless quickly became a formative math rock release, an album that also felt like it capped off an era of emo in a way that is really only visible in retrospect. One pandemic later, Gulfer has released a self-titled record, a split, and a handful of sparkling singles that all built out the Montréal group’s precise sound. Turns out that was also the proper amount of time to marinate and mutate into something that pushes far beyond the restrictive realms of emo or math rock. Third Wind is a spectacular indie rock album that sees a band exploring the bounds of their influences to create something wholly unique in a space where that sort of exploration is not always well-received or rewarded. There’s so much to love here: the immaculate poppy sensibility of “Clean,” the autotuned articulation of the climate crisis on “Cherry Seed,” the hardcore outpouring of “Too Slow,” and the hypnotic repetition throughout “No Brainer.” How about the way lead singer Joe Therriault plays with his word choice on “Prove,” stretching the song's title out, lilting back and forth on the “oooooo” until it becomes completely unrecognizable. This is all backed by unparalleled instrumentation that, yes, has a background in emo and math rock, but also feels indebted to shoegaze and indie rock in a way that makes it feel far more than the sum of its parts. A new act for a band who already proved themselves to be some of the greatest to ever do it. 

Taylor Grimes - @GeorgeTaylorG

Read our review of Third Wind here.


Hannah Frances – Keeper of the Shepherd

Ruination Record Co.

Hannah Flores has been releasing emotionally naked folk records for over half a decade, reckoning with the loss of her father across five projects, but her latest feels like a reintroduction. On Keeper of the Shepherd, Frances doesn’t grab your attention so much as she takes your face in both hands and holds your head to hers. Take the opening track “Bronwyn,” where a full rock band crackles and coils around her multi-tracked howls in an all-consuming whirlwind that calls to mind the best of fellow full-voiced powerhouses such as Weyes Blood or even Joni Mitchell. Repeated Christian imagery throughout the deceptively jaunty title track and “Vacant Intimacies” captures how truly distant the love of God can feel beside the fresh absence of someone whose love was tangible. Yet each of these seven songs comes with a personal revelation on how to live not just with loss but how to live as your own person. There’s a tendency in art to mythologize suffering, but Keeper of the Shepherd is a document of healing and moving forward. Hannah Frances knows that the most beautiful art often comes from a place of clarity and confidence that suffering cannot support, which is why on “Haunted Landscape, Echoing Cave,” even as she mirrors the climax of its bookend, she simply declares, “I am leaving.” We’d all be wise to follow her. 

Wes Cochran - @ohcompassion


Knifeplay – Pearlty (2024 Remaster)

Topshelf Records

Knifeplay’s uniquely raw and emotional shoegaze is the perfect soundscape for quiet days inside, long car rides in dreary weather, and abrupt moments of self-understanding. Pearlty originally came out in March of 2019, only about 1,800 short days ago. In that time, Knifeplay has accomplished the difficult feats of releasing their 2nd full-length album, getting signed to a label, and remastering an already amazing album. The timing of the remaster is a bit poignant to me because I started graduate school around the time Pearlty came out. The album is so heavy with emotion that it could drown me if I let it. It’s sonically in the sweetest spot of ambient and active. My personal favorite songs to get lost in are “Suffer” and “Lemonhead,” both of which are just long enough to fully re-contemplate dropping out of school for the nth time. Pearlty’s remaster has given me some new perspective on my “life timeline” and has soothed months of accumulated burnout. It is a beautiful product of a band’s attention to the details of their craft, and for me personally, it is a signpost that says, “Five years down, you’re almost there.”

Braden Allmond - @BradenAllmond


Tapir! – The Pilgrim, Their God and the King of My Decrepit Mountain

Heavenly Recordings

Somewhere in the confluence of centuries of myth and folk music is Tapir! (exclamation point required). After unfolding over the past couple of years, the London six-piece strives heavenward on The Pilgrim, Their God and the King of My Decrepit Mountain, their debut record presented as a three-act musical quest. The first two “acts,” released in 2023, fell under my radar, so I encountered the LP in continuity, not piecemeal — I encourage you to do the same. Not because Tapir!’s pastoral anthems can’t stand on their own, but because of the feeling that flows in as the final chord of the 7-minute closer “Mountain Song” rings out. The band recognizes the subservience of narrative to composition and allows the orchestration to speak for itself. Lore and lyrics capture equal aspects of the story being told; the group is wise enough to opt for balance over proggy density. As they swim through seas of sound and summit the grassy knoll, the listener is guided every step of the way by a comforting presence, ephemeral and silent. Get lost in the fantastic, knowing Tapir! will help you safely return from your travels.

Aly Muilenburg - @purityolympics

Read our review of The Pilgrim, Their God and the King of My Decrepit Mountain here.


Theophonos – Ashes In The Huron River

Profound Lore

Absolute societal degenerate type shit. Years-long diet of sewer rats type shit. Prison stabbing blood loss type shit. Seedy cult ritual docuseries type shit. Black tar cartwheel type shit. Scanners-level cranial burst type shit. Sludge-flooded dungeon type shit. Crime scene photo developer type shit. Wearing the skin of your enemies type shit. Kool-Aid Man Kamikaze piloting himself into the walls of the factory that made him type shit. Convicted criminal pump-up playlist type shit. Thinking about car bombing the DMV type shit. Nightmarish boss battle type shit. Hydroplaning into Hell type shit. Boot-stamping every proud boy in the tri-state area type shit. Laser removing a tattoo you got to cover up the scar of an unconventional piercing type shit.

Logan Archer Mounts - @VERTICALCOFFIN


Waxahatchee – Tigers Blood

Anti-

The sixth album from Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield, Tigers Blood, brings the singer/songwriter’s country sensibilities to the forefront. While it's not the first Waxahatchee record to draw upon Crutchfield’s Southern upbringing, the feeling is omnipresent throughout this album. Deep into her career, Crutchfield’s songwriting continues to get better and better. In addition to the wildly catchy singles, Tigers Blood is full of great tracks, one after the other. Additionally, Crutchfield’s phenomenal voice is aided throughout the album by the recurring presence of MJ Lenderman on guitar and backing vocals. We may only be a quarter of the way through the year, but Tigers Blood has set the bar high for 2024.

Nick Miller - @nickmiller4321


Yard Act – Where’s My Utopia? 

Island Records

Everyone I know had a shit winter. Whether you’ve got SAD or are just sad, the lonely months seem to hit deep this year. All winter, I was grabbing for fuzzy comforts like Greg Mendez, Nirvanna The Band The Show, or the “Hell Naw” dog. I was trying to shake the doldrums, but nothing could get ‘em loose – until I listened to Yard Act’s riotous, effusive, and nimble new record. Plenty of punk-adjacent bands have made their dance records in the past few years (Turnover and Parquet Courts being the ones to commit the hardest), but nothing has been as wide-open, voracious, and filled with pure joy as this record. It’s the celebration of reinvention, an ode to the bloom. It’s filled to the brim with danceable hooks – like the chorus of “Dream Job,” which sounds like a sample from an iconic disco song that doesn’t exist, or the earwormy, ever-descending chorus of “Petroleum” – because, as spelled out in lead single “We Make Hits,” “We’re all gonna sink. And we just wanna have some fun before we’re sunk.” Where’s My Utopia? answers its titular question with a shapeshifting joy-spreader of an album. It’s an intellectual, physical, and emotional utopia that can only be found on the dance floor. An invitation to shake the doldrums while we still can. 

Joshua Sullivan - @brotherheavenz

glass beach – plastic death | Album Review

RUN FOR COVER RECORDS

I have spent years trying to appreciate the Grateful Dead. Everything about them should be exactly my speed: psychedelic country rock with long-winded live performances? I’m usually all-in on that sort of thing, but their acclaim has eluded me ever since I began getting into music. They’re a huge influence on so many artists I love, from The Black Crowes to Kurt Vile, yet I’ve never been able to figure out my disconnect. As a flagship band of music nerdery, I re-examine the Dead about every eighteen months to see if my tastes have finally progressed to a place that will let them in, but no such luck.

I say this all to contextualize my thesis: glass beach is my anti-Grateful Dead. Nothing about this band should work for me, but I find them absolutely fascinating. Their influences of note, like Car Seat Headrest and Radiohead, have been among my most maligned artists since my first encounters. glass beach’s lowercase presentation, sometimes erratic genre-hopping, and hour-plus album runtimes are all things I’ve turned my nose up at when done by other bands. It’s the way they create a specific melting pot with all of these things, the way it all comes together in the end. They deliver their brand of leftfield indie rock a cut above other groups, and they aren’t shy about proving it on plastic death.

the first glass beach album was self-released midway through 2019 and got picked up by Run For Cover Records by the end of the year. The Massachusetts label made a name for itself in the 2010s by releasing pop-punk mainstays like Citizen’s Youth and Turnover’s Peripheral Vision. But in the last few years, the focus has shifted to more indie unknowns and upstarts from all over North America. The loud angst of their standout albums was left behind for the twangy emo of Runnner, the pleasant pop of Mini Trees, and the frenetic cacophony of glass beach.

Much like its predecessor, the latest album by glass beach is a bombastic LP that refuses to pigeonhole the band to any one subculture. It’s too smart to be simply nth wave emo, too angular to be just indie rock, and too what-the-fuck to be anything else. If we’re splitting hairs, you could loosely throw glass beach in the math rock camp, but not every song gets as noodly as the style dictates. There’s an argument for post-rock, but that doesn’t really apply to the more aggressive moments. On first listen to either album, it would be easy to assume the band is just throwing ideas at walls for parts of every song and seeing how much they can peel off in one sitting. But for the most part, it all feels pretty intentional, each song its own alternative suite.

After a five-year gap, intent is the name of the glass beach game. Album opener “coelacanth” is six and a half minutes of full-force emo prog, like if Between The Buried And Me were a new Topshelf Records signee. From the spoken word intro to the first droney moments of vocals to what sounds like a xylophone-led bridge, this is exactly the type of song that forces you to understand that glass beach are not students of convention. It ascends to a scaley, arpeggiated guitar passage over classic emo horns that sounds like what would happen if you played songs by Protest The Hero and American Football at the same time. The track ends with offbeat music stabs that could have been a coda to a ‘90s noise rock track.

motions” follows with a more compact and direct version of this unique style, pumped up in the way only glass beach can make it, like if The Dismemberment Plan wrote an anime theme song. “Reveal the underbelly, I hollow out your shell. I spiral in dark matter, I’m so sick of going through the motions.” A sentiment that can be shared by many, though if I have one consistent criticism throughout the album, it’s that “Classic” j’s vocals are sometimes a bit too underperformed and slurred in their delivery, undercutting the lyrics’ potential impact. The composition of these songs are fiendishly creative; it would have pushed this thing the extra mile to have a more defined lead vocal on tracks like this or the Slaughter-Beach-Dog-in-space-style balladry of “guitar song.”

Additionally, I can’t say the metal breakdowns on songs like “slip under the door” or “commatose” don’t stand out in a bit of an awkward way, but they’re thankfully not peppered in often. These heavy moments aren’t used as a crutch or a gimmick; just like everything else on plastic death it’s clear that glass beach have a vast understanding (and appreciation) of many different styles, it’s just some they pull off better than others.

People in the seventies used to think there were hidden satanic messages if you played Led Zeppelin records backward. I don’t think there’s any hedonistic undertones on “rare animal,” but its intro riff sounds like a honky tonk country single played too fast in reverse, which gives it a ton of personality. The track is a standout moment for me, with the band locking into an air-tight groove throughout the explosive, post-Vaudevillian-space rock melodies and top-notch, multi-part vocal layering. A perfect choice for a single, as it does the best job of presenting all of glass beach’s capabilities in one piece.

plastic death is brickwalled with strange bangers, and I think “puppy” is the album’s crown jewel. This song has j’s strongest delivery on the entire LP, paired with a top-notch guitar riff that sounds like a lost alternative gem from the late ‘90s repurposed for a hyperpop track twenty years later. The lyrics appear to be from the canine’s perspective, making this one ripe for replay to grasp its feelings. “Hold your hands in between the bars, and I’ll lick your palms and bite your fingernails. Hold your hand in between the bars, and I’ll just lay here so effortlessly still.” Talking more about intent, it clearly wasn’t unplanned to have this lead into one of the album’s softest cuts, “the killer.” If this were anywhere else in the tracklisting, it may have been easy to gloss over due to the bulk of the collection. The song’s string arrangements are a wonderful addition that make the album seem as grand as possible.

This mid-album trilogy of songs ends with lead single “the CIA,” a track that leans a bit post-punk in the verses before bursting into a cosmic math-pop chorus. Like “motions,” if you were to condense plastic death down to a few introductory tracks, this feels like an obvious one to display. It’s interesting to have some of the more straightforward songs bundled towards the back half (as “straightforward” as an album like this can be), but it would be against the glass beach code to make an expected sequence.

In the album’s final leg, we get “200,” which I can only describe as yachtgaze. Smooth and slightly jazzy verses get dispersed around a heavy guitar chorus before a bridge that feels like an Andrew Lloyd Weber-meets-Coheed And Cambria crescendo. That theatrical intermission is only the suffocating lead-in to the penultimate “commatose,” which runs just shy of ten minutes. It’s at this moment we finally hear the album’s lyrical namesake, j passionately delivering: “Plastic death, plastic death, suck the marrow ‘til there’s nothing left.” During this section, the song moves into some absolutely head-spinning instrumental territory, like an Alan Parsons-produced breakcore track. The second half of the song leans a bit more reserved, eventually fading out into a wide soundscape. Even with its two defined movements and a nearly double-digit runtime, the track doesn’t feel overblown at all from the sum of its parts.

Album closer “abyss angel” begins as a gorgeous piano ballad with the second-place standout lead vocal across the entire tracklisting. It’s a tender moment of respite from the overwhelming pummel of the songs before it, evolving into the most Thom Yorke-esque recording so far. The performance itself from the entire band is quite good, although I don’t know if I personally needed another six-minute technical journey to cap off an album full of similar cuts. After the epic “commatose” preceding it, I think the final moments of vocals, piano, and ambience would have been better suited to be the last drive from this thing.

glass beach’s most impressive qualities fall into two crucial criteria. First, regardless of whether you like everything the band is capable of, they have undeniably crafted a sound that is all their own. You can easily tell what their influences are, but once they mix them all together, there’s not a single group that sounds like them. It’s the hard individualistic work that helped artists from Frank Zappa to Twitching Tongues stay instantly recognizable in any lineup of contemporaries. Second, plastic death is not an overreach by any imagination. glass beach isn’t writing outside their capabilities or creating a braggadocious album to shame any band that can’t deliver the same way. The sonic fusions don’t feel lazy or half-baked, but calculated and genuine. Sure, I can’t say that I’m in love with every experiment or idea for the entire hour it’s on, but I can feel the work that was put into it, which is what makes plastic death the ultimate feat that it is.


Logan Archer Mounts once almost got kicked out of Warped Tour for doing the Disturbed scream during a band’s acoustic set. He currently lives in Rolling Meadows, IL, but tells everyone he lives in Palatine.

The Best of March 2021

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Here are my favorite albums and EPs released in the month of March. This is probably the most emo collection of releases I’ve ever written about in any monthly roundup, so consider yourself warned. 


Tigers Jaw - I Won’t Care How You Remember Me 

Hopeless Records

Hopeless Records

The day before Tigers Jaw released their sixth studio album, I published a piece laying out the band’s position as both a legacy emo act and as artists who are constantly growing. That article focused primarily on my history with Tigers Jaw, specifically their breakthrough self-titled album that so many fans hold up as a landmark of the emo genre. The band’s output since then has ranged from solid to excellent, but nothing since 2008 has quite hit the same melancholic feelgood tone as their sophomore album… until now. Asking bands to make the same album over and over again is a fruitless (and unfulfilling) prospect for both parties, but on I Won’t Care How You Remember Me, the Pennsylvania four-piece managed to create a record that’s as catchy and triumphant as the album that so many fans consider their “best.” The release opens with an acoustic introduction that slowly draws you in before bottoming out into a fully-fledged pop-punk banger. The album’s front half is stacked singles all bearing sticky choruses, hard-hitting guitars, and glowing keys. Whether it’s the beguiling “Cat’s Cradle” with its siren song synth or “Hesitation” with its sunny springtime riffage, the album never lets up for a second. Even the back half of the record shakes things up with spitfire deliveries and a stellar closer, all of which seem ready to soundtrack springtime adventures and sunny hikes. A return to form in the best way possible. 


Biitchseat - I’ll Become Kind. 

Refresh Records

Refresh Records

I’ll Become Kind is a heartfelt EP about the vastness of emotion and the constantly-shifting nature of relationships. While those topics sound complex and heavy in theory, Biitchseat has a way of making these amorphous subjects sound as light and easy as talking to a childhood friend. Lead single “Anti-Depressed” features a high-flying chorus made up of conflicting feelings. Perfectly representative of the band’s style, “Anti-Depressed” is one of those songs that’s carefree and singable until you actually sit down and listen to the words. With a style that feels inspired by fellow Ohioans Snarls and Sonder Bombs, the four tracks on I’ll Become Kind act as a reminder that in order to better ourselves, sometimes we have to take a long, hard look at the bad stuff. Then it’s off to the skatepark.


Home is Where - I Became Birds 

Knifepunch Records

Knifepunch Records

Somewhere between the Bermuda Triangle of Neutral Milk Hotel, Snowing, and Bob Dylan lies Home is Where. The album(?) opens and closes with a rustic campfire guitar, but is packed with horns, harmonica, violin, and more on top of all the usual guitar, drums, and bass. As lead singer Brandon MacDonald’s nasally yelp guides the listener along each dynamic track, the topics range from lighting cops on fire to assassinating presidents. For me, the heart of the album comes in the form of “Sewn Together From the Membrane of the Great Sea Cucumber,” where a steady guitar pairs with an escalating drum build. At the same time, a group chant repeats, “look at all the dogs! / look at all the dogs! / I wanna pet every puppy I see!” before throwing to an old-school screamo breakdown. It’s both charming and unexpected, a violent roller coaster of emotions that feels like it’s one screw away from falling apart at any moment. There are also harmonica hoe-downs, snappy pop-punk cuts, and hard-charging Dogleg-like passages that sound tailormade for driving down the highway at 90 miles an hour. Each consecutive minute of I Became Birds keeps you guessing. You never know whether the song is about to devolve into a tappy emo anthem or a high-pitched screamo tantrum. Easily the best emo release of the year so far.  


glass beach - alchemist rats beg bashful (remixes) 

Run For Cover Records

Run For Cover Records

Much like 100 gecs’ Tree of Clues, glass beach’s alchemist rats beg bashful is a victory lap. The hour-plus remix album sees the proggy emo wizards handing over their debut album to a host of collaborators and conspirators from every genre under the sun. The results range from faithful recreations, ecstasy-fueled EDM, and Daft Punk-indebted house… and that’s just the first three songs. For what could have easily been written off as “just” a remix album, alchemist rats feels like a genuine celebration. It feels like a band finding their community, raising them up, and rallying around each other, fans included. The diversity of sounds found on this record is a testament to both the skills of the artists remixing the songs and the brilliance of the source material. Plus there’s a Dogleg contribution, so I was sold before I even hit play.


Riley! - Already Fucked 

Chillwavve Records

Chillwavve Records

Listening to Already Fucked is like catching up with a friend who has had one too many cold brews. The record opens with an instrumental rumble as lead singer Ryan Bluhm affects an announcer’s voice while introducing the band by name. The end result strikes a balance somewhere between the pre-set excitement of a DIY show and the explosive bombast of a professional wrestling match. After this enthusiastic welcome, the band quickly shuffles through everything on their mind without much time for a breather. As you listen to the band move from talking about time signatures to high school reunions and the failures of capitalism in the same punky sneer, half of the fun is just keeping up. 


Harmony Woods - Graceful Rage 

Skeletal Lightning

Skeletal Lightning

If Already Fucked is like listening to a friend unload all their anxious thoughts on you in-person, then Graceful Rage is like reading someone’s diary. It’s an album concerned with excavating deep wells of emotions through everything from soaring Julien Baker ballads to bratty pop-punk rippers. Lead singer Sofia Verbilla achieves this through confessional songwriting featuring a blend of obsessively-fixated realist observations and poetic inward reflection. These realizations are soundtracked with emo-flavored indie rock instrumentals featuring embellishments of horns, cello, and lap steel, all filtered through production courtesy of the wonderful Bartees Strange. The culmination of all these feelings arrives in the penultimate title track as Verbilla belts,  “Graceful rage is all that suits me these days,” striking a precise balance between beauty and anger; a perfectly acceptable resting state for 2021. 


Future Teens - Deliberately Alive 

Take This To Heart Records

Take This To Heart Records

Each release from Future Teens has been immaculately titled. Hard Feelings? A perfect label for the emotions that flow from the weird half-adult struggles of your early twenties. Breakup Season? Another snappy, clever, and self-explanatory name for the waves of doom that seem to cut through multiple relationships every fall. Even last year’s Sensitive Sessions is a beautifully indicative (and alliterative) name for what’s ostensibly “just” an acoustic EP. Now, the Boston-based bummer pop group is back with Deliberately Alive, an apt way to describe how we’ve all been operating for the past year or so. We all feel tired and overwhelmed. We all feel some sense of regression or not keeping pace. Our relationships with others have been strained or warped, and we’ve all found different ways to cope. Every day, we have to make the deliberate decision to live, Future Teens just found a way to call that out in the most catchy manner possible. The best part is, after four tracks of emotionally exhaustive yet cleverly written rock, the band caps the release off with a Cher cover. Just beautiful. 


Bicycle Inn - THIS TIME AND PLACE IS ALL I’LL EVER KNOW 

Suneater Records

Suneater Records

While the young upstarts at Suneater Records have made a name for themselves off jittery zoomer emo, variety is the spice of life, and Bicycle Inn is adding some much-needed spice to the label’s lineup with their debut album. Watching the recent waves of emo roll in has been exciting because it genuinely feels like a new golden age in a genre that can quickly become stale, repetitive, and derivative. That said, sometimes you just want to return to basics. There’s something comforting in familiarity, and bands who can put their own spins on an old sound are bound to become quick favorites of mine. Groups like Short Fictions and Barely Civil who are heavily inspired by a distinct style of fourth-wave emo, yet still bring something new to the table. That’s my sweet spot, and that’s why I was immediately drawn to this record. With THIS TIME AND PLACE IS ALL I’LL EVER KNOW, Bicycle Inn are adding their names name to that list by way of a stellar debut that isn’t afraid to be unabashedly emo.


Brown Maple - I Never Really Learned How To Say Goodbye. 

Chillwavve Records

Chillwavve Records

Despite opening with a Scott Pilgrim sample, I Never Really Learned How To Say Goodbye is better than your run-of-the-mill emo release. I’ll admit I’m a sucker for a good riff, but the tapped guitar line that opens “Swiss Cheese” is easily the best I’ve heard all year. In this song, the band navigates their way through sorrowful sentiments of heartbreak and loss, eventually riffing their way up to a cathartic group chant that sounds downright Marietta-esque. If you’re a fan of emo, you know that’s just about the highest praise one can ascribe to a band. Lead single “Merry Go Round” works its way up to a similar outpouring as the band jostles the listener around with a moshpit-inspiring instrumental that’s reminiscent of the breakdown at the end of “Death Cup.” Despite name-dropping two of the most influential groups in modern emo, Brown Maple still manages to feel like their own entity with a unique sound and a story worth telling. 


Quick Hits

Arab Strap - As Days Get Dark - The slow-talking Scots are back with their first album in 16 years, a noir-flavored look at the dark side of humanity. 

Adult Mom - Driver - Inside you, there are two wolves. One is gay, one is sad. 

A Day To Remember - You’re Welcome - A soulless, cash-grabby, Imagine Dragons-wannabe release from the band that used to be a paragon of the pop-punk/easycore scenes.

Drake - Scary Hours 2 - It’s more Drake. 

IAN SWEET - Show Me How You Disappear - Ethereal, witchy, waif relationship songs. 

Dollar Signs - Hearts of Gold - This album is to Jeff Rosenstock what Muppet Babies is to The Muppets. This is a compliment. 

Really From - Really From - Minimalist, improvisational, and horn-heavy emo-ish indie rock.

America Part Two - Price of a Nation - Like a spiritual successor to Valient Thorr, Price of a Nation mixes high-pitched snotty vocals and hard-charging garage rock for an energetic debut album.

Michigander - Everything Will Be Ok Eventually - Fantastic folk that’s consistently catchy.

Citizen - Life In Your Glass World - A dancy and heartfelt pivot from the kings of emo Tumblr.

The Antlers - Green to Gold - The first record in seven years from the iconic indie rock act is a little slower and a little more pensive than their previous work but still hits just as hard.

Nagasaki Swim - The Mirror - Acoustic-led bedroom rock that still manages to sound huge.

Gengis Tron - Dream Weapon - Once the go-to grindcore act of my high school music fandom, now the synthy post-hardcore reunion album of my late-20s.

KALI MASI - [laughs] - Beautiful, powerful, and well-constructed emo in the vein of Microwave of ManDancing.