Hater's Delight – February 2023

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February kinda sucks. January may be the Monday of the year, but at least it represents the promise of a fresh start. I’ve found that February is usually the coldest, greyest, most miserable month of the year; the calendar equivalent of a big, slushy pile of days-old snow pushed to the back of a parking lot. Try as I might to be funny and cutting about the second month of the year, there’s no better coda to February than this video, so I’d recommend you just go watch that to get in the mood for this month’s edition of Hater’s Delight. 

If you’re just catching up with us, ​​Hater’s Delight is a micro-review column brought to you by Swim Into The Sound writers who want to vent about the things online and in music that have gotten under their skin over the past month. Each writer gets a paragraph or two to bitch about their chosen topic, then once we expel the Haterade from our systems, we all go back to loving music and enjoying art. Speaking of which, if you’re more in the mood for some positivity, here’s a playlist of all this month’s new releases that I enjoyed (or at least found notable) to help you keep up on everything that’s happened in February. 

Without further ado, here’s some hater shit. 

Pop Goes Punk

Right as the month began, Doja Cat revealed in an interview that she wants to make a transition into punk music. But not that soft “pop-punk” that Machine Gun Kelly and Olivia Rodrigo have been playing around with, the REAL “hardcore” stuff. Look, pop artists have been trying to go “punk” for years now with mixed results. Artists like Demi Lovato and Willow Smith have adopted the “dangerous” aesthetics of metal and punk music into their latest albums. There’s a crop of good songs amongst them all (yes, even the worldwide-hated, double-number-one-album-selling MGK has a couple of catchy ones), and I hope the best for Doja Cat if she means it. But at the end of the day, major label executives and A&R teams will skew the vision to ensure it turns a profit. Unless you’re recent Blink-182 support act Turnstile, that’s probably not going to happen. Still waiting patiently for the Charli XCX punk album, though.

Logan Archer Mounts – @VERTICALCOFFIN


The Internet and Hardcore Music

Probably prudent disclaimer– I am sorry. My tweet was bad.

Earlier this month, I tweeted a kind of mean thing about a hardcore band. This was shitty of me for various reasons, but I’m here to double down, not publish an apology. The truth is that the internet demands very little (at least in its current iteration) from artists– so long as a band caters to the aesthetic of a nebulous “scene” bound neither by genre or geography, the unwashed masses with their bad tattoos and patchy goatees can rest easy knowing that they are enjoying “the next big thing in hardcore/emo/punk/etc.” My recent brush with the hardcore scene proves their shallow digs at me (poser, unwelcome, rookie, tourist) more accurately describe themselves. Their music is neutered, their stage presence is listless, and their dance moves are ripped from Bruce Lee movies. Their politics are aimlessly liberal and center far more around retweets than rehabilitation when it comes to such nuanced issues as “community policing and accountability.” No matter how many cops in dress-punk streetwear you cram onstage with Marshall stacks, you’ll never be half as hardcore as that time back in New York when I broke a dude’s nose over a particularly distasteful tattoo. My address is included in my byline here. Mail me a pipe bomb if this makes you angry– I’m off Twitter these days. Peace and love, y’all.

Michaela Rowan Pearl Montoni, ** ******** Street, Apt. *, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 – @dumpsterbassist


Concertgoers Living In The Past/“I Liked Your Old Band Better” Syndrome

Go ahead, keep drunkenly screaming the name of some obscure Arrogant Sons Of Bitches song at the Jeff Rosenstock show, he’s not gonna play it. Since you’ve already decided to be an asshole, why not become the two hundredth person on this tour to ask him when there’s gonna be a Bomb The Music Industry reunion? You paid your own hard-earned money for that ticket to the Glitterer gig, why are you acting shocked when it isn’t Title Fight 2.0? It’s fine to like Modern Baseball more than Slaughter Beach, Dog (respectfully, I agree to disagree), but don’t go to an SBD show and get pissy when Jake Ewald doesn’t play any MoBo songs (though there’s a decent chance he’ll play “Intersection”). It’s insulting to treat an artist’s current project like a consolation prize that you’re settling for because their old band is no longer active. Don’t let your love of something that existed in the past get in the way of your ability to engage with the present. And don’t ask Augusta Koch to sign your years-old Cayetana merch after a Gladie show, that’s kind of a dick move.

Grace Robins-Somerville – @grace_roso


Spotify’s AI DJ

Never before have four characters struck fear into my heart quite like “AI DJ.” Actually? It’s not even fear. More like anger, confusion, and resignation. Of course this is happening; it’s the logical conclusion to everything Spotify has been building toward lately, but with the added fun of everyone’s favorite dystopian technology. Over the past few months, I’ve written quite a bit about how Spotify has been shifting music consumption and how we approach art. Whether it’s single rollouts, algorithmically-generated playlists, or backend licensing nonsense, Spotify has long been at the forefront of annoying extra-musical trends, the latest of which is this AI DJ, as shown in this video spot. After introducing himself and throwing to music with a robotically emphatic “let’s go,” the DJ narrates our hero's journey from one song to the next, including the phrase “let’s get you out of your feels and switch up the vibe.” ugh. 

This feels like a combination of multiple things I hate. First, there’s Spotify’s ongoing approach of “corporate relatability,” deploying common vernacular and AAVE for their playlist and collection names. Second, there’s the flashy addition of AI, a technology I unilaterally hate and believe is more powerful and sinister than we give it credit for. Third, and most pertinent to music fans, this just feels like Spotify continuing to wrestle control and autonomy from its users. As I talk about in this article, Spotify has a vested interest in keeping you listening to what they want you to listen to. Even better if they can pad out those songs with Microsoft Sam speaking in between each track. An AI DJ is the perfect storm of shit that makes my skin crawl in 2023.

Taylor Grimes – @GeorgeTaylorG


Main Character Syndrome at the Rock Show

@much Y’all gotta let #SteveLacy perform in peace 😭 via @stave__ ♬ original sound - MuchMusic

This is probably symptomatic of being stuck inside at the beginning of the pandemic or the hyper-commodification of music in the streaming age (or some combination of both), but people have leaned in a little too hard on that whole “main character syndrome” meme in regards to being at concerts. You would think people would be super appreciative after not having the privilege of watching live music with a crowd of others for a while, but lo and behold, some of us have committed to showing our asses instead. When did it become so acceptable to treat someone performing on stage like shit because you paid for a ticket? Why do they have to say hi to someone they don’t know during a performance so you can send a shaky video to your friend? How come everyone’s talking during an opening act’s set-or worse, just straight up being hostile to them? I had some dude-who-peaked-during-highschool yelling at a band to hurry up and finish their set so they “could see who they actually came to see.” Yikes! Those are people with feelings up there, buddy! Toss in the exuberant costs of touring, and it feels almost surreal that any artist would be willing to step within 50 feet of a stage. Someone make a viral TikTok about concert etiquette- at this point, it’s probably our only hope.

Nick Sackett – @DJQuicknut


The Swiftification of The National

Taylor Swift has a feature on The National’s new album, and I’m annoyed about it. I like some of her music, so I’m not a unilateral hater, but her unavoidability drives me insane. Surely not everything is Swift-able?! It feels like so many artists I care about bring her into stuff to get popularity points. Like, literally—not even streams, which I’d maybe understand in the right circumstance, but social cred. Taylor Swift always gives me these uncanny high school time-warps (so, yes, this is a me problem; I’m aware) to the blonde, thin, cheerleader/volleyball types who would descend on the alt friend group because they’re bored of the football players and they know they’ll be fawned over among new blood. I’m not super happy about this. **Unless, of course, I end up loving this song, in which I reserve, as a therapist once assured me was my due, the right to change my mind. In any case, I clearly need some therapy over this.

Katie Wojciechowski – @ktewoj


Firebreathing Gargoyles of the Night

I don’t fully understand why, but I despise the New York “classic” rock band KISS (also spelled “KIϟϟ” for some godforsaken reason). I’m sure at least part of my hatred is borne of residual disdain from working at a record store where KISS diehards were some of our most consistently insufferable regulars. I never want to hear a man in his 40s explain to me why KISS’ live output surpasses their work in the studio.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with songs like “Rock and Roll All Nite.” I’m not so self-obsessed that I can’t see the appeal of such a simple, hooky pop song. But I see it in the same way that I see the theoretical draw of the Republican National Convention or moving to Wisconsin. It couldn’t be further from what I would ever enjoy, but I guess they’ve been successful for long enough that they must be onto something. That being said, this rotating quartet of trickle-down pyrotechnics and absurdist vanity has never risen above being a corporate joke. How delusional do you have to be to expect to be taken seriously when you’re pretending to be a cat-man? I grew up reading the Warrior cat books, and I still don’t get it.

The schlock-rock novelty is enough to convert some, but it’s nefarious hypnosis at best. Destroyer isn’t “secretly a good album.” KISS isn’t “underrated” or “actually incredibly talented.” They serve their function as well as any past-the-point-of-mockery band of the past. That hardly justifies their induction into the upper echelons of enjoyable music, nevertheless what could be defined as rock history. Let KISS drift away into the landfill of the past and seek better listening habits.

Sidenote: the only positive contribution that Gene Simmons has ever made to society is the Kiss Kasket — unintentional comedic genius.

Wes Muilenburg – @purity0lympics

Webbed Wing – Right After I Smoke This... | EP Review

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Memory Music

Webbed Wing makes loud ass rock music. Led by singer and songwriter Taylor Madison, the band has surprise released a new EP today titled Right After I Smoke This… In only seven minutes, the Philadelphia three-piece manages to deliver three songs that are filled with hooks, riffs, and infectious power pop energy. If you close your eyes really tight, you’ll think you’ve been transported back to the mid-aughts, and you can hear them slotted between Third Eye Blind and Switchfoot on your local alt-rock station. It’s not hyperbolic to mention the group alongside such acts because these songs are absolutely bulletproof. 

“Medication” gets things started with a bang as Madison declares that he is in a rut saying, “I’ve been avoiding all my problems, I can’t move forward.” Moments of apathy ring throughout each track as Madison looks for ways to get out of the situation he’s in, but the solution always feels just out of reach. The darkly humorous “Sure Could Use A Friend” finds Madison getting in his own way as he claims that he’ll get his life moving, but only after he lights one up for old times’ sake. He’s procrastinating adulthood, but he’s sick and tired of being down on himself. On “I’m Feelin Alive,” Madison breaks free from his dark thoughts as he wonders how to “keep these feelings awake, and the other ones asleep?”

These songs epitomize the old “spoonful of sugar” notion as the band candy coats each one in deafening guitars and punchy drums. Each hook has “lead single” written on it, and if it wasn’t for Madison’s vocals being front and center, then you might mistake them for cheerful love songs. Sonically, “Sure Could Use A Friend” is a real stand-out here. Accompanied by a soulful twang, Webbed Wing are in full Lemonheads worship mode on this song, but they don’t let their influences get the best of them. “Medication” and “I’m Feelin Alive” are both straight-ahead guitar rock bangers with no superfluous frills. 

Right After I Smoke This… might find Webbed Wing in between albums, but that doesn’t mean they’re motionless. With the band about to embark on a nationwide tour with Drug Church, Prince Daddy, and Anxious, they’re likely about to earn themselves many new fans, and rightfully so. Proof that sometimes three songs and less than ten minutes is all you need to get your point across.

Connor lives in Emeryville with his partner and their cat and dog, Toni and Hachi. Connor is a student at San Francisco State University and is working toward becoming a community college professor. When he isn’t listening to music or writing about killer riffs, Connor is obsessing over coffee and sandwiches.

Swim Camp – Steel Country | Album Review

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Self-released

Air travel has become a consistently more terrifying endeavor as I’ve grown older. With each passing year, I find myself increasingly anxious at the prospect of stepping foot on the massive metal machines that have reinvented global travel—both domestic trips and international ventures are now mere footnotes in the great span of time that constitutes our lives. The world’s longest nonstop commercial flight, which goes from Singapore to New York City, is nearly nineteen hours. And somehow, while my time in the air usually tops out at three hours, the takeoffs and landings nearly break me. My chest tightens, I get shaky, I drown everything out as waves of noise course through me until the plane has fully stopped on the runway.

Even then, for all the fear it’s started to cause me, aviation has its moments. Sometimes, a stroke of infinity has painted itself across the earth, and the windows of an aircraft are the best viewing place. Sometimes, sunlight crosses the sky and cuts through the exhausting, hopeless odor of seat 23D. These silent moments of salvation shine our neverending modern headache, undeniably bright even in their quiet entrances into our lives.

On Steel Country, Tom Morris’s third full-length under the Swim Camp moniker, passages of brilliance are impossible to ignore. A far cry from sleepless plane rides where the slightest slant of the sun’s rays is the only suggestion of joy, this album is a bountiful harvest of musicianship overflowing with a soft certainty, and is a perfect follow-up to 2021’s superb, washed-out, slow burner Fishing in a Small Boat. Steel Country sees Morris somehow manage to sharpen his already near-flawless songwriting instincts, constructing giddily addictive tracks with hooks swept up in waves of fuzz and distortion and tinted with electronic dissonance. It’s an album that leans into a delicate warmth only furthered by Morris’s gentle vocals, which provide the foundation for each track. The record forges a careful balance between rippling noise and quiet steadiness, and through this, Morris connects the threads of an existence in which, above a harsh sea of fears, questioning, and struggle, day breaks into bliss. It’s a quilt of friendships, memories, living rooms, half-thoughts, windows, lazy days, quick glances, empty streets, collective joy, and all the love in between, an ode to possibility in a life that’s full of it. 

credit Sarah Phung

Steel Country is a record straight out of a sun-washed afternoon in the grass, and its opening track, “Line in Sand,” is like waking from a midday dream. Morris’s voice rings lightly over as he starts singing, “The money’s gone, I tried to tell you / His face was wrong, I couldn’t help you / People change, I’m not the same now / On my way, he had a breakdown” over warm acoustic tones, until everything kicks in. An enchanting central riff that reminds me of some of the foundational lightness of 22° Halo’s Garden Bed is interjected with playful electronic passages until the instruments are washed away and make way for “Dougie (For Sharyl),” an addictive meditation on unhealthy relationships. It’s hard to think of anything catchier than when Morris realizes, “Oh shit, he’s aiming at me,” followed by a rush to the head of spaced-out guitars, hard synths, and relentless drums that operates as a sugar-high-esque moment of musical synergy. 

The album doesn’t let up in the slightest as it moves to “Pillow,” a gazey track built on a starry-eyed synth line that converges with guitars soaked in reverb and a plentiful helping of heavenly effects. It’s hard to think of a better way to lay the groundwork of an album’s soundscape than precisely what Swim Camp manages to accomplish on Steel Country’s first three tracks. Imagining a world of its own that simultaneously feels ours to live in and one which we must witness through windows, an eerie reckoning with the existence we dream of, the back-to-back-to-back from “Line In Sand” to “Dougie (For Sharyl)” to “Pillow” captures the heart. I have a feeling that’s exactly what Morris wants it to accomplish. By the time the last moments of “Pillow” sparkle away and the fugue-state passage that is “cLotine” takes over, you’re fully wrapped up in the record’s undeniable humanity. 

The dream only grows clearer as Steel Country moves forward, taking us further into the skies above. “Everything” elucidates the consuming yearning of cold nights, envisioning the solitude of a walk past the house of a lover’s parents. As questions surrounding that person’s feelings bubble up inside, guitars blare, and drums crash while Morris is subdued to incomprehensibility, replicating the internal uncertainties plaguing the heart. The blushing warmth of “Cherry” is built on bright guitars and hypnotic drums that move into periods of growling electronics reminiscent of Alex G’s recent crushing synth passages on “Blessing.” Songs like “No” and “is this the plan” present an evolved version of the slow, sugary sweetness that characterized 2021’s Fishing in a Small Boat, giving lots of space for Morris’s tender voice. “Apple” wants you to believe it’s going to be a crashing, heavy track, coming in with fierce drums and dizzying crests of noise, but it’s only a lead-in to a song that truly embodies country sensibilities with its drawn-out guitars moving at an infectious, heel-tapping pace. It’s an embrace of distant adoration and care, the way that we reconnect with our feelings toward the joys and loves of our past, and is one of the record’s most emotionally potent ventures. “hevvin00” is a dive under the ice on a frozen-over lake in the hollow core of winter—everything feels submerged and out of reach, but the possibility within the washed-out sounds is tangibly exciting.

The final three tracks strike a different tone than their counterparts among the first three, bouncier than the rest of the record. Morris’s ear for a strong chorus emerges on “Heat Makes Cracks in the Bones,” which moves into a refrain that feels so effortless you wish it could last forever, and “Say Hi” comes in like a washing-machine-whirlwind that’s built for the pit, moving with a dancy, tumbling liveliness. The album feels complete by the time Steel Country closes out with “what I saw,” which begins like Etiquette-era CFTPA track and gradually sinks into washed-out lo-fi waves.

Steel Country’s completeness is the consequence of many factors—a thoughtfully curated tracklist, addictive riffs, thoughtfully placed thematic crescendos, extensive sonic diversity, a willingness to challenge expectations, as well as the sheer talent and musicianship of Tom Morris. At the heart of its successes, though, is the coherence of its array of soundscapes. Even when it moves from tracks that lean lo-fi to electronic passages, or from its gazy stretches to lighter ballads, the album presents a foundationally raw and stripped-back revision of historical effects-showered indie music. 

That mesmerizing reinvention is best captured on my favorite track on the record, “Puddle,” a song that goes further into the territory of heaviness than anything I had expected to hear. The track begins with a headbanging riff that sits on layers of distortion and pure noise, all while a muffled recording plays, ending with a killer breakdown deserving of all the feedback loops in the world. In between those two points, the song builds with precision: at first, after letting its initial noise die down, we get clarity through the vocals, but then the instruments make their way back. Drums push the track forward as Morris drags out his words and begins to repeat the trance-like phrase “The puddle’s gettin’ deeper” until, in the utmost of parallels, his words are drowned out in the ocean of guitars, drums, bass, and even synths, all culminating in the aforementioned breakdown. It’s a decisive moment on the record—everything falls apart in the end, but you’re left with a beautiful view all the same. That’s exactly why I found myself writing about airplanes at the beginning of this whole affair; there’s something magical that courses through the veins of this album. It’s something as unreal and dreamlike as watching the world from forty-five thousand feet above the ground, and if this is what flying can feel like when we let go of our fears, then get me on the next plane. 

Spencer Vernier is a student in Boston, Massachusetts who also happens to enjoy the process of writing and editing. He loves to talk about cats, poetry, his friends, and of course, music. He is a managing editor at Melisma Magazine, a student publication which you can find here!

Paramore – This Is Why | Album Review

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Atlantic Records

When frontwoman Hayley Williams, guitarist Taylor York, and drummer Zac Farro decided to start writing music again as Paramore in 2021, the first thing they created was “Thick Skull,” the final track on their new album, This Is Why. It answers a question I’ve been asking for a long time, and something I think more people frankly should have been asking too: what if my bloody valentine, but with a good singer? It’s my favorite song on the album, and I think it’s perfect: the brooding guitar builds underneath Hayley’s verses like a storm, breaking around the 3-minute mark right as she jumps up an octave for the final incendiary chorus. I’ve seen people call it “Paramore’s shoegaze song,” and it’s true, but “Thick Skull” is also urgent in a way that most shoegaze isn’t. It’s the feeling of the three bandmates surrendering, perhaps for the first time in decades, to the inevitable draw of writing rock music together.

For many fans, Hayley could sing the phone book, and they’d eat it up, but that’s never been good enough for Paramore. With This Is Why, they pay their rent with change to spare: each of the ten songs has something to say, with style statements in equal measure to substance. The band draws from Bloc Party, British post-punk, and the “indie sleaze” dance-punk of the late 2010s to augment their signature melodic rock sound. They are making music on their own time and on their own terms, and the assuredness comes through. Paramore are right where they are supposed to be. 

The album’s lead single and title track reintroduces the band in the only way that’s fitting: as a trio. Guitarist Taylor York and drummer Zac Farro have said they worked more collaboratively on the album’s instrumentation than they’ve ever done in the past, and nowhere on the album is that alchemy more obvious than on “This Is Why.” York’s guitar crashes in on the choruses, pounding along with Farro’s kit like an extra snare. Williams’ voice builds and breaks on the bridge, formatting the three friends’ treatise on agoraphobia with the explosive vocals the world has always craved from her.  

Not every moment on This Is Why is perfect, but all of it adds to the Paramore extended universe, and it will be interesting to see what sticks. There’s something I like to call the “Ain’t It Fun” Effect: the Paramore songs that genre-bend to a bit of a ham-fisted extent often end up beloved. Plus, the band’s curveball songs—often dismissed by critics—have historically been the ones that reach a new corner of music fans. Many Black Paramore listeners cite “Ain’t It Fun” as an important touchstone in their fandom. 

There’s such a vital spot in the Paramore ecosystem for the tryhard songs—I mean, have you listened to them? They’ve been not-exactly-subtle for going on two decades now. In that light, “The News” and “C’est Comme Ça”—two of the album’s three singles, and the songs with the heaviest post-punk touch—may overreach a bit. But I say let ‘em cook. 

The second half of the album, though, plunges relentlessly into the strongest writing the band has ever done. “You First” kicks off the run with a punky bite reminiscent of Riot! or Brand New Eyes. Williams plays out an internal battle, where she wrestles with the energetic cost of resentment on her inner peace. Ultimatley, her spite wins out on this one, landing her at the vindictive conclusion that, “Karma's gonna come for all of us, and I hope she comes for you first.” Then “Figure 8” starts off like the start of a roller coaster, rushing into the first moment of the album that gave me real chills: Hayley’s howling harmonies over the pre-chorus, confessing “I don’t know how to stop / I don’t know how to stop.” 

Track eight, “Liar,” isn’t just a good song; it’s a momentous one. As much as Williams has historically evaded media conversation about her dating life, it’s always been a center of gravity for Paramore: her romantic endeavors have been the source material for much of their best music. The vulnerability of “Liar” is as hard-won as it is sacred. The track plays out as the guarded singer (she’s a Capricorn) serenades guitarist York, her partner of a few years. As longtime Paramore fans know, York was a founding member of the band (he, Farro, and Williams have been friends since middle school) and, according to interviews, supported Hayley through the darkest time of her life in the mid-2010s. The addition of this song to Paramore’s canon is a gift, and its lovely guitars and wistful vocals underscore its quiet significance.

What the band has to say on the final two songs, “Crave” and “Thick Skull,” feels like two sides of the same coin. Life is long, much longer than we’d imagined when we were stealing boyfriends in high school, and the time starts to play out in patterns when we tread through enough of it. Layers of Hayley’s power vocals (some of the prettiest of her career) and unresolved seventh-chords drench “Crave” in longing: she tries and often fails to live in the present, but the honesty in her efforts tethers her to life’s sweetness either way. The dark mantras of “Thick Skull” usher in the opposite side of the years’ unraveling: 

Thick skull never did
Nothin' for me
Same lesson again
Come on, give it to me

The foil to “Crave’s” soaring harmonies, Williams’ musings on “Thick Skull” are just as impressive vocally, but play with a more sinister tone. It’s an album closer that denies us resolution, reminding us that yang belongs just as much as yin and that the angst that fueled us as teens might still have a thing or two to teach us. This song exemplifies the kind of delicate depths that decades-long bandmate relationships give you the sanctuary to explore.

This Is Why triumphs in its confessions, in its breadth, in its generosity. In the first Paramore album with the same lineup as its last, Williams, York, and Farro’s hard-won love for one another and their fans lets them carve creative new paths into post-punk, shoegaze, and dance rock. For a band that so easily could have gotten stuck in the past, Paramore shows us that no matter how dark the world feels, we can always find our way back to each other.

Katie Wojciechowski is a music writer and karaoke superstar in Austin, Texas. She is from there, but between 2010 and now, also lived in Lubbock, TX, Portland, OR, and a camper. Her life is a movie in which her bearded dragon Pancake is the star. You can check out her Substack here, and some of her other writing here. She’s writing a book about growing up alongside her favorite band, Paramore.