Crooks & Nannies – Real Life | Album Review

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Grand Jury Music

​​Is this real life? It feels really bad sometimes.

Max Rafter and Sam Huntington, better known as Crooks & Nannies, are here to ask the questions that have been on all of our minds the last few years. The duo met in High School and began making music together (formerly as The Original Crooks and Nannies) before seemingly taking time off after their 2016 release Ugly Laugh. Seven years and a handful of singles later, they’ve returned with Real Life, an innovative and haunting record chronicling the beauty and horror of coming to understand yourself. 

Real Life begins with chirping bugs and the hum of outside, starting the Huntington-led “N95,” an evocative song about losing a loved one to illness and wanting them to know who you really are before it’s too late. Her father was diagnosed with terminal cancer in early 2020, just days after she started hormone therapy. After his passing, the duo started writing the songs for Real Life in the cabin he had been building before his diagnosis. 

The cabin itself is woven into the record–from beginning to end, you feel as though you’re sitting on the porch with a friend, trading cigarettes and stories from the past few years of your life. The brilliance of “N95” is in its simplicity. It only takes two verses to completely crush you: “I tell you I’m a woman while you sit with the dog / On the bed in the room where I put on the bras / Cause you die in a week either way / So I won’t wait.” Sonically, it feels like a spaceship slowly starting up, abducting you into the world of Crooks & Nannies, before drowning you in a final chorus of the word “wait” that stretches on for nearly a minute.

The contrast between the duo’s songwriting is a great strength throughout Real Life, and the second track- lead single and Max Rafter-led “Temper”- features some of their best lyrics like “giving gives pleasure, but it means I gotta work a little harder / power gives pleasure easily” and “it doesn’t have to meet my every need / a seagull in a parking lot still eats.” Musically, it’s a song that could easily be straightforward, but Crooks & Nannies pepper in growling background vocals, buried screams, and guitars that burn through you like lasers before ending as abruptly as it began. 

“Cold Hands,” one of my favorite tracks from the record, features Huntington singing about someone who has supported her through indecision and uncertainty. Crooks & Nannies are adept at painting a picture with sound instead of lyrics. When Huntington sings, “It's flooding in the b a s e m e n t,” the way it’s sung physically takes you down to the basement and makes you feel like you’re drowning there with all her things. Another thing they do incredibly well is creating dynamic moments, making full use of their range. “Cold Hands” is a song that starts and remains mostly soft-spoken- until the end when it erupts in booming swell bass, stinging guitars, and record scratches. Yes, record scratches. And it works incredibly well. 

On “Big Mouth Bass,” Rafter sings about the unique bond of a friendship with someone who understands you. Breaking plates and laughing together. The song feels like sitting in the grass on a warm day and teeters back and forth from soft country to Motion-City-Soundtrack-esqe synths. Some of the song's best moments are the contrast between the huge, layered guitars and vocals before cutting to just an acoustic guitar and Rafter’s twang-tinged voice. 

The undeniable centerpiece of the record is “Growing Pains,” a song that speaks on the struggles of transitioning and coming to terms with who you are. With lyrics like “I hurt myself bad without blinking and wanna know why that’s a thing that I do,” Huntington is digging all the bad parts from inside herself and presenting them to you, the listener. The fear of hurting those closer to you without meaning to is universal, and “Growing Pains” nails that feeling before ultimately ending on a positive note: “I don’t wanna die / I wanna do something right.” The vocal effects when she sings “I’m moving through space and time” sonically align you with the lyrics, making you feel like you’re moving with them. Similarly, there’s a persistent “tick and tick and tick and tick” of time in the aforementioned “Big Mouth Bass.”

“Country Bar” and “The Gift” are the next two Rafter-led tracks, the former about taking apart a relationship like a mechanical bull before piecing it back together and attempting to make everything fit, while the latter is possibly exhuming the end of a relationship. Both songs are heartwarming and insightful windows into the struggle that comes with these seismic changes in a partnership. “The Gift” features some of Sam Huntington’s most intricate drum work and more poignant lyrics from Rafter - “I touched the pan / yeah I knew it was hot / so why’d I touch it? / being carefully cruel to the things that you love is still careless.”

Track eight, “Immaculate,” begins with the screeching and creaking of violins, creating an eerie horror movie-like vibe at the start of the track that permeates the whole song. Another high point of the record; the lyrics reference Rafter’s struggle with alcohol. The ending will stop you in your tracks as all the music cuts out, leaving just Max’s voice along with a pitched-down backup singing:

I won’t have another drink
cause I don’t wanna be that guy anymore
but it hurts to sit and think
I think I better take a walk

The record ends with “Weather” and “Nice Night.” While “Weather” was written over the course of a nighttime bike ride by Huntington, “Nice Night” feels like the return from that bike ride and places us back on the porch of the cabin where we began the record. Musically, “Weather” leans into the band’s darker side, constantly wondering if we who are makes us bad. The heavy, slamming guitars reflect that inner conflict as Huntington sings, “I’m fucking not playing, don’t leave me alone / I don’t wanna find out what I’m capable of” before cutting out to a good 15 seconds or so of silence, giving us time to think about what we just heard. Silence is something Crooks & Nannies use throughout their record to great success. In my opinion, the silence they leave us with is just as important as their music. “Nice Night” harkens back to the theme of friendship, rounding out the record with a beautiful, drifting saxophone and Rafter accepting the horrors of being truly understood. 

Crooks & Nannies have created something incredible with Real Life that already feels like it will stand the test of time. It’s one of those rare records that lingers in your mind, beckoning you to come back over and over again until you can fully understand all of its inner and outer workings. It’s the friend you return to while the strobe of the porch flickers on and off, so bright with raw truth and talent that you have to shield your eyes. It’s an honest reflection of who we are, the good and the bad, that I will continue to return to no matter how much it hurts to hear. Like a moth to the light. 

My name is Alex, and I make music as Birthday Dad! I released my debut album, The Hermit, last year and have vinyl available now from Refresh Records! Follow me on Twitter and everything else! @iambirthdaydad

Ratboys – The Window | Album Review

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Topshelf Records

There is a moment I love from Ratboys’ debut album AOID, on their song “Charles Berenstein.” Amidst a song about love and confusion, the instrumentals suddenly switch to a waltzy three-four time signature for a measure or two, with an ascending bass line imbuing the piece with a bouncy and breezy, almost jazzy, feeling. It’s a bold move; a sudden musical change like this could feel abrupt and out of place, but Ratboys pulled it off, making it sound sealed and solid. I love this moment because it’s cool and makes me want to dance, but also because you can feel the whole group perfectly operating as a unit. 

For a band that has felt so coherent and solid from their debut, it is hard to imagine improvement. Yet Ratboys have continued to surpass themselves, with each record outdoing the last in style and emotive depth. The Window, their fifth and latest record, is the culmination of this stunning growth, with the band writing all songs together for the first time. It also marks the first time the band has recorded an album outside of Chicago, which struck me as curious since the record carries a quintessentially Chicago flavor, that specific jaunty and reckless strain of indie rock. Instead, the songs were recorded in Seattle with producer Chris Walla, known for his involvement in the band Death Cab for Cutie, who pushed the band to expand their repertoire while leaving the Chicago sound intact. Described by frontwoman Julia Steiner as a “dedicated and intentional process,” the songs were written and rehearsed for two years before seeing the light of production.

Right from the opening track, the composition and energy diverge from the rest of the band’s repertoire while maintaining the ethos of tenderness that has characterized their music from their earliest releases. Throughout the album, grungy, garage-rock-inflected motifs veer into power pop and country-folk territory, and the songs feature lyrics ranging from punchy and defiant to grim and reflective. The band even leans into goofy horror aesthetics in the record’s smash lead single “It’s Alive!” which continues the record’s window theme while also articulating a particular kind of American ennui: “I feel it all, frozen in my house / All around, it’s in the stars / It’s speeding towards the sign.” There is even a brief fiddle featured on “Morning Zoo,” showing the magic of their bold new songwriting experiments.

Lead single “Black Earth, WI,” is almost nine minutes in length and features a transcendental guitar solo that evokes a different time in rock and roll history when guitar solos were treated with a different kind of attention and reverence. More rollicking garage rock fun adorns “Crossed That Line” and “Empty,” with gutsy energy creating a noisy but endlessly danceable groove. The fuzzy guitars propel Steiner’s vocals to ethereal heights. The lyrics on these songs would feel snotty if they weren’t so confident: “Get it? I got it / It’s not what I wanted / it’s fucking dumb.” This young feeling of rebellion revived suffuses other songs, as in “No Way,” where Steiner sings, “I’ll take a penny for your thoughts, and I’ll throw it straight to hell / There’s no way you’ll control me again.”

The album’s title track carries a smashing rock effect, which belies the stunningly intimate lyrics about the death of Steiner’s grandmother in June of 2020. According to Steiner, protections from the COVID-19 pandemic dictated that the family had to say their goodbyes through an open window in her grandmother’s nursing home, unable to be physically close. Steiner notes that many of the lyrics in the song come from quotes her grandfather said to her grandmother through the window: “I need to tell you everything / before it’s too late / That I don’t regret a single day / And you’re so beautiful.” The song is so upbeat and catchy it is almost impossible to cry, striking an energetic tone amidst a reflection on grief and change.

Closing out the record, “Bad Reaction” is the final jewel in the crown. Following the diversely uptempo offerings of the other songs, “Bad Reaction” stands in partial contrast to the busy and ambitious sonic textures of the other songs, with poignant and spare composition. The quieter sound makes the sincerity of the song all the more meaningful and shows that Ratboys can do more than crash and crush. The emotions of the song feel achingly clear and present, to me at least, my heartstrings pulled as Steiner’s clear voice asks, “What’s the one thing you love / what’s the one thing you love / what’s the one thing you love now?” Although I have never driven a car fast in reverse, as Steiner sings, I feel a profound sense of relatability with the song, which carries a certain hallowed resonance I struggle to describe. Perhaps it is simply the keen pain of a singular longing. Either way, it captures the peculiarly unhappy feeling of being young and listless in America with a haunting specificity that also feels universal. 

Such a wide range of sounds and emotions could sound disjointed with any other band at the helm, but Ratboys manage to make it sound cohesive and solid, a confident execution of a bold artistic vision. The Window showcases a band’s growth and documents their lineage within a specific indie scene. They are at once omnivorous and ambitious, cheeky and contemplative, salty and sweet.

Elizabeth is a neuroscience researcher in Chicago. She writes about many things—art, the internet, apocalyptic thought, genetically modified mice–on her substack handgun.substack.com. She is from Northern Nevada.

Broken Record – Nothing Moves Me | Album Review

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Really Rad Records

“What do you do / When the void fills you? /
A steady flow of vacant thoughts / The sum of which is nil.”

The internal Swim Into The Sound upcoming release doc listed Broken Record’s Nothing Moves Me as “Sunny Day Real Estate + The Cure = Stadium emo.” Despite being an English teacher, this equation made immediate sense and piqued my curiosity.

I feel the need to express that this is not going to be a typical review. It’s not that this album’s music is not worth talking about in the stereotypical “awesome #toanz, dude” manner (the #toanz are indeed awesome, dude). As a music listener, however, I am drawn first toward how all of the instruments and vocals sound in concert with one another. Nothing Moves Me showcases lyrics that, funnily enough, move me and push me as both a music fan and critic.  

For some more context, I am a person who struggles with depression. Right around when I received the press stream of Nothing Moves Me, I was prescribed Lexapro. At first, it felt like a godsend. Spring and then summer wore on, and my partner confirmed something I had suspected: the prescription muted me and my world. Everything felt evenly mediocre. After a while, everything feeling mediocre starts to suck. I would rather experience the ups and downs.

It was during this period of medication that I played Nothing Moves Me over and over again. Regardless of my personal state, this is certifiably catchy emo. There are hooks on hooks and beautiful harmonies in every track, especially in singles “Weightless,” “Blueprinting,” and “See It Through.” These three songs buoy the record's first half with exciting second-wave emo sounds, the intro to “See It Through” almost sounds like it's referencing Taking Back Sunday’s “Cute Without the ‘E’ (Cut From the Team).”

Beyond hooks, the band excels with track sequencing. “Weightless” opens up into a spacey bridge that seamlessly meanders into “Round 2,” the epic six-plus-minute track. As a Jimmy-Eat-World-album-closer nerd, singer-guitarist Lauren Beecher, guitarist Matt Dunne, bassist Corey Fruin, and drummer Nick Danes are appealing directly to me. (Dear Broken Record: please explore this anthemic, slowcore-leaning sound more on your next release.)

What impresses me most, though, is the use of production and composition to enhance those hooks. Opener “Nothing Moves Me” begins with driving a dirty, driving bass line that trickles into a tight song with a contrasting, clean, right-panned arpeggiated guitar. The first song on the album showcases just how great a band Broken Record are; the following 32 minutes are a cherry on top.

“What about the lyrics, Joe?” is what you should be asking right now.

Now weaning myself off Lexapro, Nothing Moves Me hits differently. The reverb-rich and chorus-laden production makes the album sound underwater, which is how I feel when I am in the throes of a rough depressive period. Then there is the album’s cover, which features a skeleton sitting in the shade rather than the sun. Hell, the title is Nothing Moves Me. All this context pushed me to engage more deeply with the lyrics, and the epiphany was confirmed: this is an album about depression. The songs are not necessarily hiding this message; my world was just too grayed out to see it. The theme of depression permeates every track, but personal favorites include “Runner’s Digest” (“But I can’t fake / away the shame / I’m sick of empty hope / and consolation prizes”) and “Vacuum Tube Supplies” (the whole dang song).

Broken Record’s Nothing Moves Me is an important album not only for the upstart Colorado band but for all listeners, those contending with mental health issues or not. The sophomore effort solidifies Broken Record as incumbent torchbearers for both the genre, and for those wrestling with a void inside themselves, myself included. While it is one thing to create an incredible piece of art like Nothing Moves Me, it is another thing entirely to speak to and validate a population of people typically misunderstood for their behaviors and attitudes. Broken Record make doing both look easy.

Joe Wasserman lives with his partner and their dogs in Brooklyn. When he’s not listening to music, he plays bass in bands, writes stories, and releases music as After School Special. You can find him on Twitter at @a_cuppajoe.

Dim Wizard – X-Games Mode | Single Review

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Self-Released

I cannot tell you the last time it was that I picked up a skateboard and popped an ollie or landed a shuvit. Now that I’m 30 and it truly means nothing to me, my memory wanes as to whether I actually landed a kickflip like I bragged to some attractive women in college. Not to kill my ego, but I probably didn’t. That being said, I would’ve burned a hole in the flash memory of my iPod Nano listening to Dim Wizard’s “X-Games Mode” on repeat while slamming the deck into my shins.

The latest collaboration from Bad Moves’ David Combs and illuminati hotties’ Sarah Tudzin features garage power-popper Mike Krol and Ratboys’ Julia Steiner on vocals. Distorted and compressed to a chaotic hell, “X-Games Mode'' is just plain fun. Combs and Tudzin’s earworm songwriting and musicianship are complemented by Krol and Steiner’s cool deliveries to create a track that evokes nostalgia while also feeling new. Because of that, “X-Games Mode” immediately feels timeless in the best way.

Although my skating days are well behind me, the single’s catchy chiptune elements and swirling guitar riffs make for the perfect soundtrack to play Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (or, for a true X-Games mode, Skate) with your friends. If we play at your house, I’ll bring the forties.

Joe Wasserman lives with his partner and their dogs in Brooklyn. When he’s not listening to music, he plays bass in bands, writes stories, and releases music as After School Special. You can find him on Twitter at @a_cuppajoe.

Hater's Delight – July 2023

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This July has been the longest, sweatiest, shittiest month of the year so far. Let’s hear it for unending heat, unbreathable air, and unforgivable takes from every fuckwit with a phone screen! The sooner this month’s over, the better; let’s send it out the door with a kick in the pants in the form of this month’s Hater’s Delight.

If you’re just now joining us for the first time, Hater’s Delight is a monthly micro-review column brought to you by our team of Swim Into The Sound writers and a guest or two. This is a space where we can vent about the things online and in music that have gotten under our skin this past month. Each writer gets a paragraph 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 July.

Spotify UI

Oh, Spotify. I don’t like your artist payouts, and I don’t like your pivot to video. I don’t like your alt-right podcasts, and I don’t like your SEO slop. There’s a virtually endless list of things I dislike about the world’s most ubiquitous music streaming platform, yet I use it every day. Don’t get me wrong, I still have my physical media and a hefty MP3 library, so I am not beholden to Spotify, but I use it because it is synonymous. Because Spotify is some people’s sole way to interact with music, I think it’s worth analyzing, criticizing, and discussing. Earlier this year, I wrote about artists clogging Spotify up with single bloat, but now Spotify is inflicting this visual repetition on itself. On the desktop version of Spotify, the company recently introduced “Now Playing View,” which replaces the “Friend Activity” panel on the far-right side of the screen. Now the space is absorbed by a larger version of the album art, a song title, the artist name, bio, merch, tour dates, and what’s next in the queue. If that sounds like a lot, it’s because it is! Half of it is redundant information to what is already displayed on the bottom left, and the rest of it is pretty useless to the average listener. I presume this is a way to elevate ticket sales and promote merch, both of which Spotify gets a kickback on, but do we really need all of this info on screen? Especially when you’re paving over my literal friends and family, you better replace that with something just as compelling. While you can still click the “Friend Activity” button to return to the old view, the “Now Playing View” returns each time you click on a new song, so it might as well be there for good. This is all on top of recent changes to the sidebar, playlist organization, and various other changes, all of which make Spotify worse for the wear. 

Taylor Grimes – @GeorgeTaylorG


Apple Music v. Spotify: Dawn of Bullshit

 I’m self-aware enough to say that I am an Apple fanboy. It wasn’t on purpose; it just kind of happened, like how I got into the Mission: Impossible movies because my sister likes them, and I want to make her happy. This past week, I purchased an Apple Watch after years of thinking it wasn’t for me. I found enough reasons (i.e., easy access to a timer for teaching, the fitness tracker, and… a watch) to justify the cheapest finance option. Because I am in the minority and sip the Apple Juice (patent pending), I find it frustrating when anyone links music to Spotify as the default. Call me lazy, but I’m sick of searching on Apple Music for something that’s immediately available at Spotify users’ thumbs.

I understand why Spotify has a chokehold on streaming music. Sometimes I wish I subscribed just to experience its superior social aspects and playlisting. Yet, for all of the reasons that Taylor listed above, I still find the company’s actions and policies toward artists deplorable and solely a necessary evil in our current brand of capitalism. :sips Apple Juice: Whenever I share music online, I send a Bandcamp link to support the artist directly. If recipients do not wish to support, then at least the stream is immediately available to Spotify and Apple Music users alike. (Either way, I’m ridiculed for sending Bandcamp or Apple Music links because they’re not Spotify.) Although I’m happy at how Bandcamp has grown, it still does not feel like the default, agnostic streaming service that anyone can use immediately and remains a niche for independent labels and smaller musicians. Perhaps someday, it or another streaming service/online music storefront will be the norm, but that day feels far away. Regardless of which you use, M.A.R.T.H.A. remains: Music Algorithms Revile Trying to Help Artists. 

Joe Wasserman – @a_cuppajoe


“I am the one you love to hate.”

In a very meta paragraph here, I’m giving my hate to the haters. Code Orange has been pushing heavy music boundaries their entire career. Their left-of-center approach to hardcore and metal has been celebrated by freaks and questioned by cowards on every album. In 2017, they began incorporating more elements of alternative and industrial music on their album Forever, with songs like “Bleeding Into The Blur” and “Ugly” packed with soaring choruses fit for rock arenas. The most stubborn members of the hardcore community turned up their noses and turned their backs on the band, but they always seem to reappear whenever the band has new music to promote just to give their two cents. Online comments surrounding their latest single, “Take Shape,” are filled with sentiments like “This band fell off” and “Code Orange still sucks.” The first statement is confusing, considering their last album, Underneath, was the biggest of their career, released on March 13, 2020, and helped spawn the livestream music era. It also got them onto 2021 support tours for Korn and Slipknot, undeniably two of the country’s biggest metal acts. Redarding the second point, if Code Orange’s new music isn’t for you, that’s fine. There are a million homogenous California beatdown bands’ demos for you to choose from, only for you to forget about when the next ones come out after those, and so on and so on. But Code Orange is clearly doing something unique; they always have been (cue astronaut meme). It is palpable how much effort and energy they put into this music if you really listen to it. I mean, they got fucking Billy Corgan to sing the bridge on “Take Shape.” Not any bullshit band can do that; only a 1000% dedicated band gets that kind of co-sign. And Code Orange is absolutely deserving of it.

Logan Archer Mounts – @VERTICALCOFFIN


Three Chords and Some Bullshit

A lot of people on the internet are talking about Jason Aldean’s new song “Try That in a Small Town,” calling it racist, White Nationalist propaganda that stokes and cultivates an ever-widening division between rural American conservatives and… everyone else in the country. Honestly, I’m just astounded anyone can hear it at all, given that it is composed entirely of dog whistles. Now, I personally agree that this song is probably racist, but bad-faith actors note how there is nothing particularly racist about the song’s lyrical content, so I won’t try to tackle that. Here’s what I will say instead:

Jason Aldean lives in the city–my city. We both are transplants in Nashville, sporting cowboy hats and making country music (I write my own songs, though). But get this, I’m from a small town of 600 people, while he is from Macon, Georgia–population: 153,095. He’s not afraid of the city. He’s only ever lived in the city. He’s nothing but a right-wing grifter. Aldean knows his fans are bootlickers who are afraid of everything Fox News tells them to be afraid of. He’s a phony who would never want to actually live in the country. But he knows what he’s doing, and it’s given him a #1 country song. The song sucks though, and anyone with an ounce of integrity knows the song sucks. Three chords and some bullshit. I’ll say though–if this song keeps Aldean’s fearful fans at his bar on Broadway and away from all the other parts of Nashville, I reckon it’s doing some good.

Russ Finn – @russfinn


Message to Snail Mail

Snail Mail recently posted an Instagram Story claiming that we must “bring back hating on things”... Miss Mail, I couldn't agree more! For starters, I hate your attitude; I hate that you posted a pretty gracious Pitchfork profile of you years after it happened and called the writer a “huge cunt;” I hate how rude you were when you played Chicago on tour with JPEGmafia and Turnstile last October, snapping at your guitar tech, snapping at the sound guy, snapping at the audience saying “fuck all of this;” I hate that you posted yourself on Instagram posing with a handgun in rural Nevada–Lindsey, you went to private school in Baltimore! My culture is not your costume! But most of all, I think if you’re going to behave like a snotty little irresponsible rockstar, you should at least make music that is good enough to justify that behavior. Because I hate, hate, Snail Mail’s music, not just the most recent record, but all of it, from the goopy insubstantial beginnings to the limp and insipid present, and have no reason to revisit or reconsider unless you undergo rapid character development. Being kind isn’t a rockstar characteristic, but it is cool in its own way. Try it; you might like it. Godspeed!

Elizabeth – @OneFeIISwoop


What’s more important? Your own self-importance or the audience's? (Or "How I learned to hate Miranda Lambert")

I'm very happy to have the opportunity to "go off" this month, but when rattlin' my noggin for what I wanted to write about, I thought of everything I could possibly hate. However, for some reason, the same stupid bullshit continued coming up in every space in my life. People were talking about it at work. My server was talking about it at the restaurant. My mom even asked me about it. By "it," I'm begrudgingly referring to the moment country pop star Miranda Lambert stopped her show in Las Vegas because a group of women in her VIP section started taking a group photo—seemingly a completely unimportant and uninteresting moment in pop music. Unfortunately, parents and grandparents across the corn fields of Ohio (Where I happen to be) took this as a sign of her love for genuine human connection, or as I see it, her hatred of it. I don't have any strong feelings toward pop music in general, and I usually disregard any "news" involving such people. This time was different because of how inescapable it was. Everyone had an opinion. Some of which were kissing her (cowboy) boots. 

Aloe Weetman – @aloe_wise


We Will Not Be Rehabilitating Everyone’s Taste For Buckcherry

We’ve been going through an odd resurgence of late. The Will Yip-core edge of every modern punk adjacent band's new release has whet the appetite for 90s grunge/alt-rock sonics and aesthetics. This was inevitable, hell I’d even say understandable as the internet cycles through everything that has come before, as well as people and bands having been unabashed with their inspirations and even deep fondness for everything from Nu metal to Creed in recent years. Has it become a bit rote and tired? Sure. All this I can abide, even though I feel like I’ve been hearing the same album in slightly different fonts all year, but sometimes that's how the green screen background music video rolls. However, we can’t simply roll over and let this spirited go at revisionist history convince both newer music fans and older heads alike that they can feel good about enjoying Buckcherry. Buckcherry is awful. And not in the fun Nickelbacky it’s-kind-of-bad-but-it’s-actually-a-banger type of way. Buckcherry is just downright dog tripe. How far are we willing to fall here? Buckcherry’s primary claim to fame is their boring and repetitive single “Crazy Bitch.” This misogynistic and deeply questionable regaling of sexual coercion isn’t just dog water as a piece of art but also has a dodgy history featuring a minor in their sexually explicit behind-the-scenes short showing the making of the music video. How this band is still around isn’t baffling to me, but seeing the slow creep of rewritten love and acknowledgment of grunge and alt-rock bands like Staind and Creed, leads me to believe we’re only a viral trend away from Ed Hardy hats and Affliction jeans worming their way back into the public zeitgeist. I am begging everyone to just bedazzle their own headwear and denim, and please leave this withered, sunbleached garbage lost to the sepia-tinted wastelands of 2000s hard rock.

Elias Amini – @letsgetpivotal