Swim Into The Sound's Staff Favorites of 2023

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I won’t beat around the bush too much, but before we get into our staff’s favorite records of 2023, I’d just like to take a moment to brag about them and what an awesome year we’ve had. 

Back in January, I put out a call for new writers and the response was greater than I ever could have hoped for. A couple dozen people reached out to me, and about half of them went on to become regular contributors over the course of 2023. Reviews, premieres, single write-ups, interviews and more all flowed from the minds of these incredible writers, all of whom are doing this purely for the love of the music. 

Aside from those more traditional bits of music writing, we also established a regular monthly column called Haters Delight, which took this blog in a more timely, goofy, and gripey (but still good-natured) direction that fell outside our usual perview. While I was a little nervous about wading into such negative waters at first, I soon discovered that pretty much everyone loves a communal bitch sesh.

These writers also helped widen the scope of this blog and the music we cover. Through expansive quarterly roundups (including the one you’re about to read), they honed raw passion into thoughtful write-ups, making the case for artists that I typically wouldn’t be able to speak eloquently on or even know to cover. Who would have guessed that bringing in a talented slew of people also meant a wealth of new passion and perspectives?

At the time of writing, we’ve published 69 articles this year (nice), amounting to a little over 100k words total. About half of those have been penned by our talented team of guest writers, and I think that goes to show just how much these people have helped make Swim Into The Sound feel like a real music blog, not just some dork typing about emo music into his Macbook. 

When we published our first-ever Staff Favorites roundup back in 2021, I talked about how lucky I felt to have this talented team of writers at my back, and now that feeling is amplified tenfold. I couldn’t be more proud of this team or their work; they make me want to be a better, more well-rounded music writer. Scroll down to read about their favorite albums of this year, then go follow them on social media, and support all of their projects. Each and every person in this article is talented beyond belief with taste to match, I have no doubt you’ll come away from this with a list of incredible new music to check out.

Without further adieu, here are Swim Into The Sound’s Staff Favorites of 2023. 

Nickolas Sackett | Greg Mendez – Greg Mendez 

Forged Artifacts / Devil Town Tapes 

When I was younger, my childhood home was often blanketed by the background hum of a random radio station or TV show. I didn't have a strong concept of actors or fiction yet, so there were times when I would fall into the conversations of Law & Order or Sex and the City and believe I was listening in on real people out there somewhere. The songs on Greg Mendez remind me of that (perceived) window I thought I was stealing looks through as a child– stolen glimpses into a world far away from my own, hushed confessions and painful stories told in a whisper from behind a lit cigarette in an alley. And yet, despite how bleak these stories can unravel, their mere existence reminds you that although all of this can be quite painful and terrible, there's still so much beauty to be found. 

Other Highlights:

  • Indigo de Souza - All of This Will End (review)

  • Field Medic - Lightisgonept2

  • André 3000 - New Blue Sun

  • Taylor Swift - 1989 (Taylor’s Version)

  • 100 Gecs - 10,000 Gecs

  • Olivia Rodrigo - Guts

  • billy woods & Kenny Segal - Maps

  • Chuquimamani-Condori - DJ E

  • Earl Sweatshirt & The Alchemist - VOIR DIRE

  • Jungle - Volcano

  • The Drums - Jonny

  • Hotline TNT - Cartwheel


Joe Wasserman | phoneswithchords, Ben Sooy – phoneswithBen

Start-Track

I’m not sure I believe in love at first sight. Frankly, I don’t give the notion much thought. I do, however, believe in AOTY at first listen. That moment for me this year was when I first heard “If Time,” the lead single off phoneswithBen, the collaborative album by phoneswithchords and Ben Sooy of Denver rock band A Place for Owls. There is not much more that I can say about this record than what I already have on my Substack. I’m in love with its sounds and melodies, the way it speaks to me about my anxieties and worries, and the way it makes me feel comforted and okay. Before listening to this album, I felt alone with age and time. When I listen to it, all I can think about is the warmth that surrounds me.

In alphabetical order, here are five more albums that spoke to me this year:


Nick Webber | Vagabonds – The Pasture & The Willow

Self-Released

I’m very bad at picking favorites, but The Pasture & The Willow is the album that has snuck up on me the most this year, and I love a grower. The record begins with “Sungazer,” a mantra: “It won’t happen like you think.” There’s something ominous and mystical in the atmosphere, like a prophecy. As foretold, the song blooms from hushed slowcore to shoegazey/yelly post-hardcore in barely 3 minutes, an anthem for grief prolonged and an apt prologue for the fevered, contemplative vision to follow.

The album’s title evokes something literary and bucolic, and the lyrics are often painting impressionistically: pastoral scenes, trees that weep, just noticing the beauty of simple things. Interspersed are these earnest, personal vignettes of everyday life; “The Checkout Line” describes a breakdown at work, where the backroom becomes a sanctuary for the grieving grocery clerk. The infinite crashes into the ordinary.

There’s also joy in the fullest, most mysterious sense: the peaceful reassurance of waking up next to someone you love, the hope for a future out from under the thumb of the forces that conspire against your flourishing, perseverance in the pain and uncertainty. It won’t be like this forever; visions of settling down somewhere quiet in the country, longing for rest. “The peace comes to visit / But never to stay.”

The Pasture & The Willow is gentle in its heaviness, wrapped in some of my favorite guitar work of the year. I found myself reaching for it when I felt weary, anxious, or reflective. It’s the one thing that felt good to listen to when I was driving to the hospital last week (everything is fine now). It’s equal parts calm and cathartic; I’m still caught off guard at how massive the arrangements get. And at the center of it all is this preoccupation with connection. Can we cut through the curtains that separate us from each other (and me from myself) and climb on through?


Elizabeth Handgun | Water From Your Eyes – Everyone’s Crushed

Matador Records

Goofy yet profound, experimental and artistic yet grounded, Water From Your Eyes delivered one of the greatest albums of 2023 and possibly all time. The musicianship! The humor! The daring to go where few musicians have ventured before! It’s all there on Everyone’s Crushed. From the flurried and chaotic lead single, “Barley,” through “14,” which is mellow and shot through with longing, to the thumpy, punky closer, “Buy My Product,” the album delivers a bewildering yet beautiful tour through the minds of Rachel Brown and Nate Amos. The album also gets more interesting with each consecutive listening, rewarding close attention and an open mind. The whole project is strange and remarkable but with a little current of tender jokiness running throughout. I’m crushed!


Logan Archer Mounts | Lydia Loveless – Nothing’s Gonna Stand In My Way Again

Bloodshot records

To be fair, I must admit this is my second favorite album of 2023. I am rolling out my entire list of 100 albums on my Instagram (@sleeps.with.angels, shameless plug), and I don’t want to show off my top pick just yet. But I have a trend that seems to ring true every year: my top spot is occupied by what I think is objectively the year’s greatest musical experience, and the runner-up album is usually what I listened to the most. My bootleg third-party app streaming stats for my Amazon Music account may say otherwise, but Lydia Loveless’ sixth studio album was a cornerstone soundtrack to my year. The only two times I’ve seen the Ohio-based, alt-country singer-songwriter were in 2023, and they were at the exact same venue just eight months apart. In March, she appeared for a pop-up acoustic set at the Empty Bottle in Chicago, coincidentally enough, my second favorite venue in the city. The show mainly contained new, never-before-played material from her upcoming album that had yet to be announce. I was thrilled to hear these tracks in such an intimate setting and couldn’t wait for the final product to be unveiled. 

Nothing’s Gonna Stand… arrived in September, with Lydia returning to her Chicago label Bloodshot in conjunction with her own imprint Honey, You’re Gonna Be Late. It’s a concise, ten-song collection that showcases what Loveless does best: twangy guitar rock with unforgettable hooks and melodies. Besides the excellent singles “Sex and Money” and “Toothache,” the entire record is full of no-holds-barred honest pop, like the self-effacing “Poor Boy” or the wall-crumbling breakup anthem “French Restaurant.” The track “Ghost” features the album’s title in its chorus: “Now that I’m dead, nothing’s gonna stand in my way again.” You can bet I listened to that song over and over again as I was preparing to, and successfully did, quit my job. The spring of anticipation and the late summer of constant rotation led into the fall of presentation: I soon found myself at Loveless’ tour opener back at the Empty Bottle on Black Friday, this time with her full band and a record out in the world. I stood right up against the stage again as they burned through most of the tracklisting of Nothing’s Gonna Stand…, as well as fan favorites like “Head” and the return of the oft-requested “Wine Lips.” I got her to sign my concert scrapbook, including the setlists I was able to grab from the stage at each show, and thanked her for the brilliant record. So even though it didn’t take the coveted number one spot, on a personal level, I could not have gotten through this year without it. And for the first time all year, I truly feel like nothing’s gonna stand in my way again, thanks to Lydia Loveless.

If that sounds good to you, you may enjoy some of my other favorites I’ve selected:

  • Sincere Engineer - Cheap Grills (Chicago folk-pop-punk international touring sensation returns with her best and catchiest release yet.)

  • The Mountain Goats - Jenny From Thebes (John Darnielle’s prolific catalog expands with this theatrical sequel to the 2002 classic All Hail West Texas. In some ways, it’s sort of the anti-album to its lo-fi companion, but I think that’s what makes it one of the band’s best among their last handful of titles.)

  • Dave Hause - Drive It Like It’s Stolen (The Loved Ones’ frontman burns through ten songs in 28 minutes, a more compact, but just as fulfilling, version of the heartland punk he’s perfected over the years.)


Ben Sooy | Gia Margaret – Romantic Piano

Jagjaguwar

Last night, I felt a panic attack approaching. Car trouble, money trouble, difficult day, underlying grief, and mental instability. I was trying to breathe deeply, get to sleep, and remember I’m okay. I’ve learned a few practices to help in a time like this. I can kneel down and put my face in the carpet, I can lay on my back and slow my breath, I can count all the things I’m grateful for, I can listen to music that helps center and calm me down. 

When asked about her very good (mostly instrumental) 2023 album Romantic Piano, Gia Margaret said, “I wanted to make music that was useful.” This is music that is of great use to me, personally. There are sounds from the natural world, piano songs filled with longing and peacefulness, touched by melancholy. The squeak of a piano bench, the sound of cicadas at night. It’s useful the same way walking outside and being surprised by a thunderstorm is useful; I forget about my troubles, wrapped up for a few moments in something bigger than myself. This album improves my quality of life and my mental and spiritual health in ways I can’t begin to articulate. I think it would be helpful to you too. 

Other 2023 favorites:

  • Nick Webber - All The Nothing I Know (A thoughtful and beautiful exploration of what it means to realize that you don't know anything about anything, but that's okay! Written and painstakingly self-recorded by universally beloved human Nick Webber.)

  • Josaleigh Pollett - In The Garden, By The Weeds (Josaleigh and her musical partner Jordan Watko created a masterpiece, one of my favorite records of the last ten years. Dark and lonely, hopeful, heartbreaking songs for when you feel insane and need a friend.)

  • Plain Speak - Calamity (Plain Speak writes and records the kind of songs I've always attempted to write and record. Earth-shatteringly good indie rock in the vein of your favorite Death Cab record.)

  • Broken Record - Nothing Moves Me (Denver emo band Broken Record was created in a lab to make the exact kind of music I like: emo made by people who obsessively listen to Jimmy Eat World, Sunny Day, and the Cure. I would die for Denver emo band Broken Record.)

  • Elliott Green - Everything I Lack (Crushingly good songs about addiction and heartbreak written by a very kind human being. If you like any of the boygenius crew, for the love of God, check out this record.)


Jason Sloan | Glia – Happens All the Time

Candlepin Records

Consider the wheel. Invented in Mesopotamia, or maybe Eastern Europe, or China, or perhaps in each location independently, the wheel was seismic upon impact, perfected almost as soon as it was conceived. Millennia of human ingenuity may have added component parts here or there, but the underlying technology has remained fundamentally unchanged. You’ve heard the one about wheels and reinvention. 

The beauty lies therein—a well-made wheel is still a hell of an instrument. And on Happens All the Time, Glia fashions one hell of a wheel. While they may not be inventing new textures out of whole cloth the way Kevin Shields did way back when, Glia polishes up the familiar into 41 minutes of blissful shoegaze; the shuffling drums and psychedelic guitar crunch of “Tumble” alone are worth the price of admission. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it; just make sure you make it really fucking good. 

An off-the-top list of old (new-to-me) songs that meant a lot this year:

  • Yard Act - “100% Endurance” (2021)

  • Silkworm - “Couldn’t You Wait” (1994)

  • Breakwater - “Five” (1995)

  • Hard Girls - “If They Never Find Out” (2012)

  • Gangsta Blac - “Down wit Clique” (1998)

  • Prefab Sprout - “Appetite” (1985)

  • Thurston Moore - “Benediction” (2011)

  • Red Red Meat - “Gauze” (1995)

  • Swervedriver - “Never Lose That Feeling/Never Learn” (1993)

  • Nicki Minaj x Cocteau Twins - “Heaven or Super Bass” (2021)


Connor Fitzpatrick | Lankum – False Lankum

Rough Trade Records

Irish music reigned supreme in 2023, well, for me at least, seeing great albums from John Francis Flynn’s contemporary twist on folk standards to Lisa O’Neill’s orchestral storytelling to Øxn’s experimental doom. But among all these towering achievements, one album stands out as a titanic classic. That album is Lankum’s False Lankum. 

The Dublin doom folk quartet’s fourth album feels like a masterpiece in the truest sense as it crystallizes the band's elements into a singular, haunting tome. Lankum infuses their Irish folk with drone music, creating an atmosphere that is as menacing as it is tranquil. The stories in these songs often feature characters who live hard and wretched lives, doomed for some sort of tragic death. “Go Dig My Grave” tells the tale of a woman who ends her own life after being spurned by the man she loves. Fun stuff, right? But it's the way the band brings these stories and characters to life that makes the album so enthralling. They're at their best when Radie Peat takes on the lead vocals backed by traditional instruments like uilleann pipes and bayans as she describes the lives of the meek who did not inherit the earth. False Lankum is a dense album that rewards those who return to it, and I intend on returning over and over so I can savor every minute of it.


Katie Wojciechowski | Bully – Lucky For You

Sub Pop Records

I am trying to wrangle this blurb into something that’s not jarringly tragic. And honestly, it might be a futile effort. After all, Lucky For You is about a dead dog, about breakups, about the end of the world as we know it. When you lose your dog, your marriage, or your career, there’s grief, of course, and also, there is rage. A sensation that resonates with hoarse yelps, the slamming of cymbals, chugging, distorted electric guitar chords. With Lucky For You, Alicia Bognanno of Bully has turned the shards of grief and anger into grunge-pop melodies that are as unflinching as their subject matter deserves: she lost her beloved dog Mezzi last year, after more than a decade together. These songs are the sound of her attempts to process life’s stock-in-trade heartbreaks—romantic wounds, crippling self-doubt, and the horrors of living in America—without her best friend by her side. 

There have been days this year when singing along to “Days Move Slow” in my car at the top of my lungs has felt like a conversation with a friend who understands: a friend who’s a step ahead of me, who’s cracked the code of alchemizing despair into melody. Even before I knew that “A Wonderful Life” was about a dead dog, I felt Bognanno’s warm, punchy words in my bones: “What a wonderful life / my heart’s breaking on the bathroom floor” quickly became the refrain, this last summer, for my own life falling apart in real-time. 

Bognanno’s vocals have a retro quality, evoking charismatic pop-rock voices from the early 2000s, like Michelle Branch or Sheryl Crow in her louder moments. But she’s not content to cash in on basic pop blueprints: like its 2020 predecessor SUGAREGG, Lucky For You leans into distortion, thick bass riffs, and, at times, full-on yelling, like in the Bikini Kill-esque final track “All This Noise.” The last two songs of the album zoom out on the sociopolitical factors that tally among Bognanno’s sorrows: the latter torching the American government in a blaze of rage, the former, “Ms. America,” a soft, piercing reflection on the improbability of the dream of motherhood in a rotten country like ours, where there’s endless funding for weapons manufacturing and none for healthcare or schools or even clean water. I listened, a hundred times over, when she sings, “All I wanted was a daughter / try my best to raise her right / but the whole world’s caught on fire / and I don’t wanna teach a kid to fight.” All that we’ve lost this year, so many of us. All that 2023 unceremoniously stomped against the curb. I’ve watched it all slip through my fingers, and I’ve carried my dog’s old collar in my backpack when I’ve bounced between temporary homes, and I’ve listened to Bully like a prayer, knowing that despite how it sometimes feels, I’m never really alone.

My other favorites:

  • Black Belt Eagle Scout - The Land, The Water, The Sky

  • Paramore - This Is Why

  • Kara Jackson - Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love?

  • Hotline TNT - Cartwheel


Russ Finn | Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band – Dancing on the Edge

Sophomore Lounge

Leading his band State Champion, Ryan Davis crafted cinematic songs about bar bands and barflies, using impeccable vocabulary and wit like some sort of art-school-educated Hoosier John Prine. Since his last album with State Champion, 2018’s Send Flowers, Davis has spent a lot of time painting, drawing, and writing the seven songs found on my favorite album of 2023, Dancing on the Edge.

The atypical country-rock structures and long-winded rambling found on Dancing on the Edge feel like the natural continuation of State Champion, even if it’s rebranded as a solo album. Davis’ time spent making visual art perhaps informs the striking imagery and minute details within his songs. His ability to effortlessly put the listener in a “piss-stop town,” a “shipyard plumber’s band,” or a “junk drawer heart” is unmatched. Beautiful lines like “there’s a blackened space between the back of my head and the back of my face” are found so frequently on Dancing on the Edge, it would be impossible to summarize all of the best lyrical moments in a short blurb. Instead, I suggest you listen to the opus “Flashes of Orange” and give the lyrics serious attention. For the literary-minded singer/songwriter fans out there, Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band’s Dancing on the Edge is an essential album and one of the best of 2023.

For what it’s worth, my second favorite album of 2023 is My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross by ANOHNI and the Johnsons. Below are some releases from friends, acquaintances, and obscure corners of the internet I feel deserve more attention:

  • Spirit Furnace - Spirit Furnace EP

  • Heavy Quitters - Heavy Quitters

  • Riley Parker - Discover EP

  • Bailey Allen Baker - Grab a Bucket

  • Perfect Angel at Heaven - EP

  • Chief Broom - Hidden in Plain Sight

  • Taxiway - This is Permanent

Jimmy Montague – All The Same | Single Review

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SELF-RELEASED

“All The Same” by Jimmy Montague feels like a breath of fresh air. His discography is full of soft-rock jams that meld contemplative and deliberate arrangements with the free-wheeling spirit of rock ‘n’ roll from days gone by, but the new single opens on a decidedly more vintage (and somehow even sweatier) vibe– a rollicking and expressive crescendo of jazz piano. If nothing else, it demonstrates the compositional and instrumental talents of the man himself. But that isn’t all it does. Its drawn-out and embellished chords also foreshadow the jaunty, Broadway-esque main riff of the piano-driven rocker, which is eventually propelled into motion by chunky drums played metronomically to a driving rock ‘n’ roll beat. Montague’s vocal delivery, which is simultaneously hushed and urgent, has never shined brighter than it has on this song. He sounds both impassioned and detached at once as he croons for a love he waits for by the phone. The verse elides into a wonderful backslide of a chorus before the inimitable Chris Farren takes the wheel with an almost effortless guitar solo and a falsetto disco verse. Truly a meeting of the minds guys.

The groove comes first to both him and Montague on this track– the verses slip by, the second chorus is unsung, and those driving drums play the song out. “All The Same” is an evolution from Montague’s last LP, honing his instinct for slick pop-rock without sacrificing musical complexity, vintage pastiche, pure rock and roll, or complete sincerity. It’s a perfect slice of ‘70s nostalgia to pair with a big-bodied automobile, a beautiful lover, some worn-in bell-bottom jeans, and whatever remaining marijuana you can pull together. You can stream the song now on your platform of choice, at the strong recommendation of this writer. Jimmy Montague’s new LP, Tomorrow’s Coffee, drops early 2024.

Mikey Montoni is a nonfiction writing student at the University of Pittsburgh, originally hailing from New York. When she's not writing, she's bruising herself attempting skateboard tricks, playing with her punk rock band, digging through bookstores for '70s pulp sci-fi paperbacks, and wandering Pittsburgh in search of good coffee.

Frog – Grog | Album Review

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tapewormies

The sailors survived off rum. Not in the nutritional sense, of course, but in the way one may survive by watching their favorite sports team. Everybody needs a little something to get through the day. The problem arose when the sailors realized they could stockpile their daily rum rations for two, three, four days at a time and then drink themselves silly. Eighteenth-century British naval ships were dangerous operations, and drunk or hungover sailors posed a threat to everybody’s safety. An enterprising admiral named Edward Vernon began mixing fresh water into the rum rations in a 4:1 ratio, shortening the liquor’s shelf life and thus forcing the sailors to consume responsibly. Vernon’s concoction took on his own nickname: Grog, after the grogham cloth he wore around his waist.

Daniel Bateman has always operated in this space, writing fiercely humanist songs under the moniker Frog about the ways in which people mete out coping mechanisms to survive. In the intervening years after 2019’s Count Bateman, his wife gave birth to twins. Faced with the twin specters of newfound responsibility in fatherhood and a pandemic-wracked world, Bateman suddenly found he needed to dig deeper within himself to be able to write and escape into his music; in this regard, it’s fitting that the fifth Frog album is titled Grog, after the beverage which kept the sailors able to focus on the tasks at hand. Grog is, in many ways, a culmination of the greater Frog project: a refinement of the musical and lyrical themes Bateman has pursued his whole career, with fuller arrangements and a bounce that never quite materialized on older records. It also marks the band’s first go-round as a family affair, with Bateman’s brother Steve taking over full-time on drums.

“Goes w/o Saying,” the first proper song on the album, is one in a long tradition of Frog songs that cloaks sexual pursuit in vaguely religious language. But this time, they let the instrumental—a series of chiming pianos—ride out for over a minute after Bateman stops singing until the song starts to sound like hourly church bells collapsing inward on themselves. It’s a new trick for the group, the music now working in greater tandem with the lyrics. Lead single “Black on Black on Black” rides a ferocious stomping groove as Bateman works in abstract notions about Odysseus and Athena. He’s long been obsessed with the modern American myth—2015’s Kind of Blah namechecks Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, MGM, and Patrick Ewing all within a three-song run—but this dive into more classic mythology represents a new frontier. Rather than using pop cultural knowledge as evocative shorthand, he taps into some of the oldest shared cultural knowledge available as a world-building device.

But Grog’s most salient change is Bateman’s status as a new parent. Where his prior character sketches often dealt with fumbling young adulthood in pseudo-autobiography, with all the impulsive drugs and awkward sex that entails, he’s trained his gaze on a younger generation this time around. “420!!” is a melancholy guitar symphony of adolescent shenanigans and early pot-smoking laced with a morbid undercurrent: “You’re gonna die, and yeah, it’s cool / You don’t know why you’re going to school.” It’s a weed-addled bildungsroman in miniature that recalls what its characters are experiencing in real-time: a firmer (and maybe sadder) understanding of the human condition undercut by buzzed euphoria that borders on acceptance. Fatherhood is tackled most explicitly on the tender “Ur Still Mine,” a musing where Bateman imagines talking to a fellow parent before offering words of encouragement to his own kids. “New Ro” lands a bit closer to the Frog songs of prior albums, a bluegrass romp that flashes back to his hometown “where the girls they put out in a car/and the pizza guys know who you are.” 

Everything converges on the stunning closer “Gone Back to Stanford,” a bleary vignette about a college underclassman having trouble adjusting to the next phase of her life. Like many of the best Frog songs, “Gone Back to Stanford” is a series of images that stops just short of adding up to a story, littered with asides, non-sequiturs, and foreboding undercurrents. This unnamed person goes to parties and drinks Ketel One and has unfulfilling one-night stands; through it, she’s trying to work up the nerve to tell her mother she wants to transfer out. Bateman fleshes out the scenes beautifully, able to capture the pain and elation and danger of these environments from afar without ever passing judgment; paternal, but never paternalistic. It’s also the most richly arranged song of the band’s career–never before have they been able to execute the kind of drop they pull off at the end with as much heft as they manage here. They bring it home on one of Bateman’s best turns of phrase over his years of writing about lost innocence: “Born in a manger/Going home with a stranger.”

Jason Sloan is a guy from Brooklyn by way of Long Island. You can find him on Twitter or occasionally rambling at Tributary.

Hotline TNT – Cartwheel | Album Review

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Third Man Records

I was 20 years old when I first found out about Weed… The band, not the substance.

I used to hang out at the record store where I currently work when- one day, a used copy of Running Back by Weed came in. When Dollhands (now Clearbody) put out our first EP, the label that pressed tapes for us compared our music to Weed, but I thought it was just a joke and not an actual band. As soon as this record was staring me in the face, I knew I had to buy it without a second thought. Sure enough, I got home, threw Running Back on my record player, and it changed my outlook on music forever. I had never heard anything like this collection of songs; I had found my first holy grail of a record. 

I think Will Anderson understands that feeling more than most people in bands do. Hotline TNT did an Audiotree Far Out back in 2019, this was my first exposure to the group. Having already spent countless hours with Weed’s KEXP session, I quickly realized that this was Will’s new band, and needless to say, I was an instant fan. The first thing I did after watching that Audiotree was open up Spotify and type in Hotline TNT- to my surprise, nothing showed up. I then searched YouTube and found out that the only way to get these songs was to download them through a Mediafire link in the description of Fireman’s Carry. Back then, the only way to hear Hotline TNT was through YouTube, vinyl, or this janky Mediafire link. I grew up torrenting on Limewire, so this wasn’t a foreign process to me, in fact, it felt special like I was the only person that had this on their phone. 

All this to say, I’ve been closely watching the metamorphosis of this band, and Cartwheel feels like a victory lap after the longest possible NASCAR race of all time. The band is firing on all cylinders here, and with a bare-bones 33-minute runtime, not a moment is wasted. This record blends the perfect mix of cool style, cuteness, and loud-ass fuckin guitars. The textures of guitar tone are unlike anything I’ve heard in any other album, 100 other bands could try all the studio wizardry in the world and not achieve sounds like these. At its core, the tone sounds like it’s being built with an acoustic guitar, but it’s fuzzed out to the max. I especially love the color the 12-string adds on “Stump,” the record’s heartfelt closer. 

Cartwheel starts with the first two singles, “Protocol” and “I Thought You’d Change.” I was lucky enough to first hear “Protocol” last year when I saw Hotline open for Snail Mail and Momma. The song blew my mind then, and it somehow still does every time I hear it. My favorite track on the record is “Spot Me 100,” the way Will starts the song with “Squad car, caught you on the Autobahn” really does something for me. The lyrics are buried underneath all the layers of guitar, as God intended, but when one slips through the wall, it sticks with you for the rest of the runtime.

When you break down all the songs on this record, it’s the old man’s definition of Shoegaze, simply pop songs that are played deafeningly loud. Personally, I love how skewed the meaning of shoegaze has become; the genre can truly be whatever the artist (or the listener) wants it to be. Some people will call this a lo-fi record, maybe even just a rock record, but to me, this is the closest anyone has gotten to making our generation’s Loveless. Cartwheel is easily my favorite record that’s come out this year, even the interlude track is a contender for one of the best songs this year. 

After being a fan for so long, this LP exceeded my already high expectations. Cartwheel is a career-defining album for Hotline TNT. I love seeing this band win, I love it whenever I go to their Spotify page and see those monthlies go up. They’ve been grinding for years at this point and have been playing the game their way, and it’s really inspiring for someone like me to see that you can do it YOUR way. Being in a band is hard work, it took me the better part of two years to write songs for my band’s last release, so I can hear all the love and hard work that went into Cartwheel. I often think about how we’ll view records 20 years down the road; the process of putting out an album is so quick, and sometimes it feels like people forget about music a week after its release, but this is not one of those records. Even though it’s only a few weeks old at this point, it’s clear that Cartwheel will easily be a touchstone of this era of music.

My name is Eric Smeal, and I play in a band called Clearbody. We put out a record called Bend Into a Blur earlier this year, and I’m very proud of it. We play shows and tour sometimes, but right now, I’m just out here living life, writing our next record, working my day job, taking photos, etc. My handle everywhere is @amplifierwrship, thanks for reading!

Puppy Angst: One Year of Scorpio Season

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Dreamy, gazey Philadelphia rockers Puppy Angst celebrated one year of their debut LP Scorpio Season, hitting the road on an East Coast tour and releasing a vinyl edition to commemorate the occasion. Swim Into The Sound spoke with lead vocalist Alyssa Milman as they looked back on the genesis, recording, and touring of this creative and impressive contribution to indie rock. 

Milman was a founding member of bands Blushed and Past Life and has played as a touring member of Kississippi. They noted that touring with Kississippi and other bands has been a deeply generative experience, which helped shape and focus their sights on their own musical projects. 

“As of April 2022, Puppy Angst is my only band. It’s why I left Kississippi. Having those experiences on the stage as we played… definitely shaped me as a musician, in the sense that it taught me what tour was really like,” said Milman. “It was a whirlwind and definitely changed things for me. I had never played on a stage that big. It just [gave] me a bit of a hunger to have this band get to do that stuff, too.”

Puppy Angst is a rollicking rock outfit suffused with youthful energy and tenderness, nurturing both brashness and vulnerability. Milman described the sound as “like if Mannequin Pussy or Bully was a shoegaze band.” To my ear, it also recalls glam rock and pop-punk while being something entirely original.

The band’s grounding in the Philadelphia rock ecosystem is one of Puppy Angst’s great strengths. Every member in the band besides Milman is in other projects; drummer Eric Naroden is the frontman of In Lieu of Roses, synth player Pauli Mia is the frontwoman of Twin Princess, and bassist John Heywood tours with indie superstar Alex G. Guitarist Dan Leinweber played alongside Milman in Blushed, and makes ambient music under the name greenspace. “It is cool to have this intricate web,” said Milman. “A band family. Bands-in-law, as [synth player] Pauli would say.”

For Scorpio Season, Puppy Angst’s debut album, the creative process was a mix of gradual cultivation and rapid finalization. The songs were written slowly, starting in 2019 and continuing over the next three years. Lead single “Yellow Paint,” a catchy and dynamic song, which offers an early high point on the album. The revving guitars deliver energy and strength, while the warbling synths add a layer of gauzy beauty and complexity.

“‘Yellow Paint,’ as soon as I wrote it, I was like “this is the one. This is the greatest song I’ve ever written!” Milman adds, “It was one of those moments where I was like “I can’t believe I wrote that.”

Writing the album was as much a process of transmogrifying old songs as it was coming up with new material; some of the songs, like “Aftermath,” had been reworked from early versions performed with previous bands.

“‘Aftermath’ was a really fast [song], it fit the Blushed world of the surf punk, super quick, chaotic type of thing, which we do a lot of in Puppy Angst! But something about it felt wrong to just take the song that Blushed wrote and record it verbatim on our album,” said Milman. “To record it, I wanted it to be a new song while still honoring some of that old song, like put it into the Puppy Angst world while also not taking too much from what Blushed did in the past.”

In contrast to the slow and intricate writing process, recording was done in a flash, with the band eager to finish the record in time for an (on-brand) Scorpio season release. “We went into Headroom Studios, just me, John, and Eric. We got all the drums and bass done in a day and a half,” said Milman. 

Additional recording took place in the home studio of the sound engineer Joanna Baumann with the help of Dan Leinweber while Milman left for tour with Kississippi. “I was worried I just wouldn’t have the time or the creative energy to write all these guitar parts for an album, but I knew I wanted to have the bottom layers on it, to make it really textural, really lush,” said Milman.

“We finished mixing it in the summer of 2022 and put it out on October 24, 2022. So it was a long-winded process, but in the end, it was really quick,” said Milman. “I wanted it to be called Scorpio Season, I’d had this plan for so long… I wanted it to be for the fall and winter, I wanted it to match the season it came out in.”

The album indeed carries a punchy melancholy that feels appropriate for the autumn months; the album is colored with themes of both decay and renewal, a certain bitterness and pain, and is tempered with perspective and reflection. Even the songs that are by no means soft carry an unshakable vulnerability; on “Your Bones,” Milman sings, “I would’ve comforted you, I would’ve comforted you, but… you would never do the same.” The strong doses of anguish and abandon make the record feel at home in the darkest months of the year.

After the album’s release, the band embarked on an extensive tour, playing everything from college radio shows to two official showcases as South By Southwest.

“Our two official showcases were so, so much better than I ever could have imagined. Packed rooms! It was bizarre!” recounts Milman. “There were shows where the venue staff and bartenders were buying our merch. I was like, ‘You guys see so many bands! It’s so wild you would want to buy a tee shirt from us.’ That felt very affirming.”

The smaller shows were also memorable, with Milman noting that the younger audiences carry different (higher!) energy. “We played a really insane house show where Pauli was scared her beer was going to get knocked over by kids moshing,” Milman recalls, laughing.

Ultimately, the tour’s success has represented more than a good record; it represents a validation of individual and collective ambition, a deserved reward for Milman and the band’s dedication. In this way, Scorpio Season is a triumph, both personal and artistic.

“It’s been a really long process of realizing that I can put my own art, my creative pursuit first, it can be my first priority, and I can be all in on it,” said Milman. “Sometimes I feel like I’m making a fool out of myself. But then, on this tour, I was like, “No, the dream is happening! This is the dream.”

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.