Crush Fund – New Fixation | EP Review

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Blixworld Records

I do not dance. Whenever I try to dance at a show, I feel deeply self-conscious as I shuffle my feet back and forth in a box the width of my shoulders and swing my arms out of time with the band. So I don’t dance. I do, however, find catharsis in diving into the pit occasionally. I enjoy writhing around in a mass of humanity that swirls me across the floor regardless of where I want to be. Diving into the pit is cathartic because it lets me release control of my body. I don’t have a chance to get self-conscious about my dance moves because I’m more worried about staying on my feet. 

I’ve seen Crush Fund ten times since they released their debut EP, Drama, back in 2021, and I love that their shows offer a chance for trans girls to experience liberation. Even still, I’ve never been the one to start the pit, even when they tried to peer-pressure me into it the time I saw them in D.C. But the first time I put on New Fixation, I felt compelled to dance. Any moment I found myself alone, be it in the office, the bathroom, the elevator, or the kitchen, was a chance to two-step to “Womanhood.” Only one other album has triggered this impulse: Gel’s Only Constant.

The songs on New Fixation are manifestations of the pure reactionary impulse that comes from roiling under the patriarchy. The EP’s centerpiece, “Unwanted Attention,” features vocalist and drummer Nora Knox gazing back at someone treating her like a piece of meat over a knotty, bouncy riff on the verses before things escalate to a boiling hardcore chorus. The first time the chorus comes around, we only get one run-through of it, just a taste of the feeling of pushing back, so when they immediately go into the second verse, we’re already craving another chance to shout, “fuck you! Get off my dick!” It’s a fabulous pop songwriting trick tucked into a song you can two-step with.

My favorite track is “Tender is the Night” for how it turns being desperately horny into a minute and a half of pit-churning fury. In the first verse, Knox details an illicit tryst in the park that quickly dissolves to reveal it is a masturbatory fantasy. The choruses don’t just revel in that solo pleasure; each repetition of the cyclical guitar and bass hectically races towards collapse, and each bar adds another layer of Knox’s vocals, all coming together to mimic the taut, singular sensation of the body and mind being overwhelmed by pure feeling until she finally cries out, “right there!” The short stop between the second chorus and coda is a satisfactory reprieve, a chance to catch your breath. 

While “Tender is the Night'' is all about reaching satisfaction, “W.W.Y.D.” offers no reprieve as it crams a panic attack into each 5/4 bar. Each chorus ends with the instruments piled up on each other like a car wreck before pulling themselves back together. The song is a neverending cycle of doubt in yourself and desperation for someone to tell you what to do. “W.W.Y.D.” is a song trying its hardest to keep you from dancing, but you just can’t be stopped. 

This is the beauty of Crush Fund’s version of dance music. It taps into your impulses and gives you a chance to hand off control of your body to the beat. New Fixation is an offer to dance yourself clean of your frustrations.

Lillian Weber is a fake librarian in NYC. She writes about gender, music, and other inane thoughts on her substack, all my selves aligned. You can follow her burner account on twitter @Lilymweber 

Rosali – Bite Down | Album Review

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Merge Records

There’s something unshakably elemental about Rosali Middleman’s music. Maybe it’s the pastoral greens she uses to color her album covers or the sweeping, naturalistic lyrics she uses to flesh out her music. Or at least when I’m listening to her rage and writhe around with her backing band, Mowed Sound, thoughts of weather are conjured. If 2021’s No Medium was a whirling storm, then Rosali’s new album, Bite Down, is the waves settling back into place, finding a rhythm that’s confident and precise. 

Bite Down finds Rosali in a new place, both figuratively and literally. In the time since her last record, she’s relocated from Philly to Asheville, something we’ve all considered doing, or maybe that’s just me. Either way, the serenity of the Blue Ridge Mountains seems to be rubbing off on her, as her fourth LP is filled with early morning music that begs you to sit on the porch with your coffee and look out at the leaves while you consider life’s possibilities. It’s funny because the album cover is unnerving, featuring a wide-eyed Rosali grinning through a shroud of leaves, resulting in a spectral sensation that goes against the grain of the naturalistic feeling found in the music. 

This meditative sentiment is captured perfectly on the album’s closer, “Make It An Offer,” as Rosali ponders, “And I’ll sit for hours gazing at the light. And I do wonder and waste my life. No, I don’t wonder if I waste my life.” The real waste is to allow these thoughts of doubt to cloud your mind. “There is hope upon me. There is reason to try,” reminds Rosali. This instinct to persevere is also present on the album’s emotional centerpiece, “Hills On Fire,” which finds Rosali pursuing love in a world that’s burning as she sings, “Hills on fire and still we climb.” Both of these songs feature mid-tempo arrangements, spotlighting her lyrics and matching the contemplative state that she finds herself in.

While the album has a wealth of soft and tender-hearted lyrics, this is far from a sleepy affair; throughout the album's 45-minute runtime, the group finds plenty of time to let loose with instrumentals that simmer and explode. Rosali and her band put together one hell of a bar rocker with “My Kind,” where she expresses her frustration of having fumbled the bag, pleading, “How am I gonna live without you?” The tightly wound “Slow Pain” shoots off sparks of guitars before igniting into a full blaze of captivating soloing. On penultimate track, “Change Is In the Form,” Rosali’s selflessness as a collaborator is on full display as she steps aside to let guitarists James Schroeder and David Nance take center stage with their dueling pyrotechnics.

None of this would be possible without the deepened collaboration between Rosali and her backing band, Mowed Sound. On No Medium, they were crafting turbulent country rockers in the vein of Neil Young and Crazy Horse, but on Bite Down, they play like a school of fish, moving together as one, yet still each member to glint in the light. Rosali might have found herself in new surroundings for this record, but the amazing thing is, you can't tell. Even more settled in and communal than her last release, Rosali seems to have found a place that feels like home.

Connor is an English professor in the Bay Area, where he lives with his partner and their cat and dog, Toni and Hachi. When he isn’t listening to music or writing about killer riffs, Connor is reading fiction and obsessing over sports.

Cheem – Fast Fashion | EP Review

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Lonely Ghost Records

A couple of years ago, I decided to make the journey from Los Angeles to Sacramento to stay with some friends, using a Coheed and Cambria show in Berkeley as the perfect excuse for a little cross-state adventure. In an attempt to keep travel expenses down and being the perpetually car-less wonder that I am, this trek was to be made via Greyhound bus. Traveling from LA to Sacramento on a public bus is just about the longest trip you could possibly imagine, which necessitated an equally long and engaging collection of songs to pass the time as I took in the great, wide nothingness of central California farmland. 

It's no secret that I love making playlists, especially for travel, so before that trip, I decided to make a collaborative playlist and asked friends to add whatever they were jamming to at the time. Among the additions to this playlist, my friend Sierra of the New Jersey band With Sails Ahead added a song called “Pay2Play” by this band Cheem who had somehow completely slipped under my radar. If their name and bright, stylistic album cover weren’t enough to pique my interest, the music itself felt like dunking my brain in Liz Blizz flavor SoBe and impaling it like the Neversoft eyeball logo that pops up before the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater title screen. 

Listening to Cheem for the first time was like nothing I had ever experienced before – a seamless marriage of early aughts pop-punk vocals, nu-metal rapping, and the tightest rhythm section I had heard in ages. I was immediately arrested by how the band effortlessly shifted from hip-hop to ska to punk and myriad other genres, not only between songs but within the songs themselves. I’ve always found myself drawn to music that plays with various genres and subverts expectations, unafraid to test boundaries, and the way Cheem was not tethered to any one specific style quickly cemented them as one of my all-time favorites in the DIY scene. 

As the relationship between artist and listener has evolved in recent years with the advent and expansion of social media, the discussion of music classification rages on more fervently than ever before. Music fans have become so comfortable having instant access to the artists they listen to, and with that access comes the ability to make these artists aware of every conceivable opinion a listener could have on their music, unfortunately including this onslaught of hot genre takes. I consistently see this happening to the band pulses. and the endless list of genres they are told they are despite being very clear about how they classify themselves. Cheem is another one of these bands that is constantly testing the limits of genre classification. 

The members of Cheem have clearly grown up with an appreciation for multiple genres of music, and you can hear that love incorporated in their songs. In the past, I’ve described them as “a jazz band disguised as a nu-metal band disguised as a pop band.” Funky bass grooves, sharp and textured drum shuffles, heavy riffs, and the smoothest execution of the two-singer style – rapping blended with dynamic vocals reminiscent of a few particular pop-punk vocalists of yesteryear. Even within their last LP, Guilty Pleasure, their sense of style and genre is broken down and rebuilt countless times across the record’s 22-minute runtime. Cheem are a fierce amalgamation of the countless artists who have inspired them, and their latest EP release, Fast Fashion, maintains this versatile approach to their creative process, expanding on it in a fresh, explosive way. 

Immediately, listeners are thrown into this latest Cheem experience with a relentless, biting riff that is soon joined by the band’s rapper, Skye Holden, and it’s clear that “Bootleg” is nothing like the two singles that preceded the EP. Instead, it leans far more into the band’s heavy rock and hip-hop sensibilities, hitting me more like a song straight out of the Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island soundtrack. There’s a freedom in Cheem’s approach to style that allows for the most creative descriptors of their music that are never too far off the mark.

The groundwork laid in the intro track is juxtaposed by “Motorola Razr,” which perfectly encapsulates its name, boasting a distinct, mid-2000s sleekness. This track features the commanding and mesmerizing drumwork I’ve come to love from the band, frenzied pop vocals gliding over them, and irregular keyboard notes sending the listener back to a time when owning a flip phone was one’s coolest quality. Gabe Weitzman’s production on this EP amplifies each song’s most note-worthy aspects, particularly in how gorgeously every bass note and keyboard ping of “Motorola Razr” accents the main groove. The band packs their songs so neatly with various textures, and it's always a treat to hear tracks like this that let every single detail shine. 

The star of Fast Fashion for me, from first listen to every revisit, remains “Jock Horror.” It simultaneously reflects everything I love about Cheem’s signature style while continuing to defy expectations, and what we’re left with is a dark, cynical, hardcore banger. The thick textures are all there, from subtle electronic effects to consistent record scratches, all anchored by sporadic, distorted chords. Lead vocalist Sam Nazaretian’s buttery vocals sail across the pop straight-aways to balance out Skye’s harmonies and rap breaks. Approaching the end of the track, when you think there couldn’t possibly be any more surprises, Sam slides in with the cleanest “oooh girl” vocal lines I’ve ever heard. Even calling them an “earworm” is doing them a disservice. They are operating on a level as a singer that I genuinely believe future generations will look back on with the same reverence as Patrick Stump. “Jock Horror” delivers hip-hop sensibilities, hints of nu-metal, gnarly breakdowns, and more – a stylistic modern masterpiece that could be plucked from several different eras of music and is exactly what makes Cheem such a memorable act in our current musical landscape. I do think “all good things must end” because, unfortunately, this song does. 

This latest offering from Cheem acts as a powerful reminder that not only is genre usually an unnecessary way of defining music in our current climate, but in Cheem’s case, it makes absolutely no sense to confine them to any one specific box. As a writer who actively suppresses using the term “vibes” in her writing, I can’t help but describe this band as running purely on vibes alone. They don’t have time to concern themselves with inconsequential things like genre when they’re hard at work fabricating stylistic bangers straight from the Cheem pop factory. There is something in this EP for everyone, and contrary to what the title would suggest, Fast Fashion is a versatile and calculated collection of songs that will not be wearing out any time soon. 

Ciara Rhiannon (she/her) is a pathological music lover writing out of a nebulous location somewhere in the Pacific Northwest within close proximity of her two cats. She consistently appears on most socials as @rhiannon_comma, and you can read more of her musical musings over at rhiannoncomma.substack.com. 

Empty Heaven – Laughing | Album Review

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Self-Released

Machine Gun Kelly goes pop-punk, Demi Lovato goes metal, Beyoncé goes country. (Taylor Swift goes… pop?) The lines of genre are constantly being blurred, even by some of the industry’s most prominent superstars. But digging into the underground, you’ll find plenty of bands who incorporate multiple styles on a single album or even within a single song that are usually filed far away from any mainstream recognition. Back in January, I reviewed the beautifully radical plastic death by glass beach, an album I commended for its risks, but unfortunately, I don’t see them having a shot at being the opening act on Post Malone’s grunge tour anytime soon. Now I find myself again with a piece of music so freeing, so intense, and so hard to pin down, that I wonder why it can’t be a King Gizzard-level sensation. I don’t think fame is the desire nor the intent of Anthony Sanders, the composer, lyricist, and multi-instrumentalist behind Empty Heaven. What I think the intent might be is to push his personal artistic boundaries until they snap, and in that regard, he made a seismic accomplishment with Laughing.

After a smattering of one-off singles and collaborative tracks, like the forgotten friend ballad “Ozzy” or the almost eponymous “Heaven Is Empty” featuring Jennie Lawless, Empty Heaven’s debut album Getting The Blues came out in 2021. Similarly to those early singles, the release was performed almost entirely by Sanders, save for a few additional vocal appearances. Whether or not it meant to, that album felt like a reflective collection as the world began its first steps out of the COVID-19 pandemic, lo-fi in moments and musically sporadic in others. Two years later, Sanders locked himself in once again while working on a cruise ship. Using the minimal gear he had with him, he recorded  Enjoy Like A Pro, one of my favorite EPs of 2023. It was impressive and inventive how much he was able to convey from the confines of a cabin room, even going so far as to make a music video for the single “Don’t Worry, Be Happy 2” from his digs.

The premiere singles for Laughing, “End Times” and “Hauntology” made two things extremely clear: firstly, that this album was going to be Sanders’ most sophisticated release so far. Tricky time signatures, multi-faceted composition, and hyper-dynamic vocal delivery are key elements to both tracks. And secondly, there would be a noticeable throughline exploring laughter from all sides, as the idea is mentioned in the lyrics on both tracks and three more on the rest of the LP.

“End Times” laments, “I acted like a king, stood atop a mountain, convinced I had a kingdom that had somehow reached the thousands. Now I’m laughing… I’m not laughing” while “Hauntology” declaims, “Every particle’s a ghost of my life in slow motion. Some are every potential that I wouldn’t allow. Some I hurt for glory, and they’re laughing now.” Whether it’s laughter from power or via shame, Sanders thoughtfully journeys the concept from every possible entryway all throughout the album. I love how unrelentingly brash “Hauntology” is displayed, and it pairs well with the prettier presentation of “End Times.”

After the teaser introduction of “We’ll Never Laugh That Way Again,” the record properly kicks off with “We Don’t Want The Same Thing,” a post-genre tour de force with a Liturgy-inspired burst-beat drum performance that leads into a spoken word rock opera. Its challenging presentation could fall anywhere between the Coheed and Cambria to mewithoutYou spectrum of progressive-leaning emo music. There’s a delivery at about two and a half minutes in that is borderline rap metal and yet doesn’t feel forcefully experimental. The complexities of all the songs on Laughing are pure proof of intensive, methodical practice.

If you’re looking for more knockout rockers, Empty Heaven thankfully don’t stop with “Hauntology” or “We Don’t Want The Same Thing,” the album’s second half opens with “The Pattern Is The Pattern,” an anthemic, energy-building, arena-pop-punk showstopper. Sanders’ execution of the chorus could have been taken right out of a Dashboard Confessional track, and even the added guitar solo by guest vocalist Mark Jaeschke (Kittyhawk, Party’z) that finishes it all off reminds me of Matchbook Romance. This song could have easily been a third single, but it having it appear as a killer B-side moment was particularly exciting.

The next outside contribution on Laughing appears as “The Zero With 1000 Faces,” where Sanders’ wife, Nicolette Van Dielen, sings the chorus with him: “Hey, you feel a world away, but there's no world today; I woke up, and the sun was gone. I lost you to space and time, but I think you were a friend of mine, maybe my favorite one! But now, you're gone.” Other than this touching moment, Jaeschke’s solo on “The Pattern is the Pattern” and a flute guest spot from his sister Audrey Belliveau on “Pure This Time,” the album was otherwise performed exclusively by Sanders. Considering the intricacies that lie within every song here, as a fellow creative, his frustratingly high level of talent continues to sideline me with every listen.

“Someone Else’s Song,” begins like a shoegaze track on shuffle before moving into a tender folk verse, not far off from some of the latest Mountain Goats material. It lies in a time signature I can’t quite place, but it’s a wonderfully dizzying ride. Once the drums kick in, it becomes a bit more of a straightforward math rock rager, with Sanders pleading out: “I wanna feel like somebody else / I’m in the tall grass, in the tall grass; squint your eyes and see. / I’ll feel like anything, anything, just not like me.” His balance of aggression and melody on every piece of the album feels so perfectly assembled, like a Voltron of song-structure dynamics.

In 2022, I became fascinated with the idea of the “indie rock musical.” Two of my favorite albums of that year were Ants From Up There by Black Country, New Road and angel in realtime by Gang Of Youths — artful, sprawling records with plenty of non-corny, musical theatre-adjacent moments. Laughing fits right into this distinction, and “Laughing Again” is exactly the finale that you’d expect to wrap the experience up. Sanders mentions “laughing” in all of its derivatives a total of 36 times across its seven-and-a-half-minute runtime, most of them anchored by the somewhat sinister refrain: “When I first died, I was laughing, then not laughing. Now I’m laughing again.” Despite it being the album’s longest track, musically, it doesn’t take quite as many turns as tracks like “We Don't Want the Same Thing” or “Hauntology.” The closer remains at a steady pace while leaning into some meta lyrics: “I’ve been altered by results of aborted cuts. I was born in Empty Heaven five years back. I’m what the demiurge could sculpt.” Mentions of “Heaven” run just behind “laughing” as the album’s core subject, but I believe this lyric is a direct reference to Sanders stating via his YouTube series that he plans to fully retire the project upon the album’s release. At least it will have to be after Empty Heaven’s only two slated live performances for the end of March 2024 in Sanders’ second home state of Texas.

Laughing is the culmination of five years of work for a band that had its ending written even long before I wrote this review. It seems borderline impossible that fans of any subgenre couldn’t find something to enjoy about it. I dream of the day more bands can be as unabashedly outgoing on an album as Empty Heaven is on this one. And if this truly is the ending of the project, I’m not laughing.

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

Josaleigh Pollett – YKWIM (Pacing Remix) | Song Premiere

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Self-Released

Josaleigh Pollett’s In The Garden, By The Weeds was one of my favorite singer-songwriter albums of last year, excitably detailed in my glowing review on this very blog. One of the project’s standout elements is its embrace of quirky, semi-electronic production by Pollett and bandmate Jordan Watko, aka Crowd Shy. It’s the type of record that perfectly lends itself to being re-imagined, and today, Pollett reveals the debut track from an upcoming yet-to-be-titled remix album. We’re pleased to share a version of the original album opener, “YKWIM,” reinterpreted by Katie McTigue, aka Pacing.

“YKWIM (Pacing Remix)” showcases exactly what lengths can be reached with these already fantastic songs. McTigue preserves the lo-fi energy of the original while giving it a fresh indietronic spin that sounds like It’s Blitz!-era Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It keeps the integrity of Pollett’s original vision intact and is enhanced with McTigue’s personality, as she explains here:

“I basically just dug through the stems, picked out the sounds that I thought were interesting and had fun playing with them. There was this big, noisy, distorted "chop" happening on a loop that I thought was super cool, so I turned it way up and added a bunch more noise. And I used my mountain dulcimer to make a bunch of droney stuff. This song is conveniently in D, which is the only key I know how to play dulcimer in! For the vocals, I had fun trying to sing like Josaleigh to blend with them. I love singing with my friends so much. I wish we could sing together in person!”

Pacing is a largely acoustic project, but McTigue makes a seamless transition into digital producer with this remix. The track was mixed by Dylan Ganz and mastered by Andrew Goldring. There’s no release date for the entire remix project yet, so in the meantime, listeners have the opportunity to venture into Josaleigh Pollett’s brilliant In The Garden, By The Weeds in its original form while we eagerly await to hear more takes on these songs from other artists.

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