Ekko Astral – pink balloons | Album Review

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Topshelf Records 

As a trans woman, I spent the first 24 years of my life walking through a security line, checking for deviances from the norm in my performance of masculinity. When you spend every day questioning whether you fit in, you mistrust whether you know who you are. I had not heard a record capture these feelings more concretely until pink balloons by Ekko Astral. Throughout the album’s 36-minute runtime, frontwoman Jael Holzman lays out the issues trans people are forced to grapple with over a wall of noisy post-punk.

Ekko Astral hails from our nation's capital and has formed a nice little cult on the strength of their first excellent EP, QUARTZ, and a stellar live show, which, after I saw it once, drove me to travel to DC just to see again. QUARTZ was an incredible first document, full of moments that inspire desperate sing-alongs, like the brilliant kiss-off to the male gaze, “EAT OFF MY CHEST (WHILE I STARE AT THE CAMERA),” or tracks like “1000 DEGREES” that contrasts the ferocity with an ethereal dream of a blissfully content life.

But pink balloons takes everything magnificent about QUARTZ and allows the band to stretch out their sound and mutate. Where there was once space in the mix of “YXI,” newer songs like “head empty blues” immediately present a more claustrophobic sound, filling the mix in with two additional guitars. Holzman’s lyrics on “THE MIRROR IS A MONSTER” were already semi-surrealist, but now it feels like they have been infested with Twitter brainworms when she sings, “my brain’s bust like / molly shannon / just shoot me out a cannon / and as I hit / open my head / can you see it? / nothing’s there!” 

I love the ways Holzman hysterically details the experience of endless dates on “uwu type beat” with lines like “baskets of fries / empty suit guys” and “he skipped just one of her episodes / and now he’s completely lost the plot / he’s going gone.” One track later, “on brand” finds her desperate for love when she sings, “she’s lefty loosey / but the right guy could / make her swing right tho.” The whole record is full of brilliant lines that I have wanted to steal and tweet myself ever since I first pressed play, like the cry against consumerism, “spending all my money on a mass hysteria,” or the crazy rhyme of “you’re running thru the aisles / drinking taco bell mild / credence clearwater revival / just another two-week trial.” 

The humor and linguistic creativity in Holzman’s lyrics make the moments of directness feel even more impactful. We see these dynamics at play most distinctly on “devorah” with how the Taco Bell couplet immediately follows Holzman excoriating Congress people for compartmentalizing issues into simple acronyms on the lines “I’ve got solidarity with all the missing murdered people! / I’ve got solidarity! / Do you solidarity?” She expands the acronym used on the hill for Missing or Murdered Indigenous People to remind us that these issues aren’t just talking points. Holzman’s plea of “nothing’s funny anymore” on the coda of “sticks and stones” reminds me of fellow DC punk Ian Mackaye’s call of “irony is the refuge of the educated” on “Facet Squared.” We have to engage in the issues of our time instead of avoiding them with artifice.

The most impactful moment of the record for me rests in the chorus of lead single “baethoven.” Holzman’s cries of “the pain of being myself” are layered one on top of each other to the point of being nearly incoherent as the rhythm section hammers an icepick through your eye socket. The loudest critic of my transition has always been the dysphoric thoughts that rush into my head when I look at myself in the mirror and notice all the things, like my brow ridge or beard shadow, that make my brain deny my femininity. That is “the pain of being myself,” and it is fucking overwhelming. 

My favorite moment comes with the gentle, guitar-only ballad “make me young.” Bassist Guinevere Tully takes lead vocals for this track, delivering the line “all those things I thought I was / got muddled with what I’ve become,” which captures the dual reality of transness: being happy with existing truly while perpetually yearning for more. When Tully sings, “Yeah I know these thoughts / shouldn’t drive me insane / but they do / oh it does,” I’m reminded of how it feels to agonize over the fact that I didn’t start transitioning earlier. How hearing Transgender Dysphoria Blues didn’t make everything click for me. “make me young” may be the easiest track to digest aesthetically, but that’s only there to lull you into a false sense of security. This song will break you. 

“make me young” is meant to destabilize you in terms of sequencing as well, as its jangly guitars immediately follow the haunting, skeletal beat of “somewhere at the bottom of the river between l’enfant and eastern market.” The echo of “I can see you shifting in your seat” that opens the record finds its source here in a spoken word passage about how cis people shy away from facing the realities we trans people experience. They want to ignore the fact that “lots of us don’t make it home.” The impact of politics is material in our lives, and we need cis people to understand the fact that “if you walk through a cemetery / you’ll pass people buried under gravestones of strangers.” To sit uncomfortably and do nothing is complicity. Or, as Holzman says, “I have friends still hiding while you throw a parade.” 

The most euphoric moment on this record comes at the very end. Closing track “i90” starts with three minutes of simmering, tension-building solo guitar that calls to mind how IDLES ended their first record with a lament. In the second verse, Holzman is joined, for the first time all record, in solidarity by another voice, Josaleigh Pollett’s. When the tension finally gets to be too much, the rest of the band syncs up with Holzman and Pollett belting out a repeated plea of “low rider / hang em higher / keep the rhythm.” After a record detailing the trials and tribulations of transitioning, this is a plea for you to survive. “i90” is not a triumphant end to the record, but it is a true one. Until we can burn this whole thing down and build a new world in our image, all you can do is keep the rhythm and, God, stay alive, please.

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

Teens In Trouble – What's Mine | Album Review

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Asian Man Records

When you think of North Carolina, what are some of the first things that come to mind? Most people would probably mention how the state’s passion for college basketball teams reaches a messianic level or how the delectable fried chicken and buttermilk biscuits from Bojangles just hit different. But what’s flying under the radar Wright-brothers-style is how influential The Tar Heel State is when it comes to indie music. The lineage started in the early 90s with noise rock acts like Archers of Loaf and Superchunk. Today, bands like Wednesday, MJ Lenderman, and Indigo De Souza have roared onto the scene, creating memorable albums that stick in your mind like super glue. Now, the newest contender to join these prestigious ranks is Raleigh resident Lizzie Killian and her band Teens in Trouble.

On their debut album, What’s Mine, Killian takes us on a blast from the past ride with a bevy of melodic hooks and heavy guitars. The record comes out the gates swinging with the fuzzy pop-punk hit “You Don’t Want To Mess With Me.” Enlisting Stefan Babcock of the band PUP, Killian sprinkles him throughout the track like a gourmet chef, adding in some extra seasoning through an assist on guitar and vocals on the chorus. She sends warning shots to a potential new love interest, singing, “And I know better than to ask the world of you / And don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Fitting into everyday society is something that weighs heavily on Killian’s mind as she tries to navigate social norms throughout the album. She’s been trying to find her place since the start of the pandemic, and you soon start to see that this is a lifelong struggle. You can get a sense with each social faux pas she makes that Killian dies a little inside from embarrassment. In the uptempo jams “Awkward Girl” and “Autopilot,” she uses self-deprecation, calling herself “weird” and “annoying” as a tool trying to mask her destructive moments when out in public. She seeks comfort in isolation while finding peace within herself, repeating “I’ve got me / It’s just me” as a personal mantra. We know that she’s had her fair share of cringe-worthy moments throughout her life, but who among us hasn’t? We’ve all gotten to a point where something so embarrassing happens to us that we just want to curl up into a ball and die. Killian articulates the pain one feels like a seasoned veteran over groovy-sounding guitars.

Elsewhere, Killian crafts songs that make me wonder about the possibilities of time travel. Let’s say, hypothetically, it exists, and you got your grubby little hands on Doc Brown’s DeLorean. I’m jealous, by the way. If you took What’s Mine to every radio station in 1994, they wouldn’t even bat an eye at you… in fact, they’d probably thank you for bringing such a bounty of hooks to their airwaves. Killian is clearly a student of her craft because she has mastered the sound of the 90s with swirling guitars and cranked-up distortion aplenty. From the bright pop melodies to ample fuzz, when you drop the needle on What’s Mine, you’re liable to get transported back to a summer 30 years in the past without having to drive 88 mph to get there. Every Gen X person who sits at home starving for Blue-Era Weezer will be well-fed by “It’s Up To Me.” The riffs are so chunky and thrashing you would think Rivers Cuomo was playing guitar behind the curtain. The hook is simple yet gargantuan, culminating in the best song on the record. 

Killian's love of music is apparent with each passing song, from her sonic inspirations to her natural ability to capture a moment in time. In the back half of the record, we discover that music is also a window into her soul. Anyone who’s ever made a playlist for a crush knows the rollercoaster of emotion that goes into it. The careful curation of each song, the nervous handoff, and (hopefully) the pure ecstasy you feel when they end up loving it. When it all goes well, it can feel like you just won the relationship lottery, and on “Playlist,” Killian wants to listen to every one of those songs you hold dear. Throughout the rapidly paced song, she brings a wired energy as she questions what songs you listen to when you cry, when you're high, or when you're dancing alone. Nick and Norah, eat your heart out.

Teens In Trouble’s brand of indie rock tugs at your emotions with in-your-face, passionate, direct lyricism. Killian creates a safe space through playful melodies and ageless guitar riffs that make going through the difficulties of finding your societal belonging not so burdensome. Her songs touch upon social anxiety, loneliness, and embarrassment in ways that can be used directly by the younger generation as a coming-of-age text. Killian confronting her struggles with self-acceptance on What's Mine shows that the growth process never stops even past your formative years. We’re lucky that she’s here to use her voice not only to help herself but also the teens who are actually in trouble. 

David is a content mercenary based in Chicago. He's also a freelance writer specializing in music, movies, and culture. His hidden talents are his mid-range jump shot and the ability to always be able to tell when someone is uncomfortable at a party. You can find him scrolling away on Instagram @davidmwill89, Twitter @Cobretti24, or Medium @davidmwms.

Stars Hollow – In the Flower Bed | EP Review

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Acrobat Unstable Records

Emo has come a long way in the three years since Stars Hollow's last release. Whatever phase of emo we’re in these days—5th wave, post-emo, whatever—Stars Hollow is back for more existential jams and tasty riffs with their third EP, In the Flower Bed.

In general, the genre we’ve come to sometimes ironically call “emo” has come a long way since this photo.

All but two of the bands featured in this photo have largely faded into the ether, for some reasons worse than others. That speaks volumes about the volatile nature of this genre as a whole. After their first full-length LP in 2021, the future of Stars Hollow was up in the air. Too fresh off a global pandemic to properly tour, the trio spent the intervening years working on their careers, pursuing higher education, and discovering themselves. Letting their body of work speak for itself, the band reformed three years later, ready to take another swing at it. Leaning back on the short form of their earlier releases, the group has reemerged with a collection of songs that pick right back up where they left off. 

From the introductory first track, the Iowa-based trio kicks off the EP as if they never left, jumping right back into the exact type of morbid lyricism we've come to love from the band. Continuing the grotesquely dark themes found in the rest of the Stars Hollow discography, vocalist Tyler Stodghill beckons, “I’m laying out / the clothes I’ll be buried in.” The EP’s minute-long commencement sets the stage for the themes of rejuvenation found throughout the following four tracks.

If I were to boil Stars Hollow down to just a few things, it'd be 1) twinkly-ass emo riffs, 2) a penchant for the above-mentioned dark lyricism, and 3) punctual tracks. The band’s latest EP features five songs, only one of which is over two and a half minutes. This is something that I love from music in general, no matter the artist. My internet-fried Gen Z brain can’t withstand tracks longer than four minutes, and Stars Hollow almost always deliver on this front. With In The Flower Bed, the band manages to pack meaningful lyrics and crowd-swirling riffs into two-minute windows that keep everything feeling effective, emotive, and impactful.

Despite its 10-minute run time, the band is able to get across their message loud and clear. Crafted as a concept EP about the complicated relationship we hold with our past selves, the tacks seem to swap back and forth between Stoghill’s “who I was back then” and himself in present day. Hindsight is always 20/20, and it’s difficult not to be frustrated with your past self when looking back and all the mistakes are in plain sight. This EP challenges that notion by shifting it into a positive one. Rather than throwing out who he once was, Stoghill is burying it out back and watching it grow. 

The band also delivers on their signature twinkly emo sound throughout the EP. For example, track two, “Thorns,” starts with a bouncy intro akin to what we hear on their 2019 single, “Tadpole.” It’s patently Stars Hollow and a warm way to welcome fans back into the band’s world. 

Twinkle shredding is all well and good, but that’s also not all we find on the EP. Track four, ”Sickening,” finds the band at their heaviest since their debut EP, I’m Really Not That Upset About It. On this song, Stars Hollow enters their Sempiternal era, ending the track on a breakdown paired with a glitched-out scream that feels very 2013 metalcore in the best way. The track also features some of the darkest lyricism on an already dread-filled EP, with Stodghill at one point shouting, “It hurts to not tell you / I want to crack my fucking skull / on pavement.” The group follows up on that heaviness with one of their softest tracks ever, in the form of their closing title track, “In the Flower Bed.” This juxtaposition makes for a quaint ending to the release that also recounts the overall themes of the EP. 

In the Flower Bed places the listener out in the garden, with many of the tracks about burying what once was yet still valuing that person, place, or time in the past for what they contributed. Throughout these five songs, there are various times where Stodghill mentions killing who he was back then, a sentiment listeners are encouraged to take as literally or figuratively as they want. However, the album lands softly in the end, wrapping up with the line, “sinking slowly / never lonely / in the flower bed.” 

Despite its sometimes graphic lyricism, In The Flower Bed fosters a space of growth, optimism, and reconciliation. Just because something is emo doesn’t mean it has to be hopeless. As the band walks us through these anguished sentiments, brutal lyrics, and knotty riffs, this EP is ultimately about burying your past self to forge a better future. Sometimes, you have to work through the dark stuff to reach the fresh start that’s waiting on the other side. 

The final track ends fittingly with a soft callback to the band's 2018 EP, Happy Again. Echoes of the band’s older lyrics float around the listener, with some distant, younger version of Stodghill singing, “I’m the not same / I’ll be happy again.” For just a moment, these two selves exist simultaneously, briefly acknowledging one another before the song fades to black, leaving us in the flower bed, present day, with nothing but boundless options before us. 

Brandon Cortez is a writer/musician residing in El Paso, Texas, with his girlfriend and two cats. When not playing in shitty local emo bands, you can find him grinding Elden Ring on his second cup of cold brew. Find him on Twitter @numetalrev.

Butterflies Don’t Go Away: Majesty Crush’s Long-awaited Moment 

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Numero Group

I often find myself consumed by life’s “what if” moments. The chance of it all. The little things that never happened. There are different levels of “what if”—missing a train, leaving a party early, deciding to move across the country—but the sentiment remains true: in some other reality out there, there’s a version of you that is living with the repercussions of catching the train, staying at the party, or not moving. You have no idea what their life is like, and you just have to be okay with that. Most of the time, I’m not.

Some people like to think the things that are supposed to happen will happen, one way or another. Like meeting your partner on a dating app in your twenties, then learning you overlapped a few years at summer camp as kids, or finally landing the dream job you were rejected from at the start of your career. They’ll say it’s all about ‘timing’ and ‘alignment’ and ‘what the universe has in store.’ That’s too much relying on external forces for me, but I’ll admit it’s nice to relinquish control of your life for a second.

Is it obvious I was just emotionally wrecked by Past Lives? Anyway…

A lot of the time, life isn’t that simple. It’s sprawling, multifaceted, and confusing, with no direct answers or guaranteed results. Even when good things happen to us, it’s easy to nitpick what’s wrong with any given situation. But you’re still allowed to feel joy when a dream you had is finally coming to fruition.

This back-and-forth about fate versus control mirrors Majesty Crush’s journey over the last three decades. Back with a career-spanning double LP thanks to Numero Group, Butterflies Don’t Go Away combines a repress of their 1993 record Love 15 with a second disc of singles, rarities, and previously unavailable tracks. I’d argue it’s one of the most important reissues, at least in the last five years, but to understand that, we need to take a look back.

Photo By Amy Harlan

Majesty Crush is often referred to as one of the ‘forgotten’ bands of the early ‘90s shoegaze boom. The Detroit-based four-piece differentiated themselves with an innate ability to mutate from shoegaze to dream-pop to punk to grunge and back again. David Stroughter led the band as a reluctant, Syd Barrett-type frontman whose piercing vocals glided over the instrumentals, with Hobey Echlin on bass, Mike Segal on guitar, and Odell Nails III on drums. Together, they created a sweeping and all-consuming sound that made them stand out, mostly because people really couldn’t pin them down. The group quickly gained notoriety within their Midwest community, earning significant airplay on college and alternative rock radio stations. Opening for everyone from Mazzy Star and Sonic Youth to Royal Trux and The Verve, Majesty Crush seemed to be able to win over audiences in just about any scene. Yet no one could figure them out.

Majesty Crush’s mixed-race lineup made them something of an anomaly in the predominantly British shoegaze scene. It was hard to get a read of the band’s sound just by their appearance, something bassist Hobey Echlin says he thinks made the group so special in their local scene: fans had never heard anything like Majesty Crush, let alone from people that look like them. 

Immediately following the release of Love 15 in 1993, Majesty Crush’s label Dali, an Elektra subsidiary, shuttered, making it their first and only full-length LP. Here were these local legends, ready to spread their sound way outside the confines of their city, who suddenly had no backing or promotion to hold them up. Because of this, Love 15 fell through the cracks. As grunge quickly swept up the remains of a shoegaze/dream-pop scene in the US, Majesty Crush remained under the radar. The group went on to release one final EP, Sans Muscles, on their own Vulva Records before disbanding in 1995. 

Over the next 30 years, the band members split off into a disparate web of careers, including but not limited to yoga instructing, graphic design, law, and journalism. But the music remained, especially for Stroughter, who continued to record and release as P.S. I Love You, even recruiting Crush bassist Echlin to play drums on some tracks.

Eventually, the group settled in different parts of the country. In 2017, years after his last communication with anyone from Majesty Crush, David Stroughter was killed by police in El Segundo. Stroughter’s mental health continued to decline throughout the aughts, and his nomadic lifestyle made it difficult for him to regularly have access to his medications. While the LA County District Attorney deemed the police’s use of their guns lawful, the need for such force remains heavily debated, making this another case of unnecessarily escalated police violence against people of color.

And now, in 2024, Numero Group is offering listeners the most comprehensive collection of Majesty Crush music ever. In 2019, it was revealed that Stroughter had left Majesty Crush master tapes in an old roommate’s closet and had asked his sister to be the custodian of his music. Without realizing it, Stroughter left the rest of Majesty Crush (and the world) a gift he never could have anticipated. 

With this reissue, Majesty Crush’s discography is newly available to day-one fans who remember seeing them live in Detroit all those years ago, as well as newfound shoegazers hungry for more sounds. This is especially true as the shoegaze genre is enjoying a renaissance, thanks in part to TikTok, opening the door for Majesty Crush to finally get their long-deserved recognition. Some would argue that a shoegaze resurgence and social media virality was exactly what Majesty Crush desperately needed back in the ‘90s (I can see the ‘Our label closed right after our debut album dropped’ multi-part TikTok series so clearly), but it came at the price of Stroughter losing his life, prompting the discovery of these masters. Now, Stroughter isn’t here to see how many new ears have found his music and are moved by his gutturally passionate vocals and ultra-specific storytelling. It’s heartbreaking to think that Majesty Crush’s “time” came after they lost the man who tied them all together and became the beacon of their sound. 

Photo by Jack Nelson

Butterflies Don’t Go Away takes listeners on Majesty Crush’s tumultuous journey through early versions of Love 15 tracks (“No. 1 Fan - EP Version,” “Horse - EP Version,” “Purr 7” Version”), their first-ever release (“Sunny Pie”), and songs from the post-label shuttering EP Sans Muscles. Through these tracks, we see a band finding, then possibly attempting to change, their sound. The humble basement beginnings are clear on the noisiest tracks like the 7” version of “Purr” and the EP rendition of “No. 1 Fan,” but the stars align on Love 15 tracks like “Boyfriend” and “Grow.” The group’s post-label loss anguish clearly rips through Sans Muscles songs like “Seine” and “Ghost of Fun.” 

On Love 15, “Purr” is a minute-long cascade akin to Pink Floyd’s “Breathe (In the Air),” however, on the 7” rendition, we hear the song as it was originally released: as a four-minute single, complete with expansive, brain-scratching guitar textures. While the single version of “Cicciolina,” a song Stroughter wrote about an Italian porn star, is sauntering, moody, and slowed, the album version more fully encapsulates the rage-meets-desire feeling Stroughter felt for this woman, with Mike Segal’s crunchy and grating guitar, Hobey Echlin’s hypnotic bass lines, and Odell Nails’ pulsing backing rhythms propelling the track forward. 

Stroughter escalates the idea of female obsession throughout these songs, with most lyrics toeing the line of a twisted psycho-sexual fantasy. These songs are often the darkest yet poppiest tracks, which was at the heart of Majesty Crush’s approach to songwriting: take these pop sensibilities, blow them out, and then share your deepest, darkest secrets on top of them.

While researching this piece, I found myself so consumed by everything about Majesty Crush’s music and story that I eventually came into contact with bassist Hobey Echlin. I got to speak with him in March and hear his perspective on the group’s writing processes and how it feels to reenter the musical conversation. On Stroughter’s lyricism, Echlin told me, “No one could write about having a crush in such a multidimensional way.” 

“Boyfriend” starts Love 15 off with a thesis statement about torturing and killing a girl’s partner so she would fall for Stroughter instead. The scene-setting in this song alone highlights the rapid escalation of Stroughter’s internal monologue, with the opening lines explaining that he sees this beautiful girl on the train and immediately spirals into an internal dialogue of ‘Why is she with that guy when she can be with me?’ He uses his wit to prove he is superior (her boyfriend apparently can’t even get her soup order right: “He’ll bring you minestrone when you want egg drop”—Stroughter would never do that). But it doesn’t stop there: the next two songs are also about crazed feminine obsession. There’s “Uma,” presumably about actress Uma Thurman, then “No. 1 Fan,” the band’s most popular song that takes inspiration from John Hinkcley Jr.’s obsession with Jodie Foster, leading to his attempt at assassinating Ronald Reagan (depicted in on-the-nose lyrics “I’ll kill the president (For your love)”). Both tracks are all-consuming and massive; on “Uma,” Segal breaks into psychedelic guitar passes that sound like so much more than just the distortion, tremolo, and delay effects he stuck with. Meanwhile, “No. 1 Fan” completely immerses the listener into its crazed, modern-day stan POV through Stroughter’s desperate wails, Nails’ deep drum textures, and Echlin’s melodic bass tying the whole thing together. Other tracks hit on this theme, including “Seles,” “Grow,” and “Horse.” Even “Sunny Pie,” the first song Majesty Crush ever released, was about an experience with a girl working at an adult book store. 

The truest peek inside Stroughter’s mind listeners ever get in the Majesty Crush discography is “Brand,” a middle-of-the-A-side track that Echlin recently called “a step away from album filler” in an interview with Stained Glass Stories. In speaking with him, he clarified that he was mainly talking about the repetition in the instrumentation, saying, “Musically, it’s not the one with the fireworks, but lyrically, it's the most down-to-earth and personable, and it's Dave turning his lens on himself.” This track is one of my personal highlights, featuring Stroughter delivering a confessional of his everyday existence rather than spinning the narrative onto his latest craze. “I’m always so fucking drunk / I wake up with a bottle in my hands / I go to bed with a bottle touching my lips” paints the perfect picture of a man clinging to his vices to get through the day-to-day. The repetition, both lyrically and instrumentally, is overtaking, with Stroughter’s echoing vocals sweeping around listeners. These crisp deliveries also set Majesty Crush apart from the other shoegaze groups at the time: where many were mumbling through fragmented lines, Stroughter was telling a whole story, creating an entire atmosphere, and you could actually understand what he was saying. The emotions in his voice cut through your ears and go straight to your heart. “Brand,” specifically, is even more profound now as we look back, as it’s one of the most authentic looks into Stroughter’s mind that we will ever receive. 

Fundamentally, Majesty Crush wrote pop songs. The group approached songwriting in three elements: Part, Break, and Window, each time taking little liberties and twisting the structure in unique ways. Echlin compared their process to riffing off of an idea, continuing to make it better and take it farther. The most important part of a Majesty Crush song, in my opinion, is the Window: the chance for the cathartic and anthemic release that often comes at the end of their tracks. The perfect example of this songwriting approach is “Penny For Love,” a song that gives the same feeling as The Smiths doing a rendition of The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven.” One of the most straightforward tracks on the record, the up-tempo melodies and catchy guitar riffs mask the story of prostitution hidden in the lyrics. But you can hear the release in Stroughter’s vocals, the overflow and sighs he adds to lines like “Cause honey tastes so good.” Penultimate track, “Feigned Sleep,” is at the other end of this spectrum: it’s one of the most expansive tracks on the record that still utilizes the Part/Break/Window song structure. It sends the same shiver down my spine that I get when listening to something like “Jesus Christ” by Brand New, with the rhythm section acting as the song’s heartbeat. The repetitive drawl of the guitar and vocals builds a gripping intensity to the end of the song. The catharsis eventually overflows as backing vocals, drilling drum patterns, intricate bass runs, and circling guitar riffs layer on top of each other, emphasizing how Majesty Crush can take anything standardly pop and make it their own.

The tracks off of Sans Muscles see the repercussions of the post-shoegaze musical landscape Majesty Crush found themselves in by 1994. Grunge was taking over, and you can hear the pressure to be heavier on songs like “Seine,” which sounds like an alternate rendition of Nirvana’s “Scentless Apprentice.” Then there’s “Ghost of Fun,” which utilizes electronic patterns, hinting at a possible future direction the band could have taken. Left with nothing after Dali folded, Majesty Crush took out their frustrations through brooding backbeats, heavy guitars, and Dave’s aggression tying it all together. The group got meta with it, too. Take “If JFA Were Still Together,” a track that combines Deftones-esque blown-out drums juxtaposed with a melodic bass and glittering poppy guitars. Echlin says the track was their ‘what if’ moment after losing it all at the end of ‘93: “It’s kind of like, what happens when your favorite band breaks up? You lose your sense, you lose your bearings.”

“Space Between Your Moles” sounds the most like a Love 15 b-side, with lyrics even calling back to the debut as Stroughter delicately intones, “15 for you and love for the space between your moles.” The track has a Mazzy Star-type of relaxation, sounding like the closest thing Majesty Crush would ever get to a shoegaze ballad. Another instance of Majesty Crush simultaneously fitting into these rock niches and defying the category completely. Echlin says the Sans Muscles tracks were “the logical progression of Majesty Crush,” the emotionally charged next step that propelled them into this angrier sound while still keeping their shoegaze mastery close.

Butterflies Don’t Go Away perfectly encapsulates the Majesty Crush story: from noisy basement beginnings to the moments it all came together, and what happens in the aftermath of having the rug pulled out from under you. In speaking with Echlin, he told me he loves the Numero repress because it “gives just as much emphasis to the footnotes of our career as our big stuff,” offering listeners a chance to hear their trajectory in real-time. Stroughter had said, “If anything happens to me, I just want my music to be heard.” While he’s not here to see it, it’s nice to know that his music is finally reaching more ears and finding its audience. There’s now a whole new generation of shoegazers finding their solace in David Stroughter’s immersive storytelling and the sonic journey of Majesty Crush.

Cassidy is a music writer and cultural researcher currently based in Brooklyn. She loves many things, including but not limited to rabbit holes, Caroline Polachek, blueberry pancakes, her cat Seamus, and adding to her record collection. She is on Twitter @cassidynicolee_, and you can check out more of her writing on Medium.

Documenting The Void: An Interview with Heavenly Blue

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Started in the aftermath of Michigan band Youth Novel, Heavenly Blue is a seven-piece screamo/post-hardcore outfit that just issued their first release, We Have The Answer. Taking inspiration from a range of sounds in the genres of punk and hardcore, Heavenly Blue delivers an impressive collection of songs with their record. Swim Into The Sound guest writer Nick Miller recently sat down with guitarist Maya Chun and bassist Jon Riley to discuss the album, their musical influences, the band’s upcoming plans, and their love of Texas gas station food.

Heavenly Blue just got off a tour with Frail Body last month. How did that go?

Maya: It went super fucking well. I don’t think it really could’ve gone any better.

Jon: Yeah, the shows were well attended. We played with some great locals, which is always a plus. We met a bunch of pals that we hadn’t met before in person. It was cool.

In your Bandcamp bio, it says, “Screamo with dignity and integrity.” I feel like the screamo label can be sort of divisive. Some people get a little embarrassed, but Heavenly Blue seems to embrace it. What are your thoughts on “screamo?” 

Maya: Like the word and label?

The use of it. Some people are like, “I don’t know. I don’t really consider us a screamo band.” That’s kind of a standard thing you hear.

Jon: I would say it’s divisive, even internally. I personally don’t enjoy music labeled as “skramz,” but I do like bands that refer to themselves as screamo now, and I’m also into bands that referred to themselves that way in 2008. So I think it’s come full circle for me, where it’s like – okay, I like post-hardcore, metalcore, and screamo, that’s fine. I like “real screamo” screamo, that’s fine. I’m really not a big fan of “skramz,” both as a label and as a genre classifier that has a sound. I just don’t really like it. I guess some of our songs are screamo songs, some of our songs are decidedly not screamo songs. They’re way more post-hardcore. There’s some noise rock-y bits. The label screamo is kind of tongue-in-cheek, when we say, “With dignity and integrity.” It’s like a little inside joke.

How do you feel about genre labels in general? It feels like everything is a mix of different genres, so it’s kind of hard to place bands into genres today.

Maya: Especially these days, I would say a lot of music is just everything.

Jon: Yeah.

Maya: I think it’s helpful to have genre labels to understand today’s music specifically, but at the end of the day, if you don’t understand genre labels and you just listen to cool music, you’ll probably make cool music.

Jon: I think I’m similar to Maya in that I have a hard time with labels. We had this discussion on tour. What actually is “mathcore?” … I don’t think I like mathcore, and Maya says she likes mathcore. But I do like white-belt grind and Maya’s like, “Those are mathcore bands.” Now I’m thinking about the Venn diagram of mathcore. I don’t understand mathcore, and I’m not even going to pretend to understand mathcore. But then we have some songs that are kind of math-y. Like – what is that song even called?

Maya: “Looming?”

Jon: “Looming” is like seven-eight-nine-five-five-seven-eight. The counting is so messed up. I’m like, ‘Is that a mathcore song? Do I like our music? I don’t know.’

Maya: That’s just a Drew [Coughlin] song.

Jon: Yeah, it’s drummer music, and maybe that’s what we should describe it as. We have drummer music, and then we have guitarist music.

Maya: Yeah, that’s honestly more accurate, because you can tell bands like Ulcerate or Origin in the metal genre specifically – it’s all about the drummer in those fucking bands. And then you have other bands like, I don’t know – Necrophagus or fucking Brain Drill is obviously all about the guitars.

Jon: I think maybe we start the Venn diagram at guitarist music [versus] drummer music and then go from there. But I actually do think genres are helpful in just understanding where people see their allegiances. I think when a band tells me what genre they are, it’s more interesting for me not because I’m trying to be like, “You’re not a real screamo band.” But it’s like, “Oh, but you listen to that stuff, and those are the things you’re influenced by, and now when I’m listening to your music, I’m listening for the things you like.” I think that’s kind of how I think about it – genre’s just like your influences now because everything is everything.

When you’re writing music, are you conscious of what your influences are, or do you let it sit subconsciously and figure it out later?

Jon: I personally only write music after I’ve been listening to other music. I never just wake up in the morning and have a riff in my head. I’m always listening to an Unwound song, and I’m like, “Oh, the way that song builds and everything is chaos and catharsis – I would want to do that for a Heavenly Blue song,” and I kind of use that motif as a starting point… I’m not taking notes or even riffs or whatever, I’m mostly just taking musical concepts and motifs, and seeing how I can interpret them in our musical lexicon.

Maya: It’s sort of a mix for me. Obviously, we were just on tour for Frail Body for two weeks, and a couple of days ago – it was just a regular afternoon after I came home from work. I’m just playing guitar, and I’m like, “I have an idea.” And I write, for the first time in months, a song that’s like two-thirds Frail Body and one-third Nuvolascura, because I just love Nuvolascura. I think I get exposed to stuff and it influences me subconsciously, but then I’ll just randomly have an idea.

Talking about We Have The Answer, what do you feel like your influences were?

Maya: I think we all had a lot of pretty different influences coming into that record. … A fair amount of the guitar parts on that record are –

Jon: They’re holdovers from Youth Novel. Some John Dickinson riffs.

Maya: Yeah, John Dickinson wrote some riffs with us and sent them over following the release of the Youth Novel record, and I built songs around them, along with some older riffs. But for other parts of the record, I regularly take a lot of guitar influence, at least, from At The Drive-In and The Fall Of Troy, I guess as a quote-unquote lead guitarist or whatever.

Jon: Our drummer writes songs on drums, which is pretty different from most bands. There’s a few songs [like that] on the record. If you listen to the record, you’ll know which ones they are, because it’s very apparent. The drummer will write a drum song, and then we come in later. Maya writes guitars and we kind of workshop it and change the structure a little bit to make it more musical “song structure” sense. Because drummers have Drummer Brain and just want to drum, so you have to help them write songs. And then Kris, me, and Drew kind of jammed together, and we sort of talk about stuff as like – “Okay, so this song is ‘Screamo Banger.’” And that’s the way we think about that collection of riffs and parts. It’s all part of this song that’s loosely defined as “Screamo Banger.”

Maya: I barely remember what the actual name of it is. I just know it as “Screamo Banger.”

Jon: We have codes for all of our songs.

Can you tell me which one “Screamo Banger” is?

Jon and Maya: “...And Like That, A Year Had Passed.”

Photo by Kyle Caraher

Let’s talk about the Metal Frat at the University of Michigan. Is that where you two met?

Jon: We met on a Facebook group, but yeah.

Maya: Because of Metal Frat.

What did you learn from your time living there or just being around there?

Jon: I know all the different types of mold. The types of mold that can hurt you and the types of mold that you can cohabitate with.

Maya: I know how to shotgun a beer in less than a second.

Jon: I know how to book a show. I think I learned how to do that there.

Maya: The pedal board that I built there is still the one I have.

Jon: Learned how to live in difficult situations. One of the things living in an environment like that teaches you – it’s actually good training for being in a band. You might not always get along with your close cohabitants, and you often have to learn how to make it work in creative ways. I think that has made being in a band with so many people easier for me and Maya specifically, because we’re used to living with 24 people, sometimes more.

Maya: Sometimes I forget that. It’s just like – yeah, I used to live with 20 fucking people.

Maya, you recorded and mixed much of the album. What were your goals going in? Did you have an idea of what you wanted it to sound like specifically?

Maya: The drums for seven of the songs were recorded in Baltimore when Drew was still living there. The remaining three or four songs we recorded here in different capacities. Due to the nature of how we recorded it, because it’s hard to get seven people in a room together, I think I just wanted it to sound as good as I could. And I think I also have a pretty distinct idea of what sounds good at the end of the day, and I think that’s born from listening to a lot of metal and maybe idolizing Devin Townsend in my early years, and loving “Wall of Sound” production. I just like things to sound big; I like things to sound live. I guess my ideal mix is the perfect live show experience. I can be both very forgiving and very picky about how I do that, which I why I spent like three months agonizing over the mix every day, for many hours every day. I really like mid-2000s Kurt Ballou. I really like fucking Adam from Killswitch [Engage]’s mixes of all those early metalcore records, like Norma Jean’s, Bless The Martyr and shit. I just like those dirty-ass, hard-hitting, stupid records. And I also played djent in the 2010s, so I can’t escape that either, I suppose.

What is your background in audio engineering?

Maya: I was self-taught from middle and high school. I was just on the internet, I didn’t have friends in real life, and I liked progressive metal. So I really didn’t have anything else to do other than just make music in my room alone.

Jon: I’m gonna interject and say Maya made quite possibly the best post-rock metal record of the 2010s when she was in early high school.

Maya: I did no such thing.

Jon: She lies to you.

Maya: It’s a prog record.

Jon: It’s a prog record but it’s actually great. It was one of the things where I was like, “This person has to join Metal Frat because one – you can record Youth Novel. Two – the record, it was better than anything I’ve ever done to this day. 

Maya: That’s not true.

Jon: It’s true.

What’s it called?

Jon: The project was called Goodthink, and the record is called Ascend. Is that right?

Maya: That’s correct. I released that in the summer of my senior year, just about to go into college.

Jon: That’s in writing, Maya. Everyone who reads this is gonna go listen to that record, and they’re gonna be like, “Wow.”

Maya: No, they’re not. They’re gonna listen to the first record and be like, ‘What is this Dream Theater bullshit?’

Jon: Maya’s magnum opus.

Maya: It was definitely my magnum opus at the time, in high school. Yeah. And that was 11 years ago.

Jon: Sorry to derail your question. Maya sells herself short. She’s been very good at audio engineering for a long time.

Maya: Then I went to U of M and did the Performing Arts Technology program, which is essentially their audio engineering program, for a few years. Now I’m here.

Do you think you’re going to keep recording the band?

Maya: Unless a lot of money is handed to us, with the condition being Maya doesn’t record the band, then sure, yeah. I’d like to, because I just like to. 

Let’s talk about the album art. Where did that come from?

Jon: So that was me. … It’s an interesting story. We kind of went back and forth on a lot of concepts for the album, just in terms of how the songs made us feel, or what are the types of imagery that kind of encapsulate both the lyrical and sonic content. God, I sound like I’m being a dick. I kind of feel like an asshole. You can tell I went to art school. So anyway, I kind of bounced a bunch of ideas off people. The things that kind of stood out were [that] it feels brutal and dense and kind of obstructive. It feels like it’s just in the way of something, but you don’t know what. It’s just like a rock in the middle of the road. It feels impactful. But then other people were like, “It makes me feel de-personified and absent, like the void.” So I kind of looked for a bunch of themes, and one of the things that stood out to me was the desert. And Maya’s like, “This is not a desert album.” And I was like, “It’s not a desert album.” Still think it was a great concept.

Maya: It’s not a desert album.

Jon: It’s not a desert album. 

Maya: We ain’t Kyuss.

Jon: We could be, though.

Maya: We’re not Kyuss. 

Jon: I’m telling you, Maya. The stoner rock arc is the next record, for sure.

Maya: I don’t think so.

Jon: Anyway… I kind of started to do some digging into the archives on those themes, and I found this photograph from 1960s San Francisco political organizing. I’m not gonna mention who the person in the photo is. That’s part of the purpose of obscuring their face – so you don’t know. It is a person from the San Francisco Bay Area who was integral in moving forward progressive politics in that time period. We obscured all the faces from that image in hopes that you understood that de-personification that we were feeling when we listened to it or when we wrote it… There are some other elements to the art, specifically the layout. The physical record has one of the alternative covers that I looked at, which is a person performing a ballet dance on a stage from the exact same event that you’re looking at in the first image. Part of it has to do with – you don’t know who these people are, you don’t know what the event is, but they’re obviously doing an evocative act. This is a performance of some sort. And that’s kind of how I view the record. I don’t know how people are going to describe it, but I know that they’ll kind of have a hard time. But you’ll listen to it. You have to kind of engage with it. You have to work through the songs to hopefully get what we were trying to do. … Oh, and the cross. This is the last thing I’ll say.

Maya: Oh, yeah.

Jon: Part of it was like, “What if we name the record We Have The Answer and put a cross on the cover? Are we a Christian band?” That was one of the things we kind of joked about. … But also, I’m personally interested in text-based design, and I like when people break conventions with text in a design. So I was trying to go for something that kind of mimicked the image. So if you look at the cover, you’ll see the person on the stage with this hand pose, and the text is supposed to kind of be a mirror image of that just in the shape of everything. It’s purely aesthetic, is what I’m saying. It’s not Christianity.

Are you going to put out lyrics with the album?

Maya: I think we are, yeah.

Jon: I know that they are in the liner knows. I don’t know if they’re going to make it [online]. … They are in the liner notes with the exception of some lyrics that we have withheld from the song “Certain Distance,” because some of those lyrics were written by the first vocalist of Heavenly Blue. We’ve already gone through one vocalist. That’s our friend Nathan. Nathan didn’t want to be in a band anymore. Nathan’s a spiritual member. 

I’m fascinated with sequencing and how people come up with that. Can you talk about how you decided on the order of the tracks? Was that carefully thought through?

Maya: I think usually I’m generally the one who does it. I’ll bring a certain tracklist to the band and be like, “What do you guys think of this?” And everyone will give their input and we’ll change it. We’ll have another tracklist and if we like that, we’ll go with it, or if we don’t like it, we’ll make some more changes.

Jon: With this record, I think Maya was intimately familiar with the songs.

Maya: That’s every record!

Jon: But this one specifically because you mixed it for three months straight.

Maya: How long – we worked on the Youth Novel record for seven years.

Jon: You worked on the Youth Novel record for seven years. I worked on the Youth Novel record for a total of three weeks. Anyway… I think there is an arc to the sequencing. The way that it sort of goes, which is kind of funny, is it goes in chronological order of how the songs were written.

Maya: Pretty closely, yeah.

Jon: So you kind of see the creative process of this band forming in this record. The first couple songs are all Youth Novel holdovers.

Maya: That plus riffs that John Dickinson wrote after the Youth Novel LP.

Jon: And then there’s the drummer songs, which are the middle of the record, and … kind of like a junction. Drew actually recorded drums for those songs before the songs were completed. Just recorded drums at the studio because we paid for studio time.

Maya: I had written the songs around it by that time, but they weren’t done.

Jon: The last three or four songs me, Kris, and Drew wrote together in a collaborative way, the skeleton of, and Maya took it into a DAW [digital audio workstation] and finished. That’s kind of how the sequencing came to be. I do think there’s kind of an arc of more melodic content at the beginning, and then it goes into more math-y, abrasive content in the middle, and then this build-up and fall-off for the last two tracks. I think there is a sequence. I don’t know if it was as intentional as most people because we didn’t sit down and write this record in a month. This record took two years, so it was a long process.

How do you see the writing process changing going forward, now that you sort of have a base?

Maya: We’re out of Youth Novel riffs. No more.

Jon: I’m ready for our new stuff because I do think it sounds a lot more like us, like the people in the room who are making the music. We got together and went to a cabin in Port Hope, Michigan [in] the thumb of Michigan. … [We] got together for a weekend, hung out, and wrote five or six songs. Parts for songs. They’re not done, but –

Maya: That, plus everything else we have – we have like 47 minutes of raw material for the next record.

Jon: We have a lot that we are toying with. I’m excited to start the next record.

Heavenly Blue is playing a couple of festivals this summer. Will you be touring on the way there?

Maya: Four shows, including PUG Fest.

Jon: Yeah, we’re doing a slew of shows with Dreamwell. … That’s gonna be fun. Good band. They put out a good record last year. And then we’re playing some shows before New Friends Fest with an unannounced band that I’m not gonna name yet. We’re gonna wait a little bit longer. We are gonna be playing with Flooding again, I think. We love Flooding. Best band ever. We got to play with Flooding for three dates on this last Frail Body tour. We’re hoping to play some shows with them because they’re also playing New Friends and we love their music. And they’re also sweet people. And we might have some other stuff coming at the end of the year.

What do you like to eat on the road?

Maya: Buc-ee’s

Jon: We fell in love with Buc-ee’s on the road.

I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of Buc-ee’s. Is it a Texas thing?

Jon: It’s a Texas thing.

Maya: Yeah, it’s like a big, old truck stop, except there’s no trucks allowed.

Jon: It’s a truck stop without the trucks. It’s amazing.

Maya: They have a whole deli bar kind of thing for just jerky. They have fresh-made BBQ sandwiches. They have burritos. It’s basically like gas station food but cranked up to the absolute max, and also in Texas. 

Jon: Everything’s bigger. I know they say everything’s bigger in Texas, but the sandwiches are enormous.

Maya: They were fucking good.

Jon: The cost-to-weight value of food there is unreal.

Maya: You can’t get a BBQ sandwich [in Michigan] that good.

Jon: Buc-ee’s is the best Texas gas station. I would say the other things we do for food – I don’t know, we try not to eat like absolute garbage. The band tries to buy people good food once a day because you gotta eat well to live a quality life, and we try to take that seriously. On this [last] tour, the band paid for everyone’s meals and we tried to buy ourselves good food. We love Taco Bell, too, especially for the vegetarians. 

Maya: We’ve got some vegetarian/vegan people, so we usually have to take that into account. Most of us will eat whatever.

Nick Miller is a freelance writer from Ypsilanti, Michigan, primarily writing about the world of professional wrestling. He also enjoys playing music, reading, tabletop RPGs, and logging Letterboxd entries (AKA watching movies). You can find him on X at @nickmiller4321 or on Instagram at @nickmiller5678.