Claire Rousay – sentiment | Album Review

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Thrill Jockey Records

A candid voice message is the first thing a person hears when they put on Claire Rousay’s sentiment - placing the listener in a certain headspace and preparing them for the album they are about to hear. During this message, the phrase “letter to the universe” is used: an expression that feels like it captures the album as a whole: a no-holds-barred confessional work that serves, at times, as an expansive yet intimate slice of life. 

Listening to Rousay can feel like eavesdropping on a conversation you’re not supposed to hear. These ten tracks showcase our narrator’s inner thoughts in a quietly chaotic yet beautiful atmosphere. Rousay shepherds the listener through these thoughts with brutal honesty that can make them laugh, either out of humor or discomfort, or cry. It highlights the true human nature that comes as a person wrestles with emotions. 

This is something I experienced firsthand when I saw Rousay perform in Cincinnati last year. At that time, I didn’t have much experience watching drone/ambient artists live. I hoped her music would sound as massive as it does on her recordings. Across her discography, Rousay has a knack for building unique and specific worlds through her pieces, whether it’s a sprawling, 20+ minute narrative or a 2.5-minute straight-forward pop song. 

As I do at most shows, I stood toward the back and “surrendered to the flow,” but the overwhelming nature of Rousay’s performance forced me to sit on the floor. It felt like a religious experience, evoking some of the same emotional reactions that worship songs bring as they build to a climax. 

At the end of the hour-long set, I was in a kind of shock, feeling emotionally drained and moved at the same time. I was in awe of how Rousay could make everyone in the crowd feel connected and on the same playing field. Live music is an important part of my life - from first being exposed to it through weekly church services to now seeing multiple shows a month throughout the Midwest. While I get something out of every performance I witness, it’s less often that I sit back after the fact, reflecting on the majesty of what I witnessed hours, days, weeks, or even years later, realizing that what transpired on that particular night would never happen again. 

Like her live show, sentiment brings unabashed honesty and emotion in droves. Rousay uses her lyrics, as well as the music behind them, to convey a series of conflicting emotions. Through this, she brings human reality to the forefront by speaking honestly about how inner thoughts can overtake a person’s perspective, even during the best times. She speaks on how life can be nice on paper but can be marred by a darkness that makes its blatant presence known. 

That conflict can be quite relatable to the overall human experience, one that can sometimes feel uncomfortable to hear spoken out loud. I don’t think there’s a better example of this than the intro to the album, “4pm.” The spoken word track, featuring the talents of Theodore Cale Schafer, highlights the emotional thought process of what it’s like to be alone and discarded amid success. In real-time, over the song’s three minutes, the positive things happening in the narrator’s life - even the parts of life that are considered a dream come true - are dismissed, bringing that darkness front and center. 

This is hard to express for many people. Some may see the positive developments in a person’s life and not understand why they feel the way they are. This causes them to keep those dark thoughts to themselves. 

I am writing this on my iPhone, and can already tell that this text will either end up sounding like a suicide note or like some pathetic attempt at ‘being real.’

Throughout the album, this conflict is expressed multiple times: no matter how much effort is put into life - whether it’s a relationship or just the day-to-day stuff - that darkness remains. “I’m just going to fuck things up anyway,” as she starts the song “Asking For It.” 

To avoid the hurt that could come from being open and vulnerable, a facade can form, causing a person to approach relationships and the day-to-day with a “fake it until you make it” approach. Rousay touches on this subject in the song “lover’s spit plays in the background.” At one point in the Broken Social Scene-referencing song, Rousay sings…

trying to convince everyone
that im ok
when i am not
fucking ok

Through its various iterations, emo music allows musicians, artists, and people to convey their innermost thoughts in a confessional manner for others who believe no one understands how they are truly feeling. 

In the past, Rousay has dubbed her music “emo ambient,” a phrase that perfectly encapsulates this album. Through sentiment and her entire body of work, Rousay uses her platform to highlight real emotions, focusing on what most go through as part of the human experience: relationships and love. 

No matter how big or small that feeling of darkness is during a given time, all Rousay wants, and what we all want, is to be loved and connect with others. The album ends with Rousay pleading how much she wants to hear that sentiment reciprocated toward her. “It’s okay if it’s not true,” Rousay’s song “ily2” featuring Hand Habits begins. “Just say it like you mean it… I’m easy to convince.” 

sentiment serves as a level-up for Rousay, musically and emotionally. With this album, Rousay is taking the approach she brought to other releases, from the ambient masterpiece “sometimes i feel like i have no friends” to the more pop sensibilities of Never Stop Texting Me, and continuing to convey that honesty and emotion through a cohesive and compelling piece of work. 

What makes Rousay’s music stand out is that instead of a person coming to her, she comes to the listener. Through her music, she finds a way to relate to wherever they’re at. Her songs make what they feel valid and important. They bring normalcy to those complicated and conflicting emotions every human goes through, even though a person may think no one else feels the way they do. 

Isn’t that what emo music is all about?

David Gay got into journalism to write about music but is now writing news and political articles for a living in Indiana. However, when he got the chance to jump back into the music world, he took it. David can be found on Twitter and Instagram at @DavidGayNews. (Just expect a lot of posts about jam bands.)

Garden Home – Garden Home | Album Review

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Thumbs Up Records

Somewhere between Chicago, Illinois, and the Twin Cities of Minnesota lies Milwaukee. It’s an hour and some change between Madison and Lambeau Field, aka the Two State Capitals of Wisconsin. Situated on the gorgeous shore of Lake Michigan, perhaps unassumingly, Milwaukee is a small-market city with some big bragging rights, namely Giannis Antetokounmpo, Miller High Life, and four-piece post-hardcore screamo project Garden Home. 

After several years of impatient waiting, the band has graciously delivered their self-titled debut album to fans and followers alike. Preceded by two incredible EPs from 2019 and 2021, the anticipation surrounding Garden Home’s LP has been steadily growing - and MAN, was it worth the wait. The quartet’s first release, Disposable, introduced their sound with full force, a perfect five-song articulation of their post-hardcore sound and emotionally gritty lyricism. The band’s second EP, Postmortem, further developed their craft and includes a nod to a fantasy every Midwesterner has considered at some point – driving your car into Lake Michigan. 

If you’re no stranger to these shores, you already know Garden Home is not for the weak of heart, though they produce music for the weak-hearted. Thematically, their lyrics steer directly into the hopelessness of being alive, and their self-titled record is no different. Garden Home keeps this promise alive by giving us emotionally depressed types a glimmer of hope across eight beautiful tracks and twenty-three glorious minutes. The album is truly the gift we Milwaukeeans have all been waiting for – and if you’re new here, welcome to the 414. We’re thrilled to have you.

The album wastes absolutely no time delving right into the hard shit. “Right by Me” opens the proceedings up with immediate candor and vulnerability as vocalist Dylan Mazurkiewicz speaks about the chaos of personal weakness. Within seconds, we’re treated to the full Garden Home experience, a true display of the band’s exemplary musicianship and songwriting right off the cuff. They inundate us with the thematic concept of the album - to be human is to know love, hate, unbridled rage, and the depths of emotion. This brutal honesty is emblematic of companionship, its upswings and downfalls, and everything in between. The lyrics foster this connection with metaphors of daggers and compasses – a hand and an object acting together as one, for better or for worse. This idea remains constant throughout every song, yet it never becomes stale and never grows tiresome. Garden Home capture humanity in a flawless and sprawling way, showing that we can feel the same hundred emotions in one million completely different ways. For at least half of them, there is something on this album to be your anthem.

Remember when I said earlier that Garden Home isn’t for the weak of heart? Remember when I said they waste absolutely no time getting right to the point? The perfect example of this exists on track three, “Grim,” which delivers infectious drums, a haunting riff, and the promise of a looming reaper that will carry you through the afterlife. There’s a simultaneous comfort and agony in the inevitability of grief and loss. You can feel the unfairness, the rage, the reckoning within the track. The lyrics provide comfort that pairs with this questioning of the afterlife, displaying death as a familiar friend while still wondering where it will take us. Images of nature and wind ground us in the Earthly realm and the comforting notion that our deceased loved ones stay present through the joy of those surrounding us. 

What got me wasn’t just the song itself but the band’s decision to close the track with a snippet of a voicemail. Anyone who has lost a loved one can confirm that there is a perpetual desperation to hear their voice again. When my father passed in 2017, I called his phone every day just to hear his voicemail prompting me to leave a message. I’d pretend he was teaching a class or on the golf course, anything to hold off on the reality that he was gone. I called every day until the phone company disconnected his number. The agony is in remembering that painful detail of my life, but the comfort is knowing that there is something I can turn to every time I feel it creeping up again.

The three singles released from the album, “Not Today,” “Past Life,” and “The Worst of It,” each have been garnering high praise and feeding into the brimming anticipation for the album’s arrival. The trio of songs chosen to represent the band’s debut could not have been more perfectly articulate. “Not Today” is an ode to regretfulness, a screaming apology for being unworthy of someone who deserves more than what you can offer. “Past Life” promises forgiveness for a past self who neglected to live to their potential and succumbed to their own sadness. It pleads that this life, though futile at times, is worth living and there’s always something to stay alive for. “The Worst of It” is a narration of that life, about witnessing a world that unravels around you and the growing impulse to give up - yet to feel such pain is to experience the willingness to persist through it. Together, the singles spin the hopeless and simultaneously sanguine tale of life. The darkness gives way to light, and it's worth it to kick and scream and fight your way through to it. 

Through these singles, Garden Home created an extraordinary momentum without giving too much away, and the reception has been awe-inspiring. These songs provoke such vulnerability, toying with the darkness of human emotion while still remaining encouraging and uplifting by promoting love, kindness, growth, and healing at the core - and everyone feels like that? It’s not just me grappling with my own struggles of my past, present, and future… and it’s not just you, either. Garden Home have single-handedly bridged the gap between this mentality that you’re alone in what you feel, at a time where everything can feel so damn isolating and so fucking unfair. The album is a call for community and friendship, reflecting what the MKE scene is all about.

Milwaukee is often referred to (quite unlovingly) as a Chicago Suburb. In recent years, however, the Southeastern Wisconsin city has witnessed a renaissance of sorts regarding the arts and music scene. There are street festivals that feature local creatives of every kind in all seasons, notably Summer Soulstice and Locust Street Festival as summertime staples and Mittenfest as a beloved winter Bay View tradition. Shows with all-local band bills are selling out on random weekdays, with no presales, and all walk-ups. 

Garden Home’s self-titled has earned its flowers amidst its home-grown accomplishments. This record is a labor of love from the band members themselves, to the album art, to the label, to the production, extending all the way to the fans who make up the hometown scene. The band itself is made up of some supremely talented and experienced individuals - this isn’t anyone’s first rodeo. They’re releasing this debut on local MKE label Thumbs Up Records, which boasts bands from Milwaukee, the Midwest, and beyond. Cody Ratley produced the album and is no stranger to the Milwaukee scene. Other local contributors include Justin Perkins of Mystery Room Mastering, with local artist Lee Behm and photographer Samer Ghani handling the album art. The release show is taking place on April 19th at Cactus Club, a massively renowned community arts hub that has its own growing list of positive impacts upon the city. Garden Home is a project with such deep roots in the MKE scene, and the efforts will never go unnoticed. This is all to say that every single person involved in the creation of this album has added to the city's inspiring legacy. If you’ve been sleeping on the Good Land, Garden Home came to wake you up with a shoulder to cry on, and it bears repeating - Welcome to Milwaukee, we’ve been waiting for you.

Sofie Green is an average music enjoyer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is your biggest fan (and she cried while she wrote this). Find her relentlessly hyping her favorite DIY bands from the Midwest and beyond at @smallsofie on Instagram and @s_ofs_ on Twitter.

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.