Virginity – Bad Jazz | Album Review

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Smartpunk Records

There’s this video of Deer Tick playing “La Bamba” at Firehouse 13 that I used to watch almost every day when I was in high school. It was the coolest shit I’d ever seen, and it made me want to play in a band so bad just because I wanted to be part of something like that. This is a feeling I often find myself chasing when checking out new music; many surface-level things might make me like a band, but the bands that I come to love are the ones that make me feel how I did when I was watching that video–like being in a band is the coolest thing in the world. 

Bad Jazz, the latest release from Florida power-pop outfit Virginity, is an album that makes me feel this way. Simply put, Virginity just sound like a band that would rule to be in. It’s unbelievable how densely they’ve packed Bad Jazz with moments that light the pleasure centers of your brain on fire: the chorus of “2 Sad 2 Get Stoned,” the jangly guitar on “Any Good Thing,” the bass slides on “Midweekend,” it all just hits. Awesome moments keep feeding into awesome moments, with so many payoffs that had me viscerally nodding my head the way I do when Columbo hits a suspect with the “just one more thing.”

“2 Sad 2 Get Stoned” is my favorite track on the album and one of the best rock songs I’ve heard this year. It also exemplifies a contrast found across Bad Jazz; these swaggering songs that sound like they could soundtrack the best night of your life are largely about feelings of doubt and inadequacy. “Is this where you saw yourself when you pictured the progress that you’d hoped to make, or has that been postponed?” At the song's start, Casey Crawford sings over a foreboding backdrop of low thundering toms and swelling guitars, “Was the image that you conjured a portrait of you laid up for weeks, feeling too sad to get stoned?” 

As the track continues, what was simmering boils over, and the song shoots forward into a ferociously sung pre-chorus before turning back for another anticipation-building verse. The next time we get through the pre-chorus, things take off into the kind of soaring hook rock critic Ken Tucker was looking for when he applied some number 45 sunblock and went fishing for power-pop. What really sells this hook is Crawford belting it without inhibition; this is something that’s consistent across the album’s best choruses, he often gets about as close to yelling as you can get without actually yelling. The fact that he’s so palpably giving it his all gets you so hyped you feel like you could throw a football 300 yards. It has a similar appeal as the chorus of Superdrag’s “Sucked Out,” where you hear John Davis’ voice border on cracking, there’s just nothing else like a vocal that sounds like it’s approaching the edge. 

Even when Crawford’s singing is more reserved, like early on in “Swinging South,” there's a Chekov’s Gun-like quality where you know he could floor it and send the band into overdrive at any moment. When Crawford steps on the gas, the instrumentation never fails to meet him; when a hook gets you hyped, a drum fill keeps you there, and there’s always a hot guitar lead or bass lick just when the song calls for it. When Virginity go hard (which is most of the time), they commit fully, and their fearlessness in pursuit of this pure rocking momentum can only come from an unfakeable confidence in the music they're making. 

This self-assuredness is never more evident than on the appropriately named “Nashville Hot Chicken,” a blistering love song that lasts just over two minutes because if it were any longer, the band would spontaneously combust. Here, we see Virginity working from a place of bliss rather than doubt as Crawford sings about the intoxicating promise of a budding new relationship: “Still not tired, isn’t that strange? I’m over most folks within a day.” The song's energy matches the rush you feel in the early stages of love, where you realize that this really might be something.

Virginity are able to hit it out of the park over and over again on Bad Jazz because they fully believe in what they’re doing. It’s an album without half-measures or choices made to please a specific audience or algorithm. The music, even when it’s about sucking, is made with the kind of unbridled joy that I saw in that Deer Tick video back in high school. This is a joy that can so easily be ripped away from a band by various external forces early on in their existence; the fact that Virginity have been able to hold onto it and put it on this record is special. Its presence throughout the album reminds us that as we oscillate between feelings of frustration/love/doubt, there will always be joy to be found. This is something that’s tough to convey without sounding cheesy or trite, which is why the way Bad Jazz makes you feel it, in a way that goes beyond any specific words or lyrics, is so valuable. It’s life-affirming music, and I think that’s the coolest thing in the world. 

Josh Ejnes is a writer and musician living in Chicago. You can keep up with his writing on music and sports on Twitter and listen to his band Cutaway Car here.

Webbed Wing – Vol. III | Album Review

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Memory Music

No matter how many parties you attend, vacations you plan, or hours you spend napping under a blue sky, there’s always a point in the summer when the sun’s glow turns into sunburns. Suddenly, the season’s promise becomes covered in sweat and mosquito bites. The once-endless days that stretched before you are now hazy nights long behind you. When the sun goes down, it’s all briefly too much: too hot, too humid, the day was too long, and oh yeah, are my friends, like, mad at me or something? Did I suck at that party I just left? Why is the bar always so crowded? It's like 100 degrees out. Do I just need to drink water or something? The overwhelming nature of the season sets as fast and low as a sudden summer storm cloud.

With guitars that test how high your car speakers can go and lyrics that dictate a spiraling internal monologue, Superheaven’s Taylor Madison and Jake Clarke are back with Mike Paulshock for Webbed Wing’s loudest project yet, Vol. III. The group’s third album solidifies the genre-melding music Webbed Wing is best at–combining garage grunge, 90s alt-radio rock, and fuzzed-out country with their signature guitar shredding. Through ten tracks, Vol. III, soundtracks that looming feeling that you did something wrong at a house party, and also maybe your whole life, while you sit on a plastic lawn chair in jorts. 

If you weren’t ready to rock out with the album’s opener, “Further,” you have about two seconds to brace yourself before “Tortuga” kicks in. The chords hang low, surrounded by static, as Madison laments the bitter feeling that he drags the people around him down. This is a common thread throughout the album, a near-obsessive worry about how others might see you–not how they actually criticize you, but how you think they might. Through the song, the pang of insecurity winds through the guitar strings as the opening static builds into the first livewire solo of the album. The repeated lyrics fold into the melody as the guitar soars and dives in a way that feels almost improvised if it wasn’t so precise. The solo is full of frustration but pushes forward, ultimately crossing the finish line of the impossible race the lyrics describe.

If “Further” was a race, then “So It Goes” is an all-out sprint. It’s the music for a montage at a particularly frustrating part of a movie, and it’s the song that will make you jump at a show. The track feels chasmic as it repeats the universal conclusion, “You’re never gonna get what you feel like you’re owed.” While in other bands this might be a particularly grim lyric, spiteful even, it’s not with Webbed Wing. Instead, it’s factual; it’s just a reality-based observation. The band threads this declaration through the song and ties it together with a relentlessly heavy drum beat, delivering a crushing weight before a brief lull.

The final hum of “So It Goes” feeds directly into “Hero’s Death” – the closest Vol. III ever gets to a breather. The song diverts from the cannonballing drums and pick slides for quieter introspection, allowing the audience a brief period of reflection now that they’ve reached the halfway point. It sits amongst other recent ballad breaks like Militarie Gun’s “See You Around” or Liquid Mike’s “Am,” and its twang feels evocative of Ratboys’ “Black Earth, WI.” While other songs on the album use indirectness to convey their observations, this one looks the listener straight on and relies on layers of self-doubt combined with tongue-in-cheek overconfidence to protect itself from vulnerability. While the personal lyrics toe the line between humor and honesty, the outrageous desires laid out in the lyrics meet the sound, creating a huge and spiraling song. After sitting on your roof in a panic about how weird the summer has been, it’s the equivalent of tipping your head back, breathing in the night air, and staring at the stars sprawling across the sky. It’s not a solution, but it’s a break.

Past an always-appreciated whistle break in “Change Me,” the Nashville keyboard in “I Shared a Cell,” and the psychedelia-infused riffs of “Take It From Me” are the final barnstormers of the album. Vol. III (and Webbed Wing generally) is, first and foremost, a necessary case study on why guitars are the coolest thing in the world, and “Where Mortal Men Dare Not Tread” is the album’s best example. It’s a stoner rock instrumental track that digs its roots deep and spirals up, big and bold, casting a shadow on the rest of the songs. It looms, it sneers, it has a harmonica. Fueled by brash kinetic energy, it reminds me of the relentless buzz of cicadas on a summer night and the feeling that the night sky that briefly offered solace might crash down around you at any moment. 

The album ends on “My Front Door,” the last chance for Webbed Wing to throw in everything they have. The closer takes several turns, switching between the final song a radio station DJ might play before their shift ends and the encore a beloved country act would break out at the end of a festival after the amps have already been humming with hours of electricity. But its finality is apparent as it lulls the album to a natural close. Between a stadium drumbeat, a brief bass solo, and guitar riffs outrunning the rest of the song, “My Front Door” feels like the sun is slowly coming up on the horizon. 

Every weird, gross summer night will end eventually, and the sun will come up. That doesn’t mean that things that ignited exhaustion are suddenly gone; it’s just an assurance that there will always be another day. Similarly, Webbed Wing is not in the business of just saying it’ll be fine, it will happen, and it will eventually be over, and it might happen again. So, unstick your thighs from that lawn chair, turn off the porch light, and call it a night. 

Caro Alt’s (she/her) favorite thing in the world is probably collecting CDs. Caro is from New Orleans, Louisiana and spends her time not sorting her CD collection even though she really, really needs to.

Bob Dylan Live At the Veterans Something-Or-Other-Amphitheatre

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I saw Bob Dylan live in concert for the second time at the Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater in Virginia Beach. Inching into the gravel parking lot, my friends and I saw big signs stamped with warnings that tailgating was not just prohibited but illegal, not that it would’ve been particularly pleasant in the muggy coastal heat, anyway. So we settled for $14 beers inside the complex, a purchase I justified to myself by reasoning that since it’s a 24 oz can, it’s more like two $7 beers, and that’s not an absurd price to pay for a drink, right? Right?

It was the kind of crowd that you would expect from a venue with this name – a crowd that cheered louder for a flyover of Chinook military helicopters during “Ballad of a Thin Man” than they did for just about anything else. Not that this perturbed Dylan, of course. It seems pretty obvious by now that he’s not on tour for the money or some gratification that comes from the cheering masses but just because he likes to play whatever he wants. This is a trait that is charming to some and aggravating to many others.

Consider this chain of events from when I first saw him live last fall: Bob Dylan takes the stage precisely on time. No opener, no set decoration. Road cases are lying on the stage. He and his band play about twelve songs. No banter, no song titles. After the twelfth song, he angles his head toward the crowd and, almost as if he’s surprised that we’re there, says, “Oh! Thank you!” He introduces the band, plays about five more songs, takes a bow, and walks off the stage. Perfect.

True to his shape-shifting ways, the Bob Dylan I saw perform at the Outlaw Music Festival last month was different. Everything felt a bit looser, from the tan shirt he wore unbuttoned down almost to his belly button to the sometimes sloppy arrangements of songs like “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,” which is the one 60s tune he’s played both times I’ve seen him. He was somewhat chattier, too, addressing the audience a grand total of four times (we counted) and chuckling into the mic when he fumbled some of the words to “Shooting Star.” Bob doesn’t play the guitar anymore, but when he gets excited about a song, he stands up while jamming his hands into the keys of his grand piano. 

But forget the guitar-strumming, the kabuki makeup, and the offputting setlists. Bob Dylan could wear his pajamas and sing nothing but nursery rhymes and it would still be a don’t-miss-it-for-the-world performance because of that voice. Many vocalists lose their luster once they can’t hit the high notes anymore, but Dylan’s voice is still stunningly malleable even after six decades of performing. He sneers and bites through a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Little Queenie,” then softens into a croon for doo-wop standard “Mr. Blue.” Sure, a lot of the appeal for me comes from his Tom Waits-cragginess, but it’s also the little things you don’t expect, the little leaps up into falsetto (“and he walks up to YOU when he hears you speak”), the ends of phrases that sound like snide little comments only you can hear. 

When you hear Bob Dylan sing, it’s hard to imagine that he’ll sing that specific song that specific way ever again. He’ll start a line during the buildup to a verse just to see what it sounds like in words wherever it seems like they belong. His longtime drummer, Jim Keltner, described him in an interview as being almost like a jazz vocalist, and you could really hear it on that Wednesday evening in Virginia Beach. Hoping to sing along to “Ballad of a Thin Man” or “Simple Twist of Fate”? Forget about it. It’s a wonderful gift to hear a song you love and to be forced to pay such close attention, to constantly wonder how the next line will be delivered.

Bob Dylan is 83 years old. He’s been around long enough that some of his songs about old age are nearly 30 years old themselves. And he’s still got it. The band is rock solid, the voice is as interesting as ever, and the songs speak for themselves. Go see Bob Dylan because whatever tour date you end up at, no one else will see anything like it again.

John Dietz is a writer and musician based in Virginia. You can find them on Twitter @johndbdietz or Substack at https://johndietz.substack.com. 

Excuse Me, Who Are You? – Double Bind | Album Review

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Thumbs Up Records

I have a sinking feeling that I was a lot cooler two years ago. Back then, I was on top of new releases, ran like 20 miles a week, and always sang in the shower. Now, most days, I feel like I’m aspiring to be my old self. I lived abroad for two years and realized a few things pretty quickly: you never get back the time you spend, last-minute international plane tickets are heartbreakingly expensive, and there’s no such thing as a “makeup” funeral. I moved home last month, and, in a recent effort to correct course, I’ve been listening to “The Good Life” by Weezer twice a day (doctor’s orders) and leaning back into my old interests. Specifically, I’ve been reading way between the lines of music I like.

Excuse Me, Who Are You? (stylized as EMWAY) popped up on my radar two years ago, just after I left the US. Their debut single, “... In The Test Chamber,” was a 4-minute mission statement released in early 2022, showcasing everything the group brought to the Wisconsin emo scene and screamo at large. Noisy and unconstrained, the song was an instant addition to my running playlist, and I’ve listened to it multiple times a week since then. At the time, I remember being surprised that there was only one bangin’ single from an act that was clearly going somewhere. Luckily, I didn’t have to wait long for the group to release their Half-Life-themed EP About That Beer I Owed Ya in October of the same year. 

Two years later, EMWAY have doubled down on their companion-piece method and screamed out an 18-minute LP where every song references or samples the film Perfect Blue, a 1998 animated psychological thriller directed by Satoshi Kon. The album takes its name from the movie’s fictional film-within-a-film, Double Bind. The release was accompanied by an impressively orchestrated rollout campaign with interviews, features in zines and blogs, music videos, and watch parties. 

It might surprise listeners to learn Double Bind has been in the making since 2021, even before EMWAY’s EP. In addition to crushing vocals, driving percussion, and aggressive but tappy guitar work, the album has tasteful flourishes and consistent theming throughout, making the whole piece strikingly cohesive. The lyrics “I think about it all the time / I think about you all the time” from “https://mimasroom.com” exemplifies the sentiment of rumination heard throughout the album and even calls back to the band’s EP, where the same lyrics are present in “Chicken Cock.” 

Sound bites introduce and conclude several songs, and ambient cues in key positions weave a unique soundscape with a careful balance between in-your-face despair and faraway ennui. These small details work together to make the album feel like an 18-minute musical short story rather than eight individual songs. Every song has forward momentum that pushes you through charged riffs, drags you under waves of twinkly atmosphere, and pummels you with throat-shredding vocal demonstrations.

Now, I’ve listened to a ton of emo and emo-adjacent music, and any time I hear a sample, I throw the song into a playlist called “Emo Media Recs.” I like to find these samples organically and mostly keep this playlist for myself as a reminder to watch the movies, TV shows, or video games that are referenced because I think understanding the broader context can give greater depth to the song. Most bands that do this sort of sampling might have one or two songs on an album with a sample, but those samples are usually from different places. EMWAY is unique in this aspect because every song of theirs has a reference of some kind, either to Half-Life in the case of their EP or Perfect Blue in the case of this new album. It’s fair to say this thing is absolutely littered with references and heavy themes, stuff that’s sure to get stuck in your teeth.

My favorite track is “https://mimasroom.com,” which is titled after a fictitious blog from Perfect Blue. The blog is written by a fan impersonating their idealized version of the main character’s former pop persona (I promise that string of words makes sense, please just watch the movie). In real life, the link takes you to an active website supporting the film, also including some blog entries we see in the movie. It’s a cool late 90’s stab at immersive media, with all the nostalgic ephemera you would expect from a blog on the early internet. This song sticks out to me for its impressive blending of styles and awesome feature from Caleb Hynes of Hey, Ily; its placement as the fourth track is the perfect switch-up. The bits of ambience in songs before feel like they lead up to this sort of faraway composition, and the more subdued parts of the album afterward feel like they’re recalling this song as a memory. Hey, Ily’s particular talent for blending chiptune and lo-fi techniques with shouts, screams, and in-betweens is front-and-center here and caused me to immediately revisit their 2022 album Psychokinetic Love Songs.

On the topic of featured musicians, four out of eight tracks on the album showcase emo talents from across the Midwest. In addition to Caleb Hynes from Hey, Ily, Tyler Stodghill of Stars Hollow is featured on the album’s lead single, “Maybe That Truck Hit Me… And This Is All a Dream…” Stars Hollow also recently released an EP that fellow Swimmer Brandon Cortez reviewed here. Next are Madison locals Ben Ludens of Tiny Voices and Maxwell Culver of Endswell, featured on “Volcano Balls” and “Double Bind,” respectively. Endswell, who shares band members with EMWAY, just released their debut EP, with a review soon to come on this very site! Clearly, there is a lot of emo talent in one geographic location, and all the groups embody DIY ethics that keep friends together and push the scene to new heights. This sort of team-up can also be seen on Tiny Voices’ 2023 album Make Up Your Place, which features both Endswell and EMWAY. It’s a good feeling to hear great artists working with other great artists, and I have officially put “See an emo show in Madison” on my list of “Life Goals for 2024” because of this album. 

Despite the name, I don’t actually think Double Bind is about being caught between a rock and a hard place. The lyrics from Kyle Kinney are about his father’s passing, past relationships, and friends, which makes the title an interesting choice. My definition of a double bind is “being forced to make a losing choice in an emotionally tumultuous power imbalance, where no other course of action is possible or appropriate.” The movie Perfect Blue follows a young woman who finds herself in such a situation after jumping ship from a middling career as a pop star to try acting, where the roles are much more demanding than she anticipated. She has no way back from this choice and begins to lose her sense of self, at times believing she is the character she plays in the film-within-a-film, Double Bind. To me, this album has much more to do with losing your sense of self than with the literal concept of a lose-lose situation.

Grief haunts you. Losing someone changes you, often in ways we can’t understand until months or years later. Even after understanding, parts of your identity may be lost or changed forever. It’s a natural process of growing older, but knowing that doesn’t make it less painful or easier to deal with. Double Bind is a reaction to that grief, collecting honest bits of self-reflection, voicing frustration at life, and delivering a fulfilling musical performance, all neatly tied together with the thread from an old anime. EMWAY needed this album to get it all off their chest, setting themselves up for growth and the next big thing.

Braden is a nerdy guy from small-town Kansas who is really into emo music. He is working towards a PhD in experimental particle physics, but when he isn’t struggling to do data science, he’s running around and normally listening to good music too. You can find more of him on Substack, Twitter, Instagram, Strava, GitHub, or TikTok @braden.allmond.

Bacchae – Next Time | Album Review

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Get Better Records

The Trader Joe’s near my job lost their effort to unionize last year. It was a tied vote, which legally counts as a loss for those attempting to consolidate worker power. The employees reported consistent union-busting tactics, including tried and true lies about losing beneficial aspects of the job if the union comes into place. All the time and energy people put into collectivizing their place of employment was gone just like that. I had talked with a worker there multiple times about the effort, and the defeat in their voice when they told me it ended in a tie was crushing.

What do you do when the momentum fueling change is cut short? Working-class people have to balance their time between working shit jobs to earn a living, running tedious errands like grocery shopping and laundry, and engaging with pastimes that make living worthwhile. So it is understandable that, when attempts to improve our conditions are shut down, we retrench and hold on to the small comforts we have in the status quo.

This position is where we find Bacchae on Next Time, their first record since 2020’s stunning Pleasure Vision. The band sounds paralyzed over worldly and deeply personal attempts to improve their conditions. Next Time is the sound of knowing the world is fucked and feeling powerless to make any change. 

Bacchae illustrates the dehumanization of wage workers, like my local Trader Joe’s team, on lead single “Cooler Talk,” in which Katie McD sings about how “they treat us like dogs / in a comfortable cage.” When McD sings this, I’m reminded of the Hotelier’s controversial ballad “Housebroken,” which uses an abused dog as a metaphor for those who buy into the status quo. Sure, we may have a comfortable cage and a constant supply of new toys, but that’s only to distract us from the fact that barely scraping by isn’t the life we deserve. No matter how much we buy into the system, McD reminds us that “our degradation is priceless / it keeps it all afloat.” Our captors have no interest in improving our actual conditions, but they’re willing to throw us a bone whenever we get a little too restless. 

Next Time is full of tracks grappling with labor exploitation, but while “Cooler Talk” is fit for the crowd at the barricade to finger-point over each others’ heads as they scream along to cries of “run me raw,” Bacchae throw in fun curveballs with tracks like the astoundingly catchy “Dead Man.” The syncopated rhythms and dancehall keys make the cautionary tale of dying at your desk even more haunting as bassist Rena Hagins sings with glee that “he wanted much more.” It’s as if she’s singing from the perspective of a manager laughing at someone for dreaming of a life outside of the company. 

“Dead Man” is what happens when you’re lucky after buying into the system. You’re allowed to grow old in slight discomfort, but on the title track, McD makes clear that the opposite is equally possible: “Tomorrow you’ll be just the same / squealing like a popped balloon.” What is the point of buying into the status quo? It takes just as much hope to dream you’ll be on top someday as to envision a better world for everyone. 

And that’s where the album opens on “Try,” McD sounds tired as she begs, and pleads, and kicks, and screams for a scarp of imagination in the chorus. Throughout the song, Andrew Breiner’s guitar playing scrapes and butts up against possibilities, putting on a face to try and make it through the day while the the drums and bass lock into the rhythms of everyday life. 

While much of Next Time laments the state of the world, its best moments are when McD and the band turn their gaze toward personal relationships. “Feeling The Same” is the sound of what it felt like when I was younger and formed all-consuming crushes on girls with dreams of being loved despite my inability to form a coherent sentence because I was so afraid of rejection. McD seems to feel the same, “when I see you stare / I find myself looking down.” Love requires complete surrender, a willingness to show someone the part of yourself that makes you feel shame. The pre-chorus builds on the repetition of “Could I see myself in the heart of another?” before the chorus makes clear that “I’m so fucked up / I’m scared of love.” 

That fear of hurt and rejection often keeps people in comfortable relationships, even with a partner that makes you feel worthless. What makes “New Jersey” such a reprieve is that McD is singing about escaping a collapsing relationship over the record's brightest, most anthemic melody. “New Jersey” is a joyous celebration of abandoning your fears and saying goodbye to someone who never defends you and always treats you as second best. I want to throw my fists up in celebration when McD calls her ex an asshole. You want to laugh along because, fuck it, you can just say goodbye and hope for better. 

That same hope for better that illuminates McD’s exodus to “New Jersey” animates the mid-album cut “Just a Rat.” Over the danciest groove on the entire record, the gang envisions themselves as vermin, and it’s an apt comparison. To someone like Jeff Bezos, are we anything more than a rodent scrambling for the scraps that trickle down to us? When we’re running to the grocery store with a tight budget at the end of a paycheck, how different are we from the rat poking through the garbage? But as McD sings, those with power are scared of the rats, and we’ve got their house surrounded. 

I hope the next time my Trader Joe’s attempts to unionize, they remember the advice Next Time offers. We can’t live in our fear when we have them surrounded.

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.