talker – I’m Telling You the Truth | Album Review

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Self-released

A pretty common aspect of the human condition is trying your damnedest to avoid broadcasting your “baggage” to those around you. We are essentially walking amalgamations of our past traumas, our pain, our experiences, our influences, and letting those imperfect parts of us show can be awkward at best and debilitating at worst. It’s easy to spend years pushing these feelings down because dealing with them feels like too much. On top of that, many of us have an intense aversion to confrontation, causing us to bottle up those feelings and avoid them at all costs. When you spend your whole life bottling things up, letting others in and allowing them to see what you perceive as flaws is the last thing you want to happen. 

Growing up in an intensely religious environment, suppressing my queer identity, dealing with the aftermath of my parent’s divorce since the day I was born, and constantly feeling like people could see my emotional wounds led to me avoiding that trauma for years. As I’ve entered adulthood, the outside problems of the world have compounded with these preexisting traumas. As a result, even the slightest confrontations or personal revelations can feel like too much of an undertaking to deal with, even on my best days. As another Pride Month passes us by, it feels like there’s no better time to examine the topics of identity and confront the more challenging aspects of ourselves. 

I’m Telling You the Truth, the debut album by Los Angeles-based indie rock artist talker (aka Celeste Taucher), appropriately confronts these themes in 11 raw, heartfelt tracks that tackle a multitude of tough concepts along a singular cohesive journey of self-acceptance. The catalyst to this is finally having those difficult conversations, not only with yourself but those closest to you. Every track on this album acts as its own unique excavation of the self, each time in a different way, but one is no more important than the other. talker has spent years suppressing her sexuality due to her religious background, she’s facing the challenges of being in your late twenties as part of a generation that was set up to fail from the start, as well as trying to balance her relationships with others and the relationship to her genuine self. Every single theme visited on I’m Telling You the Truth couldn't be more relatable to my journey, and in that regard, it is a record that feels like deep confessions of a close friend wrapped in brutal, glittery indie rock bops.

One of the most impressive aspects of this album is how the musical approach and formatting mirrors the thematic approach of the overarching concepts. Each song, both musically and lyrically, feels like it could be a part of a different album, but at the same time, they relate so well to each other across every minute of the release. I’ve often felt that many of the records I have consumed lately tend to overstay their welcome, especially when coming from more of a pop-oriented approach. In refreshing contrast, I’m Telling You the Truth sits comfortably at a 38-minute runtime, and the versatility of the record ensures not a second of it is wasted. 

The album’s opening track, “In Memory of My Feelings,” teases with a thin texture and soft vocals, introducing a warm country twang from Taucher before erupting into a true album opener of dynamic rock-adjacent proportions. Fierce punk flavor attacks in the following track, “TWENTYSOMETHING,” baring the teeth of the album’s base emotions and making sure the listener is matching talker’s headspace before we’re even two tracks in. 

The textures and myriad influences of the record are what really shine for me and continue to impress on repeat listens. “Everything is Something (I Never Saw Coming)” boasts clear influences from Talking Heads, but when rendered in talker’s style, hits more like one of Imogen Heap’s lighter tracks – a very easy pull for me. Similar musical themes come back later in “Return to Sender,” and talker truly excels in tethering each song together in a familiar way while offering something different each time a new sequence is introduced. The indie rock roots are all there and feel very reminiscent of popular rock tracks from the late Aughts while showing real growth, elevating the affair above simple influences and reverence. Light vocal effects, layered guitar textures, and soaring melodies create earworm after earworm that makes it hard to pick just one favorite. 

That being said, it’s hard to ignore the raw power working behind the track “Drag Your Feet,” co-written by Reade Wolcott of LA ska band We Are The Union, whose unmistakable influence can be heard throughout the song. The simple structure, emotional hooks, and tenacious guitarwork all fuse together to create a nostalgic and refreshing summer track that will keep you going until October. Even the following cut, “Say My Name,” could fit squarely on a female-fronted rock record of twenty years ago but feels so at home, bringing some much-needed softness and light to the current indie rock climate. Easy drum beats and twinkly guitar textures make it feel like you could close your eyes and be transported to your childhood bed, yapping to your friend about nothing in particular on your translucent, neon landline, tying up your parent’s internet for hours. This specific atmosphere created by the music smartly contrasts the uncertainty and troubled emotions of the lyrics, effectively cementing these feelings of inner conflict. 

The debut LP from talker operates gorgeously as a raw look at the complexities of growing up and growing into yourself. It’s a friend to confide in when you feel like you can’t talk to anyone about your problems, not even yourself. Albums like this don’t come around every day, and I’m glad we have an “album of the summer” contender that doesn’t feel disingenuous or cramming minutes into a record while having nothing of value to say. While others choose to forego substance for vibes, I’m Telling You the Truth is doing just the opposite – speaking from a place of awkwardness, a place of fear, a place of feeling like everything is too much – and always having something genuine to say. The truth can be a hard pill to swallow. Even harder to present to those around you. I’m glad talker is here to make the truth feel less terrifying and show us how liberating it can be to finally open up.

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

Soft No – Soft No | EP Review

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Abandon Everything Records

Something is in the water in the City of Brotherly Love that makes everyone want to spend half their paycheck on pedals and play the electric guitar at a tinnitus-inducing volume. The great Philadelphian shoegaze bands of yester-decade like Nothing, Sunny Day in Glasgow, and Blue Smiley have paved the way for a new generation of noisy rock groups like TAGABOW, Knifeplay, Full Body 2, just to name a few. With the release of their self-titled EP, Soft No are planting their seeds in the fertile soil of the city’s scene.

As it becomes increasingly difficult for bands to afford rent on a DIY paycheck in NYC, Boston, and other relatively HCOL cities, Philly's combo of local talent and affordability has allowed its burgeoning scene to draw national attention. But even with all of this momentum behind the genre, newcomers like Soft No are entering a crowded lane, as these sonic templates are extremely popular in both local scenes and across the internet on platforms like Tik-Tok. Events such as Philly’s recent Slide Away Festival are laying the groundwork for people to recognize and celebrate sonic diversity within the genre, but it’s still a challenge to stand out.

This context informed my headspace as I went into Soft No’s debut EP: do I really need more Philly shoegaze in my life, and how will they differentiate themselves as this space borders on oversaturation? After several listens, my answer is two-fold. For one, they’re exploring a darker, riffier sound that harkens back to 90s alt classics. Their press material mentions Smashing Pumpkins and Hum, but I also hear some of the melodic abrasiveness of Hole. Unlike other bands that lean into a sort of generic hazy heaviness, these guitar parts WILL get stuck in your head.

The other differentiator is experience. Each of Soft No’s five band members have spent years in the scene, as has contributor and producer/engineer Mark Watter, whose eye-popping CV includes the latest records from Philly legends Alex G and Hop Along. The result of their combined musical tenure is a collection of tracks that sounds dynamic and polished. In many ways, this release doesn’t sound DIY, and it certainly doesn’t sound like a band figuring out their sound for the first time.

Album opener “Keeping Tabs” kicks things off with one of the best songs in the collection. It’s probably the most straightforward shoegaze song of the bunch, but it’s a damn good cut with beautiful, piercing vocals and textured guitars. The 90s alt-rock and hardcore influences are most obvious on the lead single “Take Your Word,” which has the stickiest chorus of the bunch and the most legitimate alt-radio potential. And when I talk about the guitar parts getting wedged in your brain, I’m talking about the riff on “Melting Timelines” - my personal favorite Soft No track.

All five songs wear the hallmark shoegaze distortion, but in contrast to an MBV or bands of that ilk, the vocals are relatively clear and articulate. The drums don’t buckle under the weight of the mix; instead, they’re a driving force for this project that gives the whole thing a sense of momentum. By the time I reached the end of the last track, I felt like I was still flying forward. There are a lot of excellent debut EPs that still leave me wondering if they can keep this up for a full-length project; Soft No’s propulsive energy suggests they might just be getting warmed up.

Parker White is a tech salesperson moonlighting as a music writer. When not attending local shows in Atlanta or digging for new tunes, he’s hosting movie nights, hiking/running, or hanging out with his beloved cat, Reba McEntire. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram @parkerdoubleyoo, and you can read other stuff he’s written over on his Substack.

95COROLLA – LONG TIME LISTENER / FIRST TIME CALLER | Album Review

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We’re Trying Records

I’m thinking of a specific moment right now. The memory feels hazy, but I know I’m standing at a show, the lineup obscured by many years of tall cans and spliffs. My mind is trying so hard to conjure pictures or faces and is failing miserably. But my body remembers the sounds, the hum and vibrations of the instruments, the feeling of strangers pressed around me on all sides, as we’re all screaming and dripping sweat. Must be 100 degrees in that living room; it smells like stale beer and BO while several someones are lighting joints, thickening the limited oxygen with plumes of weed smoke. The band is two songs in, and they are in an absolute flow state, playing so loud that the air density begins to change, becoming viscous, submerging the separation of us in the crowd and them up front until it fully dissolves as we all move and yell and climb and dance together. It's absolute ecstasy. It can be, in my opinion, the type of moment that turns someone who goes to shows every once in a while to a person who is at every single one. 

Every scene has had “their band” for “their time.” As much as the internet has given us all the gift of feeling like we’re in those living rooms, basements, and community spaces, the painful truth is that we weren’t. I can only tell you what it was like seeing Joyce Manor play at The Cabin, the same way someone from the Miami scene can only tell us what it was like to see Glocca Mora play FEST. In this same vein of something special happening before the rest of us fully catch on, so too is Nashville having their moment with local punkmo outfit 95COROLLA. The band’s debut album, LONG TIME LISTENER / FIRST TIME CALLER, captures, morphs, and evolves 2000s arena emo, reverse engineering its finer points and injecting them with the distilled atmospheric ambrosia of the $5 house show.

The album opens with a voicemail, which sounds like the caller is suffering from different injuries, possibly head trauma, before the band kicks into some soaring and thematic mid-aughts riffage. This sort of concussed recounting makes multiple appearances throughout the album, weaving in and out of clear, sharp storytelling before falling back into the occasional fog of a somewhat obfuscated narrative. 

Calling the first full track of the album, “TO BE CAREFUL,” anthemic would be a significant undersell, as its structure of build and chorus triggers deep, deep yearning for a crowd to surf and careen off of. The song builds to a turbulence that quickly spikes and jumps, perfectly mimicking the abrupt panic and eerie calmness of getting “that” phone call. Never before has the horror of a car accident felt so catchy and huge (yeah, I said it), and that's the ultimate rub, at least in my opinion, on this album: covering the complex feelings of living and breathing with the delicate outlines of temporal absurdity, all assembled into a collection of tracks that would be an easy pick for any Tony Hawk game.

This seems to be the specific balance 95COROLLA strikes between having the joyous, style saccharine emo punk with a ponderous yet snarky lyricism that feels like Bren Lukens and Diablo Cody fighting for control of the pen. This battle occurs throughout the album on songs like “PLANTER” and “NO COAST.” There’s an almost 4th-person narrative where the songs feel as though there’s some type of out-of-body experiences being grounded but in the most non-euclidean way possible communicated as awkward, cloying, spiritual gasps in lyrics like 

We dance it, dance around it, I’ve been here before
I’m outside your window, your outside my door
No chance about it, chance about it, I fell on the floor
I’m fucking landlocked

The album’s third single, “NOTHNXLOL,” is so dreadfully catchy that I almost missed the whisper of my stomach knotting. Meanwhile, “NOTHING MAJOR” operates as a vehicle for fun, dancy, and moshable riffs while laundering in lyrics like

Can you imagine
It's just a quick incision
Replace the face if you want to
Rearrange the shape if you want to
I don't need anybody else
I can fuck this all up myself
I can think of nothing more permanent
Than a fucking temporary fix

which really didn’t sink in for me until the 4th listen-through. And trust me, the subsequent listens still feel as hot-breathed and infectious as the first spin, with its undeniability remaining even after you return to the world outside of the album.

All of this is already quite engrossing when it’s coming in through the decaying speaker system of your 2011 Honda Civic, so I can only imagine what the 95COROLLA live experience is like. As much as this album is easy to disappear into, I still wanted to get a bit of confirmation that what I’m hearing is what is being felt, so I asked fellow Nashvillain Douglas Kinsella of Tennessee fever dream screamo twinkle dadmo revivalists, Captain Jazz what one could expect from a ‘ROLLA live show and he had this to say:

“95Corolla hits the first few notes, and suddenly you're there: Watching FuseTV on a glowing CRT with the lights off, memorizing call and response choruses for nighttime car rides. Sneaking into a theater with a 12-pack RC Cola, reading tabs for Senses Fail b-sides until you're knocked free of nostalgia by the shoulder of the moshpit.”

Yeah, that sounds about right. 

I still can’t remember the lineup that I’m thinking of, and frankly, I don’t think it matters. It could’ve been so many different shows with so many different bands. The thing that remains constant is the feeling. The “I know this is where I’m supposed to be” type feeling that now invokes the twinges of joyful melancholy that my years removed from that time have produced. Still, I’m pressing play on LONG TIME LISTENER / FIRST TIME CALLER, and I am transported back to that living room, surrounded by people who I don’t talk to anymore as we smile and scream unintelligibly. The band, which could be any band, is playing every note right and singing every word I want, possibly even need to hear, and the night could be any night, with people spilling out the front of the house. The show will end soon, and we’ll go out to eat somewhere. I am as alive as I’ll ever be.

Elias is a southern California-based music writer relishing the recent screamo renaissance in the area. You can occasionally find them bugging bands about their old forgotten projects on the podcast Not Just A Phase, where they also write reviews for the blog. Their handle @letsgetpivotal can be found across multiple social media platforms, including Instagram and Twitter.

Sinai Vessel – I SING | Album Review

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Keeled Scales

A few months back, I read a book about the dialysis industry called How to Make a Killing: Blood, Death and Dollars in American Medicine. I went in knowing almost nothing about the subject and came out incredibly angry. This is often the price that you pay for learning things; you go from seeing strip mall dialysis centers every day without giving them a second thought to not being able to see one without gritting your teeth and thinking of the ways the people inside are getting screwed over in the name of profit. All because you decided to read a book. 

It puts you in a bind. There are so many reasons why it’s important to be informed about the world around you, but being informed can really suck. Oftentimes, it feels like fighting your ignorance comes at the cost of becoming a constantly incensed and insufferable person. The advice given to counter this is usually inadequate. You're told to remember that we’re all just on a big rock spinning in space, you only have one life to live, you can’t fight for others without keeping yourself well. All of this is true to some extent, but none of it really helps; at this point, we’ve all heard it so much that it feels cheap. In the end, we’re left with a latent anger bubbling beneath the surface as we try our best to live happy and fulfilling lives.

Sinai Vessel’s I SING is an album steeped in this reality. “Can't ride my bike at sunset down a nice street / Past beautiful houses without clenching my teeth / Rolling my eyes / Or imagining myself begging the owners for a chance of relief,” Caleb Cordes sings over soft chords and pedal steel on “Laughing” before continuing, “Suspicious that the circumstance / Has less to do with aptitude or failure to plan / And more with the cardinal sin of not being born to rich parents.” It’s a chunk of lyrics with real bite, delivered over a serene backdrop, driving home the feeling that the sentiment being deployed here comes from a long-building frustration rather than new or short-term anger. As the track continues, Cordes ponders on the failed promise of trickle-down economics before ultimately accepting, at least in the moment, a sense of helplessness where one can’t do much but just sit there and laugh. 

This kind of cursed awareness is also central to “Attack,” the album’s penultimate and most ambitious track. The song begins with a slow build, starting with just acoustic guitar, vocals, and a subtle ambient drone, and finds Cordes approaching the subject from a different angle. Both songs are about acceptance of the feelings brought by heightened awareness of the conditions around us, but where “Laughing” focuses on how this awareness can bring feelings of helplessness and madness, “Attack” focuses on how it can be a catalyst for growth. “This is my A.D. / Today, something dies in me,” we hear after Cordes decides to welcome in discomfort’s attack, “Something dies that needs to go / Something dies, I let it go.” 

Throughout “Attack,” the narrator’s progression is matched by the music, which very slowly ratchets up, first with piano joining in around the three-and-a-half-minute mark and then the full band finally arriving five minutes in. This climax, while satisfying, is big without feeling triumphant the way we often see in longer epics. We’re presented with growth, but the instrumentation makes clear that there isn’t necessarily salvation; it’s just a step forward. 

This kind of restrained arrangement is one of the things that makes the songs across I SING resonate so strongly. There are clear Heartland Rock influences at play, but where we might see a band like The Menzingers use this palette to paint pictures of the anthemic, Sinai Vessel instead takes from the genre’s more ethereal side. There is always something in the mix subtly ringing out to affix a glow around the rest of the track, be it the soft synth hanging back on “Birthday” or the long-ringing smooth-moving bass line on “Dollar.” Though it’s not a direct sonic comparison, there’s something about the approach that reminds me of the way Bruce Hornsby and the Range use piano and synths to create textures that make their songs about small towns and the people who live in them feel otherworldly. In the case of I SING, the ethereal nature of the instrumentation lulls you into the feeling of being lost in thought, priming you to look inside and reflect. 

So much of I SING is about the internal struggles inherent in dealing with the world around you, so when “Window Blue” starts with “Man, I would’ve been alright / If you’d been there every night of my life / Telling me to shut the fuck up / Man I would’ve been fine,” I cracked a smile. In my experience, the best tonic for the latent anger discussed to this point is community. Though you don’t want to build community with people who are constantly hand-waving away your feelings or concerns, there is a lot of value in having someone that will, in a friendly way, tell you to shut the fuck up when your neurosis begins to take center stage in your life. Actual human friendship and interaction can’t be replaced by self-regulation and advice read on the internet. It’s really poignant that the song on this album that offers the listener the most comfort is the one most focused on others. 

“Best Witness,” the song immediately following “Window Blue,” further explores the comfort of friends by bringing us back down to think about the struggle we face when community becomes hard to find. Here, Cordes sings from the point of view of somebody struggling to find the kind of friends you make when you’re younger, observing, “Out here, here / I care for me best / Out here, here / I’m my best witness.” This type of solitude is tough to survive under; ultimately, connection and reassurance are needed from the type of connections paid tribute to in “Window Blue” with Cordes singing, “Sweet brother, can I call you? / I’m not doing well / Can you state the obvious? / Will you say you love me still?”  

Though nothing can replace the type of companionship pined after on “Window Blue” and “Best Witness,” there is something similarly comforting about having an album like I SING that so frankly addresses what it’s like living in this current moment as somebody coming out of young adulthood. So often, as I move through my day, taking in information about what’s going on around me and throughout the world, I begin to feel a bit like I’m losing my mind. When I see other people’s reactions to things, these feelings accelerate, and while this is all happening, more and more life responsibilities are popping up everywhere. I SING isn’t an album that says everything’s going to be alright, but it is an album that shows me someone else observing the type of things I’m observing and struggling in similar ways. It’s not a “you’re fine” record but a “you’re not alone” record, and right now, I think the latter is far more valuable. 

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.

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.