Merce Lemon – Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild | Album Review

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Darling Recordings

The kinetic power nature can hold for us physically, emotionally, and spiritually is nothing short of a miracle. The energy we absorb from the natural beauty of our surroundings can center our minds, heal us, and even inspire us. In a post-pandemic world, Merce Lemon felt a sense of aimlessness with her music. She used life around her for a personal and creatively reconnective experience. When she unveiled her new record Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild, Merce explained in a press release, “I got dirty and slept outside most of the summer. I learned a lot about plants and farming, just writing for myself, and in that time, I just slowly accumulated songs.” On her latest LP, the Pittsburgh native sings sweetly about an abundance of the earth's natural resources. Blueberry trees, birds, and rivers all coexist, with Merce tying these wonders together with a certain tranquility, acting as a reassuring voice through the stormy circumstances that life presents. 

The last record we heard from Merce was 2020's jangly, alt-country-ish Moonth. Since then, the alt-country subgenre has broken into the mainstream, led by bands like Wednesday, Waxahatchee, and MJ Lenderman. Twangy indie rock has never been more in vogue than it is right now. Merce signaled her version of this evolution earlier this year, first with a split of Will Oldham covers with Colin Miller and then with the standalone slow-burner “Will You Do Me A Kindness?” Together, these songs signaled a step away from the quirky indie rock sounds of Moonth and toward something more naturalistic and folksy. On her latest album, Merce dives headfirst into the country-tinged sound, picking at the Wednesday branch with assistance from producer Alex Farrar and Colin Miller. You’ll also hear Xandy Chelmis ripping away on the pedal steel and Landon George, whose fiddle was all over MJ Lenderman’s recent Manning Fireworks.

The best example of the evolution of Merce’s sound would be the lead single “Backyard Lover,” which tugs on the heartstrings, starting with weepy pedal steel that sounds like you’re slow dancing with a partner in a middle-of-nowhere dive bar. A soft-voiced Merce Lemon delivers intimate, raw lyrics on the aftereffects of a close friend passing away, “Now I am falling to a dark place / Where just remembering her death’s / About all I can take.” Then, methodically, the band builds to an epic finish of blown-out guitars and one of the most fiery solos of the year. Throughout the record, the slow build is something Merce excels at; each and every song is a journey that she invites the listeners on, and the catharsis found at the other end makes the finish well worth the wait.

“Crow” is another song with a similar formula, with Merce singing about the “murderous flock” of birds descending onto her hometown like clockwork year after year. Momentum is constantly progressing throughout the track, beginning as a mid-tempo folk song and morphing into a raging distorted wall of guitars that match the energy of the creatures she sings about. On the same note, if there ever were a soundscape that perfectly matches the title of a song, it would be “Rain.” Adapted from a Justin Lubecki poem, the band uses a slow tempo and dreamy guitars to paint with dour grey tones. The mood is somber yet soothing, like staring outside your bedroom window during a summer shower.

Merce’s songwriting has grown with each album cycle; her lyrics have always had a persistent dread but also an idiosyncratic sense of humor, with Moonth delivering us a smorgasbord of songs about sauerkraut, chili packets, and sardines. On Dogs, she sinks further into the despair and isolation of her writing, articulating a sense of pain with beautifully descriptive imagery of people and nature. On the title track, “Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild,” we get loads of sensory references like the old man laughing his teeth out, the smell of bark off a fallen tree, and frozen-over leaves by a creek, all the while thoughts of marriage seem to be crushing her. 

But the songs aren't all doom and gloom here; there's fun to be had, like the opener, “Birdseed,” which imagines what it would be like to morph into a bird. The lyrics touch on how freeing it must be to grow wings and soar through the sky but also how funny it would be to watch unsuspecting folk’s step onto her droppings, which is freeing in a different way, I guess. The pedal steel and fiddle work overtime here, creating an enjoyable, lush experience as the lyrics subconsciously make us more careful about where we walk now. “Foolish and Fast” is a title that Vin Diesel would be jealous of not coming up with; a perfect road trip song for driving through the mountains on a blue skyed summer day. Even on the more upbeat songs, Merce still has lines that will stop you dead in your tracks. Something as simple as “There's nothing like an open road” could be either a passing observation or intensely cathartic when you think about the freedom it implies in being able to choose your destiny.  

Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild encourages you to go for a walk, take a road trip, or even just step barefoot outside your house, so long as you're present in your surroundings. Merce created a love letter to our natural resources, the wonders of what the earth can provide and inspire for us – something we should never take for granted. There's a yearning to be unencumbered like a bird soaring through the sky. Merce has detached herself from the pressures of everyday expectations and channeled her energy into an album on her terms. 

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.

Bent Knee – Twenty Pills Without Water | Album Review

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Take This To Heart Records

You can never go home again. Some variation of this phrase has haunted me since migrating to the opposite end of the country immediately after completing high school in Alabama. It cut particularly deep in the throes of a pandemic while holed up in an apartment in a new city where the only person I knew was my aunt. Even after COVID restrictions had loosened and I visited my hometown a handful of times, the chokehold that phrase has yet to let up. My memories are all I have, but those are just snapshots of a place that is constantly growing at an ever-quickening pace, with new buildings and businesses replacing the ones I know while most of the people who helped me bear it for ten years have made migrations of their own. Even the house I grew up in is wildly different, as anyone who's left home for any extended period will recognize. This inability to return to a previous status quo is a universal experience, albeit one that weighs heavier on some than it does on others. If their new album is any indication, it’s been a similarly heavy load on Bent Knee.

Few bands in the independent circuit have covered as much ground in the last fifteen years as Bent Knee. Since their 2011 debut, the Boston natives have folded everything from string-heavy art pop and prog to crushing stoner rock riffs into their arsenal in a way that’s made them impossible to put in any one box. The one true anchor is Courtney Swain’s formidable vocal ability, with her bright soprano and mind-melting belts imbuing all their music with an undeniable sense of scale and melodrama. Their previous outing, 2021’s Frosting, saw them push that sound to the limit with their most heavily synthetic palette, yet as they took a plunge into the sounds of hyperpop that would have seen most bands falling flat on their faces. Against all odds though, their commitment to the style’s everything-and-the-kitchen-sink maximalism yielded plenty of winners in the tracklist; it’s home to both some of their zaniest and most emotionally direct material to date.

That said, Frosting was also the first time you might accuse the band of biting off a little more than they could chew. It’s a good but flawed record, sometimes feeling caught between too many ideas to coalesce into a satisfying experience. By comparison, Twenty Pills Without Water sees the band scaling back in favor of a more cohesive vision. The impossible desire to return to the way things were courses underneath nearly every moment, something that seems surprising from a band as ever-evolving as Bent Knee. With context though, it’s not difficult to guess why this might have weighed heavy on their mind. While this is their seventh album as a band, it is their first record as a four-piece, having parted ways with bassist Jessica Kion and lead guitarist Ben Levin, both of whom had been with the group since 2009 and left in 2022. Even though the separation was amicable, with the members citing the difficulties of being a touring musician, I can only imagine this was a significant loss for an outfit as creative and ambitious as this one. 

Rather than hide those feelings to prove that they’ve “still got it,” Bent Knee make the choice to soak this cocktail of uncertainty in and share the journey with their audience. After a scene-setting intro full of clinking and clattering, the hypnotic thundering of drums and mantra-like wails on “Forest” signal a triumphant return to a classic Bent Knee sound on the surface, but the foreboding atmosphere that hangs over the track like a fog indicates otherwise. It even threatens to overtake Courtney Swain as she’s consumed by echoes and forgotten voices. This fog rests over every part of the record, only ever lifting when the band can no longer keep in the nagging feeling that something is wrong. Every song plays like a waiting game of how long they can swallow their emotions before they leak or, in some cases, burst out. This is the sound of a group that is lost in the woods and knows it. They continue to trudge forward because within that forest resides not only the most morose and pensive material of their career but also some of the most beautiful and affirming.

Many songs start this search with a distraction. “I Like It” seeks comfort in shared desire between two partners over skittering drum machines and a lush string section courtesy of guitarist/violinist Chris Baum. The song soon underlines that pleasure with a bitter sting as the playful chorus concludes a list of would-be turn-ons with “I like it when you swear that you’re never coming home.” On lead single “Illiterate,” Swain responds to outside criticism and pressure with self-soothing late-night binges that stretch progressively further into the morning. The song’s chopped-up riff and stop-and-start build induce a nervous tension throughout the verses that each chorus has a harder time relieving, with Swain howling about how she’s not sure if she’s crying, “but it’s okay!” by the final refrain. It’s a hollow comfort that I’ve become all too familiar with through my own various attempts to escape into fiction or any art that offers an alternative to my present state. There are well-defined rules and characters you can know in and out as an observer, unlike the chaos of waking life that still waits at the end of an episode. 

Another song whose coping mechanism hits eerily close to home is “Never Coming Home,” revolving around a late-night drive with no clear destination. I often found myself on similar trips when I still lived in Alabama. I would waste gas exploring the twists, turns, and highways that crisscrossed my county with my stereo on blast, driving anywhere but home. At the time, I thought I was just making sure I could finish whatever song or album I was singing along to, but on some level, this was when I was able to most enjoy myself as a teenager. I didn’t have to think so much about where I was or what anybody thought of me; I could just move and sing. The bouncy, light-on-its-feet production courtesy of bassist Vince Welch manages to bottle that freedom in a smooth synth-pop jam while still capturing how bittersweet those rides were, with Swain expressing doubt and a need to escape at every turn in the lyrics. Unlike previous tracks however, she almost finds it, not in her words, but in the music, with the band cruising beyond the city limits and into a spacious horizon by the end. She may not know where she’s going, but it sure as hell isn’t backwards. 

That lack of direction can be just as oppressive as it is liberating. Take “Big Bagel Manifesto,” which sees the band at their most abstract, with Swain letting emotion rather than words guide her voice through a foreboding intro made up almost entirely of strings. The lyrics are nearly nonexistent, with the liner notes reading more like suggestions in the first half and willfully nonsensical in the second. The only clear anchor here is the pitched-up refrain of “Heads up, everybody sucks!” filling out the body of the song along with the rhythm section as the crooning reaches a fever pitch. The elusive nature of the song frustrated me at first, only clicking into place when I let go of concrete interpretation and let myself be guided by the one emotion that comes across clear as day: confusion. Bent Knee have never been ones to make their lyrics especially obvious, so the tilt into a borderline mood piece is an effective one, especially with the cumulative muscle of the band and several guest musicians expertly overwhelming me once the song kicks into gear. It feels like a sister to the despondent “Drowning” later in the tracklist, an appropriately titled song that wallows in uncertainty and frayed lines of communication. It’s far and away the prettiest song on Twenty Pills, with Baum’s violin leading an ever-growing mini-string symphony over keys that glitter like sunlight on water, but also the emotional rock bottom as Swain sings of literally sinking by the end.

One always seems to be right
To swim to survive
But I sank with the tide
So see if I care

As with most rock bottoms though, it’s from here that some resolution begins to take shape. Bent Knee have always sounded mighty and confident on past records, if also a little unknowable, consistently leaving me in a state of awe. Twenty Pills is the first time that hasn’t been the case, but leave it to Bent Knee to turn that weakness into a strength. “Lawnmower” was the first song the band released as a quartet, coming out in May of last year, and pretty transparently addresses a parting of ways.

Seventeen years in the dirt
We ought to live it up
If this is all we got
Honestly I know
We have to say goodbye sometimes

With a stripped-back build reminiscent of many current indie folk darlings, it’s a strikingly candid song from a band that I’m used to sounding out of this world. It was already a high point for the record, but it didn’t click into place how important this song is for the band until seeing them perform it at their Portland concert earlier this month. It was a small venue, not exactly packed to the brim, but everyone seemed to be such massive supporters of the band, with the band shouting out specific audience members and touring partners who made their shows possible. With every added instrument, it felt like a collective weight was being lifted until the song’s explosive finish had everyone around me floating. It reminded me of the penultimate song on the album, the mysteriously titled “DLWTSB,” another synth-led, Prince-inspired romp that stuffs in a host of cliches about overcoming adversity that it can feel a bit cheesy. After an album full of doubt and fear chased with the experience I had seeing them live, I can’t help but feel the band’s earned a fair portion of cheese when the song finds its groove and Swain defiantly asserts that “Underdogs gotta stick together when we can.” Sure, it could be just another coping mechanism, a retreat into easy platitudes, but comfort can lead to healing and, beyond that, growth. I can’t say for sure if the band has made it out of the woods yet, just as none of us can ever truly say the same for our own forests, but they’ve paved a road behind them so that others may follow and a select few already have. That road’s destination may seem unclear, but to borrow from another well-worn cliche, it’s the journey that matters anyway. 

Wesley Cochran lives in Portland, OR where he works, writes, and enjoys keeping up with music of all kinds, with a particular fondness for indie rock. You can find him @ohcompassion on Twitter, via his email electricalmess@gmail.com, or at any Wilco show in the Pacific Northwest.

CLIFFDIVER – birdwatching | Album Review

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SideOneDummy Records

I’m tired. Not just in a “Oh, I didn’t get enough sleep last night” kind of way or even a “This has just been a rough week for me” kind of way. It’s been a rough 29 years, and I feel like the past few have taken more than their share off my grand total. As the years speed along, I find new and creative ways to cope with the trauma of the pandemic, the stresses of growing older, and the horrors I witness on a daily basis through the rectangle in my pocket. Daily tasks feel like a struggle, and despite being a social person, spending time with others doesn’t recharge me in the ways that it used to. This feeling of exhaustion and my inability to deal with it is compounded by the sense that I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time. I’m almost 30 years old, and I can’t get through a day or two without feeling like I missed something crucial in my upbringing that makes me “less than” my peers. 

However, something I often find myself thinking about is how I’m not alone in feeling this way. Whether it's regarding my employment status, my consistently depleted bank account, general exhaustion and dissatisfaction with my life, or feeling ill-equipped for the world around me, it seems to be a shared trend amongst my generation – and bleeding into the next. There’s a strange, oddly comforting sense of solidarity in that fact, but along with it is an even greater sense of how fucked it is that we all feel this way. Some do a convincing job of pretending these struggles don't affect them in an attempt to push “normalcy,” but it is heartening to see the overwhelming number of people I know uplifting each other and tackling the minutiae of daily life together in the hopes that maybe one day things will improve.

While listening to their latest LP, birdwatching, it’s apparent that eerily similar thoughts are heavy on the minds of Oklahoma-based punk rock band CLIFFDIVER. As a fan of the septet since the release of their last album, Exercise Your Demons, that refreshingly real and uncompromising outlook on life is nothing new to them, especially given what the band has been through in recent years, and I was pleased to discover that this new collection of songs further commits to exploring difficult concepts. 

Opening track “thirty, flirty, and thriving!!!” highlights this struggle of being alive for three whole decades and still having absolutely no grasp of what is going on around you. Desperate, honest lyrics “thirty years and I still don’t know shit” repeatedly hit me over the head, echoing the little voices rattling around in my brain and making me feel like I’m the only person in the world who doesn't have their shit together. The single “dayz gone” further piles on these exhausted emotions, daily defeats, and mistrust in those around us and the systems we live in.

CLIFFDIVER have never been strangers to versatility in their albums, and birdwatching is no exception. Upbeat tracks like “team fight tactics” saunter through with bubbly drum beats, charming back-and-forths between vocalists Joey Duffy and Brianna Wright, and sultry horn tones satisfy the desire for some easy listening. A couple tracks later, “midnight mass” explores themes of devastating losses and dissipated relationships – as gutting to listen to as I’m sure it was to write. The unique beauty of CLIFFDIVER is how both of these tracks are about daily life and human relationships –  the former highlighting squabbles between sports teams and the ever-elusive decision of what’s for dinner, while the latter bemoans the pitfalls of nostalgia and missing friends whom we’re admittedly better off without. Each of the 12 tracks on this album is its own world, its own private story to tell, and we’re given the privilege of being let in, if only for a few minutes apiece. This particular kind of sequencing and formulation on display makes me crave far more than 35 minutes in these worlds. 

It’s not lightly or hyperbolically when I state that there are no bands doing it right now like CLIFFDIVER. The ninth track on the album, “would tho,” stands not only as my favorite track on an already spectacular collection of instant classics but as a testament to everything I love about this band. Seemingly possessed by a hardcore counterpart just one track earlier, "CLIFFDRIVER," sees the group take a page out of Pool Kids's book (or should I say POOL) by throwing down a one-minute hardcore track that acts as an exhilarating mid-album burst of energy. “would tho” continues this catharsis with a danceable rhythm and spacy synth notes ornamenting this infectious hardcore punk jaunt, delivering one of my favorite songs of the year. The feature by Stoph Colasanto of Carpool in the track “goin for the garbage plate” only serves to elevate this album into the greats of 2024 and flaunts how impressive this year has been for the punk scene. Carpool delivered their own essential punk offering, My Life In Subtitles, just a few months earlier, and their inclusion here only proves that birds of a feather do indeed flock together.

I think the knee-jerk reaction when you’re dissatisfied with your life is to torture yourself with what you could have done differently. Instead of dealing with the problem at hand, it’s easier to beat yourself up and pinpoint the exact moment where you fucked everything up. And when the sulking and self-pitying recedes, there’s the allure of nostalgia and uncomplicated escapism to satiate you for a while. The final track on birdwatching, “i reckon you might could i s’pose,” acts not only as a closing thesis statement for the record but a snapshot of these difficult cycles of failure and self-soothing. As a generation trapped by overwhelming nostalgia in the face of unparalleled grief and disappointment, we’re mesmerized by the idea of an alternate universe where these tragedies never happened. The melancholic guitar trills into triumphant brass and chanting gang vocals evoke mixed emotions and open the finale up to interpretation – is this the acceptance of defeat, or is it a rallying cry? 

This latest album by CLIFFDIVER provides something the scene desperately needs now more than ever – brutal honesty. Crisp production, signature vocals, and uncompromising instrumental performances engross from track to track. Joey and Bri continue to complement each other with their unique and unmistakable styles, which are as arresting as their lyrics. Musical prowess and impressive instrumentation are definitely enough to carry a solid record, but the feelings – the raw, unfiltered admissions behind birdwatching – are what make it a truly special experience. Flawless sequencing, just the right balance of songs to mourn to and songs to get into fist-fights to, CLIFFDIVER continues to elevate my hopes for the future of diverse, complex music that always has something important to say.

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.

worlds greatest dad  – Better Luck Next Time | Album Review

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SideOneDummy Records

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what we mean when we talk about a band maturing. With artists from the past, the subject is often clear cut; if you listen to Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash followed by Don’t Tell a Soul, it’s not difficult to pick out which of the two was made by kids, and when you listen to the records that came in between the two, it’s easy to see the progression that took us from one to the next. With newer bands, especially those that are still active, the conversation becomes a little more gray. In the realm of emo-adjacent music, I often see maturation used to describe a band whose newest release features fewer of the genre’s stylistic hallmarks than the one that came before it. It seems if you turn down the knob that says “emo” and turn up the knob that says “indie,” you're bound to have your record described as your most mature yet.

I don’t necessarily disagree with this assessment when I see it, but I do wish that the way bands progress was talked about more from other angles. Maturation doesn’t always present as a band becoming more stripped down or reserved. Sometimes, it can look like further commitment to a style or adding new elements without subtracting others. It can be a band growing into their identity rather than moving towards what others might think “mature” sounds like. This is the kind of maturation I thought about when listening to worlds greatest dad’s new album, Better Luck Next Time. 

Better Luck Next Time is the group’s second full-length and their first since 2018’s get well soon. A lot happened in the six years between the releases, including a lineup of Kegan Krogh, Ben Etter, and Matt Hendler coalescing around bandleader Maddie Duncan, as well as the four signing with SideOneDummy earlier this year. Despite how much time has passed, Better Luck Next Time feels like a natural sequel to get well soon, improving on what came before without moving too far away from the band’s sound. 

Where moments on get well soon caught my attention, moments on Better Luck Next Time go a step further and knock me over. Album opener “Twenty Deer” starts with a minute of wistful vocals over acoustic and slide guitar, then, suddenly, the full band enters, and you’re hit with crashing drums and a strong, luminous guitar lead. Beyond sounding huge, when the instruments come together here, they sound clear; you can hear every part and how it compliments the whole with washes of reverb and subtle synths acting as a bed for everything else to lay in. 

This balance can be found throughout the whole album and allows the guitar leads, in particular, to shine. On the intro of “Bike Song” and chorus of “Concrete (A Love Song),” the guitar is the locomotive that pulls everything along, and its placement in the mix allows for a tone that’s strong and ear-catching without being abrasive. On “Taking One for the Team,” the lead takes prominence during the first hook in a more complimentary role, still strong but deployed to dance around the main vocal line before joining up with strings and the more prominent bass of the verses. Most of these elements have been there in past worlds greatest dad releases but generally with fewer, more compressed layers. Here, we see the songwriting and arrangements bloom fully, a more substantial structure built on similar bones. 

The scale of the songs here sometimes gives Better Luck Next Time an almost stadium rock quality. “Two Birds,” in particular, is a song that feels grandiose, pairing its massive sound with one of the record’s best hooks; Duncan singing, “Cause I was watchin’ when your head fell from the clouds / And you could correct me now if I was what knocked your feet off of the ground” is something I haven’t been able to get out of my head since my first listen. Fourth single, “The Ocean,” is another song with a huge earworm chorus that feels made for radio, with the instrumentation around the hook made extra lush thanks to the more staccato sections that precede it. Sometimes, with bands in this lane, you wonder how the sound will translate to larger stages when the time comes, but that’s not a worry when listening to Better Luck Next Time. These are big songs that feel like they’re meant to be performed in front of big crowds.

One of the more reserved tracks on the album that really stuck with me was “Fakin’ a Smile.” Part of why many of the tracks on Better Luck Next Time sound so big is the masterful use of vocal doubles, reverb, and harmonies, allowing Duncan’s voice to contend with the big instrumentation surrounding it. This always sounds cool, but it’s nice on tracks like “Fakin’ A Smile,” where we hear a bit more raw vocal that highlights the pure quality of their voice. The little vocal quiver we hear as Duncan sings, “I don’t think I can get out of bed” right before the chorus is just so good; it’s the kind of vocal affect that can sound trite if overdone, but here it’s executed so perfectly that you feel it in your gut.

Continuing into that song’s chorus, we’re hit with some of my favorite lines on the album, as Duncan sings, “And I got so drunk that I turned sober / And my stomach soured over / And I felt the floor fall with me.” I don’t know that I’ve heard a more succinct distillation of the moment that you realize that you’re too drunk and the consequences that come with it, particularly when your intention for drinking was to escape or find comfort. When the realization hits that the comfort’s not coming, but you’re already deep into a bottle, it really can send you into freefall, which is described perfectly here. 

One thing that’s tough about being in your late teens and early twenties is that you often engage in these cycles of behavior but aren’t equipped to fully identify them. I don’t think lyrics or realizations like those on “Fakin’ a Smile” generally can come from someone in the early throes of young adulthood, even though they’re related to behaviors and experiences that come in that part of your life. 

I feel similarly about the lines “It wasn’t that you gave up on your dreams / But at the same time you stopped believing in me” from “Bad Neighborhood” and plenty of other sections throughout the record. So much of the lyrical content feels like it can be summed up as reckoning with the inevitable mistakes one made when they were younger, specifically the type of reckoning that can only come with some time and distance. This ultimately is one of the things that really got me thinking about maturity when I was listening through. Better Luck Next Time is an album of progression for worlds greatest dad both sonically and emotionally. It’s their most mature record yet, and also their best. 

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.

The Name of the Band Is Pop Music Fever Dream

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Photo by Sydney Tate

I don’t know how to be alone with my thoughts. Even when I’m playing a video game or reading a book, things I love doing to relax, I need an endless queue of YouTube videos or music to keep my brain preoccupied. I used to think it was because my ADHD has been left untreated since I was diagnosed in the second grade, but now I think I just hate myself. 

I talk a big game about loving art that makes you feel bad. I call movies like Blue Velvet my favorites, saying I love films that make you confront the darkest parts of your psyche, but when the credits roll, I’m looking for something else to fill the air. I am afraid that if I’m left alone with my thoughts, I won’t like what I see. I’ve let my brain get hijacked by the algorithms that get off on serving content that makes me want to fight; I’ve become just “an extension of that glass and metal,” as Tim Seeberger sing-talks on “Another Screen,” the lead single for Pop Music Fever Dream's new EP, Songs for Emotion.

I have a setlist from Pop Music Fever Dream’s show on December 30th at Our Wicked Lady that says at the bottom, “ALL NOISE ALL THE TIME!” an apt description of the band's sound, but also how it feels to be alive. As Seeberger puts it, the “tailored presence of bad emotions / blue light cuts through my brain” helps drown out any negative thought I could have, leaving me with good feelings forever. 

I first saw PMFD (what the real heads call ‘em) at Bushwick’s premier cemetery-adjacent venue, Purgatory, in March 2023. That night was the release show of Frog Era by ok, cuddle, the brilliant fifth-wave emo project helmed by PMFD guitarist Nicole Harwayne. I hadn’t heard any of the bands on the bill at that point, except for my beloved Crush Fund, so I didn’t anticipate leaving with two new favorite bands. 

Watching PMFD that night was like falling in love. The band has the chaotic energy you read about the first wave of punk stars possessing. Their songs tap into the no-wave era Parquet Courts had on Content Nausea and have the confidence to drop in snippets of Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ classic “Maps.” On any given night, you can find Seeberger climbing precariously placed speaker stacks, shimmying their way up a pole, or crawling under the stage. These aren’t just the antics of a band desperate to hold your attention; the shambolic mess of a PMFD set is required by the music. When Seeberger drops the mic and leaves the room at the bridge of “The Internet (And Other Modern Observations), Vol. 1,” it’s not just a consistent gimmick; I imagine they need the time away from the stage to regroup. 

PMFD are pure, perpetual motion machines; they have to keep going, pushing, grinding, hitting harder, faster. If they stop for even a second, the thoughts will come flooding back in. That energy extends into the audience. I once told Seeberger that PMFD pits are the only ones I’ve ever actually been afraid to be in, and not just because I’ve taken guitar headstocks to the skull but because the crowd is as reckless with their bodies as Seeberger and the band are with their music. 

The shows offer ecstatic release, but this is not fun music. Like how listening to Gilla Band brings you into Dara Kiely’s panic attacks, Songs for Emotion is like getting trapped in Seeberger’s head as they have a mental breakdown trying to break free from the Matrix. From the liminal music video for “Another Screen,” to the torn personality manifesto of “Split,” to the drowning sound of “Elegy for Memory,” to the pipe bomb in the mailbox of transphobic legislatures of “18 States,” Songs for Emotion is music to rip your head from the screen. 

Over three Zoom calls interrupted by spotty internet and free plan time limits, as well as a couple of text messages, Seeberger and I talked about the role the internet plays in our lives, the recording of Songs for Emotion, self-hatred, and Neon Genesis Evangelion. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Swim Into The Sound: I wanted to start by talking with you about your relationship with the internet because I think it’s pretty obvious you have a fraught one. Something you do a good job of on “Another Screen” is talking about seeking the internet for comfort, which often spirals into doomscrolling and other forms of despair. When I was young, what got me into the internet was Cartoon Network games, which has since spiraled into having YouTube on in the background all the time or scrolling on my phone to constantly stimulate my brain. So I was wondering what was the thing that brought you to the internet?

Tim Seeberger: Like, what made me say the internet is for me? I think around the same vibe. I was into Nick dot com, playing all the games up there, Disney channel dot com, and I still think of the Ed, Edd, and Eddy game. There was Postopia, which was all about Cereals. I remember getting shown YouTube pretty early on. My uncle and aunt showed me the numa numa video, and I said, “This is the best thing ever.” Or, like “muffins,” which I loved but was creeped out by. And then I got really into RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, and there were all these videos of people doing mods that I would watch. I had my own little YouTube channel, and I would post my Roller Coaster POV’s. I think the channel is long gone. 

I would say that put me on the internet. I had AIM as well and would talk to the same three people in my middle school class. Then I got Facebook in the sixth or seventh grade and was like, “This is pretty sick.” I lied to get on there, I think I was 11 and said I was 13. I was an early adopter of everything. I saw the dawn of a lot of things that are now ruining my life. Instagram, I was on there early. I got on Twitter when you had to type “RT” to quote tweet. I was early on Snapchat. I had an iPhone that didn’t have a front-facing camera, but I remember when Facetime came around. All that to say, I’ve seen it all. Being 27, I’m kinda some of the last people to live a pre-internet life. Like, I started out with a dumb phone, but now I work a remote job on my laptop all day writing emails.

SWIM: Do you know when the relationship switched when it became an “issue” in your life? 

TIM: I would say around the time that it became an issue for everybody. I was a senior in high school and a freshman in college around 2015/2016. I feel like that’s when the internet started taking a dark turn. It was always on a dark turn, but it seemed less creative and more mind-numbing as the first election cycle of Trump came around. I started getting into deep-fried memes and becoming friends with people who were, as we know now, internet-pilled. 

I was on Vine too, and that probably shortened my attention span a little bit. But I would say that it was a noticeable issue around the pandemic. We had so much time to be on our phones, so I downloaded TikTok, and the rest is history. There’s one thing to be involved in memes and be brain rotted that way, but when you get into niche political content online, that’s when I was fucked. With everything that’s happening in the world, there is a whole new level of doomerism on the internet because you have niche political content that makes you wanna die, and then you jump to memes that make you wanna die, then you jump to memes that are brain rotted, then you somehow sink down into what the kids are looking at these days, and it’s like that’s a whole other level of dark. 

Photo by Sydney Tate

SWIM: That issue with switching tones feels like whiplash is constantly happening in your brain. Do you think it’s possible to manage having a brain that can take in this much information?

TIM: There’s way too much information available to us at this moment in time and in the wrong way. With the internet, all of this information was technically available to us, but it was less accessible. 

It’s been tough watching what is happening in Palestine because it is just an onslaught of terrors every day. As it should be to get the word out of how terrible this is, and there’s no internet access, and we’re purposely cut off from this. But it can get tough. I come from a journalism background, so it’s always just an onslaught of news and online stuff. But way back when you had to go searching for stuff, it wasn’t always this way. 

On the whole, without getting into nuances that obviously change this answer, there is just too much information all at once coming at you. And it’s done on purpose to keep you on there, to numb your head. I wanted to capture that feeling a little bit in “Another Screen.” That’s why there is that dissonance between the verses and the sound of the chorus and the end of the song. I felt like it had movements to it, like I wanted to write a very normal post-punk song, and then I wanted to really fuck it up. And I guess in some way, it kinda is an allegory for how the internet feels sometimes, like very normal and then at its core very intense and all-consuming. 

SWIM: That bit where you scream at the very end is the last vocal we hear, and it gets drowned out in the mix by the rest of the band. It feels like screaming into the void. Because that’s all you do when you tweet or post anything.

TIM: There is definitely intention to having it be just all of the same lyrics in that section. “At some point, it’s all too much / it never ends / it never ends.” That’s what I wanted to nail into people’s heads. It never ends, that’s it. 

That is what it feels, like you’re screaming into this void, but in my head, the void isn’t this dark and black; it’s like TV static and scrolling on your phone super fast until your eyes bleed.

SWIM: It’s like shoving your head into the TV in I Saw the TV Glow. 

TIM: Yeah, 1000%. With “I stick my head into the phone, to not explain the unexplainable,” I had this idea of my head falling back into my phone. My phone was like water, and I was drowning in it. 

SWIM: “Split” has been stuck with me for weeks.

TIM: That’s a hard one.

SWIM: Every time I listen to it, I am forced to reflect on being in the closet. Obviously, there’s the line, “and just shove myself back into the closet.” That was how I felt when I realized I was trans. Every time I listen to it, I think about how terrible of a partner or friend I was because I was just shoving myself into a corner. It’s a terrifying song. 

TIM: It was a very difficult song to write. That instrumental had kicked around in my head for close to two years, and I knew it had to be something intense. It was coming down to the wire; I was writing the lyrics on the way to record the vocals simply because I didn’t know what I wanted it to be about. 

The only lines I had that stuck from day one were “the rites of spring aren’t right anymore” and “the lights are off and no one's home,” which really summarized my existence for a while, whether when I was coming out, or be it just figuring myself out these days: “The lights are off and no one’s home.”

I was having a conversation with Nicole and Carmen in the car on the way to practice and asked, “Hey, should I put this in the song? Is this too heavy? Is this too much?” Nicole said, “You should write about whatever you’re feeling. I think the best stuff is about what you’re feeling.” In ok, cuddle, Nicole is certainly someone who puts her heart on her sleeve in her lyrics, and I admire that. I think I was very scared because it was me being open and painfully brutal about many things in my life that were going on at the time, and it applies to things that are still happening. Now that I’m in a better place, it is a little sad to look back on the line “In the name of all that is good in thee, get the fuck away from me” because it is like “I am a terrible person, do not love me. I’m gonna fuck you over.” Not the case, not true; that’s just my mental health talking. But it was basically like, ‘I don’t deserve love, run.’ 

The thing I’m most proud of is “You don’t know what you’re running from / but it scares you anyway / and you don’t know what scares you / but you run anyway.” That was something I wrote, and I was like, “I need to figure out what this means,” and I still am. It just came to me. Sometimes things sound good, and I put them in a song and I have to figure out later on what it is. I think I’m in the process of figuring that out. 

SWIM: That whole bridge where layers of your voice are echoing on top of each other is so painful because what you’re saying is so true about reckoning with yourself. You mentioned that it’s hard to look back on those lyrics of “get the fuck away from me,” but it’s so refreshing to hear someone admit that they aren’t always a good person or reckon with how they see themselves.

TIM: I’m not a person who is going to push anyone away; I’m not gonna be shitty on purpose.

SWIM: No, you’re one of the most lovely people I know.

TIM: Thanks, that was me fishing for compliments. I’m kidding.

SWIM: That’s staying in the article. 

TIM: Of course it is.

That [lyric] spoke to my perception of myself and the love that I thought I deserved for a long, long time, and honestly, it’s not even because I knew… That line came from me doing that to myself so many times. In the end, I realized that it was just not true. It was an intense and painful song. 

Sonically, this is one of the best songs I’ve ever written because it’s so weird. It was such a big, overwhelming idea in my head because I had a grandiose vision of what I wanted it to be, and I could make it happen now. 

SWIM: It’s interesting to me that the instrumental came so early and the lyrics came so late because it does feel of a piece. There are moments in the song where I’m like, this is a Black Flag song with how the guitars are like scrambling. Listening, I feel like I’m having a panic attack and literally punching a mirror. It captures what the lyrics are saying, so it’s incredible that it wasn’t a cohesive piece from the start.

TIM: We had to record it in four parts because we were still learning the song. We were very down to the wire on that one.

Thankfully, I wrote the song with four distinct movements with a stop and a start to everything. But it was an undertaking for sure. I remember Dominico sitting there for 30 minutes getting that drum fill in at the end. To his credit, he got it. There’s this video Violette (Grim, production/engineer) got of me orchestrating in the recording room, and when he did it, I remember making this fun face. 

SWIM: Because you said you had a vision for this song, and now you could execute it, I was curious how bringing in Carmen, Nicole, and Dominico changed your approach to crafting these songs.

TIM: It’s an ever-evolving process. Whereas “Another Screen” came as a fully formed idea, what you hear, save for Nicole because she writes all her own parts, is essentially the same thing. “Elegy for Memory,” Carmen wrote the bassline for that. I wrote it, and then she pushed it over the edge. That’s the dynamic of the band. I’ll come to them with these songs, and then immediately they’ll take it and be like, “What about this?” 

One of my favorite bass parts on “Spilt,” or dare I say the entire EP, is that part where Carmen goes Don Bum Bom Bum Bon Um at the end of that freakout section. That is all her. She was saving that for something, and when she did it, I was like, “You get the vision!” 

It’s a push-and-pull that feels really good. I still have creative control in some aspects, but the ideas flow very freely between us.

SWIM: I know you’re a big film buff because you and I have talked a lot about movies. Is there a film you would emotionally compare to Songs for Emotion?

TIM: Although I connect emotionally way more to the aesthetics of a film, I have to say that Neon Genesis Evangelion deeply moved me on an emotional level. First, it’s 14-year-olds in robot suits battling aliens, and then next thing you know, it’s about God and the existence of suffering. It’s incredible. I watched it at a really dark time in my life years ago, and both the last two episodes of the series, End of Evangelion, and the last Rebuild movie wrecked me and put me back together. It changed my viewpoint on life. At my lowest, I think about the scenes of Shinji crying at the thought of causing others pain when he doesn’t even realize getting hung up on that in the first place is causing the suffering. It comforts me to know you can still cry about your life and then eventually do something about it, knowing that the journey was necessary. Wrestling with suffering and trying to get out of my own way to be a better person is something I connected with in the series, which I hope is evident in the EP. 

SWIM: What’s next for PMFD? You’re going on tour with A Place to Bury Strangers later in the year, but what else?

TIM: We’re opening for Sunflower Bean. I’m super excited; they were a major inspiration for me to start PMFD in the first place. Then, take some downtime to write and record and see what happens. The beauty of naming my band Pop Music Fever Dream is that I describe it as listening to pop music in a fever dream. Who knows what is going to come out the other side? 

Stream “Another Screen” today. Songs for Emotion is out September 18th,
you can pre-save it here.

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.