Charlie Kaplan – Eternal Repeater | Album Review

Glamour Gowns

In the months leading up to my wedding day, on numerous occasions, people would come up and tell me how difficult marriage is. It's one of a handful of clichés that you say to a young person before their wedding day—a “happy wife, happy life” type beat. My wife Morgan and I became friends in middle school, started dating our senior year of high school, dated long-distance through college, and got married quickly after graduating. We had been in each other’s lives long enough to know that we didn't have to heed the old folks’ warnings. Our marriage was going to be easy.

Morgan and I have been getting into the same heated argument for the last eight years. It's the one where I want to buy a project car, and she has not yet found our stage of life to be one that includes a project car. This difference in automotive opinion has been a frequent source of friction in our relationship. Isn't that so dumb? I love it. The project car argument has been a consistent figure in our relationship. A cyclical feature that will subside and then eventually boil up in me, overflowing into friction and repeating endlessly. Our most recent project car argument also happened to be the day I first listened to my advance of Charlie Kaplan’s third album, Eternal Repeater, and now I can't seem to dissociate the two from each other.

Eternal Repeater tells tales of human brokenness with a gentle enough touch that you don't have to be brought down into the muck to see it clearly. It is a nuanced and fun nine-track album that can be sat with and mulled over or just as easily be turned on while you and your buddies play pool in the garage. The minute-long solo guitar instrumental “Sun Come Up” leads the tracklist and spends most of its time ominously hopscotching from side to side, giving me whiffs of the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack. The bridge of the song is full of hope though and acts as an answer to the questions posed by the notes preceding it. This introductory track ends with a sustained note that salves the dissonance created. In just 66 seconds, it acts as a perfect representation of the album that follows and of the human experience that will exist outside of the world Kaplan created. The second song, “Everyone Calling Your Name,” reminds me of a thought that I've had many times when considering how to interact with Morgan as Kaplan sings,

Not much has changed
Everyone’s playing the game
So I’m getting out of my way
We all have a price we have to pay

I have often thought that the best way to love Morgan would be to defer to her, to take the path of least resistance. Through some wonderful therapy sessions, I have learned that this is not correct. I have learned that the most loving way I can consider her in my life is to express my true feelings in all instances and for us to work through differences, thoughtfully and carefully, together. 

The album’s lead single, “Cloudburst,” is a pandemic-written song of contradiction and simple beauty. It starts with a twinkling piano that gave me immediate chills and made me wish I was watching Charlie perform it live. The song evokes the repetitive days of being at school in Colorado while Morgan was at nursing school back in Texas. During those days, I know I experienced unique interactions with the people I loved in Boulder, but looking back, it is so easy to lump it all together into a period defined by being away from Morgan in contrast to the collective weekends when we would visit each other. Years of complexity summarized through lazy memory into black or white juxtapositions of whether we were in the same room or not. But that time was still special. It was full of wonderful relationships and important experiences that I treasure, yet it is so easy for me to reduce all of that to a time of longing to be where I wasn't. This is what “Cloudburst” is for me. It reduces a period of time into a singular moment, defined by that hard-to-ignore feeling, but I think it is important to try and hold onto the nuance of times that made up that whole section of my life—the good and the bad that happened. 

Past other singles like “Mescarole” and “Edie Got Away,” the last three songs of the album form a collective sonic and thematic peak. The self-talk in “Idiot” was confusing for me at first, but through numerous listens, it became a place of comfort against my failings as a partner and in the ways I have disappointed myself over the years. It reminds us that how we fail can also be proof of our possibility to succeed. “Now That I’m Older” reminds me that I am the one who is in control of my own cyclical downfalls. The project car argument keeps happening because I continue to approach the topic without care. I am pulling the same lever over and over again, expecting a different result. A part of me must not think that her feelings about it are valid enough to stop me from trying.

We are about to have our first child. A daughter. Maybe this next phase of marriage is that difficult part that they were telling us about. Maybe this next part will change our marriage and put some truth to the warnings we were given. The final song on Eternal Repeater, “In a Little Bit of Time,” is much more bombastic than the songs that preceded it, especially from the album opener. It is brash and aggressive, but the lyrics hold the same softness as all the rest. I have no clue what is coming for Morgan and me in these next years, but I know that I'll be able to pull more from this album as I grow older and learn more about myself and the world. 

I believe that people are innately good. We have all witnessed and been party to the brokenness of humanity. Charlie Kaplan thoroughly exposes this brokenness and, in the midst of it, reminds us of the great potential for good that still exists. We are able to learn and improve and break the cycles that break trust and burden our most prized relationships. Our marriage is easy, our problems are real, and although I am an idiot, I will continue to become a better friend as I get older. 

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Kirby Kluth grew up in the suburbs of Houston but now lives in Knoxville, TN. He spends his time thinking about motorcycles, tennis, and music. You can follow him on Instagram @kirbykluth.

Wild Pink – Dulling the Horns | Album Review

Fire Talk

If I wanted to place Dulling the Horns in a box, I could label it with the phrase “back-to-basics.” However, I don’t want to do that. The fifth LP from Wild Pink is rougher and rowdier than the band has ever sounded before, an advancement and experiment for John Ross and company. Extensive touring in the wake of ILYSM, the band’s collaboration-heavy shot at the moon, honed their edges into jagged spikes; those extremities were subsequently reigned into the controlled chaos of the mile-a-minute word tumble of “Eating the Egg Whole” and the sludgy canine declarations of love on “Bonnie One.” The sound of Dulling the Horns is mostly three or four people playing live in a room together, pushing against world-weariness with begrudging energy and resolve. 

Album opener and lead single “The Fences of Stonehenge” finds Ross reprehensive and reflective. Years of writing and touring have threatened to overwhelm the ridge of light that beckoned in the first place. Ramshackle guitars never quite drown out the ambiguity in a pointed question like “Do you still believe it?” In fact, directness drives the song out of the static and into a Petty-via-Young barn-burner. The terrain is harsher once you’ve abandoned the main course, but there is freedom in the abandonment. The thunder still looms heavy over the horizon, so why not take a detour? You can hop the chainlink barriers encircling the megalithic structure and get a little closer to the wonder, even if it gets you into a mess. Never let your stupid ass stop searching.

There are moments on the album reminiscent of another winding, fuzz-laden record made by a band of New Yorkers — Ben Seretan’s Allora. Both songwriters’ core curiosities aren’t sacrificed in the quest towards august straightforwardness and loud amps. The ragged distortion found on all ten tracks of Dulling the Horns doesn’t come at the cost of the esoteric non-sequiturs or stark emotions that flow through Ross’ lyrics. Light doesn’t stop shining in when the clouds roll in. The crescendoing ambition of Wild Pink’s music, from the scrappiness of the self-titled debut to the wind-swept wonder of A Billion Little Lights, is turned back into itself, given a more familiar, classic rock-indebted musical landscape to inhabit, one that still possesses the same crags and biting cold, glimmering stars and lurching valleys, sun and moon.

“Dracula was a Catholic, too, in fact,” Ross sings of the vampirian prince and his orthodoxy late on Dulling the Horns. Fraying and warm saxophone dances with plinking bells around this declaration of someone else’s faith. Perhaps only a takeaway line on another song, it provides “Catholic Dracula” with its title, packing a multitude of worries into a single bar about a single bat. Even the all-powerful Vlad the Impaler (not as prone to blood-sucking as his fictional counterpart) feared God and death, felt guilt, and raged against his shortcomings. Without reading further into the fanged one’s faith, he is humanized by Ross. A straight yet blurry line is drawn between the prevalent Catholic “imagery of suffering” and Dracula’s “later work” as a pole-sharpening brutalist. How does one reckon with their faith in the light of past suffering and struggle?

Elsewhere on the record, Ross still manages to cram in lines about “long-ass German words,” Michael Jordan’s hat in 1997, Heaven’s Gate, and Czech television news. His wandering imagination and invisible associations haven’t lost any prevalence, prescience, playfulness, or laugh-out-loud absurdity. Pro-Iraq War anti-France French fries were served “proudly” in Congressional cafeterias in 2003, the year Jordan retired — all of this time-and-place specificity is stuffed into just two bars. Despite the mess of every morning and the lyrical density, gleaming nuggets of truth shine through on every track. One of Ross’ strengths remains peculiar elegance, in how bits of songs get stuck in your head in true Bermanesque fashion and how guitars, piano, pedal steel, and sax rollick into each other. Dulling the Horns is meant to be lived in; it sure as hell ain’t meant to be forgotten.

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Aly Eleanor lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she writes, records, sends emails, and more for Ear Coffee, a DIY podcast and media “entity” that she co-founded. She can be found online, underground, at home with her rats, or @purityolympics.

Leisure Hour – The Sunny Side | Album Review

Refresh Records

I have been trying to write this piece since before The Sunny Side was released. The reason I struggled is that I found myself becoming too earnest when discussing this album, as many of the topics depicted are things that I have lived through. Throughout these 34 minutes, Leisure Hour confront the realities of life in a way that hits uncomfortably close to home, with the trio addressing everything from struggling to pay rent to major instances of loss. The Sunny Side is a masterclass in breaking down universal feelings to their atoms and giving those feelings a reassuring new package.

Despite the unique heaviness of these topics, Leisure Hour remain unflinchingly positive throughout their debut LP, whether that shines through with soaring guitars that make you want to dance or sing-along “woahs” that feel primed to be belted out in sweaty basements and dive bars. It is impossible to listen to this album and remain truly sad, despite one notable, absolutely heartbreaking example I promise to tell you all about later. The Muncie, Indiana three-piece consists of guitarist/vocalist Isaiah Neal, bassist/vocalist Grace Dudas, and drummer Raegan Gordon, who come together to create 11 songs filled with rambunctious indie rock energy. 

The Sunny Side begins with “Rent’s Due,” and this song is the perfect way to start as it sets the tone and stakes with an immediate “Oh the fucking rent is due / I check my bank account / and the funds start to run / with their unlaced shoes.” These lines are sung in a rather whimsical way over a bouncy guitar riff that immediately opens up into some fun percussion, which drives the heart of most Leisure Hour songs. This song also acts as a duet between Dudas and Neal, who jump back and forth between verses as they sing about the power of staying together despite strife. The highlight of the song is a solo in which Dudas sings, “I just wanted you to know that I fucking love you / even when the rent is due,” which builds up as vocals from Neal are layered over swelling drums before finally opening up into a pop-punk-fueled ending. 

Acceptance is a central theme throughout the album and appears throughout songs like “Forgiveness,” a pop-punk banger track on which Dudas takes the lead vocals. This song explores the nature of coming to terms with your own personal limit of forgiveness. In “Part of Me,” Neal puts forth an emo ballad grappling with the nature of growing up and being alone.  Perhaps the best example of this theme is in “Ivy Tech,” one of the more emo-tinged singles from Leisure Hour’s self-titled EP that made it onto the album, and it is clear why. Aside from being impossibly catchy, “Ivy Tech” articulates the idea that everyone you love will die and then turns it around, pointing out that the fact that life ends is exactly what makes it beautiful. We, by nature, are perishable, and that makes these silly little breaths we take worth something. 

However, the air we breathe is a lot sweeter when you have someone to share it with, and Leisure Hour is more than happy to put forth a collection of love songs to remind us of that fact. Songs like “All of the Time,” “I Don’t Want This To End,” and “Am I Just Dead?” showcase the “fireworks” type of love that is explosive and inherent at the beginning of a relationship. It is that feeling when you just can’t believe what you have and all you want to do is be arm-in-arm.

The album is closed by a one-two punch that I have coined an “earnestness encore.” It begins with “Water Loves the Sunset,” and it barely feels like hyperbole when I say I find this song to be the most wholesome and intimate love song I have ever heard. The entire track is without percussion and features only a simple acoustic guitar part and distorted, echo-y duet vocals from Neal and Dudas. The song approaches the idea of holding a deep love despite not being close in proximity yet still feeling an endless pull toward each other. The water will always be pulled toward the shore, and once you feel a love like this, you yearn to be pulled right back in.

I personally view the closing track on any album as something almost holy in nature. The final song is the note you leave everything on, and The Sunny Side features one of the greatest closers I have ever heard. The conclusion of this album is “The Glow,” and this particular song is hard for me to write about because the themes are something that I have experienced first-hand. The song begins, “I was at your graduation / but you forgot to come.” The first time I heard the beginning lines of this song, I immediately broke into tears as a friend of mine passed away in high school, and images of watching her family walk the stage for her diploma played in my head, and they continued to haunt me for a while as I had run from these emotions for years. This song forced me to finally look into myself and find a way to move forward despite the grief I hid from. If I had to ascribe a single word to tell you what “The Glow” is as a song, that word would be important. Even if you hadn’t lived this story, I assure you that you will not escape this track without being overcome with emotion. I don’t know how to hear a song where you take one of the worst things to occur in your life and turn it into a beautiful gospel of positivity. 

The Sunny Side is a cohesive debut from a young Indiana band that inspires hope for their future as a band and the future as a whole. Each song on this album feels like it could be played on any sized stage and leave the crowd dancing and singing along. It can’t be understated what Leisure Hour has been able to accomplish on their first record. They’ve honed a polished sound that is deeply entrenched in a distinctly human feeling. At the end of the day, all we want to be is better, and Leisure Hour show us that we can be. 

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Ben Parker is an emo kid from a small town in Indiana who has spent a little too much time reflecting on life. Ben is a poet and has written about topics ranging from death to addiction to that feeling when you meet someone, and once you part, you realize you’ll never speak again. Ben can be found at @Benyamin_Parker on all social media.

Delta Sleep – Blue Garden | Album Review

Wax Bodega

If you look at practically any era of human history, the one constant is conflict. The difference between years past and present is our immediate access to that conflict at any given moment. A harrowing number of atrocities can be viewed almost in real-time with the swipe of a finger, and it can be hard not to let it all crash down on you. Like many others, I tend to use music as a sort of umbrella to protect myself from the torrential downpour of bad news. While art can be used as a form of escape, its primary function is to spark engagement with listeners and examine ideas in our world that might otherwise be left to the wayside. That’s where UK-based rock outfit Delta Sleep’s latest record, Blue Garden, thrives, as its intellectual form is ready to invite listeners into some conversations they may not be expecting.

Blue Garden is unequivocally Delta Sleep’s heaviest album to date, with harrowing lyrical depictions in the songwriting and grungier instrumentation than records past. The first offering from the record came in the form of a mini-documentary for Blue Garden’s opener, “Dawn,” which blends archival footage and modern sources to depict the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The video is underscored by the stripped-back, atmospheric track, with lyrics such as “Can’t say that you're a leader when there's bloodshed in your sight,” taking aim at the systems that allow the continuing genocide to happen.

In the context of the album, “Dawn” lands a successful one-two punch with a flawless transition into the much more bombastic “Slow Burn.” Lyrically, there’s a sense of despair that permeates in vocalist Devin Yüceil’s delivery in both tracks, but while “Dawn” makes a direct attack on those turning a blind eye to the atrocities of the modern world, “Slow Burn” becomes an introspective examination of the helplessness and the guilt that we all feel. The duality of these opening tracks acts as a compelling juxtaposition of stasis and how it manifests in our internal workings, depending on whether or not we choose to accept it.

The guitar tones, especially on the front half of the record, are coated with a light sheen of distortion and fuzz, with tracks like “Slow Burn” and “Toe Stepper” feeling more adjacent to grunge and shoegaze than Delta Sleep’s previously bread and butter of math rock. There are certainly moments of irregular time signatures, such as “The Distance” and bits of “A Casa,” for those seeking a hit of the band’s jazzier side. For me, math rock has always been a sort of paradox in terms of enjoyment: I’ve always appreciated and admired how artfully constructed the songs can be, but it usually feels like I’m one zoned-out second away from falling off the saddle. I can’t deny how impressive the guitar passages are, but damn, they can be hard to follow sometimes. Thankfully, Yüceil’s melodic voice brings you back into the reality of the track, which keeps it from getting completely lost.

What makes Blue Garden work for me as a cohesive record is how easily it transitions between the chaotic moments and its more intimate passages, and a lot of this is due to the cohesion of the interludes. I’m a sucker for a good interlude, especially if they serve an actual purpose instead of padding out the tracklist. “(light)” and “(night)” accomplish just that, as their specific placement on the record gives Blue Garden the shape of a three-act movie. Each of these interludes gives way to a broader song, with the specific transition from “(light)” to “Glow” feeling like a bridge between two sections of someone’s life. “Glow” highlights some comfortable, atmospheric textures that contrast with the more rambunctious first leg of the record. The track phases in and out of conversation between the instruments and the vocals, introducing a fuzzed-out guitar towards the middle that feels like it’s translating the words into an almost alien language. 

If you were looking for a song on this record to recommend to someone who wasn’t totally familiar with the specific genre nuances that Delta Sleep plays with, I would undoubtedly point you to the record’s second single, “Figure In The Dark.” This is one of the more straightforward cuts on the album, as it fits more closely into an emo, indie-rock sound if you had to give it a name, but the core of the track is much more upbeat than the lyrics would have you believe. On the flip side, there’s the mystical cut “Illuminator,” which is easily the most interesting song on the album to pick apart musically. There’s this backing synth about two-thirds of the way through the track that leads to the song's conclusion, bringing an ominous backdrop to an otherwise energetic guitar pattern and drawing more interest to what this newer element will build towards. What drove me crazy, on the other hand, was how there was so much going on within the first minute or so, and I just kept waiting for the payoff that never seemed to properly arrive. 

The final leg of Blue Garden finds its footing in its lyrics, starting with the cut “Sl_ck_rs,” which circles back to the harrowing ordeals that inspired the conception of this record. Yüceil wails a desperate warning of our planet’s destruction within the chorus:

And if we can’t fix the leak
Well then we might have made this our last century
And thrown away the chance to be
Better together

The penultimate track, “A Casa,” presents a form of introspection, shifting the focus inward with the themes of exploring your mentality within the destruction of the world around you. The band takes a triumphant step into the light in the final moments of the album with the song “Sunchaser.” Normally, I’m not the biggest fan of when bands drop the record’s closing song as a single, especially the first one, because it feels like you’re giving away the ending of a movie. However, this may be a rare exception, as the progression of the track and the lyrics become a sort of thesis for the entire project. The closer eases its way in with a math-rock-inspired riff before crashing down with drums and cathartic vocals about “Seeing you when the sun is shining.” There is so much darkness in the world, but living life without hope for the future or a shining sun to meet under only makes the world that much darker.

There’s a depth towards these moments that bring out an empathetic edge the album cleverly disguises as despair. Instead of purely relinquishing ourselves to an uncontrollable learned helplessness in every waking moment, Blue Garden invites listeners to feel everything through a diverse sonic landscape of math-rock, forays into emo territory, and splashes of indie. Part of being human is the ability to have these nuances throughout our synapses, and the four musicians of Delta Sleep know it all too well. There is a future out there, and as Delta Sleep puts it, “Maybe it’ll be worth finding.”

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Samuel Leon (they/he) is a Brooklyn-based music photographer, playwright, and performer. Sam writes plays about music but not musicals. Sam doesn’t like using the internet, but they will if they have to. If you are even remotely close to Brooklyn and want Sam to make you look cool on camera, hit them up on @sleonpics. They also have bad takes on Twitter @samislosingit.

Color Temperature – Here For It | Album Review

Developer Records

The human existence is an exercise in perspective. It’s an emotional state just as much as it is a physical one. As you get older, your perspective evolves, and your understanding of yourself and the world around you changes, reaching across temporal gaps to bring memories into fresh view, cast aglow in the light of experience and time. 

Color Temperature songs are preoccupied with perspective – especially the eleven tracks on the gorgeous new album Here For It. Ross Page, the one-man brainchild behind Color Temperature, is acutely adept at placing you, the listener, within his memories – seeing the same things,  experiencing the same emotions, feeling the same warmth of sunlight or coldness of shadow. Beyond the lyrics, the sound of the record is incredibly experiential. A Color Temperature song has the uncanny ability to flip your perspective on its head, re-orienting you into a new phase of understanding and spatial awareness. 

Take “Backdoor,” one of the excellent singles, for example. The song opens with an immediately endearing, bittersweet letter of regret: “I’m so sorry / I hurt you baby / I’d feed you cake I mean / If we had the money.” This is boosted by a rolling, fuzzy bass, the pleasant causticness of the tone ironically underscoring the intimacy. It’s the sound of laying on your bed in an apartment, working to get the words right. But then, the song takes off. The sonic world opens up. Now, it feels as if we’re on a train, watching the world go by. This spontaneous re-orientation makes us feel like we’re viewing the story from above, seeing the grander shapes and patterns of a life that led to this regret. Then, he brings us back to earth. The music shifts from soaring to ominous, sounding so obfuscated, as if we’re hearing the end of the song through several doors. Bringing us back into this apartment room. 

Time, revisitation, and shifting perspectives are all baked into the album’s core concept. To explain its structure, Page drew up a map of two concentric loops –  a circle within a circle. As a whole, the album can play as a perfect loop, much like Transatlanticism, a record whose long-trailed reverb legacy can be heard throughout Here For It. 

The song “Tracy,” which leads to the inner loop of songs, is a gorgeous jog through the late summer golden hour. Page’s softly sung, gain-cranked voice pulls you along with elastic elegance. The instrumentation here calls to mind the best of Sea and Cake – upbeat yet supremely soothing, with tropicália-esque elements intermingling with krautrock-adjacent rhythms. The guitars, recorded direct into computer rather than through amps (a byproduct of his move from Wilmington, NC to the more tightly packed Brooklyn), break up beautifully. Each note seems to barely hold itself together as it splits at the edges and cracks the veneer. But then, the energizing airiness is all sucked away, plunging us into a deep dive through aquatic synths and slowly drifting vocals. Page describes the song as being about reflecting on the past, the heartbreaks and the trials, and being hit with that doubt that asks, “Is that going to happen again?” It serves as the perfect emotional, thematic segue into the inner loop of regret and aged sadness. 

The inner loop, bookended by “Old City Pt. I” and “Old City Pt. II,” is a collection of older songs that either felt “too sad” for his previous record or that Page had reworked with a now-shifted perspective. Though, “Old City Pt. II” is one of the most comforting “too sad” songs I’ve heard in quite a while. The harmonized hope for light to “fill the frame again” is a mesmerizing, ghostly refrain that will loop in the mind of the bereaved long after the song fades to an end.  

When you exit the inner loop, you find yourself caught in the crystalline web of “Unveiling Decorations,” a show-stopping acoustic gem. The acoustic arrangement lets Page’s subtly masterful guitar layering shine, offering an uplifting respite before diving back into the glimmergaze of “Here For It.” The title track’s uneasy, shimmering guitars give way to rolling arpeggios, playing host to the best couplet of the album: “Shit, life’s just one big lingering ask / Shit, whatever you want, I’m here for it.” The gentle intimacy wraps you up in its sunny-with-shades-of-doom atmosphere. 

Then, it all (intentionally) falls apart at the end of “Dusk.” Everything dissolves into an ominous oscillation as if the whole song has been run through a haunted Leslie speaker. It’s the sound of arriving at the end of the cycle, leaving you ready for the loop to restart. It rings with the feeling of looking at a new phase in your life, noticing the echoes of what came before and how they change with this new perspective. Color Temperature encapsulates this delicate sensation in both the record as a whole and within its minutiae, creating a landscape that you’ll find yourself exploring more and more, discovering new beauty and strangeness within the ever-shifting perspectives. 

Joshua Sullivan is a writer, filmmaker, and musician based out of Wilmington, NC. Find him on Twitter (not X) at @brotherheavenz and Instagram at @human_giant.