Big Girl Are Ready to Be Your DIY God

Self-Released

Big Girl’s performance was the crux of a protest show held during last year’s South By Southwest, where a slew of punk-adjacent acts gathered to play a thrashing, beer-soaked free set under a highway. On stage, frontperson Kaitlin Pelkey is flanked by two backup singers, Christina Schwedler and Melody Stolpp, whose sharply coordinated moves set a ferociously campy scene. Their show is quite the production, with multiple guitars, choreography, and Pelkey’s powerhouse vocals wrangling the chaos. The singers’ frenzied dance lights up the band’s layered rock sound, miraculously weaving a biting punk aesthetic out of melody and perfectly timed movements. How the hell did Big Girl come up with this strange concoction of a live show? “Be truthful and be stupid,” frontperson Kaitlin Pelkey says. 

At the dyed-red heart of Big Girl’s songs, Pelkey’s voice contorts and swirls, never missing a note, yet not quite content to settle on one for too long either. The band’s new single, “DIY GOD,” finds expressive electric guitars chugging, sparkling, and wailing in Pelkey’s wake, trailing her like the briefcase chained to her wrist in the music video. There’s something a little unsettling about the tone of her voice: although pretty, her melodies are a little loopy, a little queasy, channeling ghosts of glam rock past in a way that counterbalances the songs’ scuzzy instruments. Turns out, a touch of theatrics is the perfect canvas for the NYC band’s very real experiences and emotions.

"DIY GOD" is just the first taste of a forthcoming EP called DYE which is coming later this year. Pelkey wrote most of these songs in 2020 in the midst of her mother’s dire health crisis, which she eventually succumbed to, passing away in 2021. “A lot of the stuff I write about is pretty heavy, pretty dark,” admits Pelkey. Paradoxically, the depth of her painful moments fuels the panache that sets Big Girl apart. “Just remembering that you have to keep the joy in your story - it actually elevates it,” she says about the maximalist aesthetic of their live performances and forthcoming EP. Pelkey’s songs strike a remarkable balance between maudlin and cathartic, both extremes fueled by the same deep well of emotion. 

Red keeps showing up in Big Girl’s new era, whether seeping out of Pelkey’s freshly colored hair in a sink or lighting up her energy in an angry swath. “It’s bloody,” she says about the motif. Dyed-red hair isn’t just a stylistic choice, she elaborates: it’s “transformation on your own terms…bringing color to a place that once had none.”

Photo by Tess Fulkerson

Big Girl’s guitarist Crispin Swank produced DYE with help from Justin Pizzoferrato (Speedy Ortiz, Dinosaur Jr., Pixies), who had also helped them bring their debut album, Big Girl vs. God, to life. They knocked the EP’s five songs out in just three studio days, tightening up their sound from the manic sprawl of older songs like “Big Car Full of Mistakes.” In contrast, “DIY GOD” sticks with just one time signature throughout—although don’t expect a clean-cut indie rock track, with Pelkey’s voice maintaining a dash of drama a la Puberty 2-era Mitski. The single is a lurching, groovy confessional, culminating in Swank’s guitar shredding Weezer-style behind exasperated choruses. “No one can fuck it up like I do,” Pelkey sneers, summing up the EP’s flamboyant existential crisis in a single line. 

Disassembling—hitting a wall and starting over—succumbing to weirdness and chaos. It’s all a part of Big Girl’s journey through DYE. Quitting a job on a sunny day, dyeing one’s hair just to feel something. Despite the band’s larger-than-life sound, their struggles are the same as everybody else trying to find meaning in an uncertain era. Big Girl’s snark is just one stripe in a swirl of deep experience: grief, joy, and rage at the horrors of our modern world. But what better vessel for angst than sharp, relentless rock songs?

“So watch me burn it all ‘cause I’m so bored that I told you the truth,” Pelkey howls on “DIY GOD,” wrestling with the apparent futility of… well, everything. The final scene of the music video shows Pelkey thrashing in the waves on the Miami shore, melodramatically raging against the impossibility of art, of joy, of any hope at all. The song answers its own question in a flash of graffiti in the middle of the music video: “Red Hot Salvation.” With their newest songs, Big Girl’s underlying belief shines through that creating DIY art is, in and of itself, the salvation that they seek.

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Katie Hayes is a music writer and karaoke superstar in Austin, Texas. She is from there, but between 2010 and now, also lived in Lubbock, TX, Portland, OR, and a camper. Her life is a movie in which her bearded dragon Pancake is the star. You can check out her Substack here and some of her other writing here. She’s writing a book about growing up alongside her favorite band, Paramore.

Cryogeyser – Cryogeyser | Album Review

Self-Released

Millennial culture is back like it never left. The kids of the late 90s and early 2000s–now considered the Y2K era–are all grown up with jobs, bills, and the stresses of adulthood. I’ll raise my hand for all three of those, and we all cope in different ways. Regardless of your age or what generation you may find yourself in, there’s something undeniably alluring about revisiting shows that take you back to a time when it was just you and your friends watching your favorite TV shows without a care in the world. This is what I like to call entertainment comfort food. 

When we watch reruns of shows that activate our inner child, everything from the theme songs to the needle drops instantly inject peak nostalgia into our veins, transporting us back to a past version of ourselves. This brings me to Cryogeyser’s self-titled sophomore album, which is sure to scratch any nostalgic itch you may have for the vibes of yesteryear. I’d be willing to bet a lump sum of money (preferably not my money, but someone's money) that vocalist/guitarist Shawn Marom is a big fan of shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dark Angel, or Charmed. 

In 2019, Cryogeyser’s first album, Glitch, was a solid debut from the group. Their music was painted on a canvas dream-pop throughout, but behind those lush textures, the lyrics hid an impending doom. This is most notable on the song “Waiting,” which reminds me of the final scene from the first Terminator film where Sarah Connor finds herself driving from a sun-soaked desert into the eye of an imminent thunderstorm.

Cryogeyser’s self-titled record is more interesting, pushing their sonic scope to new heights far past those found on their debut. Whether this change is coming through the newly refreshed and solidified lineup or just the natural process of getting older, their maturation is evident. The addition of Zach Capitti Fenton on drums and bassist Samson Klitsner has cranked up the dial full-blast with colossal riffs track after track. If Glitch is like driving down the sunlit California coast in a flashy convertible with the top down, Cryogeyser is like being in the same sports car, only this time, you made a wrong turn and have found yourself flying at breakneck speed past abandoned buildings, run-down impound lots, and seedy-looking characters. 

Album opener, “Sorry,” is a sonic knockout punch that would even leave Rocky Balboa woozy. The song is a fusion of grunge, shoegaze, and dream-pop rolled into one ball of awesome. Marom’s melodies instantly captivate, making it one of their best and an easy choice for the album’s lead single. Marom said about the track, “Sorry is the song that plays at the pool party your ex is at.” I hope my exes aren’t listening to music this high quality. 

Mid-album highlight “Mountain” is a tag team effort from Marom and Karly Hartzman of Wednesday, harmonizing in tandem about the after-effects of a broken relationship. Both singers sound at home over the distorted arrangement of guitars. This got me thinking that there should be more team-ups in the indie music community. We got a stellar one last year with Waxahatchee and MJ Lenderman, and that was one of the best songs of the year! Now, I’m not asking for every artist to have a Wu-Tang-like feature list on albums because that would devalue the point, but if done in moderation, the songs get elevated to feel more special, like with “Mountain.”

Maybe it’s just because they’ve toured together (multiple times), but Cryogeyser reminds me of a West Coast version of Wednesday. Both bands excel at turning their versions of shoegaze into a grimy, dirty, distorted trademark sound. Instead of the alt-country allure of Down South that Wednesday is now known for, Cryogeyser lean into the sonic landscape of their sunny, vibrant home in Los Angeles. Regional music is finally making a comeback!

Cryogeyser are also purveyors of 90s culture with their cascading waves of grungy distortion. “Cupid” (a song aptly titled for the record’s Valentine’s Day release) has an authentic alternative-rock fuzz that would make Dinosaur Jr. proud. Between the melodic chorus and scuzzy guitars, “Blew It” left a lasting impression on me, making it a compelling late-album peak. With a Lance Bangs-directed music video, there’s no doubt in my mind that “Stargirl” would have been a massive hit on MTV’s Alternative Nation. It’s a song that takes you on a journey about the isolating damage that grief does to one’s body. Marom sings, “I’m eating it fast and eating it well / My stomach feels full, and I’m going through hell.” Things progress to a fiery conclusion with cascading waves of grungy guitar distortion that will leave you slack-jawed. 

“Fortress” has a timeless classic rock-fueled pop edge. Marom’s intoxicating vocal harmonies remind me of Celebrity Skin-era Courtney Love. A couple of tracks later, “Blue Light” has a retro television show theme music quality with lyrics about self-discovery and a tidal wave of dreamy pumped guitars. It feels like I’m watching a lost episode of One Tree Hill or, for the real heads out there, The O.C. 

Throughout their self-titled record, Cryogeyser encapsulate a brooding yet blissful ambiance, setting the tone with a dreamy type of grunge sonic structure on “Sorry” all the way to the tear-soaked trip hop closer “Love Language.” It’s a kind of mood that leans heavy on nostalgia, which meshes well with the reflective nature of Marom’s lyrics, looking in the rearview mirror on past decisions or relationships. I think it’s a brilliant move, harkening back to the past sonically while coming to grips with lost times. Cryogeyser created a soundtrack for us to return to whenever the present is overwhelming, the past seems confronting, and the future seems uncertain. As the trio blur those time frames together, things somehow only manage to become more clear. 

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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.

Heart Sweats: A Swim Into The Sound Valentine’s Day Mixtape

Rip open that box of chocolates, pour that red wine, and grab some chalky heart-shaped candies, ‘cause we’ve got a lovey-dovey Valentine’s Day roundup for all you hopeless romantics out there. In celebration of the most amorous holiday, we asked the Swim Team about their most memorable music moment tied to their love life–it could be something that made their heart melt, something that made them cringe with embarrassment, or a song that played during a confession of love that they’ll never forget. Regardless, we wanted to hear about those moments when the music stuck an irreversible chord with their heart. 

Here’s a playlist of each song as a little Valentine’s Day mixtape from The Swim Team to you. I strongly encourage you to listen along as you read and enjoy the happy-accident tonal whiplash in the sequencing. We hope you have a love-filled Valentine’s Day, please have an extra chocolate-covered strawberry in our honor ❤️

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Death Cab for Cutie – “Passenger Seat”

The road from Southern Illinois University to Missouri Baptist University is about 40 minutes. Maybe 35 when you speed down the highways in your Ford Focus. It was a route I became deeply familiar with in 2008. My now-husband was studying to be an engineer, and I was getting a communications degree I had no clue what to do with. We’d spend hours together watching stupid comedies in his dorm room before I would sneak out to try to make it back before the 10 PM Baptist curfew. I spent those autumn trips diving into albums, but the one I always came back to was Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanticism. I would queue up the title track as I started the drive, but I always slowed my car down the second it turned to “Passenger Seat.” As if obeying the song, I would roll the windows down and watch the deer of the campus fields look up at my headlights before returning to their indifferent grazing. The smell of crisp autumn leaves and bummed American Spirits would flood my car as I made my way through the empty streets. Then, once the song was over, I would hit repeat. 

Death Cab would come to play a big part in those early months of our relationship. He even asked me out with a ticket to their Narrow Stairs show, and if he judged me for crying throughout the set, he never showed it. This year will mark our 14th year of marriage, and with that comes 14 years of changes, most of which are good. We’re wildly different people than we were our freshman year in college. Yet the second I hear those opening piano keys, I’m back on the road in my busted Focus, smiling as the leaves fall down around the deer of the field. 

– Lindsay Fickas

Less Than Jake – “The Rest of My Life” 

When I was in middle school, I had a big crush on one of my neighbors. We’d hang out a lot, but things never really took a romantic turn. Whenever anything happened that reinforced the fact that we’d likely never be a couple—be it her getting a new boyfriend or saying that she wasn’t interested in hanging on a particular day—I’d go into my room and blast this song on loop while fantasizing about moving to a different neighborhood where there was a neighbor who loved me back. I would never have admitted this back then—both because it’s very pathetic and because my appreciation of “The Rest of My Life” ran counter to my stance that Less Than Jake were traitors for abandoning ska to make milquetoast pop-punk—but now I’m ready to tell the truth. Also, for the record, I don’t think I ever actually believed what I was saying about Less Than Jake being traitors for their stylistic shifts; it’s just the sort of thing that’s fun to say when you’re 13 (though I was hyped when GNV FLA came out and they brought the horns back). 

– Josh Ejnes 

Talking Heads – “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)” 

In the summer of 2014, I lived in Richmond, Virginia. My wife and I had been married for almost 3 years, and we had just moved away from Denver in order to reinvent our lives in a new city. We lived in Richmond’s Church Hill neighborhood, and I was making 26 thousand dollars a year working for a non-profit. We had no money, no friends (because we were in a new city), and no real idea about the future and what shape it would take. Spotify had recently gotten a real hold on me, and I was rediscovering my love of making playlists. One playlist I made that summer was just 60 minutes of different covers of “This Must Be The Place.” I remember us dancing around our small apartment, trying desperately to figure out how to execute the logistics of “sing into my mouth.” I don’t know, man. Every year with Kate, I think I understand that song more and work to be in love that way even more deeply. Will you love me till my heart stops? Love me till I’m dead. Eyes that light up, eyes look through you. Cover up the blank spots, hit me on the head.

– Ben Sooy

Ezra Furman – “I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend”

Perhaps it’s a bit obvious to use this song to ask out a girl, but I’ve never been one to catch subtlety, so when I got a message from my future wife with this song in it, I, of course, still had to be sure she was saying what I thought she was. Unfamiliar with Ezra Furman, a transgender woman making punk that falls between Laura Jane Grace and PUP, I quickly looked up the lyrics to the song. After all, you don’t want to accidentally miss that the third verse could be sarcastic and mean the opposite of what it appears on its face. Thankfully, I found no such thing and quickly said yes as I read the lyrics, “That’s right, little old me, I want to be your girlfriend and blow your mind each night when you come home.” Subtle, it was not. Having gotten caught up in the energy of the moment, I didn’t actually listen to the song and wouldn’t for weeks. Less than a year later, I married the girl. I’m happy to call myself a fan of Ezra Furman’s now, with this song being particularly heartwarming as a moment I can share with my wife every time it comes up on a playlist or album listen. 

– Noëlle Midnight

Car Seat Headrest – “Beach-Life-In-Death” Live at the Royale in Boston

On this day in 2019, I was staring at Will Toledo.

In the second semester of my sophomore year of college, I was fresh off a breakup when my friend threw out that we should see Car Seat Headrest when they came through Boston. It was an immediate ‘yes’ for three reasons: I love my friend and would do whatever with them, Car Seat Headrest was the most important band to me in college, and I needed to hear “Beach-Life-In-Death” live. The show was on Valentine’s Day. I don’t remember much of the show, honestly. I remember the opener sucked, I remember a crowd surfer dropping directly into my friend’s arms, and I remember piles of college kids smoking Golds outside. But what I remember most fondly is waiting for “Beach-Life-In-Death.” I think it’s still my favorite song, but back then, it felt so big and so meaningful (it still does, so I guess that’s why it’s still my favorite). Which brings me back to the beginning of this. On this day in 2019, I was staring at Will Toledo, washed in a pink glow, with my friend, screaming the lyrics to my favorite song together. Love is so beautiful. 

– Caro Alt

Sufjan Stevens – “Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!”

For someone who has largely built their life around music, I can’t make a playlist to save my life. I rarely listen to songs outside the context of albums, and if someone passes me the aux cable, Lord have mercy on the hapless souls trapped in the car with me: the vibes will be chaotic. If I were a wedding DJ, I’d have people bolting for the fire exits.

My wife Ellie learned this the summer of our first year dating. I flew out to visit her at her family’s place in Minnesota, and we decided to take a day trip to Duluth. We set out before sunrise, and since she was driving, she tasked me with music duties, requesting “peaceful early morning vibes,” which started out okay! Indie folk à la Gregory Alan Isakov, Iron & Wine, The Head and the Heart, First Aid Kit, coffee shop core (non-derogatory). And then I queued up a little ditty from Illinois by Sufjan Stevens: “Decatur, Or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!” In my mind, this was a perfect song for a Midwest road trip, but Ellie burst out laughing as soon as she heard that perky banjo and accordion cutting through the predawn tranquility. It’s an obvious misstep in retrospect, as we went from sweet whispery love songs to goofy rhymes about chickenmobiles and making amends with your stepmom. In any case, the vibes were totally off the rails from there; I unearthed our collaborative playlist on Spotify, and somehow, we ended up at “Guilty Cubicles,” a moody post-rock instrumental from Broken Social Scene’s debut.

This began a tradition of sabotaging drives by dropping “Decatur” in the middle of completely incompatible queues (it’s sort of my version of Rickrolling, specifically for my wife). Eight years later, it’s a sweet way to remember one of my favorite days with Ellie, just driving up the North Shore, sharing our favorite songs, and stopping at every lighthouse we could find.

– Nick Webber

Insane Clown Posse – “The Nedan Game” 

TikTok has transformed my girlfriend into a Juggalette, which means she has pushed all her chips in on the court jesters of horrorcore, the Insane Clown Posse. How did this happen, you say? The culprit lies in the freshly painted face that goes by the username @carissadid. Carissa is a sight to behold as she metamorphosizes from human into clown while rapping seamlessly to a different ICP song in each video. I’m afraid a spell has been cast abound my girlfriend, as she has watched far too many of her posts and is past saving at this point. I fear one day I may be ambushed in my sleep with Violent J’s face paint on me or, even worse, Shaggy 2 Dope’s. 

“The Neden Game,” which is my girlfriend’s favorite ICP song, is a crude humor spoof of the show The Dating Game. The track plays over in my head repeatedly like I’m trapped in some kind of vulgar clown P.O.W. camp that would have had Bozo turn in his red nose and oversized shoes. The song sounds like it would play at frat parties in between keg stands for degenerates. If you see me at this year's Gathering of the Juggalos festival, I have been held against my will in a Liam Neeson Taken-type situation. If this happens, please, someone call the F.B.I.

– David Williams

The Sidekicks – “A Short Dance” + “Don’t Feel Like Dancing”

For a relationship that’s more or less founded on a shared love of music, I find it odd that my girlfriend and I don’t have “a song.” There is no single piece of music that we can point to as “ours,” on the contrary, it’s more like we have the opposite problem: there have been far too many songs that feel like connective tissue throughout our three years together. I suppose when faced with hundreds of possible songs, dozens of back-and-forth playlists, and a seemingly unending spool of bands we’ve bonded over, it becomes hard to pare it down to just one entry. 

Thus, this is but one pit stop in a densely populated field: the one-two punch of “A Short Dance” and “Don’t Feel Like Dancing” by The Sidekicks. Starting with the 48-second prelude, “A Short Dance,” is how so many relationships start: trepidatious and unsure–a nervous and unshakable energy as you psych yourself up for the big moment. You can imagine all the possible futures just as quickly as you can picture the stinging rejection. Either way, you find the courage to accept your fate and approach this person, ready for any outcome. 

In comes “Don’t Feel Like Dancing,” a joyous explosion of love and adoration. Over sun-splotched major chords, Steve Ciolek explains how nothing in life (not dancing, not flowers, not even ridiculing dudes!) is as sweet as when you’re experiencing them with your person. Avoid the pit of nostalgia! Sip that mimosa! Fucking boogie! You can make excuses all you want; you’re gonna get pulled onto the dance floor no matter what.

– Taylor Grimes

Pup Punk – “My Real Girlfriend”

The first thing my now-partner ever said to me was, “Hey, nice shirt!” The second thing she ever said to me was a suicide pass. Pointing at her sister, she said, “Do you think we’re twins?” I correctly answered, “No?” and it’s been a love story ever since.

In the first 18 months of knowing her, we had 20 in-person days together. We met while I was briefly in Minnesota for a conference, but otherwise, I was studying abroad in France. We hit it off immediately, sending each other a playlist less than 24 hours after meeting (mine to her, hers to me) and dooming ourselves to a year and a half of extra-long distance FaceTime calls.

Nowadays, we’re much closer—just a short 8-hour drive away or 4 hours of airport and plane time! While we were on different continents, telling our friends about each other felt very much like this song: “She’s a model, you don’t know her // She lives in Minnesota where it’s colder // I’m in love and you’re not // My real girlfriend’s really hot.” The catch is she is really real—I swear! We have pictures together!

I look back on that time when we were so far apart and wonder how we ever did it. Ultimately, what made it possible, and what makes our relationship so strong, is complementary knowledge of pop-punk and emo music. That, and a strong foundation of mutual respect and shared love for all forms of music and humor or whatever.

– Braden Allmond

David Gray – “Please Forgive Me” 

“We don’t have A Song, do we??” I had to text Emily.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I don’t think we do??? I’m ashamed..” she replied.

Surprising, and ironic, because so much of what we love about each other started with our taste in music. Hers isn’t exactly like mine, nor vice versa. But we love many of the same things, and we’ve opened each others’ worlds to new and different music. I now know about Modest Mouse’s deeper cuts, and she now knows whether ’91 or ’84 was a better year for the Grateful Dead (it’s ’91).

It’s a new relationship, though moving very quickly (we’ll be roommates in May!), and it has been built on vulnerability and honesty. Communication has been the number one factor in the initial success and comfort of our relationship. For two people who haven’t had the most luck in the past, this feels like our first adult relationship. We both feel totally at peace and have the liberty to speak our minds and lay bare our vulnerabilities.

“I will ALWAYS think of you sending me ‘Please Forgive Me’ by David Gray but idk if it’s *our* song. Just one of the first moments I remember being like oh shit, I’m so cooked,” she said.

“Please Forgive Me” is a song about falling deeply in love with someone fast and having to ask their forgiveness because you’re acting like an absolute freak. And that’s just perfect for us.

“Feels like lightning running through my veins / every time I look at you.”

– Caleb Doyle

Alanis Morissette – “You Oughta Know”

There are pros and cons to every romantic entanglement. With this one in particular, the pros were that he had fantastic music taste and was very funny, while the cons were that he refused to sing karaoke and was cheating on me. While we were together, he was in a Jagged Little Pill phase, and for a few weeks, we’d blast it every time we drove in his car. He, karaoke-averse, was always taunting me, a karaoke devotee, with a potential pick—“Okay, I think I’d actually do this one”—and “You Oughta Know” was his latest false promise. “I’d go up to a guy with a girl and sing ‘and are you thinking of me when you f— her” in his face as a bit,” he’d joke, flipping his hair. 

Well, you mess with the cat, you get the claws, I think to myself in the karaoke bar a few months ago in Brooklyn, stepping up to finally lay his alleged pick in its grave. “And every time I scratch my nails down someone else’s back, I hope you feel it,” I yelp to the room full of starry-eyed lesbians. Karaoke’s supposed to be light, and perhaps a little too much real rage seeped into my performance, but I think Alanis would understand. I hope he can’t hear her without feeling like shit, and I hope he’s thinking of me when….nvm.

– Katie Hayes

Antarctigo Vespucci– “Impossible to Place” 

My relationship with Claire is full of false starts. We kept matching on Tinder for years as I reset my account, and finally went on two good dates at the start of our junior year in film school, which resulted in me ghosting her and dating another girl for a month. 

Right after ending that interim relationship, I was out to dinner with my friends and scrolled on Instagram to see a photo of Claire. My spirit floated at the sight of her gentle smile, her beautiful black hair, and those sparkling eyes behind her tortoiseshell glasses, and I knew I wanted to rest my head against her leg forever. Two days later, we were on a kinda-first-kinda-third date for coffee. She viewed it as a revenge date, a chance to rub it in my face that she’d gotten picked for our film school's elite Spring Break trip to LA, but it ended with us cuddled up on my twin-size bed, showing her Star Wars for the first time. On the way from coffee, we stopped in my apartment's mailroom to pick up my copy of Love in the Time of Email, Antarctigo Vespucci’s sophomore record. As we watched Star Wars, I murmured the chorus of Antarctigo Vespucci LP1 highlight, “Impossible to Place,” Chris Farren’s soft plea to his wife to “stay, stay around me / for the evening.” Claire asked what I was singing, and so, for the first of hundreds of times, we listened to the song together. 

If you asked me what I feel for Claire, I would sputter and stammer that she’s my best friend, that she’s the person who makes me laugh the most, and that she has a mind I adore. But none of those words really captures the feeling. 

When she left the morning after our first/third date, I posted a Snapchat story of me holding up Love in the Time of Email with the caption, “If she doesn’t make you feel like an Antarctigo Vespucci song, she isn’t the one.” When Claire asked if that was about her, I lied and said it was a general statement. But the truth is that “Impossible to Place,” with those layers of angelic vocals on the bridge, Jeff Rosenstock’s lackadaisical chiming guitar riff, and the longing in Chris Farren’s voice, is the only place I’ve been able to pin down the pure essence of what feels like to love Claire. 

– Lillian Weber

KISS – “I Was Made For Lovin’ You”

I have talked about KISS way too many times for an indie/emo-leaning blog, and I thank Taylor for letting me get in my zone once again here. It is the biggest cultural phenomenon that I am the most in love with, so it finds its way into all aspects of my life, including the romantic ones. But I won’t be talking about “Bang Bang You,” “Take It Off,” or “Let’s Put The X In Sex.” The story goes that Paul Stanley wrote “I Was Made For Lovin’ You” and brought it to Gene Simmons, with Stanley singing the dark and sensual verses and sticking Simmons with the “do do do do do do do do do” chorus backing vocals. It’s a divisive song among the KISS Army; some fans love and embrace it, as it was a number-one charting hit in multiple countries (but only as high as 50 in the States). Some fans disown its disco flavor, the Dynasty album it came from, and nearly everything that followed for the next 40 years. It was teased in the fantastic Detroit Rock City film, released in 1999 and taking place in 1978, where a character named Christine, played by Natasha Lyonne, notes, “[It’s] so big right now, I wouldn’t be surprised if KISS made a fuckin’ disco song.”

I saw KISS for the first time in 2017 and took my then nine-months girlfriend, despite her previous disdain for the band due to an annoying Ace Frehley obsessive from her high school. From one night, she was a convert, if maybe initially just being considerate to my obsession. And she’s done just that for the last eight years, standing by my side through every phase and fixation, listening to my diatribes about how Gene tried to reunite The Beatles on his 1978 solo album, and how Paul was clearly lipsynching on the End Of The Road tour, but I suppose it’s better than him sounding like shit. I saw KISS six more times on that tour between 2019 and 2023, and she patiently accompanied me to half of them. We spent my 27th birthday in Las Vegas at the KISSWorld exhibit and mini golf course at the Rio Hotel & Casino. Truly, we’ve shared so many bands, songs, and musical moments in our relationship that it feels unfair to focus on only my dumb one. Music is the foundation that brought us together in the first place, from a year of Tumblr DMs about Hostage Calm and Japandroids to finally meeting at Riot Fest 2016. But she’s my Dr. Love, she’s hotter than Hell, and she’s my rock and my roll, all nite, all the way. I was made for lovin’ her. Do do do do do do do do do.

– Logan Archer Mounts

Amber Run – “I Found”

“Do you like him?”

My best friend Kris and I were sitting in my grad school apartment, cross-legged on my bed. She had just asked me the above question, and I, though embarrassed, admitted that I did, in fact, have feelings for the boy in question. I mean, Kris didn’t even need to ask; it was more that I just needed to admit to my crush aloud. (Everybody could tell. It was really, really obvious.)

A few weeks later, I handed my crush a letter scribbled on notebook paper. I was way too nervous to try to confess out loud, so I let this missive do the talking for me. You can imagine the beaming joy that washed over me when he admitted his mutual feelings. We were already close friends, but neither of us had ever talked about the obvious chemistry and bond that we had. 

After that day, we would spend hours together in a rickety car (borrowed from a generous friend), driving through the Florida dunes at night. We talked about anything and everything and would hit the Whataburger drive-thru for fries and malts afterward. It was a glorious and happy season. On those drives, we would take turns picking music to listen to, and one of my favorites was the gorgeous and moving “I Found” by Amber Run. The lyrics describe finding love “where it wasn’t supposed to be / Right in front of me.” It fits our relationship so perfectly, and I still smile whenever I put it on. My favorite version of this song is their Mahogany Session, which features the London Contemporary Voices. It’s recorded a cappella in a cathedral, and the melancholy beauty of this song is captured so perfectly. 

We found love right in front of us and kept it - this May marks our seventh year of marriage.

– Britta Joseph

The Beatles – “I Will”

Forgive me for writing more about the Beatles in the year of our Lord Paul twenty twenty-five. The world may be exhausted from ceaselessly hearing about how good these four fuckers were as a band, but fortunately for my last.fm scrobbles, I’m far from exhausted. “I Will,” despite being slightly buried towards the tail end of The White Album’s first disc, is far from a deep cut. It’s my favorite Beatles ballad (there’s no need to get started on other qualifiers) and also the second half of my favorite Beatles sequencing choice. Immediately following a lowdown bluesy number about, um, mid-highway exhibitionism is one of the sweetest love songs ever laid to tape.

It bears a simple conceit. “Love you whenever we’re together, love you when we’re apart.” Well, yeah, that’s what love already is. Most songwriters wouldn’t get credit for laying out obvious facts with a pleased grin plastered on their Liverpudlian face. In McCartney’s words, facts are utterly ignorable. He merely caught a glimpse of the song’s subject — that was enough for a galactic force of love to obliterate him. The simplicity is necessary. Sometimes, you’re so smitten that even the most glaring truths need to be reiterated; sometimes, it’s all that grounds you. The plainspokenness of the song is cradled by softly strummed intervals and a capella vocals sneaking into the bass register. The love depicted is unadorned with instrumentation to match.

Before I even met my partner, I would sing this song nonstop. Queuing up the 2018 White Album mix in full aside, “I Will” played in my daydreams and trickled from the clouds. When I was singing it, my voice belonged to the song and to whomever might one day hear me. In the absence of a lover’s song to fill the air, I was unconsciously hellbent on providing the air with an ample supply of music. At least the oxygen and I could enjoy it together. After falling in love, the song didn’t leave my mind, but it doesn’t occupy the air nearly as often. There is someone else’s song. The constant dawning of romance is null and void. It never really mattered; I will always feel the same. Sing it loud so I can hear you.

– Aly Eleanor

Hater's Delight – 2024 Edition

Back by popular demand, Hater’s Delight returns for one last ride through the depths of 2024. While we retired the column for most of this year, by the time December rolled around, the Swim Team realized there was more than enough material to constitute a roundup of our collective displeasure. 

If you’re just now joining us for the first time, Hater’s Delight was a recurring micro-review column we ran throughout 2023 intended to be a space where our team of Swim Into The Sound writers could vent about the things online, in music, and in culture that got under our skin. 

Each writer gets a paragraph to bitch about their chosen topic, then, once we expel the Haterade from our systems, we all go back to loving music and enjoying art. Speaking of which, if you’re more in the mood for some positivity, check out our staff’s favorite albums of the year or our 2024 Song Showdown to see what we actually enjoyed this year. Swear it’s not all bad vibes. 

Enough being tempered; let’s get into the hatred. From the bland and banal to the offensive and insulting, let’s take a look back at all the things we’d prefer to leave in 2024. 

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Zach Bryan’s Waste of a Great Idea

My litany of grievances with Zach Bryan is long. From the credible accusations that he’s a manipulative and abusive boyfriend to the fact that his head looks like a LEGO, the sin which warrants the below column is Bryan’s penchant for making the most mealy-mouthed milquetoast records and giving Country music a worse name.

The roll-out for Zach Bryan’s The Great American Bar Scene set the tone. Bryan announced that “select cuts” from the album would be played in “23 bars across the country that embody the spirit of American culture.” From Iron Horse Saloon in Oologah, Oklahoma, to Saratoga Lanes in St. Louis, Missouri (a bowling alley that still allows cigarettes inside), the selected bars represented a sort of divey blue-collar cash-only vibe.

Direct references to real-life bars and the inclusion of background noise like pool balls clacking are pretty much as far as the Great American Bar vibe goes—and the din gets quickly abandoned after a few tracks. If the goal was to create an album that tells a story about “Real Americans” and the watering holes at which they gather, this album is not quite that. If the goal was a collection of a few too many tracks with a loose thematic rubber band around them, that’s closer.

Sonically, The Great American Bar Scene is an overstuffed collection of Zach Bryan’s signature sound: mid-tempo meandering with brushed drum shuffles and the occasional Stom-Clap-Hey chorus. It’s mumbly SaddBoi low-energy background music with maybe one or two genuine upbeat foot-tappers. At 19 tracks and over an hour, the album is far less Happy Hour and far more Marathon Bender–and the hangover is just as bad.

This type of low-effort and lower-interest bullshit is not surprising coming from Bryan. What is so galling and frustrating is that he wasted a fun, exciting, and interesting concept like “an homage to dive bars” by just dipping back into his signature deflated sound. Sure, every great bar needs some dirgey sad bastard music, but there’s just nothing here worthy of slugging shots to. For an album that set out to honor the Great American Bar, one would expect more Molly Hatchet and less Damien Rice. Americans pine to link arms with their fellow barflies and scream catchy choruses together. Unfortunately, The Great American Bar Scene sounds more like silently sipping neat gin under a naked lightbulb.

So, on top of being a bad boyfriend, Zach Bryan also squandered an amazing opportunity to make a kick-ass saloon classic. And for that, may Merle and Waylon never forgive him.

Caleb Doyle – @ClassicDoyle

AI-Generated Album Art: Every Day We Stray Further from God’s Light

While my 2024 bingo card didn’t include Tears for Fears releasing a new album, it certainly didn’t include them releasing an album featuring abysmally ugly AI-generated cover art (if you can even call it art). An astronaut? In a field of sunflowers? What is this, 2011? You’re telling me that NONE of you had a throwback photo, concert shot, or a starving artist you wanted to commission? Pretty embarrassing for them. 

Even worse, the band doubled down on their decision and defended it online. It was cringe-worthy to see, especially considering that “Mad World” is one of my favorite songs of all time. You will never be able to convince me that AI art is a better option than hiring a living, breathing, feeling human being to create something for you. “But it’s so convenient! Computers are forever! AI is shaping the future!” SHUT UP! As the modern sage Caleb Hearon said, “The beauty [of mortality] is that the cup runs out.” Impermanence is part of being alive. It is part of the human experience. It is part of creating art.

Tears for Fears’ decision is sloppy, distasteful, and thumbs its nose at the very essence of being an artist of any kind. And you know what? I like Gary Jules’ cover of “Mad World” better anyway.

Britta Joseph – @brittajoes

Katy Perry Explaining Satire 

“Girlboss Shit!” exclaims the demon that sits on my chest at night as I try to fall asleep. It’s referring to a video of Katy Perry rising from the ashes of the crumbling institution of the American Brain to explain the concept of satire to the mouth-breathing masses. Dressed like an oiled-up construction worker projecting the simulacrum of sexuality, Ms. Perry lets us know that it’s okay, she’s not being serious about sexuality and femininity. Or maybe she is? Either way – it’s satire! You dumb fuck. You mushy-brained numbskull. How could you think for a second that she believes this or doesn’t believe it? Whatever “It” is. The inscrutable politics are a statement on… women? I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. As she stands in front of a line of silent, sexualized Black women, Katy Perry says something about the male gaze before retreating to her trailer to write a lengthy defense of her producer/notable rapist Dr. Luke before going to vote for Republicans to execute unhoused people in the streets of LA. Sorry, honey! That’s satire. She’s like the white Paul Beatty or the American Coralie Fargeat. 

As America was sweating through the designer-drug-fueled heat of Brat Summer, Katy Perry was busy constructing her own world. It’s a Woman’s World, you see. And we’re lucky to be living in it. Eagle-eyed fans might have noticed that this Woman’s World was filled with imagery stol– uh, borrowed – from other women. Women like Arca – whose transhumanist iconography Katy claims as her own “idea of feminine divine.” But the beauty of Katy Perry’s world is that everything is fair game. Interestingly, as Katy explains in this video, her ascension to the divine requires the literal smashing of Black working-class women. What happens to them? Doesn’t matter! Girlboss Shit! 

As our handle on nuance continues to slip day by day, it’s heartening to know that there are people like Katy Perry out there, doing the lord’s work by loudly exclaiming that you can project your own meaning onto them. The lack of perspective is the point.

As I am finally about to drift off to sleep, I hear a sincere-sarcastic whisper in my ear: “You go, girl.” Thank you, Demon That Sits On My Chest, that means a lot. 

Joshua Sullivan – @brotherheavenz

The Insurmountable Greed of Taylor Swift

Look, I like Taylor Swift a lot. I’ve been following her career and enjoying her music for well over a decade now. According to last.fm, I’ve racked up nearly 2k plays on her music. Last year, I snuck a bottle of wine into my local theater to enjoy The Eras Tour on the big screen. Five years ago, I went as Lover-era Taylor Swift for Halloween, complete with a glitter heart around my eye and a blonde wig atop my head. I’m laying all this out because, again, I like Taylor Swift. That said, she hasn’t exactly been on a hot streak lately. While I was initially on board with “Taylor’s Versions” as a concept and loved that she was reclaiming her work, after she butchered my beloved 1989, the sheen started to wear off. Then there was the middling Midnights and, this year, the insipid Tortured Poets Department. To me, the 16-song base version was bland enough, but then one day later, Swift dropped a 31-song version of the record, effectively turning it into a double album that brought TPD to an unwieldy two-hour runtime. If that wasn’t enough, she spent the year dropping 36 different variants of the album, sapping her audience of all disposable income, and keeping other artists from reaching #1 on multiple occasions in a way that feels more strategic and insidious than accidental. Shrewd business moves aside, this just seems like pure gluttony on Swift’s part, and all this for what’s easily her snooze-worthy album. The worst part is that it worked. Her tour made billions of dollars, her janky-ass book is a best-seller, and diehard “auto-buy” Swifties lined up to buy each version in droves, so what incentive does Swift have to change? It’s art as consumption carried out to its logical extreme. This is no longer about the music or even the artist; this is about owning all the things you possibly can. This is the type of greed they talk about in the bible.

Taylor Grimes – @GeorgeTaylorG

Being Shamed For Using Apple Music By Spotify 

It’s funny how every year, on the first Wednesday after Thanksgiving (it’s an official date, people), Spotify users take the opportunity to brag about their “in-depth” Spotify Wrapped and subsequently use that opportunity to exclaim how much better they are than Apple Music users. To an extent, sure, Apple Music doesn't have the most advanced UI, and the streaming service is only linked with Apple products, but come on. When compared to Spotify, Apple Music pays about double per stream, has much better audio quality, and, to my knowledge, doesn’t add any of their in-house AI monstrosities onto their own playlists. But sure, go ahead and talk about how you had a bubblegum-house-daydream March or whatever while you post Taylor Swift in your top five artists for the fifth year in a row.

Samuel Leon – @sleonpics

Stan Culture: Internet Feudalism Without Sick-Ass Trebuchets

I think we’re done here, y’all. I think it’s time for some internal accountability. I think it’s time to emulate the love and light that you so loudly claim to absorb and bathe in from your faves. It’s time to osmose some humility and grace from that single you’ve been stream farming. In the last decade or so, I’ve watched a simple dig at people who take their love for artists too seriously morph into a wild, uncountably headed hydra that has wreaked real-world havoc on innocent people with dissenting opinions. Frankly, it serves no one and nothing. Acting as a roving band of marauders for someone you basically treat as a liege lord has become so unrepentantly weird, heinous, and toxic that if it becomes a psychological diagnosis in like 10 years, I wouldn’t be surprised. I am begging you to decouple from centering a person who doesn’t know you exist and not to use your redlined dopamine receptors as your compass when acting on your punitive impulse to act against people who critique or vocally express distaste for someone who creates subjective art. I know I’m painting with a broad brush here, and that’s unfair to those stans who are actually normal people who understand how to react to another human being on the internet. But we neeeeeeed to start really pushing back for all of us, baby.

Elias Amini– @letsgetpivotal

Internet Irony-Poisoning at Concerts

Photo credit: King of the Hill, me

I'm going to keep this short. I'm going to keep this sweet. Take off the cowboy hat at that show. Don’t wear a shark costume to the gig. Don’t bring a Nintendo DS to a concert for the sole purpose of holding it up for a grainy picture. If any of this was funny, it was funny in the IRL meme-saturated days of, like, 2017. I just checked my calendar, and it says it's December 2024. It's embarrassing, and I’m telling you this because I love you. I really love you, and I want you to put the sarcastic approach to everything you love down. Like...why are you wearing that costume anyway? Because it’s ironic? Because you’re being sarcastic? It's not like it's comfortable, and now you’ve committed your whole night to what? Being a banana? Do you just want someone to take a picture of you, post it online, and say you’re funny? Post it online and say you’re funny? Does everything have to be a joke to you? Do you have to be the center of attention constantly? Can't you just enjoy yourself? Are you scared of being earnest for two seconds? Is this music so brutally honest to you that you have to wear a big, funny hat about it like weird armor from Amazon dot com? And now I can't see the stage, jackass.

This also applies to sarcastic pit-starting, filming yourself crowd surfing, and most Lightning McQueen merch at MJ Lenderman concerts this fall. 

Caro Alt – @firstwaveemo

Hater-dazed, Psychedelic, Mood-core, Genre-Identifier Daylists 

At the beginning of 2024, people would head to social media to share the latest daylist Spotify had generated for them. Suddenly, descriptions like “soccer-pilled, high school senior, emo afternoon” and “piano-keyed, dandelion-farmed, folk evening” began to appear everywhere. At first, the genres seemed like a fun way to let an evil corporation roast you with nonsense. And then, it became inescapable. Clueless-closet, rainy 90s, grunge-core afternoons bled into fork-in-socket, indie-haze, orchestral rock nights. The one consistency? None of these words were ever in the Bible. 

The entire thing was a way to monetize a larger trend in music: the subgenre-ization of subgenres. It was no longer enough to be shoegaze. It had to be doomgaze or countrygaze or something else entirely. This trend in categorizing wasn’t new, but the hyper-specific approach seemed to take on a meteoric rise with the constantly generated playlists. Let me be clear: I'm not against breaking genres down a bit further than the typical labels of “rock” or “hip-hop” or “indie folk.” Categorizations are necessary when searching for new bands or recommending beloved artists, but at the end of the day, Spotify’s method was total nonsense. It served as their way of forcing a feeling of fomo by creating something new that wasn’t necessarily good or coherent. 

So, if you need me in 2025, you can find me shaking my fist at the cloud-core, sleeper-heavy, frustrated morning sky. 

Lindsay Fickas – @lindsayfickas

Disheveled Alt-Mullets on Men

Once upon a time, mullets were mock-worthy. Now, they are everywhere, on all types of people, worn to widely varying degrees of success. But the one strain that really pisses me off is the wannabe-Mac DeMarco mullet. You know the one: greasy, unkempt, worn by a guy who is 85% likely to have a trust fund. The guy who is cosplaying being a slacker with a dose of feigned childishness. Despite being so Quirky and Goofy, he is somehow too cool to talk to you at the local indie rock show. His girlfriend is a lithe, oddly successful ceramicist. Like every other dude with the exact same scraggly, unwashed cut, he can't be burdened by society's onerous male attractiveness standards. He and his ilk are pioneers in an aesthetic that no one before them has ever tried: irony. What better way to show you are too cool to care than a purposefully ugly haircut? Well, I see right through you. The shag doth protest too much.

Katie Hayes (Wojciechowski) – @ktewoj

Drake Lawsuit

What happened to the game I love? Drake, coming off an embarrassing defeat at the hands of Kendrick Lamar in the Great Rap War of 2024, is now suing his own record label for cooking the books with “Not Like Us,” the song that dealt the final blow. I understand wanting to go after the evil empire of record labels; they’re all corrupt, so it’s the right act but the wrong messenger. Let me get on my Al Pacino Devil’s Advocate horse real quick, for argument's sake, and say the books were cooked; Drake benefitted from this same foul play for years on end from this same record label. When the result finally doesn’t go his way, he throws a temper tantrum. 

In 2001, Nas rapped about Jay-Z “being 36 in a karate class,” he wasn’t taken to court for slander accusations. There was no opening testimony from Jay-Z speaking to a judge, “Well, your honor, I was actually 32, and it was a taekwondo class.” He took his loss on the chin and kept making great music. Drake needs to take a page out of every other rapper’s book by taking the loss and moving on. Lose with a little dignity, why don’t you? And I like Drake, so this is coming from a place of love like a concerned cousin. But damn…. even Ja Rule didn’t even go out this pitiful.

David Williams – @davidmwill89

BRAT-Overdose

No record had a bigger cultural impact in 2024 than Charli xcx’s BRAT. When Charli began painting the town lime green with her wildly successful album rollout, BRAT felt like the culmination of a decade-plus of pop music experiments. After years as a poster girl for Pop’s Middle Class, a hero to funemployed twinks, and “the ‘Boom Clap’ Girl” to your coworkers, Charli made what could in some ways be considered the anti-pop star pop album. On BRAT, she sings about her inability to fit into the mold occupied by more conventional and commercially successful pop artists, the pressure to compete with other musicians who occupy a similar niche as her, and her admiration of another cult pop hero who was ahead of her time before her life was tragically cut short. 

As a young woman in a creative field who is lucky enough to be friends with many other young women in creative fields, the songs on BRAT resonate with the part of me that knows well what it’s like to be brimming with both pride and jealousy for a friend’s talents, or to stand around nervously sipping my drink instead of networking at a party where I feel glaringly out-of-place. I love BRAT in the same way that I love getting a text from a confidant that reads, “can i be a total bitch for a minute?” It’s the Hater’s Delight of pop records!

Brat Summer was fun at first. When “360” first dropped, I played the video on a loop each morning while getting ready in the morning for a week straight. I dashed from a BRAT listening party to a Wild Pink show like a true Gal About Town. The coolest thing you could be was a girl with thick, curly hair, a wardrobe full of black clothing, and a resting bitchface—I was in my element. 

I loved Brat Summer up until the infamous “Kamala IS Brat” tweet and Charli’s subsequent breach of niche containment. Don’t get me wrong, it’s wonderful to see Charli get her flowers after all this time. The album really is that good! And so are the remixes! But something shifted when lime green became the unofficial color of the DNC. Now that Kamala was Brat, everything was Brat. And if everything is Brat, nothing is. 

If you’ve been on the Girls ‘n Gays side of the internet this year, you’ve probably heard of the term “khia,” which, first of all, put some FUCKING respect on Khia’s name—“My Neck, My Back” is a banger! And second, the line between “khia” and “niche” is thinner than Gabbriette’s eyebrows. Is that C-list pop girl khia, or is she a cult hero? Who among us wouldn’t love to be Carly Rae Jepsen-famous—a one-hit wonder to the general public, the People’s Pop Star to those who can truly appreciate her brilliance? Maybe being everything to everybody is overrated and being “famous but not quite” is actually where it’s at.

Runner-Up: I wrote about this for Paste a few months ago, but can we all please agree to be more normal about Chappell Roan in 2025? I don’t think people realize how jarring it is to go from being a fucking camp counselor in suburban Missouri to being one of the most famous pop stars in the world in just a couple of months. That’s a massive change, and almost no time to adjust to it; you’d probably be yelling at photographers too if you were her. 

Grace Robins-Somerville – @grace_roso

Enemy Of The Music Business

Everyone’s an easy target. I could write about how I still don’t understand the post-Lana Del Rey underperformance of Billie Eilish, or the post-Lady Gaga third-rate cabaret flamboyance of Chappell Roan, or the promotion of underage alcoholics who get their news from TikTok of Olivia Rodrigo, but they all make children’s music for children, so what reason do I have to be mad at them? I could write about how the new Foxing album is for kids who were too smart to join theater but too dumb to take calculus, or how the new Vampire Weekend album is for people who criticize jam bands and hippies but listen to music more void of substance than the worst selling Dick’s Picks concert release, or how the new Tyler, The Creator album is for people who think about thinking about maybe one day having a deep thought on culture or society but never actually get there and instead try to tell me what the highlights are on Vultures, but I’ve never bought my girlfriend’s dad a shirt he hated that he can’t return, so that’s not really worth my time. I could write about how Jack White has stumbled and failed to reach the same immediacy of The White Stripes ever since the band broke up and only ends up becoming a Tim Burton reject version of Prince, which frankly is more of an insult to Prince, or how Green Day has been canonized as dad rock for fifteen years, releasing songs that sound like they discovered their sons’ diaries with introductory knowledge on anarchy, and how they look like washed up Social Distortion tattoo havers telling their grandkids about a hip band from back in their time they used to listen to called Green Day, or how Kings Of Leon transitioned from being a cocaine-fueled, cousin-kissing, southern rock Strokes spinoff into a band that hardly qualifies as music, now putting out albums that are even less noticeable than the Goodwill new age cassettes I bought last week, but if you think any of these bands still qualify as rock music, then there’s nothing I have to offer you. I guess enjoy the new Rian Johnson mystery movie next year? Some artists just aren’t for me (Clairo), some artists I will never understand the hype for (St. Vincent), and some artists I think objectively make shit from a butt (Father John Misty). But I’m having a way better time lately defending music others are criticizing than hating on music others are praising. Is this progress? Am I growing as a person? I’ll be 30 in 2025, and maybe it’s a sign I can’t spend all day online tweeting (blueskying?) at people about how they’re braindead simpletons for enjoying Fontaines D.C. or MGMT. I listened to almost 500 new releases this year, so trust me that I’ve earned the haterade I regularly drink and spit out, and the reality is that I listen to more music I like each year than music I don’t. But come the fuck on, you people actually think Beyoncé made a worthwhile country album and not just another bland pop-rap album with slide guitar? Please.

Logan Archer Mounts - hate mail can be directed to:
1122 Boogie Woogie Ave, PO Box 42069

Pitchfork and the Record Economy

For the last ten years, I’ve had Cindy Lee’s Act of Tenderness in my Discogs wantlist. You know why? I’ve been a fan for that long–I just can’t (and don’t) buy every single album whenever I want it. Some records get prioritized, and others remain on the wantlist until the mood strikes. Since Cindy Lee was relatively niche and their records were always around the $20 mark, I figured I had all the time in the world. Then, the worst thing possible happened–critical acclaim. 

Now, I am fine that Cindy Lee is finally getting some money, and I’m more than happy that Cindy Lee is gaining new fans–I’m not that kind of hipster. What sucks, for me, is the vinyl record economy and how Pitchfork inadvertently affects the market.

^Not this type of hipster.

240% increase of Cindy Lee’s 2020 record.

On April 12, 2024, I went to Pitchfork dot com to see the glowing 9.1 Diamond Jubilee “Best New Music” review for Cindy Lee’s 3xLP opus. And because I am a nerd, I immediately went to my Discogs wantlist to snatch up copies of Cindy Lee albums I had wanted yet neglected to buy for years. The flipping had already begun. What were once $20 records had already doubled in price by 2023. Now that Diamond Jubilee was deemed worthy of everyone’s attention, the prices of Cindy Lee’s previous albums had doubled again. As the months went by, the cost of Act of Tenderness just kept rising–recently selling for $112 in November.

“I hate you, Discogs record flippers. You suck the joy out of my favorite hobby. You don’t deserve my money at all!” I say as my cursor hovers over the Add to Cart button. Click.

Russ Finn – @dialup_ghost

You’ve been homogenized.

PICTURED: The recommended songs for the playlist exercise outlined below. Is this exploring?

Log into Spotify right now. Make a new playlist. Go ahead and add a couple of songs you love most. The ones you feel epitomize you and your taste. The kind of song you only hear once in a lifetime. For me, it was these. When you’re done (nine or ten is all you should really need), scroll to the bottom of the page and peek at the recommended songs section. What do you see?

Now for the interesting part. Take a screenshot, send this column to a friend, and have them repeat the exercise. If their taste is anything like yours, compare notes. What do you see?

The same fucking songs. Every goddamn time. No matter the vibe or the current content of the playlist– it could be entirely The Shaggs, and the algorithm would still serve up “Waiting Room” or “Grave Architecture” in an effort to serve some binary command such as “SATISFY CUSTOMER.” It makes a mockery of the discovery process, the magic of digging through stacks of fanzines or flipping through the “alternative” section of your local record store and finding something worth more than solid gold. It removes the chance of real connection beyond the surface level–that feeling of true resonance when the right song plays on the college radio station, on the bar’s jukebox, in your friend’s kitchen at midnight, at the show with five touring bands.

What’s worse than the automation of emotion is the automation of industry. Records are a novelty, and the stores that sell them rarely have the funds to invest in selling local bands’ records or lesser-known national bands. What they do have in abundance is sixteen crates full of Taylor Swift and Charli xcx, the canonized indies’ 30th-anniversary box sets, and some secondhand Stax albums ignored in a corner. People are losing their jobs in vinyl pressing plants, record labels, stores, venues, and even talent scouting to the encroaching online music industry. It’s all been relegated to social media campaigning, Ticketmaster queues, Christmastime Amazon orders, massive overseas factories dedicated to replicating Brat green–and even to a recommended section dedicated to homogenizing your taste.

Face it, we don’t explore the way we used to musically. Our society has accepted the idea of algorithmic control part and parcel, making the jobs of money-grubbing executives easier every day. As consumers lose their say in the music industry, we’ll be left with absolutely nothing. We’ll be living in a cultural desert, completely surrounded by inflatable dolls of pop stars gushing water–and there will be nowhere else to drink.

I hope Daniel Ek is next.

Michaela Doorjamb  – no applicable Twitter

Unsportsmanlike Conduct

Pictured: racks on racks on racks OR my crush fund

When Pity Sex’s first set in New York since 2016 back in August ended, I clapped for approximately one second before sticking my arm straight out, begging for a setlist. The band handed out two of their three setlists and walked off. I left my arm stretched as their crew came out when some college kid got on stage and grabbed the remaining setlist. At that moment, I felt shame for the sport. 

The thrill of getting a setlist is in being chosen by the crew or the band to get this coveted piece of paper. The joy of showing one off comes from the fact you may not have gotten it. My most beloved setlist is from the first time I saw Crush Fund because I asked for it, and it spawned a deep relationship with the band. By getting on stage to grab a setlist, you cheated not only the setlist, but yourself. 

At the secret Jeff Rosenstock show at Baby’s All Right last year, a friend grabbed one off the stage for me while John DeDomenici was reaching for it to give away, and I got embarrassed. Embarrassed enough to give it to the person next to me who didn’t mantel the stage? Not a chance in hell. 

If you’re getting on stage, it should be to jump off IMMEDIATELY (when there are enough people to land on), not to cherry-pick the setlist.

Lillian Weber – @Lilymweber

Tonight I Will Be Your Entertainment: The Ascendancy of saturdays at your place

Photo by Ty Benson

“If [saturdays at your place] is what the future of emo looks like, we’re in safe hands.” That’s what Taylor Grimes concluded when he crowned always cloudy as one of the best releases of last year. The trio dropped their star-making EP at the onset of 2023 and have spent the following two years touring relentlessly, building a grassroots fandom on the back of a very small but promising body of work. From “tarot cards” hitting streaming highs to retrieving stolen gear from evidence lockers and selling out their first headlining tour, 2024 has been a banner year for saturdays at your place, and 2025 is looking even better as anticipation builds for their next move. We sat down with a few of the band’s recent tourmates to hear in their own words what makes saturdays special, but before that, a bit of a history lesson. 

The genre’s newest superstars are from Kalamazoo, Michigan, making them, yes, true Midwest Emo. The trio is comprised of Esden Stafne on bass, Gabe Wood on drums, and Mitch Gulish on guitar, with Stafne and Wood sharing vocals duties across their discography, lending the band a nice range as they bounce from one perspective to another. Their debut album, something worth celebrating, came out in 2021, and the group has seemingly been working nonstop ever since, touring everything from basement shows to Hot Mulligan concerts. Sonically, they lean more into the traditional side of second- and fourth-wave emo (if you believe in that sort of thing), taking cues from twinkly progenitors like Pictures of Vernon, Their/They’re/There, and Camping in Alaska while putting their own distinctly gaze-y tinge on the sound. Like all new emo bands at this point, they’ve received plenty of comparisons to groups like Modern Baseball and Remo Drive, but that just scratches the surface of s@ypdom. 

We're Getting Off to a Rough Start

saturdays at your place first hit my radar on some random winter weekday in 2023 the same way a lot of people found them—a joke about their pronunciation of the word “tarot.” The band’s breakthrough song is incredibly catchy, with an immediately recognizable intro, a thumping bassline, and play-by-play lyrics about a Classically Emo Scenario: having a weird time at a house party—great stuff with a very strong start. Around the one-minute mark, the gang vocals kick in and shout, “They’re pulling out the tarot cards!” like an announcement (or a warning) (or a threat) yelled over the music at the aforementioned party. 

The joke comes from the way “tarot” is said. While lots of people seem to say the word as if it rhymes with “arrow,” saturdays at your place hit the "ro" hard, kinda like how you would pronounce “throw.” My understanding is that it’s a regional accent, but emo music listeners are very online, so the song made pretty much immediate waves on TikTok, Discord, and Twitter (to this day) because that line stuck out in such a charming and memorable way. 

Author’s note: This is the part where I admit that there is nothing I hate more than when I’m at a party and everyone decides to start playing a game or doing a secondary activity. I like chatting with strangers over music and generally hanging out. I think starting a secondary thing usually kills the vibe. If any of my friends are reading this, I am not talking about you. I loved it when you pulled out a board game at your party and had a lot of fun learning the rules of Catan at 11 pm.

Two years and eight million Spotify streams later, it's easy to see “tarot cards” success in real-time at any show the band puts on. Even listening to the studio recording, you can almost feel the finger-pointing reaction of the crowd when Stafne reasons, “Well, your friends don’t like me / I don’t like me too.” It’s obvious that someone is going to crowdsurf over the bridge’s “and when the lights go down / I don’t want to leave this house.” In fact, former tourmates Riley! said it’s their favorite song to see saturdays perform live because it's a fan favorite, and the band can command the room with it. I really like the song, too; I think it’s perfectly shy and maybe even cute. I especially like the line at the end, “Well, will you stick around if I do? / I think I found a part of me beside you.” 

Okay, so it only makes sense here to try and describe why people care so much about always cloudy. I mean, the EP has only six songs, how much could the band realistically tear through in 18 minutes? I had the same question. Turns out the answer is it’s just really loud and cohesive and earnest.

Photo by Ty Benson

What’s good about “tarot cards” being a launchpad of sorts is that it's a song that really introduces the band. Even the notion of talking to some unnamed person makes the band name make more sense—is this stumbling partygoer the person whose place you’re at on Saturdays? It makes you double back to start the whole thing from the beginning. The rest of always cloudy follows this kind of crowded hallway feeling. It's sweaty, buzzing, frustrating, overwhelming, and a little overheated from trying to wear winter clothes in a packed house while half-buzzed off three warm Miller Lites.

“future” kicks the EP off on the miserable final thoughts of their first album (discussed later), with frustrated lyrics burying themselves under a particularly dancy beat that gives each member of the trio a chance to shine. The groove of “future” extends into “fetch,” which leads into “tarot cards.” To me, the following track, “hospital bed,” is the spiritual sequel of “tarot cards”—kind of like the next morning after a wrought party experience, all mixed with a vibe I can only describe as Carpoolian. After is “it’s always cloudy in kalamazoo,” a song that needs a crowd as much as the crowd needs it.

The EP ends with “eat me alive,” a four-minute closer that's constantly colliding into itself with two distinct halves: one slow and laced with self-inflicted cruelty and another that’s fast and turns the blame outwards. It’s also my favorite. The song starts with the fuzzy dirge before Wood’s drums come in, loud and miserable. The first two minutes feel almost like the waves in the album art are washing over you as Wood lets the more complicated parts of himself crash ashore. The song builds and builds before breaking entirely. Wood speeds up his drumming and spits out one of my favorite lyrics on the EP, a strangled accusation, “You prepare me for a meal / ‘cause your friends / eat me alive.” saturdays at your place is not a band about mending relationships or even necessarily apologizing, they look at a scene from all angles, and, as much as they critique themselves, they aren’t afraid to level blame at others as well. Amidst a pummeling build, Wood flips the cards and reveals, “Saturdays are the worst for me too / I'll do anything to get you out of my room.” Actually, this one contributor on Genius can probably explain it better than me:

The album concludes with the assurance that “In time, memories will fade / I promise everything in the future” before looping back into the first track and starting again. It is a perfect six-song collection about feeling bad, feeling good, going back to feeling evil, just hanging out, and trying to figure out what you mean to someone.

Well, Will You Stick Around If I Do?

It’s genuinely refreshing to see people so excited about something new again. It should be news to no one that emo has a real nostalgia problem. Whether it's as blatant as When We Were Young Fest or as underhanded as people insisting that whatever Foxing album they heard first is their best one, it’s an irritating bias. I think saturdays at your place managed to unintentionally fulfill a nostalgic niche and satisfy a craving the scene had for ultra-catchy Midwest Emo. I think about how when I first listened to always cloudy–the house show atmosphere of the songs immediately dragged me back to the days of Modern Baseball and their music videos for songs like “The Weekend” and “Your Graduation.” It was instantly familiar in a way that other contemporary emo songs can’t quite achieve. In other words, it’s clear that the members of saturdays came into their own during that particular era of music, but they aren’t stuck in nostalgia. In fact, they seem to be actively combating it by working with other new emo bands as they collaboratively construct a cohesive scene.

saturdays at your place just wrapped their third tour of the year, each outing sharing the stage with other rapidly growing emo acts. They started the year on the Wax Bodega Tour with a stacked lineup of Ben Quad, who is taking over the world; Carly Cosgrove, who is maybe one of the best live acts you can catch (I reviewed their latest album); and Arm’s Length, who is clearing a path for these upcoming legends. When we asked Ben Quad about this, they said, “That tour felt like we were doing something important for the genre.” We agree. A couple of months later, saturdays at your place headed back out on the road as support for Prince Daddy and the Hyena’s summer tour with tapping superstars Riley! and Carpool (I also reviewed their latest album). This fall, they toured with Carpool again, with the midwest emo-revivalists TRSH and Dudes Rock connoisseur Harrison Gordon in tow. It doesn’t even end there because Origami Angel announced they’re taking saturdays on tour with them to the UK in Winter 2025. Phew. That felt like constant name-dropping, but it’s their actual reality.

Photo by Emily Harrington

But If You Get to Know Me, I'll Get to Know You

Beyond their EP, saturdays at your place has released one album, something worth celebrating, and a three-way split with SHOPLIFTER and Summerbruise called That’s What Friends Are For. 

Author’s note: While you may know that Mitch Gulish joined Summerbruise last year, did you know he’s in the music video for “With Friends Like These, Who Needs Empathy?” Thank you Mike for bringing this to our attention.

I guess this is the part where I speak very frankly. For a very long time, I didn’t care about saturdays at your place very much. I don’t know if y’all remember the state of DIY emo during the pandemic and directly after when touring started again, but it was really rough. I love a lot of the projects that came out during the time, but they were standouts in a total cesspool. Many previously exciting artists had serious accusations leveled against them, there were tensions between bands and band members, and several musicians just gave up and left music entirely during the nightmarish era. I found it hard to truly get excited about anything new, so I didn’t. As a result, when saturdays at your place released their first album in late 2021, I just ignored it. 

It wasn’t until I saw that random “tarot cards” joke a couple of years later that I gave them any time of day. This was after some of the misery of 2020-22 diy emo spaces had subsided, and notably, for one of the first times in a minute, I had seen people thoroughly geeked about something new. 

Photo by Ty Benson

One thing made very clear moments into “first of all” is that Gulish is a very good guitarist. In fact, a lot of the band’s debut album seems to be built on how good of a guitarist he is, with a couple of songs being guitar-led instrumental tracks or featuring extended guitar solos with his constant, complex, twinkly riffing. Elsewhere, songs like “existential shred” pad the release with lyric-less riffing, and I find it genuinely cool that they added these to their debut album. (Author’s note: as I was writing this, the band posted this Tweet encouraging listeners to “just skip all of the instrumentals,” so they seem to disagree, but I like ‘em.) At the time, especially after the popularity of particularly wordy emo artists like Origami Angel, many emo bands felt the need to fill in that same space with lots of lyrics. They don't. This album is proof.

Two years later, saturdays’ first contribution to That’s What Friends Are For is “pourover,” which has legitimately gotten stuck in my head at least once every week since its release in late 2023 (and you should check out their acoustic version with Counter Intuitive Records). Then there’s “forever,” which is easily one of the band’s most experimental songs as they break away from the fairly rigid rules of Midwest Emo and deploy a robotic vocal distortion on Wood’s voice. It makes the song more melancholy and distant. I consider saturdays at your place a fairly upbeat band, but this is the lowest they’ve ever dived in their discography. It acts as the symbolic ending of the split, the emotional endpoint. I look forward to hearing more of this grim experimentation on future projects. 

Can We Change the Conversation?
Can We Make It About Me?

Obviously, with only 19-ish songs to their name, this is a relatively small discography, but that means it’s more accessible to new fans. saturdays seem to have gamified the streaming algorithms that be; their songs have wound up on major editorial playlists on services like Spotify, spreading their music even further than imagined. This is at least partially responsible for their about 200,000 monthly listeners on Spotify (for reference: heavy hitters in the scene like Prince Daddy and the Hyena or Oso Oso are tens of thousands of listeners under that). 

To get a sense of this whirlwind rise to emo fame saturdays is experiencing, we reached out to Ben Quad, an up-and-coming band from another niche music scene who blew up at a similar time and also sold out national tours. In one word, Ben Quad described the experience as “wild.” They referred to tangible things like busier inboxes and new management but focused specifically on the fandom side. “Our audience is definitely a lot broader now, too. There’s also a lot more die-hard fans at our shows, which is something foreign to us. We have multiple people a show flying across the country to see us, and that absolutely blows my mind.” This experience, going from small house gigs with friends to sold-out club shows with fans in just a couple of releases, seems to mirror the trajectory of saturdays at your place and leaves the future of emo music open and sprawling.

While I can’t speak from personal experience, from observation, gaining such a quick notoriety can either drive your project into super-popularity or doom your reputation, kind of like a false start. In the case of saturdays at your place, it seems to have done the first thing. From my perspective, the minuscule mispronunciation in a great song seems to have launched the band into emo stardom and resulted in an instant classic. The enthusiasm for this band is tangible. Don’t believe me? Let’s talk about their live shows.

Photo by Ty Benson

2024 started, as mentioned, with the Wax Bodega tour. My tour date was in a cramped new club, and for the first time ever in the venue, I was struggling to catch a glimpse of the stage – it was just so packed and rowdy. When we asked Ben Quad about that tour, they said, “There wasn’t ever really a sleepy show because saturdays were there to get the crowd riled up from the start.” While I had seen saturdays before, that was the first time I really experienced that frenetic energy in action, and all for the opener.

Over the summer, saturdays shared a stage with Riley! who has a similar rowdy fanbase. When we asked about that crowd, Riley! said, “If you could boil it down into one word, energetic doesn’t even begin to explain it.” Carpool was on that same tour, and Stoph Colasanto described the crowd as “ravenous” and detailed how the audience was climbing over itself to get closer and closer to the band, a sight I experienced myself.

Carpool just wrapped up the always cloudy tour with saturdays and witnessed firsthand the band’s shift from a support slot to a headliner. Colasanto said that as the headliner, saturdays went all out. “They brought out all the bells and whistles, and it was genuinely fun to watch every night.” Ultimately, the experience “was a literal party but the type of party that’s all-inclusive and for everyone. It was cathartic.”

Outside of the performances, the fervor around the band had started to change, which can be summed up in one of Colasanto’s observations – that every single day of the tour, fans were lined up outside the venues early to get front spots for the gig. As someone who has stuck around DIY emo corners for several years, I find it hard to picture this happening in such a small and, at times, insular genre, but it absolutely is. 

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We interviewed a lot of bands for this article, and one thing became abundantly clear very quickly: this is all just so much fun. Mike Newman of Summerbruise recalled, “Their excitement about every single crunchy-ass aspect of touring really renewed my appreciation for what we get to do.” Riley! added to that sentiment and said that touring with saturdays this summer was a blast – “we truly could not have asked for better tourmates on that run.” Ben Quad continued that train of thought and said saturdays were “one of those bands we instantly connected with as soon as we met them.” From Colasanto’s perspective, “It’s really special to see something so real and organic continue to grow and to get bigger, and for it to happen to saturdays just makes my heart so happy because they deserve everything in this world and more.”

Photo by Ty Benson

So, it’s all gas, no brakes for saturdays at your place, both physically after this year spent as road dogs and emotionally as they connect with a bigger audience than ever before. When it comes to what’s next, saturdays at your place talked about working on their next album during their latest tour. This record will be one of the most highly anticipated releases of the year and the first since their split with SHOPLIFTER and Summerbruise in 2023. Coming up even sooner is their holiday show with Ben Quad, Worry Club, Summerbruise, and Palette Knife. We asked Summerbruise about the show, and Newman’s excitement was tangible: “My favorite shit as a kid was watching the bands I loved who were legit friends goofing off together on stage, and this lineup is stacked with some of my all-time favorite goofers.” 

Like I said earlier, emo has a nostalgia problem, and I pity people who sit out just because they assume the stuff they grew up on is superior for whatever reason. I am so excited, genuinely, that this generation of listeners have a band like saturdays to be a fan of, a buzzing genre to enjoy, and an exciting scene to be part of.

The larger impact of saturdays will be reverberating around the Emo World for years. People will pick up the guitar because they want to play like Mitch, or they’ll start singing in a garage band because of Esden and Gabe, and when asked about their inspirations, saturdays will be first on their lists. I also think about Kalamazoo and how exciting it is for a band from a small scene to get this big. I think about how their attention will translate into people discovering new bands and how Kalamazoo will be intrinsically tied to the emo music of this era. Stoph Colasanto put it best:

“They’re a true testament to what it means to be DIY and care about your scene, community, and hometown. That’s something that really resonates with me — talk to Esden about Kalamazoo, he fucking loves it. It's his favorite city in the world. That shit gets me so hyped up. To see a DIY band from a smaller city or town get national attention and to use that to lift up their hometown and their community means a lot. Even as an outsider, I just get so stoked for Kalamazoo and for what saturdays is doing for it.”

40 days. 29 shows. 23 sold out.

thank you all for making our first headlining tour a special one pic.twitter.com/Ops3clrEOb

— saturdays at your place (@saypband) November 14, 2024

“Anyone who has ever been in the proximity of that band knows that they are the future.” That’s what Ben Quad said while replying to our first question about saturdays at your place, and I think they’re absolutely right. Since 2023, I have seen saturdays at your place four times, and while this essay is not a concert review, I can’t emphasize enough how good they are live and how fun their performances are. Whether saturdays is headlining or supporting, the whole crowd knows the words to every song, thrashes around to every guitar solo, and the crowd surfs through their entire set. People are excited, and I am too. So, like we said, if saturdays at your place is what the future of emo looks like, we’re in safe hands.

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Caro Alt (she/her) is from New Orleans, Louisiana, and if she could be anyone in The Simpsons, she would be Milhouse.