Garden Home – Garden Home | Album Review

Thumbs Up Records

Somewhere between Chicago, Illinois, and the Twin Cities of Minnesota lies Milwaukee. It’s an hour and some change between Madison and Lambeau Field, aka the Two State Capitals of Wisconsin. Situated on the gorgeous shore of Lake Michigan, perhaps unassumingly, Milwaukee is a small-market city with some big bragging rights, namely Giannis Antetokounmpo, Miller High Life, and four-piece post-hardcore screamo project Garden Home. 

After several years of impatient waiting, the band has graciously delivered their self-titled debut album to fans and followers alike. Preceded by two incredible EPs from 2019 and 2021, the anticipation surrounding Garden Home’s LP has been steadily growing - and MAN, was it worth the wait. The quartet’s first release, Disposable, introduced their sound with full force, a perfect five-song articulation of their post-hardcore sound and emotionally gritty lyricism. The band’s second EP, Postmortem, further developed their craft and includes a nod to a fantasy every Midwesterner has considered at some point – driving your car into Lake Michigan. 

If you’re no stranger to these shores, you already know Garden Home is not for the weak of heart, though they produce music for the weak-hearted. Thematically, their lyrics steer directly into the hopelessness of being alive, and their self-titled record is no different. Garden Home keeps this promise alive by giving us emotionally depressed types a glimmer of hope across eight beautiful tracks and twenty-three glorious minutes. The album is truly the gift we Milwaukeeans have all been waiting for – and if you’re new here, welcome to the 414. We’re thrilled to have you.

The album wastes absolutely no time delving right into the hard shit. “Right by Me” opens the proceedings up with immediate candor and vulnerability as vocalist Dylan Mazurkiewicz speaks about the chaos of personal weakness. Within seconds, we’re treated to the full Garden Home experience, a true display of the band’s exemplary musicianship and songwriting right off the cuff. They inundate us with the thematic concept of the album - to be human is to know love, hate, unbridled rage, and the depths of emotion. This brutal honesty is emblematic of companionship, its upswings and downfalls, and everything in between. The lyrics foster this connection with metaphors of daggers and compasses – a hand and an object acting together as one, for better or for worse. This idea remains constant throughout every song, yet it never becomes stale and never grows tiresome. Garden Home capture humanity in a flawless and sprawling way, showing that we can feel the same hundred emotions in one million completely different ways. For at least half of them, there is something on this album to be your anthem.

Remember when I said earlier that Garden Home isn’t for the weak of heart? Remember when I said they waste absolutely no time getting right to the point? The perfect example of this exists on track three, “Grim,” which delivers infectious drums, a haunting riff, and the promise of a looming reaper that will carry you through the afterlife. There’s a simultaneous comfort and agony in the inevitability of grief and loss. You can feel the unfairness, the rage, the reckoning within the track. The lyrics provide comfort that pairs with this questioning of the afterlife, displaying death as a familiar friend while still wondering where it will take us. Images of nature and wind ground us in the Earthly realm and the comforting notion that our deceased loved ones stay present through the joy of those surrounding us. 

What got me wasn’t just the song itself but the band’s decision to close the track with a snippet of a voicemail. Anyone who has lost a loved one can confirm that there is a perpetual desperation to hear their voice again. When my father passed in 2017, I called his phone every day just to hear his voicemail prompting me to leave a message. I’d pretend he was teaching a class or on the golf course, anything to hold off on the reality that he was gone. I called every day until the phone company disconnected his number. The agony is in remembering that painful detail of my life, but the comfort is knowing that there is something I can turn to every time I feel it creeping up again.

The three singles released from the album, “Not Today,” “Past Life,” and “The Worst of It,” each have been garnering high praise and feeding into the brimming anticipation for the album’s arrival. The trio of songs chosen to represent the band’s debut could not have been more perfectly articulate. “Not Today” is an ode to regretfulness, a screaming apology for being unworthy of someone who deserves more than what you can offer. “Past Life” promises forgiveness for a past self who neglected to live to their potential and succumbed to their own sadness. It pleads that this life, though futile at times, is worth living and there’s always something to stay alive for. “The Worst of It” is a narration of that life, about witnessing a world that unravels around you and the growing impulse to give up - yet to feel such pain is to experience the willingness to persist through it. Together, the singles spin the hopeless and simultaneously sanguine tale of life. The darkness gives way to light, and it's worth it to kick and scream and fight your way through to it. 

Through these singles, Garden Home created an extraordinary momentum without giving too much away, and the reception has been awe-inspiring. These songs provoke such vulnerability, toying with the darkness of human emotion while still remaining encouraging and uplifting by promoting love, kindness, growth, and healing at the core - and everyone feels like that? It’s not just me grappling with my own struggles of my past, present, and future… and it’s not just you, either. Garden Home have single-handedly bridged the gap between this mentality that you’re alone in what you feel, at a time where everything can feel so damn isolating and so fucking unfair. The album is a call for community and friendship, reflecting what the MKE scene is all about.

Milwaukee is often referred to (quite unlovingly) as a Chicago Suburb. In recent years, however, the Southeastern Wisconsin city has witnessed a renaissance of sorts regarding the arts and music scene. There are street festivals that feature local creatives of every kind in all seasons, notably Summer Soulstice and Locust Street Festival as summertime staples and Mittenfest as a beloved winter Bay View tradition. Shows with all-local band bills are selling out on random weekdays, with no presales, and all walk-ups. 

Garden Home’s self-titled has earned its flowers amidst its home-grown accomplishments. This record is a labor of love from the band members themselves, to the album art, to the label, to the production, extending all the way to the fans who make up the hometown scene. The band itself is made up of some supremely talented and experienced individuals - this isn’t anyone’s first rodeo. They’re releasing this debut on local MKE label Thumbs Up Records, which boasts bands from Milwaukee, the Midwest, and beyond. Cody Ratley produced the album and is no stranger to the Milwaukee scene. Other local contributors include Justin Perkins of Mystery Room Mastering, with local artist Lee Behm and photographer Samer Ghani handling the album art. The release show is taking place on April 19th at Cactus Club, a massively renowned community arts hub that has its own growing list of positive impacts upon the city. Garden Home is a project with such deep roots in the MKE scene, and the efforts will never go unnoticed. This is all to say that every single person involved in the creation of this album has added to the city's inspiring legacy. If you’ve been sleeping on the Good Land, Garden Home came to wake you up with a shoulder to cry on, and it bears repeating - Welcome to Milwaukee, we’ve been waiting for you.

---

Sofie Green is an average music enjoyer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is your biggest fan (and she cried while she wrote this). Find her relentlessly hyping her favorite DIY bands from the Midwest and beyond at @smallsofie on Instagram and @s_ofs_ on Twitter.

Ekko Astral – pink balloons | Album Review

Topshelf Records 

As a trans woman, I spent the first 24 years of my life walking through a security line, checking for deviances from the norm in my performance of masculinity. When you spend every day questioning whether you fit in, you mistrust whether you know who you are. I had not heard a record capture these feelings more concretely until pink balloons by Ekko Astral. Throughout the album’s 36-minute runtime, frontwoman Jael Holzman lays out the issues trans people are forced to grapple with over a wall of noisy post-punk.

Ekko Astral hails from our nation's capital and has formed a nice little cult on the strength of their first excellent EP, QUARTZ, and a stellar live show, which, after I saw it once, drove me to travel to DC just to see again. QUARTZ was an incredible first document, full of moments that inspire desperate sing-alongs, like the brilliant kiss-off to the male gaze, “EAT OFF MY CHEST (WHILE I STARE AT THE CAMERA),” or tracks like “1000 DEGREES” that contrasts the ferocity with an ethereal dream of a blissfully content life.

But pink balloons takes everything magnificent about QUARTZ and allows the band to stretch out their sound and mutate. Where there was once space in the mix of “YXI,” newer songs like “head empty blues” immediately present a more claustrophobic sound, filling the mix in with two additional guitars. Holzman’s lyrics on “THE MIRROR IS A MONSTER” were already semi-surrealist, but now it feels like they have been infested with Twitter brainworms when she sings, “my brain’s bust like / molly shannon / just shoot me out a cannon / and as I hit / open my head / can you see it? / nothing’s there!” 

I love the ways Holzman hysterically details the experience of endless dates on “uwu type beat” with lines like “baskets of fries / empty suit guys” and “he skipped just one of her episodes / and now he’s completely lost the plot / he’s going gone.” One track later, “on brand” finds her desperate for love when she sings, “she’s lefty loosey / but the right guy could / make her swing right tho.” The whole record is full of brilliant lines that I have wanted to steal and tweet myself ever since I first pressed play, like the cry against consumerism, “spending all my money on a mass hysteria,” or the crazy rhyme of “you’re running thru the aisles / drinking taco bell mild / credence clearwater revival / just another two-week trial.” 

The humor and linguistic creativity in Holzman’s lyrics make the moments of directness feel even more impactful. We see these dynamics at play most distinctly on “devorah” with how the Taco Bell couplet immediately follows Holzman excoriating Congress people for compartmentalizing issues into simple acronyms on the lines “I’ve got solidarity with all the missing murdered people! / I’ve got solidarity! / Do you solidarity?” She expands the acronym used on the hill for Missing or Murdered Indigenous People to remind us that these issues aren’t just talking points. Holzman’s plea of “nothing’s funny anymore” on the coda of “sticks and stones” reminds me of fellow DC punk Ian Mackaye’s call of “irony is the refuge of the educated” on “Facet Squared.” We have to engage in the issues of our time instead of avoiding them with artifice.

The most impactful moment of the record for me rests in the chorus of lead single “baethoven.” Holzman’s cries of “the pain of being myself” are layered one on top of each other to the point of being nearly incoherent as the rhythm section hammers an icepick through your eye socket. The loudest critic of my transition has always been the dysphoric thoughts that rush into my head when I look at myself in the mirror and notice all the things, like my brow ridge or beard shadow, that make my brain deny my femininity. That is “the pain of being myself,” and it is fucking overwhelming. 

My favorite moment comes with the gentle, guitar-only ballad “make me young.” Bassist Guinevere Tully takes lead vocals for this track, delivering the line “all those things I thought I was / got muddled with what I’ve become,” which captures the dual reality of transness: being happy with existing truly while perpetually yearning for more. When Tully sings, “Yeah I know these thoughts / shouldn’t drive me insane / but they do / oh it does,” I’m reminded of how it feels to agonize over the fact that I didn’t start transitioning earlier. How hearing Transgender Dysphoria Blues didn’t make everything click for me. “make me young” may be the easiest track to digest aesthetically, but that’s only there to lull you into a false sense of security. This song will break you. 

“make me young” is meant to destabilize you in terms of sequencing as well, as its jangly guitars immediately follow the haunting, skeletal beat of “somewhere at the bottom of the river between l’enfant and eastern market.” The echo of “I can see you shifting in your seat” that opens the record finds its source here in a spoken word passage about how cis people shy away from facing the realities we trans people experience. They want to ignore the fact that “lots of us don’t make it home.” The impact of politics is material in our lives, and we need cis people to understand the fact that “if you walk through a cemetery / you’ll pass people buried under gravestones of strangers.” To sit uncomfortably and do nothing is complicity. Or, as Holzman says, “I have friends still hiding while you throw a parade.” 

The most euphoric moment on this record comes at the very end. Closing track “i90” starts with three minutes of simmering, tension-building solo guitar that calls to mind how IDLES ended their first record with a lament. In the second verse, Holzman is joined, for the first time all record, in solidarity by another voice, Josaleigh Pollett’s. When the tension finally gets to be too much, the rest of the band syncs up with Holzman and Pollett belting out a repeated plea of “low rider / hang em higher / keep the rhythm.” After a record detailing the trials and tribulations of transitioning, this is a plea for you to survive. “i90” is not a triumphant end to the record, but it is a true one. Until we can burn this whole thing down and build a new world in our image, all you can do is keep the rhythm and, God, stay alive, please.

---

Lillian Weber is a fake librarian in NYC. She writes about gender, music, and other inane thoughts on her substack, all my selves aligned. You can follow her burner account on Twitter @Lilymweber

Teens In Trouble – What's Mine | Album Review

Asian Man Records

When you think of North Carolina, what are some of the first things that come to mind? Most people would probably mention how the state’s passion for college basketball teams reaches a messianic level or how the delectable fried chicken and buttermilk biscuits from Bojangles just hit different. But what’s flying under the radar Wright-brothers-style is how influential The Tar Heel State is when it comes to indie music. The lineage started in the early 90s with noise rock acts like Archers of Loaf and Superchunk. Today, bands like Wednesday, MJ Lenderman, and Indigo De Souza have roared onto the scene, creating memorable albums that stick in your mind like super glue. Now, the newest contender to join these prestigious ranks is Raleigh resident Lizzie Killian and her band Teens in Trouble.

On their debut album, What’s Mine, Killian takes us on a blast from the past ride with a bevy of melodic hooks and heavy guitars. The record comes out the gates swinging with the fuzzy pop-punk hit “You Don’t Want To Mess With Me.” Enlisting Stefan Babcock of the band PUP, Killian sprinkles him throughout the track like a gourmet chef, adding in some extra seasoning through an assist on guitar and vocals on the chorus. She sends warning shots to a potential new love interest, singing, “And I know better than to ask the world of you / And don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Fitting into everyday society is something that weighs heavily on Killian’s mind as she tries to navigate social norms throughout the album. She’s been trying to find her place since the start of the pandemic, and you soon start to see that this is a lifelong struggle. You can get a sense with each social faux pas she makes that Killian dies a little inside from embarrassment. In the uptempo jams “Awkward Girl” and “Autopilot,” she uses self-deprecation, calling herself “weird” and “annoying” as a tool trying to mask her destructive moments when out in public. She seeks comfort in isolation while finding peace within herself, repeating “I’ve got me / It’s just me” as a personal mantra. We know that she’s had her fair share of cringe-worthy moments throughout her life, but who among us hasn’t? We’ve all gotten to a point where something so embarrassing happens to us that we just want to curl up into a ball and die. Killian articulates the pain one feels like a seasoned veteran over groovy-sounding guitars.

Elsewhere, Killian crafts songs that make me wonder about the possibilities of time travel. Let’s say, hypothetically, it exists, and you got your grubby little hands on Doc Brown’s DeLorean. I’m jealous, by the way. If you took What’s Mine to every radio station in 1994, they wouldn’t even bat an eye at you… in fact, they’d probably thank you for bringing such a bounty of hooks to their airwaves. Killian is clearly a student of her craft because she has mastered the sound of the 90s with swirling guitars and cranked-up distortion aplenty. From the bright pop melodies to ample fuzz, when you drop the needle on What’s Mine, you’re liable to get transported back to a summer 30 years in the past without having to drive 88 mph to get there. Every Gen X person who sits at home starving for Blue-Era Weezer will be well-fed by “It’s Up To Me.” The riffs are so chunky and thrashing you would think Rivers Cuomo was playing guitar behind the curtain. The hook is simple yet gargantuan, culminating in the best song on the record. 

Killian's love of music is apparent with each passing song, from her sonic inspirations to her natural ability to capture a moment in time. In the back half of the record, we discover that music is also a window into her soul. Anyone who’s ever made a playlist for a crush knows the rollercoaster of emotion that goes into it. The careful curation of each song, the nervous handoff, and (hopefully) the pure ecstasy you feel when they end up loving it. When it all goes well, it can feel like you just won the relationship lottery, and on “Playlist,” Killian wants to listen to every one of those songs you hold dear. Throughout the rapidly paced song, she brings a wired energy as she questions what songs you listen to when you cry, when you're high, or when you're dancing alone. Nick and Norah, eat your heart out.

Teens In Trouble’s brand of indie rock tugs at your emotions with in-your-face, passionate, direct lyricism. Killian creates a safe space through playful melodies and ageless guitar riffs that make going through the difficulties of finding your societal belonging not so burdensome. Her songs touch upon social anxiety, loneliness, and embarrassment in ways that can be used directly by the younger generation as a coming-of-age text. Killian confronting her struggles with self-acceptance on What's Mine shows that the growth process never stops even past your formative years. We’re lucky that she’s here to use her voice not only to help herself but also the teens who are actually in trouble. 

---

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.

Stars Hollow – In the Flower Bed | EP Review

Acrobat Unstable Records

Emo has come a long way in the three years since Stars Hollow's last release. Whatever phase of emo we’re in these days—5th wave, post-emo, whatever—Stars Hollow is back for more existential jams and tasty riffs with their third EP, In the Flower Bed.

In general, the genre we’ve come to sometimes ironically call “emo” has come a long way since this photo.

All but two of the bands featured in this photo have largely faded into the ether, for some reasons worse than others. That speaks volumes about the volatile nature of this genre as a whole. After their first full-length LP in 2021, the future of Stars Hollow was up in the air. Too fresh off a global pandemic to properly tour, the trio spent the intervening years working on their careers, pursuing higher education, and discovering themselves. Letting their body of work speak for itself, the band reformed three years later, ready to take another swing at it. Leaning back on the short form of their earlier releases, the group has reemerged with a collection of songs that pick right back up where they left off. 

From the introductory first track, the Iowa-based trio kicks off the EP as if they never left, jumping right back into the exact type of morbid lyricism we've come to love from the band. Continuing the grotesquely dark themes found in the rest of the Stars Hollow discography, vocalist Tyler Stodghill beckons, “I’m laying out / the clothes I’ll be buried in.” The EP’s minute-long commencement sets the stage for the themes of rejuvenation found throughout the following four tracks.

If I were to boil Stars Hollow down to just a few things, it'd be 1) twinkly-ass emo riffs, 2) a penchant for the above-mentioned dark lyricism, and 3) punctual tracks. The band’s latest EP features five songs, only one of which is over two and a half minutes. This is something that I love from music in general, no matter the artist. My internet-fried Gen Z brain can’t withstand tracks longer than four minutes, and Stars Hollow almost always deliver on this front. With In The Flower Bed, the band manages to pack meaningful lyrics and crowd-swirling riffs into two-minute windows that keep everything feeling effective, emotive, and impactful.

Despite its 10-minute run time, the band is able to get across their message loud and clear. Crafted as a concept EP about the complicated relationship we hold with our past selves, the tacks seem to swap back and forth between Stoghill’s “who I was back then” and himself in present day. Hindsight is always 20/20, and it’s difficult not to be frustrated with your past self when looking back and all the mistakes are in plain sight. This EP challenges that notion by shifting it into a positive one. Rather than throwing out who he once was, Stoghill is burying it out back and watching it grow. 

The band also delivers on their signature twinkly emo sound throughout the EP. For example, track two, “Thorns,” starts with a bouncy intro akin to what we hear on their 2019 single, “Tadpole.” It’s patently Stars Hollow and a warm way to welcome fans back into the band’s world. 

Twinkle shredding is all well and good, but that’s also not all we find on the EP. Track four, ”Sickening,” finds the band at their heaviest since their debut EP, I’m Really Not That Upset About It. On this song, Stars Hollow enters their Sempiternal era, ending the track on a breakdown paired with a glitched-out scream that feels very 2013 metalcore in the best way. The track also features some of the darkest lyricism on an already dread-filled EP, with Stodghill at one point shouting, “It hurts to not tell you / I want to crack my fucking skull / on pavement.” The group follows up on that heaviness with one of their softest tracks ever, in the form of their closing title track, “In the Flower Bed.” This juxtaposition makes for a quaint ending to the release that also recounts the overall themes of the EP. 

In the Flower Bed places the listener out in the garden, with many of the tracks about burying what once was yet still valuing that person, place, or time in the past for what they contributed. Throughout these five songs, there are various times where Stodghill mentions killing who he was back then, a sentiment listeners are encouraged to take as literally or figuratively as they want. However, the album lands softly in the end, wrapping up with the line, “sinking slowly / never lonely / in the flower bed.” 

Despite its sometimes graphic lyricism, In The Flower Bed fosters a space of growth, optimism, and reconciliation. Just because something is emo doesn’t mean it has to be hopeless. As the band walks us through these anguished sentiments, brutal lyrics, and knotty riffs, this EP is ultimately about burying your past self to forge a better future. Sometimes, you have to work through the dark stuff to reach the fresh start that’s waiting on the other side. 

The final track ends fittingly with a soft callback to the band's 2018 EP, Happy Again. Echoes of the band’s older lyrics float around the listener, with some distant, younger version of Stodghill singing, “I’m the not same / I’ll be happy again.” For just a moment, these two selves exist simultaneously, briefly acknowledging one another before the song fades to black, leaving us in the flower bed, present day, with nothing but boundless options before us. 

---

Brandon Cortez is a writer/musician residing in El Paso, Texas, with his girlfriend and two cats. When not playing in shitty local emo bands, you can find him grinding Elden Ring on his second cup of cold brew. Find him on Twitter @numetalrev.

Butterflies Don’t Go Away: Majesty Crush’s Long-awaited Moment

Numero Group

I often find myself consumed by life’s “what if” moments. The chance of it all. The little things that never happened. There are different levels of “what if”—missing a train, leaving a party early, deciding to move across the country—but the sentiment remains true: in some other reality out there, there’s a version of you that is living with the repercussions of catching the train, staying at the party, or not moving. You have no idea what their life is like, and you just have to be okay with that. Most of the time, I’m not.

Some people like to think the things that are supposed to happen will happen, one way or another. Like meeting your partner on a dating app in your twenties, then learning you overlapped a few years at summer camp as kids, or finally landing the dream job you were rejected from at the start of your career. They’ll say it’s all about ‘timing’ and ‘alignment’ and ‘what the universe has in store.’ That’s too much relying on external forces for me, but I’ll admit it’s nice to relinquish control of your life for a second.

Is it obvious I was just emotionally wrecked by Past Lives? Anyway…

A lot of the time, life isn’t that simple. It’s sprawling, multifaceted, and confusing, with no direct answers or guaranteed results. Even when good things happen to us, it’s easy to nitpick what’s wrong with any given situation. But you’re still allowed to feel joy when a dream you had is finally coming to fruition.

This back-and-forth about fate versus control mirrors Majesty Crush’s journey over the last three decades. Back with a career-spanning double LP thanks to Numero Group, Butterflies Don’t Go Away combines a repress of their 1993 record Love 15 with a second disc of singles, rarities, and previously unavailable tracks. I’d argue it’s one of the most important reissues, at least in the last five years, but to understand that, we need to take a look back.

Photo By Amy Harlan

Majesty Crush is often referred to as one of the ‘forgotten’ bands of the early ‘90s shoegaze boom. The Detroit-based four-piece differentiated themselves with an innate ability to mutate from shoegaze to dream-pop to punk to grunge and back again. David Stroughter led the band as a reluctant, Syd Barrett-type frontman whose piercing vocals glided over the instrumentals, with Hobey Echlin on bass, Mike Segal on guitar, and Odell Nails III on drums. Together, they created a sweeping and all-consuming sound that made them stand out, mostly because people really couldn’t pin them down. The group quickly gained notoriety within their Midwest community, earning significant airplay on college and alternative rock radio stations. Opening for everyone from Mazzy Star and Sonic Youth to Royal Trux and The Verve, Majesty Crush seemed to be able to win over audiences in just about any scene. Yet no one could figure them out.

Majesty Crush’s mixed-race lineup made them something of an anomaly in the predominantly British shoegaze scene. It was hard to get a read of the band’s sound just by their appearance, something bassist Hobey Echlin says he thinks made the group so special in their local scene: fans had never heard anything like Majesty Crush, let alone from people that look like them. 

Immediately following the release of Love 15 in 1993, Majesty Crush’s label Dali, an Elektra subsidiary, shuttered, making it their first and only full-length LP. Here were these local legends, ready to spread their sound way outside the confines of their city, who suddenly had no backing or promotion to hold them up. Because of this, Love 15 fell through the cracks. As grunge quickly swept up the remains of a shoegaze/dream-pop scene in the US, Majesty Crush remained under the radar. The group went on to release one final EP, Sans Muscles, on their own Vulva Records before disbanding in 1995. 

Over the next 30 years, the band members split off into a disparate web of careers, including but not limited to yoga instructing, graphic design, law, and journalism. But the music remained, especially for Stroughter, who continued to record and release as P.S. I Love You, even recruiting Crush bassist Echlin to play drums on some tracks.

Eventually, the group settled in different parts of the country. In 2017, years after his last communication with anyone from Majesty Crush, David Stroughter was killed by police in El Segundo. Stroughter’s mental health continued to decline throughout the aughts, and his nomadic lifestyle made it difficult for him to regularly have access to his medications. While the LA County District Attorney deemed the police’s use of their guns lawful, the need for such force remains heavily debated, making this another case of unnecessarily escalated police violence against people of color.

And now, in 2024, Numero Group is offering listeners the most comprehensive collection of Majesty Crush music ever. In 2019, it was revealed that Stroughter had left Majesty Crush master tapes in an old roommate’s closet and had asked his sister to be the custodian of his music. Without realizing it, Stroughter left the rest of Majesty Crush (and the world) a gift he never could have anticipated. 

With this reissue, Majesty Crush’s discography is newly available to day-one fans who remember seeing them live in Detroit all those years ago, as well as newfound shoegazers hungry for more sounds. This is especially true as the shoegaze genre is enjoying a renaissance, thanks in part to TikTok, opening the door for Majesty Crush to finally get their long-deserved recognition. Some would argue that a shoegaze resurgence and social media virality was exactly what Majesty Crush desperately needed back in the ‘90s (I can see the ‘Our label closed right after our debut album dropped’ multi-part TikTok series so clearly), but it came at the price of Stroughter losing his life, prompting the discovery of these masters. Now, Stroughter isn’t here to see how many new ears have found his music and are moved by his gutturally passionate vocals and ultra-specific storytelling. It’s heartbreaking to think that Majesty Crush’s “time” came after they lost the man who tied them all together and became the beacon of their sound. 

Photo by Jack Nelson

Butterflies Don’t Go Away takes listeners on Majesty Crush’s tumultuous journey through early versions of Love 15 tracks (“No. 1 Fan - EP Version,” “Horse - EP Version,” “Purr 7” Version”), their first-ever release (“Sunny Pie”), and songs from the post-label shuttering EP Sans Muscles. Through these tracks, we see a band finding, then possibly attempting to change, their sound. The humble basement beginnings are clear on the noisiest tracks like the 7” version of “Purr” and the EP rendition of “No. 1 Fan,” but the stars align on Love 15 tracks like “Boyfriend” and “Grow.” The group’s post-label loss anguish clearly rips through Sans Muscles songs like “Seine” and “Ghost of Fun.” 

On Love 15, “Purr” is a minute-long cascade akin to Pink Floyd’s “Breathe (In the Air),” however, on the 7” rendition, we hear the song as it was originally released: as a four-minute single, complete with expansive, brain-scratching guitar textures. While the single version of “Cicciolina,” a song Stroughter wrote about an Italian porn star, is sauntering, moody, and slowed, the album version more fully encapsulates the rage-meets-desire feeling Stroughter felt for this woman, with Mike Segal’s crunchy and grating guitar, Hobey Echlin’s hypnotic bass lines, and Odell Nails’ pulsing backing rhythms propelling the track forward. 

Stroughter escalates the idea of female obsession throughout these songs, with most lyrics toeing the line of a twisted psycho-sexual fantasy. These songs are often the darkest yet poppiest tracks, which was at the heart of Majesty Crush’s approach to songwriting: take these pop sensibilities, blow them out, and then share your deepest, darkest secrets on top of them.

While researching this piece, I found myself so consumed by everything about Majesty Crush’s music and story that I eventually came into contact with bassist Hobey Echlin. I got to speak with him in March and hear his perspective on the group’s writing processes and how it feels to reenter the musical conversation. On Stroughter’s lyricism, Echlin told me, “No one could write about having a crush in such a multidimensional way.” 

“Boyfriend” starts Love 15 off with a thesis statement about torturing and killing a girl’s partner so she would fall for Stroughter instead. The scene-setting in this song alone highlights the rapid escalation of Stroughter’s internal monologue, with the opening lines explaining that he sees this beautiful girl on the train and immediately spirals into an internal dialogue of ‘Why is she with that guy when she can be with me?’ He uses his wit to prove he is superior (her boyfriend apparently can’t even get her soup order right: “He’ll bring you minestrone when you want egg drop”—Stroughter would never do that). But it doesn’t stop there: the next two songs are also about crazed feminine obsession. There’s “Uma,” presumably about actress Uma Thurman, then “No. 1 Fan,” the band’s most popular song that takes inspiration from John Hinkcley Jr.’s obsession with Jodie Foster, leading to his attempt at assassinating Ronald Reagan (depicted in on-the-nose lyrics “I’ll kill the president (For your love)”). Both tracks are all-consuming and massive; on “Uma,” Segal breaks into psychedelic guitar passes that sound like so much more than just the distortion, tremolo, and delay effects he stuck with. Meanwhile, “No. 1 Fan” completely immerses the listener into its crazed, modern-day stan POV through Stroughter’s desperate wails, Nails’ deep drum textures, and Echlin’s melodic bass tying the whole thing together. Other tracks hit on this theme, including “Seles,” “Grow,” and “Horse.” Even “Sunny Pie,” the first song Majesty Crush ever released, was about an experience with a girl working at an adult book store. 

The truest peek inside Stroughter’s mind listeners ever get in the Majesty Crush discography is “Brand,” a middle-of-the-A-side track that Echlin recently called “a step away from album filler” in an interview with Stained Glass Stories. In speaking with him, he clarified that he was mainly talking about the repetition in the instrumentation, saying, “Musically, it’s not the one with the fireworks, but lyrically, it's the most down-to-earth and personable, and it's Dave turning his lens on himself.” This track is one of my personal highlights, featuring Stroughter delivering a confessional of his everyday existence rather than spinning the narrative onto his latest craze. “I’m always so fucking drunk / I wake up with a bottle in my hands / I go to bed with a bottle touching my lips” paints the perfect picture of a man clinging to his vices to get through the day-to-day. The repetition, both lyrically and instrumentally, is overtaking, with Stroughter’s echoing vocals sweeping around listeners. These crisp deliveries also set Majesty Crush apart from the other shoegaze groups at the time: where many were mumbling through fragmented lines, Stroughter was telling a whole story, creating an entire atmosphere, and you could actually understand what he was saying. The emotions in his voice cut through your ears and go straight to your heart. “Brand,” specifically, is even more profound now as we look back, as it’s one of the most authentic looks into Stroughter’s mind that we will ever receive. 

Fundamentally, Majesty Crush wrote pop songs. The group approached songwriting in three elements: Part, Break, and Window, each time taking little liberties and twisting the structure in unique ways. Echlin compared their process to riffing off of an idea, continuing to make it better and take it farther. The most important part of a Majesty Crush song, in my opinion, is the Window: the chance for the cathartic and anthemic release that often comes at the end of their tracks. The perfect example of this songwriting approach is “Penny For Love,” a song that gives the same feeling as The Smiths doing a rendition of The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven.” One of the most straightforward tracks on the record, the up-tempo melodies and catchy guitar riffs mask the story of prostitution hidden in the lyrics. But you can hear the release in Stroughter’s vocals, the overflow and sighs he adds to lines like “Cause honey tastes so good.” Penultimate track, “Feigned Sleep,” is at the other end of this spectrum: it’s one of the most expansive tracks on the record that still utilizes the Part/Break/Window song structure. It sends the same shiver down my spine that I get when listening to something like “Jesus Christ” by Brand New, with the rhythm section acting as the song’s heartbeat. The repetitive drawl of the guitar and vocals builds a gripping intensity to the end of the song. The catharsis eventually overflows as backing vocals, drilling drum patterns, intricate bass runs, and circling guitar riffs layer on top of each other, emphasizing how Majesty Crush can take anything standardly pop and make it their own.

The tracks off of Sans Muscles see the repercussions of the post-shoegaze musical landscape Majesty Crush found themselves in by 1994. Grunge was taking over, and you can hear the pressure to be heavier on songs like “Seine,” which sounds like an alternate rendition of Nirvana’s “Scentless Apprentice.” Then there’s “Ghost of Fun,” which utilizes electronic patterns, hinting at a possible future direction the band could have taken. Left with nothing after Dali folded, Majesty Crush took out their frustrations through brooding backbeats, heavy guitars, and Dave’s aggression tying it all together. The group got meta with it, too. Take “If JFA Were Still Together,” a track that combines Deftones-esque blown-out drums juxtaposed with a melodic bass and glittering poppy guitars. Echlin says the track was their ‘what if’ moment after losing it all at the end of ‘93: “It’s kind of like, what happens when your favorite band breaks up? You lose your sense, you lose your bearings.”

“Space Between Your Moles” sounds the most like a Love 15 b-side, with lyrics even calling back to the debut as Stroughter delicately intones, “15 for you and love for the space between your moles.” The track has a Mazzy Star-type of relaxation, sounding like the closest thing Majesty Crush would ever get to a shoegaze ballad. Another instance of Majesty Crush simultaneously fitting into these rock niches and defying the category completely. Echlin says the Sans Muscles tracks were “the logical progression of Majesty Crush,” the emotionally charged next step that propelled them into this angrier sound while still keeping their shoegaze mastery close.

Butterflies Don’t Go Away perfectly encapsulates the Majesty Crush story: from noisy basement beginnings to the moments it all came together, and what happens in the aftermath of having the rug pulled out from under you. In speaking with Echlin, he told me he loves the Numero repress because it “gives just as much emphasis to the footnotes of our career as our big stuff,” offering listeners a chance to hear their trajectory in real-time. Stroughter had said, “If anything happens to me, I just want my music to be heard.” While he’s not here to see it, it’s nice to know that his music is finally reaching more ears and finding its audience. There’s now a whole new generation of shoegazers finding their solace in David Stroughter’s immersive storytelling and the sonic journey of Majesty Crush.

---

Cassidy is a music writer and cultural researcher currently based in Brooklyn. She loves many things, including but not limited to rabbit holes, Caroline Polachek, blueberry pancakes, her cat Seamus, and adding to her record collection. She is on Twitter @cassidynicolee_, and you can check out more of her writing on Medium.