The Stark Maximalism of Sufjan Stevens

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Sufjan Stevens is an enigma. He is reclusive (aside from the occasional Tumblr post, interview, or Oscar performance), and didn’t even perform publicly once last year. His song titles contain more punctuation than a Steven King novel, and the man has released over one-hundred Christmas songs (a feat that we’re dedicated to covering in-full over on our sister site). His discography his one of the best in folk music ranging from soft, stark acoustic on Seven Swans, lush multi-instrumental fanfare on Illinois, and electronic bombast on The Age of Adz. While he initially made a name for himself with a far-fetched promise to record an album about all 50 states, it quickly became clear that his artistry and vision exceeded the need for any gimmicks. That’s about as broad of a career-overview as I can fit into an introductory paragraph, but the important thing to note for this piece is that the record he released in 2015, Carrie & Lowell, might be the collection of songs that end up defining his career. 

Worryingly for fans, Sufjan’s albums seem to be getting fewer and farther between. Carrie & Lowell is now five years old, and it’s still the last studio album from the folk hero; however, that doesn’t mean he’s been any less productive. In the past few years, he’s mostly relegated himself to singles and side-projects alongside conducting, producing, and soundtracking. Even before this five-year gap between records, Sufjan had seemed increasingly uninterested in (and discouraged by) the album format. Before Carrie & Lowell his last album was 2010’s Adz, and his last proper record before that was 2005’s Illinois. There were plenty of B-sides, art installations, EPs, ballets, and avant-garde diversions in between all that, so it’s fair to say that Sufjan is a weird mix of precious and prolific. 

Sufjan is also an artist who’s talented enough to have released several career-defining albums. If you were to ask a fan what their favorite Sufjan album was, you’re likely to get a different answer based on who you talk to. I’m a Michigan man myself, but Carrie & Lowell is a close second. And while Carrie & Lowell may be only one of two records that Sufjan released in the past ten years, there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s one of the best albums of the decade, and I’m about to tell you why.

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2010’s Age of Adz represented something of an end for Sufjan Stevens. Apart from his inclinations away from the album format, that record saw Sufjan blowing up his entire persona, sound, and musical foundation into something entirely unexpected and extraordinary. It was the album-equivalent of ego death. He eased listeners in with a familiar acoustic guitar on “Futile Devices,” but then turned everything on its head with electronic drums, angry frustrations, and cinematic builds the likes of which fans had never before seen. The album concludes with the 25-minute “Impossible Soul,” a breathtaking multi-part musical odyssey that retroactively feels like a career-ending period mark.

So where did he have left to go after such an upending work of art? It turns out that the answer was nowhere. Sufjan essentially went into hiding for a few years aside from a second collection of Christmas songs which he bound together in 2012 thanks to his label Asthmatic Kitty. He toured on that album for one festive holiday season (fittingly long-windedly-titled "Surfjohn Stevens Christmas Sing-A-Long: Seasonal Affective Disorder Yuletide Disaster Pageant on Ice"), then fell off the face of the earth. 

Sometime after that tour, Sufjan Steven’s mother passed away. 

Sufjan had a strained relationship with his mother. She was the topic of songs like “Romulus,” and (by contrast) “Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!” The rough story as presented in “Romulus” is this; Sufjan’s parents got a divorce when he was still a child. His mother moved from Michigan to Oregon and the kids visited her every summer. Sufjan depicts his mother as selfish, uncaring, and something that he felt ‘ashamed’ of. She battled addiction, depression, and schizophrenia, and was generally shown in his music to be an unfit parent. Despite all this, when your mother dies, she’s still your mother, and it still hurts. 

Her death is the event that sparked Carrie & Lowell’s creation. As a result, it’s an expectedly dark, slow, and sad record… and that’s putting it lightly. Carrie & Lowell is a morbid piece of art, a fantastic character study, and an absolutely beautiful reflection on love and mortality. If you haven’t listened to it yet, now is the time to close this tab, turn off the lights, and listen to the record on your nicest pair of headphones. 

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When Carrie & Lowell released on March 31st of 2015, it was met with widespread critical acclaim. Aside from the notable context in which it was created, a new Sufjan Stevens record felt like an event worth celebrating. The album represented a sonic return to form for Sufjan, most reminiscent of his early-career acoustic work like Seven Swans and some of the more restrained tracks on Michigan. While critical praise is no consolation prize for a dead parent, it felt like with Carrie & Lowell Sufjan finally became a household name. 

As the full gravity of the record’s lyrics and context began to set in over the first few weeks of its release, Carrie & Lowell almost had a delayed reaction as fans started to recognize the scope and weight of the feelings contained within it. I may just be speaking for myself, but distinctly I recall listening to the album a few times before the words really began to land. It wasn’t until I sat down for a handful of close listens that I grew to understand the severity of the emotions contained within the record. Carrie & Lowell wasn’t just another Sufjan record. It wasn’t Illinois, it wasn’t Adz, and it definitely wasn’t Songs for Christmas, this was something different entirely. Carrie & Lowell is one of the rare albums that sounds sad and also has the weight to back it up. It’s not sad for sadness’ sake. There’s plenty of sad music, and there’s plenty of folk music, but there are very few records like this. 

Album opener “Death With Dignity” sets the tone immediately with a soft, finger-plucked banjo and morbid song title referencing Oregon’s assisted suicide law. Sufjan enters soon after with a soft whispered voice sounding more lost than ever as he sings, “Spirit of my silence, I can hear you / But I’m afraid to be near you / And I don’t know where to begin.” The track ends with a minute of haunting, ghost-like hums that reverberate around the speakers, solidifying the album’s mood for the remaining 39-minutes. 

Should Have Known Better” is the closest thing the record has to a “catchy” song, placed second in the tracklist presumably to soften the blow of the opening track while also prepping the listener for what’s to come. This song introduces us to the record’s cast of characters, and it’s setting; Sufjan’s mom, brother, and extended family are all represented as well as the state of Oregon. Sufjan’s mom, Carrie, is introduced as a troubled character, establishing her with an anecdote about a time that she forgot Sufjan and his brother at the video store as a child. “When I was three, three, maybe four / She left us at that video store / Oh, be my rest, be my fantasy.” Here he depicts just one instance of her bad parenting, but also follows is up with conflicted feelings of missing her now that she’s gone. 

“Should Have Known Better” ends with a message of hope as Sufjan contrasts this recent loss with a new ray of hope as he sings, “My brother had a daughter (brother had a daughter) / The beauty that she brings, illumination (illumination).” Clinging on to this one shred of optimism, Sufjan sends the listener off to wade through the darkness on the rest of the album. Now we know the stakes, we know the players, and we know how it ends. All that’s left is to fill in the blanks. 

From there, the album spans from love songs on “All of Me Wants All of You” to childhood flashbacks on “Eugene.” Sufjan walks the listener through the stages of grief on “Drawn to the Blood,” and with each track, he takes the listener further down the rabbit hole of loss and confusion that comes in the wake of a loved one’s death. Each song adds another layer onto the relationship between himself and his mother, which sets us up for the heartbreaking depiction of her death beginning on the second side of the record.

Sufjan captures death rawly on “Fourth of July” as he finds himself by his mother’s bedside during her final moments. First, Sufjan sets the scene by establishing his mother’s declining health with beautiful yet pained language. “The evil, it spread like a fever ahead / It was night when you died, my firefly.” From there, he replays a conversation with each stanza trading off between the two of them. The language used is loving and forthright as his dying mother asks, “Did you get enough love, my little dove? / Why do you cry?” elaborating, “And I’m sorry I left, but it was for the best / Though it never felt right / My little Versailles.”

The use of loving pet names is punctuated immediately by post-death logistics as the hospital begins asking Sufjan about how the family would like to bury the body. This gut-punch leads to one final chorus that builds to a climactic chant of “We’re all gonna die,” which is repeated until the song fades out into darkness. It’s sublime.

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From that point onward the record shows Sufjan dealing with his mother’s death on “The Only Thing,” flashes back to his childhood once more on “Carrie & Lowell,” and gives a glimpse of hope in the form of love and religion on my personal favorite “John My Beloved.” These songs bear soft acoustic guitar, careful banjo plucks, subtle electronic elements, and creaking piano, creating one continuity of emotion that flows smoothly from one song to the next.

Penultimate “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross” finds Sufjan at his most self-destructive, turning to substances and self-harm in the wake of his mother’s passing. Finally, album closer “Blue Bucket of Gold” is a piano-led lamentation that finds Sufjan reaching out to friends, family, and God for support. The song ends with a meditative swirl of electronics that overwhelms the senses and commandeers the track. Of this song, Sufjan explained in an interview:

I didn’t know (my mom) well in a lot of ways, and I didn’t know how to say goodbye on the last track with articulation. So I quit playing piano and vocals and just stopped. I wanted to surrender her to the beyond with noises that sound bigger than just me.

So that was Carrie & Lowell; 43 minutes of heartache, confusion, loss, and sadness. It’s not a fun listen, but very few albums capture such sadness in such an open way. From then on, Sufjan let us sit with the record, and that was the last we heard from him until 2017, which is when he began adding more pieces to his creation. It was at this point that he turned Carrie & Lowell from a masterpiece into a complete body of work and one of the most definitive statements that any artist has ever made.  

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Carrie & Lowell may not seem like an album most artists would tour off of; the songs are slow, sad, and minimalistic, not exactly befitting of a large-scale theater. But Sufjan Stevens is not most artists. Sufjan took Carrie & Lowell on the road in 2015 and performed the songs as reimagined for the big stage. The tracks turned from somber reflections of death into meditative statements on life. He performed with a full band, adorned the stage with colorful lights, and donned his iconic baseball hat for months of legendary performances throughout 2015 and 2016. The songs were built out with added drums, background vocalists, and keyboards. Tracks were punctuated by ethereal electronic swirls that allowed the audience to marinate on the performance as it unfolded. Each night was capped off with either  “Chicago” or a cover of Drake’s “Hotline Bling,” perhaps to lighten the mood and ease the audiences out of the death-obsessed world of Carrie & Lowell and back into reality. 

A 2015 performance in South Carolina was filmed and released to the public as a standalone album in 2017, two years after Carrie & Lowell first landed. With the performance immortalized on Carrie & Lowell Live, Sufjan took the quiet meditative nature of the original record and turned in into a maximalist reflection on death and life. The songs were the same as they were before, but now re-ordered and re-created from the ground-up so that they shine in a completely different light.

Performing career-spanning tracks like “Redford” and “Vesuvius,” these songs fit in perfectly alongside the core album’s tracklist, further fleshing out the story of Carrie & Lowell and making the five-year gap between the seemingly distant Age of Adz feel seamless. “All of Me Wants All of You” trades Sufjan’s acoustic guitar out for an entirely-electronic soundscape that erupts in a fantastic explosion of psychedelic dance music. If you were to play the live songs side by side with their original you’d hardly be able able to tell they were the same if it weren’t for the lyrics. Similarly, “Fourth of July” is blown out into a seven-minute epic that retains the original’s guitar and piano but culminates in an extended repetition of “We’re all gonna die” over pulsating synths and a rolling drum solo. Even the pensive “John My Beloved” begins with the same familiar piano but eventually adds drums and guitar that gradually build up to a near-post-rock climax. Perhaps most notably, album closer “Blue Bucket of Gold” is followed by a 13-minute wall of ambient electronic music, lending further credence to the Sufjan quote above, leaving audiences no choice but to ruminate and surrender to the beyond, if only for a scant few minutes.

With this live performance, Sufjan gave the tracks on Carrie & Lowell a new life outside of their original context. It’s one thing to perform such a personal and dark album before hundreds of people, but it’s an artistic achievement to change them so significantly and still have them work to the same end. Carrie & Lowell Live stands as an additional support piece to the original record’s greatness, proving that it can work in different contexts and on different scales. It’s great not just because the songs are great, but because it reimagines them entirely. With this performance, Sufjan took the emotion and story of Carrie & Lowell and pushed the maximalist slider all the way up.

The other achievement of this record is that it takes all of Sufjan’s seemingly-disparate musical phases and makes them all work under one unified sound. The live performance takes the songwriting of Carrie & Lowell and touches it up with the electronic embellishments of Adz and the instrumentation of Michigan. It elevates not just the original record, but his entire discography. 

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On April 28th, the same day as the release of Carrie & Lowell Live, Asthmatic Kitty announced The Greatest Gift, an album that collected the outtakes, remixes, and demos from Carrie & Lowell all on one LP. Much like the preceding live album, The Greatest Gift further elevated the original record by adding an additional layer of context and emotional complexity, this time in the opposite tonal direction.

As mentioned above, there are three core categories under which the songs on The Greatest Gift fall. First are outtakes. These are songs like “City of Roses,” “Wallowa Lake Monster,” and “The Hidden River of My Life.” These songs fit tonally into Carrie & Lowell, but focus more on building the backdrop of the album as opposed to detailing its central players. Each song name-drops iconic Oregon locations and attractions, these three outtakes (along with “The Greatest Gift”) flesh out the world of Carrie & Lowell primarily through embellishments to the surrounding environment more than anything vital to the story.

The remixes contained on the album aren’t your standard EDM-fueled fare, but instead opt for adding subtle electronic elements that add to the atmosphere of the original songs. The first remix of “Drawn to the Blood” is helmed by Sufjan himself, editing his own song to sound like an Adz bonus track. Hidalgo Negro remixes both “Death With Dignity” and “All of Me Wants All of You” with swirling electronic additions that make it sound as if you’re underwater or floating in space. The incomparable Doveman remixes “Exploding Whale,” initially a loosie, which now finds a home here as yet another Oregon reference. Finally, 900X remixes “Fourth of July,” pulling the song apart piece by piece and reconstructing it into a cathartic seven-minute electronic build that makes expert use of the song’s white space, giving the lyrics ample time to breathe.

Where The Greatest Gift shines, most surprisingly, are its demo tracks. In these songs, we catch a glimpse of the most raw version of Carrie & Lowell in existence. “Drawn to the Blood” receives a “fingerpicking remix” that swaps the rapidly-strummed guitar of the original for a carefully-finger plucked version that sounds a touch more produced, à la “Mystery of Love.” Most notably, “John My Beloved” and “Carrie & Lovell” are denoted with “iPhone Demo,” painting a picture of Sufjan recording his thoughts, feelings, and grief directly into his phone somewhere that studio equipment was all too far away.

These demos are haunting and breathtaking. Recorded in complete isolation, they feature rough-around-the-edges guitar playing and soft, whispered vocals (even more so than usual). These songs feel remarkably “of the moment,” as if inspiration struck, and Sufjan recorded them on the spot in a bout of stream-of-consciousness. These demos capture the emotion and environment so wholly; you can hear the room tone, the creaking of a chair, and the rattling of the guitar strings. It’s Sufjan in an unpolished and lo-fi setting that most fans have never heard before. The demos take the sadness and starkness of the original album versions and amplifies them as far as humanly bearable. It’s an even more accurate portrayal of grief and loss if only because they sound that much more raw and sorrowful.

This collection of songs, particularly the demos, add yet another layer onto Carrie & Lowell, showing an alternative reality version of this album that was just Sufjan alone in his room recording his feelings into an iPhone and releasing it out into the world. You know the songs are great because they still work, even in this context. While Carrie & Lowell Live portrayed the album at its most expansive and maximalist, The Greatest Gift shows the album at its most inward and minimalist. These two releases work in tandem with the original record to elevate the songs and portray Sufjan’s strength as a songwriter and musician. 

On top of these three full-length releases, 2017 also saw the release of Tonya Harding, a single loosely inspired by I, Tonya in which Sufjan recounts the now-infamous tale of the figure skater (and Oregonian) Tonya Harding. That single felt like a leftover song from a reality where Sufjan actually carried out his Oregon album the same way that Illinois had a song about John Wayne Gacy and featured Lincoln and Superman on the gatefold. Additionally, 2015’s “Blue Bucket of Gold (Remix)” offers an alternate ending to Carrie & Lowell that, much like the live rendition, sends the listener off with a disorienting whir of electronics, amplifying what was already on the album by tenfold. 

Through these loose singles and the more Oregon-focused outtakes on The Greatest Gift, Sufjan also presented fans with an alternate reality where Carrie & Lowell was merely another album in the 50 States Project covering the fanciful characters and locations of the Pacific Northwest. Simply put, this makes Carrie & Lowell one of the most flexible, fascinating, and diverse releases that Sufjan has ever created. 

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There you have it. One record, one live album, a collection of outtakes, remixes, and demos that add up to a collective 3+ hour listen that I like to call the Definitive Carrie & Lowell

With this series of releases, Sufjan Stevens was able to not only craft a masterful and career-defining record, but he was also able to build upon it, flesh it out, and create around it in a way that I’ve seen no other artist do. Together these albums paint a wondrous portrayal of life, love, and loss. Carrie & Lowell is the type of record that only comes around once in a generation, and we’re lucky that Sufjan lent his voice and artistry to depicting such a painful and challenging topic. In immortalizing the passing of his mother and everything that came in its wake, Sufjan created a definitive statement on loss that will live on through the ages. He memorialized his mother in an honest way that made death real, impactful, beautiful, and comforting. I can’t think of a better legacy than that. 

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Profile: Don Babylon

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I found Virginia-to-Philly transplants Don Babylon when they opened for my partner’s band in New York last fall. I had just flown in from Seattle to visit and was still finding my footing, wandering in circles around the crowded warehouse. The multi-story venue was filled with hipper-than-thou East Coasters and independent radio dads, and I was jet-lagged and overwhelmed. In bad form, I hadn’t bothered to listen to the opener beforehand; I assumed they would be, in my own terrible words, “bad indie rock.” For that, I’m sorry. We love to gripe about opening bands as often as we remind our friends to give them a chance, and I’ve been guilty of the former on more than one occasion.

Not only was I being a dickhead, I was also wrong. Still avoiding the crowds, I watched from the safety of backstage and was pleasantly surprised. It was loud, a little abrasive; it wasn’t twee at all. It was the no-frills rock n’ roll that I’d been missing from DIY shows back home: not as assaulting as the hardcore gigs could be, yet more engaging than the bedroom pop that was so prevalent in my college town.

I didn’t revisit them again until months later; although new to me, their songs felt eerily familiar. I felt nostalgic- sad and comforted all at once, not unlike how I felt listening to I Brought You My Bullets… as a young teenager. While Don Babylon’s wistful, southern proto-punk was worlds away musically, the energy felt the same. The emotions were raw, they were as hopeful as they were self-deprecating. They had an affinity for graveyards.

Like the songs on Bullets, their music is earnest, unapologetic, and thoughtfully messy, chronicling experiences with addiction, grief, and anxiety with a sincerity and sense of humor that makes the process look easy. At their core they remain a rock band, but across their one EP and two studio albums, no two tracks are the same. Their heavier songs have a familiar, vintage twang of Danzig-era Misfits, while others veer into old rock, blues, and country territory. “Bedsheets and “Mach III” are nearly pop, while “There Will Be Blood 2” is a fast, thrashing hardcore track; I can barely make out the words, and I don’t even mind. In “Roll Credits,” they throw shuffle riffs into a garage rock song about finding comfort in mediocrity, and somehow, they make it work.  

While musically diverse, each of their full-length albums are bookended with indie ballads. 2017’s Babe opens with an unrelenting ten minutes and four seconds of anger and hurt in the breakup song “Ow, My Tiny Heart,” the lines “It’s hot and I hate everything / I’m always hurt or in my head / the weather is not changing / and we, we are all dead” sounding like a high school notebook manifesto in the best possible way. 2018’s Foul ends with the five minute long “Started a Band,” a playful and honest ode to failure that leaves the listener more assured than lost.

Babe may be their first album, but it feels more like a mid-career success. At just under forty minutes with only one song free of vulgarities, it’s a ride to hell and back that begins with the faux-jaunty piano track “Happiest Man I Know” and ends with the two-part epicPeople Having Fun followed by “Jerk,” a quiet yet heartfelt love song that could have come out of your great-grandmother’s kitchen stereo. Foul isn’t as chaotic, but it’s just as impassioned. From the wit of “Really Fast Cars” to the panic and loneliness of “Hopeless Man” and “Rocky XXVII” to the short yet deafening “Mean Streets II,” it’s a cleaner continuation of the themes of the first album; they’re still broke and distraught, but they know how to write songs for the radio.

I recently joked to a friend that the last thing we need is more bands full of men who make dirty, unhinged rock music, but in the age of poptimism, Don Babylon’s authenticity is a welcome relief. Their songs are vulnerable without being needlessly whiny, both serious and sarcastic when the time is right. It might seem like their drunken angst is affected, as it often is for young artists, but their humorously bleak lyrics and reckless anthems suggest that, for better or worse, it’s real. The three of them know who they are, insistent on having the last laugh; they know their weaknesses so well that they’ve already written songs about them. Their ethos is genuine, and singer Aubrey Neeley’s lyrics are self-aware; he’s honest to the point of poking fun at himself, letting dry humor soothe heartbreak, and doing what any sane person would when everything has gone to shit: scream about it. 


 

Robin has always wanted to write about music, and she’s finally giving it a go now that she’s too old for college radio. You can find her in Bellingham, Washington, microwaving 7-hour-old coffee and listening to Oingo Boingo. She tries too hard on Twitter at @robinelizabth, and is on Instagram at @antiquemallz.

 

Solemn Judgement – "Spineless" Track Premier

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Anger is perhaps the most taboo emotion. You’re allowed to be happy, people welcome it. You’re allowed to be sad, people understand that. You’re allowed to be fearful, some people prey on that. But those feelings are all internal. Anger? That’s an outward-facing emotion, and most people shy away from it for that very reason. Anger is destructive, it’s unthinking, it’s ugly… but that makes it all the more vital to get out.

As a result of where anger sits in our emotional landscape, hardcore is one of the most cathartic genres of music. Sure, listening to Elliot Smith when you’re sad scratches a certain itch, but there’s nothing more emotionally-satisfying than listening to some punchy guitars and screamed vocals when you need to vent. It’s the musical embodiment of one of the most dangerous and frowned-upon emotions in our society, and that makes it one of the most important. 

Solemn Judgement is a hardcore band based out of Detroit formed from the ashes of half a dozen different Michigan groups. They’re still in that exciting early stage of a band where they’re frequently putting out singles and EPs, each release providing fans with a slight update on the group’s ever-shifting sound. While Solemn Judgement’s EP from earlier this year ranged from familial spite to self-destructive hatred, their newest track “Spineless” is more of a faceless rage directed outward at any and all oppressors. 

The song begins with a metallic guitar in the left channel that’s soon followed by a distant scream and a series of fast-paced cymbal taps that set the pace for the coming bombardment. From there, the rest of the band launches into a low and slow riff designed to pummel listeners into oblivion. This leads to a fast-paced pit-opening instrumental where the thumping bassline, gnashing guitar, and snappy snare hits synch up, making way for Marissa Ward’s vehement vocals. 

Midway through the song, there’s an instrumental dropout that clears the path for each word to land like a punch to the gut. The lyrics are pure bile; absolute anger spewed out that the listener can easily channel their rage into. Ward yells “you’re scared senseless to face your vices / you’ll judge those for using their voices,” and you begin to get the sense that these were words that couldn’t be held in any longer.

With “Spineless” Solemn Judgement aren’t just airing their own grievances, they’re also providing an outlet for each and every one of their listeners to project their frustrations onto. And that is why hardcore will always be irreplaceable. 

 

Catch Solemn Judgement on the road this winter:

11/15 in Cincinnati @ Bitter Taste Fest
11/18 in Detroit @ Sanctuary
12/5 in Kalamazoo @ Greenhouse
12/6 in Chicago @ Empty Bliss
12/7 in Detroit @ Trumbullplex
12/8 in Akron @ Hive Mind

 

Dogleg Is The Future

When I first moved to Michigan last September, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Not only had I never been to this side of the country before, but aside from The White Stripes and maybe a few Motown singles, I knew nothing about the music scene here. In the time since l moved to the midwest last fall, I’ve been lucky enough to discover hundreds of amazing local bands and see probably about as many play. 

In a few weeks, I’ll be moving again and I can confidently say the thing I’ll miss the most about Michigan won’t be the Faygo or the coney islands, or even the square pizza. No, the thing I’ll miss the most about Michigan will be Dogleg concerts.

Dogleg is a four-piece rock band based out of Detroit playing a distinct blend of thrashy emo rock. They’re made up of guitarist Alex Stoitsiadis, bassist Chase Macinski, rhythm guitarist Parker Grissom, and drummer Jacob Hanlon. It sounds like a pretty modest setup all things considered, yet each time I see the band live, I walk away convinced that it was the best performance I’ve ever seen.

The first time I saw Dogleg was December of 2018, where they were playing alongside Shortly, Formerly Bodies, and Ness Lake at The Loving Touch. It was a relatively subdued performance from the band, but I enjoyed it enough to drop $10 on a shirt to support them. They also had a CRT TV set up at the merch table where fans could challenge them to a game of Smash Bros, which endeared me to them immediately if only because it was unlike anything I’d ever seen in all my years of concertgoing. They were officially on my radar.

 
 

The second time I saw Dogleg was at Fauxchella III in Bowling Green, Ohio, and that was the performance that turned me into a lifelong fan. 

The band took the stage at 6 PM and played a ferocious set to a rapt audience as the backdrop behind them projected a youtube compilation of anime fights and intro sequences. They blasted through their set hair flailing, drums pounding, and guitar screaming. The pièce de résistance came near the end when Alex paused to perform a handstand in between violent guitar strums only to land it flawlessly and continue playing. 

Maybe it was the anime fight scenes, or perhaps the mixture of Red Bull and pizza fueling me at the time, but in that moment, everything made sense. 

 
 


In the time since that performance, I’ve probably seen the band play at least a dozen times. That’s the benefit of getting into your local music scene, because not only will you discover these cool bands right in your own back yard, but if you like them, they’re probably playing around you all the time. 

Dogleg’s publicly-available music consists of two EP’s from 2016 that honestly don’t quite capture the intensity of their live performances very well. They’re solid releases, but they pale in comparison to the energy and musicianship on display at an actual Dogleg show. I began to think that the true essence of a Dogleg concert may be lighting in a bottle, unable to ever be captured on studio equipment… until today.

This morning, the group released “Fox” off their upcoming debut album Melee due out sometime in 2020 on Triple Crown Records. The song is perfectly indicative of the group’s unparalleled on-stage energy, and probably the closest they’ll ever get to bottling that experience up in a neat and easily-streamable package. The song’s music video (filmed at this year’s twelfth and final Bled Fest) further emphasizes how well the band’s stage presence elevates their music.


Dogleg’s songs are the perfect balance of group chants, crowd-churning riffage, and fast-paced instrumentation that flies by quicker than the listener even has time to comprehend. Their music is pure spectacle, something you have to see to believe. Whether they’re performing to hundreds of people in a packed room at Bled Fest or dozens of people in someone’s basement, each show, the band plays like their lives depend on it.

This is all to say I’ve never seen a band quite like Dogleg, and I feel incredibly thankful to have been able to watch them perform so many times over the past year. I can only hope they’ll continue to tour, and I’ll be able to keep seeing them (even if it’s slightly less frequent going forward) because they’ve been a highlight of my time in the Midwest. If you have the chance to see Dogleg live, do yourself a favor and do not pass it up.

Photo: @dappestdan

Hexing – In Tandem | EP Review

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Sometimes it’s the small things in life that resonate with us the most; the little acts of kindness, the unspoken acts of love, and the subconscious actions of others that end up staying with us for years to come. Hexing’s second EP In Tandem is a 20-minute collection of songs built around documenting these moments, encasing them in amber, and holding them up to the light for the world to see. 

Based out of the frigid, lake-adjacent Muskegon, Hexing is a five-piece rock band that blends emo, punk, and the occasional drop of melodic hardcore to a satisfying and emotionally-satiating result. The group’s newest release follows their 2018 EP Temporary and two-track single (fittingly) titled Everything is a Bummer. Seemingly having moved to a more positive mental state, In Tandem finds the group detailing their interpersonal relationships and putting words to the seemingly nondescript moments that end up meaning the world.

In fact, opening track “Car Crash” begins by throwing the listener directly into one of these lived-in moments of adoration. The song itself is a clear-eyed pop-punky track that shifts from emotive harmonies to trashy riffage at a moment’s notice, but the song’s first lines raise the curtains on a scene of confessional weakness. We hear our narrator recall a time when a loved one had to shepherd them home while they sat drunk in the passenger seat and sunk deeper and deeper into self-loathing.

I got drunk as you drove me home
so I didn’t have to be alone with my thoughts
so maybe I could feel a little less like me
cause the more I think the more I hate me

In addition to relaying these moments of personal connectivity, the other major through-line of the EP is aging out of a pre-determined mold and into something less defined. Throughout the release, the band finds themselves at a crossroads in life, stuck between their firey teenage punk phase and whatever comes after that. Lyrics like “running off what remains of my teenage fumes and decaying youth, cause I’m just not angry anymore” bottle up the all-too-familiar story of a once-punk teenager who has now reached their mid-twenties/early-thirties and looked around only to realize that they’re the oldest person in the basement.

But this newfound maturation also comes with a sense of happiness, because despite the uncomfortable (and non-negotiable) adjustment to getting older, Hexing still manages to find rays of positivity in the face of what could otherwise be complete collapse. On the goofily-named “Fleetwood Mac Sex Pants,” the band finds themselves adjusting to a more positive outlook on life… or at least a slightly less negative one. It’s a classic emo track in that the silly song name merely serves as a distraction from the surprisingly-mature sentiments on display in the lyrics as the band reiterates, “I’m getting used to feeling okay / it’s unnatural to not hate everything” in their most earnest and Wonder-Years-esque delivery.

Other highlights include the lead single “Swamp Thing,” which boasts hard-hitting screams, a driving drumline, and lyrics delivered through a defiant snarl accentuated by punchy palm-muted guitar riffs. On the opposite end of the tonal spectrum, “Sunday Mornings” builds off an emotive Balance and Composure-like guitar line that works its way up to a melodic and explosive post-rock finish. Throughout In Tandem’s 20 minutes, the band displays a unique ability to mix different subgenres and influences into one fluid presentation that makes them all seem effortless. These technical chops are backed up by the band’s grounded lyricism that any aging punk should easily be able to relate to.

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Growing up means making a lot of changes, not the least of which is figuring out how to adjust to your waning energy, passion, and drive. It’s easy to be an energetic teenager; it’s harder to be an energetic adult. We have more responsibilities, more to lose, and more people that grow to count on us over time. It’s shifting from ‘fuck yeah I’ll stage dive’ to ‘I think I’ll stand in the back tonight.’ It’s getting a good night’s sleep and eating right. That might not sound very punk, but neither is growing up. 

Rocky as they are, these types of changes are ultimately for the best because they’re signs of development and evolution. Getting better doesn’t happen all at once; it’s a long, ongoing, and sometimes painful process of incremental steps in the right direction. 

In Tandem is an album about loosening your grip and finding your place in the world. Obviously, the title and album cover both evoke a certain romantic notion, but the EP itself delves into all the specific ways that a relationship can live, thrive, and sometimes falter. Recognizing the role that people play in our lives is not to be taken lightly, and Hexing has done a masterful job of portraying the complex ways that these relationships exist. Nothing is perfect, and everything is changing, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.