Niiice. Kiss 2020 Goodbye with Explosive New Single "$20 Mints"

This one took me by surprise. Minnesota rockers Niiice. are well known for their hard-hitting Midwest emo tunes and always-entertaining internet presence (Twitter account #3 still going strong!), but what they deliver on their new single “$20 Mints” is a refreshing new tone for the group. Don’t let the compact package fool you; Roddie, Sage, and Abe make a hell of a statement in just one minute and twenty-four seconds.

The tune kicks off with overlaid guitar feedback and a wonderful sample of Michael Scott at his financial rock bottom before it quickly breaks into form with crunchy strings anchored by a tom-heavy drum beat. This dark and full-bodied sound fits perfectly with the lead vocals, which soar over the heavy but restrained instrumentals. Before too long, the sound starts building in volume and intensity, then explodes into a ferocious chorus featuring some phenomenal screams from Roddie. As quickly as the song gets going, its climax comes quickly and transitions directly into a swift ending. “$20 Minds” is a tune with no fat on its bones; it’s a great show of a band committing, throwing themselves at a track, and burning through it.

Despite its unexpected style, “$20 Mints” isn’t a brand-new song, as evidenced by the live recordings of it that date back as far as summer 2018. The song’s namesake comes from a marijuana-rich tour through Chicago with fellow Minnesotans Harper’s Jar, who put out a fantastic single “Ode to Space Lady” earlier this year. The fact that “$20 Mints” has been rattling around in the band’s toolkit for a while suggests that this may not be a complete shift in direction for Niiice., although it’s a welcome addition to their impressive output as of late. Only a few months off the heels of their LP, Internet Friends, “$20 Mints” contributes a slow and heavy sound to Niiice.’s catalog that I’d definitely encourage everyone to check out. The band keeps their edge while delivering a perfect slow-burn that blows up into one of the best barnburners of the year so far. When live shows return, this will be a song to go absolutely nuts to, and I for one, can’t wait.

---

Jack Hansen-Reed is an avid music fan from Omaha, Nebraska with a passion for all things DIY. In his free time he enjoys sticking it to the man, cheering on the Cubbies, and drumming in indie-americana act Bearwithus. Send him any music recommendations on Twitter at @jhansenreed.

The Sonder Bombs – Clothbound | Album Review

How many friendships have ended because of COVID-19? I don’t have enough fingers to count the number of people I love who have shown a completely different side of themselves over the past year. We’ve watched people refuse to wear masks and stay home by the thousands, all because it infringes upon their “personal rights.” High-risk folks should just expect to die, right? We’ve watched people protest the closure of Disneyland but remain completely silent in the face of widespread racial injustice. This entitled community flocks to brunch in enclosed igloos but refuses to assist their unhoused neighbors on the streets. We’ve watched people do all of this and more, all because the alternative is slightly more inconvenient for them. I’ve discovered these selfish, narcissistic people not just in the world around me as some reckless “other,” but that they exist in my friend groups, role models, and even my family. As deadly and horrific as this pandemic is, the one bright side is that it has helped me filter these toxic people out of my life.

Even with the worst in plain view, the pandemic has also made me realize what’s important to me, and it’s not going out to bars and partying, but building deep connections with the people I hold closest to my heart. It’s easy to mistake your friend group as kind-hearted, but that’s not always the case. I still miss these people and think of them often, but then I realize I’m missing only fractured memories. Positive memories of late-night drives across state lines, screaming along to emo songs, and smoking in 7/11 parking lots get buried by feelings of anger and hatred towards people I thought I’d always be able to fall back on. I cried more often than not in 2020 but learned that it’s okay to cry--even cool. But puns inside, I realized that being sensitive and vulnerable isn’t a weakness, but actually a strength. Clothbound, the sophomore album by The Sonder Bombs, came at a time when I was struggling with feelings of inadequacy, tenderness, anger, and loneliness. This record carefully and precisely fleshes out each of these emotions in loving detail. 

With emotions and sensitivity on full display, The Sonder Bombs have crafted a masterpiece of a comfort album. But it wouldn’t be a Sonder Bombs release without some absolute bangers. Lead single “What are Friends For?” established the group’s mission statement early on. Clothbound isn’t a record about external relationships beginning or ending; it’s about Willow’s internal relationship with their sensitivity and self. It is watching the growth in real-time through Willow’s encapsulation of the full range of human emotion and gender expression. When I listen to this album, I find a home in Willow’s portrayal of sensitivity. I consider myself an overly sensitive person, and I found peace and solace in the fact that someone else shares these emotions that can sometimes feel larger than life. Not only that, but they are able to grapple with these feelings and put them into songs that help me feel less isolated in this time of turmoil.

“Crying is Cool,” the second single released off the album, is the quarantine comfort song. “Netflix and a box of wine”? Yeah, that happens quite often. Am I gonna cry to whichever movie I put on? Probably. Between the nurturing lyrical content and summery flower-adorned music video, this song set the upbeat poppy tone for Clothbound with a track that’s not afraid to talk about feelings. Even the title conveys an evocative message. Whether it’s “Cr-crying is cool” or “F-feeling is fine,” the stuttered sentiments that close out each verse makes it feel like Willow is trying to convince themselves of these things in real-time. We hear them hesitating and nervous but also trying to build themselves up, growing into the affirmations as the song ends. It is the perfect tune to keep us holding on for spring weather and better times. 

Of course, with emotionally charged lyrics comes banging riffs. The hypnotizing dance party that is “Vegas BABY!!!” is brilliantly carried by Kevin Cappy and Jimmy Wilkens’ staple guitar and bass lines. The Sonder Bombs always deliver with the most catchy riffs and incredible articulation of pure emotion into each note played. The chorus’s back and forth vocals make for a dance party as vibrant and sophisticated as the lights of the Vegas Strip. We even get a taste of synth that shines and shimmers to a prismatic effect. This album is fuller than any other Sonder Bombs release thanks to support by Joe Reinhart, who recorded, mixed, and produced Clothbound. This is the most profound Sonder Bombs release yet, and the album is not only heartfelt but enchanting and magical thanks to songs like “The One About You.” The band has completely opened themselves to create an album that is relatable, masterly put together, and chock-full of passion. 

A departure from the sharp femininity and perfectly placed rage of Modern Female Rockstar, Willow fully opens their heart on Clothbound, realizing the feelings that lie beneath anger are equally as important. Both “Swing on Sight” and “k.” provide us an outlet for rage, complete with riffs, breakdowns, and even screams that welcome you to join in on the vent session. But, without neglecting those feelings of anger, the band has found that feeling a full range of emotions helps make peace with those angry thoughts. In Clothbound, each emotion holds significance. It’s growth in every regard. 

When I saw The Sonder Bombs in 2019, I identified with Willow in many ways, but mostly with my place as a woman in the scene. Within the time since, Willow has opened up to identifying with all pronouns. This album shows the depth of emotions that comes with finding your non-comforming place in the world and especially the music scene. Similarly, during that same time, I have transitioned into being nonbinary. This album is a whole new level of reassurance for a femme-presenting person in the DIY scene. To every sensitive nonbinary, this one is for your tender heart. 

Willow’s pure gentleness, combined with the elegance of a soft rainstorm in “Scattered,” creates a somber lullaby. Jer Berkin’s drums are what guides us on this soft-spoken track. With lyrics such as “seaside ashes scattered in someone else’s backyard,” a picture is painted of some broken midwest kids attempting to find closure in the complex process that is grief. This song takes me back to the sorrow embedded in Willow’s performance of “Pindrop” at the House of Independents on the 2019 Just Friends tour. As a then-unreleased song, I spent weeks trying to track down a recording and the lyrics. Every part of that performance stuck with me as I was currently picking up the pieces from the death of a loved one. The Sonder Bombs comforted me then, and they comfort me now with Clothbound.

There is delicacy and strength in being soft-hearted. This album is an all-consuming thesis on emotions, one in which we listen to Willow process and work through their feelings in real-time. Over the course of the album’s 31 minutes, we witness the band wrestle with emotions of every size, type, and capacity. By the time we get to the last song, “Play it by Fear,” we are dealing with Willow’s self-doubt in which they examine their rage that simmered over on the previous track. The group had just let out a whirlwind of anger on “k.” Despite the fact that Willow had spent the entire release trying to convince both themselves and the listener that these feelings are valid, they find themselves turning inward, entering a period of reflection, and beating themselves up. The lyric “wish I was free, not locked in a cage” conveys that although Willow spent the last nine songs with every emotion on full display, they still resort to locking themselves away for feeling. Full of regret and uncertainty, Willow realizes that the burden of support cannot be a solitary act. Upon the final verse of the album, Willow finds themselves reflecting on their place in the world and still feeling lost. The final lines echoing the sentiment, “I’m too big of a narcissist,” showing the need they are still left with: love and admiration from others.

Clothbound is an album about picking up the fallout of a heart cracked wide open. Yet in all the jumble of emotions, The Sonder Bombs manage to make peace with their enemies. Whether these enemies are internal or external, serenity is found through forging self-love and acceptance. In the rush of emotions that is life, recognizing your feelings is an essential part of growth and a vital part of your relationships. Clothbound stands as a monument to feeling. It’s a reassurance that emotions are okay to feel in full-form. It’s a reminder to never back down from those feelings, because that’s who you are at your core.

---

Ashley Bedore is a disabled, queer music lover living in Denver, CO. They can usually be found with a record spinning, head buried in communist theory, with cats on either side. As a sociology major with a never-ending love for the DIY scene, Ashley enjoys discussing accessibility and collective care in the scene to foster spaces where every single body belongs. Follow them on Twitter at @emomarxist.

Tiberius - Lull | Album Review

Love and heartbreak have to be two of the most well-trodden territories in songwriting. I suppose they’re ever-fruitful creative ground since everyone’s relationships are different and all fluctuate in unique ways. Whether it’s friendship, a romantic relationship, or something else, that combination of two people coming together and forming something special between them means that love and heartbreak are infinitely interpretable topics. No two relationships are alike, and exploring those novel combinations of people has led to some of the best songs in the world. It’s also led to some of the most trite and soulless garbage imaginable. Turn on the radio or walk into a grocery store anywhere in America and odds are, within a few minutes, you’ll hear a song about a relationship either beginning or ending. That duality of love and heartbreak is all well and good, after all, people are still connecting to it and finding new ways to write about it after hundreds of years, but that doesn’t stop it from being commonplace. 

These days, I’m much more interested in the grey areas of life… The spaces between the defined path and the boundless area ahead. Those “commonplace” concepts of falling in and out of love are fine, but they’re extremes. We spend more of our lives existing in the ground between those two states. 

As an artist, what do you have to say about an unremarkable Wednesday? How do you fill the space when your friends don’t call and your family is far away? What do you do when it’s interminably slow at work and you need time to fill the void? This is the sort of grey area we’ve been living in since March of 2020, so maybe that’s what appeals to me so much about artists who stray away from the binary of “love” and “heartbreak.” More often than not, life isn’t “good and bad,” it’s mute and indescribable. It’s listless and empty. It’s either a hectic scramble or adrift emotionality. What you have to say about that is what tests your mettle as an artist, not finding a new way to say ‘I am sad about girls.’

While your mileage may vary, I think the first time that many of us experience this grey area of life in full is immediately after college. If everything goes according to plan, after graduation you’ll find yourself in your early 20s, degree in-hand, and debt piled up. You followed the path that society has set out for you; you went to school, did your homework, found your “calling,” now what? Most students enter the world lost and confused with a resume and a handful of intern credits that they expected to help them land them a job that they may not even want. Then they spend months (or years) finding their way into that job, all for the express purpose of paying off that debt they attained just trying to get here—what a great system. 

Lull, the sophomore album from Tiberius, delves into this grey area in full over the course of a sprawling 48 minutes. Helmed by multi-instrumentalist Brendan Wright, he bills the release as an exploration of “self-hatred vs. self-love, the complexities of transitioning between youth and aging, and the power of the pen and expression.” 

Walking a fine line between midwest emo and lush indie rock, the collection of songs on Lull prattle on in the most charming and abstract way. Sometimes dipping into near-rapped spoken word excursions and exploratory solos, the music is slowly but surely making its way forward. This record is the musical equivalent of sleeping over at someone’s house and navigating your way to the bathroom in the dark; you move forward, one unsure step after another, all the while your hands gently scan the empty middle ground in search of any obstacles that might impede your journey. Despite the dread that comes with navigating this unfamiliar territory, the sense of satisfaction you feel when you accomplish that journey and make it back to the warm comfort of the bed makes it all worth it. The excursion was necessary, even if you didn’t want to embark on it.

Perhaps the best indicator of Lull’s message comes in its name… Lull. It’s a fitting word to describe that period of your life where the predetermined path ends and the world lies before you. What direction do you go now? How fast should you be moving? Are you even going the right way? Lull captures the lost essence one feels as the gust of energy, creativity, and forward momentum suddenly gives way to a distinct type of nothingness.

Opening track “The First of Many Lasts” sets the tone for the release with a swirl of strings, acoustic guitar, and xylophone that all congeal together to establish a melody that will present itself throughout the record. After this calming 50-second introduction, “MPHL” brings this swirling melody to a complete halt, acting as an instrumental stop sign that commands attention and draws focus on Wright’s vocals. After an opening salvo of downtrodden lyrics, the cymbal taps grow louder, eventually culminating into a fully-fledged drum build. As the song begins to swell and pick up intensity, the remainder of the instruments join in, forming a swaying instrumental that acts as an optimistic counterpoint to the cynical lyricism. These first two tracks serve as a detailed and multi-layered introduction to the complicated and emotional world of Lull. 

From there, lead single “Pale Ale” is a catchy, cathartic anthem that doubles as one of the record’s most pointed and self-contained tracks. This song walks the line between midwest emo and classic indie rock in the vein of Broken Social Scene. There are drums, bass, multiple guitars, and even a soaring sax solo that manages to fit into the song seamlessly. Even though some tracks feature additional band members, I can’t help but marvel at the fact that something this dense and layered came from one mind. While Lull was created and recorded primarily by Wright alone, “Pale Ale” acts as a hyper-collaborative high point that he is able to revisit thematically later in the album. 

From here, the band explores the aforementioned topics of relationships, aging, creativity, and self-expression through a series of constantly-shifting tracks. The album’s title track pairs gorgeous female vocals over a buoyant guitar line that drives the song forward. “Urn” is a dark and groovy cut with an instrumental reminiscent of early Interpol or even The Cure. “Furrow” pairs an electronic instrumental bed with a wispy guitar and gentle piano for a funky and laid-back excursion. 

Despite the fact that all of these songs feel unique and stylistically different, they all fit into the larger theme of the album thanks to Wright’s vocals and overarching artistic vision. No matter what stylistic indulgences or genre-based fluctuations the album goes through, Lull always centers back to the same concepts of progress and feeling like you’re not quite where you’re meant to be.

Are you actually growing or merely sustaining? Did you follow the instructions, or were you even meant to in the first place? As damaging as a lull can be in your life, the beauty is that it can also act as a period of reflection. Stalling out may feel bad because you’ve lost momentum, but it can also be a much-needed pause that allows us to think, find that missing sense of direction, and pull ourselves out. It’s all about perspective; a lull is only as negative as you allow it to be. On the other side of every lull, there is explosive progress, affirming relationships, and personal development. A lull might feel bad while you’re in it, but sometimes the only way out is through. 

The Relatable Suffering Of Greet Death

When most people think of Flint, Michigan, one thing typically pops to mind: the Flint Water Crisis. They know it’s a depressed town in the midwest that has uncovered larger systemic issues. A city that has been failed by its own government, whose people have been left for dead because of extreme income inequality and poverty. I’ve been to Flint once, maybe twice, and I can confirm that there’s a reason it’s become symbolic for all those things. It’s no fault of Flint; they are a symptom of capitalism. A casualty of corporate greed sucking the life out of the towns that once aided to capitalistic gain, now drained and discarded.

Greet Death is a shoegaze band from Flint, Michigan, and they embody this same type of deep-seated betrayal, bitterness, and sorrow in their music. But like any other citizen of Flint, Greet Death aren’t content to just give up and lie down; they are going to continue, they are going to create, and they are going to persevere. Not only that, they are going to thrive and live to tell the story. 

The type of profound misery found in Greet Death’s discography isn’t unique. There are songs of heartbreak and hard decisions found in everything from emo to Americana. What makes Greet Death different is how they translate that sense of lumbering existential dread into their instrumentals. The type of heaviness that the band experiences in life is carried over into their production, their lyrics, and their song structures. This isn’t some over-the-top stoner rock heaviness where the bass is fuzzed-out because it sounds good to a college freshman doing bong rips; in Greet Death’s case, heaviness is the only way to do these stories justice. 

The group combines this distorted, shoegazey instrumental bed with the unique vocal stylings of bassist Sam Boyhtari and guitarist Logan Gaval. Helmed primarily by Boyhtari, his soft, higher-pitched croon provide a nice counterpoint to the heaviness of the band’s instrumentals. It humanizes the tracks in a way that makes the dense fog feel slightly more bearable. Meanwhile, Gaval lends a bit of a clearer more ‘poppy’ sensibility to the band… poppy only in the sense that, when compared to everything else, the songs that Gaval sings are downright catchy by comparison.

Take all of these elements and place them over the sway of Jim Versluis’ consistently impressive drumming, and you have Greet Death. Together the band has released two albums, a 7", and an Audiotree live, all amounting to exactly two hours of dense, smoky, riff-filled music that captures a sense of dread unlike anything I’ve ever heard. 

I use the word ‘dread,’ but even now, after multiple re-reads and edit passes, don’t think I can find anything better. Greet Death’s music is at once sinister and foreboding yet comforting and ritualistic. There’s a sense of something cataclysmically evil lurking just on the edge of your peripheral vision, yet your eyes can only fixate on what’s right in front of you. The songs are dark, moody, and crushing, but they also possess this sort of magic that keeps you coming back. They aren’t catchy in a singalong way, but they embed themselves somewhere deep within your psyche and keep you coming back for more. 

Anyone familiar with the shoegaze and dream-pop genres will likely know exactly what I’m talking about. The same way that Slowdive is peaceful yet existential. The same way that Hum is warm yet morbid. The same way that Mazzy Star is relaxing yet sorrowful. It’s that mix of contradicting feelings that both captivate and confuse. 

Greet Death is part of a new class of shoegaze acts integrating unique stylistic elements in order to flesh out corners of the genre that were previously unexplored. Bands like Holy Fawn, Gleemer, Narrow Head, and Clearbody, all of whom are taking cues from different genres and melding them into the shoegaze sound to increasingly-impressive effect. Greet Death is taking more inspiration from stoner rock and post-rock, two genres very near and dear to my heart, so it would follow that the music from the Flint natives clicks with my brain particularly well. 

When I first heard Dixieland, the band’s debut, I’ll admit I wasn’t all that impressed. I knew the band was part of the Michigan DIY scene, one heavily populated with dime-a-dozen emo bands, so honestly, I was probably just surprised to not hear guitar tapping within the first few seconds. My turning point on the band came in 2019 when they released New Hell and it made its way onto my album of the year list within the space of about one month. 

Throughout 2020 New Hell has been an album I’ve returned to on an almost weekly, sometimes daily basis. It has become a comfort album, one that I can rely on and call upon at any time. I can come into New Hell in any emotional or mental state and emerge on the other side completely changed. 

What first drew me to New Hell were the other, more familiar sounds that I heard in the band. There was a folksy Alex G-like twang on “Let It Die,” there was stoner rock riffage on tracks like “Strain,” and these elements proved familiar enough for me to give the band a second chance. From there, I began to fall in love with characteristics unique to the record, the molten guitar solo on “You’re Gonna Hate What You’ve Done,” the deliciously fuzzed-out tone on “Strange Days,” and the hypnotic lyricism on “Entertainment.” The band caps it all off with an epic ten-minute closing track that explains the album’s namesake and wades the listener off with an instrumental bed that twists and winds to its inevitable conclusion. In the final minutes of the album, the band pairs Boyhtari’s singing with Gaval’s screams, mirroring each other over a towering riff that’s nothing short of soul-destroying. It’s one of the best closing tracks I’ve ever heard and wraps the album up in such a compelling, emotional way that’s both thought-provoking and motivating. 

I soon realized the album’s power. Every time I hit play on the record, I began to recognize the almost-tangible effects it had on my surroundings. No matter what environment I listened to the album in, New Hell was a record that poured out of the speakers and eventually grew to permeate every corner of whatever room I found myself in. The songs creaked, rumbled, and reverberated, bouncing around the walls of my brain and leaving me emotionally-drained in their wake. Now, this might not sound fun, but this is exactly what I want from my music sometimes. 

After dozens of relistens to New Hell, I ventured back into Dixieland and discovered that, unexpectedly, the band’s debut carries the same heft as their sophomore effort. There’s a different wrapper on them, but the nine songs on Dixieland hit the exact same fold of my brain as the nine found on New Hell. Songs like “Bow” use the same lyrical device as “Entertainment,” repeating one phrase over and over again until it morphs from poetic to hypnotic. Meanwhile, “Black Hole Jesus Christ” is probably the most dynamic track on the album, gradually shifting from reverb-laden soundscapes and ballad-like deliveries to an ascending post-rock instrumental that beckons you to join it over at the edge of the universe. Best of all, both “The Waste” and “Cumbersome” are hulking, monstrous seven-minute tracks that act as tentpoles for their respective sides of the album. These songs gradually carve their riffs into your head and leave you to wade through the emotional wreckage once they’re over. 

After multiple listens of Dixieland, I found myself reevaluating the two records as part of a larger oeuvre. I began to believe that they are actually connected in some way. Obviously, they’ve come from the same minds, but perhaps there’s a deeper connective tissue between these two records than I previously realized. 

After my many, many, many relistens to New Hell, I've crafted a defined opinion on the album, more explicitly on its thesis. Greet Death don’t strike me as the type to over-explain their songs. In their Audiotree session, Gaval explains the surprisingly nonchalant origin of the album’s title, specifically, a shitty retail job where things were always going wrong, which led his co-worker to joke that ‘every day is a new hell.’ While that anecdote explains the origins of the album’s namesake, it’s a far cry from explaining what the term means to the band or even within the context of the record’s nine songs. This is all a long-winded way of me saying that everything from here on out is solely my interpretation of Greet Death’s music and what the band is trying to say.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder - Netherlandish Proverbs (1559)

The cover of New Hell reminds me of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s work, specifically Netherlandish Proverbs and The Triumph of Death. I know between me using the word ‘oeuvre’ and name-dropping 16th-century renaissance painters, your Pretentious Douchebag Alarm is probably going off loud as hell, but I promise all of this will make sense soon. 

These paintings (as recently popularized by the Fleet Foxes and It Came At Night, respectively) are mid-sized hyper-detailed oil paintings that depict, in a word, chaos. Netherlandish Proverbs is meant to offer literal illustrations of Dutch-language proverbs and idioms; these include people on fire, someone slaughtering a sheep, and (what appears to be) a twisted form of inter-species fellatio à la that one shot from The Shining. Meanwhile, The Triumph of Death is a more brutal and straightforward painting meant to literally depict hell on earth. In this painting, the skies are filled with smoke and adopt an orange hue. Armies of undead skeletons are funneling the last few surviving humans into some sort of torture chamber while others mutilate, brutalize, and otherwise torment the corpses of the recently deceased. These paintings are both brutal in different ways. For example, one is a quaint rustic town scene that becomes more twisted and disturbing the longer you look at it. The other is just outright violent and spiritually unquieting.  

Pieter Bruegel the Elder - The Triumph of Death (1562)

To me, the cover to New Hell created by Liam Rush achieves the same effect. It’s a twisted, violent, disorienting mix of human bodies and demon forms. The humans are either curled up helpless or screaming in agony as sadistic demons rip hearts from chests and cleave bodies in half. There are skeletons, serpents, fire, and fangs. It’s a detailed, ornate, gold-tinted depiction of literal hell, much like The Triumph of Death. Still, there are telltale signs of the earth we know scattered throughout the carnage; a cop car on fire, a radio tower, a factory topped with smokestacks. These are all references to lyrics within the album but also serve as remnants of the world we know hidden beneath the more immediate layer of damnation.  

While there is some degree of interpretive flexibility within the record, for the most part, it feels like the band is taking this name and applying it more loosely. The “New Hell” they talk about in the album is different for every listener. Sometimes it’s an emotional hell, sometimes it’s a physical hell, sometimes it’s literally just the biblical hell. At least that’s what I get from it, and that’s what makes New Hell an excellent record: these songs and their meanings, are different for everyone who listens to them. 

By contrast, Dixieland takes many of these stylistic cues mentioned above but applies them to a more grounded environment. The songs are still lofty, lumbering, and even metaphorical at times, but they are firmly rooted in the band’s lived experience growing up in Flint. According to the Pitchfork review, Dixieland gets its name from a flea market in the band’s hometown. This is foundational in the album’s creation and the band’s observations of their surroundings, but it also acts as a stand-in for any number of abandoned midwest towns that have been left to rot by our government and society. 

Dixieland is depicting a different type of hell, one that the band was born into, has lived through, and continues to exist in. It's a hyper-specific and grounded depiction of their environment; the music is merely the result of that environment, the band's best attempt at formulating the feelings of their world into a song.  

That is why Greet Death appeals to me on such a deep level. Not only does the band borrow the sludgy tones and grandiose song structures of genres that I already love, but they depict a feeling and an emotion that I’ve only experienced while living in Detroit. They capture this sense of hopelessness, of abject sadness, of the oppressive indifference of reality, and they do it better than anyone I’ve ever heard.

In other words, New Hell is a metaphorical version of hell that can be interpreted as literal, while Dixieland depicts a literal type of misery and torment that feels biblical. They’re two sides to the same coin, both using varying degrees of interpretation and metaphor to pack their message in. Both albums use the same type of slow, brutal instrumentation to batter the listener with riff after riff, forcing them into understanding this type of sadness, first through sympathy on Dixieland, then later by empathy on New Hell. They are two records that work together towards a collective understanding of humanity, suffering, and divinity. The band is able to juxtapose these external elements of everyday sadness with a deeply-understood internal sorrow, and I feel like I have a better understanding of the world as a result. 

PHOTO: Kris Herrmann

Moon By Moon - Chelsea | EP Review

In my experience, life isn’t the hardest at extremes. Obviously, when things are going good, then the hardships that life throws your way are just seen as balance. Even when tainted by the glow of nostalgia, those good periods in your life can fuel you for years after the fact. In other words, the negative things all wash away with the distance of time. Meanwhile, the overtly bad periods can be crushing, but there’s a consistency to them that allows you to put your head down, get things done, and try your best to change your situation… because that’s all you have. 

No, I’ve found that the hardest parts of life are those liminal spaces that exist between these two polarities. The middle ground that lives between the highs and the lows. The mundane days, the absence of life, the haunting abyss of nothingness. The space when you’re in between jobs and have an interview or two lined up; you’re not hopeless, but you’re not sure how much hope you can allow yourself. That point in a fight where you’re not sure if your partner is about to end it all or keep on loving you. The times when you just have no fucking clue what you’re doing. The space between the good and the bad is what pains me most because it’s not numbed by an extreme. You’re in limbo, and that is its own kind of pain.

Chelsea, the newest EP from Moon By Moon, is a release dedicated to examining these in-between spaces in life. It’s a nine-minute collection of auditory exploration that wanders through these moments with both tenacity and grace, a feat if I’ve ever seen one. 

“Chelsea,” the EP’s namesake, opens with a swirling ethereal coda that flashes forward in time to the song’s eventual melody, tipping its hand before the listener even knows it. Disembodied voices float through the air over a dreamy Mazzy Star-like instrumental, eventually dissolving into a tapped guitar line and swaying vocal melody. Halfway into the track, the song mounts and the drums erupt, making way for a towering indie rock riff that sounds straight out of a Snail Mail song. As shoegaze-like distortion erupts the song’s melody, the singing becomes more impassioned and soon the entire thing simmers over, pausing just long enough for the initial guitar line to make one final appearance before ascending into the clouds. 

From there, the two songs that make up the back half of the EP work together as a singular ambient piece that takes the project from reality to a sort of Twin Peaks-like dream state. “Stars” opens with the pitter-patter of rain which slowly fades in favor of a simple acoustic guitar pattern and gorgeously hushed vocals. This passage evokes the optimistic beauty of Adrianne Lenker’s recent solo work while simultaneously capturing some of the stark, existential sounds of artists like Grouper. 

Finally, “Something in the Making” sends the listener off on another bed of swirling angelic voices that mirror the EP’s opening. It’s a beguiling and dream-like way to end the release that makes the whole thing circle back to the beginning. In this way, the final two minutes of this EP act as a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy that ends up forming one larger recursive journey.

Chelsea is an EP that exists in life’s liminal moments. Not only that, Chelsea finds the beauty in those liminal moments and holds them under a magnifying glass for the entire world to see. It’s a collection of sounds that, optimistically, chooses to hone in on the good in those moments when other people might waver. 

This is a release that captures the best of those in-between moments. The space between wake and sleep, between the wind and the trees, between the past and the future. It is the shaking of leaves in the fall. It is the insects trilling far off in the summer air. It’s an ode to a lost year, capturing the bleary days and restless nights that we’ve collectively weathered while suspended in stasis. The fact that the band chose to focus on the positive moments within those spaces shows their strength not only as artists but as people.