Colleen Dow – Bumbum | Single Review

Blanketed in soft layers of reverb, the guitar intro of “Bumbum” is an invitation to a dream. A much-needed lullaby for the time when it’s a little bit too past your bedtime. Here, in the third single under their own name, Colleen Dow muses on a midnight daydream of falling asleep in a warm white room, listening to city sirens while wrapped in sheets and someone else’s embrace. It’s a fantasy I could only describe as “everything I could ever ask for.” 

But it’s not meant to last. Even before the first verse comes to a close, Dow starts having doubts about the staying power of this situation. The guitar is joined by bass, drums, and a plunky piano that simultaneously maintain the bedtime tempo while creating a march. It’s giving pacing around your kitchen at one a.m. waiting for the water for your sleepytime tea to boil. 

The song is a move away from the syrupy indie-punk of Dow’s main band Thank You, I’m Sorry towards a more intimate and inward sound inflicted by bands like Postal Service and Now, Now. Together with producer Abe Anderson, they’ve crafted a sonic treat that allows Dow’s personality as a songwriter to shine through these influences.

The second half of “Bumbum” is where the lyrics begin to hit a little *too* close to home for me. If the first verse is a cozy dream, the second verse is a rude wake-up call from Dow’s internal critic. Their fantasy turns to a vision of abandonment, loss, and fear of waking to find your partner’s bags packed so they can flee. Worse even, Dow begins to wonder if these anxieties are mutual.

Look, I’m no stranger to imagining worst-case scenarios and projecting them onto my partner's. I just wasn’t expecting to feel called out about it today. It is nice to know that the person I usually trust with playlist recommendations on Tik Tok has the same insecurities as me.

Historically, the kind of music I would compare to an anxiety attack involves a lot of screaming and thrashing guitars—the sort of thing you can see coming from miles away. But I’m actually pretty good at keeping anxiety attacks to myself. Sure, I’ll talk the ear off of anyone who will listen, but I mean this more in a physical sense. I wring my hands, I clench my jaw, and I carry it all in my chest. The choruses of “Bumbum” are an incredibly accurate representation of the feelings inside of my body. The tension of my chest lives in this bassline. Bum bum goes my beating heart. Even the layer of acoustic guitar is in rhythm with the wringing of my hands.

“Bumbum” feels like a reflection of both my physical and mental state at my most anxious. It’s as if Dow took my own desires, fears, and insecurities and wove them into a pop song. That may not be an experience most listeners would willingly flock to but, in addition to being catchy as heck, it really is incredibly comforting to have these feelings echoed back at me. In this way, “Bumbum” feels like an anxiety attack and a security blanket at the same time. It’s the sheets in a warm white room I look forward to wrapping myself in for the rest of the winter. 

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Cailen Alcorn Pygott is a writer, musician, and general sadsack from Halifax, Nova Scotia. He’ll tell you even more about his anxieties on his band No, It’s Fine.’s album I Promise. Tell him how brave you think that is on Twitter @noitsfinereally and on Instagram @_no_its_fine_.

Delta Sleep – Spring Island | Album Review

Growing up in Sacramento, California, I had a lot of friends in high school who were really into math rock. For some reason, there’s always been a vibrant scene there, and to this day, I still don’t really know why. My buddies were all into bands like Dance Gavin Dance, Tera Melos, and Hella. I was still deep into my Riffs Only Phase (think Metallica, Mastodon, Queens of the Stone Age), so, to me, this all sounded like repetitive noise. I just didn’t get the appeal. I felt like my dudes were too concerned with time signatures and looping pedals when they should be emphasizing the emotional side of virtuosity.

It wasn’t until I was in college that I found some math rock that felt made for me. I stumbled onto Battles while listening to my campus radio station (shout-out KSMC). The DJ played “Atlas,” and I was floored. My perspective shifted as I realized that math rock bands are still rock bands, but bands that like to do their rocking in a, well… mathy way. Real deep eighteen-year-old thoughts, I know, but are you gonna look at me and tell me that I'm wrong? Battles allowed me to dive back into the genre with a new appreciation and understanding of what I did and didn't like. I found that bands who tend to craft noodly riffs based on repetition weren’t really my thing, and what I was really looking for were bands making big choruses.

For me, Delta Sleep are the latter of these two points of view. You’re just as likely to see the Brighton cosiners on the bill for ArcTanGent as you are The Fest. The band’s approach to math rock is imbued with splashes of big tent indie, emo, and even some post-rock. Their new album Spring Island places a heavy emphasis on the bombastic indie rock portion of Delta Sleep’s DNA. These are songs meant to be shouted at the top of your lungs in the midst of a bunch of other sweaty people. 

Lead single, “The Detail,” utilizes tried and true start-stops to build up to a massive post-rock catharsis. “Planet Fantastic” is a charming and gentle ballad of sorts that ends with the band cutting out while a chorus of friends sings the refrain one last time, presumably circled around the mic, arms interlocked over each other’s shoulders. “The Softest Touch” features a midsection that belies the song’s title. My personal favorite, “Old Soul,” is a rowdy banger that features a bending guitar line reminiscent of Coldplay’s “Yellow.” 

Lyrically, much of Spring Island is concerned with anxiety and dread sparked by climate change. On “Spun,” frontperson Devin Yüceil sings about his fears for the natural world and how the seeming inability to do anything about them is driving him mad. Meanwhile, “Forest Fire” shrouds a love song with the terror of fire season, and “The Softest Touch” laments that global warming will melt the polar ice caps while we’re all convincing ourselves that we are making a difference. The group demonstrates Yüceil’s justified paranoia with a precise frenzy that a band can only be achieved through years of collaboration.

Spring Island is an impressive achievement. It’s intelligent, but it’s not soulless. It’s technical, but it also rips. I’m thankful that my friends never stopped preaching the gospel of math rock because I would not have found Delta Sleep without them.

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Connor lives in San Francisco with his partner and their cat and dog, Toni and Hachi. Connor is a student at San Francisco State University and is working toward becoming a community college professor. When he isn’t listening to music or writing about killer riffs, Connor is obsessing over coffee and sandwiches.

Follow him on Twitter or Instagram.

Snarls – What About Flowers? | EP Review

When I was in high school, my favourite album was Say Anything’s ...Is A Real Boy.

This is relevant, I promise.

After years of being obsessed with the pop-punk albums of Sum41, Treble Charger, and Avril Lavigne (did I mention how Canadian I am?) ...Is A Real Boy introduced me to the more sonically inventive and emotionally challenging world of 2000s emo. My favourite lyric was, “I’ve got these last twelve bucks to spend on you. You can take me anywhere your sick mind wants to.” I spent hours figuring out how to download, edit and assign that passage as the ringtone on my red Motorola KRZR.

Snarls’ new EP What About Flowers? is filled with these Ringtonable Moments™. It’s not hard to imagine my high school self swooning over lyrics like “I used to think that you were an angel. Only when you said the words that meant everything” and “Know the world doesn’t care if you feel alone. Into the flames we fucking go.” The band has found a way to tap into the beautiful earnestness of these emotions. It’s not the naivety of high school I relive when I listen to What About Flowers?, but rather the all-encompassing totality of feeling FEELINGS. 

It’s a beautiful sentiment and a delicate tightrope to walk. Luckily for us, the listeners, Snarls is the tightest they've ever been on this EP. Snarls’ debut album, Burst, was also super tight, but there’s something more happening here; it’s clear the band has spent the intervening year and a half honing their craft. Vocalist Chlo White describes it best when she says, “We’re in the ‘pressed flowers’ phase of our band, Burst was taking a fistful of glitter and throwing it, but this EP was more intentional.”

And this intentionality shows! Everything from the guitar solos to the drum fills to how the bass locks in with the vocals on lead single “Fixed Gear” feels deliberate and tells its own story. I could go on about White’s vocal performance both on this EP and Burst for days, but I think it’s easier that I share this notes app screenshot from my second listen through:

Even with this more intentional approach to songwriting on this EP, What About Flowers? isn’t without those signature bursts of glitter. While the first two tracks end with stuttering feedback and the sound of guitar delay settling, something interesting starts happening halfway through. Delay trails, echoed vocals, and synth textures are sprinkled into the back and foreground in a way that creates their own spacey crescendos and percussion. It all builds toward the lullaby-like finale on “If Only” and a gorgeous piano line that feels incredibly hopeful after the song’s exploration of heartbreak and isolation.

This is a lovingly crafted EP that perfectly showcases the talent and depth of a fantastic young band. I spent a long time trying to think of a perfect metaphor to accompany it. A thread of yarn unspooling, opening a present, a single heart-shaped kite in the sky. Something simple like that. But I think it’s this: What About Flowers? is the feeling of falling asleep on the bus on your way back to college after going home for thanksgiving for the first time since moving away. Is this *very* specific to my experience? Sure. But just about everything about this album, down to the collaboration with producer Chris Walla, feels like it was specifically tailored to make me feel nostalgic so just let me have this.

It’s been a difficult year. I mean, globally? Sure, yeah, I think that goes without saying. Without including too many details (and at the risk of turning this small portion of Swim Into The Sound into my diary, thank you, Taylor), it’s been an adjustment period. Dramatic shifts in work, relationships, and my living situation have brought me back to those days of the overwhelming emotions captured here by Snarls. That perennial Fall Feeling of knowing that spring and summer will bring beautiful new growth, but only after you’ve had to shed everything and plant yourself for the Winter. The interim of death and rebirth.

What about flowers indeed.

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Cailen Alcorn Pygott is a writer, musician, and general sadsack from Halifax, Nova Scotia. His band No, It’s Fine. also releases their album I Promise. today. Tell him how cool you think that is on Twitter @noitsfinereally and on Instagram @_no_its_fine_.

Pictoria Vark – I Can't Bike | Single Review

There are some artists you will never forget hearing for the first time. Maybe you remember precisely where you were, when it was, or how you first stumbled across them. Sometimes the experience itself is notable, but more often than not, our brain decides to lock these feelings of initial discovery into its long-term memory banks because the music connects with us in some profound way. You hear the song, and you’re struck with some variation of “how have I gone my whole life without this?”

I have many artists that fall under this criteria, but one project I’ll never forget hearing for the first time is Soccer Mommy. I had never heard of Sophia Allison or her band until 2018’s Clean, which had just released and was the talk of the town in indie music circles at the time. I threw that album on, and everything seemed to click all at once. It was gorgeously produced, instrumentally stunning, and disarmingly confessional. I’d never heard anyone sing about those topics quite the way that Allison does on that record. 

When I press play on “I Can’t Bike,” the newest single from Pictoria Vark, I am immediately struck with the same things I felt when I first heard Soccer Mommy all the way back in 2018. Pictoria Vark is the solo project of Victoria Park, a clever spoonerism that allows Park to explore the brutal and ever-changing waters of her twenties through earnest and emotional indie rock. This similarity to bands like Soccer Mommy isn’t found just in the song’s brilliant instrumental or structural modesty, but a deeper ethos rooted in something universal, human, and truthful. 

Much like the best songs from Soccer Mommy, Snail Mail, or any of those deeply personal bedroom-born indie rock projects, “I Can’t Bike” hinges on the singer grappling with some form of personal failure. These songs find their heroes recognizing something they’re bad at and struggling with that fact openly. This form of harsh self-judgment is an immensely relatable experience, especially for people in their early 20s just on the cusp of entering adulthood and encountering new pratfalls in seemingly every area of life. 

Sometimes these personal failings can come from our own lack of experience, and other times it’s because we’re unfairly comparing ourselves to those around us. In the case of “I Can’t Bike,” the song finds Park honing in on near-imperceptible ticks of someone she’s known for years and realizing that she has her emotional work cut out for herself. It’s easy to get hung up when you’re on the receiving end of these types of interactions, but that’s where music becomes the perfect outlet. Rather than harp on these negative emotions, Park turns them into a communal outpouring that any listener can absorb and fit into their world. 

“I Can’t Bike” begins with, of all things, a steady bassline. While this initially might seem like an odd way to kick the track off, the instrument doesn’t sound out of place in the slightest. In fact, once you find out that Park has played bass for the likes of Squirrel Flower and Dee Snider, this choice seems like a no-brainer. 

Within seconds, Park’s delicate croon enters, setting the scene as her bass keeps time. Thirty seconds into the song, the guitar and drums (all played by Park) enter the fray, propelling the track forward while still keeping the pace set by the initial soothing bassline. The song rolls onward with momentum and adoration reminiscent of Blue Deputy’s “New Jersey,” weaving a lush mid-paced Beach House-esque instrumental that the listener can fully luxuriate in. 

As this rising instrumental punctuates each verse, the track eventually culminates in an eruption of distorted guitar around the two-minute mark for a fiery solo that offers a mixture of catharsis and redemption. As the music video shows, this song is not actually about biking at all, but finding comfort in the presence of close friends. The title “I Can’t Bike” captures one possible meaning of the complicated world of early-adulthood emotions while the lyrics capture another. The single is crafted so that anyone can listen and project their experiences onto it, finding comfort in the fact that they are not alone. 

Sufjan Stevens & Angelo De Augustine – A Beginner's Mind | Album Review

For better or worse, Sufjan Stevens’ lasting mark on pop culture may be his ill-fated 50 States Project. Whether catching random strays on Twitter, receiving post-mortem retrospectives via music blogs, or being spiritually revived by fans, it seems that the idea of each state receiving its own album-length dedication was too alluring of a conceptual hook for some to let go of. And I get it, just extrapolate the data; Illinois is an all-time classic indie album, and Michigan is one of my favorite records of all time. It’s easy to look at those two LPs and go, ‘man, I hope Sufjan writes an ornate 90-minute indie-folk album about my state.’ Maybe that’s why people can’t seem to move on; because it’s so personal, so potential-filled, and so hopelessly abandoned. 

Sure, Sufjan has enjoyed a relatively recent pop-cultural hit in “Mystery of Love” (with an Oscar appearance to boot), but as those Tweets and articles above prove, his 50 States PR stunt was an idea that appealed to music fans from all across the country for very obvious reasons. No matter how many hit songs or incredible albums Stevens makes, some music fans will forever be hung up on the 50-album pitch that he first staked his name on. 

The thing that bugs me about The 50 States Project being Sufjan’s primary cultural touchstone is because it misses the point of why those albums are great. If you take those releases at face value and simply view them as “records about states,” then Sufjan Stevens has already dipped his toes into similar conceptual waters. He’s written an album about every planet in the solar system, he’s recorded over 100 Christmas songs, he’s made a record about stories from the bible, and even created an entire multi-media project about a specific bridge in Brooklyn. If those don’t show commitment, then I don’t know what does. 

Obviously, these conceptual hooks might not have been broad or clever enough to garner that same level of mainstream attention. Sure, I enjoy them, but I am also a Sufjan freak. My point is that Sufjan Stevens has created albums with similar levels of conceptual commitment; it’s just that nothing has managed to break through in quite the same way as the 50 States Project did. That’s why, when Asthmatic Kitty announced A Beginners Mind, my interest was piqued. 

Unveiled as a collaborative project between Sufjan Stevens and labelmate Angelo De Augustine, A Beginner’s Mind is a concept album where each song is “(loosely) based off popular movies.” The album promised to run the filmic gamut from highbrow films to lowbrow popcorn flicks and everything in between. That sounds like some damn broad appeal there. 

The other half of this equation is the music itself. As mentioned above, both Michigan and Illinois are best-in-class indie records. As much as it pains me to admit, only a select few pieces of Sufjan’s oeuvre even get close to broaching the same level of quality, whether they had similarly ambitious concepts or not. Planetarium is fun, Seven Swans is stark, and BQE is charmingly earnest, but those records are far from universally appealing. Similarly, (as much as I adore them), it’s not outlandish to see why 100 Christmas songs wouldn’t appeal to everybody. But movies? Everyone loves movies!

When I clicked play on “Reach Out,” the album’s opening song and first of four singles, I was immediately struck with a sense of “Classic Sufjan,” for lack of a better term. Sure, he was flanked by a collaborator and confidante in Augustine, but it truly sounded folky as fuck, and that’s something I have been missing since 2015’s Carrie & Lowell. It’s not like Sufjan hasn’t been prolific over the last decade or so; in the time since his seventh studio album he’s scored a ballet, released a synth collaboration with his father-in-law, and even dropped a two-and-a-half-hour-long electronic piece earlier this year. Furthermore, 2020 saw the release of The Ascension, Sufjan’s first proper studio album in nearly five years, and while that record was good, it was more an extension of his electronic-tinged Age of Adz from a decade prior. What I’m saying is that those releases all felt like auxiliary additions and electronic diversions within the Sufjan Stevens Canon. It’s been over half a decade since we’ve heard anything like this from an artist whose greatest works are all firmly rooted in the trappings of folk music. 

Luckily that single wasn’t just a bait-and-switch; the album continues this folky trend while still edging into exciting new sonic territories. Both “Lady Macbeth In Chains” and “Back To Oz” are groovy early-album cuts that evoke visions of peak Fleetwood Mac or “Young Man’s Game” off of the most recent Fleet Foxes album. There are aching piano-led ballads, precise guitar plucks, and songs grounded by searching ambient swirls.

Lyrically, the device of using these famous films as jumping-off points allows for our singers to shift perspective at will, much like Sufjan did on those early States albums. Just as Michigan and Illinois would see Stevens placing himself in the shoes of a down-on-his-luck Yooper or a renowned serial killer, the songs on A Beginner’s Mind see our intrepid duo taking unique perspectives on stories that have already proven themselves to be compelling. Sometimes our musical guides sing from the point of view of a character directly from the film; other times, they analyze the cinematic events of a given movie from an omnipotent distance.

In almost every case, as a listener, it’s fascinating to put the pieces together and see how Stevens and Augustine use these ideas from a completely different medium as artistic inspiration. Regardless of the source film or your familiarity with it, these songs are written in a way that makes you relate to their plight either by linking it to something universal or through sheer force of empathy. For example, in “You Give Death A Bad Name,” the duo use Night of the Living Dead as a way to discuss climate change, the failings of a capitalistic society, and general disillusionment with America. These are all topics that Sufjan thoroughly delved into nearly two decades ago within the States Projects and as recently as songs like “America” off The Ascension from last year. They’re ongoing evolutions of thoughts on the same subjects, just cast in a different light.

Elsewhere on the album, the two touch on themes of religion, death, and general existential dread, all tried-and-true topics for both artists. Sometimes they work the title of the movie into the chorus of a song like the aforementioned “Back to Oz” or “It’s Your Own Body And Mind,” where they delicately croon “she’s gotta have it” over a series of gentle acoustic guitar strums. 

“Olympus,” another early single, uses Clash of the Titans as inspiration to paint a scene not of mythical claymation monsters but genuine human connection. The song’s outro deploys a poetic lyrical alternation to hone in on hyper-specific details that quickly work their way up to cosmic forms of adoration.

There’s something
And it’s the light on your hand
There’s something
And it’s the touch of my wristband
There’s one thing
And it’s the weight of our wish
There’s one thing
And it’s our very first kiss

Songs also contain quotable one-off barbs that all land at different times, depending on how close you listen. Minutes before the above quote in the same Clash of the Titans-themed song, Sufjan asks himself, “​​am I at rest, or resigned in my chaos?” Quite a deep and existential line for a song based on a 40-year-old fantasy adventure movie.

Outside of the music and lyrics, these songs are all wrapped in gorgeous art courtesy of Daniel Anum Jasper as seen throughout this article. Jasper is a Ghanaian artist famous for his work in the 80s in “mobile cinema” culture. This phenomenon first emerged when enterprising film fans screened Hollywood blockbusters in the backs of pick-up trucks using portable generators. Ghanaian artists painted alternate posters to advertise the movies, inspired only by the scant information they had about each film. Within Asthmatic Kitty’s press release, the label explains this choice with poignant and concise rationale:

By transforming old films into vital new songs with new imagery, Stevens and De Augustine ask us to consider ourselves (and the world around us) from a previously unconsidered vantage point—a new way of seeing and hearing—an exercise that’s as necessary and relevant now as it’s ever been. 

And therein lies the true appeal of Sufjan’s most remarkable work, whether it’s weaving tales of snow-covered life in the midwest, the bleeps and bloops of an alien planet, the stark emptiness of loss, or the portrayal of Pinhead in Hellraiser III. As listeners, we haven’t always experienced those things firsthand, but that doesn’t make them any less relatable. In fact, when presented in the right way, even the most far-off places and unknowable concepts can feel surprisingly easy to understand. 

So, given all these options, why would you ever want an album penned about your hometown? Just to hear familiar nouns rendered in song form? I’d argue it’s more exciting, fulfilling, and rewarding to visit these distant landscapes and imagined perspectives because they are so opposite of our day-to-day life. These songs give us entire worlds to escape into, even if just for a few minutes at a time. It’s an exercise in empathy, but it also ladders up to some greater understanding of the universe. The concepts of grief, love, longing, and loss are practically too big for words, but maybe if you look at them from enough perspectives, you begin to see pieces of the bigger picture.