Pool Kids – That's Physics, Baby | Single Review

I’ve waited years for this moment, so I’m just going to come right out and say it. There’s a new Pool Kids song.

Whew, that felt good.

For those not in the loop, the Florida math rockers first made waves in the emo scene back in 2018 with the release of their debut album, Music To Have Safe Sex To. Spawning from an initial friendship between singer and multi-instrumentalist Christine Goodwyne and drummer Caden Clinton, the duo booked a short studio session that resulted in a collection of nine proggy, freewheeling rock tracks. With no shortage of goofy song titles, iconic riffs, and references to mathy predecessors like TTNG, these songs immediately placed Pool Kids in a continuum of bands walking the line between overwrought emo and tappy, hyper-technical guitarwork. These elements, combined with endearing brushes with pop-punk greats, quickly signaled that this band was destined for something more than the rigid confines of “emo music.”

In the time since their first album, the group has been rounded out by guitarist Andy Anaya (of fellow Florida greats Dikembe and You Blew It!) along with bassist Nicolette Alvarez. Together, they make four of the most talented musicians ever assembled, as anyone who has seen ever Pool Kids live can attest. While fans were treated to a jokey hardcore one-off for April Fools Day 2019 and an Audiotree session that captured the newly solidified lineup’s full prowess, specific weirdos like me have been eagerly waiting to see what this band would do next because, at times, the possibilities truly seemed endless.

Pool Kids even signaled their return in early 2020, going back to give album highlight “$5 Subtweet” a proper video, but whose grand plans haven’t been disrupted since then?


Now that you have the background, you can appreciate when I say that the return of Pool Kids is something I’ve been anticipating for years. Years of wondering what this newly minted lineup would result in, countless nights spent swaddled in my Pool Kids hoodie listening to Safe Sex, and now we have ourselves a new song. I am happy to report that somehow, some-fucking-how, lead single “That's Physics, Baby” lives up to my insurmountable hype. 

In what feels like a nod to the band’s origin, the track begins with the two people who made up the first iteration of Pool Kids; Clinton and Goodwyne. We hear a drum hit and then are immediately dropped into a shreddy guitar lick. Together, these instruments fuse into an innovative groove that could only have come from the minds of this band. Soon, the bass and a second guitar join the fray, rounding out the riff and pushing the song up into the stratosphere. 

In the music video, we watch a listless Goodwyne struggling with her “Untitled Documentary” as bills pile up on the desk of her cozy wood-paneled office. Set in Washington, we see the band as a motley crew of filmmakers staking out the lush Pacific Northwest wilderness in search of some type of small furry creature. Adorned in the finest early-90s attire and armed with cutting-edge home video technology, the band hams it up, making their way through forests, caves, and mountain tops, all in pursuit of the perfect shot. Things get even more Twin Peaks-ey as this narrative alternates between this communal journey of the band and shots of Goodwyne drinking, smashing mirrors, and struggling to assemble her project.

As the video’s tone bounces back and forth from dark to goofy, the lyrics languish in the painful feeling of a failing relationship. The verses hinge upon a persistent theme of losing time, whether it’s lines about clocks moving backward or just a general sense of wasting away. It’s a slow-sinking quicksand of a feeling that any bad relationship inevitably hits. This pain is punctuated by an immensely catchy chorus of “Telling you what I / Telling you what I need / I’m telling you what I / Telling you what I need.” As much as I can’t wait to sing along to this live, within the song’s narrative, these lines are delivered with a sense of frustration, Goodwyne practically pleading for the person on the receiving end to listen to what she is saying.

The video ends with an over-the-top slapstick moment as Caden cracks open a soda, the can exploding in his face and knocking him backward off his chair. As the rest of the band doubles over with laughter, the chorus plays out one last time, and the camera resolves on a close-up of Goodwyne staring off into the distance… Is she catching a glimpse of the animal they’ve been searching for the whole video? Is she experiencing a moment of clarity? As we hear “Telling you what I / Telling you what I need” one final time, the lyrics become re-contextualized. I choose to interpret this shot as a realization that, despite the arduous journey, emotional strife, and financial difficulties, this group of friends, and maybe even that one laugh, was the thing Goodwyne was truly in search of all along.

Pool Kids’ self-titled album is out on Skeletal Lightning 7/22. Pre-order here.

Lou Roy – Pure Chaos | Album Review

Chaos. It’s one of those words that the internet has seemingly become obsessed with in recent years. It’s a descriptor that’s attributed to a wide range of content, often used similarly (but not analogously) to terms like “cursed” or “unhinged.” Just look at one of the many “Tiktoks That Radiate Chaotic Energy” compilations. It’s become a catch-all for anything we deem unconventional or unexpected– a video of a possum eating Froot Loops, fanart of Sonic smoking weed with Spongebob, a woman duck-facing in a supermarket aisle with a bag of chips balanced on her head. One might wonder if we’ve reached market saturation, if the word has lost its meaning from overuse. After all, if everything is chaotic, then nothing is. 

I’d credit this overexposure in part to the popularity of Dungeons & Dragons alignment charts, which became a stock meme format in the 2010s and have since persisted due to how easily the 3x3 set-up lends itself to various means of categorization. This fairly simple formula situates chaos as the antithesis of lawfulness, yin-and-yang equal opposites with the same relationship to one another as good and evil. If we take chaos to mean the absence or disregard of lawful behavior and expectations, then it makes plenty of sense that Lou Roy would choose to set her debut album Pure Chaos against the backdrop of the seemingly lawless landscape of Las Vegas. Roy has said that the city’s hedonism and larger-than-life tackiness served as the inspiration behind the record. Through the excess and artifice, she manages to tap into an earnestness, metaphorically hot-gluing rhinestones to thoughtfully crafted pop songs. “Scroll” sees her offering a metacommentary on (in)authenticity in the digital age, singing, “I stare at my phone all day/What a nasty way to engage with the world/What an unfair way to play/I could play guitar and sing.” When Roy chooses to go for something bright and flashy, it’s because she’s already got something of substance to draw attention to.

A self-described “anti-genre singer-songwriter who has never done anything weird or wrong,” Lou Roy pulls from a variety of sonic influences, consistently proving her jack-of-all-trades crossover appeal. She breezily floats from the quirky alt-country of vocalists like Faye Webster and Laura Stevenson to the sunny, sardonic pop-rock of Caroline Rose and Pure Chaos co-producer Sarah Tudzin’s band, illuminati hotties. At times she even manages to capture the singalong earworminess of an early-to-mid-2010s Taylor Swift hit. Lead single “Uppercut” in particular occupies an energy not unlike “22,” albeit with a more present awareness of one’s mortality. Not that Roy would let something as silly as the looming eventuality of death get in the way of a good time– the infectious hook laughs in the very face of such surrender: “I swear to you babe we’ll always have our fun/even when we’re grinded into cosmic dust/even when we’re back on earth as pond scum.” 

Whether she’s unabashedly admitting to being a New Year’s Eve Hater or celebrating life’s small joys– a french fry grease-soaked night with friends at a 24-hour diner, waking up with her dog’s “fat face” on her shoulder –Roy hits us with simple truths about the good and the bad that life throws at us, and she takes both in stride. Even in the midst of “plenty of horror stories/plenty of bad days,” her commitment to having fun is never shaken. In the music video for this peppy song-of-the-summer contender, Roy struts unbothered through suburban streets with a small army of puppies leashed to her belt like charms dangling from a charm bracelet. The aforementioned Sarah Tudzin even makes a cameo appearance as an onlooker, perplexed by (and in awe of) Roy’s magnetic energy and unshakeable confidence.

Pure Chaos does not necessarily feel like an album that sets out to be chaotic, but rather a collection of songs about eschewing rigid expectations and embracing the inevitability of chaos. Opener “Valkyrie” serves as a thesis statement for the “fuck it” philosophy that drives the album. The song begins with minimalist percussion from the tapping of a plastic bottle, as Roy explains that she was “forced to breathe on purpose.” From the get-go, she admits her powerlessness to the whims of a random, lawless universe: “Chaos reigns/all is permitted.” The song’s title is a reference to spirits in Norse mythology responsible for guiding fallen soldiers into the afterlife. Roy implores these mythological beings to ride with her into the unknown. Over the moody synths of “Down Since ‘07,” she reaffirms that she’s “down for whatever,” with a casual coolness that dissolves into a moment of quiet vulnerability at the track’s outro. “You’re the only one pulling me out of the corner to dance,” she sings, her voice hushed and breezy. The jagged, jangly percussion and layered harmonies of  “Big Anvil” place it in a sweet spot somewhere between Fiona Apple and HAIM, as Roy asserts her relentless optimism in the face of uncertainty. The future is a source of simultaneous hope and fear for her, as it is for many of us, and Roy clings to aspirations that are small but life-affirming– “One day I’m gonna take that girl to dinner/One day I’ll get the band back together.”

On softer, more introspective ballads like “Bull Ride” and “If We Were Strangers,” Roy’s vocals take center stage, pouring warmly through Golden Hour-era Kacey Musgraves production like sunlight through a window. Both feel like “what-if” songs, with Roy taking on a nostalgic, daydreamy tone as she envisions alternate timelines in which her reality might’ve been different from the one she’s currently living. It’s a subtle but welcome contrast in an album that– especially in its more high-energy tracks –sees Roy radically accepting whatever craziness life sends her way. To get these moments in which she quietly indulges fantasies instead of embracing what’s right in front of her gives the album a refreshing sense of thematic tension. 

The album closes with the grand, sweeping finale of “Dream,” a country ballad fit for the closing credits sequence of a big-budget Western film. It’s not just the references to leopard prints and press-on nails that give the song a gaudy-glam drugstore cowgirl feel– on what is perhaps Roy’s strongest and most compelling vocal performance, she takes her voice to its most show-stopping emotional heights, evoking the sultry charm of Nancy Sinatra and Angel Olsen alike. While most of the album seems to look toward the precariousness of the future, the closer takes on a wistful, reflective tone, with an eye towards the past. As with many other Pure Chaos cuts, “Dream” reminds us that what is beautiful is often also fleeting. The throughline of Roy’s debut album seems to be its message of acceptance– learning to let go of control and enjoy going along for the ride. But as she croons, “dream, baby it’s different in real life,” we see that when it comes to facing what’s real, imagination just might be her greatest superpower.


Grace Robins-Somerville is a writer from Brooklyn, New York. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter @grace_roso.

Nagasaki Swim – The Weight Pt. 2 | Single Review

I don’t know about you guys, but things have been pretty rough lately. Between fascist infringements on bodily autonomy, frightening escalations of rightwing dog whistles, and apocalyptic concerns for the world at large, it’s been hard for me to do much beyond just continuing to exist. It’s been nearly impossible to motivate myself at work, and even harder to motivate myself here on the blog. On top of all this, I caught COVID back in April, so that was a fun little reminder of my mortality. 

Over the past year, I’ve tried hard to recognize when I need to take a break. Last year I set a goal of publishing at least one article here every week (and I did it!), but recently I’ve been reminding myself that it’s okay to walk away from things for a little bit. That means I don’t force myself to publish anything just for the sake of fresh “content” because nobody wants to read that, and I don’t want to write that. I love sharing the music that I love with the world, but taking the time to sit down and articulate why I adore a piece of music has been a surprisingly hard thing for me recently. 

This has been a long preamble, but hey, ‘words on music and life,’ right? That’s what ya signed up for when you clicked on this. I write all this as a way to flush out my thoughts but also to say that “The Weight Pt. 2” by Nagasaki Swim is the first piece of music I’ve heard in months that’s inspired me to break out a fresh Google Doc and actually start writing. That alone should speak volumes about this song.

The track is a prelude to the Neverlandish folk group’s upcoming sophomore effort Everything Grows and acts as a direct sequel to the mid-album cut from last year’s The Mirror. Back when it was released, I described the band’s debut as “acoustic-led bedroom rock that still manages to sound huge.” Based on what’s on display with “The Weight Pt. 2,” the group has only refined that sound further, expertly walking the line between sweeping and intimate.

“The Weight Pt. 2” slowly wades the listener in with a single acoustic guitar which gradually builds outward with bass, drums, and a gorgeous string section. After establishing this solemn sway, lead singer Jasper Boogaard enters with a nasally delivery that evokes the remorseful twang of recent Greet Death singles.

After a verse about wasting days nudging thoughts around, the instrumental pairs down to just the strings before lifting off into a beautiful, meditative passage. Between the funeral scenes depicted and the anguishing morbid thoughts articulated, the feeling of death hangs heavy over the atmosphere of the song. 

The instrumental dies out again about four minutes in for (what feels like) the end, only for the strings to swell back up and carry us out with a soaring outro that affords the listener just enough time to properly absorb the heft of the topic. 

“The Weight Pt. 2” is not a fun or light-hearted listen, but it is cathartic and freeing in its own way. God knows we’ve all felt that weight of death and dread recently, and sometimes it’s comforting to seek refuge in a song that fully acknowledges the presence of those extremes. It’s not a distraction; it’s an affirmation that things are fucked up and hard. If you’ve been feeling the weight lately, Nagasaki Swim is right there with you. 

Prince Daddy & The Hyena – Self-Titled | Album Review

Since 2018 Prince Daddy & The Hyena has been a massively influential band in my life. I remember hearing “I Wish I Could ctrl+alt+del My Life” come on the playlist at my café job and RUN-ning to the office to see who was singing it. “Prince Daddy & The Hyena,” I said to myself. “That’s a weird name, I sure hope I don’t form some kind of intense, parasocially emotional connection to this band that lasts for years, maybe even the rest of my life.”

But I did.

I’ve learned a lot of lessons both as a musician and writer from PDaddy. This band taught me it’s okay to make incredibly specific (potentially impenetrable) references to the movies and tv shows you relate all your feelings to. They helped me affirm that guitar rock is still awesome, and perhaps most importantly, they taught me not to be afraid to indulge in oversharing my feelings and mistakes with anyone who might be willing to listen. So really you only have them to thank for this extra-long intro.

The moment that crystallized the pandemic as reality for me came on March 13th, 2020. My partner and I were sitting in the cafeteria of Halifax’s Queen Elizabeth II hospital, waiting for my mom to get out of dental surgery, when the tweets came in. “Tour’s canceled,” I imagine they said. I don’t know, I’m not going to scroll back through two full years worth of tweets. I've already put off proofreading this article long enough. My partner was living in Montreal and we had plans to see Prince Daddy there and in Toronto and sing along to *every* word from Cosmic Thrill Seekers, which was the style at the time. We had the tickets. My flight was booked. There was so much uncertainty back then, and rather than cancel my flight and risk not seeing her again until god knows when I kept my ticket and spent three months in an experimental cohabitation that never would have happened without PDaddy. Cosmic Thrill Seekers being one of my top 5 all-time favourite albums to run to meant they carried me through a lot of days during that time, and I’m so grateful for that. It’s still one of my favourite memories of the pandemic?

And while that relationship eventually ended, Prince Daddy & The Hyena persists.

I was so nervous in the weeks before Cosmic Thrill Seekers was released. How could it possibly live up to the perfection of PDaddy’s first LP, I Thought You Didn’t Even Like Leaving. Considering the space CTS takes up in my heart, it feels silly now to have ever felt that way. So I’m not sure why I did it again in the lead up to this brand new, self-titled LP. Maybe I keep my hopes low to avoid being let down. Maybe I just tend to anticipate the worst in everything.

But hey, I learned it from the best.

Prince Daddy & The Hyena (the album) is a perfect representation of everything Prince Daddy & The Hyena (the band) have spent the past six years building on. For how honest and raw lyricist Kory Gregory has been since day one, he always finds new ways of removing barriers with each release. CTS has less of the “keep the world at arm's length” snarky humor that appears so often throughout Leaving, and with this self-titled, he allows us to hear his actual singing voice more regularly. It’s a subtle softening of boundaries across a body of work that’s incredibly impressive.

PDaddy has always been a band with firm control over their vast dynamic range, and here they’ve honed it to a sharp edge. While tracks like “A Random Exercise in Impernance,” “Shoelaces,” and “Keep up That Talk” smother you with a familiar frantic energy, moments such as “Something Special” and “Discount Assisted Living” are welcome opportunities to breathe. They’ll also break your fucking heart.

The highlight track, for me, has to be “Hollow As You Figured.” Opening quietly with an unsettling guitar riff that sets the stage for one of Gregory’s deeper explorations of the dark places that isolation can bring us to—eventually combusting into the heaviest riffs of the album and possibly PDaddy’s catalogue.

As a 30-something Canadian, it’s hard not to compare it to Sum41’s third album Chuck and the more mature themes and musical style the band explored within. I won’t, but just know that if I did, it would be with all the love in my heart.

Probably the most impressive feat of the album is “Black Mold.” The message I sent to my band’s group chat upon opening my advance SoundCloud streaming link was, “new prince daddy has a fucking nine-minute song on it.” I know what you’re thinking, and yes, while I didn’t let anybody hear the album before it came out, I did brag to two of my closest friends that I would get to listen to it early because I am a “professional.” As the emotional climax of the record, we have our hands held as we’re taken on a tour of various traumas from the singer’s past, a familiar recurring theme for longtime listeners. What blows me away is that there are no wasted moments in this song. Nine minutes is a LONG time, but it never feels like that here. It’s an extension of PDaddy’s ability to weave multiple pieces together as seen on Leaving and CTS, and a testament to their more operatic tendencies.

Prince Daddy & The Hyena the band proved my doubts about Prince Daddy & The Hyena the album wrong just like they did with Cosmic Thrill Seekers: You can improve on perfection.


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_.

His top five albums to run to of all time are:

  1. Mom Jeans - Sweet Tooth

  2. Gregory Pepper And His Problems - I Know Now Why You Cry 

  3. Prince Daddy & The Hyena - Cosmic Thrill Seekers

  4. Bowling For Soup - The Hangover You Didn’t Deserve 

  5. Charly Bliss - Guppy

Honorable mention: Dollar Signs - This Will Haunt Me

The Merrier – Cyclical | EP Review

Remember when the internet was fun? Remember multi-colored clamshell MacBooks and AIM away messages? Remember agonizing over your Top 8 and risking a computer virus just to download a sketchy file named “nine_inch_nails-HURT-014.mp3” for your morning bus ride? Well, The Merrier remembers, and throughout Cyclical, the hyper-collaborative bedroom pop project born of Jake Stephens aims to recapture that feeling of boundless early internet wonder… or at least as much of it as can be salvaged in the toxic, post-apocalyptic, ad-riddled landscape of 2022.

This isn’t some Vaporwave-esque adoption of internet aesthetics for their own sake, but rather a project that couldn’t have existed without the collaborative spirit of the internet. While most of the songs here possess a baseline dreamo soundscape, the concept behind this project turns it into something more compelling than the sum of its parts as Stephens invites a host of different artists in to collaborate on each song. This process results in a collection of tracks with vastly different sounds and ideas that are unconcerned with genre or any larger album-wide statement. It’s like if Gorillaz were DIY… and good.

Listening to this EP feels like those now-ironic book covers showing a super cool 90s teen riding a keyboard as a metaphor for surfing the internet. Guest vocalists materialize and float by like web pages from a bygone era, each inviting the listener into their respective narrator’s rich inner world.

Cyclical begins with “BMO,” a song inspired by the Adventure Time character boasting a lovely little synth line that sounds like it was ripped straight out of a long-lost 80s workout tape. Propelled forward by this instrumental, Talor Smith of Biitchseat lends their vocals to the track, giving the listener a relatable perspective that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on last year’s I’ll become kind. After an instrumental dropout followed by a swirl of dreamy “ooohs,” the track seamlessly transitions to a verse from the Japanese lo-fi indie-pop band BLUEVALLEY, which adds a unique flavor to the song without sounding incongruous. In the final minute, these two vocal features stack on top of each other, resulting in a striking contrast of sounds that could have only been brought together under the Merrier moniker. 

From here, the release winds from the catchy and biblical “Cathedral” to planetary astral projections of love on “Venus” for an ever-shifting scope that expertly utilizes its cast of guest appearances. Sandwiched between these songs is “Gold,” which works the EP’s title into a cute turn of phrase over a bright and sunny instrumental that, ironically, would have fit in perfectly over the end credits of Adventure Time. Just as you wonder where Cyclical will go next, Merrier throws “Vaminos” at you for a vibrant rap song whose verses from Ponz The Angel and Masakiio evoke the carefree joy of 2016-era Lil Uzi Vert.

After the metaphorical (and literal) high of “Vaminos,” Cyclical wraps on the punctual and groovy “Scenery,” featuring guest vocals from Ohio-based multi-instrumentalist Superdestroyer. Despite its shorter running time and peppier pace, the final minute of this song switches over to a spaced-out rainy day instrumental as Merrier allows Superdestroyer to croon the EP’s last lines.

I hope that you know
I would do anything
To make sure that you're happy
Because you make me happy
I hope that I make you happy
I hope that I make you happy
I hope that I make you happy

Maybe it’s just due to how hypnotic this repetition is, but the line “I hope that I make you happy” feels like the closest thing this EP has to a thesis, given its diverse spread of perspectives and sounds. Cyclical is a collection of songs that inherently cannot have an overarching message, but this final refrain feels like a perfect note to send the listener off on. After all, if we don’t have happiness, music, and each other, what else is there?

Cyclical represents an often-unfulfilled promise of the internet; that we would be able to connect with strangers who share our interests and artistic visions, collaborate with them, and create something special together. With Stephens as the creative ringleader, Cyclical is a diverse and exhilarating collection of songs representing pure, creative collaboration. Even upon repeat listens, this EP will keep you wondering what could possibly be coming next and always manages to leave you amazed at the result.