Colleen Dow – Inside Voices | EP Review

What’s in a name? Colleen Dow already has a pretty good one in Thank You, I’m Sorry–a Minneapolis-based emo project that began with solitary bedroom acoustic recordings but quickly blossomed into a fully-fledged indie rock group. Regardless of the scale that TYIS took, Dow’s writing and voice always shined through as the transfixing centerpiece at both ends of this spectrum. Whether articulating the realities of depression or fixating on the woes of tour life, it was easy to find a home in these songs and empathize with Dow’s perspective within them. And now, thanks to a string of solo releases under their own name, there’s a new dwelling in which fans of Dow’s work can nuzzle up to their own anxieties.

When Dow released “Periwinkle” back at the end of 2021, it felt like a strange sense of deja vu. Given how unique Dow’s voice is, given that Thank You I’m Sorry started as a solo project, and given that it was being released on the same label, it was easy to see this single as an extension of Dow’s main band… that is until you listen to it. 

While TYIS songs tend to explode forward with nervous energy and feature noodly math rock riffs, “Periwinkle” opens with a woozy guitar sway and ignites in a dreamy synth beat. Glitchy vocalizations flit and flutter on the outer edges of the song, still recognizable as Dow but obscured by a cold, technological feeling. While relatively peppy, the song’s lyrics still bear the trademarked emotional struggle Dow often writes around, lending the piece a nice artistic continuity. 

A month later, things got even sadder with “Sorry,” a crushing song centered around a reverb-soaked Julien Baker guitar line and adorned with appropriately dour album art. For the first three months of 2022, Dow sent out monthly dispatches in the form of “Bumbum,” “Yeah,” and “Lists.” Each song leaned into a different style of electronic music, always guided forward by Dow’s voice, augmented by subtle guitar playing, and accompanied with awesome art courtesy of Sim Morales of Insignificant Other.

So what did Dow find in a name change? Freedom for one, lack of expectations for another. By releasing these songs under their own name as opposed to the up-and-coming indie rock band they front, Dow forced the listener to approach, listen to, and conceive of these songs as something different from their “main” act. Why feel boxed in creating a follow-up for your emo project when you can explore something totally new within the confines of your own name?

I figured this string of singles was essentially just a creative exercise for Dow; one-off pieces of music that they could drop with less pressure and more creative control. I should have known better. I should have Trusted In Dow because now we have Inside Voices, a 5-song EP that drops 13 minutes of new material at once, rounding out Dow’s solo “side project” to a solid 26 minutes of music, a collection that surpasses the very first TYIS release by about four minutes.

Throughout the new EP, Dow remains as honest as their previous work, equal parts charming and disarming. On the boppy opening track, “Bummer Summer,” Dow sings, “Banging my head against the wall / I can tell from your eyes that it’s all my fault / I’ve been staying up late and don’t ever call you back.” You always know exactly what Dow is struggling with because they find a way to say it plainly and calmly. While these lyrics might read as sad-to-a-fault on paper, Dow’s forthright approach is nothing but compelling within the music. 

And it turns out that labeling these emotions has paid off well; a few lines later in the same song, Dow sings, “I know better than to build all these walls / And it wouldn’t be that hard to just give you a call.” These lyrics make the solution clear; wisdom gained from having weathered these experiences and made it out the other side. 

This honesty allows for a surprisingly fluid train of logic that keeps the listener nodding along, wincing with pain as each line of the song adds a different brush stroke of ennui. These sentiments would be harder to swallow if they weren’t swaddled in such sweet instrumentals and packaged in such adorable album art. 

Guest appearances from fellow bedroom rockers Ness Lake on “Childhood Home” and Snow Ellet on “Radiator” help push the view beyond Dow’s perspective, fleshing out the world and adding a nice variety to the middle of the release. While relatively subtle and never show-stealing, these collaborations make Inside Voices feel more like a mutual support group as opposed to a solitary dairy entry. This is even reflected on the EP’s cover, which sees all the people from the preceding single releases coming together for a wholesome hug–a mini multiverse moment for the ever-expanding Colleen Dow musical universe… Dow-iverse? We’ll figure out a better name later.

Like the first sip of a sugar-free Red Bull, “Redline” injects some buoyant energy into the final stretch of the EP. The song walks a line between the kind of sad confessionalism we’ve heard up to this point but also acts as a (half) love letter to Dow’s temporary home of Chicago. That two-minute burst of energy paves the way for “Lil Kid,” an ultra-relatable song about finding a grounding sense of peace in taking a stroll while listening to Courtney Barnett on your headphones. Wow, they’re just like me for real.

As the EP’s final song wraps up, I come back to the question I asked at the beginning and think maybe a name doesn’t matter at all. Listening to Inside Voices, I’m just as taken with Dow’s artistic vision as I was when I first found Thank You, I’m Sorry. Especially when taken in concert with the preceding string of singles, it’s amazing to have what’s ostensibly a full LP’s-worth of music from someone you were already a fan of. Whether it’s in their main band, their solo project, or something totally new, the most important thing is that we are lucky enough to keep hearing from Dow.

Tim Heidecker – High School | Album Review

Tim Heidecker, still attempting to balance his livelihood as a comedian and prove his reputation as a musician, recently released a new concept album. High School is a compilation of autobiographical songs that tell the tales of classic missteps and boredom fueled by 80s suburbia. While the album offers little to no resolution, we are introduced to the characters of Heidecker’s world; the bands he listened to, the people he left behind, and the internal relationships fostered between himself and his understandings of politics, religion, and privilege. While other projects in vintage and modern music approach this concept better, perhaps there is something quaint and accessible about Heidecker’s world. It is hard to resist well-worn nostalgia, especially when accompanied by a warm musical arrangement. 

High School’s opening track, “Buddy,” finds Heidecker lamenting over a burnout friend from high school that he’s since lost touch with. Heidecker describes the friend as “gone” because he was the resident stoner. There is a desperateness to Tim’s inactivity as a character in this song – longing for things to work out for his friend but ultimately seeing him as a lost cause. This narrative choice is interesting, considering Heidecker has mentioned how he took psychedelics in high school. This isn’t a judgment on their activities, but rather an observation of the unfairness for Tim to position himself as a more aware person than his friend as if they were not partaking in the same coming-of-age activities. Heidecker unintentionally brandishes a naivety about why he was able to “escape” this lifestyle while his friend didn’t – never connecting the dots between his friend’s home life (“we turned it up, so you didn’t have to hear the yelling downstairs”) and his own (“Mom and Dad to hear me sing / they seemed to love it, they said it was great”). There is a privilege in not only having the means to escape your hometown and rebuke your identity as a teenager, but also having the support of parental guidance and untouched optimism. 

The fifth track, “I’ve Been Losing,” is where Heidecker begins to find his footing. His voice is his own, no longer hiding behind the impulse to slip into his Springsteen and Dylan impressions that get him guaranteed laughs on his call-in podcast Office Hours Live. His tone is sweet and wistful yet enveloped in an unavoidable melancholy. “Working myself up to the fact that my best days are behind me,” he sings in the third verse. This sentiment is common, not just as a punch in the gut for a performer, but as a symptom of the human condition. There is a real resignation in feeling that your peak has come and gone and that there’s no way to reach it, that you can’t go home again. However, my appreciation for this song is diminished by the outro, in which Heidecker sings, “Oh, I’ve been talking / talking too much / maybe I should stop and listen.” This is an ironic point of view for Heidecker to foster, considering the only other endeavor at the forefront of his current career is his podcast. Office Hours Live is fully funded by fan support through Patreon, though it operates under a Howard Stern-esque format, complete with interviews, listener call-ins, and a “comedic” bitterness that is appealing to a demographic that I don’t hold. In short, I don’t believe Heidecker is as self-effacing as he tries to be in this song, and the existence of his podcast is proof that he is more intentioned in finding a viewer to berate than listening and learning, or whatever he is trying to say at the end of this song. 

This leads me to ask: If this album is built on framing Heidecker’s adolescence from the perspective of his current adult self (mentions of regret, embarrassment, and longing are scattered throughout each track), then why isn’t there any redemption? It is reductive to focus entirely on the past without also building a bridge to the present and, perhaps in more proactive terms, the future. The crux of catharsis is not just unloading shame from your past but also uncovering the specific desire within oneself to transform or metamorphosize into an entirely new being. For the listener, there is little fulfillment in hearing a stranger wax nostalgic about the one who got away simply because it’s a story that’s been told (and lived) so many times before. It also provides a sense of tunnel vision to the album, which can limit one’s ability to find and apply universality to the sentiments Heidecker is singing about. 

The album bounces back and forth between a 90s alt-rock sound and light 70s country psychedelia. It also explores a wannabe 80s novelty song sound in the track “Sirens of Titan.” In my previous article, The Slow Cancellation of the Future: 70s Cosplay in Modern Pop Music, I detailed my disdain for artists' reliance on the aesthetics of 70s music and skewed cultural ideas. In that piece, I also mentioned how Heidecker’s previous album Fear of Death fell under the umbrella of liberally borrowing from 70s rocker influences and how those instincts tarnished my relationship with the album and made me question Heidecker’s motive for wanting a music career. In High School, he continues this trend, focusing his energy on name-dropping bands and musicians he found solace in. These references feel somewhat natural, albeit a bit stilted. It’s clear that Heidecker was mesmerized by the 60s & 70s era of classic rock staples as a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s, but the references almost feel invasive, as if he is working very hard to cultivate a setting without describing anything at all. He is relying on the listener to use their own association and viewpoint of those bands to tap into their own nostalgia. This is a tool that can be implored intelligently, but it seems that Heidecker does it because he doesn’t have anything of depth to say or explore within his adolescence. 

In “Sirens of Titan,'' Heidecker reveals that he was a “little right-wing” and “fiscally conservative” until he “got that college degree.” As a long-time fan of his comedy, Heidecker declaring he became progressive or politically enlightened doesn’t feel honestly representative of his post-college work. In addition to this, I cannot recall an interview in which Heidecker has ever mentioned college as a useful experience either in terms of his filmmaking craft or his political awareness. I believe Heidecker’s insistence of his now-honed liberal politics is compensation for the insecurity of his childhood ignorance.

 However, in tracks like “Punch in The Gut,” it seems that Heidecker’s activism is still reserved to only pointing out what was wrong, rather than conjuring a hindsight that offers a revolutionary ardor. The song details Heidecker witnessing a schoolyard brawl that targeted “the kid with the different skin.” His point of action was to ask the priest to intervene, and when nothing was done, Heidecker resigned. This song, in particular, highlights the glaring issue with the pattern of lyrical content of this album – Tim doesn’t have any guts. He didn’t advocate for his burnt-out friend in “Buddy,” and he didn’t stand up or involve himself with the classmate who was being bullied to the point of physical harassment. To this day, Heidecker still possesses the same lack of conviction he had in his adolescence, which is why these songs often feel aimless. Speaking of listlessness, late album cut “What Did We Do With Our Time?” channels the height of suburbia angst with the lyrics “I’m a weed-wackin’, lawn-mowin’, leaf-blowin’, snow-shovelin’ boy.” Oh, the horrors of maintaining your environmentally damaging lawn!

I think the exploration of Heidecker’s adolescent cowardness wouldn’t be frustrating if he made any effort to disparage his past self or the environment that allowed him to operate with such passivity. Songs like these have a build-up that needs a release, but instead, Heidecker usually opts to repeat a verse or two until the runtime has reached a respectable length, slowly letting the fade take over. This style can be done; Lucy Dacus’ Home Video comes to mind, where in a few tracks, she invokes more of the timber in her voice and harshens her word choice while still keeping the ballad-like instrumentals. Lyrically, Conor Oberst’s “Next of Kin” manages to name-drop Lou Reed and Patti Smith without feeling shoehorned in. This is because Oberst uses the identities of those two performers to allude to a larger personal theme, stating that meeting them didn’t make him “feel different.” Oberst’s disillusionment with these transgressive icons of his youth correlates with a loss of innocence; his internalized anger didn’t serve his art or his character well. In this context, the output of “meeting” these figures acts as a coming of age moment that’s been prolonged or put off in some way, which is why it works as a binding point between Oberst’s allusions to the death of a relationship and the inability to perform on stage in the first half of the song. This is also why there’s an earned victory and a sense of finality that he found his ‘way back home’ in the closing verse. 

Bruce Springsteen’s “No Surrender” from Born in the U.S.A is a masterclass in tapping into the generational angst that Heidecker is chasing throughout the runtime of High School. The song’s second line, “we learned more from a three-minute record than we ever learned in school,” accomplishes what Heidecker’s trivia-esque namedrops attempt but with more emotional resonance. Springsteen does the work to communicate the impact he felt when listening to music, somehow being both vague and specific, which is done purposefully. He is evasive in the act of not naming the record or artist because he knows that won’t serve any value to the song; the descriptor would just serve as a personal easter egg, which can distract the audience from the focused message of the song. This snapshot is just a tool to drive Springsteen’s point further; it is intentional in his choice to describe the experience of listening to music while being young. To write that a record is more important and beneficial to him than school, we understand multiple things: his relationship to music, his relationship to school, and what he desired in his youth. Right away, listeners are able to place themselves in his shoes – it doesn’t matter if they necessarily find resonance in his ideals and objectives because he frames it as a story with himself as a key character. Throughout Born in the U.S.A, Springsteen muses about his youth, looking back and alternating between present and past tense. In “My Hometown,” he relays his disillusionment with what he was told when he was young (be proud of your hometown) to what he saw later (tensions between races in school and firearm-related incidents) and what he sees now as an adult (vacant stores, closed down textile mills). Not everything on the album is factual or speaks to Springsteen’s specific experiences, but its aim is to preserve and communicate the realities of feeling abandoned by youth. In contrast to this, Heidecker focuses on being confessional above all else. The interpretation of one’s own personal narratives can be a liberating act. However, in the context Heidecker presents, it is creatively stifling. His desire to remain honest in his experiences sacrifices the creative edits that could be made for the benefit of the song's story. Poetic license can and should be implemented if it functions better than the original encounter at illustrating the narrative hook or learned moral truth being communicated in the song. 

Elsewhere in the album, Heidecker alludes to the political turmoil within himself as a young person growing up towards the end of the Cold War era. This point in time was significant in that, to the conspiracist or critical-paranoid, everything was a sign. Pop culture was flooded with fear and fascination, but that didn’t prevent people from searching for answers in it. Culture was and is a tool that could influence the masses to conformity or a soft rebellion. My assumption of this is perhaps overly reliant on Pynchonian redux, but if Heidecker is willing to reference Vonnegut at the forefront of this album, even having merch that rips off the stylized 90s paperback covers of his books, perhaps it should’ve been the leeway for constructing the atmosphere of growing up in this portion of the Cold War era. Postmodern literature (a response to the dishonesty of the Cold War era) explores paranoia, which can be considered a close cousin to helplessness. I don’t know any other time I’ve felt more helpless than when I was in high school. And it is not only this, but also the idea that technology has its own itinerary. In the 80s and 90s, the idea of people becoming subservient to technology became relevant in the modern context – not just in literature, but in film, television, and music as well. I think this concept could’ve been easily implemented into Heidecker’s songs on High School, especially when his analysis of his youth intersects and overlaps with pop culture and the intrusion of media. He was using music and literature to find meaning because all he found in the real world was boredom. 

The album closer “Kern River” effectively achieves what Heidecker has struggled to do in previous tracks; it brought on veritable feelings of nostalgia and wistfulness. For whatever odd reason, whenever I am in a moment, I can sometimes feel myself yearning for the memory even though I am in it, creating it. I’ve always been plagued by a severe sense of sentimentality; I am someone who ruminates on the present as if it’s the past. This song is a snapshot of that experience. It is the culmination of the end of summer, especially if you live in a rural area where kayaking or tubing down a river is a common activity. As Tim sees it, the end of the river is the end of his childhood. Through these obscure, albeit trivial, landmarks, I can notice cracks appearing in the metaphorical shell of my adolescence. The ages of 14 through 18 are difficult because you experience everything with intensity. You have plenty of time and freedom to do what you want, while also noticing the days falling away with a quickness that is only fathomable to kids and to parents who have to watch their kids grow up. Every situation you face and every emotion you feel is magnified because it is the first time you are encountering them. It’s difficult, but somehow you still find yourself prioritizing your teenage years over the whole affair of adulthood. 

If “Kern River” is any indication of the heights that Heidecker is capable of reaching, then I am cautiously optimistic about his future endeavors in writing music. I can only hope that Heidecker forgoes the struggle of trying to legitimize himself as a musical performer and person of strong moral virtue and instead focuses on building fully-formed songs with complete emotional depth.


Kaycie is a freshman at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, where she is majoring in English. You can find her on Instagram at @boyishblues

Long Neck – Soft Animal | Album Review

“Who told you you have to be good?” Long Neck frontwoman Lily Mastrodimos sings on album closer and Soft Animal title track, paraphrasing Mary Oliver’s 1986 poem Wild Geese. The record is nearing its end, and at this point, we get the sense that Mastrodimos has grown tired of being good. Or rather, she’s grown tired of having goodness dragged out of her by thankless, unforgiving circumstances, much like how she drags out the words “polite and gracious”-- to borrow from the late Ms. Oliver –“a hundred miles in the desert.”

Mastrodimos’s stripped-down 4th LP, composed mostly in Covid-induced solitude, marks a sonic return to her solo era before Long Neck’s sound had been filled out by a backing band. Even with occasional contributions from her collaborators, the absence of company is felt throughout Soft Animal. It’s an album that often sounds lonely, recalling long solo walks during the early days of quarantine, tentatively breathing in the air of the outside world while still feeling disconnected from everyone in it. This sonic emptiness is fitting thematically, as much of Soft Animal’s lyrical content deals with the struggles of isolation. It’s a reflection of the self-questioning spirals we go down when we’re left alone in our own heads for too long, as well as the difficulties of re-adjusting to social and professional life that follow those periods of reclusiveness. 

She begins the album by comparing herself to the minute-long opening track’s titular “Evergreen”-- strong, dependable, always in bloom, not because she necessarily wants to be, but because she feels like she has to be. The spacey, ominous production mimics the fogginess of someone who has overextended herself to her breaking point. The distorted background vocals and sample of a barely-discernible conversation between a mother and toddler give the track a disorienting feeling, not unlike sleep paralysis. Like much of the rest of the album, it feels transient and unsure, existing in an in-between space. 

Soft Animal’s ability to toe the line between the universal and the deeply personal is perhaps its greatest strength. Almost as soon as lockdown began, we were bombarded with co-opted “we’re all in this together” messages from celebrities and politicians whose lived experiences of pandemic life were worlds away from the average person’s (as well as empty promises and inaction from those in power). This Long Neck album recognizes that the grief is simultaneously all of ours (collectively) and each of ours (alone). Take the delicately fingerpicked “Cut & Burn” for example, in which Mastrodimos likens her isolation to “a cat run out to die,” sighing, “this is private, this is mine.” She presents this cycle of ups and downs– mostly downs –as a forest burning to the ground, growing back from the ash and decay, and burning down again. 

That’s the crux of Mastrodimos’ songwriting on Soft Animal– failing and starting over a million times, all while struggling to show herself the same kindness that she’s committed to showing others, whether or not it's returned. On piano ballad “The Headwaters,” she fruitlessly attempts to preserve an unequal relationship and in the process, sacrifices her own wellbeing for someone who doesn’t reciprocate her efforts. “What can I do to mean something to you?” she pleads, so clouded by her good intentions that she forgets to mean something to herself. 

Interpersonal relationships aren’t the only area of our narrator’s life in which she puts herself under immense pressure during extenuating circumstances. “If I can’t put a pen to paper, what good am I? / The calendar says April, but it’s May, June, and July,” she muses on “Ants,” having internalized the message that her self-worth must be directly correlated with her creative outlet, even in an ongoing global crisis. Especially during an ongoing global crisis. For artists and writers, the fear of emerging from quarantine having not finished our King Lear became an existential one. Who are we outside of our art? The harsh truth is that adversity doesn’t always equal creative motivation, and sometimes the things that make our lives harder don’t inspire our greatest work. There’s this idea that if we’re able to spin our suffering into great art, that suffering will somehow become meaningful and “worth it.” “Ants” grapples with this notion and occasionally falls for it, finally settling (sort of) on the resigned, open-ended line, “I guess that everybody is.” 

558” is the cut that holds the most personal resonance for me, and if you spent any part of the last two years working in the service industry, I’m guessing you’ll feel similarly. It's a jarring departure from the bare-bones acoustic folk of the rest of the album, with its fuzzy electric guitars and discordant low-fi production mimicking the alienation of a tedious, mind-numbing job. It reminds me of the protective detachment I had to develop last year while working as a waitress, shutting my brain off for hours at a time and turning myself into a customer service robot. I pushed all the grief and fear down as customers pointed at my mask and said, “you know you don’t have to wear that anymore, right?” and on a couple occasions, told me I’d look prettier without it; as the two drunk girls at the end of the packed bar on a Monday night toasted “to Covid being over!” during August of last year; as an immunocompromised coworker got infected just weeks later, and our manager neglected to tell the rest of the staff that we’d been exposed. The first time I heard Mastrodimos snarl, “thank you for coming into work / wasn’t my choice to make,” I felt that same anger bubbling back up. Listening to “558” felt like stealing a few minutes in the walk-in fridge to cool down and indulge in my resentment toward rude customers and bosses who prioritize profit over safety before returning to dissociative, dehumanizing work with a smile on my (masked) face.

Other tracks on the album’s back half like “Gardener” and “Visitor” deal with recovery and rebuilding over quiet, sparse instrumentation that gradually grows into something grander, swelling at each song’s emotional peak. The former takes a more introspective approach, while the latter is more socially-inclined, depicting a reunion scene between acquaintances who haven’t seen each other in a long time and might not see each other for a while afterward. We see Mastrodimos momentarily healed by much-needed human connection, tenderly singing, “there’s no one on earth I wanna know more than you.” She caps off this campfire sing-along country ballad with a bittersweet farewell– “not goodbye but see you soon.”

Soft Animal” closes out the album of the same name, serving as the thesis statement that Mastrodimos has been slowly building up to. Her dissection of the album’s central questions– “Who do you love? / How do you love them? / What do you want? / How do you show it?” --feels reminiscent of Mitski’s subversive 2014 ballad “I Will,” which Mitski has said is not a love song for someone else, but a series of reassurances that she herself would want a lover to say to her. In a similar vein, “Soft Animal” sees Mastrodimos finally putting herself first for once after a record’s worth of self-neglect. In learning to extend her forgiving nature and generosity to her own needs, she ends up letting go of some resentment towards both herself and others. Mastrodimos’ strength does not come from rejecting her vulnerability and gentleness but rather from directing it inwards and using it to care for herself the way she’s used to caring for those around her. By the time the key change hits and the band begins to play us out, she’s ready to fly with the wild geese into the harsh and exciting unknown.


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

Camp Trash – The Long Way, The Slow Way | Album Review

I love deceptive music. More specifically, I love pop music that is so bubblegum it becomes saccharine. Those types of songs where the more that sickly sweet flavor sits on your tongue, you begin to realize how dark and upsetting it is. You can spit out the gum if you want to, but you can’t get rid of the taste it left in your mouth. No, it’s gonna stay there. It’s gonna remind you of the decision you made to ingest this seemingly delightful candy. You’ve been duped, and now you have to see the song for its true colors. 

Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life” comes to mind. Filled with blaring guitar chords and “doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo’s,” the song deftly slides into your subconscious. You’re singing along, and you don’t even realize it. Maybe you’re starting to get a sense of what lies beneath the surface, but when Stephan Jenkins finally utters the words “crystal meth,” the glass breaks, and it is now all too clear that you’ve been singing along to a stark drug ballad. There is no coming back from this; it’s the “Ring Around The Rosie” effect. You can keep shouting the lyrics, but you will always know what the song is about.

Florida’s Camp Trash practices this sort of arcane magic. Their debut album, The Long Way, The Slow Way, is filled with songs like “Semi-Charmed Life.” The tracks come across as summery indie rock loaded with massive hooks and slick melodies. You know where I’m going with this. The lyrics are not in line with the instruments. They’re pained and anxious self-assessments that are harsh but honest. 

“When did I get so hard to love?” muses Bryan Gorman over a punchy drum beat on “Soft.” Early single “Weird Florida” is a high-energy pop rock song that begs to be blasted from a boombox while you cannonball into the pool with your boys but acts as a facade for the story of a summer relationship that was doomed from the start. The penultimate track, “Riley,” digs into the apathy of knowing you need to end a relationship but wanting the other person to call it off because you can’t do it yourself. 

Many songs have that cool, breezy tone mastered by bands like Built to Spill, but in no way are they derivative. Camp Trash can write one hell of a hook, but they are more than just a pop rock band. On my favorite track, “Another Harsh Toyotathon,” they step outside of the radio hit structure to deliver something that falls somewhere between Pavement and Jesu. Behind the heavily distended bass, Gorman delivers one of the more savage burns I’ve heard in years as he shouts, “You’re an only child: what do you know about being replaced?” Album closer “Feel Something” even hints at the possibility that, in spite of all of the anxiety and self-doubt that’s expressed throughout the album, meaningful change can be achieved.

So maybe not all of the songs on The Long Way, The Slow Way fit my bubblegum analogy, but a lot of them do, so I’m sticking to it. But don’t let my willingness to die on this self-constructed hill deter you from Camp Trash’s achievement because this is one of the most well-crafted debuts to come along in a long while. 


Connor lives in Emeryville 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.

HTML – Righteousness Endures Forever | Album Review & Interview

I’ve been thinking about death a lot lately. My own death, the death of my parents, the deaths of my friends and the people I love. When I really get thinking about it, the totality of death just feels so all-consuming. It's endless and inevitable. It’s a heavy thing to have on your mind, but sometimes sitting in those thoughts is the only way through. 

As long as I can remember, I’ve also always enjoyed albums about death; Carrie & Lowell, Psychopomp, Tunnel Blanket, Springtime and Blind, just to name a few. I think it’s fascinating to hear someone articulate their personal understanding of grief in such a public forum. 

There’s something beautiful in hearing an artist you admire grappling with their own version of the same things that are weighing heavy on your mind. There’s something comforting in hearing that journey and those learnings summarized in a condensed album-length format. There’s also a strange peace of mind in knowing that something so gorgeous as any of those records can come from the loss of a loved one.

I don’t want to romanticize death, but it is a fact of life. It’s something we all brush up against at some point, and it’s a topic that people shouldn’t shy away from. HTML’s Righteousness Endures Forever is the latest in a long line of death albums in which I have found refuge. Pitched by lead singer Travis Verbil as “a dad-rock record about my dead dad (but chill though),” the release is heavily inspired by 70s singer-songwriter fare but also acts as a clear continuation of the emotional indie rock sound found on 2018’s Topmost Grief.

Album opener “How to Grow Muscle” begins with far-off bird chirps and a Jeff Tweedy-indebted acoustic guitar riff. Much like the opener from last year’s Unmake Me, this song grounds the listener in the physical space where our narrator is about to lose their loved one. With a first line of “outside the room you died / there were gold sunbeams and gardens green,” HTML waste no time jumping straight into the topic, immediately letting the listener know what type of album this is. The song describes the horror of walking in on your father having collapsed on the floor and the frantic thoughts and actions that go into the following minutes. It’s harrowing and morbid but also beautiful. 

Knowing that Verbil has made it through this experience, processed it, and turned it into the beautiful piece of music you are now consuming gives a sense of relief that makes the recounting palatable. Rather than let this loss render him inconsolable, Verbil uses it to make a statement about impermanence–eventually arriving at the ironic conclusion that there’s a serene finality to be found in this kind of loss. 

After something as heavy as this opener, “Queens Blvd (Drunk Moonlight)” adds some unexpected (but much-needed) levity to the affair with a cocky instrumental fit for strutting around Queens wrapped in your favorite jean jacket. After some good-natured borough-on-borough shit talk, initially-innocuous lyrics like “I will never let your buds die” begin to shine through and take on a whole new death-tinted double-meaning upon repeat listens.

The album’s upbeat streak continues with both “Reservation Cigarettes” and ​​“Reapin’,” the former of which has a boppy acoustic groove and bouncy drum pattern while the latter bears the album’s most distorted guitar lick and catchiest chorus. Perfectly-placed bells give “Reapin’” a sun-soaked Sam’s Town-era Killers feel. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say Springsteen, but the two might as well be used interchangeably here. Evoking a religious-flavored viral tweet, Verbil outlines, “Reapin’ / I don’t like reapin’ / I much prefer sowing / So I sow” in one of the album's most singable moments. 

Throughout the final three songs, HTML flips back into a more somber and introspective tone as Verbil shifts perspective to focus on his relationship with his mother, his late father, and eventually himself

Album closer “Light Hypertrophy” ends the release on an overtly happy note as Verbil sings, “I’m glad I’m alive / Oh, I’m glad I never died / I’m glad, I’m glad I’m alive.” Hearing these words as the period mark on the end of an otherwise grief-filled album only reinforces that good can be pulled out of the depths, making the journey worth it. 

After reiterating this affirmation of life, Verbil shares a condensed version of the process that led him to this optimism in the wake of his loss. In his most heartfelt delivery, he sings, “Lately I’ve been thinking / The hole that you left / could be where the light comes back.” He then pauses for a beat, letting the sentiment soak into the air before adding, “into my life.” 

As these words wash over the listener, the release ends with more bird chirps, a lovely full-circle moment that acts as a reminder that life keeps moving. Much like those first chirps of birds in the morning, the record stands as a testament to beauty coming after darkness.


I sat down with HTML vocalist/guitarist Travis Verbil and lead guitarist Brian Mazeski to discuss their artistic process, death, and the creation of the band’s stellar sophomore record.

Photo by Hannah D’Arcy

SWIM: You describe the album as having a 70s-era singer-songwriter “dad rock” vibe first and foremost. What artists or albums most directly inspired this sound?

BRIAN MAZESKI: Travis had the idea to put together a sort of “inspiration” playlist while we were writing/ideating the album, and it was filled with both actual 70s music (Van Morrison, Dylan, Dr. John, Paul Simon) but also more modern singer-songwriter tunes. A lot of these artists and albums I had only heard in passing, but I started to listen to them more and more, just to have it all rolling around in my head while we were writing the album. I’m not sure any of that influence comes through explicitly on the album we actually wrote, but I do think that influence helped inform our decision-making, in sort of a “what kind of lead would Van Morrison want on this track” sense. And Travis would also use some of these influences for direction on certain instrumentation; if I were stuck writing a lead guitar part, he’d say, “think Van Morrison hazy seventh chords,” and somehow that would help. 


SWIM: Righteousness Endures Forever represents a bit of a genre pivot for HTML. How do you view this record in relation to your previous work?

BRIAN MAZESKI: I think a big aspect of the genre/tone shift for me is that I think about music and writing music much differently now than I did when we wrote our first album. Back then, I wanted our songs to stand out for their complexity and technicality (which I still admire in artists/music), whereas writing this new album, my sensibilities aligned much more with Travis’s, and we both sort of locked into this goal of writing a free-wheelin', groove-oriented album of songs that all hit the ground running and could be arranged/played a number of ways and all sound good. That being said, I think we have a certain style (guitar tone sensibility, for instance) that is common to both albums, which is really cool given how different both projects are.

TRAVIS VERBIL: Going into this record, both writing and recording, I was on a really sprawling Dylan kick and tried my best to divorce my thoughts on production and genre from songwriting. It was extremely freeing. We were able to tear down a lot of walls we built for ourselves. I think our best work comes when we tend to think of genre as window-dressing. 


SWIM: Given that the album is about your late father, the songs get into heavy topics and imagery. How do you go about writing and recounting things like this through your lyrics?

TRAVIS VERBIL: It didn’t feel particularly hard or uncomfortable to recall those moments to write; I already had gone through them a million times in my head. Between the living and the writing, the writing was certainly easier.


SWIM: You’ve tweeted before about
being your own audience which is the creative philosophy I most respect at this point. How did you arrive here? Similarly, given that this record is so personal to you, who do you think this record is for?

BRIAN MAZESKI: One of the things I love about being in a duo with Travis is that we have a kind of litmus test method between the two of us such that, if we’re playing around with a song or an idea, if we both love it then we love it and the seal of approval ends there, and if one of us is lukewarm on it, we can usually play around with it more until we fix it or scrap it. But at the end of the day, we both want to make music we love, and we rarely make decisions based on how we think something is going to be perceived (I've definitely been guilty of that in the past, though). Nowadays, I think we both share the view that if you make art for and from yourself, you’ll find your tribe out there who dig it. 

TRAVIS VERBIL: It’s been a long road, but I’m glad we arrived here. I feel like people get in your head at a young age and will try to be the arbiters, the proprietors of capital-c Cool or capital-s Style. Brian and I have been playing in bands together, playing a lot of different genres, since we were literal children. And in that time, the only times I have ever felt fulfilled or spiritually nourished, whatever you might call it, is when I feel like we’ve been true to ourselves and our shared sensibilities. In that vein, I feel like this record is for anyone that enjoys it, hopefully as much as we do. 


SWIM: I love the cover art and feel like it perfectly captures the feeling of the record. Who took this photo, and why did it feel right to use it as the cover?

TRAVIS VERBIL: Thank you! I took the photo— it’s actually the view from my childhood bedroom window. And before you ask, yes, I grew up in front of a cemetery; that’s an extremely Queens thing. This photo was taken in 2017, I would guess. It’s the spot where my dad began planting a vegetable garden just weeks before he died.


SWIM: Between the title of the album and Reapin’, you evoke quite a bit of religious language throughout this record. What's your background with religion, and how does it factor into this collection of songs?

TRAVIS VERBIL: I had a Catholic upbringing, and a lot of that stuff just lingers in my head— especially when I think about death. There’s no real rhyme or reason to it. It’s always there, though.


SWIM: Sonically, it feels like the record has two modes: quiet, subdued folk tunes and explosive full-band bombast. Was this a conscious decision or just a byproduct of your songwriting process?

BRIAN MAZESKI: That’s a really good question, and I think you nailed it with the second bit about the songwriting process. Every track on the album came directly from an initial rough demo Travis sent via voice note, usually just him playing an acoustic guitar. For some of those tunes, we knew that “the song,” meaning the essence of what made it good or unique, was that it was loud and distorted and driving and quick, whereas for other tunes, we felt that “the song” was just Travis and the guitar, with maybe some ambient piano, and nothing else was needed. For the more subdued songs, I think we took our cue from classic songs we loved that are relatively minimal (either overall or maybe in the sense that they are drumless or more open rhythmically) and tried to be conscious of realizing/acknowledging what makes a song complete and what it actually needs versus what we can pile on in the studio. 

Photo by Hannah D’Arcy

SWIM: I love the little ways you chose to round some of these songs out (the bells on Reapin’, the harmonica on NY Cowboy, even the bird chirps that appear throughout). I’d love to hear about the decisions that went into these little flourishes that appear across the album.

BRIAN MAZESKI: I am so glad to hear you dig those little details! I think we’ve always been interested in auxiliary percussion/instrumentation, dating way back to the first album Travis and I made years ago (we used bells and a ukulele and even some of Travis’s theater group members as a backing choir), but for whatever reason, I personally felt inspired to explore auxiliary percussion much more for this album. I really wanted these songs to groove and for people to feel the groove and bop their heads. I found myself thinking about being back in the high school percussion ensemble, playing all these shakers and guiros and bongos, and thinking about how so much of the music I love (both older and modern) takes full advantage of these tools (“Do It Again” by Steely Dan, for example, or the congas on “Patience” by Tame Impala) and that we should do the same if we want to make music that really grooves and makes people feel the rhythm. 

As for the bird sounds, I was inspired by Travis’s vision for the album and wanted to go all-in on it; when we would talk about the sequence of songs on the album, he said the first track, “How to Grow Muscle,” is like the sun rising on the first day of summer, everything is lush and growing, and so I decided to throw some bird sounds at the beginning of one of the later demos and fortunately, we both liked it and decided to keep it for the final mix. Many of the songs on the album (as I understand them, and what I admire about them) are about a specific moment and feeling, and I felt like a small detail like bird sounds would go a long way toward transporting a listener (I hope!). There are dark moments and aspects to some of the songs and the album in general, but at the beginning of “How to Grow Muscle,” we want the listener to feel like they’re listening to the beginning of a new summer day. 


SWIM: You haven’t released any music since 2018’s Topmost Grief, and death isn’t exactly something you can plan for in advance. When were these songs written, and how did this album come together?

TRAVIS VERBIL:  It all came together very organically. In December 2020, just about six months after the Father’s Day when I discovered my father had passed away in the night, I broke three different bones in my foot in a freak accident. I ended up going on worker’s comp, and my boss (​​a songwriter himself) called me and told me to write an album to pass the time. I ended up staying with my sister for a few weeks since my apartment was a walk-up, and I started messing around with her acoustic guitar–the same one I taught myself on when we were kids. 

I started writing one song a day and sending them to Brian. I started on New Year’s Day; I think that’s when I recorded the first demo for “How to Grow Muscle,” and by the end of the month all of the songs were written. Brian created arrangements for all the songs on the GarageBand app on his phone in the Winter, and he would send them to me, and we would talk about leads, drum parts, you name it. 

There was an issue though— we had, essentially, already written most of the follow-up to Topmost Grief, an album we were calling Heaven II. We had to make a creative decision based on the moment, and, for a lot of different reasons, we decided to shelve Heaven II and go full-speed ahead with Righteousness

It was the right call. We were in the studio that spring, started recording on weekends, and were finished by late July. We decided to sit on the record because we both envisioned it coming out at the beginning of the summer and decided that a Spring 2022 release date was best.


SWIM: Twenty minutes is pretty lightweight for an LP, but Righteousness feels like it has enough time to tell a complete story. How was it to assemble this collection of songs? I’m curious if there was any whittling down on your part, or did these seven songs just make sense?

TRAVIS VERBIL: We had some songs that didn’t make the cut for us. There were songs called stuff like “Rosemary,” “My Cup Runneth Over With Junk,” “Death House,” one called “The Last of the Coffee Grounds,” and a handful more that didn’t do it for us. Some of them we really liked and some of them we liked less. Brian and I came to the consensus we’d rather have a very tight set of seven than release a record with songs we didn’t think were our absolute best. I was also very inspired by summer 2018 when Kanye put out a new seven-track record he produced every Friday. I really dug some of those records, mostly Pusha T’s DAYTONA, and thought that we could similarly get away with a seven-song tracklist.


SWIM: Were there any other albums or pieces of media (about death or otherwise) that helped you through your personal experience with loss?

TRAVIS VERBIL: I kept going back to “Real Death” by Mount Eerie. I have this very funny memory of making my girlfriend and sister listen to it in a hotel room before going out on the town in South Beach, Miami. Talk about a pre-game!


SWIM: Queens, NY plays a central part in the identity of this record and your band. How do you see that physical space coming through in these songs, and why is that important?

TRAVIS VERBIL: I feel like I spent some of my earlier years wishing I had a Brooklyn demeanor, Brooklyn sensibilities, all that. I wasn’t being true to myself. I’m a Queens guy;  I’m a 7 Train guy, a chicken-over-rice guy, a white sauce and hot sauce guy, a Let’s Go Mets guy. We wrote these songs during the one year of my life I lived in Brooklyn, and as much fun as I was having, I definitely missed Queens. And the more I wrote about my dad, the more I missed Queens. Just like the genre stuff I said earlier, I really felt like making this album so unapologetically Queens was fundamentally important in Brian and I being true to ourselves.


SWIM: The final song speaks for itself and ends the album on a bright, optimistic note. What’s one thing you hope people take away from this album as a whole?

TRAVIS VERBIL: The response to this record from our friends and contemporaries has been unreal. All I could hope is that people are excited for what’s next.