Nagasaki Swim – Everything Grows | Album Review

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Excelsior Recordings

Is there a way to observe the passage of time that isn’t inherently sad? Nagasaki Swim, the Rotterdam-based project of songwriter Jasper Boogaard, sits with this question on their sophomore album Everything Grows. Guided by Boogaard’s ambitious yet steady hand, the new album leads Nagasaki Swim to powerful new heights, cementing their reputation as one of indie rock’s most promising new bands on either side of the Atlantic.

Everything Grows follows Nagasaki Swim’s dreamy 2021 release The Mirror, a record loaded with jams, showing a young band bursting with promise and energy. The band’s latest album features an all-star roster of collaborators; Molly Germer, who has worked with (and dated!) Alex G plays violin. Songs: Ohia veteran Mike Brenner, who has lent his talents to over 100 recordings in the music industry, also makes an appearance.

Nagasaki Swim’s sophomore record is a compact yet potent meditation on time and life transitions, and each song unpacks these themes in new ways. On the folky, country-inflected “American Dipper,” Boogaard sings “everyone wants the quickest way to love.” It is a beautiful and ludicrously infectious song. “Eternal,” the lead single from the album, is dreamy yet dynamic, a song that you reach for on a long drive, a song that makes you want to light out to the provinces.

These songs were followed by the more contemplative and downtempo “Window,” and the delicate interlude “Wait,” which is one of the most interesting pieces of music I have heard on an indie album in several years. It sounds like someone playing piano alone in a field, infused with nostalgia but gently resisting melancholy. Many of the tracks on this record are constructed to be steady and unwavering, providing a feeling of solidity against the album’s themes of uncertainty and transition. In “Wait,” the piano melody is allowed to stand on its own, unmoored from other instruments but not an isolated sonic texture. Despite the apparent loneliness, I take this piece of music more as a refuge of solitude and pleasant memories, an interesting departure from sad yearning typical of other music made about isolation.

The title song off Everything Grows immediately makes its case as one of indie rock’s great songs, balancing both depression and affirmation: “there is a fire in everyone,” Boogaard sings, before saying “leaving the old ways… doesn’t get easy.” With a comment on transience befitting Sufjan Stevens, the refrain becomes “everything goes, everything goes.” Much like “Wait,” the song closes the album with piano and birdsong, placing the listener out in the bewildering wild world.

This album got better and better the more I listened to it, and never lost its poignancy. As Townes Van Zandt said, time is a fast old train, she’s here and she’s gone and she won’t come again. To be human, perhaps, is to be troubled by time’s passage, to fret our hour upon the stage. How should we spend the brief moments we have on Earth? How to ensure that we waste the least amount of time? Should we quit our jobs, leave cities in droves, form anarchist communes in the Montana wilds? Everything Grows doesn’t answer this, exactly, but it suggests that time spent contemplating isn’t wasted.

When Everything Grows touches on melancholy, it refuses to be maudlin, gazing evenly at the great sadnesses and unknowns of being human. The album consistently explores these themes with sincerity and humility, it is tenderly melancholic and bittersweet: cough syrup encased in a hard sweet shell. We are left with the impression that perhaps the best way to watch time go is by fostering growth, moment by moment.

Elizabeth is a neuroscience researcher in Chicago. She writes about many things—art, the internet, apocalyptic thought, genetically modified mice—and makes electronic music in her spare time. She is from Northern Nevada. Find her on Twitter at @OneFeIISwoop.

Xiu Xiu – Ignore Grief | Album Review

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Polyvinyl Records

Whether one wishes to acknowledge it or not, grief touches us all. It can happen in an instant or years down the line when you least expect it, but it’s going to take you by the hand, or by the throat, and force you to confront life after loss. Grief is unbothered by time, plans, and ego and often materializes on a whim, silently informing our days. It’s subtle and abrasive, ambiguous and comprehensible, and painfully common. Your grief is not special. Your pain is not unique. Your suffering is universal. The heavy malaise that accompanies grief and how it rests on the spine of those it visits is palpable when listening to Xiu Xiu’s brooding and brilliant new album, Ignore Grief.

“You did this to yourself, is all they will choose to remember.”

If you’re familiar with Xiu Xiu, the landscape this album inhabits is not new, but the territory that is explored here is honed and focused in a way that feels fresh. It is at once exhilarating and truly unnerving. Previous albums like Angel Guts: Red Classroom and Girl with Basket of Fruit come to mind when reaching for touchstone comparisons. Both of those albums are dark, cacophonous, and confrontational in ways that keep most at arm’s length. Ignore Grief is no different at face value, but as the album unfolds, something feels darker, more sinister, and unrelenting. 

“Why do I happen to me?”

Xiu Xiu has always had a reputation for being shocking and pushing boundaries, whether that be lyrically or sonically. Their work has undoubtedly warranted those descriptors, but I’ve always struggled with any notion that it is shock for the sake of shock. It is unlikely that there are many passing or casual fans of the band, so the authenticity of the material should be evident at this point. Jamie Stewart has helmed this project for over 20 years and mined deep within himself (and the lives of others) to unearth and confront the macabre tales that we all wish did not exist yet we all experience. The fact that he’s still striking gold is both exciting as a fan of his art and heavy as a human, acknowledging that grief ripples forever. Always has and always will.

“You aren’t the first person to leave me stuffed in a trash can. I am not the first person you have stuffed in the trash.”

The opener, “The Real Chaos Cha Cha Cha,” sets the tone, quickly pulling us into what feels like a haunted house. I swear this track, the ending especially, evokes all the emotions that the film Skinamarink was trying to elicit and does so in a fraction of the time. (I’d like to note that this is not a dig on Skinamarink. I quite enjoyed that film.) Longtime band member and key collaborator Angela Seo takes the lead on vocals here for what I believe is the first time and does so for half the songs on the album. To say her contributions here are crucial is an understatement. The back-and-forth between Angela’s and Jamie’s vocals from track to track makes for such an absorbing experience. It creates a riveting energy that kept me engaged throughout my repeated listens. And that’s the kicker about this album. It’s horrific, bleak, and suffocating, yet I found it endlessly listenable. If that says more about me than the album, so be it. My grief-stricken being needed something like this. Hail Xiu Xiu for delivering.

“In my secret heart, torn asunder, I wonder why?”

Jamie sharing vocals is actually something the band has explored before. Their previous album, 2021’s OH NO, was comprised entirely of duets with people that Jamie credited for supporting him through an incredibly trying period of his life. Anglea was one of those people, and their track “Fuzz Gong Fight” is arguably my favorite track from the album. Listening back, it really previews just how well Ignore Grief is going to work, even if the focus and subject matter are vastly different between the albums. “This is a record of halves,” reads the opening of the album’s press notes. It goes on to detail how half the songs are an “attempt to turn the worst life has offered into some kind of desperate shape that does something, anything, other than grind and brutalize their hearts and memory within these stunningly horrendous experiences.” A noble effort, for sure. The other half is fiction, drawing from the tradition of old rock’n’roll “Teen Tragedy” songs. It all blends together in a hurricane of discomfort… But storms can be relaxing, right?

“A body that invites violence.”

Anglea also takes the reigns on the pulsing “Esquerita, Little Richard,” which repeats the album title over a disquieting beat before slowing down to a dreary synth line that draws to mind the feelings of the early work of Harmony Korine. The album truly feels cinematic, but that word doesn’t quite capture the whole picture. The cinema Ignore Grief strives for is more in line with the Dogme 95 guidelines, David Lynch, and found footage horror rather than the grand pageantry the descriptor typically evokes. At times, it feels like this record is something that shouldn’t be listened to. It’s raw. It’s bleak. It’s honest. It’s a pure expression of empathy only achieved through lived experience. There is understanding and a chance at peace in the sharing and admission of pain. There can be peace, but not without reckoning.

“So much pressure to feel joy or even say joy.”

The production on display here is pristine. The textures and layers of sounds continue to reveal themselves, and to call this Xiu Xiu’s “jazz” album wouldn’t be a stretch whatsoever. The brass and woodwinds shine whenever they're present, and are thankfully quite present throughout. Whether it be in the patience of “Tarsier, Tarsier, Tariser, Tarsier” or the frantic patterns of “Pahrump,” every instance scratches an itch. I’d be remiss not to note the percussion as well because Xiu Xiu is now a trio with Jamie and Angela enlisting David Kendrick (Sparks, Devo) to take over drums and percussion on the album. He’s a righteous fit, making himself a welcome addition to the freak rhythms and dark sonic soundscapes we’ve all come to appreciate from the band.

“A black hole is everything a star longs to be.”

The album closes with “For M,” an 8+ minute song sectioned into five parts that really encapsulates the breadth of the overall experience. It doesn’t get quite as pissed as a track like “Border Factory,” but consider it a true denouement. After everything the album drags you through, it still made me write, “Horrible - horrifying (Pt. III) - really unnerving” in my notes. That was all while drawing a complimentary comparison to the trudging pace and style of Bohren & der Club of Gore. There is so much to unpack and chew on. They’ve crafted one of their most urgent, moving, and present albums with Ignore Grief, and like the well of grief itself, the depths of this album will continue to be explored and discovered as time ticks on.

“What is your fondest wish?”

Xiu Xiu tapped into something with Ignore Grief, and it certainly tapped into me. When I speak of the universal nature of grief, I obviously speak from experience. We all have experience. I had a stroke when I was 24, and I lost my father the following year to a traumatic brain injury when a tram derailed and struck the vehicle he was in. These things, among many others, overwhelm and isolate me with their everpresent weight, but what I feel is not exclusive to my experience. My grief is not special. My pain is not unique. My suffering is universal. The heavy malaise that accompanies grief’s cyclical nature is palpable, and when it’s captured and presented in a way that proves there is understanding and proves there is life after loss, even through the constant strife that life piles on, that courage deserves recognition. Ignore grief all you want. It’ll be there when you’re ready.

Christian Perez is a member of the band Clot and is always trying his best to exist gently.

Webbed Wing – Right After I Smoke This... | EP Review

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Memory Music

Webbed Wing makes loud ass rock music. Led by singer and songwriter Taylor Madison, the band has surprise released a new EP today titled Right After I Smoke This… In only seven minutes, the Philadelphia three-piece manages to deliver three songs that are filled with hooks, riffs, and infectious power pop energy. If you close your eyes really tight, you’ll think you’ve been transported back to the mid-aughts, and you can hear them slotted between Third Eye Blind and Switchfoot on your local alt-rock station. It’s not hyperbolic to mention the group alongside such acts because these songs are absolutely bulletproof. 

“Medication” gets things started with a bang as Madison declares that he is in a rut saying, “I’ve been avoiding all my problems, I can’t move forward.” Moments of apathy ring throughout each track as Madison looks for ways to get out of the situation he’s in, but the solution always feels just out of reach. The darkly humorous “Sure Could Use A Friend” finds Madison getting in his own way as he claims that he’ll get his life moving, but only after he lights one up for old times’ sake. He’s procrastinating adulthood, but he’s sick and tired of being down on himself. On “I’m Feelin Alive,” Madison breaks free from his dark thoughts as he wonders how to “keep these feelings awake, and the other ones asleep?”

These songs epitomize the old “spoonful of sugar” notion as the band candy coats each one in deafening guitars and punchy drums. Each hook has “lead single” written on it, and if it wasn’t for Madison’s vocals being front and center, then you might mistake them for cheerful love songs. Sonically, “Sure Could Use A Friend” is a real stand-out here. Accompanied by a soulful twang, Webbed Wing are in full Lemonheads worship mode on this song, but they don’t let their influences get the best of them. “Medication” and “I’m Feelin Alive” are both straight-ahead guitar rock bangers with no superfluous frills. 

Right After I Smoke This… might find Webbed Wing in between albums, but that doesn’t mean they’re motionless. With the band about to embark on a nationwide tour with Drug Church, Prince Daddy, and Anxious, they’re likely about to earn themselves many new fans, and rightfully so. Proof that sometimes three songs and less than ten minutes is all you need to get your point across.

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.

Swim Camp – Steel Country | Album Review

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Self-released

Air travel has become a consistently more terrifying endeavor as I’ve grown older. With each passing year, I find myself increasingly anxious at the prospect of stepping foot on the massive metal machines that have reinvented global travel—both domestic trips and international ventures are now mere footnotes in the great span of time that constitutes our lives. The world’s longest nonstop commercial flight, which goes from Singapore to New York City, is nearly nineteen hours. And somehow, while my time in the air usually tops out at three hours, the takeoffs and landings nearly break me. My chest tightens, I get shaky, I drown everything out as waves of noise course through me until the plane has fully stopped on the runway.

Even then, for all the fear it’s started to cause me, aviation has its moments. Sometimes, a stroke of infinity has painted itself across the earth, and the windows of an aircraft are the best viewing place. Sometimes, sunlight crosses the sky and cuts through the exhausting, hopeless odor of seat 23D. These silent moments of salvation shine our neverending modern headache, undeniably bright even in their quiet entrances into our lives.

On Steel Country, Tom Morris’s third full-length under the Swim Camp moniker, passages of brilliance are impossible to ignore. A far cry from sleepless plane rides where the slightest slant of the sun’s rays is the only suggestion of joy, this album is a bountiful harvest of musicianship overflowing with a soft certainty, and is a perfect follow-up to 2021’s superb, washed-out, slow burner Fishing in a Small Boat. Steel Country sees Morris somehow manage to sharpen his already near-flawless songwriting instincts, constructing giddily addictive tracks with hooks swept up in waves of fuzz and distortion and tinted with electronic dissonance. It’s an album that leans into a delicate warmth only furthered by Morris’s gentle vocals, which provide the foundation for each track. The record forges a careful balance between rippling noise and quiet steadiness, and through this, Morris connects the threads of an existence in which, above a harsh sea of fears, questioning, and struggle, day breaks into bliss. It’s a quilt of friendships, memories, living rooms, half-thoughts, windows, lazy days, quick glances, empty streets, collective joy, and all the love in between, an ode to possibility in a life that’s full of it. 

credit Sarah Phung

Steel Country is a record straight out of a sun-washed afternoon in the grass, and its opening track, “Line in Sand,” is like waking from a midday dream. Morris’s voice rings lightly over as he starts singing, “The money’s gone, I tried to tell you / His face was wrong, I couldn’t help you / People change, I’m not the same now / On my way, he had a breakdown” over warm acoustic tones, until everything kicks in. An enchanting central riff that reminds me of some of the foundational lightness of 22° Halo’s Garden Bed is interjected with playful electronic passages until the instruments are washed away and make way for “Dougie (For Sharyl),” an addictive meditation on unhealthy relationships. It’s hard to think of anything catchier than when Morris realizes, “Oh shit, he’s aiming at me,” followed by a rush to the head of spaced-out guitars, hard synths, and relentless drums that operates as a sugar-high-esque moment of musical synergy. 

The album doesn’t let up in the slightest as it moves to “Pillow,” a gazey track built on a starry-eyed synth line that converges with guitars soaked in reverb and a plentiful helping of heavenly effects. It’s hard to think of a better way to lay the groundwork of an album’s soundscape than precisely what Swim Camp manages to accomplish on Steel Country’s first three tracks. Imagining a world of its own that simultaneously feels ours to live in and one which we must witness through windows, an eerie reckoning with the existence we dream of, the back-to-back-to-back from “Line In Sand” to “Dougie (For Sharyl)” to “Pillow” captures the heart. I have a feeling that’s exactly what Morris wants it to accomplish. By the time the last moments of “Pillow” sparkle away and the fugue-state passage that is “cLotine” takes over, you’re fully wrapped up in the record’s undeniable humanity. 

The dream only grows clearer as Steel Country moves forward, taking us further into the skies above. “Everything” elucidates the consuming yearning of cold nights, envisioning the solitude of a walk past the house of a lover’s parents. As questions surrounding that person’s feelings bubble up inside, guitars blare, and drums crash while Morris is subdued to incomprehensibility, replicating the internal uncertainties plaguing the heart. The blushing warmth of “Cherry” is built on bright guitars and hypnotic drums that move into periods of growling electronics reminiscent of Alex G’s recent crushing synth passages on “Blessing.” Songs like “No” and “is this the plan” present an evolved version of the slow, sugary sweetness that characterized 2021’s Fishing in a Small Boat, giving lots of space for Morris’s tender voice. “Apple” wants you to believe it’s going to be a crashing, heavy track, coming in with fierce drums and dizzying crests of noise, but it’s only a lead-in to a song that truly embodies country sensibilities with its drawn-out guitars moving at an infectious, heel-tapping pace. It’s an embrace of distant adoration and care, the way that we reconnect with our feelings toward the joys and loves of our past, and is one of the record’s most emotionally potent ventures. “hevvin00” is a dive under the ice on a frozen-over lake in the hollow core of winter—everything feels submerged and out of reach, but the possibility within the washed-out sounds is tangibly exciting.

The final three tracks strike a different tone than their counterparts among the first three, bouncier than the rest of the record. Morris’s ear for a strong chorus emerges on “Heat Makes Cracks in the Bones,” which moves into a refrain that feels so effortless you wish it could last forever, and “Say Hi” comes in like a washing-machine-whirlwind that’s built for the pit, moving with a dancy, tumbling liveliness. The album feels complete by the time Steel Country closes out with “what I saw,” which begins like Etiquette-era CFTPA track and gradually sinks into washed-out lo-fi waves.

Steel Country’s completeness is the consequence of many factors—a thoughtfully curated tracklist, addictive riffs, thoughtfully placed thematic crescendos, extensive sonic diversity, a willingness to challenge expectations, as well as the sheer talent and musicianship of Tom Morris. At the heart of its successes, though, is the coherence of its array of soundscapes. Even when it moves from tracks that lean lo-fi to electronic passages, or from its gazy stretches to lighter ballads, the album presents a foundationally raw and stripped-back revision of historical effects-showered indie music. 

That mesmerizing reinvention is best captured on my favorite track on the record, “Puddle,” a song that goes further into the territory of heaviness than anything I had expected to hear. The track begins with a headbanging riff that sits on layers of distortion and pure noise, all while a muffled recording plays, ending with a killer breakdown deserving of all the feedback loops in the world. In between those two points, the song builds with precision: at first, after letting its initial noise die down, we get clarity through the vocals, but then the instruments make their way back. Drums push the track forward as Morris drags out his words and begins to repeat the trance-like phrase “The puddle’s gettin’ deeper” until, in the utmost of parallels, his words are drowned out in the ocean of guitars, drums, bass, and even synths, all culminating in the aforementioned breakdown. It’s a decisive moment on the record—everything falls apart in the end, but you’re left with a beautiful view all the same. That’s exactly why I found myself writing about airplanes at the beginning of this whole affair; there’s something magical that courses through the veins of this album. It’s something as unreal and dreamlike as watching the world from forty-five thousand feet above the ground, and if this is what flying can feel like when we let go of our fears, then get me on the next plane. 

Spencer Vernier is a student in Boston, Massachusetts who also happens to enjoy the process of writing and editing. He loves to talk about cats, poetry, his friends, and of course, music. He is a managing editor at Melisma Magazine, a student publication which you can find here!

Paramore – This Is Why | Album Review

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Atlantic Records

When frontwoman Hayley Williams, guitarist Taylor York, and drummer Zac Farro decided to start writing music again as Paramore in 2021, the first thing they created was “Thick Skull,” the final track on their new album, This Is Why. It answers a question I’ve been asking for a long time, and something I think more people frankly should have been asking too: what if my bloody valentine, but with a good singer? It’s my favorite song on the album, and I think it’s perfect: the brooding guitar builds underneath Hayley’s verses like a storm, breaking around the 3-minute mark right as she jumps up an octave for the final incendiary chorus. I’ve seen people call it “Paramore’s shoegaze song,” and it’s true, but “Thick Skull” is also urgent in a way that most shoegaze isn’t. It’s the feeling of the three bandmates surrendering, perhaps for the first time in decades, to the inevitable draw of writing rock music together.

For many fans, Hayley could sing the phone book, and they’d eat it up, but that’s never been good enough for Paramore. With This Is Why, they pay their rent with change to spare: each of the ten songs has something to say, with style statements in equal measure to substance. The band draws from Bloc Party, British post-punk, and the “indie sleaze” dance-punk of the late 2010s to augment their signature melodic rock sound. They are making music on their own time and on their own terms, and the assuredness comes through. Paramore are right where they are supposed to be. 

The album’s lead single and title track reintroduces the band in the only way that’s fitting: as a trio. Guitarist Taylor York and drummer Zac Farro have said they worked more collaboratively on the album’s instrumentation than they’ve ever done in the past, and nowhere on the album is that alchemy more obvious than on “This Is Why.” York’s guitar crashes in on the choruses, pounding along with Farro’s kit like an extra snare. Williams’ voice builds and breaks on the bridge, formatting the three friends’ treatise on agoraphobia with the explosive vocals the world has always craved from her.  

Not every moment on This Is Why is perfect, but all of it adds to the Paramore extended universe, and it will be interesting to see what sticks. There’s something I like to call the “Ain’t It Fun” Effect: the Paramore songs that genre-bend to a bit of a ham-fisted extent often end up beloved. Plus, the band’s curveball songs—often dismissed by critics—have historically been the ones that reach a new corner of music fans. Many Black Paramore listeners cite “Ain’t It Fun” as an important touchstone in their fandom. 

There’s such a vital spot in the Paramore ecosystem for the tryhard songs—I mean, have you listened to them? They’ve been not-exactly-subtle for going on two decades now. In that light, “The News” and “C’est Comme Ça”—two of the album’s three singles, and the songs with the heaviest post-punk touch—may overreach a bit. But I say let ‘em cook. 

The second half of the album, though, plunges relentlessly into the strongest writing the band has ever done. “You First” kicks off the run with a punky bite reminiscent of Riot! or Brand New Eyes. Williams plays out an internal battle, where she wrestles with the energetic cost of resentment on her inner peace. Ultimatley, her spite wins out on this one, landing her at the vindictive conclusion that, “Karma's gonna come for all of us, and I hope she comes for you first.” Then “Figure 8” starts off like the start of a roller coaster, rushing into the first moment of the album that gave me real chills: Hayley’s howling harmonies over the pre-chorus, confessing “I don’t know how to stop / I don’t know how to stop.” 

Track eight, “Liar,” isn’t just a good song; it’s a momentous one. As much as Williams has historically evaded media conversation about her dating life, it’s always been a center of gravity for Paramore: her romantic endeavors have been the source material for much of their best music. The vulnerability of “Liar” is as hard-won as it is sacred. The track plays out as the guarded singer (she’s a Capricorn) serenades guitarist York, her partner of a few years. As longtime Paramore fans know, York was a founding member of the band (he, Farro, and Williams have been friends since middle school) and, according to interviews, supported Hayley through the darkest time of her life in the mid-2010s. The addition of this song to Paramore’s canon is a gift, and its lovely guitars and wistful vocals underscore its quiet significance.

What the band has to say on the final two songs, “Crave” and “Thick Skull,” feels like two sides of the same coin. Life is long, much longer than we’d imagined when we were stealing boyfriends in high school, and the time starts to play out in patterns when we tread through enough of it. Layers of Hayley’s power vocals (some of the prettiest of her career) and unresolved seventh-chords drench “Crave” in longing: she tries and often fails to live in the present, but the honesty in her efforts tethers her to life’s sweetness either way. The dark mantras of “Thick Skull” usher in the opposite side of the years’ unraveling: 

Thick skull never did
Nothin' for me
Same lesson again
Come on, give it to me

The foil to “Crave’s” soaring harmonies, Williams’ musings on “Thick Skull” are just as impressive vocally, but play with a more sinister tone. It’s an album closer that denies us resolution, reminding us that yang belongs just as much as yin and that the angst that fueled us as teens might still have a thing or two to teach us. This song exemplifies the kind of delicate depths that decades-long bandmate relationships give you the sanctuary to explore.

This Is Why triumphs in its confessions, in its breadth, in its generosity. In the first Paramore album with the same lineup as its last, Williams, York, and Farro’s hard-won love for one another and their fans lets them carve creative new paths into post-punk, shoegaze, and dance rock. For a band that so easily could have gotten stuck in the past, Paramore shows us that no matter how dark the world feels, we can always find our way back to each other.

Katie Wojciechowski is a music writer and karaoke superstar in Austin, Texas. She is from there, but between 2010 and now, also lived in Lubbock, TX, Portland, OR, and a camper. Her life is a movie in which her bearded dragon Pancake is the star. You can check out her Substack here, and some of her other writing here. She’s writing a book about growing up alongside her favorite band, Paramore.