PHONY – Heater | Album Review

Counter Intuitive Records

I’m a known short album enjoyer, and Heater, the new album from PHONY, just might be the best example ever. The record is a scant nine songs that add up to a grand total of 21 minutes; that’s just two minutes longer than I Became Birds or your favorite Joyce Manor album. It makes sense then, that in 2021, the latter would enlist Neil Berthier to play guitar and synth in support of their then-upcoming record 40 oz. to Fresno.

While his ongoing Joyce Manor tenure might net him a lot of cred in millennial emo circles, Berthier has been creating excellent records under the PHONY moniker as far back as 2019. That’s not to mention the half-decade he spent fronting the now-defunct Donovan Wolfington. So it should come as no surprise that Heater is as refined and punctual as it is. This is the sound of someone who’s been at it for over a decade, and this album specifically sees PHONY refining the pop-punk formula into a glossy collection of shredders that are pointed, addicting, and deliver a complete arc within the time it takes to watch an episode of Spongebob. 

Things kick off with “Caroline,” a re-recording of a song initially released as a one-off single last year as a prelude to PHONY’s third album. While I had assumed Caroline was doomed to obscurity as a non-album loosie, it’s nice to hear the song here perched at the onset of a new record, gaining a well-deserved second life in the process. In comparing the two versions, it’s fascinating how they each embody their respective “eras” so well: while the 2022 Caroline is still peppy and energetic, it fits better in the disaffected, disorienting, and death-obsessed world of the album that came after it. In contrast, the 2023 Caroline is snappier and scrappier, with a brighter vocal take that signals to longtime fans they’re in for something different than last year. 

Following this revisitation of an old single-name classic, PHONY spends the remainder of Side A ripping through the album’s three singles in reverse order. “Card In A Spoke” springs to life with a bouncy drum pattern that sounds like a dribbling basketball or a heartily-thrown dodgeball. This is only the warm-up though, because everything explodes to life when the rest of the instruments slam into the track about 24 seconds in. Wielding a snotty pop-punk riff and hard-charging rhythm section, Berthier desperately searches for signs of life and a sense of time following a crashlanding on alien terrain. The group can hardly wait a minute before getting to a guitar solo and then rolling back into the chorus again, ironically making the listener also feel like a card in a spoke getting beaten with the repeated prongs of energy stemming from the band. 

“World You Love” begins with a waltz but quickly builds into a full-body ballroom sway as images of bloody sidewalks and brain-frying boardwalks flash between cathartic cries of “REALLY WHO GIVES A SHIT!?” One proggy guitar solo later, and we’re dumped off into “Chinatown,” the album’s lead single and one of my favorite songs of the year. Perhaps the closest to the maudlin vocal stylings of AT SOME POINT YOU STOP, this song has a fun drum beat and attention-grabbing opening moment as Berthier explains to some faceless other, “You were built for speed, and I was built to last.” From there, the song slides headfirst into a jumpy punk section as we hear tales of sunshine and tequila shots delivered in an enthusiastic shout. 

After a pretty relentless outpouring of energy over the first ten minutes, “Roof” acts as a solitary moment of reflection before jumping into the record’s back half. Based around a simple piano line, this track is the perfectly placed interlude slotted right in the middle of the album and almost feels like a mirror to last year’s “KALEIDOSCOPE.” More a scene-setting exploration of drunkenness and disconnection, some studio chatter punctuates the minute-long excursion before the album’s remaining four songs swoop us back into the pop-punk mayhem.

Just as was the case with the first half of the album, almost each of the songs on Side B boasts a catchy hook, cocky vocal delivery, and flashy guitar solo. Things rarely dip below 100 bpm, “Water In Your Wine Glass” is the closest thing the album gets to a “slow song,” and even then, PHONY can’t help but build up to a snappy little guitar solo midway through. Similarly, “County Line” eases into things with a somber beginning, but that only lasts about 20 seconds when the band roars to life for the chorus. 

Heater resolves on “Pass The Ball,” a song that touches on touring life, alcoholism, and learning how to commit to something. To me, this song is really about partnership and learning how to share yourself with someone else, whether that be in a romantic, platonic, or creative setting. The lyrics promise, “You could really have it all / if you learn to pass the goddamn ball.” This mantra is delivered calmly at first but then in a near-scream by the end. As the title of the song is repeated, the guitar crescendoes into a post-rock wall of noise and, most shockingly, some Sweater-Song-esque “oooh ooohs” appear to sing the listener off. All in all, it’s a very big swing that ends up feeling like the perfect closer to a blisteringly fast record. 

I know I’ve talked a lot about the speed and tempo of these songs, but it’s surprising just how amazingly everything flows when placed together. These tracks feel like an amazing synthesis of emo and pop-punk, all delivered in a style that feels true to this project and Berthier’s last ten-ish years of music-making. It’s stunning to hear an album this complete and fulfilling delivered in just 21 minutes, and the crazy thing is you can just let it all roll from the top again.

Up until now, I haven’t talked too much about AT SOME POINT YOU STOP, the PHONY album that came out before this one. That record was one of my favorites of 2022 and fleshed out a world of emotional indie rock unlike any I’ve ever heard. While it was an album about death, loss, and reconfiguration, the bigger question it leaves the listener with is what comes after. Heater, it turns out, answers that question with an emphatic collection of songs where life flashes by at superspeed. These songs are the sound of someone experiencing existence after a sort of cosmic reset that rendered everything before it null. They’re fast because that’s exactly how things unfold in the real world. When I throw on this record and the songs each blaze past me, I’m reminded of this fact. Everything is fleeting, and we’re just lucky to be here taking in the scenery—a card in the spoke, flickering along and enjoying the ride for as long as we can.

Frog – Grog | Album Review

tapewormies

The sailors survived off rum. Not in the nutritional sense, of course, but in the way one may survive by watching their favorite sports team. Everybody needs a little something to get through the day. The problem arose when the sailors realized they could stockpile their daily rum rations for two, three, four days at a time and then drink themselves silly. Eighteenth-century British naval ships were dangerous operations, and drunk or hungover sailors posed a threat to everybody’s safety. An enterprising admiral named Edward Vernon began mixing fresh water into the rum rations in a 4:1 ratio, shortening the liquor’s shelf life and thus forcing the sailors to consume responsibly. Vernon’s concoction took on his own nickname: Grog, after the grogham cloth he wore around his waist.

Daniel Bateman has always operated in this space, writing fiercely humanist songs under the moniker Frog about the ways in which people mete out coping mechanisms to survive. In the intervening years after 2019’s Count Bateman, his wife gave birth to twins. Faced with the twin specters of newfound responsibility in fatherhood and a pandemic-wracked world, Bateman suddenly found he needed to dig deeper within himself to be able to write and escape into his music; in this regard, it’s fitting that the fifth Frog album is titled Grog, after the beverage which kept the sailors able to focus on the tasks at hand. Grog is, in many ways, a culmination of the greater Frog project: a refinement of the musical and lyrical themes Bateman has pursued his whole career, with fuller arrangements and a bounce that never quite materialized on older records. It also marks the band’s first go-round as a family affair, with Bateman’s brother Steve taking over full-time on drums.

“Goes w/o Saying,” the first proper song on the album, is one in a long tradition of Frog songs that cloaks sexual pursuit in vaguely religious language. But this time, they let the instrumental—a series of chiming pianos—ride out for over a minute after Bateman stops singing until the song starts to sound like hourly church bells collapsing inward on themselves. It’s a new trick for the group, the music now working in greater tandem with the lyrics. Lead single “Black on Black on Black” rides a ferocious stomping groove as Bateman works in abstract notions about Odysseus and Athena. He’s long been obsessed with the modern American myth—2015’s Kind of Blah namechecks Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, MGM, and Patrick Ewing all within a three-song run—but this dive into more classic mythology represents a new frontier. Rather than using pop cultural knowledge as evocative shorthand, he taps into some of the oldest shared cultural knowledge available as a world-building device.

But Grog’s most salient change is Bateman’s status as a new parent. Where his prior character sketches often dealt with fumbling young adulthood in pseudo-autobiography, with all the impulsive drugs and awkward sex that entails, he’s trained his gaze on a younger generation this time around. “420!!” is a melancholy guitar symphony of adolescent shenanigans and early pot-smoking laced with a morbid undercurrent: “You’re gonna die, and yeah, it’s cool / You don’t know why you’re going to school.” It’s a weed-addled bildungsroman in miniature that recalls what its characters are experiencing in real-time: a firmer (and maybe sadder) understanding of the human condition undercut by buzzed euphoria that borders on acceptance. Fatherhood is tackled most explicitly on the tender “Ur Still Mine,” a musing where Bateman imagines talking to a fellow parent before offering words of encouragement to his own kids. “New Ro” lands a bit closer to the Frog songs of prior albums, a bluegrass romp that flashes back to his hometown “where the girls they put out in a car/and the pizza guys know who you are.” 

Everything converges on the stunning closer “Gone Back to Stanford,” a bleary vignette about a college underclassman having trouble adjusting to the next phase of her life. Like many of the best Frog songs, “Gone Back to Stanford” is a series of images that stops just short of adding up to a story, littered with asides, non-sequiturs, and foreboding undercurrents. This unnamed person goes to parties and drinks Ketel One and has unfulfilling one-night stands; through it, she’s trying to work up the nerve to tell her mother she wants to transfer out. Bateman fleshes out the scenes beautifully, able to capture the pain and elation and danger of these environments from afar without ever passing judgment; paternal, but never paternalistic. It’s also the most richly arranged song of the band’s career–never before have they been able to execute the kind of drop they pull off at the end with as much heft as they manage here. They bring it home on one of Bateman’s best turns of phrase over his years of writing about lost innocence: “Born in a manger/Going home with a stranger.”

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Jason Sloan is a guy from Brooklyn by way of Long Island. You can find him on Twitter or occasionally rambling at Tributary.

Hotline TNT – Cartwheel | Album Review

Third Man Records

I was 20 years old when I first found out about Weed… The band, not the substance.

I used to hang out at the record store where I currently work when- one day, a used copy of Running Back by Weed came in. When Dollhands (now Clearbody) put out our first EP, the label that pressed tapes for us compared our music to Weed, but I thought it was just a joke and not an actual band. As soon as this record was staring me in the face, I knew I had to buy it without a second thought. Sure enough, I got home, threw Running Back on my record player, and it changed my outlook on music forever. I had never heard anything like this collection of songs; I had found my first holy grail of a record. 

I think Will Anderson understands that feeling more than most people in bands do. Hotline TNT did an Audiotree Far Out back in 2019, this was my first exposure to the group. Having already spent countless hours with Weed’s KEXP session, I quickly realized that this was Will’s new band, and needless to say, I was an instant fan. The first thing I did after watching that Audiotree was open up Spotify and type in Hotline TNT- to my surprise, nothing showed up. I then searched YouTube and found out that the only way to get these songs was to download them through a Mediafire link in the description of Fireman’s Carry. Back then, the only way to hear Hotline TNT was through YouTube, vinyl, or this janky Mediafire link. I grew up torrenting on Limewire, so this wasn’t a foreign process to me, in fact, it felt special like I was the only person that had this on their phone. 

All this to say, I’ve been closely watching the metamorphosis of this band, and Cartwheel feels like a victory lap after the longest possible NASCAR race of all time. The band is firing on all cylinders here, and with a bare-bones 33-minute runtime, not a moment is wasted. This record blends the perfect mix of cool style, cuteness, and loud-ass fuckin guitars. The textures of guitar tone are unlike anything I’ve heard in any other album, 100 other bands could try all the studio wizardry in the world and not achieve sounds like these. At its core, the tone sounds like it’s being built with an acoustic guitar, but it’s fuzzed out to the max. I especially love the color the 12-string adds on “Stump,” the record’s heartfelt closer. 

Cartwheel starts with the first two singles, “Protocol” and “I Thought You’d Change.” I was lucky enough to first hear “Protocol” last year when I saw Hotline open for Snail Mail and Momma. The song blew my mind then, and it somehow still does every time I hear it. My favorite track on the record is “Spot Me 100,” the way Will starts the song with “Squad car, caught you on the Autobahn” really does something for me. The lyrics are buried underneath all the layers of guitar, as God intended, but when one slips through the wall, it sticks with you for the rest of the runtime.

When you break down all the songs on this record, it’s the old man’s definition of Shoegaze, simply pop songs that are played deafeningly loud. Personally, I love how skewed the meaning of shoegaze has become; the genre can truly be whatever the artist (or the listener) wants it to be. Some people will call this a lo-fi record, maybe even just a rock record, but to me, this is the closest anyone has gotten to making our generation’s Loveless. Cartwheel is easily my favorite record that’s come out this year, even the interlude track is a contender for one of the best songs this year. 

After being a fan for so long, this LP exceeded my already high expectations. Cartwheel is a career-defining album for Hotline TNT. I love seeing this band win, I love it whenever I go to their Spotify page and see those monthlies go up. They’ve been grinding for years at this point and have been playing the game their way, and it’s really inspiring for someone like me to see that you can do it YOUR way. Being in a band is hard work, it took me the better part of two years to write songs for my band’s last release, so I can hear all the love and hard work that went into Cartwheel. I often think about how we’ll view records 20 years down the road; the process of putting out an album is so quick, and sometimes it feels like people forget about music a week after its release, but this is not one of those records. Even though it’s only a few weeks old at this point, it’s clear that Cartwheel will easily be a touchstone of this era of music.

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My name is Eric Smeal, and I play in a band called Clearbody. We put out a record called Bend Into a Blur earlier this year, and I’m very proud of it. We play shows and tour sometimes, but right now, I’m just out here living life, writing our next record, working my day job, taking photos, etc. My handle everywhere is @amplifierwrship, thanks for reading!

Carpool – Can We Just Get High? / Gulfer – Clean | Double Single Review

Ah, November 15th: a Wednesday that will go down in history as the day we got new singles from venerable emo projects Carpool and Gulfer. Truly a duet of pleasures. Funny enough, even though these are unrelated singles from completely disconnected bands, the titles play off each other in a way that feels like a hilarious coincidence. As a diehard, insatiable emo freak who’s been a fan of both groups for years, today is as good as a national holiday.

First up, Carpool’s “Can We Just Get High?” is a scuzzy dirtbag anthem that asks the exact question posed in its title. The Rochester emo group wastes no time, blasting in immediately with a bouncy two-note pop-punk riff and lyrics that lay out the entire spectrum of human emotion as lead singer Stoph Colasanto shouts, “Love me / hate me / don’t care, can we just get high?” 

This single immediately feels right at home in Carpool’s discography, continuing themes found in some of the band’s best songs, touching on drug use, escapism, and codependency, but still somehow making those topics fun enough to sing along to. Just the first taste of the band’s upcoming sophomore album, “Can We Just Get High,” is the boisterous sound of a party that’s just getting started. As you would expect from any endorphin-expending night out, the comedown is soon to follow, which actually leads beautifully to…

Gulfer’s “Clean” arrives with a magnanimous video that aims to wring the last moments of sun-soaked joy out of the summer. We watch as the Québécois emo group jump into a backyard pool, instruments and all, as the lyrics weave the tale of Nicki, a disillusioned office worker caught in the endless loop of work/home/repeat. 

Moving a half-step away from the emo tappiness of their most recent singles, one-offs, and splits, “Clean” has a sunny sway that shows an unexpectedly poppy side of Gulfer. As the video moves from poolside to the band members lounging around a cozy plant-adorned house, tensions mount as a second layer of harsher vocals get layered onto the final verse, making for a scintillating reminder of why Gulfer are one of the greatest emo bands to ever do it. 

Buck Meek – Haunted Mountain | Album Review

4AD

I’ve often felt that it takes at least three listens for an album to truly imprint itself on my brain, but Buck Meek’s latest struck me with a stunning immediacy and an absorbency that was almost magnetic. Best known for being one-quarter of the Grammy-nominated Pitchfork-headlining indie band Big Thief, Meek has released two prior solo records, appeared in a Bob Dylan concert film, and also used to be married to Adrianne Lenker. From a life as full and complex as Meek’s, his prior solo work has been lovely and simple, but this has expanded considerably with Haunted Mountain.

Right from the beginning of the record, “Mood Ring” strikes the listener with something buzzy and complicated and new, a blurry melange of notes from guitars, maracas, and modular synthesizers. This track is fresh without being off-puttingly experimental; it bears almost no resemblance to the straightforward country-folk notes that composed his previous solo releases. “Cyclades” is another bright spot in the album’s progression, with electric guitars reminiscent of 60s power rock in both chord progression and instrumentation. (I scribbled “delectable” in my notes during my first listen.) “There are too many stories to remember / Too many stories to tell,” Meek sings, with the sonic richness of the music complementing the feeling of abundance. 

Meek soon returns to his mellow folk roots further in the record; the title track, “Haunted Mountain,” co-written with Jolie Holland, features glossy lap steel guitar and a square dance percussion. “Lullabies” dips into the American folk classic “You Are My Sunshine” to touching effect. Meek strikes a delicate balance between rock and folk in “Undae Dunes.” This song features thumping percussion and a prominent bass romping behind the lap steel guitar; the composition feels crowded with influences and emotions. 

At moments, the jaunty folk-inflected rock reminded me of contemporaries like MJ Lenderman and Wednesday, but without the restlessness and brashness that grants energy and power to the newcomers’ work. Meek’s music is reflective, dealing with themes of soulfulness and travel rather than Formula One racing and high-end butcher stores. It’s almost as though the newcomers to the country-rock scene (or bootgaze, or whatever you want to call it) are more grounded, while Buck Meek, although perhaps older and more worldly, seems to have less of a sense of self.

The album ends with an unusual collaboration of sorts; Meek was given the opportunity to finish a song by the Christian songwriter Judee Sill, who died in 1979, eight years before Meek was born. “The Rainbow,” with lyrics written three weeks before Sill’s death, is a partnership that crosses generations and folk styles to arrive, gauzelike, in our ears. I have complicated feelings about this song; it sounds vaguely like Sill, with slight seventies folk sensibilities; it sounds more like an influence and less like a replica. Whether or not it matches up with Sill’s intentions for the piece is unknowable. Meek stated that his intention with this song was to act as a “vessel” for the late Sill, and this is a staggeringly difficult role for any musician to play, technically and ethically. Yet what I hear is fundamentally a Buck Meek song, and to include it as the album’s closer is an extremely bold move.

In parsing this record for weakness, I could find only the unfortunate fact of the voice. Buck Meek is an extraordinary instrumentalist, but he is markedly less extraordinary of a singer. His voice has a smallness to it, a reedy and almost nasal quality, which leaves the instruments to fill the space where stronger vocals might be in other artists’ songs. I like his previous solo work a tremendous amount, which largely consists of him singing alongside a single guitar; the simplicity works for his voice there in a way that the more complex formulations fail to do. The upward-tilting vocals also make these songs feel exceedingly wistful, almost like children’s music. The overall effect is saccharine and goopy, with all the sincerity of a Big Thief song but none of the elegance.

That being said, this record is a remarkable and sometimes enjoyable foray, a valuable addition to the rapidly growing catalog of American country-rock music. There is a certain looseness in the production that befits the impromptu jam-like feeling that suffuses this record. This record reminds me of a family, commenting on love in all its complicated, imperfect, myriad forms.

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Elizabeth is a neuroscience researcher in Chicago. She writes about many things—art, the internet, apocalyptic thought, genetically modified mice–on her substack handgun.substack.com. She is from Northern Nevada.