Stay Inside – Ferried Away: A Reflection by Ben Sooy

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Self-Released

Last week, I found the CD-R with my wedding photos. My wife and I got married in 2011, and some of these photos I already had saved on my phone (the ones I uploaded to Facebook), but a lot of these I had not seen in years. We were so young, so beautiful! Look at all our friends, our family, our groomsmen and bridesmaids! 

The beautiful couple and their beautiful friends.

I was hit with a particular kind of melancholy when I saw a group shot of me and my groomsmen: I don’t see these guys nearly enough. Some of these people, who once were my best friends in the world, I haven't seen or spoken to in years. 

This shit happens. It happens all the time to most of us. As you get older, you may find that making new friends gets harder and harder. When you’re 19, and you’re going to school, you’re living on your own for the first time maybe, you’ve got roommates, you’ve got classmates, you’re wasting time at the coffee shop, you recognize the same faces, you strike up conversations, you go on dates. 

Now you’re in your 30s, you’ve got a steady relationship, you’re making a little more money, so roommates aren’t necessary anymore. You’re still making new friends occasionally, meeting folks at work or whatever, but not as many deep relationships, and not everyone there is in your same life stage or shares the same values. A lot of your friends are pairing off and having kids and moving back to where they’re from to be closer to the grandparents. Friendships just die off. 

This is, kind of, I think, what the album Ferried Away by Brooklyn emo post-hardcore band Stay Inside is about. 

I miss you,
but I don’t have the time
where I could make it right.
Your daughter, your neighbors,
I wish they knew my name.

Let me get this out of the way first: Stay Inside is a band I truly love. They are heavy and melodic, weird and accessible, pretty much everything I love about this style of music. They are true sweethearts, too! Genuine people who care about others, and I get the sense that they try to center their lives around compassionate action. I know this because we have some friends in common (we both love the guys from Caracara), and I got to open for them once in Denver when they were on tour with awakebutstillinbed. We talked about guitar pedals and friends we love but don’t see as often as we’d like and growing up loving the Christian rock band Switchfoot. Great hangs! Thoughtful and delightful people. 

Stay Inside is Bryn Nieboer, Chris Johns, Chris Lawless, and Vishnu Anantha.

This new Stay Inside record is a wonderful and perfect album, and I very much resonate with the theme: “Ferried Away is a collection of songs about people we love or have loved. Each song is dedicated to a specific person we know.” 

Somewhere, I lost track
of someone I won’t get back.

Reflecting on every once-significant relationship that drifts off or fades away is like giving a eulogy for people who are still alive. You can let these relationships disappear unnoticed and unmourned, or you could do the hard work of remembering. 

I’ll admit this was all my fault.
Shiver when I drive past your car.
Still know your phone number by heart.
Still know your phone number by heart.

When a friendship falls apart or just fades away, there’s resentment, there’s guilt and regret. No one leaves these sorts of dissolutions without taking part in some of the blame. 

I think the most difficult part of friendships and relationships ending is that no one likes to be the villain in any story they’re in. If we’ve acted poorly or hurt someone through action or inattention, that’s hard to deal with. It’s easier, mentally, to fall into one of two untrue mindsets: we’re totally the victim, or we’re totally the villain. 

It’s easy to spin the events in our memory so we feel justified in what we did or didn’t do. But sometimes, we hurt folks! Part of healthy remembering is taking ownership of how we acted like an asshole. 

I’m sermonizing. I know I’m sermonizing! But this album makes me reflect on how I haven’t called my guy Ward in, like, eight years, and I’m feeling all kinds of ways about it.

Why do I feel so bad about every relationship where we used to be close but we’re not anymore?! I have lived in seven or eight cities over the course of my life! I have met a simply innumerable number of people. It would be totally unreasonable to expect that I’ll have the capacity and energy to carry on a deep friendship with everyone I’ve ever loved or considered a friend. 

But it still hurts! I still feel guilty! I wonder what Josh, my best friend from 2nd grade in Cleveland, is up to. I wonder if he’s happy. If he’s loved. Does he still like nu-metal? I hope he feels like he belongs somewhere. 

Once things go bad, everything’s my fault, isn’t it?

Here are a couple of stray thoughts about the music on Ferried Away: The horn parts on this record are truly inspired. There’s a warmth and timelessness to hearing trumpet leads this good and pure, like post-hardcore visited by the ghost of Chuck Mangione [complimentary]. 

And the songs themselves are so refreshing and surprising. No lyrical image is simple, and no melody is rote. On any given piece, instead of a traditional bridge, there are long instrumental sections that take the listener on a journey to strange and undreamed places. (Shout out to long instrumental sections that take the listener on a journey to strange and undreamed places; gotta be one of my favorite forms of song composition.)

Next time I see y’all might be through my dead eyes. 

The central premise of Ferried Away is the hope (or maybe the anxiety?) that everyone you’ve ever loved but lost touch with will meet up again at the end of the world at Steeplechase. In the band’s own words, “Steeplechase Park was one of the original Coney Island amusement parks that burned down in 1907. To many New Yorkers, Coney is a fun and beautiful place that you’ve always wanted to visit but never make the time. This album lets the historical Steeplechase stand in for a sort of purgatory of memory where the people you love live between the last time you see them and either of your deaths. Whether you’re estranged, or in different states, or just fallen out of touch, these are songs for the friends in Steeplechase.”

There’s a comfort for me in the thought that there might be a reunion at the end of time. This hope reminds me of my favorite Wild Pink lyric: “Wherever we go when we go for good // Do you think we really meet again like we hoped we would?”

But to be totally real with you, I don’t want to wait until after death to speak to the folks I’ve loved but have lost touch with. 

Listening to this album and reflecting on these themes made me realize how much I miss my buddy Andy Grinnan (one of my roommates and best friends from college and one of my groomsmen). So, a couple of Saturdays ago, I texted him, and he immediately called me. Wild that almost six years or something had passed, and we still loved each other! We caught up on life and work, his daughters, and his hopes for the next phase of his life and career. He was proud of me and all the cool stuff happening with my band. 

I don’t know, It was nice. We’ve talked a couple of times since and texted way more often. He’s my brother. I love him. Randomly (or not so randomly if you believe that events might be something more complicated than coincidence), he and his wife will be in Salt Lake City the same weekend my band will be. I’m going to see Andy effing Grinnan in person! After too many years. 

This wouldn’t have happened without the music of Stay Inside, I don’t think. 

What’s my point? Maybe we can be better friends! Maybe music can actually benefit our real lives. Maybe listening to Ferried Away is the only thing between you and reconnecting to parts of your past life. I don't think it should take the end of the world to meet back up with people you once held dear. With their sophomore effort, Stay Inside have not just crafted an excellent record, but an album-length reminder of what being a human is all about. 

Ben Sooy lives in Denver, Colorado where he writes songs and plays guitar with his best friends in the band A Place For Owls.

Gulfer – Third Wind | Album Review

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Topshelf Records

When I first discovered Gulfer back in 2015, it felt like finding a diamond in the rough. The Canadian quartet were touring through America on the back of their incredibly strong debut LP, What Gives, and I knew I had to find a way to see them. Fortunately, I was able to make it to their Baltimore show at Charm City, and that night turned out to be one of my favorite gigs I’ve ever had the privilege of attending.

Gulfer was one of the fiercest live acts I had seen in recent memory, with vocals so unhinged they felt like they shouldn’t fit over the twinkling borderline emo-math rock riffs. I believed it then, and I believe it now: these four were onto something special.

It’s been almost nine years since that day, and a lot has happened in Gulfer World. Two more albums, a split, and a few singles later, Gulfer is back to bless us with another ten tracks that have recaptured me all over again. This is a band who has continuously polished and renewed the sound they first found, iterating on their style with each release to the point where they’ve practically perfected their formula. So what’s so special about this new album, Third Wind, that makes it worth a half hour of your time?

Let’s start with the lead single and opening track, “Clean.” This is the most tame Gulfer has ever felt vocally, with singer/guitarist Joe Therriault singing in a calming croon we’ve rarely heard from him, and it works beautifully. I always loved the mathy side of Gulfer, but this newfound straightforwardness proves they’re absolutely destined to be a household name in this scene. In the time since its November release, “Clean” has already proven itself to be one of the catchiest, most melodic tracks in the band’s discography, and it’s only the opener.

The following track, “Heartshape,” feels just as alive, aided by fantastic production courtesy of Gulfer’s own Vincent Ford and Great Grandpa’s Dylan Hanwright. Ever since their early days, Gulfer have leaned into crystal clear production that allows each instrument to shine and sparkle through the mix; they want you to hear every guitar tap and vocal strain. Even still, Third Wind somehow manages to be the band’s best-sounding record to date, where that trademarked Gulfer clarity meets a host of new ideas and sounds. 

The best part? It only gets better from there. The rest of the album feels just as new and fresh as they scatter bits of their old selves among this new, more melodic approach helmed by Therriault. It’s not that the band has “softened” their sound like so many indie acts of the early 2020s, but instead that they have taken a much more intelligent and considered approach to their songwriting. Every time I’ve listened to Gulfer in the past, I would find myself inspired by the way they structure songs: balancing technical precision with unhinged moshpit-inspiring ferocity. I’m pleased to report that the ingenuity and angst are both still here in equal measure; however, this time, those elements feel delicately laced throughout the album with a more intentional pattern.

This feels to be a proven point come “Cherry Seed,” which erupts from the very get-go with a peppy bounce and then drops off into an indie masterpiece unlike anything else Gulfer has ever done. The same can be said about “Drainer,” which feels like the band fully bringing this new sound to a head while still feeling just ‘Gulfer’ enough in a way that no band could ever duplicate.

Halfway through the album, we hit my favorite run in the tracklist. First, we have “Too Slow,” a one-minute berating where burnout lyrics precede an instrumental assault that bottoms out into a pensive electronic outro. That breakcore-esque interlude flows directly into “No Brainer,” a song that almost feels like it could have been a single with how catchy it is. Then “Motive” sweeps in, offering a winding journey that shows why this band is still some of the best instrumentalists in DIY. Practically all of my favorite styles of Gulfer feel like they’re captured within this eight-minute stretch smackdab in the middle of the record. 

The final third of the album begins with swirling guitars and continues to prove that these are songs that couldn’t have been written by a younger version of this band. The maturity in these tracks feels self-evident, especially as someone who’s been following the group for nearly a decade. This is maturity. This is growth. This is the peak of songwriting.

While that growth in song structure, influence, artistry, and lyrics is evident across the record, the final two songs on Third Wind feed directly into my love for old Gulfer. The final track, “Talk All Night,” feels like the band wanted to close the album by going straight for your throat. Front to back, the fourth Gulfer album is an absolute barrage, smacking you in the face from the jump and not letting up until the album comes to its perfectly timed close.

So I’ll ask again: what’s so special about Third Wind that makes it worth a half hour of your time? It’s really quite a simple answer… 

Absolutely everything.

Will Green is a solo artist hailing from Huntsville, AL. He recently released Mollify, his debut album as Full Blown Meltdown, in October of 2023. Find him on Twitter @FullBlownMltdwn and Instagram @FullBlownMeltdown.

Conor Lynch – “Slow Country” | Single Review

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Devil Town Tapes

I’m not sure if it’s because I was born and raised in the backwoods of Western Washington state, grew up around my father’s affinity for country-adjacent folk musicians like James Taylor, or some secret third thing, but I have somehow always found myself in the presence of music with some type of “twang.” However, like many misguided white folk, I also found myself throwing out the all-too-common “I like all music except rap and country” rhetoric in my youth, but as the years have grown and my tastes have expanded, I have delved into the former and reclaimed the latter for myself. I still avoid your pop- or stadium-level country acts, but seeing how country is an umbrella genre, I have broadened my horizons and found elements of the genre I now embrace and appreciate all their own. So naturally, when the opportunity arose to review a new “beautiful alt-country” single, I jumped at the chance. 

“Slow Country,” the latest single from Detroit-based singer/songwriter Conor Lynch, takes the listener to a cool, breezy place to help them forget their troubles and pass the ever-decelerating minutes. Structurally simple, the song sleepily glides through four quick vocal lines accompanied by fuzzy acoustic guitar tones and wistful pedal steel to amplify the calm and collected feelings evoked through the lyrics. Despite the textures of the track being rather thin, the instrumentation employed by Lynch only adds to this theme of simplicity. The line “Don’t know how long I can stay / ‘Least a minute lasts an hour in this place” perfectly articulates the feeling of sitting down with this gentle country jam – your troubles melting away for what feels like much longer than two and a half minutes. This feeling is amplified even further when watching the beautiful one-take music video that accompanies the single, in which the camera slowly pulls out from a close-up of Lynch to reveal a sea of bright orange trees perched on the edge of a Detroit cityscape. Lackadaisical, nostalgic piano notes fade in, mirroring the dominant guitar line as the song concludes, and all that’s left to do is hit replay for another few minutes of bliss.

I love that within the realm of DIY, so many genres and subgenres exist together across a myriad of talented artists simply making the music they want to make. Acts like Conor Lynch prove that there is plenty of room for these easy-going, alt-country excursions that defy the expectations and stigma surrounding the genre. I think I speak for most when I say sometimes all you need is to find a cool spot in the shade, put your feet up, and take in the world's splendor. I’m so grateful that Conor is here to help guide us there. 

Ciara Rhiannon (she/her) is a pathological music lover writing out of a nebulous location somewhere in the Pacific Northwest within close proximity of her two cats. She consistently appears on most socials as @rhiannon_comma, and you can read more of her musical musings over at rhiannoncomma.substack.com.

Tapir! – The Pilgrim, Their God, and The King of My Decrepit Mountain | Album Review

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Heavenly Recordings

Kyle Field, of Little Wings fame, narrates the opening to each act of Tapir!’s debut album, The Pilgrim, Their God and The King of My Decrepit Mountain. Field and his Little Wings project persist as one of the most enduring outsider indie folk projects of the aughts - outsider, not in the way Daniel Johnston's lo-fi aesthetic was irreplicable, but in the way Jim O'Rourke's sprawling catalog has been canonized by a dedicated few.

Field's presence on Tapir!'s debut record is emblematic, not necessarily of the type of music they hope to make (though the influence is palpable), but of the enamored status Tapir! hope to achieve. The six-piece began playing music during the pandemic, but as they began releasing music in 2022, the bedroom aesthetic they developed stuck around, even as the group expanded their focus towards a precise visual brand. The association with red papier-mâché helmets present in nearly all of the band’s press material was an obvious move towards cementing a trademark symbol. This splashy red iconography was complemented by the flowing green hills and vast naturescapes that persist in the band’s imagery, which they curated over the album’s two-year gestation period.

Tapir!’s first EP, Act 1 (The Pilgrim), was released in 2022 and doubles as the first of three acts contained within their debut. After a remaster of Act 1 and the release of Act 2 in late 2023, Tapir!'s vision finally culminated in The Pilgrim, Their God, and The King of My Decrepit Mountain, the kind of high-concept work that pervaded amongst indie auteurs in the mid-to-late 2000's à la Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois and Joanna Newsom’s Ys. Through their debut album, Tapir! has not only crafted a narrative and aesthetic worthy of such comparisons, but boasts the musical breadth to back it up.

After setting the stage with a brief introduction by Field, Act 1 (The Pilgrim) opens with "On A Grassy Knoll (We'll Bow Together)," which also acted as the group's debut single. Paced snaps of a drum machine play with arpeggiated guitar and light flourishes of pianos, horns, and other woodwinds. Both intentionally and impulsively, the track evokes the wide range of aesthetics developed in the indie music of the late 2000s. Further than its interpolation of LCD Soundsystem's "I Can Change," the exact instrumentation paired with the thump of the drum machine sounds like what would happen if the Postal Service welcomed Jonny Greenwood as a third member.

The record rests upon pristine compositions, bedding youthful lyrics and vocals. Act 2 (Their God) features a rendition of "Gymnopédie," a 19th-century piano composition denoting the classical training that informs the sonic direction of the album. Like many of their London contemporaries, a formal excellence found in the halls of Berklee or the BRIT School courses through many of the band's tracks. Many artists that depend on technical formality deprioritize the soul of their songs, but Tapir! use theory and history to their advantage, evoking aesthetics from chamber music to accentuate their naiveté.

Tapir! primarily rely on straightforward lyrics to paint simple images, but occasionally, they drop slight winks towards a greater grasp of their poetry than they divulge. "Eidolon" is an easygoing guitar number, save for the title itself, a reference to the spirit-image of a living or dead person as conceptualized in ancient Greek literature. Largely though, The Pilgrim, Their God and The King of My Decrepit Mountain is a record that lets its music speak far more volume than the words actually put to page.

The improvement and evolution of Tapir! can be tracked throughout the three acts of The Pilgrim. Between Act 1 and Act 3, Tapir! signed to a label, expanded their resource pool, and picked up a drummer, leaving Act 3 as an incredibly thrilling conclusion to not only the journey of the album but also this chapter of the band. 

"Untitled" and "My God" are two of the LP’s tightest tracks, but "Mountain Song" closes out the album in grand fashion, justifying every overreaching concept and larger-than-life visual the record produced in its lifespan. The seven-minute opus begins tense and distant before evolving into a swirling and expansive collage of guitars, strings, drums, synths, and a whole menagerie of voices that move from phase to phase, each grander than the last. “Mountain Song” is indebted to the grand post-rock compositions of London contemporaries like Black Country, New Road and Squid, which are in turn indebted to the immense lineage of post-rock and art rock that came before them. Despite all of its influences, "Mountain Song" places a Tapir!-exclusive naivete on the grandiosity that still feels personal to the band's ethos and taste.

The influences swirling around Tapir! are very clearly present, but they're twisted and spun in ways that still center Tapir! as the man of the hour. As more and more artists harken inaccurately to bygone eras, drawing on influences they don’t understand, artists who were already mimics, and relying on audiences ignorant of history, hearing a band that so assuredly understands the technical, conceptual, and aesthetic depth of their influences is a refreshing gust of wind. Even if the episodic structure feels akin to Sufjan Stevens' Illinois, the chamber instrumentals are incredibly Arcade Fire-esque, and the drum machines could have been bought from a Postal Service estate sale, Tapir!'s virtuosity and strong holistic concepts allow The Pilgrim, Their God, and The King of My Decrepit Mountain to stand mighty and tall on its own qualities.

Benny is the managing editor of STATIC Mag and a freelance writer. If he’s not nose-deep in a book about an over-specific era of music history, he’s probably bumping the dirtiest underground rap hit of the week or the shiniest disco track of the 70s.

Heart to Gold – “Can’t Feel Me” | Single Review

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Memory Music

Some of the best music is seasonal. I’m not talking about holiday music, and I’m not even talking about something overt, like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. I mean, there are some songs, bands, and sounds that just feel like they suit a certain kind of weather. There are songs for winter that feel nostalgic and heavy and sad, music made for that moment when the sun barely crests the horizon and the temperature seems like it never rises. Then there are songs for summer, which are often eager and full of anticipation, like the feeling of waking up early to take a trip with nothing more than the open road ahead. “Can’t Feel Me” by Heart to Gold falls somewhere between spring and summer, heady with the first warmth of May, yet still tinged with the chill of old snow that lingers in the shadows of the woods.

Heart to Gold has long been a band in my personal rotation of favorites, with their 2022 album Tom being one I still put on regularly. Since the release of their first EP in 2016, their bold sound and distinct vocals have set them apart from other bands in the emo/punk scene, with tracks like “Tokyo” and “Tigers Jaw” only solidifying their position. “Can’t Feel Me” comes on the heels of their 2023 tour supporting scene giant Movements, along with Mannequin Pussy and Softcult. This is also the first we’ve heard from the band since the release of their standalone 2023 single “Chloë,” which was one of my favorite tracks of last year. Heart to Gold consistently outdo themselves with each subsequent release, and “Can’t Feel Me” is no different.

Tender guitars and soaring vocals took me by the hand and pulled me, laughing, through breezy patches of sunlight and past damp, mossy shadows. I felt like I was missing something I never had as Grant poured his heart out over rich chords.

Sometimes the highest highs, at times the lowest lows.
It must feel like I’m distant, constantly can’t feel me.
Seems like the right direction, but right now I can’t see.

His lyrics echo the sentiment so many of us twenty- and thirty-somethings feel. I think this is the right thing to do, but what if I’m making a mistake? Am I doing it right? We are watching the spring of our lives transition into summer, welcoming the change of seasons with open arms and a hesitant smile, but in the back of our heads, we still wonder if it’s where we’re really supposed to be. “Shout it out,” cries Grant, “shout it out! I don’t feel the same!” Neither do I, and as the new warmth of summer touches my skin and freckles my arms, I think I’m okay with that.

Britta Joseph is a musician and artist who, when she isn’t listening to records or deep-diving emo archives on the internet, enjoys writing poetry, reading existential literature, and a good iced matcha. You can find her on Instagram @brittajoes.