Late Bloomer – Another One Again | Album Review

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Self Aware Records

Late Bloomer seem to think their name is a designation; I’d argue it’s a misnomer. The Charlotte “Wait, they’re a three-piece?” three-piece arrived in near-full-bloom on their sophomore album, Things Change, which served as a buffet of fist-pumping bar rock heroics and shout-along emotional anthems. Filled with texture and rambling structures, the album speaks to a band that has a very complete sense of self, with shades of Dinosaur Jr. coloring in the open-chord choruses of The Replacements and the driving rustbelt-rock verses of Guided By Voices. 

Late Bloomer name-checks those latter two bands, along with therapy, as primary touchstones on their new swing-for-the-rafters album, Another One Again, out March 1st via Self Aware Records. While those influences check out, they don’t fully capture the sound of the record, specifically the pop-punk flavors found in the back half of the LP. This is an album that seems to be caught between two states, but the deeper you dig, the more that seems to be a feature, not a bug. 

Opener “Self Control” seems like an explanation for the 6-year gap since their last proper record, Waiting. “It’s getting hard to keep it together.” Neil Mauney confides over gentle, Eels-esque guitar before telling you the root issue: “I don’t have the self-control.” It’s immediately endearing, like hearing a heartfelt reunion happening the next table over from you. This first minute pulls you in with its honesty. Before you know it, you’re forgiving someone for something they haven’t even done to you yet; a grace note for a stranger. Then, we’re thrust forward into a triumphant riff straight out of the 90s Merge scene. It’s a statement: this is music to get your shit together to. 

You feel that self-determined drive all over the ten tracks on Another One Again. Late Bloomer is here to show their growth, especially in their production. Mauney’s guitar tone has been supersized, with his Nashville-sized doubled riffs soaring over Scott Wishart’s cathedral-filling hi-hats. Josh Robbin’s bass creates an enveloping platform for the band’s genre-bending mixture of giant hooks and scrappy, palm-muted syncopations. The whole thing rings clearly, inviting you to sink into the songs like a reupholstered easy chair. 

Those sonic upgrades complement the more indie-rock cuts, specifically “Mother Mary,” with its cavernous drums, 90s emo bassline, and earnest country-adjacent vocals. Here, the room to breathe afforded by the pristine production is used to pull the listener into a quasi-religious environment. Late Bloomer is at their best when painting personal histories with the vibrant reverence of stained glass, creating songs that function as both ends of the confession booth. Penned by Robbins, lines like “Tell me all your secrets. Show me where it hurts” feel like a doubting Thomas realizing that he’s been asking the wrong questions the whole time. The space between each note lets the emotion bloom, shattering the wall between us and them. 

Elsewhere, in pop-punk adjacent tracks like “Video Days” and “What Do You Say,” the pristine production feels conversely restraining. You find yourself wanting a bit more grit, a bit less room. With such propulsive rhythms, you should feel the tightness of it all. This ends up leaving these songs stranded a bit in the sonic context of the album. Thematically, however, they have a lot on their mind.

“Video Days,” one of the pop-punkier tracks on the record, seems to be written as an example of the type of “songs we used to sing” invoked in the opening, the same ones that Mauney would listen to while “bombing hills.” In a song about an old bond that may never be reconciled, those teenage textures and melodramatic vocals bring the lyrics to life. It has the effect of a 3D memory, one that you can step inside and explore, examining it from new angles. Personally, I prefer the band in Westerberg mode rather than Wonder Years, but these genre digressions come across as endearingly genuine rather than calculated nostalgia bait. Like the fellas in Late Bloomer, I’ve been to therapy and know that unabashed sentimentality is a strength.  

The two sides of the band come together brilliantly in album closer “Bright Kid,” where a tight-fisted chugged verse splits wide to near-psychedelic openness. Here, the expanse threatens to dissolve the weight of the song, but a sinewy guitar pulls you through the liminal space and towards a mighty refrain: “You’re a bright kid, just listen.” It’s the type of message you wish you could tell your younger self – but you can at least pass it on. 

In its best moments, Another One Again doles out self-reflective anthems, turning personal revelations into cathartic shout-alongs. The sound of the record is highly considered and engineered to feel as big as possible. It’s a step forward from a band who want to seem like they’re two steps behind. 

Josh Sullivan is a writer, filmmaker, and musician based out of Wilmington, NC. Find him on Twitter (not X) at @brotherheavenz and Instagram at @human_giant.

Replica City – Gift of Knives | EP Review

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Power Goth Recordings

Replica City are kicking off their third year as a band with the Gift of Knives, a short play that reinforces the Colorado group’s grip on melodic riffage and adds some swagger to the set. While the vibes certainly nod towards contemporary pillars like Hot Snakes and Protomartyr, I found this batch of tracks recalling the unexpectedly vibrant twists that Dave Grohl and Hot Water Music managed to sneak into the alt-rock bins of Best Buy in the mid-90s. The dedication to arrangement shows this band thriving in an aggressive yet smooth landscape, with each song surfing along flashy drums and Big Drop-D Energy progressions. 

Gift of Knives particularly succeeds in the tone zone department. Matt Dunne shows up with an absolute beast of a bass sound, blending Rancid-esque hairiness with a sparkling, rich low-end. Corey Fruin’s vocals have an engaging, down-to-earth quality that keeps the songs feeling authentic and human while his guitar work rewards with acid-dripped accents to each song’s framework. Nathan Rodriguez’s drumming hits my personal sweet spot of nimble and sloppy, showing a player who can pay the bills but isn’t letting precision get in the way of an earnest performance. All these ingredients are cooked into one tasty enchilada by Lauren Beecher, who has produced, engineered, and mixed every Replica City release to date. I don’t have the specs on Lauren’s studio, but these recordings embrace a “mid-fi” scrappiness and deliver a robust and clear mix that I wouldn’t enjoy as much if it had a higher-end studio polish. 

The beauty and risk of an EP is brevity. If I can’t sit through half a set, then obviously, I’m not gonna be sold on a longer play. Replica City tackles four songs over 15 minutes and succeed in keeping my attention. “Charming and Approachable” kicks things off with wild drums and feedback that blast into a tight-knit lamentation. I can already imagine Fruin’s elastic refrain, “There’s gotta be something else,” being a highlight in a live setting. The title track, “Gift of Knives,” pushes Dunne’s bass front and center in a mid-tempo number that floats between semi-ballad and tense chords before lighting up the sky for the outro. “Rear-Fanged” closes out the trio of original songs with the most aggressive of the batch and feels like the connective tissue between the band’s previously released singles and this group of songs. Fruin brings more self-reflection, admitting the “truth is I can’t get enough / now I got a taste of the good stuff” and asking, “What do I gain from this? Nothing.” Buddy, I totally hear you! 

The EP ends with a cover of Violent Femmes’ “Kiss Off,” and thankfully, the band avoids the cliched movie trailer “sad song of death” trope for this one. Instead, the song is steadily delivered with the same explosive and fuzzy emotion found in the first three songs. In my headcanon, Replica City is a group forever cursed to cover songs now and again due to their name ;) I’m sure the band has got plenty of other originals to share before hitting the wedding circuit, so I’ll just imagine those true-to-self performances on my own time. 

Overall, I’m impressed with Replica City’s ability to go grunge without breaking out the flannels. Lately, I’ve leaned less towards mid-tempo saturated rock songs, but the group’s nervy energy feels like a resource that’s in short supply these days. A true blue rock record that will have me checking out future releases. 

Thomas Swinn-McNeely recently bought a wok and is scared of how hot it gets.

Jimmy Montague – Tomorrow’s Coffee | Album Review

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Self-Released

The promotion of this record has made this writer feel genuinely very bad.

Once a week for about sixteen weeks, Jimmy Montague has posted to his Twitter page with increasingly desperate (and in some cases menacing) pleas to not “fuck him on this one.” Writers, labels, publications, and fellow musicians have faced the eye of Jimmy and withered under its gaze, seemingly unable to handle the simple task. Don’t fuck him on this one. And yet, here I am, late on deadline by about a week (maybe two?), trying to offer my thoughts on this album in just a few measly paragraphs. Don’t fuck him on this one. How hard can it be?

The playful bemusement in the first measures of Montague’s new LP Tomorrow’s Coffee doesn’t feel real. That’s not to say that it lacks authenticity– in fact, it’s an immediate and striking way to begin a record of heart-on-sleeve rock and roll storytelling– but it’s so puerile and delicate, possessed of a heart that’s pointedly absent from this modern and crystalline world. Montague’s sonics, too, throw the listener back to a warmer age of music-making; the obvious touchstones of Steely Dan, Chicago, and Billy Joel bleed through every song. From the meticulously arranged horn flourish (second single “Only One For Me”) and bouncy bongo groove (“The Smoke After the Kill”), those touchpoints hang heavy over the music, but Jimmy eschews such pigeon-holing.

On standout “No New Starts (For Broken Hearts),” he trots out a neurotic and folksy acoustic bounce that channels both Elvis Costello and Elliott Smith, at once dopey and jaded, lovesick and a total card. On “Halfway Out the Door,” he brings a newfound zeal to an instrumental so effusive that the only possible point of comparison is Aretha Franklin’s 1972 live record Amazing Grace. Montague has created an intoxicating vintage sonic world for a new era of jokers, smokers, and midnight tokers that boasts his formidable knowledge of rock history while also maintaining an intense sense of identity.

Montague’s talent, though, extends beyond rock– his ensemble consists of, at minimum, nine other musicians playing vastly varied (often multiple) instruments to dense and heady arrangements penned by the man himself. As a composer, Montague shines on this record more than in any of his previous works. On lead single, “All the Same,” the jaunty piano is grounded by sustained horn bellows and gently voiced “ooh la la’s” outlining chords in the back of the mix. On mid-album cut “Worst Way Possible,” the vocalizations give way to sweeping strings and grandiose classical piano gestures that feel ancient, far more moving than any rock ballad could ever hope to be. But beyond these compositional flexes, Montague has also found a way to transcend the average rock band’s understanding of the studio recording experience. On that track, his deft hand in the studio shows, sending notes swirling around listeners’ heads in what surely is the biggest climax in a rock song of this current decade before slamming it all back down to the bare minimum, an electric piano and a whispered hook.

Tomorrow’s Coffee is a record about finding the triumphant in the small. It’s a record about holding on to the biggest emotions in life while being worn down by monotonous and painful everyday nothings. In a way, despite its retro stylings, it’s the most ‘20s a record can possibly be– wracked with anxieties of loneliness, of destitution, of losing what little you have, of being fucked on this one and finding hope in spite of it all in the maximalist rock-and-roll of days gone by.

Michaela Montoni is a nonfiction writing student at the University of Pittsburgh, originally hailing from New York. When she's not writing, she's bruising herself attempting skateboard tricks, playing with her punk rock band, digging through bookstores for '70s pulp sci-fi paperbacks, and wandering Pittsburgh in search of good coffee.

Coco – 2 | Album Review

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First City Artists

Many bands claim to take an equitable approach to making music, but very few are able to sustain a vessel that holds space for every member to feel creatively satisfied. Some of the all-time greats have prematurely broken up due to the difficulty of keeping everyone feeling like compeers whose contributions are of equal importance to the group’s identity. One of the few contemporary examples of a band who have managed to maintain this sort of dynamic over the course of multiple decades is Dirty Projectors, who, in addition to making one of my favorite albums of the 00s, also happen to share a bandmate with Coco in their current iteration - the magnificent Maia Friedman, whose primary contributions to 2 are lead vocals and guitar.

Maia joined Dirty Projectors to support the live shows that followed their 2018 album Lamp Lit Prose. Guest collaborators and lineup changes have defined much of DP’s 20+ year existence, and the chemistry revealed during these shows, Longstreth says, inspired the formation of the band’s current lineup. This newest iteration went on to record the wonderful 5EPs in 2020—a project in which a different band member takes lead vocals for a 4-5 song chunk. The democratic approach taken in Dirty Projector’s recent work may have inspired Friedman to form Coco in the following months alongside two other indie veterans, Dan Molad of Lucius and Oliver Hill of Pavo Pavo. To no one’s surprise, the output of their collaboration oozes with the confidence and wisdom of a band who understands and confronts the challenges that come when talented artists create together, and they do this without compromising their individuality. You can hear it in their self-titled debut, and those qualities are even more profound on their bluntly titled follow-up, 2.

2 is quite clearly the result of a joint effort between three artists who each have their own rich and unique musical histories. While Maia Friedman arguably takes the lead on the majority of songs here, the band constantly takes turns on vocals and cycle through a small music store's worth of instruments - analog and digital percussion, electric and rubber bridge guitar, multiple synthesizers, a flute, a sax, and a piano. Much like Maia's recent work with Dirty Projectors, the band is constantly sharing and ceding the spotlight to each other. In following this direction, Coco sacrifice a bit of tightness and continuity, but their commitment to that organic and equitable dynamic manifests in a lovely collection of tracks that glow with live set energy and pay homage to a myriad of genres and musical themes.

Coco open the album with the grand and melancholy “Any Other Way,” an excellent intro that establishes the combo of dreamy pop melodies and loud, fuzzy electric guitar, which serves as a core tenet of Coco's identity. In case it wasn’t obvious, I’m trying really hard to avoid using the footwear-adjacent genre word right now. The singularity and effect saturation of the guitar on this song reminds me a lot of Beach House's 7, which presents me with two good opportunities - one to mention an all-time favorite band of mine and also to file a small complaint about naming your album simply "n" for whichever nth entry in a band’s discography this album represents. It doesn't negatively impact my enjoyment of the album, but we can't underestimate the power of a GREAT album title - 2 and 7 aren't exactly swinging for the fences!

Dream pop gives way to a classic trip-hop sound as Coco turn on a dime into the second track, “Moodrings,” my personal favorite single released in support of 2 (and favorite song on the album overall, for that matter). Maia’s effortless floating on these sensuous, mellow grooves calls to mind groups like Portishead or Zero 7 and really got my hopes up that this sound would be explored more deeply on this project. Sadly, it's abandoned pretty quickly as we roll into “For George,” a bossa-tinged chamber ballad that I like quite a bit, even if it wasn't more of that sweet, sweet trip-hop goodness I was hoping for. Then comes lead single “Mythological Man,” a fantastic little 60s harmonic pop cut that yet again sees Coco shifting shape, swapping seats, and refusing to be confined to any particular lane.

That first half of the album defines the experience of listening to the entirety of 2, for better or for worse. The lack of continuity and potential whiplash associated with these frequent genre changes may cause problems for some, but there’s a lot to love in the song-to-song dynamism afforded by the band’s democratic approach to songcraft. Coco have solidified that approach as part of their DNA, and they aren’t going to force any one sound if they feel like exploring. As much as I love getting wrapped up in the singular sound and atmosphere of a sonically cohesive album, I can certainly appreciate a colorful and versatile songbook made with care, love, and equity in mind, and that’s exactly what 2 is. Proof that sticking to those core values results in a vibrant and exciting future for the band, as well as a compelling collection of songs.

Parker White is a tech salesperson moonlighting as a music writer. When not attending local shows in Atlanta or digging for new tunes, he’s hosting movie nights, hiking/running, or hanging out with his beloved cat, Reba McEntire. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram @parkerdoubleyoo, and you can read other stuff he’s written over on his Substack.

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.