Sunday Cruise – The Art of Losing My Reflection | Album Review

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Lauren Records

The first time I got my heart broken, I was thirteen. I sat on the floor of my childhood bedroom with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, purple mascara flooding my cheeks, and cried to whatever sad breakup songs came up on YouTube. This would not be the last time that I felt agonizing pain after indulging in love, nor would it be the last time music became my only comfort. There is something empowering about having a soundtrack to your suffering, an energy that is difficult to pin down. Chicago indie-rock band Sunday Cruise confidently deliver that energy in their latest album, The Art of Losing My Reflection - a surf-inspired collection of pining love letters with dreamlike guitars and hooks that stick for days on end. Across twelve tracks, we are blessed with anthems of desperate adoration that convey one central message - there is an inevitability in longing, one that is ageless and incessant. At every turn of this album, I found myself faced with a million past selves, confronting the loneliness of heartache I felt from ages 13 to 25. If you’re looking for a generous rhythm section, dizzying guitars, and vocals as ethereal as the words themselves, Sunday Cruise packaged it up and tied it together with a silk bow for your consumption.

On the album’s first single, “Oh Lover, Why?” the quartet firmly established the dancy heartache that would act as the album's emotional throughline. Despite the heavily emotional topics the group explores throughout the record, the delivery is melodic and energetic enough to keep you grooving along. Everything about the music warrants jumping, dancing, and swaying. Lyrically, it begs, it pleads, it’s wrought with merciless abandonment. In spite of itself, by the end of the song, the affliction subsides into acceptance. It’s time to let the lover go and say goodbye.

Later on in the album, “Bitter” proves to be an instant classic. Lead singer Zoe Garcia dives in with deliberate exposition that seems to recall my own experience from high school - I dated a boy who lived thirty minutes away, and neither of us could drive. What the fuck do I do? “Maybe we’ll fall slowly. Maybe you’ll stay, and I won’t get so lonely.” The hopeful and dreamy lyrics are relatable beyond nostalgia - seventeen or twenty-seven, driver's license or not, sometimes you just crave ceaselessly for another person, the lingering cologne forcing you to the brink of insanity. “Bitter” delivers the waltz of wanting to run away with your lover both lyrically and musically.

The star of this album rollout is undoubtedly the music video for “Pretty Girl.” It begins with a viewer discretion warning that I thought was facetious - no, it was for sure required. It’s shot retro-style with focused lighting and floating florals that look like something Kate Bush would adore. The beginning oozes with femininity in its surface-level forms: white gloves, red roses, silk bows, you name it. The following shots delve deeper into where the video is headed with tape measures, pill bottles, and a friendship bracelet that affectionately reads “DIE.” A ballerina twirls mockingly next to a porcelain crucifix. It’s about to get real good.

I won’t spoil the ending for you because it’s something that must be experienced first-hand. Think worms, think the unattainable beauty standard, think the faceless monolith that threatens deviation from feminine expression. Heed the warning. Hold on to your teeth and fingernails.

As I kept The Art of Losing My Reflection on repeat, I couldn’t help but realize with every spin just how special this album is. It was subtle at first, something I couldn’t quite capture, but as I delved deeper into the album, lyrics, and videos, everything came together. By presenting heartbreak alongside such danceable music, Sunday Cruise perfectly encapsulated the enigma of love: the euphoric rush and the crash all at once. It came to me as I was reminded of my first girlfriend, who broke up with me on a suburban porch. I had purged from my mind the men I dated who, in retrospect, really didn’t like me that much, until the music dropped them at the forefront of my memory. The ongoing struggles of not being pretty enough or cool enough, of trying to prove that you’re even good enough- it’s all there, it’s all brutally honest, a comforting reminder that it’s all too common. The isolating feeling of unrequited love is something every single person on earth has felt. 100% of the human population have dreamt of having that one person, so close but so out of reach, finally in their arms. The extraordinary thing about this album is the way the band turns such longing into a comfortable hug. It’s okay, we’ve all been there. Here’s something to get you through it.

The Art of Losing My Reflection continues Sunday Cruise’s theme of infectious music and dire lyricism. It’s authentic, it’s beautiful, and it made me ache for the girl I once was. If my thirteen-year-old self could have heard it, she’d need a second pint of ice cream. If my fifteen-year-old self could have heard it, she would have probably made a few better friends. If my seventeen, eighteen, and twenty-two-year-old self could have heard it, she probably would have saved some wasted time from some less-than-fulfilling relationships. Until time travel exists, though, I’ll just be thankful I get to hear it now and consider it a gift - sorrow, silk bows, and all.

Sofie Green is an average music enjoyer from Milwaukee, WI. She is your biggest fan. Find her relentlessly hyping her favorite DIY bands from the Midwest and beyond at @smallsofie on Instagram and @s_ofs_ on Twitter.

Bedbug – pack your bags the sun is growing | Album Review

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Disposable America

When you’re on a long drive by yourself, it’s incredibly hard to fight boredom. In the Midwest, in particular, you can drive for hours only passing fields with no definitive qualities other than that some have cows and some don’t. After a while, this sameness can start to feel like an onslaught.

One way to combat this is to get romantic about your surroundings. You tell yourself that each field you pass, each rundown barn, each water tower, has a story. People’s dreams have, at some point, been connected to them. You’re not driving through a boring landscape; you’re traveling through a space where people live and have lived. When you bring humanity to what you're passing, you feel connected to it. It makes things more bearable. 

Bedbug’s new album, pack your bags the sun is growing, is a project that looks at the world through this lens. “I saw spirits on the highway driving home from your house,” Dylan Gamez Citron sings on the opening track “the city lights,” continuing, “built something crazy, could change it all for us, but what if there’s not much more than this.”

Throughout the rest of the album, Citron continues this kind of contemplation, connecting emotionally with abstract ideas and shapes like the sun's reflections, snowbanks, and the changing seasons. Driving, in particular, comes up a lot.

On “the great bonfire” they call dibs on shotgun before singing, “We were slow dancing cross interstate lines, we’ve done it for miles and hours pass and heaven abandons us.” In both this line and the one quoted earlier, driving is treated as meditative. It’s an act through which you can see spirits or feel a shift in the way the cosmos relate to you. 

Leaning so heavily into driving as the mode for this type of reflection is an interesting choice. We more often see feelings like this inspired by looking up at the stars or taking in the vast ocean. These more traditional catalysts for introspection can also be found in places throughout the album, but they’re never elevated as more powerful than the reflections that come from something as seemingly mundane as a drive home.

This is made even more explicit on the album’s lead single, “halo on the interstate,” where we hear the line “light refracts on the dashboard of my car, gives me halos on the interstate, the turnpike looks like heaven.” To be able to view reflections on your dashboard with the reverence one views the stars in the sky is something special. It takes an uncommon type of emotional literacy, and it’s this quality that is one of Bedbug’s biggest strengths on the record. 

Because the album is so lyrically rich, it is tempting to continue with just this type of analysis. There are so many themes that repeat throughout this record, exploring the emotional impact of living in a city and the use of sleep as a way to pass time more than to rest. To focus solely on the lyrics, though, would do pack your bags the sun is growing a disservice, as there’s so much beyond them deserving consideration. 

“the city lights” is a great opener for this record because it introduces us to Bedbug’s new sound. The track opens with Citron’s vocals over clean guitar arpeggios and pronounced bass, and while we’ve certainly heard all these things together on past Bedbug records, we’ve never heard them come through with such width and clarity. At around thirty seconds, there’s a cymbal swell, and then at around a minute, we’re hit with a prominent, real, full drum kit. 

This is the first record that Bedbug has recorded in-studio with a full band; as a whole, it feels like a step towards indie rock and away from bedroom pop (a genre Citron recently wrote a eulogy for) and a big part of this is the drums. In past Bedbug releases, the rhythm section has largely been filtered drum machines that ride along with softer vocals and guitar. That’s not the case here, with many of the songs featuring an unfiltered full kit sound from drummer Minerva Rodriguez that drives tracks forward, becoming an essential part of the mix. In particular, “The Great Bonfire!” features some great fills, and on “postcard,” it feels like a fuse has gone off when the drums kick in. This is still Bedbug; there are still the lo-fi bedroom pop qualities and great songwriting you’ve come to expect, it’s just bigger and clearer like you’re looking at Bedbug for the first time after cleaning off your glasses. 

The change in sound feels like a natural progression for Citron, who, in interviews, has made clear their love and admiration for Modest Mouse. This influence has been more lyrical than sonic on past Bedbug projects, but here, it shines through in the production, particularly of the vocals. There’s definitely some Isaac Brock, especially in spots like “Postcard,” where the full band is propelling the songs to a place where Citron can let loose and sing with an intensity we didn’t see when they were working with just fuzzy acoustic guitar over lo-fi drum machines. 

There’s a section in Citron’s genre eulogy where they talk about the newer music that apps like Spotify serve up to those searching for “bedroom pop.” This music often has the aesthetic of the genre without the ethic, sounding like, as Citron describes “studio-produced, groovy alt-pop, curated for Instagram stories and vibes TikToks.” This is a summation I don’t disagree with. There’s something uncanny valley-like about how the genre’s lo-fi qualities, largely born out of necessity, are now being mimicked by people purely trying to match a certain vibe. 

Ultimately, this sort of thing is almost inevitable as any genre evolves. From an optimistic standpoint, these developments speak to the impact that earlier bedroom pop has had on new artists who feel inspired to take parts of the genre and move in a new direction. One thing that I like about pack your bags the sun is growing is that it represents a different way that one can take these influences and evolve. It’s a record where the intimate feel and introspective lyrics of bedroom pop are expanded with grander instrumentation and higher-res production. There are certainly some fuzzy/lo-fi elements throughout the record, but the pursuit of these qualities is not what’s driving things. It’s this purity of approach that sets this album apart from a lot of the other music in this space, making pack your bags the sun is growing an impactful work worth listening to.  

Josh Ejnes is a writer and musician living in Chicago. You can keep up with his writing on music and sports on Twitter and listen to his band Cutaway Car here.

Safari Room – Time Devours All Things | Album Review

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Self-Released

I feel like an absolute goon whenever I talk about nostalgia. It seems like the last decade or so has been nothing but a series of nostalgic media assaults, one after another, all trying to grab our attention. The funny part is that it works on me every time, without fail. Perhaps this is why I’m so reticent to even talk about it. Nostalgia is such a perpetual fuel for my enjoyment of things that I tend to catch myself thinking back more often than forward. The mind will tie threads and seek connections without you even noticing it. Time Devours All Things, the third LP from Safari Room, is a latticework with fringes of 2000s alt-rock acts woven with the band’s distinct personal lyrics and history.

I wish I could really put my finger on what it is about Alec Koukol, Safari Room’s brainchild, conductor and creative engine, that seems to pull this thread of nostalgia in me. Opening track, “The Great Outdoors,” feels like it could've been a Purevolume find of mine, one I would happily blast while deciding if I should steal or pay for that one Kaiser Chiefs album. There is certainly a type of aughts rock presence that Koukol seems to be occupying, but don’t get it twisted; the album’s sound is clearly his own. 

This is not a role Koukol takes lightly, especially as changes in the band's makeup caused the project to shift away from Safari Room as a fixed unit. Instead, Koukol has been framing himself as the “ring leader of a musical circus” with a revolving cast of musicians behind him setting a solid foundation for the album's sonic journey. When many would bluster, Koukol instead winnows, while others would hard left between melodies and staccatos, he meanders right through croons and arpeggios. A troubadour navigating the inevitable march of time, and yet here, the clock's tick functions not as a device to harry and rush, but as a metronome through which the moments of the album are set and measured. 

Themes range from sad and fractious, touching on the natural conclusion to a once close relationship (“Broken Things”), the pangs of a lonely life (“You Are a Ghost”), to a thriller-tempoed takedown of spineless politicians and our failing system (“The King”). All have a unique distinction from each other, as each track on the album does, parsed out and pieced together across 38 minutes. At different times, the unshakable 2000ness of it all ebbs, and I remember I’m in the present day, listening to something that is a 2024 release, devoid of tight v-necks and dance-clap rhythms.

On songs like “Crease in the Blinds” and “Groundhog Day,” we can find Koukol erring on the mellower side of 2000s emo alt-rock ala Taking Back Sunday’s “...Slow Dance on The Inside” or New London Fire’s “Nadine.” Tracks that would be saved for night sky wandering eyes or half-glazed-over gazing out dusty windows on crisp autumn days. Yet this also is where Time Devours All Things becomes less a cultural snapshot of influences and talents and feels more like a sort of time machine. In and out of each song, the push and pull of past and present gives the listener the feeling of escaping and entering the jaws of time, like the big and little hands zipping around each other, wrapped up in its melancholic march but still marching all the same. 

Sure, there’s heartbreak and dissolution and panic and uncertainty, but ultimately, we’re all staring down the same yawning maw of eternity, whether we want to or not, and this becomes the great equalizer for us all. Despite some greener compositional moments, Koukol does seem to be figuring things out with this new band format he’s adopted, this is as promising a step in the right direction as any of his previous works with a more consistent backing band. 

A search for answers punctuated by that ever-present memento mori whisper, Time Devours All Things is grand in concept yet humble in its delivery. Through its course and narrative, the album’s subtext of dimensionality, of forward, back, here, now, the unfixable metric of time as a place, with nostalgia as a ghostly mile marker where we rest and look back on our lives while trying to process the now, offers us a faint glimpse past the familiar into oblivion.

Elias is a southern California-based music writer relishing the recent screamo renaissance in the area. You can occasionally find them bugging bands about their old forgotten projects on the podcast Not Just A Phase, where they also write reviews for the blog. Their handle @letsgetpivotal can be found across multiple social media platforms, including Instagram and Twitter.

Sheer Mag – Playing Favorites | Album Review

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Third Man Records

In September 2019, I saw Sheer Mag at Ace of Cups in Columbus, Ohio. They were sandwiched in between two much-beloved Ohio bands: Vacation and Tweens. It is a story lately told that bitches from Ohio love bitches from Ohio. This may not be unique to us, but I’ve been told by some transplants that we are more zealously committed to uplifting “Ohio” than people are about their states anywhere else. Maybe it’s flyover state imposter syndrome–maybe it’s all the chemicals in the water. So that night, a lot of folks showed up early to see Vacation (they were great, by the way). Sheer Mag went on next, and singer Tina Halladay opened the set with an anecdote from the restroom. The long and short of it was that she had overheard two other girls talking while she was in the stall; one asked the other if she was staying for the next band, and the other replied, “I don’t know. It’s just some girl and a bunch of sweaty guys.” Halladay gave the girls a shoutout: “Don’t know if you’re still here, but… just some girl and a bunch of sweaty guys? I’m sweaty, too!” They proceeded to shred.

I appreciate talented musicians who do not take themselves too seriously.

On the aptly titled Playing Favorites, Sheer Mag has taken everything great about 70s rock and roll and combined it all together into an anthemic tribute to 20th-century arena bangers. It almost feels like they’re chronicling the sound of 70s rock across the decade, starting with the reliable garage rock sound of the title track that has served them so well in the past. The further you get into the tracklist, the more lush the sounds become. “Don’t Come Lookin’” begins with a delicate acoustic introduction reminiscent of Led Zeppelin’s softer side but quickly trades that in for soaring power chords more akin to Thin Lizzy. “Moonstruck” smacks of Steve Miller Band’s playful noodling, while “Mechanical Garden” finds the band experimenting with funk guitar and bass as well as a synthesized steel drum. By the time you get to “Golden Hour,” they’ve gone full power-pop.

In the wrong hands, this 70s Saturday Night treatment could sound very muddled (and corny), so it's a testament to Sheer Mag's talent that they have managed to mix these disparate sounds together in a way that not only makes sense but feels elevated. In the hands of a lesser band, this spinning the greatest hits of the 70s, 80s, 90s, and NOW approach could wind up sounding like in-store radio, but Sheer Mag has taken these familiar tropes of popular music and turned them into something that sounds new and bold. 

While Playing Favorites may lack some of the venom of the band’s earlier work, its bigger, fuller sound reflects a certain level of growth you would want to hear from a band that’s coming up on ten years together. The most aggressive moment on the entire record appears on “Moonstruck” (a love song), where Halladay growls, “C’MON YOU SON OF A BITCH!” While that’s not exactly “if you don’t give us the ballot, expect the bayonet,” it’s still pretty satisfying.

According to the band, their move towards lighter subject matter was intentional. Per Third Man’s website, rhythm guitarist and lyricist Matt Palmer stated, “Those first four songs came out of a hard moment in life for all of us collectively—they kind of felt like an attempt to figure out how to have fun when you actually feel miserable.” In that same article, Halladay goes on to add, “Those first few records felt like a personal coming out party; they felt like they were an introduction to me and my life story. With these new songs, I feel like I’m finally able to move past that—there are parts on this record that I couldn’t imagine being able to sing ten, five, or even three years ago.”

So they wanted to make a record that was fun, and they succeeded. Playing Favorites is undoubtedly a fun record, and given the current state of things on a macro scale, who can really blame them? It's always interesting to see which way artists lean in times of global turmoil. It can be cathartic to get angry and indignant, but that's not always sustainable, and Sheer Mag have been down that road already. Sometimes, you just have to let loose. Sometimes, it's more cathartic to enjoy yourself in spite of everything. With the context Palmer and Halladay have provided, it's easy to hear the band celebrating through the misery. 

The two main themes of this record are moving on from things that no longer serve you and allowing yourself to accept the good new things that come your way (to put it in terms that would make my therapist proud). The way the tracks are sequenced feels like a very intentional way to highlight this, with many “moving on” songs in the beginning and lots of ‘what if we were happy?’ songs toward the end. There are even a few in the middle that are kind of ‘what if we moved on and were happy?’ It makes for a listening experience that is at times raucous and smarmy but also wistful and bittersweet in turn.

But above all, Playing Favorites is a party record: from start to finish, it feels like the life-cycle of a house party, from cheeky and rambunctious at the beginning of the night to sentimental and big-hearted by the end. Like downing lukewarm PBRs in a house show with no air circulation, but in a way that you'll feel nostalgic for years later. Like drunkenly oversharing with someone you barely know, only to become great friends with them by the end of the night. Like lucking into an excellent blunt rotation with a bunch of people who were basically strangers a minute ago. Like sneaking off to dimly lit rooms to make out with guys you'll either regret later or forget about entirely, but the vibes were right at the time. Like standing in an unventilated basement with wall-to-wall people to see a truly righteous band consisting of some girl and a bunch of sweaty guys who proceed to melt your face off.

Brad Walker is a writer, comedian, and storyteller from Columbus, Ohio. Find him on the World Wide Web: @bradurdaynightlive on Instagram and @bradurdaynightlive.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Thank You, I’m Sorry – Repeating Threes | EP Review

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Self-Released

I’ve always been a little scatterbrained, and growing up in an age where constant content has seeped into every crevice of my life (especially as a teenager) hasn’t exactly helped. The supposedly simple act of sitting down to watch a movie or listen to an album in full still remains difficult to a degree. Thankfully, as I’ve grown up and acknowledged the existence of this short attention span, I’ve begun to develop practices to help, like tossing all my distractions outside of arm's length (aka throwing my phone on my bed). The very nature of an EP alleviates this problem since it presents a sizable portion of work without giving you room to get distracted. This is part of the reason why I was psyched to find out about Thank You, I’m Sorry’s latest project, Repeating Threes.

Formed in 2018, the Minneapolis, MN, indie rock band has been in high gear since the release of their third full-length, Growing in Strange Places, at the end of last year. In the time since, they’ve tackled two tours that have taken the quartet across the country, all while uploading informative TikToks about life on the road and teasing new music. Their new EP, Repeating Threes, comes less than six months after their latest full-length, and it showcases the band working in a similar vein, exploring an array of new sounds and ideas.

One of the aspects of Growing in Strange Places that stood out to me was singer Colleen Dow’s genius lyricism. The main standout on this front is the early album cut “Self Improvement,” where Dow’s ironic use of the term sheds light on the darkest parts of their life. On the other end, the directness of the lyrics on songs like “Chronically Online” offer a poignant reminder to unplug from the internet and ground yourself in the real world. There’s quite a bit of instrumental variety in this album too, from the synth-tinged “Brain Empty” to the fuzzy, punk rager “Head Climbing.” The band is able to explore all these flavors of indie rock without compromising the overall sound of the album.

Repeating Threes continues the quartet’s exploratory songwriting trajectory, albeit in a more bite-sized form. Our first taste of the EP came in the form of acoustic TikTok snippets of “Sneaking Off,” which the band labeled as “the song for your childhood best friend who you had a crush on (gay).” There isn’t a single lie within this description; a throughline of longing stretches across all nine minutes and fifteen seconds of the release. The EP’s first and only single, “When I Come East,” begins with the opening lyric, “If I mailed my heart through the midwest, would you read it,” reinforcing the yearning qualities underlying the entire collection of songs.

While the TikToks present a stripped-back version of “Sneaking Off,” the EP version is anything but. The real star of this show is the guitar that comes in during the 0:45 mark, which gives a nostalgic, twinkly sound that blends perfectly with the lyrics. There’s a sweet build-up around the minute-and-a-half mark where the band lets every instrument off the leash for a wonderful crescendo before they strip things back to a moment of serenity. The final leg of the track feels distinct from the rest of the song, with a reverberating mantra of “At least you let me hold your hand” that stays with you till long after the final guitar strum.

The final track, “Car Sick,” kicks off with a centrifugal eight-strum pattern that echoes and builds throughout the song, culminating in a refrain that kicks with the power of a 1990s Mustang. If you were ever looking to open up the pit during this EP, this would be the perfect time with the bridge packing the energy and unbridled chaos of that same Mustang doing donuts in a parking lot. The track is a high note to close on for this short but sweet EP, and it’s certainly one I’m looking forward to seeing live in the future.

Within the vast realm of emo/indie/pop/dreamy music, Thank You, I’m Sorry stands out as a voice of authenticity. The songwriting exudes an unfiltered quality, almost like Repeating Threes was born out of raw emotion alone. This unbridled passion is accompanied by an eye for detail that can only come with the methodical planning and craftsmanship of people who truly care about what they’re making. Works like Repeating Threes remind me of why I fell in love with these genres of music in the first place: there is pure, unbridled excitement in the sorrow, and finding that emotional connection is a beautiful thing. 

Samuel Leon (they/he) is a playwright/actor/music lover from Brooklyn. Sam writes musical theater but not musicals. They also don’t particularly care for the internet but will use it when necessary. You can find them on Instagram @sleon.k.