Heavenly Blue – We Have The Answer | Album Review

/

Secret Voice / Deathwish Inc.

Humanity’s search for an “answer” is a tale as old as time, with the ever-present desire to find meaning in life occupying the thoughts of countless people every day. Despite living in a world where everyone is closely connected through the means of the internet, feelings of isolation are as prevalent as ever, made worse by a global pandemic that was allowed to thrive in a dehumanizing system that continues to grow unabated. On We Have The Answer, Heavenly Blue embodies those feelings of isolation track after track, while the band also offers insight to what might be the only thing that can heal us – building true community.

We Have The Answer is Heavenly Blue’s first full-length release, but it feels much more like a culmination than a debut – in the best possible way. Some of the album’s tracks originated in the band Youth Novel, as detailed in Swim Into The Sound’s recent interview with Heavenly Blue’s guitarist Maya Chun and bassist Jon Riley. The songs here are refined, drawing on a range of 2000s screamo and post-hardcore influences to create something that sounds new and exciting. Fans of bands like Orchid, Funeral Diner, and Pg. 99 will find plenty to enjoy, along with some slightly broader influences like Converge, The Fall of Troy, and Thursday.

These 11 tracks cover a wide range of emotions, balancing chaotic aggression with more melodic sections, often within the same song. A perfect example of this dichotomy is “Certain Distance,” the longest track on the record, which features stretches of light and airy guitar interplay to break up the unrelenting force of the rest of the song. The music is accompanied by poetic lyrics similar in style to the previously mentioned Orchid, serving as one of the lighter songs on the album.

What is this impersonal plea?
I know who I am in a pinch.
I by design shatter, untwine
I stumble back and fall out again
On my own

That song gives way to “Static Voices Speak To Me,” the album’s first single. The track is short and sweet, with a catchy hook that’s rare to come by in the genre and shows the breadth of styles Heavenly Blue is taking inspiration from. It’s easy to picture crowds of screamo kids in basements and small clubs singing along to the chorus here, and the song has a sweetness that stands out amid all the aggression. “Static Voices Speak To Me” is one of the album’s highlights, serving as a stark example of the duality of despair and hope that define these songs.

Heavenly Blue’s rhythm section keeps the record moving swiftly, with the percussion on “A Part Of Me, A Part Of You” standing out as another high point. The song moves at a breakneck pace, with the frenetic drums adding an infectious energy that elevates everything else. Once again, the band straddles the line between melody and discord before transitioning to “Looming,” possibly the heaviest piece on the album. In front of blazingly heavy riffs, the band’s two vocalists take turns belting out lyrics that are fittingly grim.

I'm looming, I'm flaying, I'm hemorrhaging my time
I'm bleeding, flailing, my words all want for knives

Next is the penultimate track of We Have The Answer, “Heat Death Parade.” Here, the band slows things down at first with an intro reminiscent of something you’d hear on City of Caterpillar’s classic 2002 self-titled release. Things continue to build from there, with dual vocalists Juno Parsons and Mel Caren joined by pulsating guitars until the song culminates in a satisfying post-rock zenith. The final track, “All Of The Pieces Break,” picks up where “Heat Death Parade” leaves off, featuring a dreamy guitar melody interrupted by a heavy, repeating riff. This leads to a fittingly energetic finale for the album before it all comes to an abrupt stop.

Mixed and partially recorded by the band’s own Maya Chun, the production on We Have The Answer is clear without sounding overly polished for the genre. With layers of distorted guitar tracks winding in and out of each song, it’s easy to envision how muddled this album could sound. Instead, everything has space to breathe – except for the moments that offer cascading walls of sound as the band builds up to the album’s emotional high points.

Despite the carryovers from Youth Novel, the name change is appropriate, as the finished product sounds very distinct from the band’s previous incarnation. Though they are relatively recent arrivals on the scene, the last several years have seen the band build momentum by playing some higher-profile shows, including opening for Touché Amoré and playing New Friends Fest in 2023. In their short time as a band, Heavenly Blue has built tight bonds with other bands like Frail Body and earned support from names like Touche Amore’s Jeremy Bolm, who runs the Deathwish Inc. imprint Secret Voice, which put out We Have The Answer. The screamo genre seems to be on the rise again, and Heavenly Blue is carving out their position in the latest wave.

In speaking with members of the band and reading past interviews, it’s clear that they’re intent on building or maintaining the community aspect of DIY music. Though the music is often dark, there is still a feeling of hope underneath the surface, tied directly to the band’s focus on that community. The songs on We Have The Answer offer catharsis for the many frustrations of our current social climate, but, as promised, Heavenly Blue offers an answer. Even when music serves as a release for feelings of hopelessness, it creates bonds between people. There are moments of beauty in life, but they only come through building genuine connections with others. Make art, have conversations, and be mindful. We live in bleak times, but through our connections to each other, it is possible to build a better future.

Nick Miller is a freelance writer from Ypsilanti, Michigan, primarily writing about the world of professional wrestling. He also enjoys playing music, reading, tabletop RPGs, and logging Letterboxd entries (AKA watching movies). You can find him on X at @nickmiller4321 or on Instagram at @nickmiller5678.

ther – godzilla | Album Review

/

Julia’s War

I’m glad that Godzilla hasn’t attacked yet. The day-to-day takes enough out of us that we don’t need a Kaiju-sized monkey wrench thrown into the fray to make us shiver with exhaustion, tremble with hope, gaze with fearful awe. If there are giant monsters hiding beneath the waves, waiting to fulfill their roles as harbingers of humanity’s comeuppance, we’ve managed to create enough pain on our own that their aid hasn’t been necessary. It must be disappointing to feel so useless. Fortunately, Godzilla has always made a better symbol than destroyer.

Philadelphia’s Heather Jones, who writes and records as ther, excavates multitudes on their third LP in as many years. Ambiguity proves to be a perennial obsession in Jones’s songwriting, recurring not from a pursuit of musical both-sideism, but from lived experience and constant introspection. Nearly everything is out of our control, and it’s terrifying. Facing reality’s reverie of expectant horror rarely feels any other way. Jones implores us not to succumb to our paralysis and let it fuel our action.

godzilla reunites and rearranges the band of Philly fixtures from 2023’s a horrid whisper echoes in a palace of endless joy, orienting the instrumental palette and mixing familiar colors into new blends. Guitars spark to the forefront and land with a tidal wave of distortion. They may be newly louder and sometimes slower, but no less deliberate. Saxophone and cello appear like streaks in the sky, passing behind clouds as they placate the sun and moon. A capital-R riff is rarely the focus, but Jones and company infuse strange geometry into songs like “matthew,” letting a jagged melody cut through, grounding their anxious Biblical reflections. 

Photo by Heather Jones

Holiness isn’t delivered through scripture and sermons; Jones instead places it within the ostensibly mundane. God isn’t a hand that refuses to save until we beg for redemption. It’s in the breeze gushing through the quiet light bathing our faces (“a wish”). You can hear it in a bloodstained dog’s howls, overcome by visceral, soulless dread as it takes a cat’s life; or in the moon’s patient voice, dictating an unexpected reply (“moon ruby”). On the folky mid-LP exhale of “advil,” the consequences of a fist thrown in childhood anger paint a bluntly honest truth.

No amount of saying sorry ever made things right,
Forgiveness is a thing you earn after work and over time
And a leap that’s divine

Caverns are built around little truths — the break of day is miraculous, we’re all a bit fucked, death isn’t the end but remains an ending. godzilla’s miracle is revealed in the way that newly-acquired noise coexists with the minutiae. Like the work of Mark Rothko, all-consuming color seen from a distance reveals a topography of crags and contours up close. The balance holding every searing melody or hushed lyric together isn’t lost as they spiderweb into each other. Songs unfold with emtpiness, springtime periwinkles playing coy, never betraying the cacophony that could erupt in their final moments.

Perhaps the best example of this is “a pale horse ha ha ha ha.” Reinvented from a 2019 single, the band crafts a dirge refusing to deny the absurdity, comedy, and contradiction inherent in life itself and responds to death’s anticipated arrival in the only appropriate manner — laughing out loud. A joke shared with a knowing companion as she guides us along the Jersey turnpike feels like a more honest outcome than blissful dissolution or cold darkness. The band synchronizes their wanderings through a maze of forgotten lost-and-found truths. Jones and keyboardist Veronica Manger laugh in raptured harmony, swept away by uncertain grace and fuzzy chords. Waiting at the end is a figure dressed perhaps a bit like this, offering familiarity, a ride out of town, and no answers.

godzilla knocks firmly on the door, asking to be let in regardless of what lies behind: life, nothing, or a 400-foot monster. Jones carefully unravels the cocoon, one thread at a time, to reveal a shimmering heart, more like a distorted mirror than a revelation. There isn’t going to be a grand proclamation, a volcanic exit, or a flaming chariot in the sky. The sun will set and rise and set again, and we’ll keep holding onto what we cherish. That time you stayed up way too late with a friend, drinking soda and playing video games even though their parents told you not to, is infinitely more precious than anything heaven could say. Gravity will pull you inward, but you’ve learned to resist.

Aly Muilenburg lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she writes, records, sends emails, and more for Ear Coffee, a DIY podcast and media “entity” that she co-founded. Her writing can be found online or underground, and she can be found at home or @purityolympics.

Claire Rousay – sentiment | Album Review

/

Thrill Jockey Records

A candid voice message is the first thing a person hears when they put on Claire Rousay’s sentiment - placing the listener in a certain headspace and preparing them for the album they are about to hear. During this message, the phrase “letter to the universe” is used: an expression that feels like it captures the album as a whole: a no-holds-barred confessional work that serves, at times, as an expansive yet intimate slice of life. 

Listening to Rousay can feel like eavesdropping on a conversation you’re not supposed to hear. These ten tracks showcase our narrator’s inner thoughts in a quietly chaotic yet beautiful atmosphere. Rousay shepherds the listener through these thoughts with brutal honesty that can make them laugh, either out of humor or discomfort, or cry. It highlights the true human nature that comes as a person wrestles with emotions. 

This is something I experienced firsthand when I saw Rousay perform in Cincinnati last year. At that time, I didn’t have much experience watching drone/ambient artists live. I hoped her music would sound as massive as it does on her recordings. Across her discography, Rousay has a knack for building unique and specific worlds through her pieces, whether it’s a sprawling, 20+ minute narrative or a 2.5-minute straight-forward pop song. 

As I do at most shows, I stood toward the back and “surrendered to the flow,” but the overwhelming nature of Rousay’s performance forced me to sit on the floor. It felt like a religious experience, evoking some of the same emotional reactions that worship songs bring as they build to a climax. 

At the end of the hour-long set, I was in a kind of shock, feeling emotionally drained and moved at the same time. I was in awe of how Rousay could make everyone in the crowd feel connected and on the same playing field. Live music is an important part of my life - from first being exposed to it through weekly church services to now seeing multiple shows a month throughout the Midwest. While I get something out of every performance I witness, it’s less often that I sit back after the fact, reflecting on the majesty of what I witnessed hours, days, weeks, or even years later, realizing that what transpired on that particular night would never happen again. 

Like her live show, sentiment brings unabashed honesty and emotion in droves. Rousay uses her lyrics, as well as the music behind them, to convey a series of conflicting emotions. Through this, she brings human reality to the forefront by speaking honestly about how inner thoughts can overtake a person’s perspective, even during the best times. She speaks on how life can be nice on paper but can be marred by a darkness that makes its blatant presence known. 

That conflict can be quite relatable to the overall human experience, one that can sometimes feel uncomfortable to hear spoken out loud. I don’t think there’s a better example of this than the intro to the album, “4pm.” The spoken word track, featuring the talents of Theodore Cale Schafer, highlights the emotional thought process of what it’s like to be alone and discarded amid success. In real-time, over the song’s three minutes, the positive things happening in the narrator’s life - even the parts of life that are considered a dream come true - are dismissed, bringing that darkness front and center. 

This is hard to express for many people. Some may see the positive developments in a person’s life and not understand why they feel the way they are. This causes them to keep those dark thoughts to themselves. 

I am writing this on my iPhone, and can already tell that this text will either end up sounding like a suicide note or like some pathetic attempt at ‘being real.’

Throughout the album, this conflict is expressed multiple times: no matter how much effort is put into life - whether it’s a relationship or just the day-to-day stuff - that darkness remains. “I’m just going to fuck things up anyway,” as she starts the song “Asking For It.” 

To avoid the hurt that could come from being open and vulnerable, a facade can form, causing a person to approach relationships and the day-to-day with a “fake it until you make it” approach. Rousay touches on this subject in the song “lover’s spit plays in the background.” At one point in the Broken Social Scene-referencing song, Rousay sings…

trying to convince everyone
that im ok
when i am not
fucking ok

Through its various iterations, emo music allows musicians, artists, and people to convey their innermost thoughts in a confessional manner for others who believe no one understands how they are truly feeling. 

In the past, Rousay has dubbed her music “emo ambient,” a phrase that perfectly encapsulates this album. Through sentiment and her entire body of work, Rousay uses her platform to highlight real emotions, focusing on what most go through as part of the human experience: relationships and love. 

No matter how big or small that feeling of darkness is during a given time, all Rousay wants, and what we all want, is to be loved and connect with others. The album ends with Rousay pleading how much she wants to hear that sentiment reciprocated toward her. “It’s okay if it’s not true,” Rousay’s song “ily2” featuring Hand Habits begins. “Just say it like you mean it… I’m easy to convince.” 

sentiment serves as a level-up for Rousay, musically and emotionally. With this album, Rousay is taking the approach she brought to other releases, from the ambient masterpiece “sometimes i feel like i have no friends” to the more pop sensibilities of Never Stop Texting Me, and continuing to convey that honesty and emotion through a cohesive and compelling piece of work. 

What makes Rousay’s music stand out is that instead of a person coming to her, she comes to the listener. Through her music, she finds a way to relate to wherever they’re at. Her songs make what they feel valid and important. They bring normalcy to those complicated and conflicting emotions every human goes through, even though a person may think no one else feels the way they do. 

Isn’t that what emo music is all about?

David Gay got into journalism to write about music but is now writing news and political articles for a living in Indiana. However, when he got the chance to jump back into the music world, he took it. David can be found on Twitter and Instagram at @DavidGayNews. (Just expect a lot of posts about jam bands.)

Garden Home – Garden Home | Album Review

/

Thumbs Up Records

Somewhere between Chicago, Illinois, and the Twin Cities of Minnesota lies Milwaukee. It’s an hour and some change between Madison and Lambeau Field, aka the Two State Capitals of Wisconsin. Situated on the gorgeous shore of Lake Michigan, perhaps unassumingly, Milwaukee is a small-market city with some big bragging rights, namely Giannis Antetokounmpo, Miller High Life, and four-piece post-hardcore screamo project Garden Home. 

After several years of impatient waiting, the band has graciously delivered their self-titled debut album to fans and followers alike. Preceded by two incredible EPs from 2019 and 2021, the anticipation surrounding Garden Home’s LP has been steadily growing - and MAN, was it worth the wait. The quartet’s first release, Disposable, introduced their sound with full force, a perfect five-song articulation of their post-hardcore sound and emotionally gritty lyricism. The band’s second EP, Postmortem, further developed their craft and includes a nod to a fantasy every Midwesterner has considered at some point – driving your car into Lake Michigan. 

If you’re no stranger to these shores, you already know Garden Home is not for the weak of heart, though they produce music for the weak-hearted. Thematically, their lyrics steer directly into the hopelessness of being alive, and their self-titled record is no different. Garden Home keeps this promise alive by giving us emotionally depressed types a glimmer of hope across eight beautiful tracks and twenty-three glorious minutes. The album is truly the gift we Milwaukeeans have all been waiting for – and if you’re new here, welcome to the 414. We’re thrilled to have you.

The album wastes absolutely no time delving right into the hard shit. “Right by Me” opens the proceedings up with immediate candor and vulnerability as vocalist Dylan Mazurkiewicz speaks about the chaos of personal weakness. Within seconds, we’re treated to the full Garden Home experience, a true display of the band’s exemplary musicianship and songwriting right off the cuff. They inundate us with the thematic concept of the album - to be human is to know love, hate, unbridled rage, and the depths of emotion. This brutal honesty is emblematic of companionship, its upswings and downfalls, and everything in between. The lyrics foster this connection with metaphors of daggers and compasses – a hand and an object acting together as one, for better or for worse. This idea remains constant throughout every song, yet it never becomes stale and never grows tiresome. Garden Home capture humanity in a flawless and sprawling way, showing that we can feel the same hundred emotions in one million completely different ways. For at least half of them, there is something on this album to be your anthem.

Remember when I said earlier that Garden Home isn’t for the weak of heart? Remember when I said they waste absolutely no time getting right to the point? The perfect example of this exists on track three, “Grim,” which delivers infectious drums, a haunting riff, and the promise of a looming reaper that will carry you through the afterlife. There’s a simultaneous comfort and agony in the inevitability of grief and loss. You can feel the unfairness, the rage, the reckoning within the track. The lyrics provide comfort that pairs with this questioning of the afterlife, displaying death as a familiar friend while still wondering where it will take us. Images of nature and wind ground us in the Earthly realm and the comforting notion that our deceased loved ones stay present through the joy of those surrounding us. 

What got me wasn’t just the song itself but the band’s decision to close the track with a snippet of a voicemail. Anyone who has lost a loved one can confirm that there is a perpetual desperation to hear their voice again. When my father passed in 2017, I called his phone every day just to hear his voicemail prompting me to leave a message. I’d pretend he was teaching a class or on the golf course, anything to hold off on the reality that he was gone. I called every day until the phone company disconnected his number. The agony is in remembering that painful detail of my life, but the comfort is knowing that there is something I can turn to every time I feel it creeping up again.

The three singles released from the album, “Not Today,” “Past Life,” and “The Worst of It,” each have been garnering high praise and feeding into the brimming anticipation for the album’s arrival. The trio of songs chosen to represent the band’s debut could not have been more perfectly articulate. “Not Today” is an ode to regretfulness, a screaming apology for being unworthy of someone who deserves more than what you can offer. “Past Life” promises forgiveness for a past self who neglected to live to their potential and succumbed to their own sadness. It pleads that this life, though futile at times, is worth living and there’s always something to stay alive for. “The Worst of It” is a narration of that life, about witnessing a world that unravels around you and the growing impulse to give up - yet to feel such pain is to experience the willingness to persist through it. Together, the singles spin the hopeless and simultaneously sanguine tale of life. The darkness gives way to light, and it's worth it to kick and scream and fight your way through to it. 

Through these singles, Garden Home created an extraordinary momentum without giving too much away, and the reception has been awe-inspiring. These songs provoke such vulnerability, toying with the darkness of human emotion while still remaining encouraging and uplifting by promoting love, kindness, growth, and healing at the core - and everyone feels like that? It’s not just me grappling with my own struggles of my past, present, and future… and it’s not just you, either. Garden Home have single-handedly bridged the gap between this mentality that you’re alone in what you feel, at a time where everything can feel so damn isolating and so fucking unfair. The album is a call for community and friendship, reflecting what the MKE scene is all about.

Milwaukee is often referred to (quite unlovingly) as a Chicago Suburb. In recent years, however, the Southeastern Wisconsin city has witnessed a renaissance of sorts regarding the arts and music scene. There are street festivals that feature local creatives of every kind in all seasons, notably Summer Soulstice and Locust Street Festival as summertime staples and Mittenfest as a beloved winter Bay View tradition. Shows with all-local band bills are selling out on random weekdays, with no presales, and all walk-ups. 

Garden Home’s self-titled has earned its flowers amidst its home-grown accomplishments. This record is a labor of love from the band members themselves, to the album art, to the label, to the production, extending all the way to the fans who make up the hometown scene. The band itself is made up of some supremely talented and experienced individuals - this isn’t anyone’s first rodeo. They’re releasing this debut on local MKE label Thumbs Up Records, which boasts bands from Milwaukee, the Midwest, and beyond. Cody Ratley produced the album and is no stranger to the Milwaukee scene. Other local contributors include Justin Perkins of Mystery Room Mastering, with local artist Lee Behm and photographer Samer Ghani handling the album art. The release show is taking place on April 19th at Cactus Club, a massively renowned community arts hub that has its own growing list of positive impacts upon the city. Garden Home is a project with such deep roots in the MKE scene, and the efforts will never go unnoticed. This is all to say that every single person involved in the creation of this album has added to the city's inspiring legacy. If you’ve been sleeping on the Good Land, Garden Home came to wake you up with a shoulder to cry on, and it bears repeating - Welcome to Milwaukee, we’ve been waiting for you.

Sofie Green is an average music enjoyer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is your biggest fan (and she cried while she wrote this). Find her relentlessly hyping her favorite DIY bands from the Midwest and beyond at @smallsofie on Instagram and @s_ofs_ on Twitter.

Ekko Astral – pink balloons | Album Review

/

Topshelf Records 

As a trans woman, I spent the first 24 years of my life walking through a security line, checking for deviances from the norm in my performance of masculinity. When you spend every day questioning whether you fit in, you mistrust whether you know who you are. I had not heard a record capture these feelings more concretely until pink balloons by Ekko Astral. Throughout the album’s 36-minute runtime, frontwoman Jael Holzman lays out the issues trans people are forced to grapple with over a wall of noisy post-punk.

Ekko Astral hails from our nation's capital and has formed a nice little cult on the strength of their first excellent EP, QUARTZ, and a stellar live show, which, after I saw it once, drove me to travel to DC just to see again. QUARTZ was an incredible first document, full of moments that inspire desperate sing-alongs, like the brilliant kiss-off to the male gaze, “EAT OFF MY CHEST (WHILE I STARE AT THE CAMERA),” or tracks like “1000 DEGREES” that contrasts the ferocity with an ethereal dream of a blissfully content life.

But pink balloons takes everything magnificent about QUARTZ and allows the band to stretch out their sound and mutate. Where there was once space in the mix of “YXI,” newer songs like “head empty blues” immediately present a more claustrophobic sound, filling the mix in with two additional guitars. Holzman’s lyrics on “THE MIRROR IS A MONSTER” were already semi-surrealist, but now it feels like they have been infested with Twitter brainworms when she sings, “my brain’s bust like / molly shannon / just shoot me out a cannon / and as I hit / open my head / can you see it? / nothing’s there!” 

I love the ways Holzman hysterically details the experience of endless dates on “uwu type beat” with lines like “baskets of fries / empty suit guys” and “he skipped just one of her episodes / and now he’s completely lost the plot / he’s going gone.” One track later, “on brand” finds her desperate for love when she sings, “she’s lefty loosey / but the right guy could / make her swing right tho.” The whole record is full of brilliant lines that I have wanted to steal and tweet myself ever since I first pressed play, like the cry against consumerism, “spending all my money on a mass hysteria,” or the crazy rhyme of “you’re running thru the aisles / drinking taco bell mild / credence clearwater revival / just another two-week trial.” 

The humor and linguistic creativity in Holzman’s lyrics make the moments of directness feel even more impactful. We see these dynamics at play most distinctly on “devorah” with how the Taco Bell couplet immediately follows Holzman excoriating Congress people for compartmentalizing issues into simple acronyms on the lines “I’ve got solidarity with all the missing murdered people! / I’ve got solidarity! / Do you solidarity?” She expands the acronym used on the hill for Missing or Murdered Indigenous People to remind us that these issues aren’t just talking points. Holzman’s plea of “nothing’s funny anymore” on the coda of “sticks and stones” reminds me of fellow DC punk Ian Mackaye’s call of “irony is the refuge of the educated” on “Facet Squared.” We have to engage in the issues of our time instead of avoiding them with artifice.

The most impactful moment of the record for me rests in the chorus of lead single “baethoven.” Holzman’s cries of “the pain of being myself” are layered one on top of each other to the point of being nearly incoherent as the rhythm section hammers an icepick through your eye socket. The loudest critic of my transition has always been the dysphoric thoughts that rush into my head when I look at myself in the mirror and notice all the things, like my brow ridge or beard shadow, that make my brain deny my femininity. That is “the pain of being myself,” and it is fucking overwhelming. 

My favorite moment comes with the gentle, guitar-only ballad “make me young.” Bassist Guinevere Tully takes lead vocals for this track, delivering the line “all those things I thought I was / got muddled with what I’ve become,” which captures the dual reality of transness: being happy with existing truly while perpetually yearning for more. When Tully sings, “Yeah I know these thoughts / shouldn’t drive me insane / but they do / oh it does,” I’m reminded of how it feels to agonize over the fact that I didn’t start transitioning earlier. How hearing Transgender Dysphoria Blues didn’t make everything click for me. “make me young” may be the easiest track to digest aesthetically, but that’s only there to lull you into a false sense of security. This song will break you. 

“make me young” is meant to destabilize you in terms of sequencing as well, as its jangly guitars immediately follow the haunting, skeletal beat of “somewhere at the bottom of the river between l’enfant and eastern market.” The echo of “I can see you shifting in your seat” that opens the record finds its source here in a spoken word passage about how cis people shy away from facing the realities we trans people experience. They want to ignore the fact that “lots of us don’t make it home.” The impact of politics is material in our lives, and we need cis people to understand the fact that “if you walk through a cemetery / you’ll pass people buried under gravestones of strangers.” To sit uncomfortably and do nothing is complicity. Or, as Holzman says, “I have friends still hiding while you throw a parade.” 

The most euphoric moment on this record comes at the very end. Closing track “i90” starts with three minutes of simmering, tension-building solo guitar that calls to mind how IDLES ended their first record with a lament. In the second verse, Holzman is joined, for the first time all record, in solidarity by another voice, Josaleigh Pollett’s. When the tension finally gets to be too much, the rest of the band syncs up with Holzman and Pollett belting out a repeated plea of “low rider / hang em higher / keep the rhythm.” After a record detailing the trials and tribulations of transitioning, this is a plea for you to survive. “i90” is not a triumphant end to the record, but it is a true one. Until we can burn this whole thing down and build a new world in our image, all you can do is keep the rhythm and, God, stay alive, please.

Lillian Weber is a fake librarian in NYC. She writes about gender, music, and other inane thoughts on her substack, all my selves aligned. You can follow her burner account on Twitter @Lilymweber