worlds greatest dad – Better Luck Next Time | Album Review

SideOneDummy Records

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what we mean when we talk about a band maturing. With artists from the past, the subject is often clear cut; if you listen to Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash followed by Don’t Tell a Soul, it’s not difficult to pick out which of the two was made by kids, and when you listen to the records that came in between the two, it’s easy to see the progression that took us from one to the next. With newer bands, especially those that are still active, the conversation becomes a little more gray. In the realm of emo-adjacent music, I often see maturation used to describe a band whose newest release features fewer of the genre’s stylistic hallmarks than the one that came before it. It seems if you turn down the knob that says “emo” and turn up the knob that says “indie,” you're bound to have your record described as your most mature yet.

I don’t necessarily disagree with this assessment when I see it, but I do wish that the way bands progress was talked about more from other angles. Maturation doesn’t always present as a band becoming more stripped down or reserved. Sometimes, it can look like further commitment to a style or adding new elements without subtracting others. It can be a band growing into their identity rather than moving towards what others might think “mature” sounds like. This is the kind of maturation I thought about when listening to worlds greatest dad’s new album, Better Luck Next Time. 

Better Luck Next Time is the group’s second full-length and their first since 2018’s get well soon. A lot happened in the six years between the releases, including a lineup of Kegan Krogh, Ben Etter, and Matt Hendler coalescing around bandleader Maddie Duncan, as well as the four signing with SideOneDummy earlier this year. Despite how much time has passed, Better Luck Next Time feels like a natural sequel to get well soon, improving on what came before without moving too far away from the band’s sound. 

Where moments on get well soon caught my attention, moments on Better Luck Next Time go a step further and knock me over. Album opener “Twenty Deer” starts with a minute of wistful vocals over acoustic and slide guitar, then, suddenly, the full band enters, and you’re hit with crashing drums and a strong, luminous guitar lead. Beyond sounding huge, when the instruments come together here, they sound clear; you can hear every part and how it compliments the whole with washes of reverb and subtle synths acting as a bed for everything else to lay in. 

This balance can be found throughout the whole album and allows the guitar leads, in particular, to shine. On the intro of “Bike Song” and chorus of “Concrete (A Love Song),” the guitar is the locomotive that pulls everything along, and its placement in the mix allows for a tone that’s strong and ear-catching without being abrasive. On “Taking One for the Team,” the lead takes prominence during the first hook in a more complimentary role, still strong but deployed to dance around the main vocal line before joining up with strings and the more prominent bass of the verses. Most of these elements have been there in past worlds greatest dad releases but generally with fewer, more compressed layers. Here, we see the songwriting and arrangements bloom fully, a more substantial structure built on similar bones. 

The scale of the songs here sometimes gives Better Luck Next Time an almost stadium rock quality. “Two Birds,” in particular, is a song that feels grandiose, pairing its massive sound with one of the record’s best hooks; Duncan singing, “Cause I was watchin’ when your head fell from the clouds / And you could correct me now if I was what knocked your feet off of the ground” is something I haven’t been able to get out of my head since my first listen. Fourth single, “The Ocean,” is another song with a huge earworm chorus that feels made for radio, with the instrumentation around the hook made extra lush thanks to the more staccato sections that precede it. Sometimes, with bands in this lane, you wonder how the sound will translate to larger stages when the time comes, but that’s not a worry when listening to Better Luck Next Time. These are big songs that feel like they’re meant to be performed in front of big crowds.

One of the more reserved tracks on the album that really stuck with me was “Fakin’ a Smile.” Part of why many of the tracks on Better Luck Next Time sound so big is the masterful use of vocal doubles, reverb, and harmonies, allowing Duncan’s voice to contend with the big instrumentation surrounding it. This always sounds cool, but it’s nice on tracks like “Fakin’ A Smile,” where we hear a bit more raw vocal that highlights the pure quality of their voice. The little vocal quiver we hear as Duncan sings, “I don’t think I can get out of bed” right before the chorus is just so good; it’s the kind of vocal affect that can sound trite if overdone, but here it’s executed so perfectly that you feel it in your gut.

Continuing into that song’s chorus, we’re hit with some of my favorite lines on the album, as Duncan sings, “And I got so drunk that I turned sober / And my stomach soured over / And I felt the floor fall with me.” I don’t know that I’ve heard a more succinct distillation of the moment that you realize that you’re too drunk and the consequences that come with it, particularly when your intention for drinking was to escape or find comfort. When the realization hits that the comfort’s not coming, but you’re already deep into a bottle, it really can send you into freefall, which is described perfectly here. 

One thing that’s tough about being in your late teens and early twenties is that you often engage in these cycles of behavior but aren’t equipped to fully identify them. I don’t think lyrics or realizations like those on “Fakin’ a Smile” generally can come from someone in the early throes of young adulthood, even though they’re related to behaviors and experiences that come in that part of your life. 

I feel similarly about the lines “It wasn’t that you gave up on your dreams / But at the same time you stopped believing in me” from “Bad Neighborhood” and plenty of other sections throughout the record. So much of the lyrical content feels like it can be summed up as reckoning with the inevitable mistakes one made when they were younger, specifically the type of reckoning that can only come with some time and distance. This ultimately is one of the things that really got me thinking about maturity when I was listening through. Better Luck Next Time is an album of progression for worlds greatest dad both sonically and emotionally. It’s their most mature record yet, and also their best. 

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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.

MJ Lenderman – Manning Fireworks | Album Review

On Monday, June 24, 2024, I woke up to great news. For one, it was my birthday, and I was thrilled to be turning a supple 31 years old… but that wasn’t the news. After making sure I was sufficiently awake, my girlfriend alerted me, “MJ Lenderman dropped a new song and has an album coming out in September.” Perfect. It felt like a little gift delivered right to me. 

Together, we watched the video for “She’s Leaving You” and basked in the bummer lyrics, soaring chorus, and charismatic talent show visuals. As MJ shredded a guitar solo while his band moved around him at half-speed, the song immediately felt like yet another masterstroke in Lenderman’s already full canvas of fruitful fuck-ups and off-putting weirdos. The melody is immaculate; the instrumental is covered in a layer of grit, while the lyrics embody a type of dejected divorcee energy that you’d usually find in a Drive-By Truckers song or, at the very least, penned by someone about twice Lenderman’s age. It's not like this is MJ’s first brush with these types of broken-down boomerisms (“TV Dinners” would like a word), but even still, it’s shocking to hear sentiments like these from the mouth of someone only midway through their twenties. Above all else, “She’s Leaving You” is catchy as hell and has remained on repeat all summer long, soundtracking sunny trips to the beach, lackadaisical days in the park, and sweltering excursions into the city. It was an excellent way to start my 31st year.

Between the record’s first three singles and MJ’s contributions to the incredible new Waxahatchee record, I was fully having an MJ Lenderman Summer. Blessed with an early advance of Manning Fireworks, I waited until just the right moment to crack this LP open and enjoy it to its fullest capacity. Turns out what that looked like for me was a sweaty day in Brooklyn on the Fourth of July. After spending the morning scraping and cleaning my girlfriend's family’s grill, I escaped to Prospect Park with a beach blanket, a half-smoked joint, and my AirPods. I spent a little while walking around the busy park, taking in the swirl of conversations, volleyball games, and family get-togethers. I absorbed all the smiles of passersby and inhaled deeply, feeling the sun on my skin and relishing the smell of hot dog smoke in my lungs. I found a nice little secluded spot under a tree, laid out my blanket, and hit play to enjoy all 38 minutes and 54 seconds of Manning Fireworks uninterrupted and unimpeded. It was one of my favorite music-listening experiences I’ve ever had in my life. 

If you’ve followed this blog for long enough, you probably know I’m a bit of an MJ Freak. While I’d been following his work for a minute, it wasn’t until a fateful Fourth of July a few years ago that I found myself kicking back to Boat Songs over the course of a relaxing four-day weekend on the Oregon Coast and felt everything click. From there, I became infatuated with his country-flavored guitar fuzz, one-of-a-kind observations, and funny-ass lyrics. If he wasn’t so thoroughly North Carolinian, he felt exactly like the types of dudes I grew up with, obsessed with wrestling, Jackass, and rock music. Over time, I tended to drift more towards the dirty lo-fi stylings found on his early work, like Knockin’ and Ghost of Your Guitar Solo, but Boat Songs grew on me more and more with each listen until I considered myself a pretty hardcore MJ fan. A couple of years later, a knockout live album helped his entire body of work coalesce into one hour of personable alt-country indie rock. A patio album through and through, And The Wind (Live and Loose!) offers a quick way to get up to speed with MJ’s body of work, acting as a career-spanning already-greatest-hits that feels like both an introduction to prospective new listeners and a celebration of everything Lenderman had released up to that point.

If you’re familiar with any of the three albums or four EPs that came before this, one of the first things you might notice about Manning Fireworks is how cleanly produced these songs sound. Gone is the garage rock haze of “Tastes Just Like It Costs” and sub-fi strums of “Dan Marino,” which were oftentimes more artistic affectation than technical limitation. Also gone are the winding runtimes found on MJ’s self-titled first album, where most of the tracks clocked in around 7 minutes. On his fourth LP, virtually every song hovers around the three-minute mark, save for the ten-minute closing track, “Bark At The Moon,” and even that’s kind of cheating since it ends with a long stretch of wordless drone. To that end, I’ve found Manning Fireworks feels much more spiritually parallel to Ghost of Your Guitar Solo than Boat Songs, but maybe that’s just because both lean into Lenderman’s impulse to throw a scratchy instrumental track into the mix. 

I think it’s easy to see Manning Fireworks as less raucous and “fun” than Boat Songs, but this really is an album of halves. There’s no song as upright and victorious as “Hangover Game” or as bright-eyed and loving as “You Are Every Girl To Me,” but this record still has plenty of energy, ideas, and riffs to dole out. I also think it’s easy to lose sight of how incredibly fun each of these singles have been since they’ve been strategically doled out over the course of 14 months. 

The origins of Manning Fireworks technically started back in 2023 with the release of “Rudolph” smackdab in the middle of July. Originally positioned as a standalone single meant to accompany his signing to ANTI-, the song signaled a level-up in more ways than one. Boasting an infectious four-beat countdown and whining pedal steel, the track recounts an ill-fated meeting between the famously outcast reindeer and Lightning McQueen of Pixar’s Cars franchise. Like all great MJ songs, these pop culture references mainly serve as goofy totems the listener can grasp onto as Lenderman uses them to ladder up to a more profound point. In the case of “Rudolph,” the song mounts up to a pathetically lovestruck confession as he sings, “I wouldn't be in the seminary if I could be with you.” 

A month later, “Rudolph” was revealed to be a 7” single that gave Lenderman an excuse to revisit “Knockin,” the original version of which is, on a good day, my personal favorite MJ song. While it’s obviously different than the scrappy rendition from a couple of years prior, MJ has a history of re-recording his own material: he’s got alternate versions of “TLC Cagematch,” “SUV,” and “Tastes Like It Costs,” just to name a few. This is an artistic quirk that I like a lot; it rewards longtime fans and offers the artist a new way to interface and interpret his own work. [Fun Fact: he does just this on Manning Fireworks, turning “You Don’t Know The Shape I’m In” from a crunchy homespun groove off a Bandcamp comp into a Beat The Champ-esque waltz adorned with clarinets, upright bass, and something called a “slide bebo”]. While I initially thought this “Rudolph b/w Knockin” package was just another in a long line of these re-recordings, I actually think it was MJ tipping his hand a bit in terms of shifting away from that lo-fi sound. It’s not exactly a rejection of the original “Knockin,” but it’s a revisitation that almost implies this is how the song was always meant to be heard. Maybe it was a primer for this record; maybe it was just a send-off to that era. 

This upgraded fidelity is noticeable throughout Manning Fireworks, but not a knock against it (see what I did there?). On the contrary, this record sounds impeccable. It was recorded by Alex Farrar at Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville, NC, which currently feels like an absolute hotbed of scene-shaping indie rock. Not only have the last few MJ releases gone through Drop of Sun, but Fararr has also touched records from Wednesday, Squirrel Flower, Indigo De Souza, Hotline TNT, and Horse Jumper of Love. Drop of Sun’s output ranges in scale from local North Carolina talent like emo punks Kerosene Heights and Durham folksters Fust all the way up to indie rock household names like Angel Olsen, Snail Mail, and Plains. The place also looks incredible; I’ll drop a gallery of photos here just in case you’re as struck by the vibes as I am. 

When all’s said and done, you have a very pretty album that feels like a clearly realized version of what MJ Lenderman’s music can be when he lets his singer-songwriter tendrils unfurl. Manning Fireworks is a fairly traditional-length album that posits a familiar structure. You’ve got a slow-starting opening, a Side A that’s slammed wall-to-wall with singles and heaters, then a more introspective (but still rockin’) back half, all capped off with a meditative six minutes of feedback. I’m here for it. 

Throughout the album, Lenderman phrases his words in endlessly mystifying and charming ways. Sometimes, the thing he’s Actually Talking About feels like it’s veiled in fifteen layers of mystery; other times, it’s only ten. Pretty consistently, Lenderman is obtuse to the point where it almost feels like its own language. You can parse his phrasing in a few different ways and get vastly different interpretations. Even when he’s just singing something as commonplace as Guitar Hero, there’s a specificity to it that suggests there could be a deeper layer. Other times, it’s just meant to be funny. No matter which way you interpret it, there’s an undeniably benign beauty to a lyric like “We sat under a half-mast McDonald’s flag.” 

This is not just esotericness for esotericness’ sake. In fact, it’s all so earnest that the listener is encouraged to take it all at face value, which becomes just one possible way to read the album. Lyrics on Manning Fireworks often feel like brief little barbs or self-dispensed idioms, leaving the listener to either laugh or fill in the gaps. As soon as one line lands, the next one is already there to sweep you off into a separate thought or tasty riff. Whenever Lenderman happens to settle in and tell a story, things are gripping and compelling. They usually depict down-on-their-luck people who are pathetic to various points of return. Are they losers for life or just in that moment? Did we happen to catch them on a bad day, or is this their irredeemable day-to-day existence? On the opening title track, Lenderman depicts a guy who’s ultimately surmised to be a “jerk.” 

Some have passion
Some have purpose
You have sneakin' backstage to hound the girls in the circus

Interestingly enough, he also chooses to address this all directly to the audience, sketching this caricature while attributing every quality to you. He continues on in a biblical batch of lyrics that hit me as Father John Misty-esque on first listen. 

You’ve opened the Bible in a public place
You’ve opened the Bible to the very first page
And one of these days
It will all end
Your tired approach to original sin

As this story unfolds, the rest of the band slowly emerges behind him: guitar, drums, and a fiddle that carves its way through the mix beautifully. This track also features an upright bass and trombone courtesy of Landon George and backup vocals from Karly Hartzman. Other than a handful of assists like these, the guitar, drums, and bass found throughout Manning Fireworks were all played by Lenderman himself. Many familiar occupants of the Wednesday Cinematic Universe still appear throughout the album: you’ve got Xandy Chelmis on pedal steel, Ethan Baechtold on piano, and Colin Miller on trumpet as well as the aforementioned “slide bebo.” 

For all the talk of Lenderman’s Rorschach-like lyrics, there are moments when even Lenderman himself seems befuddled by others. At one point in “Rip Torn,” he recounts a confounding exchange

You said, “There’s men and then there’s movies.
Then there’s men and ‘Men in Black’”
You said, “There’s milkshakes and there’s smoothies.”
You always lose me when you talk like that

It’s nice to know that sometimes Lenderman gets turned around too. Usually, you’re not sure if he meant what he said to be so profound or funny, but usually, somehow, it’s both. I think the man himself addresses this pretty succinctly on “Joker Lips,” where he sings, “Please don't laugh only half of what I said was a joke / Every Catholic knows he could've been pope.”

On his early work (especially), it was easy to draw a clear connection between MJ and artists like Jason Molina. Some of that’s vocally, but a lot of it is spiritual, too. I think there are similar connections to be made between Lenderman and Neil Young, David Berman, Jim James, and Doug Martsch. Across his discography, there are in-song nods to classic rock legends like Dylan, Clapton, Zevon, and The Band, so this dude obviously knows his stuff. Even with all those reference points in mind, above all else, MJ Lenderman sounds like himself.

Nobody else could pen a line like “Kahlua shooter / DUI scooter” and deliver it like that. Only this mind could come up with, “I’ve got a houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome.” Only MJ Lenderman could write, “It falls apart / We all got work to do / It gets dark / We all got work to do” and make it sound that revelatory. The balance between these two polarities is what makes him one of my favorite songwriters to emerge this decade. 

Throughout these incredible lyrical flexes, there are a handful of artistic throughlines. Religion comes up a few times, as does romance and separation or misinterpretation. While you could read into the interpersonal stuff any type of way, I tend to think of those examples as little brush strokes that add detail to each individual character and, ultimately, MJ as a narrator. When all’s said and done, I take Manning Fireworks as a depiction and rejection of being a jerk. On “Rudolph,” the record’s lead single, MJ bemoaned

How many roads must a man walk down til he learns
He’s just a jerk who flirts with the clergy nurse til it burns?

Then, on the album’s opening track, Lenderman and Hartzman harmonize as the two sing a verse that seems to explain the record’s namesake. 

Once a perfect little baby
Who’s now a jerk
Standing close to the pyre, manning fireworks

How does one start so pure and end up so muddled? Well, the answers are infinite, and Manning Fireworks delves into but a handful of examples. To me, this record reads as a tome dedicated to documenting a select few of these journeys from a faultless point of origin to a messy, conflicted, and flawed person. The record is populated with odd people who are at once relatable and sympathetic yet ultimately feel like cautionary tales of who not to be. Sometimes, it’s an outright condemnation; most of the time, however, MJ seems content just to tell these stories and let the listener take their own interpretation away from his words. Anyone can be a jerk, but there’s much to be mined from how they got that way. 

In an interview with The Guardian earlier this year, MJ Lenderman was asked about the concept of “Dudes Rock,” a term that emerged in shitposty left-leaning spaces online whenever a man was seen doing something stupid, kinda dangerous, possibly ingenious, but mostly harmless. Over time, the phrase got obscured, watered-down, and over-used to the point where it became tired and cringey. Lenderman rejects this notion outright, explaining, “I don’t really resonate with whatever ‘dudes rock’ is. I don’t want the music to come across like it’s not inclusive to everybody – like somebody who’s not a dude.” Which is totally right. 

While that phrase was once meant to evoke carefree institutions like Jackass or, musically, bands like Japandroids, it’s since been perverted into something a tad more sinister. As astutely pointed out in his essay “The Death Of The Dude,” Jay Papandreas lays out the solitary dark side of Dudes Rock, explaining an important distinction in the namesake: “The Dude cannot rock alone. It's Dudes Rock, not Dude Rocks.”

To that end, the record wraps on “Bark At The Moon.” The song begins with Lenderman in free fall and looking for a connection.

I’ve lost my sense of humor
I’ve lost my driving range
I could really use your two cents, babe
I could really use the change

This unnamed other offers some advice in return.

You said it takes revision
You said it takes finesse
Don’t move to New York City, babe
It’s gonna change the way you dress
It’s gonna change the way you dress

After throwing up an SOS, the pair within this song splits off, with one person drinking to excess and the other hopping on a plane. “You’re in on my bit / you’re sick of the schtick / well what did you expect?” Lenderman says, sounding world-weary as ever. Our narrator goes on to detail his perceived lack of experiences, singing

I’ve never seen the Mona Lisa
I’ve never really left my room
I’ve been up too late with Guitar Hero
Playing “Bark At The Moon”
Awoooo
Bark at the moon

We’re treated to one more rippin’ guitar solo, and then the instruments crash to a stop. All that’s left is a distorted singe of feedback. As this feedback sustains, it’s almost like you’re waiting for the band to come back on stage to play an encore. The air is still abuzz with energy and noise, but then… nothing. The band doesn’t come back. Instead, the drone stretches on for a little over six minutes until the song winds to a close and we’re left with silence on the other end of the record. 

I think that’s a super bold way to end an album, and I kinda love it. At first, I thought it was just a novel way to undercut a more traditional closer. I could close my eyes and practically see Lenderman’s guitar leaned up against an amp, each squealing into the other. Then I noticed something important in the album credits. 

Not only is this drone attributed to Lenderman, but practically every other featured player on the album. Karly Hartzman, Colin Miller, Landon George, Shane McCord, and Adam McDaniel are all credited on the track. To me, that attribution acts as one of the most poignant reminders of community and togetherness. This buzz that could have been achieved by one guitar is actually the work of multiple people. Imagining all these musicians in the studio (or on stage) sustaining this feedback like the shoegaze bands of yore, all building and mounting this one sound, is really beautiful. Most importantly, and most tellingly, that all-hands-on-deck feeling of bringing in all these friends and collaborators is a far cry from the jerk we heard about at the outset of the record, standing off by himself, manning fireworks.

Cheridomingo – Shapeshift | Album Review

everybody lives!

Musical genres can be tricky. In theory, they’re a kind of shorthand used to categorize bands with vaguely similar sounds in order to help match them up with the right audience. However, the result often leaves musicians pigeon-holed into certain scenes or expectations. Sometimes, though, a band will decide to throw genre conventions out the window, finding ways to bring all of their influences together. Examples of this include emo stalwarts The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, “nü pop” favorites Cheem, and newcomers Cheridomingo here on their first full-length release, Shapeshift.

The name of the record couldn’t feel more appropriate, as the Ventura County natives spend ten songs rapidly moving between different alternative genres with clear appreciation and reverence for the music that came before them. Be prepared for a combination of pop-punk, post-hardcore, electronic, nu-metal, emo, and more. It might seem like a lot to take in, but the songs have continuity in the form of vocalist and guitarist Anthony Avina.

It’s clear that the title Shapeshift has a dual meaning, referring both to the way the band weaves together different styles as well as the themes found within Avina’s lyrics. Across the tracks, the singer runs through a list of fears and anxieties keeping him at a distance from the world around him, all written in a way that feels relatable to any listener or onlooker. The most direct example of this universality is on “/cry,” the third single off Shapeshift, which finds Avina lamenting, “If I die young or I grow old, it makes no difference / I’m afraid of where I will go after my life ends.”

Discussing the album, Avina stated that he never had someone in his life to reassure him that things would be okay, forcing him to create that person within himself. We all do this to some extent–shifting between personas we’ve developed depending on the situation we find ourselves dealing with. While those themes recur across Shapeshift, there’s plenty of lighter fare, too, like the chorus of “Limerence,” which is delivered in a melody that accurately captures the nervous energy of falling in love.

Caught on the line, reeling me into you
I’m terrified that I’d die if you tell me to

The fact that Shapeshift moves so seamlessly between styles is also a testament to the band’s musicianship and songwriting. Credit should go to lead guitarist Adam Dobrucki and production from Zach Tuch (Movements, Trash Talk, ZULU), as the guitars sound crisp and easy to define. Nothing on the record feels unnatural or disjointed, which can be a common pitfall while trying to bring this many different genres to the table. The rhythm section keeps the proceedings moving smoothly with their own moments to shine, such as bassist Alex Gonzalez’s work throughout “/cry” and how drummer Simon Beck intertwines physical drumming with electronic beats.

The catchiest song on Shapeshift is “Disconnect,” a pop-punk-post-hardcore track that brings to mind the best output of bands like Saosin or Balance and Composure. With the chorus, Cheridomingo shows that they’re capable of coming up with hooks that can stick in your head for hours on end. It’s songs like this that have the power to win over hordes of fans at live shows, so here’s hoping “Disconnect” makes regular appearances on the band’s setlist. 

Of the album’s three singles, “/cry” is a clear standout. This track brings the band’s nu-metal influences to the forefront, with elements that harken to Deftones as Avina’s effects-laden voice is heard over a thumping bass line. This mood feels like it stands in direct contrast to the more emo-tinged opener “Like A Chain” or the 2000s alt-rock found on “Peace of Mind.”

Cheridomingo even dips into straightforward pop music at points, most notably with “Get In.” which picks up immediately where “Disconnect” leaves off. The song starts off on a somber note but quickly turns into something that wouldn’t feel out of place on mainstream pop radio. Similarly, the song “Sympathy” includes sections with strong Panic! At The Disco vibes while also folding in some post-hardcore elements that bring a harder edge. 

Shapeshift is a good album with moments that are great. Avina’s vocal melodies are very strong, and together, the band has already shown they’re capable of writing quality songs across different genres. By offering so many different styles on the same record, Cheridomingo encourages listeners to keep an open mind and explore something different than they might normally listen to.

The state of music only changes through experimentation, and a lot of that happens through the blending of genres. With that in mind, if Shapeshift can be considered an experiment, it should be seen as a successful one on the part of Cheridomingo. As long as they continue to develop their style with future releases, they will undoubtedly be a band to keep an eye on.

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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.

Combat – Stay Golden | Album Review

Counter Intuitive Records

Somewhere in the back of Ottobar, I was sipping a drink with Deep Eddy's grapefruit vodka as I turned to answer my friend's question. He had tagged along with me to see Prince Daddy & the Hyena's summer tour and was asking about the local opener. The star-studded lineup included saturdays at your place, Riley!, and Carpool, but my friend was most curious about the first band on the list – Combat. I think I yelled something along the lines of “best band in Baltimore right now,” or “you wouldn’t believe their new single,” or “they’re probably going to bring the building down,” but was cut off because, at that moment, Combat crashed onto the stage. The air in the room that hung with pre-show humidity suddenly buzzed with electricity as we braced for what was coming. Within seconds of the first chord, the whole crowd was moving. 

I was really bad at physics in school, so don't quiz me on anything else, but I remember that the law of conservation of energy says that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but it can change form. I’m pretty sure that Combat’s sophomore album, Stay Golden, is sonic proof of that. Throughout the concept record, Combat bounces between speed and resonating impact, often at the turn of a lyric. Ultimately, the live wire sound keeps the momentum of the album at a thrashing high energy while the lyrics delve into insecurities, secrets, memories, and an ever-evolving outlook on the very album you’re listening to. Through meta self-analysis and music so emotive it feels impossible to capture, Combat’s latest is a legend in the making. 

After a brief piano intro, a sample from Spider-Man: Homecoming sets the tone, playing off the band’s name as a robotic Jennifer Connelly asks, “Would you like me to engage Enhanced Combat Mode?” to which an emphatic Peter Parker responds, “Enhanced Combat Mode? Yeah!” Seconds later, the band rips into the jingly cacophony of the titular “Stay Golden." which tears out in a thrash of whirlwind pop-punk. Before we get any further, I feel the need to explain the physical impact of this song. When I saw Combat in July, this song, the album’s first single, had only been out for a couple of weeks. It was received with rave reviews, appearances in 5x5 Friday grids, and apt comparisons to the wild and raucous sound of Bomb the Music Industry! But then I saw it live, and as much as I’ve tried to rework this sentence, it is impossible to describe the ferocity the band threw into this song and how much the crowd threw right back. I mean, the whole pit knew the words within a handful of days and was scrambling over each other to scream “Hey Holden!” back to the lyric’s namesake, frontman Holden Wolf. That split second pretty much explained the frenzy that Ottobar had turned into. Luckily, it’s immortalized on video here (and yes! That is the album's producer, Origami Angel's Ryland Heagy filling in on guitar, and yes! That is a Riley! cameo).

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The whole album is a sprint from there. After being drop-kicked by the title track, “Faith” feels like being punted through the air, continuing the more meta side of the album as Wolf describes writing the song you’re listening to. “Put Me In, Coach” feels like falling but never hitting the ground and keeps up the impossible breakneck speed of the album’s introductory tracks. While a brick is on the gas pedal, the jaded side of the album’s lyrical themes are put into overdrive as Wolf sardonically asks, “Do I make you lots of money?”

This stretch of songs feels like someone who doesn’t know they have telekinesis on the brink of discovering their powers by accidentally exploding their room. It’s building and building and building. This cartoon tornado of energy spirals into the aptly titled “Full Speed Ahead,” a song that climbs like you’re on a broken elevator with a cord pulling you up and then dropping you in a way that makes everything that came before it somehow feel slower by comparison. Wolf yells with such a strain in his voice that it feels like the band is using everything they have left, and it’s only the fifth song. 

After furious cymbal crashes and guitars that ricochet against each other, the front half of the album crescendos into the first 8-minute powerhouse, “Weird Ending Explained Pt. 1.” It’s chaotic. It’s a breather. It’s chilling. It’s miserable. It’s apologetic. It’s bitten. It bites back. The song is self-confident and self-referential, feeling like this album’s answer to 2022’s Text Me When You Get Back. “Weird Ending Pt. 1” gives the listener an abridged history of Combat thus far, closing a chapter mid-album while also showing the band’s cards and revealing the direction they’re taking now. The song weaves and winds, pulling together past musical motifs and forgotten chords from their catalog while the lyrics pile on top of each other, working into a building panic. The momentum picks back up when suddenly Wolf flips and describes the unending process of writing another album, jokes about using leitmotifs, and bemoans trying to stay golden despite it all. Honestly, it makes me feel silly to write that they used something like leitmotifs and recurring lyrics —  as if I walked directly into a trap. It’s yet another crack in the fourth wall of the album, a jab at what the song just did. As it slows and fades out, Combat is left standing in a kind of panopticon of their own making as they decide between expectations for the band, their future, and the audience.

From there, the album pumps the brakes, but only slightly. The blistering momentum cools down into longer songs and slower deliveries, but that doesn’t mean the raging is over. Guitars duke it out on the Prince Daddy-ish “Happy Again” and “Compound Sentences” feels like the fast-food-obsessed spiritual successor to Origami Angel’s "24 Hr Drive-Thru," but with a bit of twang thrown into the mix. Between those two songs, “Merrow Lanes” builds traction back up, using Magic the Gathering as a flexible metaphor for poking and prodding at something until it reaches perfection. To exemplify this, Wolf declares he’s “on the way to idealized far destinations” but “stuck on a freight train to Loserville.” The whole song ultimately turns against the notion of vapidly improving yourself as it repeats the cloying phrasing “you’re gonna have to do better,” mocking those who deal such flat advice while the music turns into a stampede that is sure to take the floor out of any venue they play this in. 

The energy of the final tracks oscillates between kinetic and potential. “Epic Season Finale” is a sort of pseudo-closer, pulling the self-depreciation, want, and meta sides of the album's lyrics to more forgiving heights. It soars up and sits in the same blue sky as the cover. It’s a buddy comedy of a song. Amongst the concept album framework, it has almost a final scene quality, an epic season finale if you will, one with forgotten conflict, accepted confessions, big smiles, and forever friendships.

The promised second part of “Weird Ending Explained Pt. 1” arrives to close out the album. Of the nine minutes that make up “Weird Ending Explained Pt. 2,” the first two are purely instrumental, a sturdy bass line holding it all together until the crash. If “Epic Season Finale” was the final scene, this would be the montage that plays over the credits. Much like its mid-album twin, “Weird Ending Explained Pt. 2” revisits prior melodies and themes but focuses on Stay Golden instead of prior Combat projects, all while staring directly through the hole in the 4th wall. With these meta devices in place, this song also continues to offer new perspectives on the album you're listening to as you're listening to it. One of the most jarring comes when Wolf amends "Faith," circling back to the complications of writing this particular album:

It's just getting harder
To try to get it through your skull
Sounding out your vowels and consonants
Barely make out compound sentences
George never played the upright bass
Was just a line to fill out space
With impersonal, infactual, and total witty quips.

These lyrics turn the entire album on its head, a simple glimpse at how many details and references are packed into its 40-minute runtime. The album begs to be replayed immediately, and it’s not even over yet. The quick admittance leads into the final few minutes of the song as it jumps from a fast-stepping melody into a wrenching wail, into a trumpet-laced dirge, into a last-ditch bouncy refrain, and into slowing violins that loop into the first track. 

Energy cannot be created or destroyed, but on Stay Golden, it’s entirely infinite, and this is clearly only the beginning. Back at Ottobar in July, Combat’s set ended in the same frenzy it started, with constant collisions spiraling around the room and out into the crowd. But all kinetic energy eventually has to shift back into potential; the next band must go on, we need to find the owner of whoever lost a shoe in the pit, and I need to grab a beer before the next set. 

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Caro Alt’s (she/her) favorite thing in the world is probably collecting CDs. Caro is from New Orleans, Louisiana and spends her time not sorting her CD collection even though she really, really needs to.

Ben Seretan – Allora | Album Review

Tiny Engines

I’ve gotten really into meditation this year. It’s become one of those habits that has gone beyond performative. Instead, meditation has become a practice that makes me feel better and supports my neverending human endeavor to grow in warmth, beauty, and happiness.

Ben Seretan’s Allora has also been instrumental in my spiritual development. Through its lens of a ripping, anthemic indie rock album, I find myself selfishly excited to meditate on its drone. Every song basks in the overdriven tube warmth of a guitar amp. Plucked strings and shredding leads guide listeners to Seretan’s gospel about resilience and love. A congregation of bassist Nico Hedley and drummer Dan Knishkowy backs Seretan to form a kind of garage band trinity. 

At over eight minutes, album opener “New Air” introduces his thesis as Seretan repeats, “We breathe new air for the first time.” The single is grounded by a driving bassline and groove that ascends into an explosive solo, awash in crashing cymbals and tremolo picking. Given the track’s length and droning structure, the song begs listeners to give in, let go, and enjoy the moment. In that trance, though, there is respite and rebirth, as Seretan and co. offer dynamics that allow for breathing room, processing, and gratitude. Long songs are always a risk, especially as first tracks, but despite that inherent challenge, Seretan sets the bar high right out of the gate.

If “New Air” is a meditation on rebirth, “Bend” is a sobering reflection on the compounding nature of one’s past. The lyrics-cum-poetry are memories:

flowers on the road
bending toward the sun
I will follow slowly
you were almost free
I could hear you singing
for the last time.

These flashes of imagery push Seretan to the edge with an emotional weight that is exhumed through his climatically delivered refrain: “Bending with the weight of it / what I want could fill the world up / I will bend, not break.” Similarly to how Dan “Soupy” Campbell of The Wonder Years encouraged a younger me to push through depression and apathy with the war cry “I’m not sad anymore,” Seretan encourages me now to be flexible in the face of adversity, tragedy, and grief. 

“Free” is the eight-minute tails to the head of “New Air.” Mostly instrumental and darker in tone, the track is plain and clear in a desire for liberation: “Were it that I was free / ah, free.” Although Allora is not without conflict, “Free” is the most obvious and direct. There is love and resilience and joy, but some shackles still remain. Even then, though, Seretan remains grateful on the closer, “Every Morning Is A,” where he sings, “Every morning is a / glory hallelujah.” The final song is simply those lyrics and Seretan’s now familiar guitar noodling over an organ pad. Reverbed up to heaven, you’d swear you were in a church yourself.

A skeptic myself, I had some unwelcome flashbacks to being in church in elementary and high school. In spite of the emotions that accompanied those memories, Ben Seretan’s Allora left me peaceful, hopeful, and surprisingly grateful to carry my weight because it is mine, and I will not break under it.

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Brooklyn native Joe Wasserman moonlights as an English teacher when he’s not playing bass in the LVP. Find more of his writing on Substack.