Hey, ily! – Hey, I Loathe You! | Album Review

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Lonely Ghost Records

Spending my formative years under the sheltered, religious eye of Seventh-day Adventism, the music I consumed as a child extended almost exclusively to contemporary Christian music and pre-approved classic rock songs. While growing up with divorced parents resulted in some unapproved secular music slipping through the cracks, the floodgates didn’t entirely open until my brother and I received the first two Guitar Hero games one fateful Christmas in 2006. Those games were vital in sculpting my adolescent music tastes primarily because they exposed me to songs that weren’t strictly religious or classic rock, but also due to the sheer variety of music across their combined 111 song tracklists. Variety was – and continues to be – the crux of my music tastes. Due to insecurities surrounding my sheltered upbringing, I’ve always gravitated towards bands and artists who themselves do not stick to just one specific genre. Yet, despite how vital the Guitar Hero series was in influencing my tastes, their soundtracks weren't the only thing broadening my musical horizons. 

Arguably more important than my exposure to iconic, mid-2000s rhythm games was being in my teen years during the era of Pandora, before Spotify had a chokehold on music streaming. Specifically, it was a custom radio station based on Say Anything – my favorite band at the time – that truly cemented my early tastes. This station reached beyond the scope of alternative, fostering my love for synth-heavy music via artists like Motion City Soundtrack and the Postal Service while acting as a crash course for the pop-punk and emo bands whose merch lined the shelves of my local Hot Topic store. In tandem with these early Pandora days, I was falling deeply and irreversibly in love with the soundtracks of my favorite video games like Kingdom Hearts and Sonic Adventure 2, along with the kickass opening themes of the animated shows I voraciously consumed – notably Full Metal Alchemist and Teen Titans.

I often think about how I relate to myself and the world around me via the media and art I engage with, and since the advent of social media, that has extended to how I relate to the internet as well. In their recently released sophomore album, Hey, I Loathe You!, Montana-based quintet Hey, ily! navigate their relationships with themselves and others primarily through the lens of the internet age. They expertly weave together 11 songs across 35 jam-packed minutes through a beautiful marriage of music heavily inspired by their favorite “traditional” genres, such as jazz and 80s glam, as well as various digital sub-genres and anime intro themes from the last two decades. 

The first track on the album, “The Impending Dissolve of Hey, ily!,” immediately sets the expectations for instrumentation high with its buttery synth melodies and monstrous breakdowns. Tracks like “Wind-Up Toy” and “Dev Hell” similarly pack a mighty digital punch with electronic screams, guttural croaks, and devious keyboard licks straight out of a fight scene in your favorite anime or video game.

Beyond its impressive musicality, Hey, ily! maintain a throughline of human connection across the record, particularly concerning how we relate ourselves to others. Tracks like “Is Worry” and “Wind-Up Toy” touch on how hard it can be to see someone you care about suffer, to realize that having worries for them is to love them, while also understanding that you can’t save everyone, especially from themselves. “Pass The Body Dysmorphia, Please!” hits particularly close to home, navigating the familiar feelings of seeing yourself differently than how the world views you. Similarly, the themes in “(Dis)Connected” touch on how social media is just one giant vacuum of presenting only a deliberately manufactured version of yourself and avoiding the urge to spill your guts to a group of faceless individuals every chance you get. There’s an inherent danger in forging your identity around strangers’ perceptions of you and separating that from how you view yourself. 

The latter portion of the record is particularly impressive in the way it ties together its thesis – how we need to face our problems and fears head-on or risk drifting through the numb nothingness of despair. Over the past several years, there’s been this heavy, almost lethal combination of becoming desensitized by the news and media, a desire to cope via simple pleasures, and a refusal to interact with the growing problems we face. Now more than ever, it’s crucial to make yourself feel everything.  “whenicouldstillfeel” is devoid of lyrics beyond the song’s title, yet the somber atmosphere created by the acoustic guitar and cavernous production drifts gorgeously into “Head Like a Zombie,” which nails home the feeling of disconnection and passiveness through unconcerned guitar chords and lackadaisical drum beats. 

The specific strength of Hey, I Loathe You! lies in its ability to alter and guide emotion equally through its lyrical content as well as the avant-garde musicality and its myriad tonal shifts. While I wouldn't necessarily categorize it as a “concept album,” it has a strong connective tissue that I can’t help but liken to progressive rock acts like Coheed and Cambria, specifically in the way each song flows to the next. There is an inherent sense of where everything is going, and even when the music feels haphazard and off-the-cuff, like the jazz sensibilities in the finale of “Head Like A Zombie,” there is a clear vision for where the band wants to navigate you emotionally in response to the music. It’s ingenious how Hey, ily! has fleshed out the almost nostalgic musicality of this album while the lyrics are literally screaming at you to face your problems – to not merely cope with them or push them deeper.

It's always refreshing to listen to an album that makes me feel connected to my past without feeling cloying or predatory. Like many of my music-adjacent peers these days, I listen to a hefty amount of new music, but it doesn’t always stick. Hey, ily! have delivered a dynamic, impressively-paced collection of songs that make me feel connected to my younger self and the art that has formed my identity yet challenges me with every tonal shift and instrumental excursion. There are plenty of triumphant highs and melancholic, pensive lows to go around – and the layout of those specific emotions could not be more deftly structured and plotted out. With each successive listen, I’m increasingly confident that this album – and Hey, ily! as a band – will not be lost in the stampede of constant music releases. Hey, I Loathe You! exudes the qualities needed to stake its place in the great alternative releases of the 2020s, and I could not be more anticipatory of what’s next for (the optimistically-not-dissolving) Hey, ily!

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

Peel Dream Magazine – Rose Main Reading Room | Album Review

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Topshelf Records

NYC’s Peel Dream Magazine dives into a personal exploration of their mind and surroundings with their fourth studio album, Rose Main Reading Room. This record invites listeners into a world where the ordinary becomes extraordinary, effortlessly merging themes of wistful reminiscence with an exploration of mundane hidden beauty. These themes all collide within the backdrop of various locales in New York City, which evoked specific memories both there and back home where I attempted to find the corresponding LA parallels of these feelings. 

Opening track, “Dawn,” starts off as a hypnotic morning ritual. The lyrics repeat, “Comb your hair, comb your hair, wash your face / Find your keys, find your keys, grab your coat,” but change tempo throughout until it reaches a crescendo that transports you from a cozy indoor space into the woodsy “Central Park West.” This seamless flow from track to track is present throughout the album and helps envelop the listener in the world that the band is building. Many of the melodies used in these tracks felt eerily familiar, almost as if they were taken straight from mid-2000s loading screens or commercial jingles, several of which managed to wriggle their way into my brain even after the first listen. 

The one track that stood out and kept coming back to take up the radio waves in my brain was “Oblast,” a track that is self-described as “cheekily prodding at mutually assured destruction.” With a chorus that rings a lover's hope and promise, “You could live for me, I could live for you, we could live for we,” is practically guaranteed to remain stuck in your head hours after you first hear it. That track bounces from a deep, bassy punch to a melodic chorus that makes the words sound angelic in the middle of it all. On a similar note, the track “I Wasn’t Made for War” feels like a direct follow-up to “Oblast,” tackling ideas of everyone around wanting more glory, whether it be wealth or power, all the while the protagonist of this song just feels lucky to have their partner. Despite how doom-and-gloom that may sound, the track feels bright and cheery, giving me a vibe similar to the more upbeat songs on Postal Service’s Give Up. 

In the realm of comparisons, I also felt a lot of inspiration on certain tracks, such as those where vocalist Olivia Babuka Black sounds similar to other artists like Slow Pulp, Pearl & The Oysters, and Healing Gems, to name a few. This rings especially true on “Wish You Well,” which felt like it could have been plucked from a Slow Pulp record just listening to the vocals alone. Using the same soft and contemplative voice, Babuka Black also excels in the track “Lie In the Gutter,” which I found to be my favorite of the album. With a mix of sprechgesang and an accompaniment of cosmic loungey drone sound, the track tackles the theme of a relationship where – though things may be difficult in their respective lives – inside the walls of their shared space, they feel as safe as can be. The last line really rings true and captures the simple yet powerful songwriting the group possesses as they sing, “Lie in the Gutter, stare at the stars / Millions of light years, all of them ours / A fountain of wisdom, a kink in the system / Essential to all our belief / Lie in the gutter, and stare up there with me,” and that just captures such a strong feeling of finding hope when all else is hopeless.

The more I listen to this album, the more I find comparisons that I want to keep making and find different moments of inspiration the group may have had while producing this record. Going from a folkish Yo La Tengo vibe in some tracks to a Beach House-esque tone in others, the record is given a chance to shine on all these different fronts at different intervals. The dreaminess was extremely present in their instrumental tracks like “Gems and Minerals” and “Migratory Patterns,” though I sometimes felt like the lullaby-esque qualities of those songs may steer some folks away at first listen. Even the lyrical content keeps jumping out at you, with the album title referencing the room in the New York Public Library, which is extremely fitting to the nature of this album. 

Ultimately, Rose Main Reading Room serves as a compelling snapshot of Peel Dream Magazine’s artistic journey, skillfully capturing the tension between familiarity and innovation. The album’s charm lies in its ability to evoke a sense of familiarity and comfort while also experimenting with a soundscape that mixes a blend of electronic and acoustic elements. From the very first notes of “Dawn,” the album swept me away, creating a captivating realm where time seems to stand still, and reality gently fades into the background to the gentle lullaby of “Counting Sheep” that serves as the perfect way to close the album out. The album itself sets you down and guides you through a walk in the park, a subway ride, to lunch, and everywhere in between. I felt really captivated by the grounding name drops of real locations sprinkled throughout, which gave me a sense of connection to the piece. 

As Peel Dream Magazine navigates their sonic landscape, they provide listeners with a well-crafted, reflective experience that shines particularly well in its more introspective moments. While it might not push the boundaries of the genre, it’s a rewarding listen for those who cherish a thoughtfully constructed and immersive musical experience. Reading into each track a little more, I find that under the lush soundscapes, there’s so much to be pieced together as you uncover where certain concepts lay. There are lofty ideas to be had here from stagnation and questions about life or death to just the trouble of getting out of bed. Despite the bleak and foreboding atmosphere some of these topics carry, the band holds up love as a solution, showing how good it can feel to have someone there to catch you from a spiral and keep you grounded. As the album closes, the words “Don’t worry” end each line, which feels like an apt message to leave the listener with: that everything is and will be okay. 

Based in LA, I’m a full-time music-head immersed in the vibrant world of psychedelic music and anything else that falls into my headphones that week. When I’m not listening to music, you’ll find me watching random movies or talking about baseball or Arsenal Football Club. To see whatever my current music obsession is or hear any of my sports takes, follow me on Twitter or Instagram.

Charlie Kaplan – Eternal Repeater | Album Review

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Glamour Gowns

In the months leading up to my wedding day, on numerous occasions, people would come up and tell me how difficult marriage is. It's one of a handful of clichés that you say to a young person before their wedding day—a “happy wife, happy life” type beat. My wife Morgan and I became friends in middle school, started dating our senior year of high school, dated long-distance through college, and got married quickly after graduating. We had been in each other’s lives long enough to know that we didn't have to heed the old folks’ warnings. Our marriage was going to be easy.

Morgan and I have been getting into the same heated argument for the last eight years. It's the one where I want to buy a project car, and she has not yet found our stage of life to be one that includes a project car. This difference in automotive opinion has been a frequent source of friction in our relationship. Isn't that so dumb? I love it. The project car argument has been a consistent figure in our relationship. A cyclical feature that will subside and then eventually boil up in me, overflowing into friction and repeating endlessly. Our most recent project car argument also happened to be the day I first listened to my advance of Charlie Kaplan’s third album, Eternal Repeater, and now I can't seem to dissociate the two from each other.

Eternal Repeater tells tales of human brokenness with a gentle enough touch that you don't have to be brought down into the muck to see it clearly. It is a nuanced and fun nine-track album that can be sat with and mulled over or just as easily be turned on while you and your buddies play pool in the garage. The minute-long solo guitar instrumental “Sun Come Up” leads the tracklist and spends most of its time ominously hopscotching from side to side, giving me whiffs of the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack. The bridge of the song is full of hope though and acts as an answer to the questions posed by the notes preceding it. This introductory track ends with a sustained note that salves the dissonance created. In just 66 seconds, it acts as a perfect representation of the album that follows and of the human experience that will exist outside of the world Kaplan created. The second song, “Everyone Calling Your Name,” reminds me of a thought that I've had many times when considering how to interact with Morgan as Kaplan sings,

Not much has changed
Everyone’s playing the game
So I’m getting out of my way
We all have a price we have to pay

I have often thought that the best way to love Morgan would be to defer to her, to take the path of least resistance. Through some wonderful therapy sessions, I have learned that this is not correct. I have learned that the most loving way I can consider her in my life is to express my true feelings in all instances and for us to work through differences, thoughtfully and carefully, together. 

The album’s lead single, “Cloudburst,” is a pandemic-written song of contradiction and simple beauty. It starts with a twinkling piano that gave me immediate chills and made me wish I was watching Charlie perform it live. The song evokes the repetitive days of being at school in Colorado while Morgan was at nursing school back in Texas. During those days, I know I experienced unique interactions with the people I loved in Boulder, but looking back, it is so easy to lump it all together into a period defined by being away from Morgan in contrast to the collective weekends when we would visit each other. Years of complexity summarized through lazy memory into black or white juxtapositions of whether we were in the same room or not. But that time was still special. It was full of wonderful relationships and important experiences that I treasure, yet it is so easy for me to reduce all of that to a time of longing to be where I wasn't. This is what “Cloudburst” is for me. It reduces a period of time into a singular moment, defined by that hard-to-ignore feeling, but I think it is important to try and hold onto the nuance of times that made up that whole section of my life—the good and the bad that happened. 

Past other singles like “Mescarole” and “Edie Got Away,” the last three songs of the album form a collective sonic and thematic peak. The self-talk in “Idiot” was confusing for me at first, but through numerous listens, it became a place of comfort against my failings as a partner and in the ways I have disappointed myself over the years. It reminds us that how we fail can also be proof of our possibility to succeed. “Now That I’m Older” reminds me that I am the one who is in control of my own cyclical downfalls. The project car argument keeps happening because I continue to approach the topic without care. I am pulling the same lever over and over again, expecting a different result. A part of me must not think that her feelings about it are valid enough to stop me from trying.

We are about to have our first child. A daughter. Maybe this next phase of marriage is that difficult part that they were telling us about. Maybe this next part will change our marriage and put some truth to the warnings we were given. The final song on Eternal Repeater, “In a Little Bit of Time,” is much more bombastic than the songs that preceded it, especially from the album opener. It is brash and aggressive, but the lyrics hold the same softness as all the rest. I have no clue what is coming for Morgan and me in these next years, but I know that I'll be able to pull more from this album as I grow older and learn more about myself and the world. 

I believe that people are innately good. We have all witnessed and been party to the brokenness of humanity. Charlie Kaplan thoroughly exposes this brokenness and, in the midst of it, reminds us of the great potential for good that still exists. We are able to learn and improve and break the cycles that break trust and burden our most prized relationships. Our marriage is easy, our problems are real, and although I am an idiot, I will continue to become a better friend as I get older. 

Kirby Kluth grew up in the suburbs of Houston but now lives in Knoxville, TN. He spends his time thinking about motorcycles, tennis, and music. You can follow him on Instagram @kirbykluth.

Wild Pink – Dulling the Horns | Album Review

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Fire Talk

If I wanted to place Dulling the Horns in a box, I could label it with the phrase “back-to-basics.” However, I don’t want to do that. The fifth LP from Wild Pink is rougher and rowdier than the band has ever sounded before, an advancement and experiment for John Ross and company. Extensive touring in the wake of ILYSM, the band’s collaboration-heavy shot at the moon, honed their edges into jagged spikes; those extremities were subsequently reigned into the controlled chaos of the mile-a-minute word tumble of “Eating the Egg Whole” and the sludgy canine declarations of love on “Bonnie One.” The sound of Dulling the Horns is mostly three or four people playing live in a room together, pushing against world-weariness with begrudging energy and resolve. 

Album opener and lead single “The Fences of Stonehenge” finds Ross reprehensive and reflective. Years of writing and touring have threatened to overwhelm the ridge of light that beckoned in the first place. Ramshackle guitars never quite drown out the ambiguity in a pointed question like “Do you still believe it?” In fact, directness drives the song out of the static and into a Petty-via-Young barn-burner. The terrain is harsher once you’ve abandoned the main course, but there is freedom in the abandonment. The thunder still looms heavy over the horizon, so why not take a detour? You can hop the chainlink barriers encircling the megalithic structure and get a little closer to the wonder, even if it gets you into a mess. Never let your stupid ass stop searching.

There are moments on the album reminiscent of another winding, fuzz-laden record made by a band of New Yorkers — Ben Seretan’s Allora. Both songwriters’ core curiosities aren’t sacrificed in the quest towards august straightforwardness and loud amps. The ragged distortion found on all ten tracks of Dulling the Horns doesn’t come at the cost of the esoteric non-sequiturs or stark emotions that flow through Ross’ lyrics. Light doesn’t stop shining in when the clouds roll in. The crescendoing ambition of Wild Pink’s music, from the scrappiness of the self-titled debut to the wind-swept wonder of A Billion Little Lights, is turned back into itself, given a more familiar, classic rock-indebted musical landscape to inhabit, one that still possesses the same crags and biting cold, glimmering stars and lurching valleys, sun and moon.

“Dracula was a Catholic, too, in fact,” Ross sings of the vampirian prince and his orthodoxy late on Dulling the Horns. Fraying and warm saxophone dances with plinking bells around this declaration of someone else’s faith. Perhaps only a takeaway line on another song, it provides “Catholic Dracula” with its title, packing a multitude of worries into a single bar about a single bat. Even the all-powerful Vlad the Impaler (not as prone to blood-sucking as his fictional counterpart) feared God and death, felt guilt, and raged against his shortcomings. Without reading further into the fanged one’s faith, he is humanized by Ross. A straight yet blurry line is drawn between the prevalent Catholic “imagery of suffering” and Dracula’s “later work” as a pole-sharpening brutalist. How does one reckon with their faith in the light of past suffering and struggle?

Elsewhere on the record, Ross still manages to cram in lines about “long-ass German words,” Michael Jordan’s hat in 1997, Heaven’s Gate, and Czech television news. His wandering imagination and invisible associations haven’t lost any prevalence, prescience, playfulness, or laugh-out-loud absurdity. Pro-Iraq War anti-France French fries were served “proudly” in Congressional cafeterias in 2003, the year Jordan retired — all of this time-and-place specificity is stuffed into just two bars. Despite the mess of every morning and the lyrical density, gleaming nuggets of truth shine through on every track. One of Ross’ strengths remains peculiar elegance, in how bits of songs get stuck in your head in true Bermanesque fashion and how guitars, piano, pedal steel, and sax rollick into each other. Dulling the Horns is meant to be lived in; it sure as hell ain’t meant to be forgotten.

Aly Eleanor 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. She can be found online, underground, at home with her rats, or @purityolympics.

Short Fictions – Cities Underwater | Single Review

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Lauren Records

How different are you from the version of yourself that existed five years ago? One would hope a lot. I feel like I’ve changed fundamentally as a person since 2019, inside and out, but all for the better. Sure, some of those changes were made under duress, but I wouldn’t swap the progress I’ve made for anything. 

Five years ago, the pride of Pittsburgh, midwest emo revivalists Short Fictions released their debut album, Fates Worse Than Death. Dropped smackdab in the middle of December on a DIY label, this very blog bestowed the LP with the esteemed “That’s Why You Don’t Publish an Album of the Year List in November” superlative. Sure, that is mostly a dig at those other music publications that act as if the year is over before Thanksgiving rolls around, but it’s also meant to speak to how great that record is. 

To this day, Fates Worse Than Death remains a monumental LP in both my personal life and the larger emo music landscape. Since the album’s release, I’ve seen the band live multiple times, absorbed their Audiotree performance, and worn my Mallard Shirt so much it’s shrunk down an entire size from repeated washing. I’ve also followed the band feverishly as they’ve followed up their debut with one fantastic release after another. 2022’s Every Moment of Every Day iterated on the ideas found in their debut with even more sheen and adoration, then last year’s mouthful of an album, Oblivion Will Own Me and Death Alone Will Love Me (Void Filler), took things to a darker, spacier, and more inward place. The group’s discography is dotted with screamo outbursts as well as some of the most catchy and pure-hearted love songs this side of Carly Rae Jepsen’s discography. All this to say, the band has had a hell of a half-decade with nary a single misstep, yet as much as I love each of these records, something always draws me back to Fates Worse Than Death. 

Short Fictions’ debut centers around a specific brand of climate crisis panic and captures what it’s like to grapple with that weight on top of everything else. Even when they’re about falling in love, the songs that Short Fictions write are dispatches from a world crumbling in slow motion – because that’s the one in which we all exist. And despite the very emo presentation on most of these songs, there is an overt rejection of what most emo music stands for, perhaps best articulated when band leader Sam Treber sings, “You should only write songs about girls and your friends” on the record’s fourth track. 

Instead, the band uses the power of their words and music to speak to the larger issues that threaten us all. Climate change, gentrification, police funding, and mental health are all addressed directly across the record’s scant half-hour runtime. Everything feels urgent and beautiful, making for a vibrant and exciting collection of music wrapped in a deceptive emo package with more going on under the hood than the charmingly cluttered cover lets on. 

Back in September, I was on vacation with my family in central Oregon. My parents, two younger brothers, and I were all staying in a small resort town we would travel to every summer from my childhood through college. We hadn’t been back in years, first because of COVID, then because I lived across the country, and then because we all had different schedules.

My two brothers are now both in their mid-to-late twenties; one lives across town from my family, and the other still lives at home but works a night shift job. I live across the country in North Carolina, so between all of that, it’s not often we get an opportunity to take a family trip like this anymore. It was novel to pack all five of us (plus a dog and a cat) under one roof for a week, and the trip was fun until we had to head home a day early due to nearby wildfires. The signs were there in the days leading up to our evacuation: smoky air had wafted in, obscuring the mountain range and adding a sting to the air that you could feel in the back of your throat. By the time were hurriedly packed our shit into the family van, the sky was dark by four PM and what light we had was cast in an unsettling orange hue. Two days later, the area we were staying in was hit with a Level 3 evacuation alert, which equates to “drop everything and leave now.” We had left just before the worst of it. 

By the end of the month, I’d be back out in North Carolina, where I’m currently living while my partner finishes grad school. I never thought I’d love North Carolina as much as I do. The palmetto bugs are nasty and the water is filled with undrinkable forever chemicals, but aside from those two things, this is probably my favorite place I’ve ever lived. This state is gorgeous in ways I’ve never experienced anywhere else in the country, and the people here are forthright in a way I am continually appreciative of. On top of that, the arts scene here is tight-knit and inspiring, the weather is stunning, and there’s an absolute embarrassment of great restaurants and coffee shops. I love this place, and it truly feels like home. 

At the end of September, Hurricane Helen swept through the Gulf Coast, killing hundreds and flooding the western part of North Carolina in the process. Homes were destroyed, lives were ruined, and the loss remains incalculable, with entire towns completely wiped off the map. It’s a horrifying thing to watch unfold, with echoes of Hurricane Katrina, Florence, and dozens of other natural disasters ringing through the nation’s consciousness. But that word, natural disaster, surely takes a lot of onus off the real problem here. This is a man-made problem. Corporations, our government, and our pollutant-producing military-industrial complex all contribute to this phenomenon, making things like Hurricane Helen more common. 

At the same time, our government is sending billions overseas, actively contributing to Israel’s genocide, and building cop cities to keep our already militaristic police force ready to quell any dissent. Meanwhile, people within our borders are clinging to library wifi while being kept out of grocery stores in their own neighborhoods by armed guards. It’s fucked. 

It’s here we find ourselves as Short Fictions revisit “Cities Underwater,” re-recording the Fates Worse Than Death cut and giving it even more bite. As they turn the once-five-minute track into a three-minute outpouring, the group infuses the song with a newfound sense of urgency and anger. The snare pops, the guitar is caked in additional layers of distortion, and Treber’s shouts still ring just as true as they did back in 2019. By the time we get to the song’s titular line a minute in, the blast beat becomes a conduit for all the rage and frustration I feel watching the world destroy itself. 

I’m not sure if it’s a testament to the band or a condemnation of our culture that the lyrics of “Cities Underwater” feel just as relevant now as they did back in 2019, but the song has taken on an entirely new meaning in 2024, even if it happens to be the exact same as it was five years ago. 

After it felt like I spent my September escaping from one natural disaster to the next, I spent the following weeks explaining to various people in my life that, despite living in North Carolina, I was safe and sound out on the coast in Wilmington. We hadn’t experienced much more than strong winds and lots of rain on the day that Helen made landfall, but it was sweet of anyone to ask. I would usually go on to tell them how severe things were out on the western side of the state, relaying anecdotal stories from friends, band’s Instagram Stories, and local reporters. 

Asheville, which has recently become a lifespring for indie rock of pretty much every genre, was especially hit hard. Once they got power and cell service back, seeing bands like Wednesday, MJ Lenderman, and Kerosene Heights log on to share that they were safe was a brief respite. Then, seeing the toll that Helen took on their homes and community was a secondary wave of grief and loss that I wasn’t expecting, especially considering these were just a few stories of the thousands impacted. But the people that live here are strong, and seeing those same artists reflect on the events was surprisingly heartening. Furthermore, watching the community rally around the people of Western Carolina, sharing mutual aid links, setting up donation tables in local businesses, and getting out to help their neighbors has been reaffirming in a very spiritual way.

I know it’s a small consolation in the wake of such a disorienting loss, but it reminds me that people care. Sometimes, it feels like we’re living in a divisive and regressive time, but watching strangers help strangers served as a needed reminder that everything isn’t always as dark as it seems. Similarly, watching this same artistic community of artists I adore express their love, care, and dedication through things like the Cardinals At The Window compilation, which binds together 136 songs from primarily southern artists, displays not just the wealth of talent and beauty to be found down here, but how quickly people can band together to turn something devastating into something beautiful that helps others directly. 

I’ve gotten a fair bit away from Short Fictions, emo music, and their re-recording of “Cities Underwater,” but it feels difficult, if not impossible, to take in a song like this and not connect what it’s saying with what we’re experiencing. We’re still living in a conflicted, divisive, and precarious time. If we can’t talk about these issues, recognize the bigger problems, and find ways to change them, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot. Sometimes it takes a re-recording of a five-year-old midwest-emo-post-hardcore track to put a finer point on it. If the next five years are to bring as much change as the last five, I hope that we’re going in the right direction.