Lil Aaron is The Internet's Last Hope

A bit of a sequel to my recent write-up on the 2017 Soundcloud scene, this post is a markedly more positive look at an artist who is using the same path blazed by trap musicians to create something wholly unique on his own terms.

While the hair-dyed “mumble rap” scene of 2016 paved the way for an unrelenting crop of new artists like XXXtentacion and Lil Pump, it also built a framework that allowed for the emergence of new artists who were able to use the same sound and take it a step further. The anthesis of these aggressive bass-abusing rappers is a long-haired dude named Lil Aaron. Described as one of the music industry’s “best kept (and weirdest) secrets,” Aaron is a 23-year-old rapper from Indiana who grew up with an omnivorous appetite for music. With a diet consisting of equal parts hip-hop and rock, Aaron’s music is the product of two decades of careful study and appreciation. He is the result of unrestrained internet access and becoming musically-conscious in an era where T-Pain and Outkast were as prevalent as Taking Back Sunday and Blink-182.

In 2017, those genre-based barriers are lower than ever, and Lil Aaron has spent the last year building a musical playground in which all sounds are treated equally. He isn’t making the same blown-out trap centered around adrenaline-inducing primordial chants, but he uses many of the same techniques as the Soundcloud rapper greats. From song topics, terms, and cultural idioms, even down to the dyed hair, Aaron takes the traditional signposts of the genre and plays with them until they’re barely recognizable. What emerges is a Das Racist-esque parody that shows immense appreciation for the scene while simultaneously deconstructing the tropes as he’s using them. It’s mercilessly poking fun at the genre in the way that only an insider can, all while making one-of-a-kind music in the process.

103°

I first became aware of Lil Aaron’s existence while browsing the Twitter-sphere on a particularly hot 103° day in Portland. I’d spend the day writing in my backyard, sweating it out and listening to Lana Del Rey in between submitting vaguely-flippant job applications. I’d put in a surprisingly hard days work and figured some mindless Twitter scrolling was a suitable reward.

I stumbled across a video that power user @belatweets2u had retweeted featuring a big white dude with green hair dancing and the caption “im a hot topic.” I’ll admit I was intrigued (and ready to hate it), but I clicked on the video anyway, mainly in an attempt to figure out how this played into my go-to high school clothing shop. When I expanded the video, I heard the unmistakable sounds of Panic! At the Disco’s ”I Write Sins Not Tragedies” and was taken aback.

I had to look away from the phone and catch my breath just to make sure I was hearing this right. To say I was perplexed would be an understatement. I hadn’t listened to the song in years, but the song’s instantly-recognizable opening notes took me back to middle school instantly. The 2005-era orchestral plucks were accompanied by Aaron’s alternating “ayyy’s” and “yeah’s” in between the song’s quickly-plucked pizzicato strings. His ad-libbed additions were on-beat and, while incongruous, fit in eerily well with the song’s original overwrought emo context. As the song’s eighth measure hit, right as you’re expecting Brendon Urie’s vocals to enter at their familiar spot, a catastrophic bass blast enters the mix accompanied by Aaron’s auto tune-drenched voice singing “I’m a Hot topic, yeah.”

I was smitten.

im a hot topic pic.twitter.com/xd4qRS9lIQ

— LIL AARON (@lilaaron911) August 3, 2017

He continued to dance, sing, and ad-lib along with his Disco-infused trap song, and within seconds everything fell into place. It was an instantly-endearing mix of modern trap stylings and middle school nostalgia that melted my heart and made me a fan within the space of a single 37-second Twitter video.

Further Down

From there, I sought out Lil Aaron’s Soundcloud and played his most recent song “Warped Tour” which takes the same approach as “Hot Topic,” this time sampling Paramore’s megahit “Misery Business” for another trap-inspired anthem. Within the song, Aaron toys with a common trap idiom by making a direct comparison between his bands (stacks of money) and the number of bands playing Warped Tour. In the time it’s taken me to write this, he’s since released “Top 8” which samples Fall Out Boy’s “Sugar We’re Goin Down” and acts as a loving, nostalgic ode to MySpace using the name of the site’s notorious friend-ranking feature as a springboard for wordplay which leads to the line “give me top, aye.”

It’s an incredible mixing of genres, sounds, terminology, and humor that I never would have thought possible given all the time in the world. Most of the tracks follow a similar format: lure the listener into a sense of familiarity with the original sample, throw them a curveball with a leaned-out trap chorus, sandwich a quick verse in the middle, repeat the chorus, then end. It makes for a brief but compelling listen that doesn’t overstay its welcome or wear out the novelty. And as short as these songs are, Aaron has since (perhaps jokingly) promised he’s working on “making his songs even shorter.” Brevity is the soul of wit, and Aaron is crafting a song structure that’s unmistakable and all his own.

You’d think the crossover between decade-old emo pop and modern trap wouldn’t be a very wide Venn diagram, but it turns out Aaron’s audience is surprisingly vast. It seems that many other listeners have experienced similar twists and turns in their journey of music discovery. Aaron is uncovering a built-in audience of fans that share a single touchpoint and cultivating a relationship with them as he continues to add onto it. With songs that routinely get hundreds of thousands of plays on Soundcloud and cosigns from Chief Keef, Slim Jxmmi, Bella Thorne, and even Kylie Jenner, Aaron’s audience is massive and only growing.

I’m glad the internet has allowed for artists like Lil Aaron to flourish. It’s such an audacious combination of genres (one that would have never found success or even life in the traditional music industry), and I’m glad that it exists. The ability for an artist to put something out into the universe and have it find an audience is one of the beautiful benefits of living in 2017.

He doesn’t fit perfectly into a box, but that’s fine, he’s not for everybody, and that’s the upside to our ever-splintering media landscape. In an interview with Pigeons and Planes Aaron addresses freedom:

“That’s what’s cool—with the Internet and where we are with media and technology, you don’t have to be selected by people in power to be successful in the music industry. Anywhere I am right now, I did all by myself.”

It’s absolute, unbridled freedom. The ability to mash two disparate sounds together and see what comes of it. Your audience will find you eventually, sometimes you just have to create and see what happens next. As Aaron revs up to drop his next emo-infused track “IWGFU” I find myself anticipating his every move and anxiously awaiting the inevitable collection of trappy-pop-punk bangers. Here’s to innovation, and a long, weird career. Here’s to Lil Aaron.

Mumbling Music, Soundcloud Rap, and Feeling Like an Old Man

I never thought I’d be “over” a genre within the space of a year. My obsessions tend to be longer-lasting, or at the very least, something that I can return to later even if it’s solely for nostalgic purposes. After “discovering” hip-hop in 2015 I quickly gravitated towards the “trap” subgenre whose outlandish figures like Young Thug and Future provided a much-needed break from the years of straight-laced and hyper-earnest music I’d been listening to most of college.

In addition to trap’s personable artists, the subgenre has managed to become one of the most popular and dominant sounds over the past several years. This combination made the scene feel communal and accessible as it grew to become an undeniable a part of the cultural zeitgeist. In fact, hip-hop is part of the cultural landscape now more than ever as artists are propelled to success by internetmemes which has led to a “look at me” mentality.

In 2016 a distinct new class of rapper began to emerge who utilized the path that had been paved by their trap forefathers to carve out their own niche and fortify themselves as the “next generation” of hip-hop. This group of (then) up-and-comers included people like Lil Yachty, Desiigner, and 21 Savage who quickly earned the derogatory label of “mumble rap,” a name inspired by the MC’s apparent lack of technical proficiency on the mic. These rappers took cues from people like Young Thug and Future (who are also often lumped into this group) but remain distinct for a few reasons. One: almost all of these artists blew up while still in their teens. Two: almost all of these artists used SoundCloud as a platform in their rise to prominence (paving the way for future artists). Three: Many of the most popular “mumble rappers” also happened to be members of the XXL 2016 Freshman Class.

This inclusion in XXL is the most important commonality to note because it elevated the genre instantly and placed these artists squarely in the spotlight. As these rappers gained popularity and publicity over the summer of 2016 many people criticized the freshmen class for their evident lack of technical skill. It quickly ballooned to a genre-wide discussion about what these rappers “brought to the table” if they were eschewing the things that were typically used as barometers of quality within the genre.

I’ve already put my flag in the ground on the topics of lyricism and proficiency in hip-hop in this post from last year on the importance (or lack thereof) of lyrics. In retrospect, comparing these rappers to groups like Sigur Ros may have been a step too far, but I still stand by the overall sentiment of the post.

Now, I hate to sound nostalgic for something that’s only a year old, much less hoist up these artists who I ultimately think are just okay… but these mumble rap artists were significantly better than what we see coming out of the scene a year later. Thanks to the 2016 Freshman Class, hip-hop became an ongoing debate of “style versus substance,” and we’re only now seeing the implications of this shift a year after the emergence of mumble rap with the birth of a brand new scene. But before I get into that, let’s take a look at two specific artists from the mumble rap movement to help us make a direct comparison.

Two Sides of the Same Sound

Lil Uzi Vert is a Philadelphia-based rapper who first made waves in 2015 with his third mixtape Luv is Rage. In 2016 he rose to prominence thanks to his fourth mixtape Lil Uzi Vert vs. the World which birthed two singles, ended up going gold, and solidified him a place on the 2016 XXL freshman list. In 2017 he’s reached unprecedented heights thanks to a (bad) verse on Migos’ quadruple platinum “Bad and Boujee” which paved the way for his own (much better) track, the monumental “XO Tour Llif3.” Tour Lif3 was originally uploaded to Soundcloud as a throwaway track and has since become a breakout phenomenon going x3 Platinum in 6 months, proving both the popularity of Uzi and cementing the platform as a viable test for mainstream hits.

Moving onto another “Lil” rapper from the same scene: Lil Yachty is an Atlanta-based artist who originally broke through in 2015 with what everyone presumed was a one-off viral hit “One Night.” Within a year his next hit “Minnesota” was being played on Drake’s radio show and he caught fire. This platform brought Yachty a newfound audience which elevated his just-released Lil Boat mixtape and propelled him to the forefront of the hip-hop stratosphere.

I chose to highlight these two because they became symbols of the mumble rap genre within the space of weeks. And while they’re often lumped together, they oddly represent two opposing sides of the same sound. So why these two guys? Aside from their inclusion in the 2016 Freshman Class, they both blew up at the same time, dropped high-profile mixtapes within a month of each other, and use many of the same tropes within their music. I also believe one of the more silly reasons these two were lumped together was because of their hair.

It sounds stupid, but Lil Yachty’s bright red braids and Uzi’sever-changingdreads became emblematic symbols of the mumble rap movement. Most of the 2016 class had a unique look, but these two stuck out like sore thumbs with their distinct and brightly-colored mops. What’s more, these two rappers specifically started challenging hip-hop norms by disregarding classics and even going as far to state that they are “not rappers” but instead preferring to be labeled as “rockstars.” For better or worse, they became symbols of the new school: two figures that stood in direct opposition to the traditions of the genre. It’s easy to see why they sparked debates, spurred controversy, and turned off old heads the world over in 2016.

There was a clear line being drawn in the sand over the 2016 Freshman. One side saw this crop of artists as energetic, hair-dyed teenagers with little artistic substance beyond the beats they were rapping over. Meanwhile, the other side saw this scene for the fun, carefree, and easily-digestible entertainment that it was intended as.

If it wasn’t apparent by now, I’m fans of these artists, and I resented the fact that these 18-year-olds were being cited as the “downfall of hip-hop” as if their very existence was an offense to the genre’s history. I’ll admit that it took me some time to come around to each artist, but Uzi and Yachty’s 2016 tapes quickly became some of my favorites that year. With upbeat, colorful, summery songs, these artists were just teenagers, but there is a time and place for the type of music they were making.

I was decidedly on the side of these artists. I didn’t see these guys as the "end of hip-hop” that so many classic rap fans were quick to decry them as. I’ve already linked this previous post on why a lack of substantive lyrics doesn’t equate to lack of substantive music, but The Needle Drop’s Anthony Fantano explains this subgenre’s appeal well in this video where he draws a comparison to this new sound and the punk mentality of the 70’s. These artists became unwitting figureheads for a movement that they didn’t necessarily even create, but their music doesn’t invalidate traditional hip-hop or threaten other artist’s artistic output.

At the end of the day, Yachty and Uzi are two musicians are working towards very different visions with Uzi representing more of a moody, rock-inspired crooning emo trapper and Yachty being more of an upbeat goofball “bubblegum trap” artist. They got judged unfairly, lumped into the same group, and became polarizing figures within the matter of a few months. But on a more positive note, they engaged and energized the younger generation, which led to hip-hop becoming the most popular genre in the US for the first time ever. Their techniques and approaches to music also paved the way for a new type of rapper who took their styles and carried them to their logical extremes. That brings us to 2017.

Mumbles Begat Soundcloud

Compared to this innovative wave of energy that we saw in hip-hop last year, 2017 has felt like a step backward in many ways. We’ve had fewer projects from bigger names, and less “movement” in the genre as a whole. I’m also willing to admit this perceived drop-off in quality could be chalked up to personal bias because, while I feel less enthused by the genre, hip-hop as a whole has still experienced a major influx of activity this year. The problem is its momentum that’s hyper-specified and that I feel absolutely no connection to.

I’ve never wanted to be the old guy who doesn’t “get it” yet, within the space of a year I feel like I’ve already crossed over into old man territory. A year after the rise of the “mumble rapper” we’re now witnessing the birth of a new class of artists dubbed the “Soundcloud Rapper.”

One major artist to blow up from this scene is XXXTentacion. I first became aware of his existence in early 2017 as he was gaining rapid popularity online while behind bars after being arrested for assault at 18 (you read that right). Between Lil Wayne’s infamous stay in prison to Max B’s recent memed-out sentence, rappers are no stranger to trouble with the law. XXX was let out on false charges (which I don’t buy) but I’m willing to (again) admit personal bias because I find the assault of a woman more heinous than simple gun charges. This controversy was a bad way to first hear about an artist and left me with a negative first impression of both the artist and the “scene.”

Around this same time, a Georgian rapper named Playboi Carti released his eponymous debut to surprisingly-high reviews. While not technically part of the same subgenre, Carti’s “Magnolia” blew up inexplicably, earning him a platinum and granting him access to high-profile collaborators the genre over. Carti’s music is similarly lacking in substance the same way that Uzi and Yachty are, so I can’t fault him for that. What I can fault him for is featuring on two and a halfseparatetracks this year in which his contribution is solely ad-lib-based. God knows I’m not against ad-libs, but it’s incredible to watch someone make a career being propped up by decent beats and more talented artists as they shout “what?” in between each of their bars. Oh and Carti was also taken into custody for assault in 2017 as well, only to be let off a month later.

Despite the public and controversial beatings, Both XXXTentacion and Playboi Carti have enjoyed success and made it onto the XXL Freshman 2017 list, ensuring them both a moderately-successful career. Comparing these two freshmen with the two I highlighted from the 2016 lineup provides a stark contrast between one group of mumbling trap artists and the second group of women-beating teenagers. Even setting aside the quality of their music, elevating and rewarding the abhorrent behavior of the latter two is undeniably a step backward for the genre. And as I’ve been editing this piece, TV’s Eric Andre has publicly spoken out against these artists citing a similar concern.

The Dregs

Now we move onto the two artists that inspired me to sit down to write this post in the first place: Lil Pump and SmokePurpp. These two Florida-born rappers are making music in the same style as XXXTentacion with distorted blown-out bassy instrumentals and loud aggressive chant-like vocals. Pump blew up several months ago on the back of the mindlessly-repetitive “D Rose.” The track, which finds Pump explaining why his expensive watches make him feel like Derrick Rose, was uploaded in late 2016 and has since garnered almost 30 million plays on Soundcloud. There’s honestly very little else to say about the song beyond that.

Critics and journalists took note of this subgenre’s meteoric rise in popularity and began writing Hunter S. Thompson-style gonzo journalism pieces about the scene including this one from Rolling Stone and this incredible write-up by The New York Times. I’d had these articles saved to my Pocket for later reading, but it wasn’t until I stumbled across a Noisey interview whose title was so great that I willingly dove into it.

The article in question “Reading This Interview with Lil Pump and Smokepurpp Will Make You Stupider” is a particularly glazed-over interview with the two Floridians in which the interviewer searches desperately for any semblance of a deeper purpose to these two artists. Their answers, relegated mostly to single-syllable words half-formed sentences, quickly revealed that there is no deeper level to Lil Pump and Smokepurpp. They’re not in search of anything, not inspired by anything, and their self-described “ih-norant” music is their artistic end-all be-all.

Now, look. I listen to a ton of stupid music, some of it just as “ignorant” and turnt up as this, but this new wave of music feels so baseless and devoid that I don’t see any silver lining to it. In fact, I write this primarily from a “worried mother” type perspective because these kids are fucking sixteen. Lil Pump (born August 17th, 2000) was admitted to the hospital following a lean scare just ten days before his birthday. XXXtentacion (born January 23rd, 1998) has (aside from the assault charges) put on a litany of violent concerts including fist fights, two-story jumps, and barricade collisions. I’m not the first to speak out against these artist’s carelessness, and I have a feeling I won’t be the last.

It’s music that trades out the bare minimum artistry that was there before for pure adrenaline and shock value. And again, maybe this isn’t “for me” and that’s why I don’t get it. If anything, these artists are simply a logical continuation of the mumble rap scene taking visual, musical, and artistic queues from the generation immediately before them. And Desiigner and Lil Uzi Vert have pulled equally-dangerous stunts at their shows… but it’s interesting to watch this progression take place so rapidly over the course of a calendar year.

And to circle away from the onstage antics and back to the music: I’m not saying Yachty’s music is high art. It’s still pretty dissonant, off-putting, and even bad on a technical level. But what Yachty traded those qualities out for is a unique sound and image based around himself. It may be discordant music, but it retains an undeniable sense of bright fun catchiness. Meanwhile, I feel like this new crop of artists retained that similar lack of technicality but traded out any sense of fun for pure adrenaline.

I don’t know where all this is headed. I do think it’s exciting that all this has happened within the space of a year, and it just goes to show how quickly the hip-hop genre is evolving and shifting. Maybe it’s just part of a bigger splintering and within a few years, we’ll have all these subgenres of hip-hop with dozens of artists occupying each well-defined niche with their own space carved out. I fully expect many of these guys to fall off and fade into obscurity soon (or at the very lease encounter more trouble with the law) but overall I think this energy bodes well for the genre. I just don’t want a teenager to die for it.

As long as young people continue to be inspired they’ll continue to innovate and push boundaries. I may not like the music, but I’m always in support of innovation. I sincerely hope I’m still on board for the next “wave” of explosive creativity in music, but I also know I will hit a point in the future where I just stop “getting it” and I accept that.

I don’t necessarily resent the scene, the music, or these artists. I think some of their extracurricular actions are deplorable and shouldn’t be celebrated, but that’s really about it. I see the appeal of the music, but I also know that it’s not for me. If anything, it’s exciting that real, young, independent musicians have the ability to build as much of a platform as more established artists, but sometimes that fan base is built on the back of shitty behavior that nobody should emulate.

It’s also interesting to watch the “gaze” of hip-hop move so quickly from one crop of artists to the next. It seems that nobody gets to spend much time on the throne, and now the artists that were exciting last year are practically legacy acts by the scene’s standards. It’s weird when the “primary focus” (or at least most explosive scene) of a genre is one that I fundamentally disagree with on nearly every level, but again, maybe I’m just turning into an old man.

I can’t think of any other way to end this besides words of hesitant encouragement. I want kids to keep innovating and scaring the adults (and 24-year-olds) by blazing their own trail. There’s something admirable about a sixteen-year-old throwing a song up on SoundCloud and becoming a certified star months later… but when it breeds violence and drug abuse I’m decidedly against it. It’s a fine line, and I respect everyone’s freedom/artistic choices/blah blah blah, I just wish everything was more positive.

So keep it up I guess. We’ll see where this scene goes. Who knows what the next year’s hot topic will be. For the time being, keep doing you. Just don’t do anything too stupid.

Heartache, Optimism, and Pop-Punk: How The Upsides Changed My Outlook On Life

The best creations are born of pain. A sad consolation prize for the inflicted, the result of life experience and raw suffering. As listeners, we judge music based on how much life and “realness” bleed through it, but we also don’t experience anything in a vacuum. Art is tainted by our own memories and experiences. It’s the reason that two nearly-identical albums can feel so different. It’s the reason you enjoy A while I prefer B. Memory is where it all comes into play, and it’s what we add to art as humans. In experiencing art we inject a bit of our own story in the listening process and add on to the creation in whatever way we can.

This is how our tastes, perspectives, and very personalities are formed: through interaction with both art and the world around us. While a positive experience, association, or context can improve our perception of an album, the inverse can also ruin something that’s otherwise objectively good. Think about any album, movie, or TV show that you used to recover from a breakup. Hell, think about a restaurant that once gave you food poisoning. Whether it’s well-founded or not, there’s probably a negative association and personal bias at play skewing your opinion.

I’m of the school of thought that traditionally “great” music starts as something you don’t necessarily love on the first listen, but becomes better over time. Music with depth and complexity that reveals itself with each subsequent spin. Challenging its consumer to be better. Most of my favorite albums were records that I didn’t think much of (or simply didn’t like) upon first listen, but gradually kept burrowing their way further into my brain.

And while memories often retroactively color our impressions of art, sometimes there are also individual works that are able to overcome our own mental hang-ups. Art that’s so strong it’s able to break through our negative associations and emerge from the other side, still enjoyable.

This combination of growth over time and overcoming an uphill battle of negative associations is one of the reasons that The Wonder Years’ second album The Upsides is one of my favorite records of all time.

From a South Philly Basement

Before I get into weird personal history: some quick background info on the band. Founded in 2005, The Wonder Years are a pop-punk act from Lansdale, Pennsylvania. Following two years of singles, split and EPs the band released their debut album Get Stoked on It! In 2007. Taking queues from the early 2000’s easycore scene, the band’s first record was a keyboard-heavy form of biting pop-punk. Get Stoked is problematic, but also very symptomatic of the year it was made. It’s not a bad record, but it bears very few resemblances to the rest of the band’s work and has been retconned by the band for good reason.

The biggest point against Get Stoked on It! Is that most of the songs were written about generic late-2000’s pop cultural buzzwords. You got a track about a ninja, one about a cowboy, one about zombies, and much more! This is in direct conflict with the band’s later hyper-earnest heart-on-sleeve meditations that pulled from real life experiences and heartfelt emotions (as opposed to funny songs about astronauts). There are still some tracks like “Racing Trains” and “When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong” that foreshadow some of the band’s future stylistic leanings, but as a whole, the record is much more underdeveloped and juvenile than their later work.

The band would later go on to “decanonize” this release, publicly stating their distaste for it both in interviews and even referencing it in future songs. When a remastered version of the album came out in 2012, lead singer Daniel Campbell said “If you like the record, enjoy the new mixes. If you hate the record, I’m on your side” which is something I’ve seen very few bands do.

Within two years of their first album, original member and keyboardist Mikey Kelly left the band. His departure essentially represented a “soft reboot” for the band which allowed the remaining members to pivot the group’s sound and take their next album into a more “honest” direction. A year after Kelly’s departure the band released their sophomore album The Upsides in 2010, and my life would change forever.

B-rate Version of Me

In 2011 I went through a horrible breakup. It was my first real relationship, and it hit me as hard as you could imagine a 17-year-old being hit. I’d recently got my driver’s license, started my first job, and I was embarking on my final year of high school, so overall it was a turbulent time of change for me. One night midway through February I was spurred to purchase a digital copy of The Upsides on a whim based on a Tweet made by Amazon Music. This is something I never do, but I had just gotten off a shift at my job and wanted to fill the void with blind consumerism. The album was on sale for $5, so even for a cheap 17-year-old, there’s not much to lose at that price. I can’t even remember if I even previewed the album, but for whatever reason, that tweet was well-crafted enough to spur me into a purchase right then and there. I was in the mood for something new.

I downloaded the album, loaded it onto my iPod, hit play, and sunk into it.

I don’t know how well I’ll be able to articulate the particular brand of slacker malaise I was engaging in at this time, but most waking hours that weren’t spent school were spent in my room playing video games listening to podcasts and music. I was pretty much distracting all my senses and escaping from reality as much as humanly possible without the use of drugs or alcohol. I wasn’t depressed, but I was in a state. Nothing really cheered me up, so it was more of an ongoing war of attrition with my own brain.

I credit The Upsides with single-handedly lifting me out of this post-dump funk and getting me back to feeling like myself. With years of reflection, I was being far more dramatic than I’m giving myself credit for, but I guess that’s kinda the point of being seventeen. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it felt like it… until this album came along.

A Pop-Punk Oddessy

Upsides begins with a bait and switch. Most pop-punk detractors dislike the genre for pretty specific (and valid) reasons. Maybe they don’t like the genre’s propensity for bitter lovesick lyrics, or they’re turned off by the whiny vocals, but in most cases, they probably have a cartoonishly-exaggerated version of the scene in their head. Thanks to the genre’s explosion in popularity during the mid-90’s, most people just think the music consists solely of whiny Blink 182-types when that’s not the case. While there certainly is no shortage of nasally lovesick songs, that sound isn’t representative of the entire genre.

For better or worse, Upsides begins with exactly what people would expect from the genre. Within the first seconds of the album’s opening track “My Last Semester” a nasally slightly-filtered Campbell sings over a twinkling electric guitar “I’m not sad anymore / I’m just tired of this place.” Within 15 seconds the singing ceases and the guitar strings sustain. An electric whir emerges from the back of the mix and quickly overwhelms the held guitar notes. Suddenly the entire song, album, and band spin to life, energizing the track with a cacophony of brash drum strikes, a biting guitar riff, and a driving bassline. Campbell, now singing at the top of his lung repeats the first lyrics with an angry vitriolic twist, and with that, Upsides has officially begun.

Those first lines of the album sound stereotypical (great, another white dude talking about how sad he is) but upon closer inspection, they’re actually a beautifully-constructed phrase that flips the listener’s expectations on their head by talking about the futility of those sad feelings. It’s a notion that’s devoid of nostalgia, firmly present, and anxiously self-aware. This specific idea of not letting sadness win is a recurring theme throughout the album that the band circles back to frequently. The mantra comes full-circle on the album’s star-studded closer and is even developed further on subsequent releases. But in this first song, the singer articulates this concept by listing all the reasons he could be sad, but then explains that he opted to find the silver lining in his situation: his music. Campbell would go on to address this later in an interview explaining:

“I thought that I had kind of beaten my issues, but when you struggle with depression or anxiety, you never really win. You always carry it with you and the point I learned isn’t to win. The point is to keep fighting. It turned out that ‘I’m not sad anymore’ wasn’t a victory speech. It was a battle cry.”

The opening line pulls double duty by acting as the album’s thesis statement while also serving as the band’s new mission statement. This represents a far tonal shift from what we last heard on Get Stoked. They’re not the same group of 18-year-olds who were singing about pirates and zombies three years ago. They elude to this with the meta line “college hit those dudes like a ton of bricks.” The band did a lot of growing up since we’ve last heard from them, and they are guided by a new creative north star.

Art Imitates Life

The foundation that the band began to flesh out with this record (and would expand upon over the course of a trilogy of albums) is a style of hyper-intricate, self-referential, and pop-culture-obsessed rock that depicts the good and bad sides of a life well-lived. Early on the band used the term “realist pop-punk” when describing the sound of their artistic rebirth. Call it what you want, but it’s still one one of the most refreshingly honest and true approaches to music I’ve ever heard, and it was an absolute revelation to me at seventeen.

There’s beauty in simplicity, and sometimes real life is more compelling than anything you could ever make up. TWY’s music doesn’t revolve around sweeping epics, chasing material goods, or even the other, it’s all music that’s firmly told from one perspective and all bears the insecurities and imperfections that come with it. The focus of the music varies from song to song, but this singular perspective allows for a cohesive vision that the listener can simultaneously empathize with, and project themselves onto.

Throughout The Upsides, singer Dan “Soupy” Campbell flexes his now-well honed writing ability, making it obvious he’d time between albums studying and working on his craft. One of the most under-appreciated aspects of his style is his acute ability to write minuscule details. Small observations and references that add a layer of specificity that makes the album feel more realized and lived-in. Each line adds onto the story that the listener is building in their head until an entire narrative is formed around the character. You’re fleshing out your own universe built on the language of the album and developing a one-of-a-kind relationship with its narrator.

Sometimes The Upsides tackles big psychological issues like post-college listlessness, relationship dynamics, and even death. At other times they zoom down to view life on a macro level and vignette the little scenes that happen in life like a broken down car or going on a midnight pretzel run to the stand behind your house. Sometimes it’s funny and biting social commentary on the Westboro Baptist Church or the shitty fist-pumping people you meet at parties. It’s an album that encapsulates the life of a post-college 20-something from every possible dimension.

To me, the quintessential song on the album is the Deluxe Edition’s penultimate track “Logan Circle: A New Hope.” The song is a stripped-down reworking of the album’s second track “Logan Circle” that echoes many of the original track’s sentiments but also serves as an incremental update on the life of Campbell. “A New Hope” is redone in a slower, more pensive approach that allows the lyrics and instrumentation to shine through and glisten to their full potential, highlighting both the brilliance of the lyrics and the proficiency of the band members.

The first verse of the original “Logan Circle” contains a lyric that hooked me for the rest of the album: “We just can’t blame the seasons / The Blue Man Group won’t cure depression.” The line resonated with me originally because it’s an obvious Arrested Development reference, but it also doubles as a bit of life advice about optimism and outlook. This all circles back to the cliched idea that this album is something I needed to hear at the time. I wasn’t hopeless, but I needed something hopeful. I needed to be told how to handle these feelings I’d never felt before. I needed to be told how to combat them and move on with my life, and that’s exactly what The Upsides did for me. It was musical therapy.

Emergence

Though I didn’t consider it at the time, I’ve only recently come to realize that pop-punk has been the genre that I’ve listened to for the longest in my life. It’s partly a byproduct of when I was growing up (thanks, mid-90’s) but also it just happened to be one of the first genres that I really explored. As a result, there was something comforting about sinking back into the genre after spending some time away from it. I feel like It’s cheesy to admit an album about not feeling sad helped me stop feeling sad, but Upsides was instrumental in my emergence from sadness in the wake of this first relationship.

It wasn’t just the optimistic messages, it’s that the songs found the optimistic messages in the face of everything else. Feelings of sadness are not invalid, but with enough distance, you realize that there’s no reason for them, there’s nothing to be gained from them, only energy wasted. It was a realistic portrayal of exactly how I was feeling then. And more on-the-nose, the album’s breakup song “Melrose Diner” served as both a validation of my feelings and a cautionary tale about becoming the shitty, bitter ex.

My love for The Upsides grew exponentially with each listen, and within a year it became my most listened-to album of all time, a title that it still retains to this day. In fact, my love for Upsides grew with each subsequent album that the band released as future songs would call back to lyrics contained within their earlier works. By fall of 2011, I’d begun my first term of college and the band had released their third album Suburbia I’ve Given You All and Now I’m Nothing.

The Upsides marked the beginning of a three album “trilogy” that depict the arc of Campbell’s struggles with anxiety and depression, and with the trilogy’s conclusion in 2013, the band cemented themselves as my favorite act of all time. With three releases that were all equally impeccable, I’ve now spent roughly 12 days of my life listening to the band’s various releases, a number I wouldn’t take back if you paid me.

At the end of the day, The Upsides is one of a handful of albums that changed my life, and there’s no higher praise I can hoist upon it than that. It’s a well-crafted and powerfully intricate release that rewards close listens and spawned its own mythology. It engages the listener in a way that few other pieces of art do. There are lots of albums in my life where I can point to a clearly-defined “before” and “after” period, but Upsides is an album that changed my entire way of being. It shifted my world one step towards a more positive existence, and I can’t thank the band enough for that. It’s a radical powerhouse of a record that I still listen to nearly every week, and I can’t fathom my life in a world without it. It’s a beautiful creation, and the world is a more beautiful place for it.

Thank you for everything, Upsides.

The Breathtaking Grace of Sprained Ankle

For years now I’ve seen the cover to Julien Baker’s 2015 album in random flashes across the internet, and it’s perpetually eluded me. It became one of those “mythical” bits of media that I saw everywhere, then suddenly disappeared from my mind.

Aside from the surprisingly-pervasive photo, I didn’t know anything about the record: I didn’t know who Julien Baker was, what genre she played, or if this album was even any good. I assumed it was, but I had zero context to go on, only this cover. It became one of those things that you see so often that you just assume it’s great but never look into. In 2017 I finally sat down to listen to the album and since then I’ve been kicking myself for taking so long.

Sprained Ankle is one of the single most impactful, graceful, flawless, and magnificent records I’ve ever heard in my life. Period.

It’s an album that’s great on first listen, and gets even better with each subsequent spin. Baker’s effortless balance between singer-songwriter folk and finger-plucked emo is an enchanting combination that makes for a grounded and heavy listen.

It’s definitely not a “fun” album in any sense of the word. It’s an album about God, death, and anxiety. On the second track (after which the album is named), she opens with the line “wish I could write songs about anything other than death.” That’s as close to humor as we get in the album’s 33 minute and 33 second running time, and even then it’s still a line about death that hits you like a punch in the gut.

Baker’s voice remains prominent in every song, laid bare near the top of the mix and paired well with her own guitar and little else. It sounds like you’re listening to a girl playing songs alone in her room just for herself. It almost feels invasive to listen to, but you can tell the contents of the album would have come out with or without your intrusion.

It’s a deeply personal album about everything dark in the world. It’s an album of purity in an impure world. It’s haunting and striking. It will stay with you after your first listen like a ghost. It sounds like someone wringing their soul dry into a bucket. It’s one of the most majestic and soul-crushing things I’ve ever heard in my life and remains just as impactful after dozens of repeated listens.

Julien Baker is a woman of few words. Amongst the album’s short nine tracks you’ll find only a handful of topics. You get the sense that these songs were carefully-selected and lovingly-crafted over time until they formed a single honed point. The fact that she’s just now revving up to drop her second album over two years later is a testament to her thoughtfulness.

Sprained Ankle is unlike anything I’ve ever heard, yet it feels immediately familiar. It’s an album about a universal topic delivered in a straightforward way. The universal of pain. It connects right away and doesn’t stop until the vibrations of Baker’s piano are overwhelmed by the dark static surrounding her on the final track. It’s an album that’s easy to grasp upon first listen, but slowly reveals its sublime intensity to those who listen closely.

Julien Baker is a beautiful person with a beautiful soul, and that fact shines through the pain and the sparseness of Sprained Ankle. It’s hard to put the feeling of the album into words, but it’s an experience that has transcended music for me. She has a way with words, melody, and sound that all come together into this perfect package.  

I’m writing this because I feel like I have to. I’ve been so deeply moved and affected by this record that I just need to document my thoughts on it in the best way that I know how. It’s unreal.

It hurts.

It hurts to listen to. It hurts to be away from. And it hurts to be without.

It’s a carefully-constructed album about loss.

About the blunt faceless pain of anxiety.

It’s stark beauty in its rawest form.

It’s Sprained Ankle.

Gateway Indie

On May 20th of 2008, my musical taste changed forever. We (or at least I) tend to discover things in waves. Specifically waves of increasingly-tiered obsession that escalate until I can focus on one thing and one thing only. I’ll find a song I really like, devour the album that it came from, read everything on the band’s Wikipedia page, explore their discography, listen to side projects, see them live, spend exorbitant amounts of money on limited edition vinyl, then (apparently) write about my experience years later.

One of the most important steps in my particular brand of hyper-obsessive fandom is delving deeper into the genre of the band who I’ve recently discovered. Whether it’s simply to contextualize their sound, see if I recognize any of their contemporaries, or just to get a better understanding of the world’s musical history. When one artist’s discography isn’t enough, sometimes the next logical step is to start absorbing everything in their immediate vicinity. It’s a beautiful notion that one album can open the door to a whole new world of music that was previously hidden. It’s how you diversify as a music listener and as a person.

Up until high school, I’d really only explored the genres of classic rock, grunge, and some metal. All pretty standard stuff, especially for a white suburban teen, but it was all music that came out before I was born. In 2008 I discovered a group of albums that opened my eyes to the ever-cool world of indie and, more importantly, paved the way for my interest in both the genre and the contemporary music scene as a whole. As each of these albums near their 10th anniversary I realized that not only have many of them achieved “classic” status within the genre, they were also part of a larger movement for my generation.

Universality

Now that the internet has paved the way for services like iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud, and Bandcamp, music has become more insular than ever. In 2017 there are entire sects of fans who can be hyper-devoted to one artist or scene that may never intersect with anyone else. Additionally, with the rise of social platforms like forums, Twitter, and reddit fans can live in a bubble… and while it’s great to connect with other fans, it also means the vocal obsessives are more walled-off.

We have fewer “universals” than ever before. Ed Sheeran is one of the best-selling artists in the world right now, but I don’t think I’ve heard a single song of his. Drake is breaking records every week, but if you don’t care about hip-hop, he’s pretty easy to avoid listening to. It’s a byproduct of the ever-splintering media landscape that we’re living in.

So there are positives and negatives, but this splintering is relevant because those “universals” will become fewer and far between as we move forward. Looking beyond music, you have shows like Game of Thrones which is one of the most technically popular and most-talked about shows currently on TV. It consistently shatters its own self-set viewership records, numbers which are worth screaming about in 2017, yet would have gotten a show canceled even 20 years ago. There’s just more to watch, more to do, and more to care about in 2017, so if you don’t want to watch Game of Thrones, you truly don’t have to. This isn’t the 20’s where everyone gathers around the radio for the day’s episode of Little Orphan Annie. I feel like I’m getting off track, but music is this phenomenon multiplied by thousands. Not only are there dozens of alternatives mediums vying for your attention, practically anyone can create music in 2017. There are more alternatives (and therefore fewer commonalities) than ever before.

I feel like we will reach (or perhaps have already hit) a point where there are simply no more universal artists. There’s never going to be another Beatles. Obviously. But looking purely at The Beatles on a scale purely based on audience and cultural impact, there will never be another musical group in the history of the world that reaches the omniscient presence that the Beatles achieved. There were fewer artists to listen to then, fewer ways to create music, and even fewer avenues to discover new music.

As technology has improved, we’ve seen a direct impact on the music industry as an entity. At the same time, we’ve also seen artists effectively harness this power. Groups like Odd Future were pervasive and forward-thinking enough that I (a high school-aged non-hip-hop listener) knew who they were and knew at least a few of their songs. While everyone’s musical journey is a unique story filled with personal discoveries that have influenced their taste, this is really a story about the first universal that I was a part of as it was happening.

I Miss the Old iTunes

Back when iTunes was still relatively new, it was my only source of current music. I would almost instantaneously drain any gift card I was given, using it to cross several songs off my carefully-curated iTunes wish list. I was also fortunate enough to have my Dad’s massive collection of nearly one thousand CD’s at my disposal, but as you could imagine, most of those albums were a decade old at least. That’s why I was a rock fan first: ease of access.

But I always found ways to satiate my hunger for new music. From VH1 to renting CDs one by one from the local library, there were only so many ways to hear new music, even in the mid-2000’s. One of the most unexpected avenues that I took advantage of was the (now sadly-defunct) iTunes Single of the Week Program, which offered exposure to countless contemporary acts one song at a time. It may not have been much, but this program turned me onto dozens of artists and sounds that I wouldn’t have heard otherwise. Through this mishmash of mid-2000’s media, I was able to satiate my budding hunger for new music as a penniless 14-year-old.

That brings us back to the first sentence of this post.

Unbeknownst to me, indie folk was blowing up In 2008. Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago was gaining serious traction a year after its release thanks to the album’s breakout hit “Skinny Love” and in May “Skinny Love” was put up as iTunes’ free song. As with most songs in the program, I’d never heard of the artist, nor had any experience with the genre, but I downloaded it anyway because that’s how hungry I was for new music.

I downloaded the track (no doubt on my family’s bulky oversized 2005 laptop) and synced it onto my iPod immediately. I was floored. I’d never heard anything so delicate. It was catchy (especially for a folk song) but it also had a soft warmth and reserved delivery that was a revelation to me at the time. “Skinny Love” evoked a feeling that was unlike any other music I’d ever heard. I had to have more.

Part of the beauty of the Single of the Week program was how random it was. One week it’d be an electropop song, the next it would be something folky like Bon Iver, and then it would be a latin song. I didn’t necessarily like it all (quite the opposite, in fact) but I listened to it all for the sake of discovery. The fact that these songs were free was just the icing on top of the cake. I had nothing to lose.

I had no idea at the time, but indie folk saw a massive explosion in popularity in 2008 with the rise of acts like Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes, who both released stunning debuts around this time. I didn’t realize that this era of indie had been such a widespread phenomenon until I saw people discussing Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago on its tenth anniversary calling it their “Gateway Indie” album. I liked that phrase, but I didn’t think much of it until I heard the ineffable deep_cuts youtube channel cite both For Emma and Fleet Foxes as “dominating adolescent MP3 players the world over” at this time. Maybe it was just his worldly UK accent, but something clicked for me. I realized this was not only a formative album, era, and sound for myself, but for everyone my age.

Beyond Folk

Later that year I met some of the coolest people in my high school. And by that I don’t mean cool in the traditional sense, they were dork-ass nerds like me, but they were dork-ass nerds with impeccable musical taste. At this point, the edgiest thing I had ever listened to was Nine Inch Nails, but these guys opened my mind to the larger world of indie music. Genres I didn’t even know existed. Sounds I could barely conceive of. This was 10th grade and the albums they showed me would go on to become some of my favorite and most formative of all time.

The first song I remember them playing for me was the opening track to Portugal. The Man’s first album Waiter: “You Vultures!” which was titled “How the Leopard Got Its Spots.” I’m going to stop there for a second just to point out this band/album/song combo was (before hearing the first note) already more experimental and out-there than anything else I’d ever heard up to that point.

“How the Leopard Got Its Spots” is a pokey unpredictable song that almost borders on prog. While Portugal. The Man changes up their sound every album, their debut is easily the most experimental of their discography, still retaining many characteristics of the band’s post-hard predecessor Anatomy of a Ghost. But I didn’t know any of that at the time. I just listened to the song, enraptured by the track’s grungy guitars that paired perfectly with Gourley’s shrill high-pitched singing. The lyrics were obtuse in a Relationship of Command-type way and the final glitched-out chorus haunted me for days after the fact, becoming an immovable earworm. I remember at the time Grand Theft Auto IV had just been released (God, take me back) and I’d spend hours tooling around the game’s gray city listening to this song on repeat for hours.

Sometime later, Eric (the one of the group who I was closest to) and I found ourselves sitting next to each other during a weirdly-placed mid-day homeroom period. I asked him what he was listening to and he said “I’ll show you” he handed me his headphones and hit play on his 3rd generation iPod Nano. What I heard were the first shimmering notes of Minus The Bear’s “Pachuca Sunrise.” The song’s carefully-times guitar taps and intensely-technical drumming provide the crunchy background for Jake Snyder’s laid-back sensual lyrics and Cory Murchy’s smooth flowing bassline. It gelled into a transformative experience that made my body feel warm with sunlight and love. There’s a reason it’s still one of the band’s most-played live songs even a decade later. It turns out “Pachuca Sunrise” was many people’s first Minus The Bear song and led countless fans to the group’s second album Menos El Oso.

At this point, I already had enough “material” to go off on my own and endlessly devour these two records from these two very different bands. And I did, but I was also hungry for more. I came back to this group of guys in our shared AV class and begged for more in the coolest way I could without discounting my own cred.

From there Eric, Oliver, and Max threw me into the deep end. They showed me “Death Rides a Horse” by instrumental band Russian Circles. I dug it. Ratcheting up the intensity, they moved onto “Laser Life” by the post-hardcore band Blood Brothers. I dug it. They then threw the hyperchaotic cybergrind “Chapels” by Genghis Tron at me. I didn’t dig it, but I warmed up to it pretty quickly.

While there were dozens of other acts and songs that these guys turned me onto over the course of the next year, this crop stands out in my mind both for its breadth and what they’ve gone on to represent for me personally.

Portugal. The Man would go onto become one of my favorite bands. I’ve often proselytized online that they have one of the best discographies in indie rock. I would also go on to expose this band to my two younger brothers, and for one of them, Portugal. The Man has become their favorite band of all time. They currently sit at my 8th most played band on Last.fm with just over 3,000 plays.

Minus the Bear was my favorite band for years. At 6 concerts they’re also far-and-away the band I’ve seen live the most, and two years ago I saw them play Menos El Oso in full for the album’s 10th-anniversary tour. The album’s closing track “This Ain’t a Surfin’ Movie” has been my favorite song of all time since I first heard it. The band is currently my 6th most-listened band on Last.fm, and three of the band’s albums are have made it onto my list of all-time favorites.

Russian Circles would eventually lead me to the world of post-rock and instrumental metal. Bands like Explosions in the Sky, Mogwai, and Earth, all of whom have served as my reading and studying music throughout high school and college. Russian Circles also have a nearly-perfect discography, and they currently sit at #15 on my Last.fm.

Meanwhile, Fleet Foxes were always a bit boring to me… until this year. Maybe I have more patience at 24 than I did at 15, but I’ve had their discography on repeat for this entire summer and I’ve been loving it.

Most importantly, Bon Iver served as my gateway to all of this. It’s weird that a slow quiet folk album could pave the way for something as discordant and brutal as Genghis Tron, but I guess it’s a snowball effect type of thing. For Emma, Forever Ago also became somewhat of a soundtrack for my first real relationship, and despite that relationship’s rocky conclusion a year later, I can still listen to the album today and enjoy it as much as I did the first time hearing it.

I can’t thank these three dudes (and the creators of these albums) enough. I can safely say that my life would be unequivocally and vastly different without having gone through this period of exploration when I did. I would be a different person with different tastes and interests entirely. Full stop. So for that, I can only say “thank you” and hope that I returned the favor with someone else somewhere down the line. Sometimes discoveries come from the most unexpected places. Sometimes a random song can lead you down a path you never could have blazed yourself. Sometimes a single song can change everything.