And Then We All Bought Yachts: A Minus The Bear Discography Ranking

For a band whose name is based on a joke about a blowjob, Minus the Bear have played a surprisingly vital role in my musical development. An alternative rock band hailing from the rainy city of Seattle, Minus The Bear made a name for themselves with a unique combination of catchy indie rock, mathy guitar tapping, and odd time signatures. This resulted in a sound that was at once accessible, dancy, hyper-technical, and entirely their own. Their lyrics are evocative and poetic, often centered around tales of love and life in the Pacific Northwest, along with iconic sing-along choruses that would become lodged in your prefrontal cortex for days on end. The band officially called it quits at the end of 2018, but to this day, they remain one of the most important and influential acts of my life. 

Minus The Bear’s Discography is somewhat daunting, stretching from the early 2000s to their final release at the tail end of 2018. They underwent very few lineup changes, but each release brought a new tone that saw the band refreshing their sound like the changing of the seasons. During their time together, Minus The Bear produced six studio albums, three EPs, two acoustic releases, one remix album, one B-sides collection, and a whole host of singles. In other words, there’s a lot of music, and somehow all of it’s worth digging into.

I first discovered Minus The Bear when a friend forced his headphones over my ears sometime in high school and played “Pachuca Sunrise” on his lime green iPod Nano. From the second that I heard those first dreamy notes, I knew that this band would become my new obsession. Placed in the same category as Portugal. The Man (who I also did a discography ranking for), these bands became the face of musical discovery for me in high school. They represented something new, something fresh, and something that was unlike anything I’d ever heard before. I downloaded the band’s discography as of 2008-ish and began to slowly immerse myself in the world of Minus The Bear.

In turn, I paid it forward and got some of my friends into the band. One of my closest childhood friends and I became MTB partners in crime, attending some half-dozen concerts together throughout high school before going our separate ways in college. To me, these songs evoke warm memories of the last carefree days of high school. They remind me of long drives on summer nights with the windows down and rainy Portland springs, begrudgingly juggling school with my teenage job at a grocery store. It’s not an understatement to say that this band soundtracked some of the most important moments, and feelings, of my life.

It’s worth noting that while this is a “ranking” of Minus The Bear’s discography, even the lowest album on this list is still a fantastic record that’s worth listening to. I believe that each of Minus The Bear’s albums shine on their own merits, the big difference is that some of these albums arrived in my life exactly when I needed them, while others haven’t had the fortune to coincide with major life events. In other words, there are no bad Minus The Bear albums: this list merely goes from “good” to “great.”

It’s also worth noting that for the purposes of this ranking, I will be disregarding the band’s remix album, B-sides collection, and some of the smaller promo singles like YAR and Hold Me Down. This list will focus on the group’s core studio albums and EPs: a grand total of eleven entries. So welcome to the world of Minus The Bear. Pour a glass of red wine, and prepare to journey into one of the best discographies of indie rock. 

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11 - Voids (2017)

Part of me feels bad putting the band’s last proper studio album lowest on this ranking, but Voids has had the least amount of time to make an impact on me, especially in comparison to some of the later albums on this list. That said, Voids is still a fantastic record that represented something of a return to form for the band as they circled back to the more mathy and intimate style of their early releases. Behind the scenes, Voids is the only album to feature drummer Kiefer Matthias who joined the band two years earlier replacing founding member Erin Tate. This record also marked the return of the band to their original label, Suicide Squeeze, for the first time since 2007’s Planet of Ice. So with some old and some new, Voids feels like a career-spanning retrospective that also acts as a truly fantastic bookend.

Voids sees MTB at their most wistful and diverse, synthesizing every different type of song they’ve made across their 17-year career into one LP. Songs like “Invisible” and “Last Kiss” are poppy radio grabs that are primed for bouncy indie dance parties and sunny top-down singalongs. Conversely, tracks like “What About The Boat?” harken back to the band’s debut, eschewing radio-ready choruses for more technical instrumentation, subdued vocals, and self-destructive lovelorn lyricism. Meanwhile, “Silver” sounds like a mid-career OMNI-cut, and “Lighthouse” builds to a glitchy, psychedelic guitar solo that would have fit in perfectly on Planet of Ice. With this record, the group pulled out all the stops and created an album that felt designed to please every type of MTB fan regardless of what their favorite era of the band was.

 

10 - Fair Enough (2018)

Minus The Bear’s final release, Fair Enough, was an apt farewell. An EP comprised of three Voids leftovers and one remix, the band’s last formal release was a bite-sized send-off that they put out right before embarking on their farewell tour at the end of 2018. Fair Enough simultaneously acted as a reminder of what made the band great and also served as a  bittersweet love letter to fans. Everyone went into this EP knowing it was the band’s final work, and that made it all the more difficult to say goodbye. 

The opening track “Fair Enough” begins somberly with lead singer Jake Snider touching on all of his favorite topics; women, alcohol, and regret. This leads to a masterful build as synthesizers, bass, and guitar swirl together over a drumroll. “Viaduct” is a hard-driving anthemic cut, and “Dinosaur” is a groovy and carefully-constructed piece centered around one of the band’s signature guitar-tapped lines. I will say, while Sombear’s remix of “Invisible” is serviceable, the decision to close the band’s entire career out on a remix is a perplexing one. It ends up feeling more like the reprised music that plays over the end credits of a movie than a thoughtful message to fans after two decades of support. That minor gripe aside, Fair Enough is a well-rounded goodbye that briefly touches upon all the reasons why Minus The Bear were such a creative force of nature. 

 

9 - Infinity Overhead (2012)

Infinity Overhead was the first Minus The Bear album released after I graduated from high school. While it might seem silly to demarcate a band’s discography by my own “pre” and “post” high-school phases, it feels relevant to mention here because this was the first Minus the Bear record that I consumed outside of the environment in which I first discovered them. This shifted my perspective as a listener and led to me experience the album differently than any of the band’s previous work. In other words, whether well-founded or not, this record represented an irreversible shift in my relationship with the band and how I viewed them. 

The first side of the album is interesting and fun, if not a little uneven. “Steel and Blood” is catchy enough, even if it feels like a label-mandated requirement for a lead single. Meanwhile, “Diamond Lightning” is flat-out one of the best songs the band has ever created, featuring soaring, gorgeous instrumentals and nostalgic, picturesque lyricism. Where the album really shines, however, is in its back half. From track six onward, the group launches into a stretch of fantastic songs that sound unlike anything they’ve ever created before or since. “Heaven is a Ghost Town” is an eerie and pensive meditation, “Empty Party Rooms” is a minimalistic construction that builds to an anthemic chorus, and “Lonely Gun” is a funky, obtuse track with electronic claps and a wah-wah guitar line that sounds like a laser. Perhaps most importantly, “Cold Company” is a cathartic closing track featuring a sticky chorus, a molten guitar solo, and a punchy, tight riff. It may be a little uneven, but my love and appreciation for Infinity Overhead has only grown with time.

 

8 - This Is What I Know About Being Gigantic (2001)

On This Is What I Know About Being Gigantic we hear Minus The Bear in their earliest, most primitive form. While obviously lacking the same level of production as any of the recordings that followed it, this EP still manages to showcase a band who very much has a fully-formed idea of who they are and a vision of what they’re working towards. 

There’s signature mathy guitar tapping, synthy embellishments, technical drumming, weird time signatures, romantic lyricism, catchy choruses, and bizarre song titles. It’s textbook Minus The Bear right from the very start from the awesomely-named “Hey Wanna Throw Up? Get Me Naked” to the enamored and intoxicated “Pantsuit... Uggghhh.” In a heartwarming turn of events, “Lemurs, Man, Lemurs” was a staple of the group’s farewell tour setlist, and let me tell you, it was nothing short of life-affirming to hear a room full of people yelling “roll one for me / roll one for me / let’s drink all night” at the top of their lungs a full seventeen years after the song was released. 

 

7 - Acoustics II (2013)

I’ll admit that including Minus The Bear’s acoustic albums in this countdown feels like a bit of a cheat, if only because they’re essentially Greatest Hits records. While the band’s acoustic releases feature cherry-picked hits from every stage of their career, I’d argue that the songs standalone and were recreated with enough love and care that they constitute their own entries. Acoustics II is, as you would expect, a fully-acoustic collection of songs and a sequel to the band’s first acoustic release in 2008. Practically doubling the original Acoustic’s runtime, the sequel is a full-length release that reimagines some of the band’s greatest tracks from each of their previous albums along with two unique tracks created just for this record. 

One of the most striking parts of both of Minus The Bear’s acoustic releases is how above-and-beyond the band went. They could have just sung their old songs over a single acoustic guitar and released them to rabid fans, but instead, they reimagine them from the ground up with lush additions and careful instrumentation. The songs are faithful and true to the originals but also feel renewed and fresh, cast in a new, more minimalistic light. We as listeners see the barebones artistry of each track; the lyrics are laid bare, every guitar note is crystal clear, and the bass carefully guides each track to its intended destination. Everything is carefully constructed, resulting in a loving release that feels like a celebratory victory lap lauding the band’s prior artistic achievements.  

 

6 - Omni (2010)

I’ll admit that it took me a while to come around on Omni... In fact, this seems like a good as place as any to acknowledge that I flat out didn’t like this record for years. Perhaps because Minus The Bear were coming off (arguably) their strongest and most cohesive project with Planet of Ice, but also because this album represented a shift away from the more moody and atmospheric work of their first few albums towards a more bright and sunny style of indie music. 

Omni’s opening track sets the tone for the record perfectly. Based around a melody played off a Suzuki Omnichord, “My Time” is a dancy warm weather song that was often accompanied by cascades of balloons or explosions of confetti at the band’s live shows. In fact, the entire first half of the record is packed with catchy and pristine cuts that could have easily been chart-topping singles if there were any justice in the world.“Summer Angel” is an amber-coated love song that finds the band happier than they’ve ever been. “Secret Country” is a careening cliffside banger with a powerful riff, buttery smooth drum beat, and muscular synth line. “Hold Me Down” is a groovy and restless track that alternates between pensive introspective stretches and fast-paced eruptions of joy. By the album’s back half, the sun has set, and the group’s love-filled optimism has made way for the distorted and mind-altering allure of drug-fueled nightlife. “Into The Mirror” is a narrative track starring a cast of seedy characters and a mirror piled with excessive amounts of cocaine. “Animal Backwards” is an abstract and psychedelic journey led by reversed bass-pumping synth line that sounds like it could have soundtracked Homer’s Guatemalan Chili Pepper trip. By the time “Dayglow Vista Rd.” rolls around, the sun has risen once again, and the group finds themselves just as enamored and overjoyed as they were at the start of the journey. Finally, “Fooled By The Night” acts as a final coda that assures us everything will be okay in the end before sending us off into a restful sleep.

 

5 - Acoustics (2008)

Coming hot off the heels of their third album, Minus The Bear’s first acoustic EP may have been released in October of 2008, but that didn’t stop it from feeling like a warm ray of sunshine. Like letting fresh air into a room that has become stale and stagnant, Acoustics saw the group stripping themselves of all studio magic and electronic trickery for a release that felt both bare and lively. Pulling mostly from the previous year’s Planet of Ice, this EP revisited some of the band’s most recent creations and cast them in a considerably different light. Also accompanied by a cut from their debut, their sophomore record, and a unique song recorded just for this release, Acoustics might be Minus The Bear at their most lyrically-precise and instrumentally-pure.

The opening salvo of “Guns & Ammo” and “We’re Not A Football Team” go a long way for setting the warm, sunny tone of the release. Sounding like an early-June day, these tracks evoke hammocks, fresh blades of grass, and light beers enjoyed in that hour right as the sun is setting and you’re enjoying the last waning moments of warmth. Even the Planet of Ice tracks which sounded frosty and atmospheric in their original context now sound wholesome and positively sun-drenched in their new acoustic dressings. This release goes a long way in letting the music speak for itself; showing that these songs can exist in any context and still work toward their intended purpose. 

 

4 - They Make Beer Commercials Like This (2004)

Admittedly a bit of a dark horse in this ranking, They Make Beer Commercials Like This is Minus The Bear’s second EP. Initially released in 2004, two years after their debut and one year out from Menos El Oso, Beer Commercials essentially acted as an artistic stopgap between the band’s shifting styles. This EP saw MTB drop some of the more fast-paced leanings of their debut and move into a more mature space that they fully fleshed out on their sophomore record.

Part of this EP’s strength comes from how punctual it is. A lightweight six tracks clocking in at a collective 22-minutes. This was later expanded to seven tracks when the band re-released this EP in 2008, but the point still stands: Beer Commercials does not overstay its welcome. Opening track “Fine + 2 PTS” is a sexy dance number that thumps with bass and synth practically leaping off the record drenched in neon light and smelling like high-end cocktails. While other highlights on this EP include the extremely-mathy “Let’s Play Clowns,” the trashy punk “Dog Park,” and the carefree “Hey! Is That A Ninja Up There?,” the strongest song is undeniably the one smack-dab in the middle of the tracklist.

“I’m Totally Not Down With Rob's Alien” opens with a hypnotic electronic drum beat, reverb-laden guitar strum, and glitchy flash-forward to the song’s emotional climax. Through each of the verses, Snider paints a picture of one carefree day from his childhood. He’s lakeside somewhere, it’s a sunny afternoon, and his parents are out at the grocery store. He decides to take advantage of this quiet and go for a swim. In the chorus, he belts out, “And I swim out as far as I can / And float on my back / Just waiting for nothing.” Not only is this a beautiful and poetic image, but I’ve also found that it speaks to something deep within me. Our narrator is young (at least young enough to still live with their parents), and there’s some deep-ingrained satisfaction in taking time for yourself just to exist and speak to no one, or as Snider puts it: “It's a lot more fun alone.” With this one song admittedly weighing the release higher in my opinion, Beer Commercials is still a tantalizing and well-constructed release that foreshadowed the greatness to come and also leaves you wanting more.

 

3 - Planet of Ice (2007)

Planet of Ice just might be Minus The Bear’s masterpiece. Despite coming in at third on my list, Planet of Ice is often cited as many fan’s favorite MTB album, or at least a high point in the band’s discography. Unequivocally the darkest and most proggy record in the group’s history, this third album found Minus The Bear slowing things down and exploring darker corners of their psyche (and the world) than they ever have before. 

One point in favor of Planet of Ice’s greatness is the staggering range of tracks. You have easily-digestible earworms like “Burying Luck,” and of course, the undeniable “Knights” with its bouncy drumbeat and scream-along chorus. There are pensive jazzy tracks like “Ice Monster” and “Part 2” that sound tailor-made for dark, rainy, neon-lit alleys and rooms illuminated solely through the narrow slats of Venetian blinds. Planet of Ice also boasts some of the longest songs the band has ever created: “Dr. L’Ling” uses its seven-minutes to create a time-bomb like build that erupts into a dance party, meanwhile “Lotus” is an expansive multi-part odyssey stretching nearly nine minutes long. This record also saw Snider experimenting with his lyrics, turning away from loosely-autobiographical tales to fascinating character studies on “White Mystery” and the aforementioned “Ice Monster.”

The album’s most impressive feat comes in its three-song stretch near the end with “Throwin’ Shapes,” “When We Escape,” and “Double Vision Quest.” These are arguably three of the strongest songs the group has ever created, and the fact that they’re all next to each other only makes the record feel all the more impressive. “Throwin’ Shapes,” the shortest cut on the album (and a staple of the band’s live set), is a chorus-heavy dance track that’s packed with irreversible momentum. “When We Escape” begins with a tone-setting synth melody and step-ladder guitar tap that mounts up to a gnashing moshpit-inspiring breakdown before floating off into space. Finally, “Double Vision Quest” is a spellbinding zero-gravity love song centered around hypnotic guitar work that climaxes in an extended instrumental break where each band member gets to flex their respective chops. 

It’s also worth noting that the bonus tracks for Planet of Ice are also spectacular. “Cat Calls and Ill Means,” “Electric Rainbow,” and “Patiently Waiting” are all deep cuts that every fan should hear (most of which finally got their justice on the band’s B-sides collection Lost Loves). Hell, even the P.O.S. remix of “Knights” is fantastic, and I’m usually wary of electronic remixes like this. There’s definitely an argument to be made that Planet of Ice is Minus The Bear’s best album, while I’ll never deny the quality of this record, it sits at one tonal (and technical) end of the band’s discography; it’s darker, more electronic, and more proggy than anything else they’ve ever created. In other words, it has earned its name. It’s just that when it comes down to it, I’m a bigger fan of the band’s warmer, more fast-paced releases. Speaking of which… 

 

2 - Highly Refined Pirates (2002)

Here is where I abandon any real impression of this being an objective list. While Highly Refined Pirates has its fair share of fans, it also finds the band at their most brash and charmingly-ignorant. Released just one year after the scene-setting Gigantic, this album represented Minus The Bear’s full-fledged unveiling to the world, and what an unveiling it was.

Opening track “Thanks for the Killer Game of Crisco Twister” wastes no time getting into things with Snider belting out, “And then we all buy yachts!” at the two-second mark. Placed over a knotty guitar line, this opening lyric more or less acted as the band’s mission statement for the first half of their career. Equal parts goofy, catchy, and chaotically-obtuse, I can’t think of a better one-line encapsulation of the band than this one. These tongue-in-cheek boasts lead to half-ironic imagery of sunglasses, remote island cabins, and endlessly-topped off beverages. This all builds to a cathartic chorus of “Our girls are looking so good! / Our girls are looking so good!” To me, these lines evoke lakeside bike rides during summer vacations in high school. They smell like sunscreen and feel like high desert sun on my skin. Ironic as these lyrics may be, they also manage to capture something beautiful and wholesome that I’ll never be able to reclaim again. 

The following songs feature similarly feel-good sentiments like “Monkey!!! Knife!!! Fight!!!” which erupts in a chorus of “We'll drive around the lake / Just a little too fast / Yeah, windows down / The wine in our heads / The city lights just blur.” Reading these lines written out, you might think they’re off a chart-topping rap song, but instead, they’re placed over a bouncing rhythm section and precise math-rock guitar. The band’s earliest hit, “Absinthe Party at the Fly Honey Warehouse,” tells the tale of escaping overseas where the red wine flows freely, where there’s a simple pleasure in a solitary park bench, and where a two-star hotel will suffice. 

These drunken elations are punctuated with meditative instrumental tracks that act less like a breathless pause between songs on the dancefloor and more like a stand-in for the two hours of sleep caught between benders. “We Are Not A Football Team” is a slow-paced springtime love song in which natural beauty and late nights lead to spending time with someone you adore, where your only goal is merely to be in their presence. Similarly, “Get Me Naked 2: Electric Boogaloo” saw Minus The Bear beating everyone to the ironic subtitle punch while also featuring some of the most beautiful and poetic descriptions of an early-stage relationship I’ve ever heard. Things get slightly murkier by the end of the record as “Spritz!!! Spritz!!!” seemingly expends all of the band’s energy, leaving them drained of endorphins for the jazzy “I Lost All My Money At The Cockfights” and the heartbroken “Let’s Play Guitar In a Five Guitar Band,” both of which still manage to work their way up to moving choruses and instrumental builds. 

Highly Refined Pirates, rough-around-the-edges as it may be, is an album that captures a mood and distills it down to its purest essence. In the same way that Carrie & Lowell is a dark and morbid album about the loss of a loved one, Highly Refined Pirates is a light and sunny album about carefree summers and innocence lost. Those records are obviously on opposite ends of the tonal spectrum, but they both manage to capture their respective moods to great effect. The songs on Highly Refined Pirates shimmer like the sun bouncing off a lake. They breeze through your ears like a summer wind nudging the leaves on the trees. Sure, this album literally soundtracked some of my last pure and innocent summers, but the music itself reflects those memories beautifully, even if they’re a little over the top. 

 

1 - Menos El Oso (2005)

Here we are at the top of our list with Menos El Oso. One of the many reasons I don’t consider myself a “music journalist” is because I’m not nearly impartial enough to be paid to do this. I let personal experiences, biases, and perspectives seep into my writing, and that is (generally) considered a big no-no in journalism of any form. As you can see above, I’m prone to elevating albums based on hyper-specific personal experiences, and I also don’t like being negative, so the whole “critical” side of the profession kid of falls flat for me. Even so, I’m about to use a word I try my hardest to avoid at all costs because of what it entails: Menos El Oso is perfect.

I used to fall under the camp that no album can ever be perfect because it’s an inherently unreachable descriptor. Whether it’s the production, one weird guitar lick, or even one word in a verse that doesn’t sit right with you, there will likely always be something that detracts from an album and keeps it from perfection. While I still believe “perfection” is a loaded term that should generally remain unused, I also believe that, when taken on the merits of indie rock, Minus The Bear’s second album is a perfect creation.

Not only was the band able to overcome the dreaded sophomore slump, but they also created their single most varied, long-living, and financially successful album. Sure, Menos El Oso is the best Minus The Bear album, but it’s also one of the best indie albums of all time. This record is a staggering achievement of musicianship, songwriting, and creativity where every song stands on its own, feels unique, and builds to something bigger. There is simply no other way that this ranking could have ended.

From second one of the record, the band comes out swinging on “The Game Needed Me,” bashing the listener over the head with a breakaway table of a riff. The guitar, bass, drums, and electronics all coalesce into one pointed barrage of instrumentation that immediately introduces the listener to the wonderful world of Minus The Bear. Things subside just enough by the time that the first verse rolls around in which Snider provides a stark contrast to the opulent opening lines of Pirates as he sings, “We don't have money / So we can't lose it” before his concerns are quelled by the touch of another person. Soon, his mind shifts from romantic pursuits to capitalism as he questions the exchange of time for money, the desire to escape that dynamic, as well as the fear that he might miss the “caress” of his office desk. “The Game Needed Me” is a killer opening track and represents an immediate improvement of the band on virtually every level.

“Memphis & 53rd” bears a similar array of earthly concerns in between hazy dream sequences and stays in arid desert motels. Similarly, “Drilling” is a tight song featuring picturesque oceanside cliffs, scenic overlooks, and the nagging feeling that this all is too good to be true. The songs on this record range from carefree party tracks, fast cars, and childlike innocence on “The Fix,” “Michio’s Death Drive,” and “Hooray,” just to name a few. These emotional high points are tempered with the darkness of morbid noire tales on “El Torrente,” and dingy smoke-filled bars on “Fulfill The Dream.”

Of course, I’d be remiss to not mention “Pachuca Sunrise,” the band’s magnum opus, and the reason I fell in love with Minus The Bear in the first place. Featuring uplifting glistening guitars, a mellow, laid-back rhythm section, and lyrics of paradise on earth, there’s a good reason why “Pachuca Sunrise” has endured as the band’s most popular song. Alternating between this heavenly depiction of a remote Mediterranian beach and snappy drum-led choruses that feel constructed with the sole purpose of providing fans the perfect beat to dance around to. 

Capping Menos El Oso off is “This Ain’t A Surfin’ Movie,” which has the distinct qualification of being my favorite song of all time, an honor it has held for nearly a decade at this point. I wrote about this song in loving detail for Swim Into The Sound’s celebratory 100th article, but it’s obviously worth going into at least a little bit of detail here. Much like “Pachuca Sunrise,” “Surfin’ Movie” recounts a tale of a beach-side getaway. It’s you and the person you love most spending the day away from civilization, troubles, and worries. This song bears some of Snider’s most precious and loving lyricism as he depicts reveling in a lover’s soft touch, the beauty of song, and ultimately becoming one with nature. It’s about finding your soulmate and planning out your future together as memories of cities and the bustle of modern life become fainter by the minute. It’s gorgeous, loving, and the single most beautiful song I’ve ever heard. “This Ain’t A Surfin’ Movie” speaks to something deep within me, and I want to live in these five minutes forever. It’s a perfect song and the cherry on top of a perfect album. 

If Planet of Ice is a frigid winter album and Omni is a breezy summer record, then Menos El Oso is every season in one. It stretches from sweltering deserts to snow-covered Pacific Northwest towns. It ranges from perilous cliff tops to sandy beaches. It spans entire lifetimes of love, life, mistakes, and memories, all in just 45 minutes. Each song manages to sound different from the others that surround it and simultaneously bear loving, poetic verses alongside bouncy dancefloor-ready choruses. There’s not a bad song in the bunch, and the fact that Menos El Oso contains both the band’s biggest hit and my favorite song of all time means that it was a shoo-in for the top spot on this list. 

It’s worth reiterating that, as much as I love Menos El Oso, every album on this list is fantastic and worth digging into. Even a cursory look at the band’s top songs on Spotify reveals a diverse list of hits that range all the way from their first album to their most recent. You’ve got “Pachuca Sunrise” off Menos El Oso, “Into The Mirror” off Omni, “Absinthe Party” off Highly Refined Pirates, “Knights” off Planet of Ice, “Last Kiss” off Voids, and even “Rob’s Alien” off Beer Commercials. In other words, Minus The Bear have managed to release an undeniable hit song off everything they’ve ever released, and if that’s not a feat, then I don’t know what is.

It’s incredible when you revisit some pivotal form of art from your youth and it still holds up. Minus The Bear have offered something that not only holds up, but ages like a fine wine. These albums impacted me deeply in high school and led me to new forms of music, but have only continued to get better with each passing year. These albums have become inextricably linked to some of the most important memories of my teenage years and beyond. 

Minus The Bear became a point of bonding for my friend group. These songs soundtracked long nights making dumb decisions, and carefree days skateboarding through culdesacs. These tracks played during moments of absolute love, as well as the aching pain of heartbreak. I can still close my eyes and transport myself back to summer days of Watermelon Arizona tea, sunscreen, and scabs from skateboarding down a hill that didn’t seem that steep from the top. It was nights of video games and making each other tear up with laughter as we willingly sacrificed precious hours of sleep just to continue staying awake to create a few more bleary memories.

These albums are obviously very near and dear to my heart, but they’re also near and dear to a lot of people’s hearts. When Minus The Bear decided to call it quits in 2018 I was saddened by the proverbial closing of such an important chapter of my life, but the memories associated with this music will live on forever. That’s a tall order for a band whose name is based on a blowjob joke. Long live Minus The Bear.

Holy Fawn – The Black Moon | EP Review

It’s funny how far first impressions go when it comes to music. Just take a look at Roddy Ricch’s chart-topping hit “The Box.” While the song itself is an undeniable meme-worthy earworm, most people’s first exposure to the track was this infectious 30-second Triller video of Ricch singing along to his own song around the house. Not only did that video expose millions of people to the song across various forms of social media, but it also gave a humanizing and endearing look at the person behind the music to both fans and potential listeners alike. At the time of writing, “The Box” has claimed a #1 position on the Hot 100 and Billboard 200, holding off both Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez as the two pop stars beg their fans for streams in order to attain that coveted Number #1 spot. So why am I talking about a trap song in a review for a three-track shoegaze EP? Because my first brush with The Black Moon was an equally-impactful experience, just on the opposite end of the tonal spectrum.

There’s nothing better than going into music blind. I went into Holy Fawn’s most recent EP having only a vague idea of who the band was. I knew they were signed to Triple Crown, and I knew people liked 2018’s Death Spells, but that was about it. For all I knew, they could have been hardcore, pop-punk, or country… So when I say I went into The Black Moon blind, I mean ignorant.

I’ll admit I’ve been starved for new music in 2020, and January 17th felt like the first big day for new releases this year. We got A posthumous Mac Miller album, a gorgeous new Pinegrove record, a groovy debut from 070 Shake, and a surprise-released Eminem album. It was already a pretty stacked day, but when I saw that Holy Fawn had released a new EP I figured “why not?” and decided to give it a shot.

When you hit play on a song with zero expectations, you tend to make a snap judgment within the first few seconds, and I knew within the first moments of “Candy” that this EP was going to be something special. Immediately met with a swirl of ambient noise followed by a wall of shoegazey riffage, the opening track sets the mood with a masterful hand. Within seconds the song grows in size until it’s towering over you, casting a dark shadow and eclipsing any source of light. The riff eventually dies down for a post-rock guitar line and some of the EP’s most clear-cut vocals, which are soon subsumed by an instrumental build led by a steady drumroll. That build crescendos and drops out for a brief moment of silence before the listener is plunged back into another monstrous riff accompanied by distant black metal screams.

The second track, “Tethered,” acts as a bit of a breather, a three-minute instrumental respite from the emotionally-draining songs that surround it. Reverb-laden guitar and bass notes intertwine as decorative ornamental ambiance circles around them. Then a whir of low-humming static carries the listener to the final track, whether they’re ready for it or not.

Seven-minute closing track “Blood Pact” begins slowly, carrying over that static from the preceding song, but now pairing it with an electronic drumbeat and orchestral soundscapes reminiscent of the early-career This Will Destroy You. Soon harmonized vocals emerge over the hybrid beat which now feels equal parts natural and synthetic. This Slowdive-like harmonization makes way to a measured verse that feels almost Wicca Phase-inspired. After smoothly transitioning between these vastly-different genres, you realize that you have no idea where the track is going next. Around the three-minute mark, the electronic drums fade out and a solitary post-rock guitar note makes way for a soaring passage where rattling bass, driving guitar, crashing cymbals, and searing vocals all coalesce into one cathartic outpouring of emotion. After every drop of this destructive essence is poured out, the electronic beat returns once more and carries the listener off into the silence.

Every once in awhile, you’ll sit down to listen to an album that just hits you in the right spot. Holy Fawn’s The Black Moon is a beautiful EP that just happened to crystalize some feeling I didn’t even know I had inside me. It reminds me of some of my favorite post-rock bands, some of my favorite shoegaze bands, and even some of my favorite new bands like Greet Death. Much like Greet Death’s New Hell (which landed a spot on our 2019 Album of the Year list), The Black Moon is a slow-moving and deeply-moody release that unfurls and slowly permeates every corner of your mind. It’s transcendent, foreboding, and unshakable. This EP is an absolutely fantastic start to the year and proof that sometimes all it takes is one open-minded click in Spotify for art to find its intended audience. 

Accepting Change: The Never-Ending Evolution of Bring Me The Horizon

When I was in high school, one of my most revelatory music phases came when I discovered the wonderful world of modern metal. This was initially seeded by groups like Underoath, Chiodos, and The Devil Wears Prada that I stumbled upon in middle school, but came into full bloom throughout high school when groups like Dance Gavin Dance, Of Mice & Men, and We Came As Romans began to gain traction. 

These bands are often categorized under different labels depending on who you ask; post-hardcore, screamo, Risecore, you name it. For a genre that’s supposedly about upending societal norms, metalheads weirdly tend to be some of the worst, most pedantic genre-nazis out of any music scene. For their sake, I’ll just refer to this overarching scene as metalcore from here on out, but I recognize that I’m painting with a broad brush. Regardless of what you call this style of music, this crop of mid-to-late-aughts metal bands became the foundation for my entire being in high school. This genre influenced my musical taste, my style of clothing, and even my personality for the better part of my teenage years. Do I regret it? A little. Would I go back and change it? Never. 

Essentially an extension of the 2000’s Warped Tour scene, these groups took cues from pop-punk, metal, hardcore, and electronica and blended them into a highly-marketable fusion of all those genres. Some groups like Attack Attack! became memes. Some groups like Of Machines burned bright and fizzled out after one record. Some groups like August Burns Red made it big and have stuck to their artistic guns ever since. And some groups like Bring Me The Horizon struck gold early on then kept growing and pivoting into a band that’s somehow still successful and filling stadiums in 2020.

I’ll be the first to admit that, even over the course of the last decade, most of this music aged has poorly. However, for people like myself who had these bands soundtrack their formative years, the nostalgia factor is undeniable and irreplaceable. Some people have tried their damndest to argue the artistic merit of bands like Attack Attack!, but unless you were listening as it was happening, I don’t see many bands from this scene being accessible to an outsider at all. Like, at all. In 2020, most of these songs sound dated, sexist, or just plain cringy, but when they soundtracked your first romance, your first “real concert” with friends, and hundreds of hours of Call of Duty lobbies, then you’re willing to overlook a lot. 

This is all to say that this era of 2005 to 2012 metalcore is near and dear to my heart. I’ve written about it in bite-sized pieces before, but never focused on any one band in particular. If you’d allow, I’d like to take you on a journey back in time to my specific discovery of one act called Bring Me The Horizon.

The year was 2006. It was my first year of high school, and I was still trying to figure out what the hell that meant. My friends and I were all working on 5-starring every song in Guitar Hero II, and (aside from homework), we didn’t have a care in the world. Drugs and alcohol were never a desire for me growing up, so the only two things filling my brain were video games and music. At the time I was deep into classic rock and Grunge. Kurt Cobain was my left-handed hero, and there was nothing more that I wanted than to be a teen in the ’90s. 

I had a few old-school “metal” bands on my iPod Nano, mostly things like AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, and Metallica, as much as you can call those metal. These groups stood in direct contrast to more contemporary metal acts on my iPod like the aforementioned Underoath and The Devil Wears Prada, both of whom were Christian bands with harsher vocals and more modern sensibilities. While that early wave of Christian metalcore was a game-changer at the time (I still remember the first time I heard “Baby, You Wouldn't Last A Minute On The Creek”), they weren’t necessarily records I was listening to every day. 

Sometime in 2007 a sea change happened, and there became a clear divide in my class of peers. There were jocks, popular kids, burnouts, theater geeks, and all the usual groups you see in every 2010’s-era coming-of-age dramedy, but an emerging addition to the schoolyard class system was the metalhead. This wasn’t the stereotypical 80s metal fan headbanging to Twisted Sister and Quiet Riot, nor was it the 90s relic metalhead listening to Pantera and Slayer, this was a new breed of fan that felt distinctly late-2000’s. 

Colloquially referred to as “scene kids,” this newest subgenre of metal fan bore little resemblance to their predecessors. They squeezed into black skinny jeans, straightened their hair, and wore shirts adorned with brightly-colored neon skulls. It was basically every “rawr XD” meme that we can now appreciate ironically with enough hindsight but done in earnest. They had snakebite piercings, carabiner keyholders, black MySpace pages, and most importantly; they listened to music with breakdowns. As uncool as it sounds now, I desperately wanted to be one of them.

Not only was this group accepting enough to let me into the fold, but it also turns out that I genuinely enjoyed their music. Metalcore aside, this included questionable shit like NeverShoutNever, Owl City, and Metro Station. I only really dipped my toe into most of those bands because the lion’s share what attracted me to the scene were the heavy bands. While the list of late-00’s metalcore acts is practically endless, the one band I still have a visceral memory of listening to for the first time was Bring Me The Horizon. 

We were in the cafeteria, and one of my friends handed me his iPod. He told me “listen to this,” and that was all the preface I got before he played “(I Used To Make Out With) Medusa.” Simply put, it was unlike anything I’d ever heard before. It was heavy as shit. Almost too heavy for me at the time, but I wanted to like it. I downloaded the record and soon found myself listening to it frequently enough to build up a “tolerance” to it. 

Technically classified as deathcore, Bring Me The Horizon’s debut album Count Your Blessings was a ten-track, 36-minute-long dip into the most hardcore of waters I’d ever swam in. It was so heavy in fact, I could only handle it in short bursts. Songs like “Slow Dance” and “Fifteen Fathoms and Counting” gave me an instrumental breather between the punishing brutality of “Braile (For Stevie Wonder's Eyes Only),” the piercing screams of “Pray for Plagues,” and the frantic guitarwork of “Off the Heezay.” Count Yout Blessings was shocking, heavy, and changed my taste forever from that point onward.

This album led me to dozens of other groups in the scene, many of which I mentioned above. As I began to immerse myself into this world, its bands, and its unique language of breakdowns and guttural vocals, I gradually grew to love Count Your Blessings. Once I knew the words, where the riffs hit, and what I could “sing along” to, the whole thing became child’s play. What was once the heaviest thing I’d ever heard soon became one deathcore album of many packed onto my 32 gig iPod Nano. 

Then 2008 happened. 

One year after I discovered Bring Me The Horizon, the group released their much-anticipated sophomore record Suicide Season. I excitedly downloaded the album, loaded it up onto my iPod, sat down to listen to it, and the damndest thing happened… I thought it was too soft. Granted, the band shifted from deathcore to a slightly-more-accessible metalcore formula, but still, it shocked me that this band I’d spend so long “adjusting to” was now putting out something that I deemed too far below my current tastes. 

Then two years passed, I got deeper into metalcore, and in 2010 the group put out the mouthful of an album There Is a Hell Believe Me I've Seen It. There Is a Heaven Let's Keep It a Secret. Once again, I gave the album a listen and deemed it “too soft” for my taste. It’s not like I was only listening to metal, at this time I was getting into Sigur Ros, Portugal. The Man, Bon Iver, and tons of other groups, the problem was Bring Me The Horizon had set the bar so high with their first album that my expectations were skewed from that point onward.

By the time I hit college, my tastes had begun to expand further into more diverse and eccentric subgenres of music. Everything from Stoner Rock to Electronica was starting to creep its way onto my then-massive 120-gig iPod Classic. Metalcore was still represented, but it began to fade into the background of my day-to-day listening, and by extension, my personality. Perhaps leaving the environment in which I “fit in” to the scene changed my taste in music. Once I no longer had piers from a specific group to connect with, learn from, or impress, then I began to drift into something that felt more honest and true to myself.  

I’d still revisit metalcore every once in a while throughout college. Sometimes it was a concert for nostalgia’s sake, sometimes I just needed something angry to vent through by-proxy on a stressful train ride home. Sometime in 2015 I revisited Suicide Season specifically, and I couldn’t believe it… the record actually sounded pretty good. I went back to Count Your Blessings to recalibrate my possibly-then-out-of-date tastes, and it sounded exactly as I remembered. What happened? Had I softened in my age? Was I not as metal as I once tried to be in high school? Had I lost touch with the scene? 

I gave Suicide Season a few more listens and moved on. I revisited the album again the next year in 2016, and then again the year after that. By 2017 I had graduated from college and found myself in a completely new phase of my life. High school felt like a distant memory, now two periods of my life behind me. Sometime that year, I found myself listening to Suicide Season and came to the shocking realization that it might be my favorite metalcore album of all time. What? 

Turns out that Suicide Season wasn’t bad, it’s just that 2008 Taylor was wrong. My perspective was skewed. My expectations at the time were misplaced, and nine years later those expectations were completely gone. It was as if I was listening to the album for the first time ever. That rediscovery of shifting tastes prompted me to give another shot to There Is a Hell, and wouldn’t you know it, but that album started to grow on me too. 

So there I sat, with egg on my face enjoying Bring Me The Horizon’s first three albums and retroactively chastising younger me for being such a dopey elitist about these two great albums merely because they didn’t have the same low growls and chuggy riffs as the band’s first release. 

By 2018, I still hadn’t given either Sempiternal or That's the Spirit a proper shake, but that summer Bring Me The Horizon started promo for their upcoming sixth studio album Amo. The first single "Mantra" wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, but I could connect the dots and see that the band had become much more radio-friendly in the two albums that I’d skipped over. Nevertheless, I made a conscious decision that I was going to go into this new album with a completely open mind, non-existent expectations, and zero preconceived notions. 

When Amo released in early 2019 the metalheads did the same thing they always do and complained that it was too poppy. I understood their criticism and saw a younger version of myself in those comments, but I gave the album a shot and, guess what, it’s great. I actually did see some positive early reception on reddit of all places, implying that maybe some of these fans were in the exact same boat as I was, aging gracefully (or not-so-gracefully) into a more refined and open-minded metal palate. 

Sure, the band that created Amo bears little resemblance to the one I first fell in love with back in high school, but that’s what happens over the course of a decade. People change. Bands change. Sounds change. Styles change. Tastes change. The group that wrote the love song "Mother Tongue" is surprisingly not the same group of 20-somethings that wrote “Tell Slater Not To Wash His Dick.”

As I mentioned above, there are plenty of groups from this era of my childhood that have “stuck to their guns” artistically. August Burns Red is still making the same album over and over again for better or worse. Dance Gavin Dance have continued to kill it despite spending a better part of their early years dealing with near-constant lineup changes. Hell, even Underoath are still putting out quality records and sound tighter live than they’ve ever been. It’s okay that Bring Me The Horizon have aged and changed their sound. The band isn’t bound to deathcore, nor should they be. In fact, at this point, Bring Me The Horizon have probably spent more time getting radio play with kind-of-heavy alternative rock than they have making the deathcore albums I associate them with. 

Sure their new sound is more accessible than their early work, but Amo is arguably a better album than the ones I grew up listening. In looking at Bring Me The Horizon, I’m reminded of a younger version of myself that I want to slap for being such a stuck-up prude about something as goofy as subgenres and sonic changes. Likewise, I’m reminded of a younger version of myself that would be shocked at the poppy music I not only tolerate but willingly listen to on a daily basis now. 

I also recognize the fact that I’m not a creature of change. I like to eat the same things, play the same games, and hang out with the same people. I’m not afraid of change, but it sure makes me uncomfortable. I can recognize that this tendency bleeds over into music, even if I like to think I’m more conscious of it now than I was in high school. I’m still as susceptible to snap judgments and bad takes as anyone, but my own revisionist history on Bring Me The Horizon highlights not only how a band can change to stay relevant and successful, but how we as listeners should try our hardest to come into things open-minded. 

I’ve grown to accept these albums for what they are, and high school Taylor would probably hate me for that. Not only that, I’ve gone on to love these albums that I once wrote off for ill-founded and superficial reasons. 

Bring Me The Horizon is a great band. Count Your Blessings is heavy, Suicide Season is near-perfect, and Amo is catchy and eclectic. They’re all great for different reasons, and it only took me a decade to realize it. 

The Stark Maximalism of Sufjan Stevens

Sufjan Stevens is an enigma. He is reclusive (aside from the occasional Tumblr post, interview, or Oscar performance), and didn’t even perform publicly once last year. His song titles contain more punctuation than a Steven King novel, and the man has released over one-hundred Christmas songs (a feat that we’re dedicated to covering in-full over on our sister site). His discography his one of the best in folk music ranging from soft, stark acoustic on Seven Swans, lush multi-instrumental fanfare on Illinois, and electronic bombast on The Age of Adz. While he initially made a name for himself with a far-fetched promise to record an album about all 50 states, it quickly became clear that his artistry and vision exceeded the need for any gimmicks. That’s about as broad of a career-overview as I can fit into an introductory paragraph, but the important thing to note for this piece is that the record he released in 2015, Carrie & Lowell, might be the collection of songs that end up defining his career. 

Worryingly for fans, Sufjan’s albums seem to be getting fewer and farther between. Carrie & Lowell is now five years old, and it’s still the last studio album from the folk hero; however, that doesn’t mean he’s been any less productive. In the past few years, he’s mostly relegated himself to singles and side-projects alongside conducting, producing, and soundtracking. Even before this five-year gap between records, Sufjan had seemed increasingly uninterested in (and discouraged by) the album format. Before Carrie & Lowell his last album was 2010’s Adz, and his last proper record before that was 2005’s Illinois. There were plenty of B-sides, art installations, EPs, ballets, and avant-garde diversions in between all that, so it’s fair to say that Sufjan is a weird mix of precious and prolific. 

Sufjan is also an artist who’s talented enough to have released several career-defining albums. If you were to ask a fan what their favorite Sufjan album was, you’re likely to get a different answer based on who you talk to. I’m a Michigan man myself, but Carrie & Lowell is a close second. And while Carrie & Lowell may be only one of two records that Sufjan released in the past ten years, there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s one of the best albums of the decade, and I’m about to tell you why.

2010’s Age of Adz represented something of an end for Sufjan Stevens. Apart from his inclinations away from the album format, that record saw Sufjan blowing up his entire persona, sound, and musical foundation into something entirely unexpected and extraordinary. It was the album-equivalent of ego death. He eased listeners in with a familiar acoustic guitar on “Futile Devices,” but then turned everything on its head with electronic drums, angry frustrations, and cinematic builds the likes of which fans had never before seen. The album concludes with the 25-minute “Impossible Soul,” a breathtaking multi-part musical odyssey that retroactively feels like a career-ending period mark.

So where did he have left to go after such an upending work of art? It turns out that the answer was nowhere. Sufjan essentially went into hiding for a few years aside from a second collection of Christmas songs which he bound together in 2012 thanks to his label Asthmatic Kitty. He toured on that album for one festive holiday season (fittingly long-windedly-titled "Surfjohn Stevens Christmas Sing-A-Long: Seasonal Affective Disorder Yuletide Disaster Pageant on Ice"), then fell off the face of the earth. 

Sometime after that tour, Sufjan Steven’s mother passed away. 

Sufjan had a strained relationship with his mother. She was the topic of songs like “Romulus,” and (by contrast) “Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!” The rough story as presented in “Romulus” is this; Sufjan’s parents got a divorce when he was still a child. His mother moved from Michigan to Oregon and the kids visited her every summer. Sufjan depicts his mother as selfish, uncaring, and something that he felt ‘ashamed’ of. She battled addiction, depression, and schizophrenia, and was generally shown in his music to be an unfit parent. Despite all this, when your mother dies, she’s still your mother, and it still hurts. 

Her death is the event that sparked Carrie & Lowell’s creation. As a result, it’s an expectedly dark, slow, and sad record… and that’s putting it lightly. Carrie & Lowell is a morbid piece of art, a fantastic character study, and an absolutely beautiful reflection on love and mortality. If you haven’t listened to it yet, now is the time to close this tab, turn off the lights, and listen to the record on your nicest pair of headphones. 

When Carrie & Lowell released on March 31st of 2015, it was met with widespread critical acclaim. Aside from the notable context in which it was created, a new Sufjan Stevens record felt like an event worth celebrating. The album represented a sonic return to form for Sufjan, most reminiscent of his early-career acoustic work like Seven Swans and some of the more restrained tracks on Michigan. While critical praise is no consolation prize for a dead parent, it felt like with Carrie & Lowell Sufjan finally became a household name. 

As the full gravity of the record’s lyrics and context began to set in over the first few weeks of its release, Carrie & Lowell almost had a delayed reaction as fans started to recognize the scope and weight of the feelings contained within it. I may just be speaking for myself, but distinctly I recall listening to the album a few times before the words really began to land. It wasn’t until I sat down for a handful of close listens that I grew to understand the severity of the emotions contained within the record. Carrie & Lowell wasn’t just another Sufjan record. It wasn’t Illinois, it wasn’t Adz, and it definitely wasn’t Songs for Christmas, this was something different entirely. Carrie & Lowell is one of the rare albums that sounds sad and also has the weight to back it up. It’s not sad for sadness’ sake. There’s plenty of sad music, and there’s plenty of folk music, but there are very few records like this. 

Album opener “Death With Dignity” sets the tone immediately with a soft, finger-plucked banjo and morbid song title referencing Oregon’s assisted suicide law. Sufjan enters soon after with a soft whispered voice sounding more lost than ever as he sings, “Spirit of my silence, I can hear you / But I’m afraid to be near you / And I don’t know where to begin.” The track ends with a minute of haunting, ghost-like hums that reverberate around the speakers, solidifying the album’s mood for the remaining 39-minutes. 

“Should Have Known Better” is the closest thing the record has to a “catchy” song, placed second in the tracklist presumably to soften the blow of the opening track while also prepping the listener for what’s to come. This song introduces us to the record’s cast of characters, and it’s setting; Sufjan’s mom, brother, and extended family are all represented as well as the state of Oregon. Sufjan’s mom, Carrie, is introduced as a troubled character, establishing her with an anecdote about a time that she forgot Sufjan and his brother at the video store as a child. “When I was three, three, maybe four / She left us at that video store / Oh, be my rest, be my fantasy.” Here he depicts just one instance of her bad parenting, but also follows is up with conflicted feelings of missing her now that she’s gone. 

“Should Have Known Better” ends with a message of hope as Sufjan contrasts this recent loss with a new ray of hope as he sings, “My brother had a daughter (brother had a daughter) / The beauty that she brings, illumination (illumination).” Clinging on to this one shred of optimism, Sufjan sends the listener off to wade through the darkness on the rest of the album. Now we know the stakes, we know the players, and we know how it ends. All that’s left is to fill in the blanks. 

From there, the album spans from love songs on “All of Me Wants All of You” to childhood flashbacks on “Eugene.” Sufjan walks the listener through the stages of grief on “Drawn to the Blood,” and with each track, he takes the listener further down the rabbit hole of loss and confusion that comes in the wake of a loved one’s death. Each song adds another layer onto the relationship between himself and his mother, which sets us up for the heartbreaking depiction of her death beginning on the second side of the record.

Sufjan captures death rawly on “Fourth of July” as he finds himself by his mother’s bedside during her final moments. First, Sufjan sets the scene by establishing his mother’s declining health with beautiful yet pained language. “The evil, it spread like a fever ahead / It was night when you died, my firefly.” From there, he replays a conversation with each stanza trading off between the two of them. The language used is loving and forthright as his dying mother asks, “Did you get enough love, my little dove? / Why do you cry?” elaborating, “And I’m sorry I left, but it was for the best / Though it never felt right / My little Versailles.”

The use of loving pet names is punctuated immediately by post-death logistics as the hospital begins asking Sufjan about how the family would like to bury the body. This gut-punch leads to one final chorus that builds to a climactic chant of “We’re all gonna die,” which is repeated until the song fades out into darkness. It’s sublime.

From that point onward the record shows Sufjan dealing with his mother’s death on “The Only Thing,” flashes back to his childhood once more on “Carrie & Lowell,” and gives a glimpse of hope in the form of love and religion on my personal favorite “John My Beloved.” These songs bear soft acoustic guitar, careful banjo plucks, subtle electronic elements, and creaking piano, creating one continuity of emotion that flows smoothly from one song to the next.

Penultimate “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross” finds Sufjan at his most self-destructive, turning to substances and self-harm in the wake of his mother’s passing. Finally, album closer “Blue Bucket of Gold” is a piano-led lamentation that finds Sufjan reaching out to friends, family, and God for support. The song ends with a meditative swirl of electronics that overwhelms the senses and commandeers the track. Of this song, Sufjan explained in an interview:

“I didn’t know (my mom) well in a lot of ways, and I didn’t know how to say goodbye on the last track with articulation. So I quit playing piano and vocals and just stopped. I wanted to surrender her to the beyond with noises that sound bigger than just me.”

So that was Carrie & Lowell; 43 minutes of heartache, confusion, loss, and sadness. It’s not a fun listen, but very few albums capture such sadness in such an open way. From then on, Sufjan let us sit with the record, and that was the last we heard from him until 2017, which is when he began adding more pieces to his creation. It was at this point that he turned Carrie & Lowell from a masterpiece into a complete body of work and one of the most definitive statements that any artist has ever made.  

Carrie & Lowell may not seem like an album most artists would tour off of; the songs are slow, sad, and minimalistic, not exactly befitting of a large-scale theater. But Sufjan Stevens is not most artists. Sufjan took Carrie & Lowell on the road in 2015 and performed the songs as reimagined for the big stage. The tracks turned from somber reflections of death into meditative statements on life. He performed with a full band, adorned the stage with colorful lights, and donned his iconic baseball hat for months of legendary performances throughout 2015 and 2016. The songs were built out with added drums, background vocalists, and keyboards. Tracks were punctuated by ethereal electronic swirls that allowed the audience to marinate on the performance as it unfolded. Each night was capped off with either  “Chicago” or a cover of Drake’s “Hotline Bling,” perhaps to lighten the mood and ease the audiences out of the death-obsessed world of Carrie & Lowell and back into reality. 

A 2015 performance in South Carolina was filmed and released to the public as a standalone album in 2017, two years after Carrie & Lowell first landed. With the performance immortalized on Carrie & Lowell Live, Sufjan took the quiet meditative nature of the original record and turned in into a maximalist reflection on death and life. The songs were the same as they were before, but now re-ordered and re-created from the ground-up so that they shine in a completely different light.

Performing career-spanning tracks like “Redford” and “Vesuvius,” these songs fit in perfectly alongside the core album’s tracklist, further fleshing out the story of Carrie & Lowell and making the five-year gap between the seemingly distant Age of Adz feel seamless. “All of Me Wants All of You” trades Sufjan’s acoustic guitar out for an entirely-electronic soundscape that erupts in a fantastic explosion of psychedelic dance music. If you were to play the live songs side by side with their original you’d hardly be able able to tell they were the same if it weren’t for the lyrics. Similarly, “Fourth of July” is blown out into a seven-minute epic that retains the original’s guitar and piano but culminates in an extended repetition of “We’re all gonna die” over pulsating synths and a rolling drum solo. Even the pensive “John My Beloved” begins with the same familiar piano but eventually adds drums and guitar that gradually build up to a near-post-rock climax. Perhaps most notably, album closer “Blue Bucket of Gold” is followed by a 13-minute wall of ambient electronic music, lending further credence to the Sufjan quote above, leaving audiences no choice but to ruminate and surrender to the beyond, if only for a scant few minutes.

With this live performance, Sufjan gave the tracks on Carrie & Lowell a new life outside of their original context. It’s one thing to perform such a personal and dark album before hundreds of people, but it’s an artistic achievement to change them so significantly and still have them work to the same end. Carrie & Lowell Live stands as an additional support piece to the original record’s greatness, proving that it can work in different contexts and on different scales. It’s great not just because the songs are great, but because it reimagines them entirely. With this performance, Sufjan took the emotion and story of Carrie & Lowell and pushed the maximalist slider all the way up.

The other achievement of this record is that it takes all of Sufjan’s seemingly-disparate musical phases and makes them all work under one unified sound. The live performance takes the songwriting of Carrie & Lowell and touches it up with the electronic embellishments of Adz and the instrumentation of Michigan. It elevates not just the original record, but his entire discography. 

On April 28th, the same day as the release of Carrie & Lowell Live, Asthmatic Kitty announced The Greatest Gift, an album that collected the outtakes, remixes, and demos from Carrie & Lowell all on one LP. Much like the preceding live album, The Greatest Gift further elevated the original record by adding an additional layer of context and emotional complexity, this time in the opposite tonal direction.

As mentioned above, there are three core categories under which the songs on The Greatest Gift fall. First are outtakes. These are songs like “City of Roses,” “Wallowa Lake Monster,” and “The Hidden River of My Life.” These songs fit tonally into Carrie & Lowell, but focus more on building the backdrop of the album as opposed to detailing its central players. Each song name-drops iconic Oregon locations and attractions, these three outtakes (along with “The Greatest Gift”) flesh out the world of Carrie & Lowell primarily through embellishments to the surrounding environment more than anything vital to the story.

The remixes contained on the album aren’t your standard EDM-fueled fare, but instead opt for adding subtle electronic elements that add to the atmosphere of the original songs. The first remix of “Drawn to the Blood” is helmed by Sufjan himself, editing his own song to sound like an Adz bonus track. Hidalgo Negro remixes both “Death With Dignity” and “All of Me Wants All of You” with swirling electronic additions that make it sound as if you’re underwater or floating in space. The incomparable Doveman remixes “Exploding Whale,” initially a loosie, which now finds a home here as yet another Oregon reference. Finally, 900X remixes “Fourth of July,” pulling the song apart piece by piece and reconstructing it into a cathartic seven-minute electronic build that makes expert use of the song’s white space, giving the lyrics ample time to breathe.

Where The Greatest Gift shines, most surprisingly, are its demo tracks. In these songs, we catch a glimpse of the most raw version of Carrie & Lowell in existence. “Drawn to the Blood” receives a “fingerpicking remix” that swaps the rapidly-strummed guitar of the original for a carefully-finger plucked version that sounds a touch more produced, à la “Mystery of Love.” Most notably, “John My Beloved” and “Carrie & Lovell” are denoted with “iPhone Demo,” painting a picture of Sufjan recording his thoughts, feelings, and grief directly into his phone somewhere that studio equipment was all too far away.

These demos are haunting and breathtaking. Recorded in complete isolation, they feature rough-around-the-edges guitar playing and soft, whispered vocals (even more so than usual). These songs feel remarkably “of the moment,” as if inspiration struck, and Sufjan recorded them on the spot in a bout of stream-of-consciousness. These demos capture the emotion and environment so wholly; you can hear the room tone, the creaking of a chair, and the rattling of the guitar strings. It’s Sufjan in an unpolished and lo-fi setting that most fans have never heard before. The demos take the sadness and starkness of the original album versions and amplifies them as far as humanly bearable. It’s an even more accurate portrayal of grief and loss if only because they sound that much more raw and sorrowful.

This collection of songs, particularly the demos, add yet another layer onto Carrie & Lowell, showing an alternative reality version of this album that was just Sufjan alone in his room recording his feelings into an iPhone and releasing it out into the world. You know the songs are great because they still work, even in this context. While Carrie & Lowell Live portrayed the album at its most expansive and maximalist, The Greatest Gift shows the album at its most inward and minimalist. These two releases work in tandem with the original record to elevate the songs and portray Sufjan’s strength as a songwriter and musician. 

On top of these three full-length releases, 2017 also saw the release of Tonya Harding, a single loosely inspired by I, Tonya in which Sufjan recounts the now-infamous tale of the figure skater (and Oregonian) Tonya Harding. That single felt like a leftover song from a reality where Sufjan actually carried out his Oregon album the same way that Illinois had a song about John Wayne Gacy and featured Lincoln and Superman on the gatefold. Additionally, 2015’s “Blue Bucket of Gold (Remix)” offers an alternate ending to Carrie & Lowell that, much like the live rendition, sends the listener off with a disorienting whir of electronics, amplifying what was already on the album by tenfold. 

Through these loose singles and the more Oregon-focused outtakes on The Greatest Gift, Sufjan also presented fans with an alternate reality where Carrie & Lowell was merely another album in the 50 States Project covering the fanciful characters and locations of the Pacific Northwest. Simply put, this makes Carrie & Lowell one of the most flexible, fascinating, and diverse releases that Sufjan has ever created. 

There you have it. One record, one live album, a collection of outtakes, remixes, and demos that add up to a collective 3+ hour listen that I like to call the Definitive Carrie & Lowell. 

With this series of releases, Sufjan Stevens was able to not only craft a masterful and career-defining record, but he was also able to build upon it, flesh it out, and create around it in a way that I’ve seen no other artist do. Together these albums paint a wondrous portrayal of life, love, and loss. Carrie & Lowell is the type of record that only comes around once in a generation, and we’re lucky that Sufjan lent his voice and artistry to depicting such a painful and challenging topic. In immortalizing the passing of his mother and everything that came in its wake, Sufjan created a definitive statement on loss that will live on through the ages. He memorialized his mother in an honest way that made death real, impactful, beautiful, and comforting. I can’t think of a better legacy than that. 

Swim Into The Sound's 20 Favorite Albums of 2019

Music moved too fast for me in 2019. Last year I listened to over 450 new releases and wrote reviews for nearly one-quarter of them. This year I listened to less, I wrote about less, and felt more out of the loop than ever before. I still managed to make it out to a ton of concerts, kept a long-running list of new albums, and discovered some cool stuff along the way, but I’ll be the first to admit there’s a lot that passed me by in 2019. 

In addition to my lack of exploratory listening, this was also a year of “good-to-great” for me. Not only did this year lack a unanimous critical darling (I refuse to acknowledge NFR), there wasn’t even one breakaway album that I heavily connected with until about halfway through the year.

For some reason, once summer rolled around, things really started to pop off, and an avalanche of new albums led to what honestly felt like a new phase of my life. This mountain of new music, combined with moving across the country (again) this time to Denver, really made 2019 feel like multiple years packed into one. 

I may have listened to less “new” music than ever before, but last year taught me that’s an exhausting endeavor to undertake. Instead, this year I found myself discovering albums that I loved and burrowing I to them like a security blanket. Most of the albums you’re about to read about connected with me immediately upon first listen, but also went on to become something that I could return to often. Instead of listening to a critical darling, thinking ‘this feels important,’ and returning to it very few times, this year I listened to what I wanted to, and I think this list reflects that. That means this list has a more narrow scope than any previous album of the year list I’ve ever published on this site, but it feels true to me and true to my experience this year.

These are the albums that soundtracked my year. Not only that, these are the albums that made my year. That made me feel welcome. That made me feel grounded. That made me feel at home, even when I was thousands of miles away from my friends and family. These are the records that I listened to and saw a piece of myself in. These are my favorite releases of 2019. 

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20 | King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Infest the Rats’ Nest

As is the case with most people, my first foray into music was hyper-uncool. Aside from digging through my dad’s CD collection and mindlessly consuming whatever was served up to me on VH1, the first albums I ever spent my own money on were Motörhead’s Ace of Spades and Anthrax’s Attack of the Killer B’s. One of the first new records I ever purchased was Black Tide’s Light from Above, which retroactively, wasn’t particularly “cool,” but makes sense in the grand scheme of things. Given this early childhood brush with various forms of heavy metal, it’s easy to see why Infest the Rats’ Nest feels like an album tailor-made for me. 

I’ve never been a big King Gizzard guy, I respect the high-concept albums, the hustle of releasing five albums in one year, and the overall energy of the band’s live performances, but it wasn’t until this year that that band finally created the album I’ve been waiting for them to make. Featuring red-hot guitar licks, boisterous, driving rhythm sections, and snarling heavy metal vocals, this is Gizz’s heaviest album to date. It’s a mix of speed metal, stoner rock, whacky 80’s hair metal, and borderline-prog all rolled into one. It genuinely feels like the band took that first collection of CDs on my middle school iPod Mini and modernized it in the best way possible. It’s a goofy album, but that’s kind of the point. The band is at their best when they’re not taking themselves too seriously or trying too hard, and Rat’s Nest comes off as an effortless love letter to the albums that my entire musical taste is built off of. 

 

19 | Bon Iver - i,i

Three months before Justin Vernon began to tease Bon Iver’s newest album, I published a career retrospective that hypothesized the band’s discography had only gotten stranger and more removed from reality as it went on (in a good way). I’ve come to love it all, but this newest record proved that once you travel far out enough, the only direction to go is back. If 22, A Million was Justin Vernon as a glittering meteorite far off in space, then i,i is the sound of his soul returning to earth. Blending elements of all the band’s previous releases, i,i takes pieces from the group’s folk, baroque pop, and electronic phases and combines them all into something that ties a neat bow on the band. It’s holistic and fulfilling, the long-awaited conclusion to over one decade of heartbreak and growth. If this is where Bon Iver decides to call it quits, then it would be a satisfactory finale. 

 

18 | Charli XCX - Charli

There are few things more cliche than a music journalist invoking the phrase “future of pop” when talking about Charli XCX. The reason that phenomenon has become so widespread is because it’s hard to listen to Charli’s music and place it anywhere on the musical spectrum that currently exists. It sounds like pop; it’s approachable, singable, and incredibly-well produced, but it’s also glitchy, bassy, and laden with so many other genres that it genuinely feels like the near-future amalgamation of all pop culture. It’s the re-introduction to the monoculture, should we be so lucky. 

Charli finds our would-be pop princess of the future actualizing herself (and her music) in a way that she never has before. Charli XCX songs tend to be about one of two things: partying, or the comedown. Aided by a star-studded lineup of musicians, Charli makes some of her most poppy (“1999”), emotional (“Thoughts”), and hard-hitting (“Click”) music to date. There are choruses worthy of a Taylor Swift album alongside bars worthy of a Young Thug mixtape, and in that duality lies the raw power of Charli XCX.

 

17 | Heart Attack Man - Fake Blood

Earlier this year, Heart Attack Man’s guitarist, lead singer, and social media mastermind Eric Egan made headlines when he posted a (normal, average, nothing-out-of-the-ordinary) orange beanie on eBay and racked up a bid of nearly 100k dollars. This meme-worthy auctioneering move brought the band to the attention of traditional music publications and earned them swaths of new listeners (myself included). When they released their sophomore album Fake Blood several months later, it immediately became clear that the band is good at a lot more than generating headlines. 

Taking a guitar-first approach to pop-punk, the group crafted eleven immaculate tracks that are somehow catchy, moshable, touching, and personable, oftentimes all at once. Songs like “Fake Blood” and “Out For Blood” lean heavier into the catchy pop side of things sounding like they could have come straight off a late-90’s alt radio station. Meanwhile, deeper cuts like “Cut My Losses” and “Sugar Coated” find Egan bearing his teeth and spitting bile at whoever finds themselves unfortunate enough to fall within his crosshairs. Personal favorites “Rats In a Bucket” and “Crisis Actor” are riff-centered singalongs that feature addicting hooks, biting commentary, and even a reading of the Miranda Rights that manages to sound heavy as fuck. Fake Blood feels like the best example of what pop-punk can achieve in 2019; a perfect mix of studio polish, well-paced energy, stellar songwriting, and just the right amount of heaviness sprinkled throughout. It may be 17 on our list, but if there were an award for the most crowd-hyping, guitar-shredding, hard-hitting pop-punk record, then this would be number one.

 

16 | Field Medic - fade into the dawn

I first discovered Field Medic in a freak playlist accident, and have been deeply in love ever since. Combining Bob Dylan-esque deliveries, jaunty folk ditties, boombox-led bangers, alongside some of the most poetic love songs I’ve ever heard, Kevin Patrick Sullivan offers a hyper-modern take on folk music. fade into the dawn was on my radar from the moment it was announced and somehow did not disappoint my exceedingly-high expectations. Featuring a similar spread of folk to country to borderline-pop, Field Medic’s 2019 record offers an escape from the normal into the extraordinary. While some songs provide far-off musings of the future, most of the tracks simply offer unique perspectives of everyday events and relationships. Whether it’s the life of a touring musician, body art, or the unknowable other, Kevin Patrick Sullivan has once again proven himself adept at reflecting the human condition within the space of several beautiful minutes. On top of all this, album closer “helps me forget...” is one of the most beautiful things I’ve heard all year and was only narrowly edged out by The National and Slaughter Beach, Dog as my favorite song of the year. 

 

15 | Greet Death - New Hell

Listening to New Hell is like casting a spell upon yourself. From the moment you hit play on the record, its energy will pour from your speakers and will grow to permeate every corner of whatever room you find yourself in. The songs creak, rumble, and reverberate, bouncing around the walls of your brain and leaving you emotionally-drained in their wake. It’s not a fun listen by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s an emotional outpouring, and that can be rewarding in a different way. From the folksy (Sandy) Alex G-like “Let It Die” to the heavy-as-shit borderline-stoner-rock shoegaze found on “Strain,” the record is varied and masterfully-crafted. There’s an impressive range of moods on display here, each one a different shade of downbeat but also adorned with shimmering gold and silver accents that add some brightness to the otherwise overwhelming darkness. And while New Hell is one cohesive piece overall, each song also has special moments that make it feel unique from the others that surround it. There’s a molten guitar solo on “You’re Gonna Hate What you’ve Done,” there’s crushing fuzzed-out riffage on “Strange Days,” hypnotic lyricism on “Entertainment,” and the band caps it all off with an epic ten-minute closing track. New Hell is a dark, moody, and morose album with transitive properties so strong that it’s impossible to come out of your first listen the same person.

 

14 | Future Teens - Breakup Season

I’ll start this off by saying that I absolutely despise the fetishization of sadness. Even worse than that, the memeification of sadness (tweeting “listening to the new Mount Eerie and crying, brb” or something along those lines). If that’s how you get your sadness out, then go for it, but more often than not, it feels like people idolizing the wrong thing and emulating “sadness” for the sake of internet points… well, this got off track quickly. The point is that Future Teens’ sophomore album Breakup Season feels like real, genuine sadness in a way that isn’t overwrought, performative, or played-out. There were probably sadder releases to come out this year, but where Breakup Season excels is that it feels like a version of sadness that’s true to me. It’s not overtly sad (in fact, it’s often pretty catchy and upbeat), but the feelings are real, the experiences are shared, and that takes guts. 

“Happy New Year” is a dynamite slow-burn opener that allows for Amy Hoffman’s voice to shine like a diamond. “Born to Stay,” “Emotional Bachelor,” and “Frequent Crier” are all peppy sing-along emo tracks that zero in on specific elements of living with depression with hyper-realistic and confessional slice-of-life observations. By the back half of the album, the group has turned their gaze outward to their relationships with the people around them. “Swiped Out” tackles what an average relationship looks like in the era of smartphone dating, and “Heavy Petting” is a cleverly-written love song about the time when your pet feels like the only constant companion in your life. Breakup Season captures and articulates a specific brand of struggles for the mid-to-late-20-something, and that’s what makes it particularly affecting. The fact that it’s all catchy as hell is just a bonus.

 

13 | Mannequin Pussy - Patience

I once heard a theory: every band name is bad, it’s just a question of whether or not the band’s music makes up for it or not. Think about it. Mom Jeans is a bad name, but their music is good. DaBaby? Terrible name, but his songs bang. Even The Beatles, one of the most revered musical groups of all time, has a name that’s based on a terrible pun. While that observation was mostly a joke, I can’t think of a better example of this theory than the punk phenom Mannequin Pussy. The band has weighed in on their own name, even offering to write coworkers and moms letters explaining the meaning behind the name, but for those not easily swayed by “bad” words, the music more than speaks for itself. 

Patience is, at its core, a breakup album; 25 minutes of anger, resentment, and recovery that come in the wake of a major emotional turnover. My friend described lead single “Drunk II” as “a war crime,” and he couldn’t be more right. The song strikes a perfect balance of sneering punk anger, real-ass emotions, and a hook that’s catchy enough to climb the Billboard charts (if there were any justice in the world). Much like the band’s sophomore effort, Patience is a short burst of hooky, well-envisioned, and incredibly-polished punk music. There’s a perfect spread of fast-paced thrashy scream-along ragers alongside catchy and approachable love songs that your mom might even be able to tolerate. The record moves fast, hits hard, and leaves you wanting more, the way that all great music should. 

 

12 | 100 gecs - 1000 gecs

As is I’m sure was the case with most people I hit play on 1000 gecs not knowing what I was getting into. I think out of everything I’ve listened to this entire year, 1000 gecs was the only record to truly surprise me. And I mean shock me. Comprised of musicians Laura Les and Dylan Brady, 100 gecs is making music that needs to be heard to be believed. The two musicians have a ravenous appetite for (and adoration of) music, and 1000 gecs is a solidified effort to display it. 

On this record, you’ll hear PC music, dubstep, bubblegum pop, hip-hop, grindcore, pop-punk, house, ska, and dozens more. The most obvious connections to draw are artists like SOPHIE, Sleigh Bells, BROCKHAMPTON, Crystal Castles, and maybe even some Breathe Carolina… but even that long list of genres, artists, and influences fail to capture what 100 gecs sound like. The duo is deconstructing not only pop music, but pop culture. This is what Lil Aaron was doing when he combined leaned-out autotuned trap and pop-punk. This album is jittery, jumping between genres, sounds, phrases, and ideas within seconds. It’s blindingly-bright fun, and if you’re a fan of any one of those genres, you’ll likely find something to glom onto throughout the album’s 25-minute running time. 1000 gecs is a record in its own class and of its own world. 

 

11 | The National - I Am Easy To Find

The National have become masters of the pivot. Their discography is fluid; each album flows easily from one to the next with the band only making minor changes and gradual shifts. Over the course of decades, the band has managed to make each record sound just different enough that every new release feels refreshing yet familiar. They ease fans into each new era with strong singles, they know how to close a record, and they put on a hell of a good live show. There’s a reason they’ve become the de facto father figures of the indie rock circuit because they’re one of the most consistent bands in the industry. 

The pivot the band made on I Am Easy To Find sees the group shifting the spotlight away from lead singer Matt Beringer and his iconic voice towards a cast of female singers. Released alongside an accompanying 27-minute film by Mike Mills, I Am Easy To Find is part album part visual art piece. The film depicts one woman’s life from birth to death, all set to songs from the album. We see her first breath, first love, her first fight, her first child. Everything. It’s a gorgeous, goosebump-inducing black-and-white narrative that is nothing short of captivating. The album tells a similar narrative over the course of it’s one-hour running time, but its crowning achievement comes in the final three minutes with “Light Years.” The song is an achingly-gorgeous piano ballad that also happens to be my favorite song of the year. It’s a wonderful and meditative message that ties the record up with a neat little bow and sends the listener off into the night thinking about what they had just consumed. It’s beautiful, painful, and ever-changing, much like life. 

 

10 | Vampire Weekend - Father of the Bride

While I do consider myself a fan of Vampire Weekend, I have what I like to call an “on-again, off-again” relationship with the band’s discography. I arrived at their self-titled record years after everyone else, and the only song I still find evergreen is the fast-paced (but admittedly basic) “A-Punk.” Meanwhile, I believe Contra is a near-perfect indie rock record, while Modern Vampires of the City is mostly over-cooked and only has one truly great song on it. When Rostam left the band in 2016, people (rightfully) thought Vampire Weekend might not be long for this world. His production and instrumentation had become so synonymous with the group’s sound that fans wondered how they would ever continue without one of its most pivotal founding members. Turns out the answer, after a six-year gap between albums, was to smoke a ton of weed, retreat into nature, and get really into the Grateful Dead.

Preceded by a perplexing album cover that broke the band’s longstanding visual aesthetic, lead single “Harmony Hall” set the tone (and expectations) for this album early on in its release cycle. Opening with an acoustic guitar, serene lyricism, and a melody that echoes The Grateful Dead’s “Touch of Grey,” this song let fans know early on whether they’d be into this new era of the Vampire Weekend or if they should tap out now. There’s something equal parts cringey and endearing about a bunch of ultra-white Ivy League graduates trading in their polo shirts and boat shoes for tye-dye t-shirts and Birkenstocks, but the music speaks for itself. “Bambina” is a bouncy auto-tuned Contra-level cut, “This Life” is a fast-paced ass-shaking track, and the Steve Lacy-assisted “Sunflower / Flower Moon” are as danceable as they are musical, offering a groovy late-album one-two punch. Meanwhile, closing track “Jerusalem, New York, Berlin” is a pensive Modern Vampires-esque send-off that’s lovingly-constructed and precious. And if you need any proof that the band can actually live up to the jammy-inspiration of The Dead, then look no further than any of this year’s Austin City Limit’s performances where the group shows they can skillfully take one of their base songs and blow it up to extraordinary and psychedelic proportions. Father of the Bride is proof that sometimes change is for the best, and sometimes your best is yet to come. 

 

9 | Charly Bliss - Young Enough

The innate power of Charly Bliss lies in how genuine each member of the band is. While they first made a name for themselves in indie/pop-punk/alt music circles with 2017’s Guppy, this year’s Young Enough is a step up in nearly every imaginable way. Still bearing Eva Hendricks’ piercing and unmistakable vocals, the band’s newest effort takes the power-pop found on Guppy and infuses it with a hearty helping of synth, resulting in a record that feels accessible and honest with just the right amount of bite.

The album walks a fascinating and addicting line between throwback synth-pop tendencies and hyper-modern rock songwriting. Electronic drums keep time in between distorted guitar stabs on “Capacity,” slow-building guitar and basslines build to an explosive finish on “Young Enough,” and “Hard to Believe” sounds downright Pixies-esque in its foundation. This album, combined with October’s follow-up EP Supermoon, paint the picture of a band with a fully fleshed-out vision and an unapologetic approach to their music. Young Enough is an album that radiates strength, even in its weakest moments, and that’s the kind of energy we could all use more of in 2019. 

 

8 |  Knocked Loose - A Different Shade of Blue

Confession time: I first listened to Knocked Loose in October of 2018. Partially because I had aged out of the hardcore phase of my high school years, but also because I had somehow confused them with Knuckle Puck for literal years. So imagine my surprise when I listened to Laugh Tracks and heard something as decidedly not-pup-punk as Knocked Loose. Needless to say, Laugh Tracks is a spectacular album that quickly became my go-to when I needed some angry hardcore music. While it’s a well-constructed release, Laugh Tracks it also very much feels like a “debut album,” so I was ravenously curious to see how they would follow that up on their sophomore release, especially now that the band had garnered a massive following.

A Different Shade of Blue is pure emotional catharsis. “Mistakes Like Fractures” is bone-crushing. “Forget Your Name” will rip your ribcage open like a shotgun blast. “A Serpent’s Touch” should come with a fucking warning label. The album is 38 minutes of nonstop, punishing riffage, violent breakdowns, and vitriolic lyricism. It’s moshpit-initiating, fight-instigating hardcore, and this record made it clear why Knocked Loose has become the gold standard for the genre.

 

7 | Prince Daddy & The Hyena - Cosmic Thrill Seekers

It’s easy to make a great first album; it’s the culmination of years of hard work, a lifetime of creativity, and countless hours of blood, sweat, and tears. For these reasons, the Sophomore Slump is a very real thing, yet Prince Daddy & The Hyena managed not only to subvert this phenomenon; they vaulted over it in style. It’s one thing to make a good sophomore album, but the decision to make the follow-up to your breakthrough album a three-act concept piece based on a bad acid trip filtered through the lens of The Wizard of Oz is next-level insanity. 

Cosmic Thrill Seekers is a 40-minute excavation of the soul, accompanied by all the fears, insecurities, and manias that come with it. Beginning with“I Lost My Life,” the album throws the listener headfirst into Kory Gregory’s raspy singing voice as he recounts the beginning of his acid-fueled tale over an acoustic guitar. Things really open up on “Lauren (Track 2),” where the band launches into a hard-charging riff that blends punk and emo into a finely-distilled fusion of the two genres. The songs flow together flawlessly, quickly guiding the listener along fast-paced crowd-churners, grungy pop meditations, and even upbeat dance tracks. Cosmic Thrill Seekers is an album packed with intricacies, scattered thoughts, and self-referential melodies. Songs fold in on themselves, pulling back language and chord progressions used on earlier songs. On top of all this, the closing track loops perfectly back to the beginning of the album, making this an endlessly-relistenable release that circles the listener right back to the start of the adventure. These elements all combine together for a rewarding and slightly-high-concept emo record that has its own dream logic and internal rhythms. It’s wandering and wonderous, charming, thrashy, and endearing. 

 

6 | Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties - Routine Maintenance

The first Aaron West album, We Don’t Have Each Other, was the story of a man blindsided by divorce. Grief-stricken and confused, Aaron fled south on an impromptu road trip to Georgia in order to find himself, or at least some answers. Bittersweet, the following 7” recounted the story of his return to New York, and found our hero facing the memories of the relationship that he had left behind. 2017’s Orchard Park was a one-off single that offered a brief update on Aaron’s life in the form of himself and his mom spreading his father’s ashes. This year, the newest update to the Aaron West saga arrived in the form of Routine Maintenance, and it’s one of the albums that made me feel most consistently this year.

It’s worth mentioning that this story, the downfall of Aaron West, is all a fabrication, a character study helmed by Dan Campbell, the frontman of The Wonder Years. Much like his main band, Campbell lends his poetic songwriting and emotional voice to Aaron, but the fact that he’s been able to create this character and relationships that feel so realized and lived-in is nothing short of an absolute artistic achievement.

While it would have been easy to make Routine Maintenance about Aaron meeting someone new, falling in love, and getting over his previous relationship, we all know that real life doesn’t work that way. Instead, the latest record finds Aaron at a crossroads. He takes his band on the road, finds some success, and then suddenly, his brother-in-law passes away. By the end of the record, Aaron is living with his mother, sister, and his nephew Colin under one roof in New Jersey. Aaron is helping out around the house, taking Colin to school, and doing the best he can to fill in the role of a makeshift father figure. It’s in the album’s final moments that it’s title Routine Maintenance makes sense. Because sometimes life isn’t about getting better, it’s about helping other people get better. It’s about doing what you can, carrying the weight, and doing minor upkeep in the name of making the world around you a little better.

 

5 | PUP - Morbid Stuff

Life isn’t miraculous. It’s not a movie, and it’s not a pop song, hell, it’s not even a commercial. There’s no justice, no resolution, and there’s definitely not a storybook ending… but that doesn’t mean it’s inherently bad. More often than not, life is just lots and lots of the same thing, and that’s a different kind of evil. Life’s not out to get you; it merely bides its time until you fall prey to it in one way or another. This unchanging and unflinching indifference of life often makes one fantasize about the end of it, if only because it’s the last significant change we have left in store for ourselves. Struggling with (and raging against) that monotony of everyday life is exactly what Morbid Stuff is about. 

Coming off their genre-elevating sophomore album The Dream is Over, Pup’s third album is filled to the brim with throat-shredding group chants, cutting lyrical honesty, and fist-balling riffage. The album opens with an anemic guitar lick that sounds like it’s being played from the top of a mountain for onlookers below. Lead singer Stefan Babcock quickly undercuts this propulsive energy as he enters the fray and snottily explains how he was “Bored as fuck / Sitting around and thinking all this morbid stuff / Like if anyone I’ve slept with is dead.” These morbid curiosities pave the way for full-throated group chants and rocket-like drum beats that eventually fizzle out into a defeated lullaby ending, a perfect crash course for the particular brand of unhappiness that PUP deals in. As a whole, Morbid Stuff feels like an incredibly democratic creation, with each member getting chances to shine from one song to the next. There’s cynical, biting songwriting on “Kids,” moshpit nu-metal breakdowns on “Full Blown Meltdown,” and even enough room for a one-line guest feature from Eva Hendricks of Charly Bliss on “Free At Last.”

Morbid Stuff lies at an odd intersection between pop-punk and full-on punk. The band has a knack for making these incredibly-catchy and energetic songs that are ripe for singing (screaming) along with, but there’s also enough of an edge to them that they’re rowdy, sweaty, and cathartic in a live setting. It’s like Speed; these are songs you can sing along to while in the car, but it feels detrimental to the artistic experience if you’re shouting along while going any slower than 50 miles per hour. Best consumed while flying down the highway or packed into a room with 500 other sweaty fans, Morbid Stuff is not for the faint of heart — it’s for the ones with the pissed-off, fed-up, raging hearts.

 

4| Oso Oso - Basking in the Glow

In the past few years, the lines between emo, pop-punk, and indie rock have become so blurred that we’ve almost looped back around to using the word “emo” as a slur. As artists continue to experiment with mixing these sounds into one big genre-fluid cocktail, nobody did it better this year than Jade Lilitri of Oso Oso. 2017’s Yunahon Mixtape was a near-perfect emo album, packed with more hooks than Nevermind and some of the best bridges in the game. Last year’s two-track single offered a tantalizing glimpse at where Lilitri was taking the group, and 2019’s Basking in the Glow represents the fully-realized potential of that emo/indie sound.

Songs like “the view” and “basking in the glow” are some of the sweetest and poppiest tracks I’ve heard all year with choruses that shimmer and lyrics that are ready for emo kids’ Instagram captions the world over. And as you would expect with any emo-adjacent record, there’s also an impressive range of emotions on display throughout. The thoughtful “dig” is a spacy and meditative track with a Smashing Pumpkins-like fuzzed-out buildup, meanwhile “wake up next to god” is a fast-paced air-drum-inspiring banger featuring tight palm-muted punctuation. Basking in the Glow is (fittingly) a bright, sunny, and warm record with a constant underlying layer of unhappiness. It’s like a spoonful of honey; sugary sweet, beautifully-golden, and sticky enough to stay with you long after you first consume it.

 

3| Macseal - Super Enthusiast

Simply put, I don’t think there was a better crafted, better written, or better-performed album this year than Super Enthusiast. While Macseal made a name for themselves with Always Sunny name-dropping and hyper-compelling shout-along emo rock, they gradually did what all of us do and mellowed out. Last year’s four-track Map It Out saw the band leaning away from those guitar-tapped riffs and screamed vocals of their early recordings and into something more poppy and polished. This year’s Super Enthusiast sees the band completing that transition swirling together a mix of mathy emo and hyper-polished indie rock.

Super Enthusiast is picture-perfect emo. It’s not particularly midwesty, it’s not really screamy, but the band was able to take the best elements of all those disparate subgenres and combine them into something remarkably holistic and pure. The songs sparkle with crystal-clear guitars, immaculate bass, and pristine drumming. Other than the band’s slight sonic shift, one of the most significant changes from Macseal’s early work is the noticeably better production. Even the most slow-paced song on Super Enthusiast is lovingly-crafted, adorned with reverb, crisp background vocals, and a slow build of distortion. There are also some remnants of the band’s early sound on songs like “Upside Down Again,” which bears a floaty, dreamlike riff that’s probably my favorite of the entire year.

Super Enthusiast feels like the album equivalent of one of a freshwater lake. It’s wondrous, natural, and almost too pure for this world. As you look down from the snow-capped mountains and gradiented blue sky, you see the reflective surface of the calm water and feel at peace. The band is no longer comprised of emotionally-turbulent teenagers, they’ve grown up, developed, and evolved into people with different coping mechanisms than whining and watching Always Sunny. They still have problems, frustrations, doubts, and fears, but they have developed new ways of dealing with whatever life throws at them. They have an unshakable lust for life.

 

2 | Origami Angel - Somewhere City

This year I turned 26. This means that Wonder Years lyrics hit different now, but it also means that I’m (arguably) more of an adult than I was before. This year I also moved across the country (again), got a place of my own (again), and started a new job in a new city (again). I packed everything I owned into the trunk of my car and drove my ass from Michigan to Colorado over the course of a few days in late November. I fought through fog, snow, and freezing rain, but I got there in one piece, settled in, and moved into a new apartment all my own with a new job right down the street.

I guess all of that is an achievement worth celebrating, but this year I also did something else I’m proud of: I bought Gushers at the grocery store. They weren’t that expensive (or as good as I remember), but that purchase felt symbolic: a snack from my childhood bought with my own money for the explicit purpose of taking myself on a trip down memory lane. Somewhere City is an album about that.

Half concept album, Somewhere City finds Origami Angel weaving a tale of a mythical land where the fast food is abundant, and the Dr. Pepper flows freely. It’s a place where your childhood cartoons are always on TV, and the only commercials are from those 2000’s youtube nostalgia compilations. It’s an album-length early-twenties realization that things will never be the same, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try your hardest to recapture a small fragment of your past.

Since the beginning of the year, Origami Angel have been on a roll. Between splits, EPs, energetic live shows, and out-of-the-box promotion, the DC-based duo has rightfully made a name for themselves as one of the faces of emo’s fifth wave. Their music is catchy, smart, and hooks into a level of nerdy specificity that connects directly with my brain. This is all to say the band seemingly has everything going for them, but you don’t have to take my word for it, you can watch any one of their music videos, and you’ll see the glowing, joyous, communal spirit of DIY emo.

Which brings us to the album.

Released at the tail end of the year, Somewhere City is Origami Angel’s first full-length record, and the band pulled out all the stops. From a “nice touch” technical level, the album pulls off all the cool conceptual things I love; it loops from beginning to end like Cosmic Thrill Seekers, and it ends with a medley of every previous song much like “I Just Want to Sell Out My Funeral.” Most importantly, every song stands on its own as a one-of-a-kind creation, and I mean every song. There’s catchy riffage on “24 Hr Drive Thru” and “Doctor Whomst,” speed-metal breakdowns on “666 Flags,” and bouncy power-slide emo on “The Title Track.” Most uncharacteristically for the genre, the biggest throughline of the album is a message of overwhelming positivity and reassurance on songs like “Skeleton Key” and “Find Your Throne.”

Somewhere City is an unapologetically bright and youthful album. Despite the album’s multiple layers of conceptuality and its ARG rollout, Somewhere City is, at its core, 30 minutes of tight riffs and feel-good nostalgia that will send long-lost memories rushing back like a pack of Gushers. This one of the best emo albums of the year, one of the best debuts of recent memory, and will likely go on to be a formative album for thousands of music fans à la to Home, Like Noplace Is There, or Whenever, If Ever.

Somewhere City spans childhoods, generations, and emotions. It’s lovingly-constructed and musically-correct. It’s filled to the brim with fast-tapping riffage and already-iconic group chants. If you haven’t yet memorized every beat of this record, there’s still time to grab a ticket to Somewhere City, all you need is an open mind and a hungry soul.

 

1 | Jail Socks - It’s Not Forever

The best and worst part about running a blog by yourself is trying to decide your album of the year. Do you pick the albums that made the most significant cultural impact? Do you pick the most financially successful albums that dominated the radio and defined the year? Do you pick the consensus albums that show up on every other blog? Honestly, those are all background factors, because ultimately your “album of the year” should come down to one of two things:

1) The album that you thought was the “best” this year
2) The album that connected with you the most

Sometimes the first one makes sense — albums like Blonde and To Pimp A Butterfly that are undeniably great and well-crafted. Sometimes the second one makes sense, an album that hit you at the right time, spoke to you in the right way, and put words to the emotions you couldn’t articulate. For me this year, that was Jail Socks. 

Within the space of a calendar year, I went from not knowing who Jail Socks were to being a die-hard fan. I go into greater detail in the full review for It’s Not Forever, but for the sake of a quick recap; after discovering the band through a video making the rounds on emo twitter, I downloaded the band’s four publicly-available songs which almost immediately worked their way into my daily rotation. 

It’s safe to say this EP was easily my most anticipated release of the year. For my first listen, I sat down, cranked my speakers as loud as I could stand, and freaked out to every note alone in my house like I was a goddamn youtube reaction channel. But I wasn’t performing for a camera; it was one-hundred-percent genuine.

It’s Not Forever is punctual, a lightweight six tracks clocking in at a collective 20 minutes. It contains two re-recordings of songs from the band’s first demo and four new tracks. Even with its abrupt running time, this group of riff-obsessed teenagers from North Carolina managed to do more with one side of a record than some artists did with 60+ minutes this year. 

The EP starts off like a firecracker with fast-paced emo guitar tapping on “Jake Halpin.” That song bleeds flawlessly into “Parting Words” as the band strings the listener along with a breadcrumb trail of bouncy basslines, crashing cymbals, and anthemic group chants. Lead single “Poplar Avenue” is an energetic feel-good breakup anthem, and “Steering Wheel” is an impactful song of personal growth set to a background of cascading guitarwork and emotional vocals. It’s instrumentally-precise but emotionally messy, and that’s a dynamic I find myself endlessly enamored with. 

Everything on this EP simply works. It may not be all that accessible to anyone outside of the midwest emo scene, but it connected with me in a way that I find absolutely astonishing. Not only is this EP great on a technical level, but it’s also hard to overstate how important a role this band has played in my 2019. Jail Socks have been the soundtrack to my year. They’ve been the soundtrack to my time in Detroit, and the words to everything I’ve felt this year. They’re emblematic of a greater movement in emo music and symbolic of everything that 2019 has meant to me. When I look back on my time in the Midwest ten years from now, these are the songs that will pop into my head. 

Very few times have I found a collection of music that seems so specifically wired to my brain. Every guitar tap, bass thump, drum hit, and shout-along vocal lands. I’ve memorized every molecule of this EP because it makes sense to me on a higher level. It’s like someone took a corner of my brain, threw it into the studio, and then performed it back at me. It’s miraculous, and I hope that everyone reading this is fortunate enough to find their equivalent at some point in their life.