The Sonder Bombs – The One About You | Single Review

“Where did your mind go, Slice?” singer Willow Hawk asks, gently cutting through dreamlike instrumentation as they guide you along a stargazing walk through an enchanted garden late at night. “The One About You,” the newest single from Ohio’s Sonder Bombs, is a song with the same lush illustration of two slow dancers at a homecoming dance as depicted in the music video for Japanese Breakfast’s “Boyish.” This song is the perfect soundtrack for two lonely lovers finding their way towards each other under the night sky and looking up at the moon for some answers. A gentle tune for when the sparks of a new fling carry the conversation into the wee hours of the night. For when nothing else matters but right here, right now, caring only about one person and one moment. 

With “The One About You,” The Sonder Bombs deliver an anthem for the hopeless romantic with the most tender of hearts. It’s a soothing melody that evokes a midnight walk through an enchanted garden. Produced amidst quarantine by Joe Reinhart (Hop Along, Beach Bunny), the track is hypnotizing and magical, but also playful and loving. It is a song full of blissful melodies and lingering phrases that wrap around the listener and slowly consumes them. The Sonder Bombs are best known for defiantly standing their ground, penning bops perfectly fit for screaming into your hairbrush on a lonely Friday night spent dancing around your room. Bringing in a whole new sound with this single, the band shows their ability to craft a gentle, romanticist song complete with guitar lines that carry you through like a walk against the shoreline. 

Showcasing the delicate side of Willow’s vocal techniques and writing style, this single is just a sneak peek into the boundless dynamics and talent featured on the band’s upcoming album Clothbound. Yearning for a perfect night to not be cut short, “won’t you stay up with me” is a delicate but pressing request embedded in tropical guitars and atmospheric bass courtesy of Jimmy Wilkens and Kevin Cappy. With this song, The Sonder Bombs have proven, once again, their ability to write songs for every mood. Featuring a delicate array of horns that carry you back down to earth towards the end, this song transports you into an enchanted paradise and softly back home again. Stream it here and share it with somebody you love.

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Ashley is a disabled, queer music lover living in Denver, CO. She can usually be found with a record spinning, head buried in communist theory, with cats on either side. As a sociology major with a never-ending love for the DIY scene, Ashley enjoys discussing accessibility and accountability in the scene to foster spaces where every single body belongs. Follow her on Twitter at @emomarxist.

In Defense of Illuminaudio: The Forgotten Chiodos Album

When I say the name “Chiodos,” it likely evokes black floral pattern Myspace backgrounds, swoopy emo hair, and songs like “Baby, You Wouldn’t Last A Minute On The Creek.” If you had a scene phase between the years of 2005 and 2010, it’s likely that the band’s output during that time was nothing short of formative to your post-hardcore upbringing. If you were born after the year 2000, it’s likely the band exists more as an emo curiosity and oddball collaborator than anything foundational. Still, Chiodos quickly became a symbolic staple of the Warped Tour scene that now lives on in Emo Nites and throwback high school playlists the world over.

Despite this widespread influence, the band maintained a relatively modest discography of only four albums. Within this collection of records lies a wealth of middle school bangers, soaring falsettos, and enigmatic song titles. While most of the band’s well-known tracks can be found on their first two records, All’s Well That Ends Well and Bone Palace Ballet, the group’s best work also happens to be the one people discuss the least: 2010’s Illuminaudio.

Essentially an orphaned step-child of the band’s discography, Illuminaudio is the only Chiodos album to not feature Craig Owens on vocals, giving both fans and the band themselves a reason to write it off as a one-off collaboration that happened while the lineup sorted itself out. Owens’ replacement, Brandon Bolmer, not only did the band’s legacy justice but elevated the group into a new plane of post-hardcore creativity that existed slightly above the cartoonish gothic imagery of their previous output. 

Even given Brandon Bolmer’s previous work as the lead singer of Yesterday’s Rising, he managed to hone his craft as a writer, performer, and vocalist. Indeed, Bolmer was able to rise to the occasion, meeting Chiodos on their level and quickly building off it. Quite frankly, it’s a shame that this release will probably never get the justice it deserves simply because it will always be viewed as “that album” without Owens. 

Illuminaudio recently celebrated its tenth anniversary on October 5th, and I saw not a single peep of it online. There was no tweet from the band account, no retrospective articles, no reddit discussion posts, no nothing, which made me sad. I get why the band would disavow this record as the one odd-man-out of their discography, but that’s so unfair to the songs because there isn’t a miss in the bunch. 

While the band eventually welcomed Owens back into the fold for 2014’s Devil (along with Thomas Erak of The Fall of Troy), Illuminaudio is an oft-overlooked chapter of the group’s history that has not only aged better than most records of this era, but stands alone as one of Chiodos’ best. It’s unfair to both Bolmer and fans that these songs are left to rot away in obscurity because they are deep, rich, and worth digging into, even if you aren’t a fan of the genre. Unlike the rest of the band’s discography, Illuminaudio is not a relic of the mid-2000s but a genuinely great collection of metal tracks that exist as a completely standalone entity.

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The album kicks off with the scene-setting “Illuminaudio,” a spellbinding journey into the ethereal world of the record. On this track, we hear Brandon Bolmer easing fans into the group’s new era by doing his best Craig Owens impression, mirroring the previous singer’s style over a simplistic instrumental that adds a disarming layer of comfort and familiarity. 

After this swirling two-minute intro, the track begins to disintegrate until a single whispered “stop” pauses the music. That interruption makes way for a solitary heartrate monitor-like note that flows seamlessly into “Caves,” the record’s bombastic lead single. Featuring a sing-along chant and slow-building drumbeat, the song hypes the listener up to a powerful and explosive scream about 30 seconds in that immediately sounds better than anything Owens ever belted. A chuggy guitar line bowls the listener over around the 1-minute mark, paving the way for the band to throw directly to the chorus, an effect that swept me off my feet on my first skeptical listen. 

From there, the band adds an air of scene cred with the Vic Fuentes-assisted “Love Is A Cat From Hell,” essentially legitimizing this era of Chiodos as an official continuation of the band. Meanwhile, “Modern Wolf Hair” beat Kanye to the long-form wolves analogy by about a decade and culminates in a piercing, distorted scream that hits the listener like a punch to the face.

The biggest bummer of Chiodos rewriting the history of this record is that there’s no good reason for it. These songs are as structurally sound, creative, and heavy as anything they’d done before. It’s just that once the group lost their boy band appeal that Owens brought to the table, they found that their songs didn’t connect with their audience in the same way. It’s funny how far something as simple (and non-musical) as a band’s “look” can go in the era of 2010’s post-hardcore. It meant that something as over-the-top and cartoonish as “Baby, You Wouldn’t Last a Minute on the Creek” could succeed because it combined a unique musical style with something that was hyper-marketable. When your band can comfortably exist on an 11x17 poster from Rise Records, that was practically a guarantee you’d sell at least a few thousand records without even trying… but that’s beside the point. 

The instrumentals on Illuminaudio are all as proficient as ever, but Bolmer’s range of both singing and screaming offered something that Owens never had. On top of this, the studio effects they used on Bolmer’s screams made them land better than anything else in the scene at the time. I’d never heard such visceral and propulsive unclean vocals outside of Austin Carlile, but they work on this record because they’re used so sparingly and with such restraint. The screams come either at the climax of each song or are seeded throughout to make individual moments more impactful. It’s really an artistic approach to a genre that was very prone to overusing elements like that at the time. 

Not only that, the band is able to create this sense of cresting emotional impact without even using screams on some songs. Just look at “Notes In Constellations” which begins as a music box-like lullaby which slowly works its way up to a ferocious and biting instrumental attack that resolves with the payoff of a feature-length film.

Songs like “Scaremonger,” “Hey Zeus! The Dungeon,” and “Those Who Slay Together, Stay Together” tread the familiar gothic horror ground as the band’s first two albums, but still do it in a way that feels more artistically elevated and complete than, say, “Is It Progression If a Cannibal Uses a Fork?”

In an album filled with fantastic performances, Bolmer’s best moment comes in “Stratovolcano Mouth” where he works a hypnotic repetition of “Let it all out / Let, let it all out / Let, let it all out / Let, let it go” into a (literal) explosion as he works up to a seconds-long scream of “EXPLODE!!” which sounds downright world-conquering. This passionate delivery is guided by a driving guitar line and a gorgeous string section with a piano thrown in for good measure. It’s textbook Chiodos, and the fact that this song has barely over a half-million plays on Spotify is a flat-out shame. 

Illumiaudio also found the band crafting unique moments that make each song feel different from the ones surrounding it. There’s a heavy-as-shit breakdown at the end of “Let Us Burn One” that’s absolutely skull-crushing. There’s a crazy auto-tuned transition at the end of “Scaremonger,” a group chant/drum roll pairing on “Modern Wolf Hair,” and that aforementioned music box-like technique used on “Notes In Constellations.” This is all capped off with “Closed Eyes Still Look Forward,” a gorgeous piano ballad that ties the entire story of the album up, references previous songs, and loops back to the beginning, all within three minutes. These songs simultaneously stand on their own in isolation and work together to fit into the stark black and gold-hued world of the album. The end result is a collection of 12 songs that all form together into one piece that’s larger than the sum of its parts.

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I know there are a ton of nostalgic Chiodos fans out there who will read this and won’t be able to separate the love for their own mid-2000’s emo phase from the music itself. I’ll admit there’s a TON of nostalgia baked into Illumiaudio for me, but what makes me passionate about this record is how unfairly the band treated it. There are songs here just as worthy of scene worship as anything on the band’s first two records, and I’d argue even more so in some cases. Seeing other bands of this time period like August Burns Red release tenth-anniversary reissues of their early work or bands like The Devil Wears Prada go on tour performing their decade-old albums in full makes me wish Illuminaudio was treated better. 

Regardless, Illumiaudio stands on its own as an album and an artistic statement. It’s punctual, explorative, and walks that fine line between welcoming old fans while still carving out new sonic territories. The instrumentals are finely-crafted, punchy, and creative. Most importantly, Bolmer’s vocals are some of the best ever recorded, and the duality between his piercing high notes and his guttural screams is absolutely otherworldly. 

The way the group meshed all of these instrumental elements together into a wall of sound that’s heavy-hitting yet swirling and ornamental is Chiodos to me. They understood what this band stood for and pushed that creative ethos as far in one direction as they possibly could. The end result was a perfect storm of a new singer and a band at the peak of their artistic ability crafting one of the best, most unfairly-forgotten post-hardcore records of the 2010s. Let us burn one for Illumiaudio.

Meet Good Luck Charm Records, The Midwest's Best-Kept Secret

In my mind, the midwest is synonymous with good music. From Ska and hip-hop to emo and hardcore, there’s a music scene for every possible genre and taste out there. There’s so much, in fact, sometimes it can feel daunting to jump into. However, with no shows happening for the foreseeable, the best way to discover these acts now shifts to social media, blogs, and labels. 

While these three entities can work together to shed light on new acts, we still live in a world dominated by a neverending news cycle and constant shitposts. Sometimes it’s hard to breakthrough, but that’s why repetition is key. I don’t necessarily see myself as a “tastemaker,” but I wanted to use what little platform I have to shine a light on Good Luck Charm Records, a bastion of the Michigan music scene, and a label that symbolizes everything good in DIY.

Created by Jake Rees of No Fun Club, Good Luck Charm Records is a label devoted to elevating the types of bands you never hear about, even within DIY-focused publications. The label has had a hell of a year, helping bring roughly half a dozen Michigan-based bands to wider platforms through small tape releases and light social media promotion. Much like this blog, GLC exists as a side-project, and the fact that Rees has been able to promote such incredible artists on top of his day-to-day obligations is nothing short of inspirational. 

Focused almost entirely on the Michigan scene, these are the types of bands you’d find opening and middling at DIY gigs in basements all over the midwest. These are the bands you’d see in a dingy Detroit bar and be blown away by. These are the types of bands you’d fall in love with after one performance and walk away with an armful of merch thinking to yourself, ‘why isn’t everyone talking about these guys?’ Hence this article. 

While I’d hope you walk away from this having discovered a new up-and-coming Michigan band, I hope if nothing else, you take away the importance of DIY and how vital it is to support your local artists. Even if you don’t have massive amounts of disposable income (who in this scene really does?), you can still help local acts by sharing them with friends, streaming them online, picking up tapes on Bandcamp, or bringing your friends to a gig once shows are back. Bands like these exist all over the world; it’s up to us, the fans, whether or not they find their audience or not. 

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Boyfrienders - Scenes of Brooklyn or Meditations on Mid-Twenties Mediocrity 

First up, we have Boyfrienders, a synth-pop group from Wyandotte. If you’ve been following the blog closely, you might remember our interview with Benny Morawa earlier this year when we helped premier “The Lower East Side Blues.” Honestly, I don’t even know where to start with Boyfrienders. I could talk about Morawa’s awesome contributions to Mover Shaker’s excellent sophomore album, I could talk about the guest features from Felix Beiderman and Garrett Hunter, I could talk about Morawa’s unique position as a non-binary frontperson and how that impacts their creative process… there are simply too many things to note in this short of a write-up. 

A loose concept album, Scenes of Brooklyn or Meditations on Mid-Twenties Mediocrity is exactly what it sounds like: a post-college grappling with one’s place in the world. Blending electronic elements with flashy indie rock, this release is like a hyper-modern DIY evolution of Future Islands as seen through a series of train stops in the most populous city in our nation. If the name alone doesn’t want to make you click play on the record, then I don’t know what will. 

It Doesn’t Bother Me - It Doesn’t Bother Me

Put simply, It Doesn’t Bother Me released one of the best EPs of the year. Not only that, they released one of the best debuts of the year. It’s one thing to release a good collection of songs; it’s another for that collection of songs to be this polished, catchy, and playlist-ready. 

Featuring jittery guitar tapping, lighthearted self-deprecation, and a hearty helping of group chants, this is a textbook midwest emo release. What separates it from the Mom Jeans of the world is the band’s ability to make these songs sound entirely fresh and approachable to someone outside of the scene. These aren’t just “good emo songs,” these are good songs full-stop. Plus, clocking in at only 12 minutes, this EP offers a low-risk entry point into the world of sad white guys talking about their problems. The band’s self-awareness makes it easy to see the forest through the proverbial trees, allowing anyone to easily see the deeper artistry beneath the familiar emo frameworks.

Bombastic Dream Pussy - BDP

Easily the best band name on this list (and possibly in the world), Bombastic Dream Pussy is a grungy rock act that slithered from the collective depths of DIY venues all across Detroit. Helmed by Hayley McNichol, this EP features instrumental contributions from the likes of Dogleg, Parkway & Columbia, Shortly, and Holy Profane to name a few. 

The best way to first experience Bombastic Dream Pussy is to witness Hayley pour their emotions out by playing these songs out on-stage. Since that’s not currently possible, the second-best way to experience BDP is to watch this video of McNichol performing lead single “Blood on My Bike Seat” to a rapt audience at Fauxchella III. This song details the hyper-traumatic experience of sexual assault, as seen directly through McNicol’s eyes, but wraps this story in a simple chord progression paired with a folksy twang that makes the topic feel slightly more digestible. It’s lyrically-heavy, but I can’t think of a single better encapsulation of what makes this project special than that song. The EP itself features 26 minutes of 90s-inspired indie rock that soundtracks Hayley’s experiences and emotions in a shockingly catchy way. It’s powerful, moving, and completely transportive.  

Happiness Isn’t Possible / Content. - Split

Last but not least, we have a split between two Ypsilanti bands that bring together disparate styles in a surprisingly effective combination. First on the split is Happiness Isn’t Possible, a hardcore act featuring members of Solemn Judgement, who I’ve also written about. The band comes out swinging with the seasonally appropriate “What’s Your Favorite Scary Movie?” Sounding like a broken nose received in a sweaty Michigan basement, this track is a crushingly-heavy seven-minute odyssey that fluctuates between doomy riffage, hardcore breakdowns, and glitchy Code Orange mayhem. It’s absolute chaos. 

Meanwhile, Content. finds Kris Lane (formerly of Hibiscus Bones and Swordfish) embarking on a solo project he describes as “post-whatever.” Leaning heavy into the blurry shoegaze/ambient side of the musical spectrum, Lane’s contributions are dripping in reverb. It’s a wall of sound that’s at once fuzzy and heavy, yet resonant and deeply-felt. The lyrics mesh into the wall of guitar, crashing drums, and a whir of electronics, creating songs that feel more like dreams or distant memories. These songs feel like the soundtrack to a horror film that hasn’t yet been made, and that makes them feel all the more haunting and visceral as you listen waiting for something to go wrong.

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There you have it, four excellent releases from a tiny label from a small corner of our country. While I admittedly have a soft spot for Michigan, what’s incredible about DIY is that there are bands just like this all over the country. There are incredible acts just waiting to be discovered and shared by you. Good bands require good fans to survive, and you don’t have to own a label or run a blog to help good music flourish. Whether you want some tappy emo or some fist-balling hardcore, there’s so much incredible art out there just waiting for you. Your support goes further than you know, and luckily for us, there are people out there like Jake helping it make its way into the world. 

Thirty Cent Fare - Time To Waste Away | EP Review

I’ve learned many things this year about myself, about the world, and about those around me. One of the many things I’ve learned is to trust Acrobat Unstable implicitly. When they drop new tapes, I cop them. When they update their weekly Spotify playlist, I listen. Most importantly, when they sign a new band, I check them out.

This trust has paid off in spades; my cassette tape collection has grown exponentially, each week I am turned on to some new music, and every once in a while I discover a cool new band to become a diehard fan of. They’ve helped usher in releases from Short Fictions, Carpool, and Ultimate Frisbee, and that’s just in the last year alone. So when they announced they were signing Thirty Cent Fare for an EP, as the kids say, I had no choice but to stan. 

Blindly jumping into an artist can be a rewarding experience, but that feeling is amplified tenfold when their Spotify page has <1000 streams and doesn’t even have any related artists. That’s true blindness, that’s genuinely non-existent expectations, which means you’re forced to trust your gut. 

When I hit play on “Split The Ceiling,” I was met with a bounding instrumental that signaled within seconds that the label had done it again. Doubling as both the lead single and opening track,  “Split The Ceiling” is a dynamic and ever-shifting song that echoes a Title Fight sentiment over a distorted guitar and bouncy country-fried drum beat. It’s a warm and sunny welcome to the project featuring remorseful lyrics and a soulful guitar solo crescendo.

This sense of carefree summer-flavored instrumentation continues on the hypnotic “Falling Around Me,” where a glitchy electronic bed pairs with the far-off swirling croons of lead singer Scott Downes. From there, the band does an emotional-180 with “Counts For Nothing,” which deploys a jaunty Field Medic-like acoustic guitar riff under a twangy vocal for an effect that’s both driving and laid-back.

“This or Something Better” uses a gorgeous arrangement of vocal harmonies to evoke the feeling of watching a sunset from the comfort of your own porch with a cold beer in your hand. Meanwhile, the closing track “Time To Waste Away” sounds like a mix of The Berries and fellow Acrobat Unstable signees Charm, with the end result being a calming and assuring send-off.

For a 14-minute project from an artist I’d never heard of, Time To Waste Away is a marvel. It’s new music in a familiar package that acts as a picture-perfect soundtrack to your late-fall evenings and amber-tinted afternoons. This is an EP that feels designed to appeal directly to your inner hiker and soundtrack your next seasonal adventure. It’s a release that welcomes you in warmly, cradles you for a mere 14 minutes, then sends you off to conqueror the world, or at least some tiny part of it. It’s the soundtrack to wasted afternoons, lost hours, and aimless adventures. However, if anything, Time To Waste Away is just an affirmation that time enjoyed is never time wasted.

The Weak Days – Fabric of Our Lives | EP Review

How do relationships begin? When do they fall apart? Are we able to see that decay in real-time as it’s happening? Is it inevitable, or can we alter the course of changing love? These are the questions that The Weak Days are posing on their new EP, The Fabric Of Our Lives. 

Filtered through a low-fantasy lens, the band’s EP tells the story of a bard and a botanist whose marriage is failing. A far cry from the emo tales and inspirational affirmations of 2017’s Tight, the band’s new EP is a finely-crafted pivot that retains their razor-sharp writing and skilled instrumentation. 

The EP opens with “No One Can Live Forever,” a remorseful duet carried by a catchy singalong “oooh weee ooo ooo oooooo” chorus. As we listen on in this conversation between the two disembodied voices, it’s here where the album's concept reveals itself. Over the course of an impassioned back and forth, one character compares the relationship to wilting flowers while the other explains they’re just “out of tune” with each other. The concept becomes undeniable as an instrumental drop out halfway through the track paves the way for both characters to shout “I want a divorce” at the exact same time. It’s gorgeous, heartbreaking, and unlike anything the band has ever made before. 

“Your Shoulder” is a more hopeful song that still contains elements of falling apart and being a broken human at your core. The song captures that sense of dread and regret that fills you the morning after an awful fight. It captures the shame and sorrow you feel while still circling back to this sense of optimism that things can still work out. From there, “The Seams,” “Intermissing,” and “Til Then” elevate the EP into high-fantasy territory with immortal beings, eternal tasks, and a poetic resolution worthy of a children’s storybook. These songs deploy mellow acoustic guitar, disorienting electronic passages, and gorgeous mallet percussion, all while continuing the beautiful back-and-forth vocal duties of drummer Dustin Reinink and bassist RB Roe. This is all wrapped in gorgeous and airy production courtesy of Chris Teti of The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die. 

This all amounts to a gorgeous, complex, and detailed 20 minutes of music that sits somewhere between emo, pop, and indie rock, all of which is filtered through a hyper-creative fantasy D&D-like lens. The Fabric Of Our Lives is an EP that feels like an album based solely on the amount of creativity, writing, and care that’s on display. It’s like an episode of Adventure Time brought to life, smelted, and poured out into a swirling world of ambrosial auditory wonder. 

It’s one thing to write about your own life, but it’s another to craft a story that feels just as lived-in and fleshed-out. Just look at what Dan Campbell has achieved with Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties; he’s written a character that’s as relatable, autonomous, and compelling as his main band which “only” takes inspiration from the member’s lived experiences. The same thing is happening here; The Weak Days have shifted the focus away from their own lives and funneled that energy and creativity into this pair of fictional characters that are just as intricate in their own right. 

Doing something like this requires not only imagination and writing prowess, but empathy and compassion as well. It reminds me of the concept of sonder, which is “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.” With this collection of six songs, The Weak Days have managed to create two separate entities that we not only identify with but come to care for over the course of the release’s 20 minutes. It serves as a reminder that we are all connected, that we should all care for each other, that we are all in this together, from your friends and family to the bards and botanists that exist in our shared imaginations.