Snacking – Blacked Out On A Train | Single Review

Not gonna lie, Florida kinda scares me. It’s not just the golf-playing retirees or the alligators or the need to be beach-bod-ready at all times… It’s that some odd combination of these elements results in an environment that’s virtually inhospitable to my Pacific Northwestern spirit. 

Despite my harsh feelings on Florida, this region has (from my outsider’s perspective) one of the best DIY scenes in the country outside of the Midwest. Florida alone has Pool Kids, Dikembe, Worst Party Ever, Virginity, Skatune Network/JER, Woolbright, Dannythestreet, Gouge Away, Camp Trash, and more. On the other side of the border, you bands like Guitar Fight spouting up in Georgia. Just across the other border, you have groups like Insignificant Other in Alabama. My point is that, despite the sweltering conditions, there’s something in the air down in the southeast that just seems to breed great bands. While I’m not one to bet on artists' popularity, I’m calling it now; Snacking will soon become another one of this region’s success stories. 

“Blacked Out On A Train,” the group’s newest track and lead single off their upcoming EP Painted Gold, is a poppy emo-flavored triumph that sets the table for the band’s artistic metamorphosis. While the Snacking’s 2018 EP Not Here acted as the group’s formal unveiling to the world, it was a collection of songs heavily indebted to the sounds of midwest emo and Florida forebearers like You Blew It! Meanwhile, “Blacked Out On A Train” elevates the group’s sound in nearly every conceivable way. From instrumentation and production to lyricism and inspiration, this song is the sound of a band evolving before our eyes.

Opening with what sounds like a shimmering arcade game ‘Continue’ sound effect, “Blacked Out On A Train” blends together uplifting power chords, snappy drumming, and even-keeled basslines for a cleanly-produced indie rock sound with just an underlying hint of midwest-flavor. On top of this compelling instrumental bed, lead singer Ryan Dormois delivers melodic yet melancholic lyricism that evokes equal parts Pedro The Lion and Into It. Over It. 

These elements all swirl together for a song that depicts the conflicting aspects of life on the road. The strange mix of freedom and excitement that is counterbalanced by hesitation and unfamiliarity. As towns and faces pass by, time continues to progress. Each passing minute brings exciting new views and experiences but also adds distance between you and the people you hold most dear. As you willingly drive away from all familiar creature comforts, alcohol becomes a companion, and the phrase “live a little” morphs from an affirmation into a challenge. These lyrical sentiments pave the way for a searing guitar solo that closes out the track and ushers in the remainder of the EP—merely an appetizer (or snack, I suppose) for the entree that’s yet to come. 

“Blacked Out On A Train” is available now on all streaming services, and Painted Gold is out on February 12th via Chilwavve Records.

Breathing New Life Into Shoegaze, An Interview with Clearbody

Even though it came out in December, Clearbody’s One More Day was easily one of 2020’s strongest debuts. Formerly known as Dollhands, the Charlotte, North Carolina trio fuse the speed and ferocity of punk with the lush textures of shoegaze to create an immensely satisfying album. Clearbody find themselves in the increasingly fertile sect of shoegaze that is heavily indebted to bands such as Hum and Deftones. Where bands like Narrow Head decide to infuse their blend of heavy shoegaze with the grungy sound of nineties alt-rock, Clearbody’s punk and emo leanings help to set them apart from the pack as they have more in common with Blink-182 than Alice In Chains.

One More Day is a shock to the system; its eight songs are delivered with both speed and efficiency in just twenty-five minutes. “Scratch The Color” opens the album at a sprint’s pace as guitar, bass, and drums charge forward in unison while Eric Smeal sings of the absence of friendship. The band displays its pop sensibilities on “Blossom”  and “Too Far Gone,” which feature infectious guitar leads backed by upbeat rhythms. 

If this is starting to sound like Clearbody is a run of the mill pop-punk band, rest assured, this band contains multitudes thanks to their bonafide shoegaze aesthetic. The title track opens with heavily reverbed guitar chords, steady distorted bass, and crashing cymbals as gloomy vocals ponder the pain of not being with their beloved. “Suspension” closes the album with a climax that displays how well the band members play off of each other as rhythm section Martin Hacker-Mullen and Seth Wesner provide grit and heft for Eric Smeal’s screeching guitar solo.

What makes One More Day so exciting and interesting is that no song is just one thing despite the short running times. The band is able to include a diverse range of their influences in each track without creating a muddy mess. Pop minded songs such as “Scratch The Color” and “Blossom” each close out with passages of heavy distortion that play into the dreamy side of shoegaze, whereas “One More Day” alternates between moments of slow haze and blistering aggression as a means of servicing the pain and confusion depicted in the lyrics.

With One More Day, Clearbody has delivered a debut that could easily be from a band that has found its sound three or four albums into its career. Who knows where they will go from here, but wherever it is, I will follow. 

Recently, I had the pleasure to sit down with Eric Smeal, Clearbody’s guitarist and lead vocalist to discuss the band’s past, present, future, and you guessed it, Tom Petty.

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The three of you were originally in a band known as Dollhands. Is Clearbody just a name change, or do you view it as a new band removed from your old work?
Kind of both, honestly. Technically the original band was called Muffled, I started that project by myself in 2014 when I was a junior in high school, it was just garage rock kinda stuff inspired by bands like the Pixies and Ty Segall. We switched it to Dollhands once we started playing local shows because the word muffled is kind of an onomatopoeia; every time I’d say the name to someone, they’d be like, “wait what? I didn’t catch that.” We came up with Dollhands off of word association, and I never really felt like it was a good fit for us, it sounded like a horrorcore band name or something. When Seth and Marty joined in 2018, it felt like a totally new band, we just played some of the same songs.

Your work as Dollhands skews more toward emo and pop-punk. I’m curious what led to the inclusion of aspects of shoegaze. Was this a conscious shift in sound or something that happened naturally?
It happened naturally, at least that’s how I think it happened. Dollhands had a scrapped EP (which I put out earlier in 2020 under the name Collection) that was more so a garage rock record than anything else, I’ve always said that we’re one thing when we’ve been called something else the whole time. I honestly think the shoegaze shit started with the song “Showbiz” off of that EP, I had no idea what the fuck I was doing at the time, but I listened to that song recently and was like, “damn, this is kind of a shoegaze song.” I like to think that we’re a “shoegaze” band, but people can call us whatever they want. When we were writing & recording One More Day, I didn’t realize how much it sounds like a classic emo record, but now I totally see why people say we’re an emo band. I really didn’t get the Sunny Day Real Estate comparisons at first, I just thought they were sick comparisons, but I like that people think of us as a melting pot band.

A version of “Quarterback” appears on a Dollhands/Stress Fractures split EP. Are the other songs on the album B.C. (Before Clearbody), or were they written specifically for One More Day?
So technically, 5 out of the 8 songs are “Dollhands” songs; “Blossom,” “One More Day,” and “In Latency” were all written while we were recording. Seth came to practice one day in April with the Blossom riff, and it just kinda wrote itself. We tracked that song first, and initially it was just going to be a single, but then we were like fuck it, let’s record the rest of these songs, which were “Scratch,” “Ultraclarity,” “Too Far Gone,” and “Suspension.” At the end of 2019, we tracked an EP, which was all of those songs minus “Suspension.” We had another song on it called “Dream Eater,” which was an incredibly cursed song for us to play live; we played it like 8 times since 2018, and every time something would go wrong, or we’d fuck it up, one time we straight up just stopped playing it and moved on hahahaha. We all felt down on our performances during the EP recording session and decided to do it ourselves. Alex Martin convinced us to add “Quarterback” to the record, and we were already working on One More Day, so we added that one too. “In Latency” just kinda came to me one night after tracking, and it felt like a good transition from “Too Far Gone” to “Suspension.” I’ve always loved artists like Grouper and Alex G, so it’s me just trying to channel that energy.  

One of the things that impresses me most about the album is how you blend punk’s speed and aggression with the spacey and dreamy aspects of shoegaze without sounding awkward or muddied. Can you speak to how you find this balance? 
We just kinda do our thing, it’s always been like that. We try to not put so much pressure into stuff like that when we’re writing, we just know where the parts should be. I’ve always been the “play as fast as possible” type of musician, which can be a little challenging when shoegaze music is usually slow and droney. When we were tracking, I was hella into bands like Boris or Yuragi, Japanese shoegaze music is fuckin sick, and they constantly blend different styles together. I showed Marty this band called “………” the other day (yes, their name is just 9 periods), and they’re straight up a pop-punk shoegaze band, its so fucking sick hahahahaha.

The field of “heavy shoegaze” acts has become increasingly fertile over the past few years, with bands like Cloakroom, Greet Death, Narrow Head, and Nothing all approaching the sound from different angles. Do you see yourself as a part of this movement? If so, do you draw inspiration from any of these bands (mentioned or otherwise)?
I think we’re apart of that movement, yeah. We’ve been lucky enough to play with both Narrow Head and Nothing, along with some other cool bands like Fake Eyes & Soul Blind too. Everyone has their own style to the genre, which is really sick. I think that I draw a ton of influence from both Greet Death and Cloakroom, respectively. I just want Clearbody to be heavy as shit, but also have huge and beautiful moments too. Spirit of the Beehive is the best example of something like that, I think, they can be so aggressive, but they also have these expansive, beautiful moments too. Dynamics in shoegaze are everything to me, they can really make or break a band. 

Will you describe your writing process? Do you all write together? Are ideas fleshed out through jamming or some other method?
Most of the time, one of us will just bring a riff to practice, and we’ll try to flesh it out as much as we can. I wrote most of the songs on One More Day by myself first, then I brought them to practice. I write all of the lyrics too.

Your lyrics speak on themes of failed friendship, the passing of time, and people either being lost in life or moved on from completely. Where do you draw your inspiration for lyrics?
Personal experiences, I guess, sometimes it can be hard to tell. My whole life, I’ve always just let the words come out; I’ve never tried to write about only one thing, so all of the songs on One More Day are about a bunch of different things. The title track is mostly about my partner Cass and how they live 12 hours away from me, but it’s also about seeing how much you’ve grown personally. That’s another thing that kind of “happened by accident,” all the songs are about growth. Yeah, sure, you can cover a lot of ground with just vague shit like that, but I think that I processed stuff on this record, shit I needed to move on from. We live in dark times, so I’m glad that the album has connected with people in that way.

Your work as Dollhands features covers from myriad different artists, but the one that sticks out to me as the most interesting/peculiar is your cover of Tom Petty’s “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.” I find it to be a very successful cover and I am curious what your relationship to his music is. I have noticed that, like Petty, your songs are able to get to the chorus/refrain in four lines or less.
That cover was actually apart of a cover comp I worked on! My dad plays harmonica on it hahahaha, but yeah, I’ve always loved Tom Petty, and when he passed away, we started working on that comp, it was way before all the Acrobat Unstable stuff. I’ve never really thought about it like that; I was raised on Tom Petty and other bands like Aerosmith and REO Speedwagon, then when I was in middle school, I found out about Nirvana and blink-182. Blink was obviously the big one; I bought a bass when I was in high school and learned all their records.

You recently played a fantastic live stream for Audiotree. How did it feel to play your music in a live setting with shows being prohibited for the foreseeable future? 
It was honestly crazy, we added something new to every song in that set, and I’m stoked with how it came out. Hopefully, we’ll be able to play live in the near future whenever it’s safe, I really miss it.

You mentioned on Twitter that you already have three songs for your second LP. Can you discuss the direction you are going with it and when you think it might be out?
It’ll probably be out in 2022. The songs really aren’t much just yet; Marty and Seth both wrote a song together, which is sick. I wrote a cowboy ass riff for it that I hated at first, but now I love it. I already have a concept for lyrics and imagery that I wanna run with, we just haven’t really had a chance to sit down and talk about that stuff yet. We’re just trying to pump these songs out cause One More Day took me 4~ years to write; the oldest song on it is “Suspension,” which I wrote back in the Muffled days (full circle interview moment) but this one we’ll hopefully be done writing sometime in 2021.

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Connor lives in San Francisco with his partner and their cat, Toni. Connor has an MFA in creative writing and is working toward becoming a community college professor. When he isn’t listening to music or writing about killer riffs, Connor is obsessing over coffee and sandwiches.

Follow him on Twitter or Instagram.

Tiberius - Lull | Album Review

Love and heartbreak have to be two of the most well-trodden territories in songwriting. I suppose they’re ever-fruitful creative ground since everyone’s relationships are different and all fluctuate in unique ways. Whether it’s friendship, a romantic relationship, or something else, that combination of two people coming together and forming something special between them means that love and heartbreak are infinitely interpretable topics. No two relationships are alike, and exploring those novel combinations of people has led to some of the best songs in the world. It’s also led to some of the most trite and soulless garbage imaginable. Turn on the radio or walk into a grocery store anywhere in America and odds are, within a few minutes, you’ll hear a song about a relationship either beginning or ending. That duality of love and heartbreak is all well and good, after all, people are still connecting to it and finding new ways to write about it after hundreds of years, but that doesn’t stop it from being commonplace. 

These days, I’m much more interested in the grey areas of life… The spaces between the defined path and the boundless area ahead. Those “commonplace” concepts of falling in and out of love are fine, but they’re extremes. We spend more of our lives existing in the ground between those two states. 

As an artist, what do you have to say about an unremarkable Wednesday? How do you fill the space when your friends don’t call and your family is far away? What do you do when it’s interminably slow at work and you need time to fill the void? This is the sort of grey area we’ve been living in since March of 2020, so maybe that’s what appeals to me so much about artists who stray away from the binary of “love” and “heartbreak.” More often than not, life isn’t “good and bad,” it’s mute and indescribable. It’s listless and empty. It’s either a hectic scramble or adrift emotionality. What you have to say about that is what tests your mettle as an artist, not finding a new way to say ‘I am sad about girls.’

While your mileage may vary, I think the first time that many of us experience this grey area of life in full is immediately after college. If everything goes according to plan, after graduation you’ll find yourself in your early 20s, degree in-hand, and debt piled up. You followed the path that society has set out for you; you went to school, did your homework, found your “calling,” now what? Most students enter the world lost and confused with a resume and a handful of intern credits that they expected to help them land them a job that they may not even want. Then they spend months (or years) finding their way into that job, all for the express purpose of paying off that debt they attained just trying to get here—what a great system. 

Lull, the sophomore album from Tiberius, delves into this grey area in full over the course of a sprawling 48 minutes. Helmed by multi-instrumentalist Brendan Wright, he bills the release as an exploration of “self-hatred vs. self-love, the complexities of transitioning between youth and aging, and the power of the pen and expression.” 

Walking a fine line between midwest emo and lush indie rock, the collection of songs on Lull prattle on in the most charming and abstract way. Sometimes dipping into near-rapped spoken word excursions and exploratory solos, the music is slowly but surely making its way forward. This record is the musical equivalent of sleeping over at someone’s house and navigating your way to the bathroom in the dark; you move forward, one unsure step after another, all the while your hands gently scan the empty middle ground in search of any obstacles that might impede your journey. Despite the dread that comes with navigating this unfamiliar territory, the sense of satisfaction you feel when you accomplish that journey and make it back to the warm comfort of the bed makes it all worth it. The excursion was necessary, even if you didn’t want to embark on it.

Perhaps the best indicator of Lull’s message comes in its name… Lull. It’s a fitting word to describe that period of your life where the predetermined path ends and the world lies before you. What direction do you go now? How fast should you be moving? Are you even going the right way? Lull captures the lost essence one feels as the gust of energy, creativity, and forward momentum suddenly gives way to a distinct type of nothingness.

Opening track “The First of Many Lasts” sets the tone for the release with a swirl of strings, acoustic guitar, and xylophone that all congeal together to establish a melody that will present itself throughout the record. After this calming 50-second introduction, “MPHL” brings this swirling melody to a complete halt, acting as an instrumental stop sign that commands attention and draws focus on Wright’s vocals. After an opening salvo of downtrodden lyrics, the cymbal taps grow louder, eventually culminating into a fully-fledged drum build. As the song begins to swell and pick up intensity, the remainder of the instruments join in, forming a swaying instrumental that acts as an optimistic counterpoint to the cynical lyricism. These first two tracks serve as a detailed and multi-layered introduction to the complicated and emotional world of Lull. 

From there, lead single “Pale Ale” is a catchy, cathartic anthem that doubles as one of the record’s most pointed and self-contained tracks. This song walks the line between midwest emo and classic indie rock in the vein of Broken Social Scene. There are drums, bass, multiple guitars, and even a soaring sax solo that manages to fit into the song seamlessly. Even though some tracks feature additional band members, I can’t help but marvel at the fact that something this dense and layered came from one mind. While Lull was created and recorded primarily by Wright alone, “Pale Ale” acts as a hyper-collaborative high point that he is able to revisit thematically later in the album. 

From here, the band explores the aforementioned topics of relationships, aging, creativity, and self-expression through a series of constantly-shifting tracks. The album’s title track pairs gorgeous female vocals over a buoyant guitar line that drives the song forward. “Urn” is a dark and groovy cut with an instrumental reminiscent of early Interpol or even The Cure. “Furrow” pairs an electronic instrumental bed with a wispy guitar and gentle piano for a funky and laid-back excursion. 

Despite the fact that all of these songs feel unique and stylistically different, they all fit into the larger theme of the album thanks to Wright’s vocals and overarching artistic vision. No matter what stylistic indulgences or genre-based fluctuations the album goes through, Lull always centers back to the same concepts of progress and feeling like you’re not quite where you’re meant to be.

Are you actually growing or merely sustaining? Did you follow the instructions, or were you even meant to in the first place? As damaging as a lull can be in your life, the beauty is that it can also act as a period of reflection. Stalling out may feel bad because you’ve lost momentum, but it can also be a much-needed pause that allows us to think, find that missing sense of direction, and pull ourselves out. It’s all about perspective; a lull is only as negative as you allow it to be. On the other side of every lull, there is explosive progress, affirming relationships, and personal development. A lull might feel bad while you’re in it, but sometimes the only way out is through.