The Best of May 2021

Easily the most stacked month of 2021 thus far, May saw oodles of emo, heaping helpings of punk, and even a few fantastic folk releases. Of course, we also threw in some blues and metalcore for good measure, plus an actual grunge album to top it all off.

Stars Hollow - I Want to Live My Life

Acrobat Unstable

The Iowa emo trio moves from licking their wounds on Happy Again and arrested development on “Tadpole” to active progress on their debut album. Capturing equal parts self-discovery, self-destruction, and self-improvement, I Want to Live My Life is one person’s journey from passive complacency to active betterment. This story is soundtracked by tappy guitar licks, emotive screams, and killer drum fills. As the listener stitches together the threads connecting each song, putting the pieces together results in one of the most satisfying emo experiences this year. 

Read our full review of I Want to Life My Life here.

NATL PARK SRVC - The Dance

Self-released

The Dance sounds like mid-aughts “classic” indie rock in the best way possible. Seven members deep, complete with a horn section and occasional strings, NATL PARK SRVC sounds like they could have opened for Arcade Fire or Broken Social Scene at the peak of those band’s respective Pitchfork-fueled successes. The Dance feels like a hidden gem you’d stumble across in a record store circa-2003 and would obsess over for years. It sounds like the cassette you’d find in the car of your best friend’s cooler older brother and would have an immediate respect for based on that association alone. This is a high-flying, highly-polished indie rock album that arrives to us fully formed. While the record comes with familiar trappings, it feels like NATL PARK SRVC have already carved out their own corner of the world in just 48 minutes and 7 seconds. 

The Black Keys - Delta Kream

Nonesuch Records

I’ve been a fan of The Black Keys for as long as they’ve been around. In retrospect, picturing myself as a pre-teen listening to Junior Kimbrough covers and songs like “Grown So Ugly” is objectively hilarious but made all the sense in the world as an accompaniment to my rabid White Stripes fandom. Watching the band evolve from sleazy, sloppy garage rock into a poppier and poppier version of themselves has been one of the great displeasures of my music listening career. That said, I don’t begrudge the band for chasing success, even if it means becoming synonymous with car commercial music in the process. 

On Delta Kream, The Black Keys genuinely get back to their roots with 11 covers of blues greats ranging from R. L. Burnside to John Lee Hooker. This record captures my favorite version of the band; it’s the one that I first fell in love with and one that I never thought we’d see again. The guitar tone is muddy, the vocals are mumbled, and the songs feel like they have space to breathe. This album is a direct contrast to 2019’s “Let’s Rock”, which feels like a collection of blues-rock songs that were bitten by a radioactive Subaru Outback. Delta Kream may not get a sold-out tour or million-dollar placements in commercials, but I’m glad it exists, and I know I’m not alone. 

Smol Data - Inconvenience Store

Open Door Records

As explained by the band themselves on Twitter, Inconvenience Store is a collection of songs about the “insane little art community you made the center of your universe as a teenager.” More specifically, the album is about aging out of that community and trying to figure out where the hell you’re supposed to go next. That’s a pretty universal experience every music-adjacent creative feels growing up, and the songs reflect that universality whether it’s through the poppy hums of “Salaried (Bankruptcy Eve)” or the ska-flavored “Bitch Store.” The record stakes out a space that melds the personable, eccentric indie-pop of Illuminati Hotties with the wholistic world-building of Glass Beach, and that is a Venn diagram I can one-hundred percent get behind. 

Just Friends - JF Crew, Vol. 2

Pure Noise Records

Just Friends is serotonin in audio form. Just Friends is pure adrenaline packed with a punch of love, acceptance, and good vibes. Following an excellent three-pack of songs from earlier this year, the band is back with another stack of fun-loving funk-rock tunes. Opening track “Sizzle” is a 100-mile-per-hour banger that sees lead singers Sam Kless and Brianda "Brond" Goyos Leon vivaciously trading bars. As Brond delivers a series of spitfire boasts with Sam as her hypeman, the song eventually breaks down into a stank-face-inducing stoner rock riff. The grooviness doesn’t stop there because this opener gives way to a Lil B remix and a fantastic No Doubt cover in the proceeding tracks. Three songs, no misses. With this EP, Just Friends once again prove that they are a reliable supplier of feel-good ass-shakin’ tunes… as if there was ever any doubt.

The Devil Wears Prada - ZII

Solid State Records

Back in 2010, The Devil Wears Prada were riding high. They had just released (arguably) the best album of their career one year prior, then they dropped a zombie-themed EP at the undeniable height of the early-aughts zombie zeitgeist. Aside from being a collection of six fantastic songs, in retrospect, it’s impressive how well the band was able to strike while the iron was hot. The Walking Dead was just revving up on TV, the video game world was inundated with games like Left 4 Dead and Call Of Duty, and films like Zombieland were doing gangbusters at the box office. Over the next decade, the band became a little shakier. They got heavier and darker with Dead Throne in 2011, they lost a founding member in 2012, and then released the middling 8:18 in 2013. The group seemed to be righting the ship in 2015 with Space EP, a similarly committed concept EP about the dangers lurking in the sci-fi corners of space. One year later, they delivered the massively underrated Transit Blues in 2016, then released the somehow even more underrated The Act in 2019. With ZII, the band is signaling that they’ve finally returned to the heights they achieved over a decade ago. 

The Devil Wears Prada may have undergone lineup changes and indulged in new sounds that didn’t always pay off, but now they are venturing back into the zombie world they began to flesh out back in 2010, and this time it’s not a gimmick. The band is able to pick up right where they left off on the first Zombie EP as if the intervening years happened in the blink of an eye. The band sounds as sharp, and the screams sound as ferocious as they did a decade ago. The lyrics faithfully stick close to the horror theme but still leave room for compelling narratives and bits of songwriting to occur without being overshadowed by a sense of novelty. For those who have been “tuning out” of the metalcore scene for the last few years, this EP is an appeal directly to you. For most fans, it was clear that the band was achieving new artistic heights with their last full-length, but this EP is an affirmation. It’s a signal to grab your old metalcore tee out of the closet and break it out one last time for 2010’s sake. 

Mannequin Pussy - Perfect

Epitaph Records

Mannequin Pussy are masters of the punk craft, and with each release, the band’s skills have only sharpened. The group’s newest EP, Perfect, is a five-song master class in the punk genre. The emotions have become more fierce but also more controlled. The choruses have become catchier but don’t forfeit their deep-rooted rage. Every type of Mannequin Pussy song is represented here. “Control” hones in the poppier chorus-driven side of the band’s spectrum, “Perfect” is the fast, thrashy punk song, and “To Lose You” is the mid-tempo rocker that pulls at your heartstrings ever so slightly. While each track is fantastic in its own right, the two biggest surprises come at the tail end of the release.

“Pigs Is Pigs” sees Missy handing vocal duties over to bassist Colins "Bear" Regisford for a Turnstile-esque track that tackles police brutality. Based on Ellis Parker Butler’s short story of the same name, “Pigs Is Pigs” encapsulates an all-cops-are-bad-narrative by illustrating how bureaucratic, systematic violence by the cops will never truly end by weeding out the “bad apples” and calling it a day. Bear uses this short story as an analogy for the dire need to defund the police as well as the ideology and policy set during the days of slave patrolling which formed the force from the inside out. As policing has become more assertive, expansive, and militaristic, the techniques have become more violent, punitive, and discriminatory, leading to extreme cycles of violence and death. Furthermore, as the rules behind policing become more violent and fascist, the general public has continued to fear the cops and act within privileged safety nets. On this song, Bear reminds the listener that these rules ascribed to us are only disguised as “right” to hide the violence and injustice behind them. This challenges all of us to decide what is actually right. Is the pervasive narrative good for your community and humanity, or are you just listening to what you’re being told? Mannequin Pussy tells us to pick a side: fear or fight. 

Closing track “Darling” is a soft-spoken confessional ballad with an electronic beat, understated guitar, and even delicate bells which carry the release out. Over its 14 minutes, Perfect sees hardened punk perfection slowly unraveling to reveal a tender core. Closing out a rager of an EP with a muted love song follows the sentimental theme found on the closing track of 2019’s Patience, and it is as poignant as it is lovely. 

Fiddlehead - Between the Richness

Run For Cover Records

When Fiddlehead dropped their debut album back in 2018, I went in completely blind. I hadn’t heard the band’s ep from three years prior; I wasn’t even familiar with the member’s other projects, Have Heart or Basement. Nevertheless, I checked the record out solely because Springtime and Blind was being put out on Run For Cover, and that was a label I trusted implicitly. My trust paid off, and that album became my favorite of 2018. 

After a brief pitstop in 2019, Fiddlehead is back with another 25 minutes of careening and grief-ridden post-hardcore. While Springtime and Blind saw lead singer Patrick Flynn reckoning with his father’s death, Between the Richness is a markedly more optimistic record about centering yourself and finding peace in between the ambivalent chaos of life. While Between The Richness may be more uplifting, that doesn’t mean the band has made a complete sonic shift. Luckily, this record bears the same throat-shredding bellows as the group’s previous work. The choruses are sticky and primed for anthemic sing-alongs in a crowd full of sweaty strangers. Richness is life-affirming rock music that comes from a deep and genuine place. Being able to venture into this world for 25 minutes at a time is an absolute miracle. 

Bachelor - Doomin’ Sun

Polyvinyl Records

My first listen of Doomin’ Sun happened in a cabin on a farm tucked far up in the mountains of Colorado. This first listen came at the tail end of a long day spent hiking, taking in the natural world, and feeling appreciative of the love I’m able to share with my partner. It turns out that was the perfect way to first experience the collaborative album from the minds behind Jay Som and Palehound. Doomin’ Sun is an album made for porch beers and long drives through the mountains at sunset with the person that matters most to you. It’s laid-back, easy-going, and emotionally forthright. I look forward to this record soundtracking many more sun-drenched memories over the coming months and years. 

Downhaul - Proof

Refresh Records

Much like the debut album from Stars Hollow, Proof is a record about personal growth as measured through one person. Throughout its ten songs, we watch our narrator work his way from hollow connections to genuine betterment. However, unlike most albums centered around this topic, Proof recognizes that the most challenging part of personal progress isn’t always growth itself, but admitting you need it in the first place. Proof is an album about wrestling with the almost imperceptible seismic shift that happens once you fully own up to the weight of your existence in every form.

Read our full review of Proof here.

The Give & Take - Great Pause

Knifepunch Records

After a five-year hiatus, Expert Timing drummer Gibran Colbert revives The Give & Take to deliver a collection of five excellent songs about uncomfortably growing into the first real adult phase of your life. These songs focus in on physical manifestations of adulthood like a gifted briefcase that has fallen into disuse. They also pan out to address more universal issues like religion, isolation, and mental health. Colbert describes the band as “twinkle country” with inclusive, positive vibes, and the release reflects that, even in its moments of vulnerability. Songs like “Settled” possess an easy-breezy porch swing sway, despite the topic of not quite being where you want to be. The release finds peace in what might make others uncomfortable, all leading up to the last two tracks, which form an emotionally resonant one-two punch that gives this EP the heft of a full-length album. 

Gulfer, Charmer - Split

Topshelf Records, No Sleep Records, Royal Mountain Records

Ever since I heard the first chaotic yelps of Dog Bless, I knew there was something special about Gulfer. They were an emo band that knew how to mix humor and levity with the usual overwrought sentiments of the genre. Their instrumentation was tight, their vocals stuck, and they were on a legendary emo label to boot. Oppositely, Charmer’s self-titled record was a slow-burn that worked its way up from standard emo fare to an album I’d consider “perfect,” even if only within the bounds of the genre. Charmer had choruses for days, and the band’s songs never overstayed their welcome. Sprinkle both of these releases with well-placed instrumentals, short run times, and excellent production, and you have two modern emo classics. 

Last year, both bands released excellent follow-ups to their respective landmark albums that flew (relatively) under the radar in emo circles. Now, they’re back, and they’ve teamed up for a split of two songs that see each band indulging in the best aspects of their respective styles. Gulfer jolts the listener with a jagged instrumental barrage on “Look,” while Charmer croons over guitar tapping on “Diamond (Sprinkler).” This split may only be two tracks, but it’s a team-up that feels tailor-made to me and every other emo out there in need of six minutes and 35 seconds of deep human connection.

Jimmy Montague - Casual Use

Chillwavve Records

While the music world was focused on the middling new 70s-inspired St. Vincent album, Jimmy Montague surprise-released a 70s-indebted record of his own. While it’s easy to listen to Casual Use and hear the classic rock inspiration, it’s something that can sound great on paper but easily fail in execution. So how do I know that Casual Use is the real deal? Well, I sent it to my father, who came of age when this type of music was in its heyday. My dad’s review? “Very good tunes” that will “probably be a regular” on his playlists. That endorsement says more than I ever can. 

Palette Knife - Ponderosa Snake House and the Chamber Of Bullshit

Take This To Heart Records

Ponderosa Snake House and the Chamber Of Bullshit is an album whose DNA is composed of equal parts Studio Ghibli sentimentality and Vine-era internet humor. It’s a collection of 11 caring, cathartic, and catchy songs, all fueled by the satisfying effervescence of LaCroix. Ponderosa Snake is an exceptionally crafted emo release that ticks all the possible boxes that the genre offers. Tappy guitar parts? Check. Immaculate production? Check. Fun choruses punctuated by brutally honest verses? Double fucking check. 

Superbloom - Pollen

Self-released

A grunge album released in 2021? It’s more likely than you think! The first song on Superbloom’s Pollen is titled “1994,” which is either incredibly apt or incredibly on-the-nose, depending on who you ask. Regardless, “1994” serves an important purpose of setting the listener’s expectations before they even click play. Upon entering the album, you’re met with a wall of sludgy guitar tone, and raspy mumbled vocals that sound about as close to Kurt Cobain as that AI-created Nirvana song from earlier this year. Taking all the best lessons from the Stone Temple Pilots and the Soundgarden’s of the world, Superbloom effortlessly blends together a wide swath of 90s sounds into one throwback release that speaks directly to my inner 90s kid. There are hooks worthy of a Nirvana song, guitar tones akin to a Smashing Pumpkins track, and self-loathing only bested by the aforementioned Stone Temple Pilots. Lead singer Dave Hoon has a voice that sits somewhere between Cobain and the nu-metal bands who took up the mantle of grunge in the early 2000s. 

With Totally 90s™ song titles like “Whatever” and others that nod to influential acts of the time like Built to Spill, it can sometimes feel like the band is merely cosplaying this era of music à la Greta Van Fleet. Even if that’s true, the songs end up coming off as more admiration than emulation. Pollen feels like a release from a bunch of 20-somethings who grew up spending hours with their Smashing Pumpkins CDs, and I respect that because, hey, me too. Pollen sounds like an album lost to time and only recently uncovered. It sounds like time traveling back to Portland in the 90s. It sounds like grunge. 

Quick Hits

BUG MOMENT - BUG - The 100 gecs-ification of bedroom rock is here, and I adore it. 

Pearl Jam - Deep - A gargantuan, too-big-for-any-normal human 5504 song collection of bootleg live recordings taken from 186 shows across Pearl Jam’s decade-spanning career. 

Angel Olsen - Song of the Lark and Other Far Memories - Angel Olsen closes out her current era with a collection of her last two records capped off with new songs and remixes.

St. Vincent - Daddy’s Home - After an exhausting album cycle, Annie Clark finally drops her woozy 70s-indebted record that attempts to recapture the grit of New York at its most mystical and drugged-out.

Pet Fox - More Than Anything  - A three-pack of poppy and impeccably put-together shoegaze tracks via Exploding In Sound records.

Fiver - Fiver With the Atlantic School of Spontaneous Composition - Spacious indie rock with a country tinge and Fiona Apple-like vocals.

Marble Teeth x Riddle - Split 7” - One of my favorite lyricists in the midwest teams up with a friend from his hometown in this lovely little four-track split. 

Weezer - Van Weezer - Initially intended to be released around the same time as last year’s ill-fated Hella Mega Tour, the newest LP from Weezer sees the band going full over-the-top 80s guitar-shredding in this album-length genre pastiche. 

SeeYouSpaceCowboy x If I Die First - A Sure Disaster - A short split (and fun video) from two of the bands bearing the torch of Rise Records-style Mallcore in 2021.

Skatune Network - Greetings from Ska Shores - The ever-prolific god of upstrokes drops a collection of Animal Crossing songs, all rendered in a sunny ska style.

Olivia Rodrigo - SOUR - If the plodding ballads from Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher traded LA-Brain for the suburbs and then went to go karaoke Lorde songs. 

Good Sleepy - everysinglelittlebit - 30 minutes of cleanly produced, emotionally messy tap-heavy emo. An impressive debut.

Babe Rainbow - Changing Colours  - Sunny vibe-filled music primed for beachside hangouts, midday beers, and watching summer sunsets from the comfort of a lakeborne boat.

Missing Life - DEMO - A shoegazy four-song demo from one of the minds behind Mover Shaker that sits somewhere at the intersection of Slowdive and Snow Patrol.

Boyish - We’re all gonna die, but here’s my contribution - Beautifully emotive and inward bedroom indie that cuts straight to the heart of relationships.

A.G. Cook - Apple vs. 7G - An album from the hyperpop head of PC Music collecting remixed tracks from last year’s fantastic Apple and the seven-disc-long 7G.

Pomegranate Tea - Life Is Getting So _____. - Six emo songs with the potential to come to life in small basements and sweaty bars. 

Beatricks - Razzle Frazzle - A series of compelling bleeps, bloops, screams, and strums that make you feel like you’re about to set the world on fire. 

Hot Mulligan - i won’t reach out to you - Emo stalwarts Hot Mulligan release a short addendum to last year’s fantastic sophomore album you’ll be fine. 

.michael. - Secret Handshake - 100 cute and surprisingly well-crafted songs all written in five minutes or less. 

Green-House - Music for Living Spaces - Relaxing synthy songs designed to “hit that part of the brain that’s affected by the emotional state that you’re in when you perceive something as cute.”

Khaki Cuffs – 3rd and Long | Single Premiere

Knowing when to end something is hard.
Knowing how to end something is even harder. 

Khaki Cuffs were a Delaware-based emo band that existed from 2017 to 2020. While the group started (as so many do) with a series of rough-around-the-edges demos and scrappy recordings, they had just begun to break through to the larger emo scene in April of 2020 with the release of their self-titled album. Obviously, the ongoing global pandemic prevented Khaki Cuffs from touring on the record, but that didn’t stop them from gaining a sizable number of fans over the last year. 

Khaki Cuffs was worth its weight in emo gold. The record effortlessly waded from screamo wails to affirmative revelations in a matter of minutes. Outside of the music, the band had some of the best merch in the game and went viral on places like TikTok and Twitter more times than I can count. Simply put, they were doing everything right. They tapped, they riffed, they got heavy as shit, but despite all this, they still made the difficult decision to call it wraps on the project by the end of 2020. 

Now, nearly a year after the release of their breakthrough album, the duo, comprised of Brody Hamilton (guitar, drums, vocals) and Drew Rackie (bass), have remastered and reissued their self-titled, completely redone from the ground up. The gorgeous vinyl, courtesy of Chillwavve Records, features new album art and contains one extra song that acts as the record’s new de facto closer. This brings us to “3rd and Long,” the final Khaki Cuffs song, which we have the honor of premiering here today.

“3rd and Long” begins with a hilarious clip from a Delaware state hearing in 2019 about Newarks’ anti-partying law. Samples like this have been a staple of the band’s discography for as long as they’ve been creating music, so it only feels right that their final song would begin with such a snippet that also pays homage to their home state. Similarly, “3rd and Long” has been a staple of the band’s live set for almost two years now, so this song finally seeing the light of day is truly a poetic full-circle moment.

This sample gives way to a propulsive emo instrumental that will immediately get your head bobbing along as if you were in a packed basement show. As the instrumental careens forward, Hamilton airs out their insecurities with lyrics that are equal parts regretful and uncertain. 

After another hard-charging instrumental push, a banjo emerges to accompany the second verse, echoing previous tracks like “how to turn your emotional anguish into cold hard cash.” This use of banjo encapsulates Khaki Cuff's dynamic sound within the emo realm and feels like something that only this band can pull off so well. 

The group hits us with one more chorus, and then the song drops out into a rolling instrumental stretch that paves the way for one final screamo outburst. As Hamilton rattles off a stream of consciousness in their unmistakable shrill wail, it feels like a reminder of what makes this band great. The way Khaki Cuffs manage to transition from boppy midwest emo to raw screamo confessionals has always been impressive.

Soon after this screamo passage, the instrumental snaps into place in the most satisfying way. The band manages to regain their composure just long enough to hit the listener with a hypnotic singalong bridge that carries the song out. And just like that, Khaki Cuffs is no more. Long live Khaki Cuffs.

“3rd and Long” drops on streaming platforms tomorrow, and Khaki Cuffs’ self-titled record is available for pre-order now through Chillwavve Records.

Downhaul – Proof | Album Review

Growth is hard to measure. It’s unquantifiable, it’s non-linear, and there’s no clearly defined endpoint. It’s also something that each person needs to recognize and undertake on their own. You can’t force a person to grow or change any more than you can stop the sun from setting or the rain from falling. Throughout PROOF, Downhaul ruminate on growth, filter it through the lens of memory, and ground it in physical spaces strewn across the wide-open sprawl of nature. 

Much like growth itself, the band does not begin the record with immediate progress but rather recognizing the need for growth in the first place. As these revelations unfurl throughout the epic seven-minute opener, “Bury,” the group does an excellent job of acclimating you into the gothic country world of the album. The song begins with a slow fade-up on an atmospheric howl of wind accompanied by a single jangly guitar and carefully brushed cymbals. As the cymbals grow louder and more intense about a minute in, lead singer Gordon Phillips emerges from the dense fog pondering in a Greet Death twang, “Did I waste the years when it all came so easily? / Was I standing still?  Did I slip at the edge of the quarry?” Soon after the first verse, the full band joins in, guitar, drums, and bass all falling into a towering and naturalistic riff worthy of a Balance and Composure song. 

The instrumental rises and falls as the guitar masterfully carves its path in the listener’s mind. The bass rumbles with a thunderous power, rattling underneath Phillips’ lyrics of backsliding and non-linear progress. As the story unfolds, Phillips begins to address some anonymous other, singing the album’s namesake and punctuating it with sentiments of despair and bitterness.

You wanted proof, you wanted
Lost sight of where we started
You denigrate your own, it’s so shameful
As you curse the ground that you came from
You wanted proof, you wanted...

The lyrics that end this song trail off, making them sound like an incomplete half-thought, but they actually do an important job of establishing the core concept for the album. As the listener hangs on this sentiment, the instrumental sputters out into a dusty, minimalistic stretch that allows for rumination. This use of negative space is something the band does excellently throughout the album and even within individual songs. These recurring instrumental stretches give the listener ample space to reflect on the lyrics and form their own meanings around the songs. 

After this long narrative pause, the next words we hear on “Dried” act like a flashback transporting us to a completely different time and place in the narrator’s life. Now on a sunny lakeside dock, the entire tone of the record shifts into a refreshing, youthful optimism in the vein of 2014-era Seahaven. Even though we’ve never been to these locations or experienced these events, Phillips’ lyrics do an excellent job of placing you there and making it feel as if you’ve experienced them in a past life. It’s a strange sense of familiarity and déjà vu. 

From there, the record changes tone within nearly every song. Even though the locations and people change, the sense that you’re experiencing everything from one single perspective is never lost. The sunny hard-charging desert drives of “Scatterplot” give way to blurry late-night trips through the heartland on “Curtains.” Lyrics range from textural to sweeping and address the relationships Phillips has both with himself and those around him. He writes about infatuation giving way to disillusionment. He talks about stagnation and contrasts that with the rewarding feeling of building something with another person. Songs zoom in on tactile things like stretchers and split-ends, then zoom all the way out to massive formations like shipyards and suspension bridges.

As we take in this full range of human emotion, these experiences all begin to fold in on themselves. A prevailing sense of unhappiness slowly emerges over the course of the album’s middle stretch. Feelings aren’t revealed. Things are hidden. People stop being honest. These relationships decay seemingly in real-time as you listen. Luckily, things take a turn for the better on “The Ladder,” where Phillips sings with newfound devotion over an understated acoustic guitar.

I’ve been backwards since I met you
Climb the ladder to impress you
All my clothes feel tighter when you
Say my name so I just let you

From this point on, things don’t necessarily get “better,” but a sense of progression begins to reveal itself. The lyrics start to come from a place of love, colors brighten, and the world warms up. Complications, while they still exist, begin to untangle themselves over time with a little bit of attention and self-care. 

PROOF truly comes full circle on the closing track “About Leaving.” After opening with a meditative slide guitar, Phillips wades into his feelings and emerges with a list of promises.

I’m gonna stand up straighter
I’m gonna leave and I won’t come back until I feel better
I’m gonna hang things on my walls
I’m gonna chase the ways we felt before this stood 10 feet tall
I gotta learn to leave

Here, everything from posture to interior decorating act as mandates for personal growth. Phillips has looked inward, found fault, and recognized the things in his life that he needs to address. Not only that, he’s promising to work on them. In the second verse, he continues this list with an even more challenging group of things to work toward, which all culminate in a soulful guitar solo.

I’m gonna stop comparing
I’m gonna focus on the people who have always cared for me
I’m gonna keep my head down
I’m gonna know when to recognize that this was all my fault
I gotta learn to leave

The final verse of the album ends with an epiphany that summarizes all of these resolutions with a beautifully poetic metaphor that both circles back to the first track and drops the album's title.

I’m gonna scale the canyon
Between who I thought I’d be and where I ended up
I’m gonna be more patient
Well you wanted proof, and I’d say that you got it

Scaling a canyon feels like an apt metaphor for personal growth. It seems monumental and near-impossible, but it is attainable if the desire is there… and that desire is a crucial first step. Landing on the line of “Well you wanted proof, and I’d say that you got it” both explains the album’s namesake and acts as an inverse parallel to the opening track where Phillips recognizes the need for proof but offers no such thing. 

Here, the listener realizes that the entire album is the proof. This record is comprised of stories, emotions, relationships, and revelations that all lead to one inevitable conclusion about the need to better oneself. As we journey past bodies of water, seek shelter from summer storms, and interact with meaningful people over the course of this album’s 43 minutes, we also accompany the band on this journey of personal growth and self-discovery. This quest is a beautiful thing to witness, but most critically, PROOF prompts the listener to look inward and think about what they can do to improve within their own life. In an album littered with landmarks and grounded in physical spaces, the most important monument within PROOF is the one we are building to ourselves.

Growth may be hard to measure, but PROOF contains enough progress to last a lifetime. Improving yourself is work; it doesn’t happen overnight, and it definitely doesn’t happen in 43 minutes. It took Downhaul five years and six releases to get here, but the band’s second album is a document that speaks for itself. PROOF is an interactive, inspiring, and emotive retelling of one person’s march toward betterment. If just one listener takes the message of this album to heart, then Downhaul have done their job. 

Ten Years of Tunnel Blanket: The Definitive Statement on Death

What is death? We don’t know, and that terrifies us. We know that death is the end of life, but we are incapable of understanding anything beyond that. This ambiguity is a frightening prospect that has haunted mankind for as long as we’ve been able to comprehend it. Death may be a fact of life, but that knowledge doesn’t alleviate any of the dread that comes with it.

As humans, we’ve spun reams of text speculating and prophesizing about what comes after life. While some find solace in religion, others turn to art in order to process their thoughts and feelings about the afterlife. Whether it’s reckoning with their own eventual death or the death of a loved one, some artists have spent their entire lives trying to depict, understand, and grapple with the uncertainty the eventually greets us all.

Albums about death are often heavy, brutal, and filled with grief. That makes them far from a casual listen, but it has also resulted in some of the most powerful pieces of music of all time. Albums like Mount Eerie’s A Crow Looked at Me, which finds a husband bereft with grief after his wife’s passing. Skeleton Tree by Nick Cave depicts a father processing the tragic loss of his teenaged son. Japanese Breakfast’s Psychopomp sees a daughter working through the untimely death of her mother. There’s 808s & Heartbreak, Hospice, Funeral, and Springtime and Blind, just to name a few. Not to mention my personal favorite, Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie & Lowell, a record I’ve already spent thousands of words meditating on. Death is one of the great human questions, so it should come as no surprise how much effort we’ve collectively expelled trying to understand it. 

These albums I just listed all tackle death from their respective artist’s genres. As a result, these records each do an excellent job of fleshing out different aspects of loss and grief in their own ways. Despite their unique stylistic leanings, one factor that ties all of these albums together is the presence of lyrics. Yes, every one of these artists, from the lo-fi grief of Mount Eerie to the fist-balling punk of Fiddlehead and the auto-tuned croons of Kanye, all work through death with the written word in one form or another. From where I sit (and despite the fact that I’m writing this currently), written language is inherently limiting when it comes to understanding something as large and cosmic as death. Death is bigger than any word, phrase, sentence, or sentiment. It just is. It’s inherently unknowable until you arrive at it yourself, and that’s what scares us. This wordless approach to understanding death is what sets This Will Destroy You’s third studio album apart from every other piece of art broaching the topic of the great beyond. 

This Will Destroy You first made a name for themselves in the mid-2000s with the release of Young Mountain and a self-titled record in 2006 and 2008, respectively. As great as these records are (I’ve written about Young Mountain as an entry point into the post-rock genre), they are, for better or worse, “textbook” instrumental rock releases. They follow the same cinematic structure laid out by fellow Texas post-rockers Explosions in the Sky with dynamic tracks that crest from subtle to sweeping in powerful ways deliberately designed to tug on your heartstrings. 

As I grew into the post-rock genre, I gradually worked my way through This Will Destroy You’s discography. While Young Mountain and This Will Destroy You offer logical extensions of the standard post-rock trappings, the group’s third album, Tunnel Blanket, threw me for a complete loop upon first listen.

Both Young Mountain and This Will Destroy You clock in at under an hour and had clearly defined song structures. The tracks begin, crescendo, and end the way that all post-rock songs do. They sounded like soundtracks to a nonexistent movie, and that’s what drew me to the genre in the first place. Tunnel Blanket, however, finds the band leaning more heavily into their ambient, drone, and shoegaze influences for a sound that the band described as “doomgaze.” This move away from traditional post-rock song structures led to a more amorphous (or, as I felt back then, boring) listen. Boy, was I wrong.

No song better exemplifies Tunnel Blanket’s shapeless approach to post-rock than its opener, “Little Smoke.” This 12-minute track begins with a pensive series of keyboard notes paired with a subtly-building swirl of distortion. These two elements plod forward, entwining with each other, then dispersing and evaporating like… well, smoke. As the keys dance, this cresting wall of white noise slowly begins to fade, eventually leading to a second of complete silence. Then, like being jolted awake by the sensation of falling, the full band thrusts into the track with a towering riff fitting of a Mogwai song. The cymbals crash, the bass rattles, and the guitar repeats the same high-frequency strum over and over again to a hypnotic effect. The riff lumbers forward with this sort of searing, distorted scream that feels simultaneously sharp with an acute pain and dulled to the point of numbness. After about six minutes, this swaying instrumental subsides and the delicate keys emerge once more, carrying the listener out of the track with a meditative and precious coda that provides a direct contrast to the brash sonic violence they just weathered. 

The following track, “Glass Realms,” opens with a fluttering wall of static that fades in and out over a backdrop of gorgeous strings. The orchestra hangs on pristine sustained notes as the static fluctuates from distracting to nonexistent. By the end of the song, the static has grown to subsume the strings, moving from one headphone to the other, jumping back and forth like a predator stalking its prey. Songs like these are what confused me upon first listen; no guitars, no drums, no bass, no nothing, just strings and a weird buzz of white noise. Hardly a post-rock song. Now, I view this song as a beautiful work of art, a meditative reflection that provides a gorgeous counterpoint to the brutality of “Little Smoke.” This song is where the record’s concept truly begins to emerge as it depicts the wholly unknowable notion of death itself, not through overt lyricism but a sense of inescapable and inevitable darkness. 

“Communal Blood” continues this train of thought, now with the band’s full instrumentation at play once more. Again, a subtle swirl of ambient reverb drives the track forward while the band members play their instruments with the utmost subtlety. The cymbals are barely brushed, the bass is gently strummed, and all of these notes are given enough breathing room to sustain and rattle out into absolute silence before the next. This song builds to a more traditional post-rock crescendo where the reverb grows and the intensity increases. All of this gradually picks up speed until the band reaches a triumphant cadence that shakes with some sort of wondrous and almighty power.

The rest of the album follows a similar structure. “Reprise” brings back the beautiful keys courtesy of Donovan Jones. “Killed the Lord, Left for the New World” pairs carefully-wielded reverb with a driving electronic beat, wind chimes, and a drum roll while disembodied voices float through the mix uttering unintelligible half-phrases. “Osario” acts as a brief mid-album stopgap featuring a warbling electronic beat that resembles the artificial breaths of a ventilator. While the album hangs together perfectly, “Black Dunes” was the one song that stuck out to me most on my first few listens. Possessing perhaps the most ferocious and forthright melody on the entire release, “Black Dunes” begins with a remorseful instrumental that eventually erupts into a brutal and crushing wall of unfathomable depth. It’s a song you can feel the full weight of, and that’s not something you get to experience in music very often.

Post-rock has always felt “cinematic,” there’s a reason why bands like Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky get tapped to score films so often. This genre captures a sort of wordless power that can soundtrack anything from a high school football game to the zombie apocalypse. The beauty is that these songs can score practically anything you want; they are objectively beautiful and musical enough that nearly anyone can enjoy them, yet they are faceless and wordless, which lends them this amorphous quality. Post-rock songs generally have a hard time carrying out a concrete “concept” or a “message” because the dynamic crescendo-based instrumental is the message. At worst, this genre can feel like powerful music just for powerful music’s sake, but the flip side is that this “blank canvas effect” means the listener can project whatever they want onto the songs, and that’s a powerfully attractive prospect. This quality is both a blessing and a curse for the post-rock genre; it makes this type of music rich and all-encompassing, yet inherently unknowable. 

You could listen to Tunnel Blanket and take it at face-value as a more subtle and ambient side of the post-rock spectrum, but I think that’s a disservice to the band’s creativity. That’s how I spent the first few years interpreting this record and why I thought it was just a more boring version of what the band had done before. What sets Tunnel Blanket apart from other albums in this genre doesn’t reveal itself until the tail end of the release… and even then, it’s only there for those who are willing to listen close enough.

Album closer “Powdered Hand” opens with a short series of piano notes and a single resonant floor tom that echoes through the listener’s body. Spaced-out hi-hat taps keep time as the keys counterbalance this heavy drumming with an air of lightness. Working together, these elements formulate a bright and sunny melody that feels like the clouds opening up after a spring rainstorm. Again, a swirl of static emerges, pushing the track forward and giving the listener something active to focus on aside from the spaced-out drums and keys. Midway through the song, this static unfurls and reveals itself to have a slowed-down human voice. 

We can only make out a few words before the voice reverts to static and the instruments re-establish their melody. After a several-minute-long interjection, the static fades, and the voice becomes clear once again. It’s a little bit jumbled and still far-off in the mix, but what we can make out is a scientist, Temple Grandin, explaining the visual phenomena of death, specifically the spirals and tunnel-shaped visions that people tend to see right before they die. It’s here that the name of the album, and its topic, fully-reveal themselves. Though wordless and abstract for a majority of its runtime, Tunnel Blanket is an album about death, specifically about the phenomena of death. 

According to an interview with Nothing But Hope and Passion, this sample is taken from a documentary called Stairway to Heaven. The band explained the inclusion of this clip in the following quote:

[Temple Grandin’s] perspective on the “afterlife” (or lack thereof) is fascinating. Tunnel Blanket was meant to be a metaphor for death or the moment right before death. Despite what you believe, that moment will be the most true, the most raw flash you will ever experience. It will always be a mystery, and as much as human beings want to distract ourselves with material bullshit, religion, etc., the outcome will always be inevitable.

I’ve never heard an album tackle the bleak darkness of death quite like Tunnel Blanket. While artists have focused on describing deaths’ effects on them, this album feels like listening to death itself. 

Tunnel Blanket is a fuzzy, grey wall that fluctuates from somber piano to larger-than-life post-rock crescendos that all mirror physical actions of the body. These tracks breathe, feel, and reverberate in the same way that we do. From the heartbeat-like percussion to the constantly swirling ambient noise, the collection of eight songs on Tunnel Blanket represent an hour-long depiction of the experience of death. 

Tunnel Blanket’s wordless exploration of death works to its advantage. This record delves into death and finds a home within it over the course of its hour-long runtime, which is something I’ve never heard any other “death album” do. 

Yes, death is remembering the details of a loved one, missing the space that someone held in your life, and combing through all their belongings after they’ve moved on. Those are all true experiences, and none of them are wrong or invalid. However, they are all very grounded experiences. They are “above-the-shoulders” ways to process, talk about, and relate to death. Tunnel Blanket grounds its understanding of death not in language or retelling experiences of loss and grief but in pure feeling and emotionality. It seeks to portray death in a way that no other artist has. On this album, the band is concerned equally with depicting the physiological effects of death as they are with capturing its profound vastness. 

Tunnel Blanket offers an alternative perspective on mortality; it represents the other side of our Earthly experience, the universal that we will all face at one point or another. It’s objectively heartbreaking to listen to an album like A Crow Looked at Me and hear Phil Elverum talk about receiving his dead wife’s mail, but that’s a personal experience that relies on the listener’s empathy. It’s sad no matter how you cut it, but that’s just one singular experience on the cosmic scale. Tunnel Blanket tackles death by becoming it. This record explores death from the perspective of an ambivalent absolute. It offers no answers and presents no resolution. Much like death itself, Tunnel Blanket just is. 

Stars Hollow – I Want to Live My Life | Album Review

The message behind Stars Hollow’s breakthrough EP Happy Again was always sitting right there staring us in the face. “It’s not that you won’t be happy again, you just won’t be the same as you were before.” A poignant (and very emo) sentiment lying in plain sight for all to see. The words used to build this statement are scattered throughout the lyrics on Happy Again (and even contained within the tracklist) but don’t reveal themselves in earnest until the final song, where lead singer Tyler Stodghill cathartically belts them all out in sequence. This lyrical throughline acts as the conceptual cherry on top of an already fantastic midwest emo release and signaled early on that Stars Hollow were doing something more than your dime-a-dozen emo band.

This sentiment lying at the center of Happy Again came straight from Stodghill himself reading about grief while simultaneously processing his own. This revelation that comes at the end of the EP acts as a stand-in for the quarter-life realization that so many of us have following the wreckless, immortal years spent as a late-teenage/early-twenty-something. Whether it’s heartbreak, death, or something in between, eventually everyone arrives at their own understanding of the irreversible nature of life. Some actions can’t be undone, some things can’t be un-lost, and some relationships can’t be salvaged. Happy Again just happened to land extra hard for me because it arrived at a time in my life that I was experiencing this type of deep-cutting and irreversible loss for the first time. 

Happy Again is a whip-smart EP with a poetic throughline that manages to get its message across in less than 15-minutes. It’s a feat of the emo genre and topping it was going to be hard. The band followed this EP up with the one-off “Tadpole” in 2019 and rode waves of DIY success to nationwide tours with fellow fifth-wavers like Origami Angel and Niiice. Now, more than two years since their last song and six years into their career as a band, the group has unleashed their debut LP I Want to Live My Life, and it is jam-packed with emo riffage, poetic lyricism, and a conceptual throughline that rivals their groundbreaking EP. 

Much like Happy Again, the concept at the center of I Want to Live My Life is sitting right there staring you in the face. This time, however, the words are only half the story. While the band hinted that the album had a concept like their prior releases, it’s clear that they weren’t going to tip their hand quite as easily this time. 

As I studied the tracklist for clues, I couldn’t help but notice how many of the song titles seemed related. “Through the Windshield.” and “Out the Sunroof.” Two references to cars. “Stuck to You.” and “Beside You.” Two songs referring to another person. There are also similarities in how the songs are stylized, with periods after almost every song title. Even the mid-album “...” is a punctuation-based song title much like “,” off Happy Again…  but what does it all mean?

When the listener hits play on I Want To Live My Life, they’re met with a sort of music box-like melody. Soon after this maudlin instrumental sets the tone, Stodghill enters with a delicate croon bemoaning, 

It’s like something’s in my closet
Laughing at me
I’ll learn to love it
Without it
I don’t think I could sleep
I wish that my comforts
were comforting to me
I want to live my life
but I’ll be here waiting…

That’s a lot to unpack, but before you can think twice about it, you’re swept up in a whirlwind of tappy emo instrumentation and screamed vocals mere seconds later. That effect is very much intentional because the preceding four songs hardly give you a second to breathe. There’s bouncy riffage and gut-wrenching screams on “Stuck to You.” There are heart-wrenching realizations “Until I Bleed Out.,” and self-destructive sentiments on “Out the Sunroof.”

Lead single “With Weight.” possesses the most fun, energetic, and dynamic instrumental on the record paired with some of the most remorseful lyrics the band has ever penned. This makes the party-hat-adorned music video feel even more apt as we watch the trio run rampant in a retro skating rink sharing birthday cake, sneaking gulps from the slushie machine, and racking up points on arcade games. These lighthearted childlike antics contrast with the group’s sweat-covered, emotional performance under the rink’s glittering disco ball. As the instrumental rises and falls around Stodghill’s wails, these two opposing feelings combine to evoke warm childhood memories of birthday parties as well as the cold, modern-day realities of adulthood. The song acts as a reminder of a time when fiscal responsibilities and emotional conflict seemed far off. It’s also a call-to-arms for the listener to suspend their disbelief, even just for a minute or two, and recapture this innocent feeling despite the looming dread of a never-ending pile of responsibilities. 

The record’s second half begins with the aforementioned “...” featuring a gentle guitar line that allows the lyrics to set a scene:

I took a step back
When I saw the window cracked
I pulled it shut
And I went back to my room where
I think something’s in my closet
Laughing at me
It’s hard to love
but without it
I won’t fall asleep
I hope someday my comforts
Will be comforting
I’m not sure if life
Is meant to be waiting…

Here, the imagery of an open window sits alongside the familiar scene established in the record’s opening track. As the guitar plays out the same music box melody, we realize the meaning in some of the phrases has shifted. Then, similar to the intro track, the band sweeps in with a bounding instrumental that leaves little time to reflect on the lyrics or the exact changes from their first iteration.

Throughout the next three tracks, the band winds their way from everything as physical as blood-soaked car crashes to things as existential and haunting as cold sweat nightmares. This feels like a good time to point out that each of these songs is masterfully crafted. Whether it’s Stodghill’s emo tapping, Gavin Brown’s buoyant basslines and phenomenal low screams, or Andrew Ferren’s precise drumming, the trio never falters once in their respective contributions. 

These songs all wind their way to the record’s inevitable conclusion on “But Better.” By the time this closing track rolls around, only 20 minutes have passed. On paper, that feels like hardly feels like any time at all, but then you look back and realize the preceding 20 minutes were comprised of life-threatening accidents and existence-altering revelations. Hardly emotionally recharging events. The record’s final song opens with a delicately plucked guitar as Stodghill sets the scene once more. 

I let out a laugh
When I saw the window cracked
I pried it open
But you pulled me back inside
Said “Life’s not kind”
I want to try

These lines depict the album’s cover, revealing the full context of this scenario we’ve been watching unfold throughout the record. After a beat, Stodghill continues with a verse that mirrors the opening track’s lyrics:

There’s something in my closet
Laughing at me
I’ll never love it
Without it
I could fall asleep

Now setting up a clear inverse parallel, Stodghill works his way up to the album’s namesake, singing,

I want to live my life
But better
I’ll face everything
I want to live my life
But better...
I’m tired of waiting.

After this final freeing cry, the group strikes one more resonant chord and lets it ring out for as long as their instruments will allow. As the guitar and bass fade, the same music box that led us into the release now shepherds us off into silence. This twinkling childlike instrumental provides a nice bookend to the album despite how different the two sentiments sitting on either end of the tracklist are. Sure, they may look similar, but the meanings behind these words could not be more different.

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What’s so different about wanting to live your life and wanting to live your life but better? The biggest difference is, in one, you’re merely surviving, but in the other, you are improving. In one, you’re living life for yourself, but in the other, you recognize there’s more than that. It’s one thing to live your life, but it’s another to want to live it better. Striving for improvement is a form of self-actualization, and that’s a far cry from remaining stagnant. 

Sometimes just wanting to live your life in the first place is already an uphill battle. Once you’ve reached the point of wanting to live your life, you are faced with a decision: do you maintain or improve? It’s like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs; you have to work your way up the ladder in order to become the most fulfilled version of yourself. 

Wanting to maintain your life is fine; after all, why risk losing something you’ve fought so hard for? But wanting to live your life better is a mission. It’s admirable. It’s never-ending. There’s always something to be working toward and always something that you could be doing better. 

Wanting to live your life but better is hopeful. It’s the realization that you might be making it farther in life than you thought when you were seventeen. It’s the highest form of self-preservation. This is not just the mere animalistic instinct to stay alive, but a uniquely human desire to improve. 

Over the course of I Want To Live My Life, we hear one person’s journey between these two states. On the first song of the record, Stodghill hesitantly sings, “I want to live my life / But I’ll be here waiting.” In the final song, we hear the same person sing, “I want to live my life, but better. / I’m tired of waiting” with full conviction. What makes up the journey between those two points is everything that you hear in between. It’s the car crashes, the chipped teeth, and the concrete. It’s jealousy, regret, and doubt. It’s learning how to navigate life through a series of errors that Stodghill somehow manages to twist into lessons. The end result of all this suffering is a realization. At the end of all this is a reason to live.