The Best of Q3 2022: Part 1

Not to sound like a guy in a suit, but it’s the end of another “quarter,” and *adjusts tie* that means it’s time to tell you about some of my favorite releases from the last few months. After all, what better way to celebrate the return of fall than getting all sentimental and retrospective?

If you’d like to read about my favorite albums of Q1 and Q2, click here or here. Other than that, read on for some of the best releases of the summer. Part 2 is coming soon because a bunch of great albums dropped in the last few weeks of September, and I’m working on my own time, baby.

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Brady - You Sleep While They Watch

Flesh & Bone Records

Sam Boyhtari has had a busy year. Somewhere between nationwide tours with Foxing, Home Is Where, and Infant Island, his band Greet Death managed to drop a phenomenal EP called New Low. Forecasted by a breadcrumb of fantastic singles, this 21-minute collection of songs found the Michigan shoegazers digging a little deeper and going a little darker. Impressive for a group whose last album is literally called “New Hell.” After releasing that EP out into the world and relocating himself to a different part of the Midwest, Boyhtari finally had enough time to dedicate to his Chicago-based heavy rock project simply called Brady. 

Self-described on Bandcamp as “the perfect blend of hick shit, innuendo, and a sad story,” it’s hard to think of a better elevator pitch for the group than that. Fans of Greet Death will likely feel at home here, as most of the LP still hovers around a baseline heavy rock sound. What's surprising, however, is just how much Boyhtari has to say and how he decides to present it. 

Much like the writing on his other project, songs like “Radon Blues” and “Family Photos” find their structure with a catchy phrase and a compelling instrumental build. Meanwhile, on songs like “Big Future” and “Catherine,” Boyhtari has enough time to get beautifully poetic and surprisingly grounded. The entire album weaves a stark, urgent, but ultimately beautiful portrait of life in 2022. You Sleep While They Watch is an album that is equal parts crushing and compassionate. A necessary balance to strike in the face of our increasingly-oppressive world. 

Read our full view of You Sleep While They Watch here. 

Carpool - For Nasal Use Only

Acrobat Unstable Records

Can we please talk about Carpool? I’ve been dying to talk about Carpool. For basically the whole summer, I’ve been lucky enough to have For Nasal Use Only on repeat. The EP has soundtracked foggy walks along the Oregon coast, much-needed trips back home, and long flights to visit my girlfriend. Simply put, there’s no collection of songs I would rather have tied to the memories of this past season, and you should be excited at the prospect of attaching these potent tracks to memories of your own this fall. 

The latest dispatch from the Rochester emo rockers offers dancy spurts, catchy chants, and even a left-field acoustic number. After an impressive debut album in 2020 with Erotic Nightmare Summer, the band’s latest EP proves that the group’s penchant for immaculate and hooky emo rock was no fluke. Carpool is one of those bands that make it easy to be a fan. The good news is, with Nasal Use finally out and even more exciting things on the horizon, there’s never been a better time to buckle up and join the ride.

Read our review of lead single “Anime Flashbacks” here. 

Holy Fawn - Dimensional Bleed

Triple Crown Records

Can you feel that? It’s the push of cold fall air gently cresting over the horizon. This change of seasons brings not just crisp weather but legions of darkened shoegaze to earbuds worldwide. Something about the dead leaves and the colder nights makes the genre feel slightly more appropriate right now than during the throes of a summer heatwave. 

Dimensional Bleed is the sophomore album from Holy Fawn and a record that feels tailor-made for this time of year. The release sees the six-piece effortlessly shift and morph between blackened metal, shoegaze, post-rock, and more. There’s a shared murkiness to all these sounds that makes the band feel like a wendigo or a smoke monster, silently gliding behind the listener, waiting for the just right time to unleash their violent fury upon their prey. Songs like “Death is a Relief” and “Lift Your Head” stick out as initial highlights, but really, the whole appeal of this album is slipping in and willingly surrendering yourself to the music for 49 minutes. 

NATL PARK SRVC - EP4

Self-released

Where have all the indie rockers gone? It’s a question that’s been on my lips (and apparently everyone else’s) as of late. For the last half-decade, NATL PARK SRVC has been crafting sweeping indie rock songs with an emphasis on early-aughts sounds that Pitchfork would have eaten up back in the day. For the last half-decade, the group has also been refining their bombastic big band style, typically boasting around seven members or more depending on the occasion. 

While I loved last year’s The Dance, at times, the full-length left me feeling looped around and overwhelmed over the course of its 48-minute runtime. For that reason alone, the five tracks on EP4 feel like a more concise and compact sample platter of what this band does best. Opener “BLOODY” is a hard-grooving track that builds to an ultra-dancy Frank Ferdinand guitar riff as lead singer Dylan Wotock croons, “why don’t you punch me in the faaaace / why don’t you put me in my plaaace,” stretching the last syllables of each line like a kid playing with silly putty. After a Billy Corgan name drop and a Will Toledo-style monologue, this chorus dovetails with a series of carefree vocalizations for an ornate display that bands like Spoon could only dream of. 

From there, lead singles “UP ALL NIGHT” and “VHS” keep the forward momentum with boppy instrumentals featuring the standard mix of guitar, drums, and bass, but accentuated by everything from violin to saxophone and trombone. It’s an ambitious feast for the ears, all spectacularly produced and remarkably clear. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention “SUMMERSIDE,” an undeniable queer anthem that navigates the muddy and often cliche-ridden waters of figuring out your own sexuality. 

The EP’s crown jewel can be found in its closer “PSALM 11:02 PM,” a remorseful and morbid piece with an unshakable Midwest flavor. The song finds Woytcke lamenting the funeral of a close friend, turning their individual grief into a sort of communal outpouring backed by the force of the full band. Mentions of funerals give the song a raw and open-hearted feeling that evokes the honesty of everyone’s favorite Hotelier song. Instead of finding catharsis in a throat-shredding shout, NATL PARK SRVC ascend into a hypnotic repetition of “I still think about it sometimes / I still dream about this sometimes,” which Woytcke sings over a group chant and a winding riff that eventually finds its rest on a charming bed of strings. A beautiful close to a stellar 20-minute release where no second is wasted. 

Pool Kids - Pool Kids

Skeletal Lightning

Throughout their self-titled sophomore record, Pool Kids lay out the various phases and emotions of a breakup, then shuffle them around, deconstructing the experience and distilling it into an explosive and cathartic album-length experience. Their first collection of songs as a full band (outside of a half-jokey hardcore double called POOL), Pool Kids balances its emotional heft with impressively technical instrumentation that will stagger even the most jaded math rock fans. 

At points, this album feels like an amalgamation of every genre I’ve ever loved growing up: emo, metal, pop-punk, prog, and 2000s alt-rock are all represented, everything wrapped in crystal clear production courtesy of Mike Vernon Davis. It’s a testament to both the band’s musicianship and vision that everything folds in so nicely under the Pool Kids banner. 

Pool Kids is unique in that it’s a breakup album in neither the “boo hoo, I’m so sad” territory or the vengeful “fuck you, I will make you pay” camp. At times it has elements of both, but the part that feels true to life is how jumbled and non-linear the process feels. Breakups aren’t all raw heartbreak or revenge fantasies; it’s both of those and much more. Breakups are pity and longing, regret and self-sabotage, moments of reflection and reconnection. Pool Kids recognizes the many facets of emotional turmoil and recomposes them into something anyone can find a piece of themselves in.

Read our review of lead single “That's Physics, Baby” here.

Quinn Cicala - Arkansas

Self-released

Quinn Cicala is back, yee-fuckin-haw. Since 2017, Cicala has quietly been making some of the best alt-country in the whole country. I’ll admit, I first found my way to the musician as a way to ween myself off Pinegrove, and while that may still be a sticky comparison for some, it at least gives you a point of reference for what to expect with this EP. The good news is I eventually grew to love the Cicalaverse on its own merits, and I’d even go as far as to call “24” one of the best songs of all-time. Heavily grounded in the American South, the five songs Quinn Cicala offers up on Arkansas are expectedly pleasant and beautifully compelling. Guided by a folksy twang and breezy instrumentals, these songs unfurl like a sleepy cat in a warm sunbeam. The humid southern air clings to the bones of this release. Whether the band is depicting true love in the heartland or talking about frivolous news publications, it’s easy to find a home within these songs, even if it’s only for a quarter-hour.

Russian Circles - Gnosis

Sargent House

I ran the numbers, and it turns out Russian Circles have been a presence in my life for 16 years. My Russian Circles fandom is officially old enough to drive. Ever since I heard the pummeling guitar of “Death Rides a Horse” back in high school, I’ve been hooked on everything the Chicago trio has put out over the course of their hyper-consistent career. Always a reliable source of instrumental metal riffage, Russian Circles seem locked into a new mode of operating on Gnosis, sounding tighter and heavier than they have in years. Every style and speed of the band is represented here; “Conduit” is a ferocious and gnashing song, while the title track is a slow-simmering black cloud that mounts into a torrential downpour. Regardless of where I’m at in life or what I’m doing, I can always count on Russian Circles to be there, scoring the scene with brutal metal that crushes me in a warm embrace. 

Brady – You Sleep While They Watch | Album Review

On some level, it would be a disservice to call Brady “Greet Death 2.0,” given that the only shared member between the two projects is vocalist/guitarist Sam Boyhtari. Even still, Boyhtari’s voice is so unique that, when placed over a heavy stoner rock rumble, it’s hard not to hear similarities between the two. If anything, that comparison is a high compliment, given that I love Greet Death more than any reasonable person should. The Michigan shoegazer’s latest release, New Low, saw them growing sonically, artistically, and literally as bassist Jackie Kalmink joined, rounding the group out to a solid four-piece. As expected with a band as good as Greet Death, the results paid off in a phenomenal collection of songs that sprawl into multiple exciting new directions. That said, for die-hard fans like myself, the EP’s mere 21 minutes was not enough. I wanted to be immersed. I want to live in Greet Death’s world. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised with You Sleep While They Watch, it came out of nowhere and offered a more full-length way to scratch that itch. 

The elevator pitch for the band is taking Boyhtari’s distinctive croon and miserablist sensibilities, but placing them over something new, independent from his other project. Fans of Greet Death will still feel at home here, as most of the LP hovers around a baseline heavy rock sound. What’s surprising is just how much Boyhtari has to say and how he presents it. In Greet Death, there’s a focus on molten guitar licks, and an assumed nihilistic viewpoint that comes standard issue for most shoegaze bands. Here, Boyhtari reveals more about his inner workings than ever before. The songs feel more like dispatches from distant but familiar corners of our world, with Boyhtari directly reporting things he sees and then telling us how they affect him. Throughout the process, we’re let further behind the curtain than Greet Death has ever allowed. 

Much like the writing on his other project, songs like “Radon Blues” still center around a catchy but ultimately abstract phrase that listeners can either project their own interpretations onto or simply treat as an earworm. But to really understand this record, one should experience it front-to-back in full. On one end of the album, you’ll find “Twist The Knife,” a sludgy opener that drives a fish hook into the listener, keeping them entranced for the remaining 40 minutes. At the tail end of the LP, you’ll find a cathartic payoff in the record’s crown jewel, “Catherine.” But let’s start at the very beginning. 

“Twist The Knife” begins by depicting a scarred but ultimately true relationship. In just a few lines, this song deftly captures what it feels like to exist in love within the crumbling utopia of 2022. 

Let’s go for a drive
Scratch our names into the weeping night
Under lidless skies
Kiss me beneath the neon lights
Everything is fine
In the shadow of the great high-rise
Love will never die
I believe that’s what they’ll advertise

In this opening verse, the jagged edge of commercialism literally overshadows love. There’s both a desperation and an immediacy to the way our narrator describes this situation. The feeling of holding on to love for dear life is palpable, the crass indifference of the world threatening to undermine the very foundation of its connective power at any moment. 

The second verse of the song moves on to equally hefty topics, alluding to police brutality and the larger sense of cultural unease that we have all felt in recent years. 

Lyrically, both “Family Photos” and “Future Now” play out like protest songs. The former finds itself mired in the serialistic violence embedded in the fabric of our culture. It lays out a litany of offenses and violent imagery, eventually breaking off into a searing guitar solo. “Future Now” also reads like a revolutionary text, especially as it ends with Boyhtari repeatedly shouting “NOW!” over a triumphant and proggy rock riff.

Just as signaled by the title of Dixieland, you can still tell that Boyhtari has spent most of his life growing up near the car capital of the world. Roughly half a dozen references to specific car brands are sprinkled through these songs, giving the lyrics a sort of inescapable commercialistic bent. References like these, and even individual terms like “footage” and brand names like “Red Bull” poke out of the lyrics, granting Boyhtari an impressive economy of words. The best example of this is found on ”Power Suck,” where a bar like “Ford-tough, fucking clown” does so much with so little. In just four words, you can picture the exact kind of person Boyhtari is disgustedly writing about. 

My personal favorite example of this descriptive power comes in “Catherine,” as our narrator recounts an acquaintance making a racist comment, getting called out, and going back to Bloomfield Hills. If you’ve never lived in Michigan, Bloomfield Hills is essentially the wealthiest, most upscale neighborhood in Metro Detroit, perched about 30 minutes outside of the city proper. It’s very white, very rich, and (surprise) very racist. While you can probably pick that up via context clues, anyone in the know will probably get a quick laugh and a quick read of what kind of person this is. This allows Boyhtari to paint a surprisingly immersive scene and populate it with very specific characters, all with a single phrase. 

There are also telltale signs of fascism found throughout this album. There are references to incarceration, SWAT teams, high school drug-sniffing dogs, and police shootings. It’s an unflinching look at our world, crystallized, and reflected back at us through a warped, smoky funhouse mirror. 

Smack dab in the middle of the tracklist, “Power Suck” is a dustbowl crusher that gives off the same feeling as a Protomartyr track. The song’s lyrics eventually arrive at the name of the album, which Boyhtari prods the listener with a few times, provoking them into a meditative trance as the instrumental slowly unwinds. 

While it’s not all veiled condemnation and provocations, by the time “Big Future” rolls around at the record’s midpoint, It’s easy to find yourself disarmed. On my first listen of this song, as the lyrics were laying out lines like “I believe in the ease of destruction,” I realized that, up until this point, I had no idea what this guy actually believed in. You can tell a lot about a band through their lyrics, stage presence, and online interactions. Greet Death have always placed an emphasis on embodying a sort of nihilistic outlook above all else. They literally have an album called New Hell; you don’t go there expecting upbeat pop songs. Greet Death is also a very funny band whose stage presence deliberately undercuts the crushing weight of their music. My point is I’ve spent years following this band, hundreds of hours spinning their music, and I couldn’t tell you one concrete belief that Sam Boyhtari holds. That’s okay, I can make a fair number of assumptions based on the evidence, but it’s fascinating to hear him lay things out clear as day on this song. 

These statements of personal belief are punctuated by a chorus that just oozes a sort of jangly new wave sensibility. By the end of the seven-minute cut, Boyhtari breaks into an artsy staccato delivery before throwing to a rolling instrumental that allows Kacey Keith’s hard-knocking bass to take center stage.

By this point in the record, you’re pretty deep in the band’s dark desert trance. It’s here where they expertly embed “Radon Blues,” a master class in melody that could have easily fit in on the hypnotic back-half of New Hell. Much like “Entertainment,” this song begins with a lackadaisical strum before majestically picking up into a full-band trot. This picturesque instrumental keeps pace underneath flashes of evocative single-line poetry. Once the song’s title is introduced, the band drops back to just the guitar, now plucking a gorgeous, arid riff for a short instrumental break. After a bleak middle section, “Radon Blues” launches into a beautiful passage with a transfixing climax that rivals the best Greet Death song. 

From here, it feels like the album could go anywhere. What the band opts for is a rumbling and meditative two-minute instrumental called “Black Horse.” Presumably the figure depicted on the cover, this track is haunted and dusty, rumbling with a dark unease like a Hex-era Earth track. This instrumental paves the way for the epic 9-minute closer “Catherine.”

As mentioned above, “Catherine” is yet another song concerned with overtly heavy topics. While Greet Death tend to be mired in over-the-top hellish metaphors, this song directly depicts the new hell happening on earth every second of every day. A family death and reverberations of addiction. A local police shooting and unmistakable traces of racism in your community. One by one, these scenes play out, pass by, and wash over the listener, burying them in a weighted blanket of anxiety and dread. The lyrics essentially jump back and forth between the details of this police shooting and the aftermath of a family death, interweaving the two stories and urging the listener to connect parallels in the process. In one of Boyhtari’s most overt lyrics ever, he roots the song in proper nouns, memorializing Hakim Littleton with sorrow as he plainly states, 

I called my sister back, July 10th
She just got home from a protest
Another cop just shot a young man dead
He was twenty, his name was Hakim Littleton

Halfway through, the song drops out to just the guitar, allowing Boyhtari to deliver the story's pivotal moment at his aunt’s funeral. 

And at the funeral I was weak
Not because the body stared at me
But from the father’s homily
When he said that she had achieved something
That she found beauty, she found peace
She was giving, she had everything
I watched them lower her deep
And couldn’t help but think she left us nothing

Immediately after these sentiments, a squeal of guitar feedback kicks up, along with a slow drum build. As the instrumental mounts and the static swirls, you can practically feel the edges of your vision go dark. Just as the abyss begins to circle, a guitar solo erupts, ensnaring the listener and dragging them down into the depths. For the next two minutes, the band takes turns building around this instrumental, stretching the bounds of the song into different directions before disintegrating into feedback and tapering off for the album’s final 60 seconds.

It’s a gorgeous, all-encompassing song and a powerful thing to take in. “Catherine” is an odyssey that exhausts you and also acts as a firm period mark on one of the best debut LPs I’ve heard in a long time. 

While Greet Death offers a borderline-Doomer examination of feelings (or lack thereof), Brady is more like a series of observations. Gradually, the inner workings of our narrator are revealed, ultimately arriving at this dual-pathed narrative in the final song that offers little resolution but lots of catharsis. And I don’t mean to keep comparing the two projects; it’s just such a knee-jerk reaction as someone who’s already a fan. 

There is a host of talented musicians behind Boyhtari, and I cannot give enough credit to how well the group collectively fleshed out such a defined corner of the heavy music world. If Greet Death is a project about depicting hell on earth through veiled analogies, Brady is an unflinching look at that same reality with a slightly more realist lens. These lyrics lean into abstraction in a unique way that allows Boyhtari to shine as a songwriter. These songs extend off nicely into the Greet Death extended universe, but still feel like a distinct ecosystem that works towards the same goal from a different angle. Even though, at times, the outlook of both projects is equally dismal, sometimes it’s just nice to hear another side of someone you’ve spent so much time listening to. You Sleep While They Watch offers a more profound insight into one person's semi-hopeless view of a bluntly-hopeless world. 

Whether it’s Greet Death or Brady, the seminal question at the center of Boyhtari’s work has always been, “how do you continue despite it all?” Throughout this album, Boyhtari finds solidarity in admitting he doesn’t have a grasp on the answer any more than we do. At least we’re in it together. 

The State of Pop Music

Stop me if I sound old. 

As we find ourselves on the precipice of fall, I defy you to tell me what the “Song of the Summer” this year was. I know that’s a nebulous term that can range from something as concrete as the most-streamed song in a three-month window to something as personal as your favorite song of the season. In fact, some people insist the Song of the Summer doesn’t even need to be released this year, a categorization that I personally reject. And that’s kinda what I wanted to talk about: where are the songs this year? Hell, what are the songs this year?

Sure, I have my fair share of summer bops I’ve had on repeat, but these are mostly smaller songs from indie labels and DIY acts. It might be hard to believe, but not too long ago, I was “tapped in” to popular music. My annual summer playlists were vast tapestries of culturally-relevant hip-hop and vibrant pop tunes. Back then, it felt like there was ubiquity to these songs, which meant that the playlists practically made themselves. You heard these songs coming out of car windows and venue speakers. You saw clever lines turned into memes, and music videos became internet-wide events. Now? I have to go to Billboard just to see what’s charting because I’m that far out of the loop. I guess what I’m saying is I used to be ‘with it,’ but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's ‘it’ seems weird and scary to me, and it'll happen to you, too.

Maybe I am just Grandpa Simpson-ing, but I think there’s something deeper going on here. Just look back at the oft-cited summer of 2016 and compare it to this year’s offerings. Six years ago, summer gave us (arguably the last great) landmark albums from big-name acts like Kanye and Drake. DRAM had “Broccoli,” and Rae Sremmurd had “Black Beatles.” Gucci was home, and Frank Ocean was back. Travis Scott and Schoolboy Q were mounting their careers with Birds In The Trap Sing McKnight, and Blank Face. Chance the Rapper followed up his smash hit Acid Rap with the great-but-not-as-good Coloring Book. Young Thug was on a tear of stellar EPs, and Lil Uzi made himself a household name with Vs. The World. Both Lil Yachty and 21 Savage introduced themselves to the world in earnest. It felt like an exciting time to be following popular music, and I don’t think that’s just nostalgia.

On the pop side of things, 2016 is still the last time we heard from Rihanna. Beyoncé was making headlines with Lemonade, and The Weeknd was following up the smash hits of Beauty Behind the Madness with the slightly poppier Starboy. Whether you like them or not, 2016 also birthed “One Dance” by Drake and “Closer” by the Chainsmokers, two songs remarkable if only because of how many records they set and how long they hung around the charts. 

To be fair, within the pop/hip-hop dichotomy I tend to fall more on the hip-hop side, so maybe I just have a myopic view of culture. To me, XXL’s 2016 Freshman Class is a perfect example of how the year was a peak for the genre, at least on some level. Meanwhile, what popular artists released music this year? Lizzo? Harry Styles? Yeat? Put a gun to my head, and I couldn’t even fake hum a single melody off Harry’s House, and I bet you can’t either. 

Maybe I’m just checked out of pop culture, but I’d argue that there hasn’t been any legitimately unifying pop music since 2019’s “Old Town Road.” Hmm, what ever could have happened in 2020 that altered our sense of community?

I’ll admit, within my personal music listening over the last couple of years, I’ve noticed a decreasing emphasis on “popular” music in general. I say that not to sound cool or above it all, but because I legitimately don’t know what counts anymore, and that’s a problem. I wasn’t invited to every single party in college (shocking, I know), but even then, I could be anthropological about it. Especially throughout the middle and late 2010s, it was so easy to troll subreddits and Twitter to gauge what people were excited about. Now it feels like the whole of culture has shifted to something far less unified. 

Maybe that’s good. I’ve written before about the death of The Monoculture. Never again will we have a large-scale unifying act like Nirvana that comes in and shakes up the entire music industry, if only because there’s less to shake up. Music in 2022 is competing with the return of movies, a constant barrage of streaming TV shows, and of course, the ever-present deluge of social media. It’s a war for attention, and music doesn’t always win that fight. That’s not to mention how streaming services have made music consumption more on-demand and egalitarian than ever before. No longer are we beholden to what radio stations and MTV will play for us, and I think that’s unequivocally a good thing. 

The flip side of this is that there are far fewer universal touchpoints than ever before. Drake, once the biggest artist in the world, is now about four albums deep on a string of releases designed to juice up streaming numbers with bloated tracklists and middling, inoffensive buffet-style artistry. Come in, take what you want, throw it on a playlist or two, and get the fuck out. No questions, no customizations, and no quality control. Look no further than the number one global artist on Spotify right now: Ed Sheeran, the musical equivalent to a Great Clips haircut. 

I’m not even trying to shit on pop culture; just asking, where is it? It feels like the pandemic has irrevocably stifled culture as a whole on some level. Just look at everything vying for our attention; it’s never been easier to tune out individual pieces of culture if you don’t like them, even culture as a whole to some degree. What I’ve found is that when social life was sapped and reset to zero in 2020, it felt like there was less incentive for me to keep up with culture. Not only that, but there was less culture to keep up with. 

I look back on my “Summer 2020” playlist as an exemplary relic of this time. A hilarious attempt to cobble together a string of hip-hop and pop hits of the era where each entry feels like a palpable shrug of ‘I guess…’ You’ve got “Toosie Slide,” “Rockstar,” and “WAP,” but man, who cares? I guess “WAP” is still pretty good and made a decent cultural impact, but that’s about it. 

Summer 2021 I tried even less, mostly just filling the lineup with songs that felt like they “should” be on a summer playlist. I still remember thinking, “I guess this new Lorde song counts,” and “people like this Megan Thee Stallion song, I think.” It was all a fool’s errand: trying to capture a moment in pop culture that never really existed. 

That’s why this year, I just threw on songs I liked that seemed to capture the summer vibe. I don’t care if only a few thousand people ever listened to the new Camp Trash album; those songs are summer to me. And that’s the dilemma with most “Song of the Summer” entries; is it the culture’s song of the summer or your own? 

Summer aside, I’ve felt less and less incentivized to keep up with pop culture as a whole over the last year or so. Maybe it’s just my age (hello, 30, I see you peeking over the horizon), but I've come to realize how ephemeral all this is. When people were rallying around “Old Town Road”  back in 2019, it felt like an event. When people discuss the 2016 XXL cypher with Kodak Black, 21 Savage, Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Yachty, and Denzel Curry, it feels like a shared cultural touchstone. Be honest with yourself: how many of those touchstones have you felt over the last two and a half years?

I’ll still check out the occasional “big name” pop album just to see if anything grabs me, but more often than not, I’m left with a feeling that it’s missing something. I listened to the new Weeknd album earlier this year and thought it was pretty slick and cool sounding, but I don’t think I’ve returned to it since February. Beyoncé dropped an album in July that I still haven’t listened to and feel zero pull towards. And apparently Harry Styles is doing like fifteen nights of shows in California, so I guess someone has to be listening, right?

There’s an odd symbiotic relationship between albums of this scale and people’s embrace of them. That kind of goes without saying (and technically could apply to any genre), but follow me here. To borrow a parlance from Stan Twitter, if an artist puts out an album and nobody listens to it, the record “flops.” It takes support and fandom to keep a piece of art relevant. But the symbiotic part comes in the form of affirmation and re-engagement. If I listen to a song and the chorus gets stuck in my head, I’ll probably want to go listen to it again later. If I am keeping up with an album’s rollout and hear the lead single while I’m out in the world, I’ll be more drawn to it in the future. If I recognize the song used in the background of a TikTok or some meme, I’ll feel a sense of payoff, as if my previously committed attention has been rewarded. 

Where is that connective tissue in 2022? Maybe it’s just harder to find in the ever-splintering media landscape, but it feels like few of these culturally-sustaining practices exist now. For an old fart like myself, it turns out I’m perfectly content to just stay in my realm of whiny emo and dumb indie rock. After all, what reason do I have to keep up with what’s popular? Furthermore, why would I listen to something that’s “popular” when it doesn’t feel like it is? 

And therein lies the problem: the feeling of popularity. That’s the draw of most pop music on at least some level; the knowledge that you’re participating in something bigger than your specific taste. You’re joining a club of millions, a worldwide network of people bonded by a specific chorus, verse, sound, or person that you all share an affinity for. That’s a hard thing for me to feel in 2022. 

Pop music needs to be more than just catchy and well-made in order for it to succeed; it actually needs to be popular. That’s a harder and harder thing to achieve in an increasingly fragmented world. I’m more than willing to throw on some bland, common-denominator music if it gives me some sense of connection to the larger pop-culture sphere, but either my time for that phenomenon has passed, or the world has become too divided for that magic trick to work any more. Maybe both. 

Carpool – Anime Flashbacks | Single Review

“Say somethin’ / say nothing at all / this is not what I wanted.” Those are the words that are about to be stuck in your head for the next 24 hours. Coincidentally, those are also the words that make up the hook to Carpool’s dancy new single “Anime Flashbacks.” Belted out in a bouncy cadence by frontperson Stophy Colasanto, the delivery is equal parts pleading, regretful, and catchy–the perfect cocktail for a late-summer emo banger. 

Just a prelude to a 5-song EP dropping on 9/23 via Acrobat Unstable Records, “Anime Flashbacks” is a knockout lead single that both announces and reassures listeners that Carpool is back. Outside of a one-off Sheryl Crow cover at the end of 2020, this is the first we’ve heard from the Rochester-based DIY rockers since their debut Erotic Nightmare Summer, which this blog named Album of the Year back in 2020. 

It’s safe to say we’re fans of Carpool here, and we’re happy to report that the band has not spent the last two years slouching around. If anything, “Anime Flashbacks” sees the group tighter than ever before, leveling up far past the skill displayed on their debut album. 

The song begins with a pace-setting stretch of feedback, giving the listener just enough time to get up to speed. Within a few seconds, the band launches into the above hook, skipping straight to the bubblegum saccharine that made their first LP so good. Like pushing your friend into the pool on a hot summer day (making sure to grab their phone first, of course), Carpool wastes no time throwing the audience headfirst into this singable bit of punk rock. 

After a short dance break, little electronic bits begin to shimmer through, accenting the instrumental and casting the song in a slightly different hue. These keys come courtesy of Carpool’s newest band member Alex Ryan, whose contributions immediately feel complimentary to the band’s existing sound, fleshing out a corner of the Carpool Auditory Universe you didn’t even know you needed. 

“Anime Flashbacks” still bears everything you’ve come to love about the group so far: tappy guitar parts, a snappy rhythm section, and of course, Stophy’s unmistakable voice. Alternating between a remorseful croon and a violent sneer, they air out petty grievances over the pop-punk instrumental, effortlessly captivating the listener in the process. 

The emotional climax comes about two minutes in when Stophy belts, “I never shoulda… NOOOO,” letting their scream ring out for as long as their lungs allow. After this outpouring of emotion, we have one more instrumental stretch that winds down and feels designed to give the people in the pit a chance to catch their breath or go extra hard, depending on the energy of the room. As the song crests to a halt, it resolves on a bed of gentle synth notes that carries the listener out, leaving us salivating for more. Luckily, we won’t have to wait too long, given that a new helping of Carpool tracks will arrive in our streaming platforms a month from now. Until then, it’s time to keep the flashbacks on repeat.

Colleen Dow – Inside Voices | EP Review

What’s in a name? Colleen Dow already has a pretty good one in Thank You, I’m Sorry–a Minneapolis-based emo project that began with solitary bedroom acoustic recordings but quickly blossomed into a fully-fledged indie rock group. Regardless of the scale that TYIS took, Dow’s writing and voice always shined through as the transfixing centerpiece at both ends of this spectrum. Whether articulating the realities of depression or fixating on the woes of tour life, it was easy to find a home in these songs and empathize with Dow’s perspective within them. And now, thanks to a string of solo releases under their own name, there’s a new dwelling in which fans of Dow’s work can nuzzle up to their own anxieties.

When Dow released “Periwinkle” back at the end of 2021, it felt like a strange sense of deja vu. Given how unique Dow’s voice is, given that Thank You I’m Sorry started as a solo project, and given that it was being released on the same label, it was easy to see this single as an extension of Dow’s main band… that is until you listen to it. 

While TYIS songs tend to explode forward with nervous energy and feature noodly math rock riffs, “Periwinkle” opens with a woozy guitar sway and ignites in a dreamy synth beat. Glitchy vocalizations flit and flutter on the outer edges of the song, still recognizable as Dow but obscured by a cold, technological feeling. While relatively peppy, the song’s lyrics still bear the trademarked emotional struggle Dow often writes around, lending the piece a nice artistic continuity. 

A month later, things got even sadder with “Sorry,” a crushing song centered around a reverb-soaked Julien Baker guitar line and adorned with appropriately dour album art. For the first three months of 2022, Dow sent out monthly dispatches in the form of “Bumbum,” “Yeah,” and “Lists.” Each song leaned into a different style of electronic music, always guided forward by Dow’s voice, augmented by subtle guitar playing, and accompanied with awesome art courtesy of Sim Morales of Insignificant Other.

So what did Dow find in a name change? Freedom for one, lack of expectations for another. By releasing these songs under their own name as opposed to the up-and-coming indie rock band they front, Dow forced the listener to approach, listen to, and conceive of these songs as something different from their “main” act. Why feel boxed in creating a follow-up for your emo project when you can explore something totally new within the confines of your own name?

I figured this string of singles was essentially just a creative exercise for Dow; one-off pieces of music that they could drop with less pressure and more creative control. I should have known better. I should have Trusted In Dow because now we have Inside Voices, a 5-song EP that drops 13 minutes of new material at once, rounding out Dow’s solo “side project” to a solid 26 minutes of music, a collection that surpasses the very first TYIS release by about four minutes.

Throughout the new EP, Dow remains as honest as their previous work, equal parts charming and disarming. On the boppy opening track, “Bummer Summer,” Dow sings, “Banging my head against the wall / I can tell from your eyes that it’s all my fault / I’ve been staying up late and don’t ever call you back.” You always know exactly what Dow is struggling with because they find a way to say it plainly and calmly. While these lyrics might read as sad-to-a-fault on paper, Dow’s forthright approach is nothing but compelling within the music. 

And it turns out that labeling these emotions has paid off well; a few lines later in the same song, Dow sings, “I know better than to build all these walls / And it wouldn’t be that hard to just give you a call.” These lyrics make the solution clear; wisdom gained from having weathered these experiences and made it out the other side. 

This honesty allows for a surprisingly fluid train of logic that keeps the listener nodding along, wincing with pain as each line of the song adds a different brush stroke of ennui. These sentiments would be harder to swallow if they weren’t swaddled in such sweet instrumentals and packaged in such adorable album art. 

Guest appearances from fellow bedroom rockers Ness Lake on “Childhood Home” and Snow Ellet on “Radiator” help push the view beyond Dow’s perspective, fleshing out the world and adding a nice variety to the middle of the release. While relatively subtle and never show-stealing, these collaborations make Inside Voices feel more like a mutual support group as opposed to a solitary dairy entry. This is even reflected on the EP’s cover, which sees all the people from the preceding single releases coming together for a wholesome hug–a mini multiverse moment for the ever-expanding Colleen Dow musical universe… Dow-iverse? We’ll figure out a better name later.

Like the first sip of a sugar-free Red Bull, “Redline” injects some buoyant energy into the final stretch of the EP. The song walks a line between the kind of sad confessionalism we’ve heard up to this point but also acts as a (half) love letter to Dow’s temporary home of Chicago. That two-minute burst of energy paves the way for “Lil Kid,” an ultra-relatable song about finding a grounding sense of peace in taking a stroll while listening to Courtney Barnett on your headphones. Wow, they’re just like me for real.

As the EP’s final song wraps up, I come back to the question I asked at the beginning and think maybe a name doesn’t matter at all. Listening to Inside Voices, I’m just as taken with Dow’s artistic vision as I was when I first found Thank You, I’m Sorry. Especially when taken in concert with the preceding string of singles, it’s amazing to have what’s ostensibly a full LP’s-worth of music from someone you were already a fan of. Whether it’s in their main band, their solo project, or something totally new, the most important thing is that we are lucky enough to keep hearing from Dow.