Growing Pains – Thought I Heard Your Car | EP Review

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SELF-Released

Slowcore, shoegaze, and indie rock are genres rich with tradition. Prospective new heads all look back to the chords, pedalboards, and vocal chops of the revered forebears such as My Bloody Valentine, Ride, or the Drop Nineteens, seeking to emulate the cult successes of a past era– but much of the appeal of these mythic albums comes from nostalgic warmth created by tape hiss and squealing feedback. When these young musicians speak of their influences, they mention things about the marks of time on them. Melted tape legends and woozy pitch-bent loops are products of the early-90s experimental attitude towards music making and production. In today’s digital frontier, very few bands choose to actually capture the spirit of the ancient texts. There’s some debate as to whether it can even be done, but that debate can be put to rest. By leaning into past and future traditions of shimmering pop-rock, Portland’s Growing Pains have brought us Thought I Heard Your Car. 

This fuckin’ EP is unreal. From the moment you press play on lead single “What Are the Odds?” you’re greeted with a classic Duster-style slowcore arpeggio. The muted drumbeat and dreamy synths float by, calling to mind hits like “Topical Solution” or “Bedside Table” before exploding into a sonically rich 3/4 groove. The tight guitar tones, which appear across the record, find a foothold with the rhythm section in a hard-edged move not commonly found among the band’s contemporaries. Kaila Storer’s vocal approach, ever ethereal, presides over shifting dynamics and moving sections from a comfortable place in the center of the mix as she sings: “Crush me in the dark / Fill my head with stars.” While I’m sure this prose conjures images of the horde of slacker-rock wannabes, the group takes great pains not to repeat the fatal mistake of sonic sameness that plagues lesser songsmiths. Layered into the vocal tracks are touches of Auto-Tuned warbling, a distinctly modern texture, and the guitar tone feels stiffened with compression. An off-kilter tremolo guitar plays a scratchy lead line as the dynamics duck and weave to make space. Though easily missed by the casual listener, these modern production touches take elements of dream pop and shoegaze sonics and blow them up into modern pop choruses. 

The energy continues down the tracklist– “In Effigy” boasts a drum part that indieheads will recognize as classic Grandaddy, shuffling along as Jack Havrila and Carl Taylor’s spindly guitars buzz by one of Storer’s most memorable hooks. Catchy melodies are buried under layers of noise, every instrument prompting you to sing along to its repetitive and zany riff as chords contextualize these phrases into hopeful and melancholy passages in equal measure. “Lemon Lime,” another standout, boasts Great Grandpa-like fuzz as pounding drums evoke classics by Ride and even the Smashing Pumpkins before shifting into a twee-pop vibe that calls forward the sonic image of the Elephant 6 collective or Plumtree. The production takes a front seat on this track, with distorted vocal overdubs and squealing feedback samples rhythmically injecting themselves throughout its back half and only continues to shine in “Pretend to Sleep,” a high-energy pop-rocker with the most radio hit potential on the album. Blending long, distorted reverb trails with tight pop harmony and clockwork instrumentals, the fusion of old shoegaze legend with the present indie-pop movement’s urgency and hooks turn what might have been a derivative slog into an inventive and eventful masterwork. Closing track, “Memory from Last Year,” is equal parts Modest Mouse, Portishead, and Feeble Little Horse– its uptempo trip-hop beat breezes by as guitars gnarl and tangle through snippets of audio and swelling reverb trails. These songs are deceptively deep– though at first glance, they’re an appealing pop-rock package just waiting to be devoured by arty college scenes.

Lyrically, the songs are indecisive and weird– neither in the pejorative sense. Everything is stuck or sticking, detailing staircase wit, stained walls, and menthol cigarettes. The sleepy imagery on “Memory from Last Year” recalls the faded and decayed way experiences often float back to the front of one’s mind, and the refusal of "In Effigy" to grasp for a subject sends listeners into a confused mess of pronouns and images. It’s a highly personal affair, but an abstract one– you kind of get the sense that the band, in their lyrical process, have boiled away excess phrases to leave only the gnarled core of the experience rattling around your mind as a listener. Storer’s indistinct and placid delivery, however, relegates the poetics to the liner notes. It all snugly fits into place under the masterful production, which makes the lyrics blow by in the most compelling way.

Growing Pains seem to have an innate artistic understanding of how to make this particular style of nu-shoegaze more than just the sum of its parts. Beyond just a crisp mix and master, the production feels as much of an instrument in many of these songs as the bass or guitar. Adept little shifts– a drop in volume, a tone change, a panning movement– all contribute to the songs in ways that look back on the storied history of the genre. Much like how the production techniques of past shoegaze bands led to the musician’s chase for the perfect recorded tone through effects pedals and studio tricks, Thought I Heard Your Car plays in their digital audio workstation like it’s 1996 and the technology is still new. 

THE COFFEE CORNER

I listen to all my albums in the living room of my cramped Pittsburgh apartment. My roommate, Nick, enjoys eavesdropping on my sessions. Nick is six-foot, with close-cropped blond hair and bright blue eyes. He is an avid Phish fan currently wandering around in a pair of ball shorts and a garish tie-dyed T-shirt smoking a joint. He contributes that "these guitars sound like vacuum cleaners" and asked me "if Phil Spector had anything to do with this."

Mikey Montoni is a nonfiction writing student at the University of Pittsburgh, originally hailing from New York. When she's not writing, she's bruising herself attempting skateboard tricks, playing with her punk rock band, digging through bookstores for '70s pulp sci-fi paperbacks, and wandering Pittsburgh in search of good coffee.

The Run For Cover Shoegaze Canon

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We’ve all heard about the Heavy Music to Shoegaze Pineline, and the math checks out there, but there’s another, just-as-important shoegaze repository that we don’t talk about often enough: The Emo Music to Shoegaze Pipeline. Okay, I promise I’m going to stop saying “pipeline” now, but this is a very real phenomenon with one highly-influential label at the center. But first? Let me take you back in time.

It’s spring term 2014, and you’re just at the onset of your emo phase. You found this cool label from Boston named Run For Cover. They had just released this album called “You’re Gonna Miss It All” by Modern Baseball, and you were digging it quite a bit. Through forums, message boards, and various online chatter, you discovered this other album with a pizza on the cover by a band named Tigers Jaw and found out that the same label put it out. Damn, two for two. You decide to check out a few more albums the label has released, and soon enough, you have a pretty solid foundation for decades of dorky emo admiration. If you couldn’t figure it out, that person was ME.

In retrospect, Run For Cover has always been my favorite record label for a reason. They put out (conservative estimate) a few dozen highly influential, respected, and revered albums since their humble beginnings in 2004. A decade into their existence, they’d already brought us Title Fight, Fireworks, The Wonder Years, Tigers Jaw, Man Overboard, Koji, and Seahaven. If you have any affinity for this specific sound or era of indie rock, that list probably got your heart rate up. 

At this point in 2014, I was just beginning to find my footing in school. I was halfway through college, settling into my major, and discovering a host of music that felt unique and uninformed by my peers or friends. This felt like music that was speaking directly to me and that I could fully own. Run For Cover was offering music from some of the most exciting and important bands in my life, and pretty soon, seeing that Run For Cover Triangle Logo was as good as a stamp of approval in my eyes. 

In 2014 specifically, we were post-Youth, but pre-Peripheral Vision. This was a time when many of these bands were either revving up or actively dropping their best material. Seahaven had just released Reverie Lagoon, and Tigers Jaw were just beginning to roll out singles to their much-awaited Charmer… Sorry that this has been a lot of “remembering guys” up to this point, but I’m just trying to paint a picture here. If these names mean anything to you, then I promise I’m building to something. 

Just over the horizon was a little band from Indiana called Cloakroom. They were about to drop their debut album, Further Out, and cement themselves as Run For Cover’s first earnest foray into overtly heavier music. At some point in an early part of their career, the band openly described themselves as “stoner emo,” which sounds exactly how you would expect it to. On Further Out, the trio fully realized their powerful potential, combining the heaviest parts of Hum with the shreddiest parts of Earth. That Hum worship also materialized in a very real way after an album delay led to an apology 7” with a song featuring Matt Talbott of Hum. 

One month after Cloakroom’s ferocious first album came another debut from a Pittsburg band called Adventures. Much like Further Out, the first record from Adventures was a shockingly developed realization of the band’s sound. Titled Supersonic Home, this album was the payoff to two EPs and two splits; it was a fresh batch of ten new songs, all without flaw. For just over 31 minutes, the band hits you with one lightly distorted hook after the next. “Dream Blue Haze,” “Your Sweetness,” and “My Marble Hole,” one by one, the band unleashed these incredibly simple yet endlessly addictive tracks. The end result is an uplifting collection of songs that sit somewhere between Sunny Day Real Estate and the Brianna-led side of Tigers Jaw. It’s also an album that I only checked out because Run For Cover was releasing it. 

While it’s hard to call Adventures a shoegaze band in the classic definition, they were certainly indebted to a specific style of fuzzy 90s/early-2000s alt-rock. Regardless of what you’d label them, Supersonic Home was one of the coolest things I’d ever heard in my life. The crazy part is how much that record still holds up almost a decade later. The magic is still there, and its status as a one-off side project makes that perfection sting all the more. Oh, that’s right. Did I not mention that Adventures was comprised primarily of members from the metalcore band Code Orange? Because that’s a crazy fun fact that I decided to bury at the very end of this paragraph. That almost makes them a prototypical member of the heavy music to shoegaze pipeline. 

One year later, I would stumble ass-backward into Psychopomp by Japanese Breakfast, thanks to a transcription of an absolutely manic and hilarious string of text messages posted to the /r/indieheads subreddit. That album would go on to become one of my favorites of all time and soon lead me to Little Big League, a gritty Run For Cover band that Michelle Zauner sang and played guitar in. This was before becoming the published author, Dead Oceans-signed, music video and movie directing Michelle Zauner that we all know today, but the music was just as good.

I wouldn’t personally discover them until years later, but around this same time, Pity Sex was releasing their iconic one-two punch of Dark World and Feast of Love, rounding out a dreamier side of Run For Cover’s gazey lineup. Similarly, Superheaven was rocking the 90s grunge worship years before anyone else would get there. The fact that one label was at the epicenter of all this music is, quite frankly, mind-blowing.

To this day, a Run For Cover co-sign is still a seal of approval. Seeing this label involved means a guaranteed listen from me. Sometimes it’s not my shit, but more often than not, I’ll discover a new obsession or favorite artist.

In recent years, the label has brought us Anxious, Sadurn, One Step Closer, and Glass Beach. Run For Cover’s involvement got me in early on bands like Camp Cope, Field Medic, and Pinegrove, in addition to everything listed above. This label has ushered me into the sprawling discographies of artists like Advance Base and Alex G, and they’ve even released one of my favorite albums of the last decade with Fiddlehead’s Springtime and Blind. 

Last week, Run For Cover dropped Narrow Head’s third album, Moments of Clarity. It wasn’t until I was listening to this record that I put all this together. At first, my reaction was “another great record from Run For Cover,” which is a relatively predictable response from me. Then I started looking through my music library and realized this label’s pedigree with these shoegaze-adjacent albums. Run For Cover was instrumental not just in my emo music fandom but also acted as my introduction to this specific heavier scene of music. 

From the dreamy wisps of “Dogwalk” and saccharine sweetness of Adventures to the stoner crush of Cloakroom and grungy blaze of Narrow Head, Run For Cover has always been there.

There are a ton of bands playing at this “grungegaze” intersection right now; Fleshwater, Soul Blind, Glitterer, Dosser, Drug Church, and Prize Horse, just to name a handful. Each of these bands are carving out distinct corners of hardcore and heavy music, pulling from the grunge, nu-metal, and the 2000s alternative rock I heard all the time growing up. This sound feels extra crystalized on Moments of Clarity, but to some extent, is just the latest in a long string of Run For Cover Records knowing what I need to hear exactly when I need to hear it.

Narrow Head – Moments of Clarity | Album Review

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Run For Cover Records

Growing up, I was raised in a pretty conservative home, and more “extreme” forms of art were often tricky to explore. I often had to find bands that toed the line with songs I could play without frightening my parents while still scratching that heavy itch. The most effective route for this was ensuring the bands I wanted to listen to were Christian, or at least marketed as such. You see, the lack of a parental advisory sticker wasn’t enough. Linkin Park didn’t cuss on a proper album until Minutes to Midnight, well after my tastes had changed, but even still, I was not allowed to listen to them because their lyrics were deemed “too depressing.” Fair enough, I guess, but the point stands. I had to do the work to find music that I enjoyed and was permissible.

There’s been somewhat of a resurgence of bands settling into massive riffs and hazy, spacey vocals. The reunion albums of Quicksand and Hum, in addition to more recent efforts by bands like Fleshwater and Soul Blind, have been stirring up waves of wistful, reflective nostalgia within me. It's been comforting if a bit tough to nail down. I hadn’t been able to pinpoint exactly what about that sound had been affecting me so much until a passage on Narrow Head’s latest LP, Moments of Clarity, where the feeling became palpable. 

After eight tracks of driving shoegaze riffs (with plenty of 90’s alt and pop sensibility thrown in for good measure), the one-two punch of “Gearhead” and “Flesh & Solitude” kicked in, and I realized that this is exactly what my thirteen-year-old self loved and sought out. This kind of stuff is how I got to where I am today in both the music I create and consume.

From the opening strums of the loose strings on the grungy (and then pummeling) “Gearhead” to the harsh vocals and the chaotic last minute of “Flesh & Solitude,” the album becomes a different beast. A beast that I greatly appreciate as it allowed me to connect to a self I don’t consciously spend much time with. This isn’t the first instance of heaviness like this, though. The moody and crushing “Trepanation,” while not in the exact same vain, darkens things up in the first half of the record before shifting to the stoner’s pace of “Breakup Song,” a track that evokes the openness of a classic Doug Martsch cut mixed with the Pixies. 

The darkness permeates throughout even the less intense tracks. The thematic opener, “The Real,” feels both biting and earnest, with the chorus asking, “How good does it feel? / To be you / To be real” It brings to mind the aforementioned Hum reunion album Inlet in the best ways. Through infectious songs like the title track and “Caroline” or the palate-cleansing “The Comedown,” Narrow Head have crafted a cohesive collection of songs that really move with intention and weave a portrait that is reflective yet uninterested in dwelling. It certainly has highlights but is best digested as a whole. Sonny DiPerri’s (NIN, Protomartyr, My Bloody Valentine) production is stellar, and taking the record in from start to finish truly allows it to reveal itself, especially on repeated listens. There’s a lot to admire.

It’s often funny to recognize the steps you’ve taken to end up wherever you are. It’s comical that I consider P.O.D. to be the band that got me into heavy music, but it’s true. Their album Brown was instrumental in getting me into bands like Blindside, who led me to Underoath, who led me to Norma Jean, and so on and so forth. Hell, Brown honestly still holds up today. Tell me this track doesn’t fit perfectly in the current state of heavy music. A little bit of now, a little bit of then. Everything’s connected. As a kid, my search for exciting yet parentally palatable music led me to scour lyrics sheets and connect the dots of like-minded bands. While I’m no longer concerned if an album is considered depressing or if they say “fuck,” I’m mindful of the intention and the piece as a whole due to the necessity of paying attention to all the details. 

The sonic territory in which Moments of Clarity exists is familiar but fresh in the melding and execution. This is one of those stepping-stone albums that allows the depths of heavier music to be explored without pushing the listener too far out. It’s both catchy and introspective while also not shying away from being aggressive with walloping clarity. Narrow Head is part of an ilk that looks to the past, both externally and internally, in order to forge ahead and craft a future they wish to live in, and the results they’re yielding make it a pleasure to be along for the ride. 

Christian Perez is a member of the band Clot and a rabid record collector.

Andy Shauf – Norm | Album Review

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ANTI‐

The power of discovering music in a record store is still as relevant today as it was before the turn of the millennium. Walking into your favorite local shop, hearing the staff picks on the speakers, and then buying the album on the spot. It’s something that just can’t be recreated by sharing a streaming link. That’s where my fandom of Andy Shauf began in 2020.

Masked up and existentially confused, the soothing tones of his release that year, The Neon Skyline, immediately stuck out to me. Sitting somewhere between the Scottish twee of Belle And Sebastian and the cabaret croons of the Burt Bacharach catalog, Shauf really showcased a singer-songwriter style I felt like I’d missed for many years. It was a heavy spin for me in the back half of the year, as was his 2021 follow-up Wilds that continued the story. Consider it the Mallrats to its predecessor’s Clerks; the same characters followed from different perspectives while introducing new ones.

Norm is Shauf’s eighth proper LP and is a wonderful way to kick off the year in music. From the beginning of the opener,  “Wasted On You,” longtime fans will be pleased that Andy is not deviating from his signature style; he continues to be one of the most recognizable voices Canadian indie rock has to offer lately. If you heard Father John Misty’s last album, Chloe And The Next 20th Century, and thought, “what would it be like if these songs were good?” Norm delivers that reality. It creates a soft-spoken world using elements of the orchestral pop and easy-listening landscapes of our grandparents’ generation. To appease all ages, those same elements shine under the ultra-clean production of the modern indie era.

The falsetto opening of “Telephone” comes in so strong I was certain he was bringing in a guest vocalist for a duet. Which, given the style of this record, would probably fit quite well. In turn, this is just Andy using his range as a strength, like Adrienne Lenker would on some of her most intimate material. Andy’s vocals are once again a standout throughout the LP, but it’s the way he uses them on top of the sparse, relaxed instrumentation that makes all his records captivating. Swooning through passionate lines such as “I would live on the telephone if I was listening to you talk about your day.”

“Norm,” the title track, is the perfect centerpiece. Calling the lead character by name for only the second time so far (the first being a subtle mention in the very last line of “You Didn’t See”), we learn he “lays on his side with heavy eyelids” and hears the voice of the narrator “lead[ing him] to the promised land.” If one thing is clear throughout the album, our hero Norm is straight up not having a good time.

On “Halloween Store,” Shauf delivers maybe his strongest stanza of the record. In describing Norm’s feelings on meeting one of the many persons of interest encountered, he “wondered if I locked the house, walked back and found that I hadn’t. But now my keys were in the car.” / “Pulled the handle, and it snapped back. At least I’d locked one door.” It’s clear the small victories for Norm are enough in some cases. Shauf’s almost talk-sing delivery makes it hard to fully take it in if you’re not listening with a close ear. It’s an intoxicating moment of insecurity.

If Norm invokes one thing, it’s tenderness. Like many of Shauf’s releases, his ability to effortlessly bring you into his orbit and immediately feel comfortable is continually impressive. For example, take the opening salvo of “Sunset” and “Daylight Dreaming,” a pair of songs whose sonic qualities live up to their titles. Shauf wields his words perfectly: “Just watching the sunset, and I’m letting you know just how long I’ve loved you for,” he pleads. On the latter, he sings, “All my daylight dreaming can’t get you on the phone, so send me strength to God Almighty.” The presence of a higher power is considered throughout the album, but maybe never accepted.

So the story ends as it begins, the 102-second closer “All Of My Love” taking its name from the chorus of track one. It gives the impression that the legend of Norm is endless, or maybe that the titular Norm’s romantic journey is. Shauf’s smart decision here to not only tie the last song to the first, in addition to making it brief, invites the listener to start it again. Flip the record back over. Hit the album repeat button on streaming. Imagine King Gizzard’s Nonagon Infinity, an album on a seemingly constant loop, albeit more French café than outer space in this instance.

I can also understand Shauf’s gift of quiet tone setting being a crutch for some listeners. If you’re not willing to be right there, ears to the words, you could miss the details. Norm is patience demanding but wildly fulfilling. If you enjoy the similar quirk of Jens Lekman, the character-driven library of The Mountain Goats, or the heartfelt delivery of late fellow Canadian legend Gord Downie, Andy Shauf’s Norm should be considered for your 2023 new release rotation.

Logan Archer Mounts once almost got kicked out of Warped Tour for doing the Disturbed scream during a band’s acoustic set. He currently lives in Rolling Meadows, IL, but tells everyone he lives in Palatine.

Twitter: @VERTICALCOFFIN
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