Broken Record – Nothing Moves Me | Album Review

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Really Rad Records

“What do you do / When the void fills you? /
A steady flow of vacant thoughts / The sum of which is nil.”

The internal Swim Into The Sound upcoming release doc listed Broken Record’s Nothing Moves Me as “Sunny Day Real Estate + The Cure = Stadium emo.” Despite being an English teacher, this equation made immediate sense and piqued my curiosity.

I feel the need to express that this is not going to be a typical review. It’s not that this album’s music is not worth talking about in the stereotypical “awesome #toanz, dude” manner (the #toanz are indeed awesome, dude). As a music listener, however, I am drawn first toward how all of the instruments and vocals sound in concert with one another. Nothing Moves Me showcases lyrics that, funnily enough, move me and push me as both a music fan and critic.  

For some more context, I am a person who struggles with depression. Right around when I received the press stream of Nothing Moves Me, I was prescribed Lexapro. At first, it felt like a godsend. Spring and then summer wore on, and my partner confirmed something I had suspected: the prescription muted me and my world. Everything felt evenly mediocre. After a while, everything feeling mediocre starts to suck. I would rather experience the ups and downs.

It was during this period of medication that I played Nothing Moves Me over and over again. Regardless of my personal state, this is certifiably catchy emo. There are hooks on hooks and beautiful harmonies in every track, especially in singles “Weightless,” “Blueprinting,” and “See It Through.” These three songs buoy the record's first half with exciting second-wave emo sounds, the intro to “See It Through” almost sounds like it's referencing Taking Back Sunday’s “Cute Without the ‘E’ (Cut From the Team).”

Beyond hooks, the band excels with track sequencing. “Weightless” opens up into a spacey bridge that seamlessly meanders into “Round 2,” the epic six-plus-minute track. As a Jimmy-Eat-World-album-closer nerd, singer-guitarist Lauren Beecher, guitarist Matt Dunne, bassist Corey Fruin, and drummer Nick Danes are appealing directly to me. (Dear Broken Record: please explore this anthemic, slowcore-leaning sound more on your next release.)

What impresses me most, though, is the use of production and composition to enhance those hooks. Opener “Nothing Moves Me” begins with driving a dirty, driving bass line that trickles into a tight song with a contrasting, clean, right-panned arpeggiated guitar. The first song on the album showcases just how great a band Broken Record are; the following 32 minutes are a cherry on top.

“What about the lyrics, Joe?” is what you should be asking right now.

Now weaning myself off Lexapro, Nothing Moves Me hits differently. The reverb-rich and chorus-laden production makes the album sound underwater, which is how I feel when I am in the throes of a rough depressive period. Then there is the album’s cover, which features a skeleton sitting in the shade rather than the sun. Hell, the title is Nothing Moves Me. All this context pushed me to engage more deeply with the lyrics, and the epiphany was confirmed: this is an album about depression. The songs are not necessarily hiding this message; my world was just too grayed out to see it. The theme of depression permeates every track, but personal favorites include “Runner’s Digest” (“But I can’t fake / away the shame / I’m sick of empty hope / and consolation prizes”) and “Vacuum Tube Supplies” (the whole dang song).

Broken Record’s Nothing Moves Me is an important album not only for the upstart Colorado band but for all listeners, those contending with mental health issues or not. The sophomore effort solidifies Broken Record as incumbent torchbearers for both the genre, and for those wrestling with a void inside themselves, myself included. While it is one thing to create an incredible piece of art like Nothing Moves Me, it is another thing entirely to speak to and validate a population of people typically misunderstood for their behaviors and attitudes. Broken Record make doing both look easy.

Joe Wasserman lives with his partner and their dogs in Brooklyn. When he’s not listening to music, he plays bass in bands, writes stories, and releases music as After School Special. You can find him on Twitter at @a_cuppajoe.

Funeral Homes – Double Vision | Video Premiere

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As an artist, you can’t always choose what people’s first impression of you will be. This is the logic behind singles and music videos: to try and craft an intentional string of encounters that build off each other, transforming someone from a prospective listener into a fully-fledged fan. In the age of streaming, TikTok, and instant access, this experience is harder for artists to have any control over. Even in the ever-splintered media landscape of 2023, a good music video has the power to give viewers an understanding of what makes a band unique. Funeral Homes know this and have put their best foot forward with their new video for “Double Vision.”

Funeral Homes is a Jacksonville-based Shoegaze band that started as the solo project of Sofia Poppert. After a string of singles and contributions to compilations, Funeral Homes released their first long-form articulation in 2019 with Lavender House, a seven-song collection that leaned more towards the heavy end of emo than overt shoegaze. Fast forward a few years, and 2022’s Blue Heaven is a fully-fledged LP with some of the most beautiful, catchy, and haunting shoegaze songs I’ve heard in years. 

The album’s lead single, “Double Vision,” is the rare case where a shoegaze song is able to rise out of its own genre trappings into something completely unique. Even within Blue Heaven, “Double Vision” comes after the lovelorn midtempo trod of “Before You Leave,” a sad song about heavy topics like separation and abandonment. Then, one song later, here comes this bounding, thumpy track that deploys a vicious amount of whammy bar and a riff that makes you want to catapult into nearby concertgoers. “Double Vision” melds shoegaze and noise pop with just a little bit of pop-punk pep, charging forward for an unrelenting two minutes before dumping you back into reality.

The video for “Double Vision” is a dizzying spin around the band’s practice space as a fisheye lens rotates through every member rocking out (and getting different fits off) until the song’s final moments. Since the group previously consisted only of Poppert, this video acts both as an unveiling of the full lineup and as a way to package up one of the band’s best songs into an entry point for prospective listeners. 

For those that journey into the rest of the album, you’ll be treated to hypnotic dream states, twilight musings, and hypnagogic revelations. The 44 minutes Funeral Homes have laid out on Blue Heaven ring out with sticky riffs, dense fuzz, and far-off vocals disguised in an alluring shroud of haze. The whole thing merges into this dreamy blue wall of noise that positions Funeral Homes as part of a promising wave of Florida-gaze bands like Rosewilder and Gravess. With any luck, the video for “Double Vision” will lead hordes of new fans into Funeral Homes’ gorgeous, humid, and heavy corner of the world.

Dim Wizard – X-Games Mode | Single Review

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Self-Released

I cannot tell you the last time it was that I picked up a skateboard and popped an ollie or landed a shuvit. Now that I’m 30 and it truly means nothing to me, my memory wanes as to whether I actually landed a kickflip like I bragged to some attractive women in college. Not to kill my ego, but I probably didn’t. That being said, I would’ve burned a hole in the flash memory of my iPod Nano listening to Dim Wizard’s “X-Games Mode” on repeat while slamming the deck into my shins.

The latest collaboration from Bad Moves’ David Combs and illuminati hotties’ Sarah Tudzin features garage power-popper Mike Krol and Ratboys’ Julia Steiner on vocals. Distorted and compressed to a chaotic hell, “X-Games Mode'' is just plain fun. Combs and Tudzin’s earworm songwriting and musicianship are complemented by Krol and Steiner’s cool deliveries to create a track that evokes nostalgia while also feeling new. Because of that, “X-Games Mode” immediately feels timeless in the best way.

Although my skating days are well behind me, the single’s catchy chiptune elements and swirling guitar riffs make for the perfect soundtrack to play Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (or, for a true X-Games mode, Skate) with your friends. If we play at your house, I’ll bring the forties.

Joe Wasserman lives with his partner and their dogs in Brooklyn. When he’s not listening to music, he plays bass in bands, writes stories, and releases music as After School Special. You can find him on Twitter at @a_cuppajoe.

Hater's Delight – July 2023

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This July has been the longest, sweatiest, shittiest month of the year so far. Let’s hear it for unending heat, unbreathable air, and unforgivable takes from every fuckwit with a phone screen! The sooner this month’s over, the better; let’s send it out the door with a kick in the pants in the form of this month’s Hater’s Delight.

If you’re just now joining us for the first time, Hater’s Delight is a monthly micro-review column brought to you by our team of Swim Into The Sound writers and a guest or two. This is a space where we can vent about the things online and in music that have gotten under our skin this past month. Each writer gets a paragraph to bitch about their chosen topic, then once we expel the Haterade from our systems, we all go back to loving music and enjoying art. Speaking of which, if you’re more in the mood for some positivity, here’s a playlist of all this month’s new releases that I enjoyed (or at least found notable) to help you keep up on everything that’s happened in July.

Spotify UI

Oh, Spotify. I don’t like your artist payouts, and I don’t like your pivot to video. I don’t like your alt-right podcasts, and I don’t like your SEO slop. There’s a virtually endless list of things I dislike about the world’s most ubiquitous music streaming platform, yet I use it every day. Don’t get me wrong, I still have my physical media and a hefty MP3 library, so I am not beholden to Spotify, but I use it because it is synonymous. Because Spotify is some people’s sole way to interact with music, I think it’s worth analyzing, criticizing, and discussing. Earlier this year, I wrote about artists clogging Spotify up with single bloat, but now Spotify is inflicting this visual repetition on itself. On the desktop version of Spotify, the company recently introduced “Now Playing View,” which replaces the “Friend Activity” panel on the far-right side of the screen. Now the space is absorbed by a larger version of the album art, a song title, the artist name, bio, merch, tour dates, and what’s next in the queue. If that sounds like a lot, it’s because it is! Half of it is redundant information to what is already displayed on the bottom left, and the rest of it is pretty useless to the average listener. I presume this is a way to elevate ticket sales and promote merch, both of which Spotify gets a kickback on, but do we really need all of this info on screen? Especially when you’re paving over my literal friends and family, you better replace that with something just as compelling. While you can still click the “Friend Activity” button to return to the old view, the “Now Playing View” returns each time you click on a new song, so it might as well be there for good. This is all on top of recent changes to the sidebar, playlist organization, and various other changes, all of which make Spotify worse for the wear. 

Taylor Grimes – @GeorgeTaylorG


Apple Music v. Spotify: Dawn of Bullshit

 I’m self-aware enough to say that I am an Apple fanboy. It wasn’t on purpose; it just kind of happened, like how I got into the Mission: Impossible movies because my sister likes them, and I want to make her happy. This past week, I purchased an Apple Watch after years of thinking it wasn’t for me. I found enough reasons (i.e., easy access to a timer for teaching, the fitness tracker, and… a watch) to justify the cheapest finance option. Because I am in the minority and sip the Apple Juice (patent pending), I find it frustrating when anyone links music to Spotify as the default. Call me lazy, but I’m sick of searching on Apple Music for something that’s immediately available at Spotify users’ thumbs.

I understand why Spotify has a chokehold on streaming music. Sometimes I wish I subscribed just to experience its superior social aspects and playlisting. Yet, for all of the reasons that Taylor listed above, I still find the company’s actions and policies toward artists deplorable and solely a necessary evil in our current brand of capitalism. :sips Apple Juice: Whenever I share music online, I send a Bandcamp link to support the artist directly. If recipients do not wish to support, then at least the stream is immediately available to Spotify and Apple Music users alike. (Either way, I’m ridiculed for sending Bandcamp or Apple Music links because they’re not Spotify.) Although I’m happy at how Bandcamp has grown, it still does not feel like the default, agnostic streaming service that anyone can use immediately and remains a niche for independent labels and smaller musicians. Perhaps someday, it or another streaming service/online music storefront will be the norm, but that day feels far away. Regardless of which you use, M.A.R.T.H.A. remains: Music Algorithms Revile Trying to Help Artists. 

Joe Wasserman – @a_cuppajoe


“I am the one you love to hate.”

In a very meta paragraph here, I’m giving my hate to the haters. Code Orange has been pushing heavy music boundaries their entire career. Their left-of-center approach to hardcore and metal has been celebrated by freaks and questioned by cowards on every album. In 2017, they began incorporating more elements of alternative and industrial music on their album Forever, with songs like “Bleeding Into The Blur” and “Ugly” packed with soaring choruses fit for rock arenas. The most stubborn members of the hardcore community turned up their noses and turned their backs on the band, but they always seem to reappear whenever the band has new music to promote just to give their two cents. Online comments surrounding their latest single, “Take Shape,” are filled with sentiments like “This band fell off” and “Code Orange still sucks.” The first statement is confusing, considering their last album, Underneath, was the biggest of their career, released on March 13, 2020, and helped spawn the livestream music era. It also got them onto 2021 support tours for Korn and Slipknot, undeniably two of the country’s biggest metal acts. Redarding the second point, if Code Orange’s new music isn’t for you, that’s fine. There are a million homogenous California beatdown bands’ demos for you to choose from, only for you to forget about when the next ones come out after those, and so on and so on. But Code Orange is clearly doing something unique; they always have been (cue astronaut meme). It is palpable how much effort and energy they put into this music if you really listen to it. I mean, they got fucking Billy Corgan to sing the bridge on “Take Shape.” Not any bullshit band can do that; only a 1000% dedicated band gets that kind of co-sign. And Code Orange is absolutely deserving of it.

Logan Archer Mounts – @VERTICALCOFFIN


Three Chords and Some Bullshit

A lot of people on the internet are talking about Jason Aldean’s new song “Try That in a Small Town,” calling it racist, White Nationalist propaganda that stokes and cultivates an ever-widening division between rural American conservatives and… everyone else in the country. Honestly, I’m just astounded anyone can hear it at all, given that it is composed entirely of dog whistles. Now, I personally agree that this song is probably racist, but bad-faith actors note how there is nothing particularly racist about the song’s lyrical content, so I won’t try to tackle that. Here’s what I will say instead:

Jason Aldean lives in the city–my city. We both are transplants in Nashville, sporting cowboy hats and making country music (I write my own songs, though). But get this, I’m from a small town of 600 people, while he is from Macon, Georgia–population: 153,095. He’s not afraid of the city. He’s only ever lived in the city. He’s nothing but a right-wing grifter. Aldean knows his fans are bootlickers who are afraid of everything Fox News tells them to be afraid of. He’s a phony who would never want to actually live in the country. But he knows what he’s doing, and it’s given him a #1 country song. The song sucks though, and anyone with an ounce of integrity knows the song sucks. Three chords and some bullshit. I’ll say though–if this song keeps Aldean’s fearful fans at his bar on Broadway and away from all the other parts of Nashville, I reckon it’s doing some good.

Russ Finn – @russfinn


Message to Snail Mail

Snail Mail recently posted an Instagram Story claiming that we must “bring back hating on things”... Miss Mail, I couldn't agree more! For starters, I hate your attitude; I hate that you posted a pretty gracious Pitchfork profile of you years after it happened and called the writer a “huge cunt;” I hate how rude you were when you played Chicago on tour with JPEGmafia and Turnstile last October, snapping at your guitar tech, snapping at the sound guy, snapping at the audience saying “fuck all of this;” I hate that you posted yourself on Instagram posing with a handgun in rural Nevada–Lindsey, you went to private school in Baltimore! My culture is not your costume! But most of all, I think if you’re going to behave like a snotty little irresponsible rockstar, you should at least make music that is good enough to justify that behavior. Because I hate, hate, Snail Mail’s music, not just the most recent record, but all of it, from the goopy insubstantial beginnings to the limp and insipid present, and have no reason to revisit or reconsider unless you undergo rapid character development. Being kind isn’t a rockstar characteristic, but it is cool in its own way. Try it; you might like it. Godspeed!

Elizabeth – @OneFeIISwoop


What’s more important? Your own self-importance or the audience's? (Or "How I learned to hate Miranda Lambert")

I'm very happy to have the opportunity to "go off" this month, but when rattlin' my noggin for what I wanted to write about, I thought of everything I could possibly hate. However, for some reason, the same stupid bullshit continued coming up in every space in my life. People were talking about it at work. My server was talking about it at the restaurant. My mom even asked me about it. By "it," I'm begrudgingly referring to the moment country pop star Miranda Lambert stopped her show in Las Vegas because a group of women in her VIP section started taking a group photo—seemingly a completely unimportant and uninteresting moment in pop music. Unfortunately, parents and grandparents across the corn fields of Ohio (Where I happen to be) took this as a sign of her love for genuine human connection, or as I see it, her hatred of it. I don't have any strong feelings toward pop music in general, and I usually disregard any "news" involving such people. This time was different because of how inescapable it was. Everyone had an opinion. Some of which were kissing her (cowboy) boots. 

Aloe Weetman – @aloe_wise


We Will Not Be Rehabilitating Everyone’s Taste For Buckcherry

We’ve been going through an odd resurgence of late. The Will Yip-core edge of every modern punk adjacent band's new release has whet the appetite for 90s grunge/alt-rock sonics and aesthetics. This was inevitable, hell I’d even say understandable as the internet cycles through everything that has come before, as well as people and bands having been unabashed with their inspirations and even deep fondness for everything from Nu metal to Creed in recent years. Has it become a bit rote and tired? Sure. All this I can abide, even though I feel like I’ve been hearing the same album in slightly different fonts all year, but sometimes that's how the green screen background music video rolls. However, we can’t simply roll over and let this spirited go at revisionist history convince both newer music fans and older heads alike that they can feel good about enjoying Buckcherry. Buckcherry is awful. And not in the fun Nickelbacky it’s-kind-of-bad-but-it’s-actually-a-banger type of way. Buckcherry is just downright dog tripe. How far are we willing to fall here? Buckcherry’s primary claim to fame is their boring and repetitive single “Crazy Bitch.” This misogynistic and deeply questionable regaling of sexual coercion isn’t just dog water as a piece of art but also has a dodgy history featuring a minor in their sexually explicit behind-the-scenes short showing the making of the music video. How this band is still around isn’t baffling to me, but seeing the slow creep of rewritten love and acknowledgment of grunge and alt-rock bands like Staind and Creed, leads me to believe we’re only a viral trend away from Ed Hardy hats and Affliction jeans worming their way back into the public zeitgeist. I am begging everyone to just bedazzle their own headwear and denim, and please leave this withered, sunbleached garbage lost to the sepia-tinted wastelands of 2000s hard rock.

Elias Amini – @letsgetpivotal

Sinai Vessel – Tangled | Single Review

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Self-Released

Wednesday… MJ Lenderman… Indigo De Souza. Within the last few years, the Asheville music scene has been absolutely overflowing with incredible art, and it’s time we talk about it. Having been to Asheville exactly once in my life, I’m sure it’s always been that way, but it wasn’t until recently that the town has found itself on the lips of every music blog and indie kid with a penchant for twang and slide guitar. Beneath the Dead Oceans/ANTI-/Saddle Creek tier of rising rockstars are lowkey hidden gems like Sluice and Broken Family – somewhere between these is Sinai Vessel.

Sinai Vessel is the formerly emo, now folksy indie rock band of Caleb Cordes and an artist that I’ve personally brought up in conversation with some of Asheville’s best. The project first wound up on my radar back in 2020 with the jaw-dropping LP Ground Aswim, which wound up being one of my favorites of the year. Even as an election and the pandemic suspended the world into a dizzying stasis, I found time to sit with Ground Aswim and find peace in its calming shores. Cordes, in turn, took the time to give his album the love it deserved. One Bandcamp Friday, fans were treated to a solitary track-for-track demo version of the album and, later, a 2019 live performance showcasing early versions of select songs. Both of these collections rendered the original album in a new light and, when played in proximity, let the listener in on both Cordes’ creative process and the evolution of these songs. Ground Aswim was immortalized on vinyl, cassettes, and a zine, all released independently, nothing short of a feat in the increasingly monopolized music landscape. One year later, Cordes made his final statement on this body of work with “Swimming,” a single-song coda that marked a definitive end to this sprawling collection of songs. 

At the end of 2021, Cordes released a handful of tracks on SoundCloud plainly labeled “LP4 Demos.” Expectantly sparse and surprisingly stark, these five songs offered a workshop-like glimpse at what was coming next for the project. By releasing these songs publicly, Cordes also continued the trend of letting the listener in on his songwriting process, this time seemingly as it was happening. Now, a year and a half later, we have “Tangled,” the first real taste of what the future holds for Sinai Vessel.

The track begins with a bouncy acoustic sway that feels like a natural extension of the guitar-based LP4 Demos we’ve already heard. The first thing this instrumental reminded me of was the bright, sunny tone of the last Hovvdy album, which wound up being an apt comparison when I learned that the song was produced and engineered by Bennett Littlejohn, known for his recent work with Hovvdy, Katy Kirby, and Claire Rousay.

Cordes wastes no time jumping into things, singing, “sitting around and waiting / waiting to get fired.” Whether fueled by self-doubt, the worry we’ve done something wrong, or just anxiety from the increasingly unstable teeter-totter of capitalism, this is a looming sense of dread we’ve all probably experienced at some point in our professional careers. It’s funny and apropos because this is something I’ve felt acutely in recent weeks as my day job has slowed to a crawl, and I’ve felt less productive than I have all year. Perhaps it’s just summer doldrums, but to hear such a specific worry reflected back at me felt very cosmic and well-timed.

The lyrics go on to depict the relationship between mind and body, talking about how one informs the other but can sometimes relay or retain the wrong thing. From there, the third verse delves into the messiness of modern communication and misinterpretation, while the final lines articulate a unique brand of self-inflicted paranoia. The back half of the song touches on this rush of topics and wraps up mid-beat in a way that leaves you on the edge of your seat, waiting to hear what comes next. Cordes offers no solution to these problems, at least not on this song, but “Tangled” sure does an excellent job of making the listener's worries feel heard. 

By depicting this messy web of concerns, both real and imagined, Cordes lets them all float out of his mind and into the ether. We live in an era of intersecting apocalypses, and sometimes it can feel like tearing yourself apart just trying to figure out what to focus on. No one person has all the answers, but we do have each other, and while these aren’t all problems that can be “solved,” the first step towards tackling any of them is to lay them all out, just as Sinai Vessel does over the course of these three minutes. We’ll figure out what comes next together.