Crush Fund – New Fixation | EP Review

Blixworld Records

I do not dance. Whenever I try to dance at a show, I feel deeply self-conscious as I shuffle my feet back and forth in a box the width of my shoulders and swing my arms out of time with the band. So I don’t dance. I do, however, find catharsis in diving into the pit occasionally. I enjoy writhing around in a mass of humanity that swirls me across the floor regardless of where I want to be. Diving into the pit is cathartic because it lets me release control of my body. I don’t have a chance to get self-conscious about my dance moves because I’m more worried about staying on my feet. 

I’ve seen Crush Fund ten times since they released their debut EP, Drama, back in 2021, and I love that their shows offer a chance for trans girls to experience liberation. Even still, I’ve never been the one to start the pit, even when they tried to peer-pressure me into it the time I saw them in D.C. But the first time I put on New Fixation, I felt compelled to dance. Any moment I found myself alone, be it in the office, the bathroom, the elevator, or the kitchen, was a chance to two-step to “Womanhood.” Only one other album has triggered this impulse: Gel’s Only Constant.

The songs on New Fixation are manifestations of the pure reactionary impulse that comes from roiling under the patriarchy. The EP’s centerpiece, “Unwanted Attention,” features vocalist and drummer Nora Knox gazing back at someone treating her like a piece of meat over a knotty, bouncy riff on the verses before things escalate to a boiling hardcore chorus. The first time the chorus comes around, we only get one run-through of it, just a taste of the feeling of pushing back, so when they immediately go into the second verse, we’re already craving another chance to shout, “fuck you! Get off my dick!” It’s a fabulous pop songwriting trick tucked into a song you can two-step with.

My favorite track is “Tender is the Night” for how it turns being desperately horny into a minute and a half of pit-churning fury. In the first verse, Knox details an illicit tryst in the park that quickly dissolves to reveal it is a masturbatory fantasy. The choruses don’t just revel in that solo pleasure; each repetition of the cyclical guitar and bass hectically races towards collapse, and each bar adds another layer of Knox’s vocals, all coming together to mimic the taut, singular sensation of the body and mind being overwhelmed by pure feeling until she finally cries out, “right there!” The short stop between the second chorus and coda is a satisfactory reprieve, a chance to catch your breath. 

While “Tender is the Night'' is all about reaching satisfaction, “W.W.Y.D.” offers no reprieve as it crams a panic attack into each 5/4 bar. Each chorus ends with the instruments piled up on each other like a car wreck before pulling themselves back together. The song is a neverending cycle of doubt in yourself and desperation for someone to tell you what to do. “W.W.Y.D.” is a song trying its hardest to keep you from dancing, but you just can’t be stopped. 

This is the beauty of Crush Fund’s version of dance music. It taps into your impulses and gives you a chance to hand off control of your body to the beat. New Fixation is an offer to dance yourself clean of your frustrations.

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Lillian Weber is a fake librarian in NYC. She writes about gender, music, and other inane thoughts on her substack, all my selves aligned. You can follow her burner account on twitter @Lilymweber 

Rosali – Bite Down | Album Review

Merge Records

There’s something unshakably elemental about Rosali Middleman’s music. Maybe it’s the pastoral greens she uses to color her album covers or the sweeping, naturalistic lyrics she uses to flesh out her music. Or at least when I’m listening to her rage and writhe around with her backing band, Mowed Sound, thoughts of weather are conjured. If 2021’s No Medium was a whirling storm, then Rosali’s new album, Bite Down, is the waves settling back into place, finding a rhythm that’s confident and precise. 

Bite Down finds Rosali in a new place, both figuratively and literally. In the time since her last record, she’s relocated from Philly to Asheville, something we’ve all considered doing, or maybe that’s just me. Either way, the serenity of the Blue Ridge Mountains seems to be rubbing off on her, as her fourth LP is filled with early morning music that begs you to sit on the porch with your coffee and look out at the leaves while you consider life’s possibilities. It’s funny because the album cover is unnerving, featuring a wide-eyed Rosali grinning through a shroud of leaves, resulting in a spectral sensation that goes against the grain of the naturalistic feeling found in the music. 

This meditative sentiment is captured perfectly on the album’s closer, “Make It An Offer,” as Rosali ponders, “And I’ll sit for hours gazing at the light. And I do wonder and waste my life. No, I don’t wonder if I waste my life.” The real waste is to allow these thoughts of doubt to cloud your mind. “There is hope upon me. There is reason to try,” reminds Rosali. This instinct to persevere is also present on the album’s emotional centerpiece, “Hills On Fire,” which finds Rosali pursuing love in a world that’s burning as she sings, “Hills on fire and still we climb.” Both of these songs feature mid-tempo arrangements, spotlighting her lyrics and matching the contemplative state that she finds herself in.

While the album has a wealth of soft and tender-hearted lyrics, this is far from a sleepy affair; throughout the album's 45-minute runtime, the group finds plenty of time to let loose with instrumentals that simmer and explode. Rosali and her band put together one hell of a bar rocker with “My Kind,” where she expresses her frustration of having fumbled the bag, pleading, “How am I gonna live without you?” The tightly wound “Slow Pain” shoots off sparks of guitars before igniting into a full blaze of captivating soloing. On penultimate track, “Change Is In the Form,” Rosali’s selflessness as a collaborator is on full display as she steps aside to let guitarists James Schroeder and David Nance take center stage with their dueling pyrotechnics.

None of this would be possible without the deepened collaboration between Rosali and her backing band, Mowed Sound. On No Medium, they were crafting turbulent country rockers in the vein of Neil Young and Crazy Horse, but on Bite Down, they play like a school of fish, moving together as one, yet still each member to glint in the light. Rosali might have found herself in new surroundings for this record, but the amazing thing is, you can't tell. Even more settled in and communal than her last release, Rosali seems to have found a place that feels like home.

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Connor is an English professor in the Bay Area, where he lives with his partner and their cat and dog, Toni and Hachi. When he isn’t listening to music or writing about killer riffs, Connor is reading fiction and obsessing over sports.

The Best of Q1 2024

Today means something different to everybody. To some, April 1 is a fun day for goofs and gags; to others, it’s just another day we have to pay rent. To obsessive music writers, today marks the official beginning of “Q2” 2024. I know that makes me sound like a business bro or some hotshot market analyst, but I’ve found increasing validity in breaking up the year into four even chunks like this. Not only does this cadence make me more mindful of the passage of time, but it also acts as the perfect vantage point to look back and take stock of what has happened over the last few months.

Whenever I talk to people, even the biggest music nerds, a common sentiment is the feeling that it’s harder than ever to “keep up” with new music. I agree, but I also think that feeling means you’re putting too much pressure on yourself. Every week is an avalanche of new music, and it can be overwhelming to keep up with. Throw in the constant stream of new singles, music videos, tour announcements, splits, interviews, podcasts, and month-long album rollouts, and it’s no wonder why fandom can start to turn back on itself and feel like a job. 

I’m of the mind that if you’re feeling that pressure, you need to reframe your relationship with music. New music will always be there, and you can’t possibly listen to everything. We here at Swim Into The Sound are passionate music geeks. We love sifting through press releases and keeping track of album cycles. We make playlists and try our hardest to check out new music each Friday. Sometimes, we take a month off, but it always comes back to our obsession and love for music in (hopefully) equal measure.

What follows is a collection of our staff’s favorite albums from the first three months of 2024. Each writer has selected one release that they’ve been gravitating towards, all in the hopes that you will find something new to love or check out. Thanks to a massive influx of new writers, our team, and our taste has never been so diverse. You’ll see everything here, from throat-shredding heavy metal to laid-back lounge fare, twinkling emo, and pastoral indie rock. Go check these records out, save a few, and check them out in your own time. No matter how well you’re staying “up” on the new stuff, we hope you find something here to adore as much as we have. 

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Cheekface – It’s Sorted

Self-released

As a Cheekface superfan, It's Sorted is not exactly the album I wanted… It's better than that. I think I wanted them to keep making the same irreverent indie rock album that made me fall in love with them (Emphatically No.) over and over again until it stopped hitting the same. Cult followings of indie artists can be a bit like stubborn children who don't know what's good for them. Instead, Cheekface gave me new things I didn't know I wanted: shiny pop productions to go with the big pop hooks, big vocal stacks, Metallica worship, a surprisingly vulnerable acoustic(ish) moment, and, "wait a minute, did you just trick me into liking ska?" Believe it or not, It's Sorted is the band's most cohesive record yet. The songs explore themes of identity in a country where we are often defined by our jobs (or something like that). While the production often takes wild creative liberties in different directions, it is always with purpose that serves the song (producers of songwriters, take note). The qualities that make Cheekface Cheekface are alive and well on It's Sorted. If anything, they are flexing (Mandy Tannen's basslines really are their largest muscle, haha) that Cheekface has gotten even better at being themselves. Ever since I found out that frontman Greg Katz has a degree in philosophy, I have been joking that Cheekface is like a modern Socrates. The band never really tells you what they think explicitly, but their lyrics will make YOU think, whether you like it or not. And I do.

Katie McTigue - @pacingmusic

Read our review of It’s Sorted here.

Faye Webster – Underdressed at the Symphony

Secretly Canadian

After a stint of TikTok virality that seemed to be handpicked by the Algorithm Gods themselves, part of me wondered if a Faye Webster pivot was on the horizon. I was painfully aware of the primarily teenaged crowd watching the show through their phone screens at Webster’s Brooklyn Steel show last October and was curious if there was a part of Webster (or the Business Folk backing her) that wanted to lean into this demo to take advantage of the moment. Luckily for us, that’s not the way things rolled out. 

Webster’s Underdressed at the Symphony sees a seasoned jazz pop veteran lean into the niches that make her great—trance-like jazz interludes and conversationally quippy lyrics—while also widening her sound through heavy synth leans, vocoders, and lyrical repetition. The record is a collection of songs about losing yourself (“Wanna Quit All the Time”), finding yourself (“Feeling Good Today”), and what happens in the in-between (“eBay Purchase History”). Webster paints a picture of her ever-changing state of mind while simultaneously leaving listeners enough room to fill in the blanks for themselves through vague enough lyrics and uncrowded instrumentation. Webster’s lyrics feel like you’re a fly on the wall of her internal monologue: half are things she’d say out loud, and half are thoughts she keeps to herself (two of my favorite lines being “And I’m looking at you talk like okay / Your eyes are so pretty by the way” on “eBay Purchase History” and “I’m feeling good today / I ate before noon / I think that’s pretty good for me” on “Feeling Good Today”). Webster packs this record with things that shouldn’t go together but do: cutesy-bop interludes, jammy synth loops, full-blown orchestras, existential crises, a Lil Yachty feature, and that classic almost-Hawaiian guitar tone we all know and love. Truly something for everyone from the reluctant queen of mellow pop. 

Cassidy Sollazzo - @cassidynicolee_

Flesh Tape – Flesh Tape

Power Goth Recordings

Flesh Tape’s self-titled record was the first thing that I bought on Bandcamp in 2024, and it’s endured as my favorite release of the year so far. It’s great, noisy guitar rock music that makes me wish I owned bigger speakers. Since this cassette came through in the mail, I’ve been listening to it front to back nearly nonstop while playing Madden, letting the massive wall of distorted guitars take me away as I throw interception after interception. I have some stuff from Nothing and Hotline TNT in a similar rotation, and I think Flesh Tape fully stands next to them as a band in that lane. In particular, the back half of this record is incredibly strong, with “Catalytic Converter” and “Sunny” landing as my two standout tracks.

Josh Ejnes - @JoshEjnes

Friko – Where we’ve been, where we go from here

ATO Records

Recently on Twitter dot com, I saw Jordan Walsh say that the new Friko album, Where we’ve been, where we go from here, would fit seamlessly with the early 2000s Saddle Creek catalog. As I’ve listened to this album over and over and over, I haven’t been able to get that comparison out of my head. The Chicago band’s frontman, Niko Kapetan, channels all the best parts of a young Conor Oberst’s urgency, loquacity, and recklessly wobbly vocals. At the same time, drummer Bailey Minzenberger drives the songs forward with fervor and no shortage of delightfully messy cymbals. Clever time signature changes keep tracks like “Crimson to Chrome” and “Get Numb To It!” fresh where so many folky-emo bands have stumbled into monotony, and the lullaby-like “For Ella” and “Until I’m With You Again” follow haunting piano melodies down to the band’s tender core. While Friko forge a sound undeniably all their own, strands of my youth’s bygone styles have tied this comforting, chaotic record up as my favorite so far this year.

Katie Wojciechowski - @ktewoj

Read our review of Where we’ve been, where we go from here here.

From Flowers to Flies – We Built This Machine

Broken Windmill Music

It’s only natural to occasionally wonder where the people you went to school with ended up. I often think back to my time attending my alma mater, Sonoma State University, and the people I walked the halls of our music building with fondly. To my surprise, earlier this year, I discovered that three of those classmates, along with another friend, started a band together and released one of the most engaging and complex records I have heard thus far in 2024. Across every second of its uninhibited 45-minute runtime, listeners can expect prog-rock sensibilities, improvisational brass solos, scream vocals, variations of the Dies irae (to my absolute delight), and so much more. When a handful of incredibly skilled, dedicated music majors get together in a studio, the end result is, unsurprisingly, one of the most versatile and detailed rock-fusion records you’ll ever hear. Jam-packed with subtle references to their countless influences and overlapping eras of music, We Built This Machine stands as a brooding, genre-fluid experience from the heavy-hitting newcomers to the DIY music scene, From Flower to Flies. 

Ciara Rhiannon - @rhiannon_comma

glass beach – plastic death

Run for Cover Records

plastic death is a summer album. Who cares that it was released in January? This is the perfect soundtrack for a June evening, driven with the windows down while blasting this beautifully rambunctious album. The opening track, “coelacanth,” has my heart as it features a wonderful piano accompaniment, but the following tracks, “rare animal” and “commatose” are equally compelling. glass beach has done a fantastic job of expanding upon their previous album’s sound by pushing their technical and creative abilities, challenging the listener as they lead you through an hour of rhythmically complex and harmonically lush music. Whether you enjoy post-punk, shoegaze, fifth-wave emo, or an even more niche internet genre, plastic death offers all that and so much more.

Britta Joseph - @brittajoes

Read our review of plastic death here.

girlsnails – california kickball

Self-released

In a year of highly anticipated releases, the debut LP by girlsnails stood highest among them. After stumbling across their 2019 self-titled EP last spring, I was immediately enraptured and impatiently awaited what was next from the Surrey/Vancouver, BC band. Delivering equal parts math rock and emo, the album leans into those genres but also plays loosely at their edges. The vocal work and albums’ mathier moments feel like a cross between Laufey’s stylistic jazz melodies and the more technical pieces of the American Football discography. With papercut penmanship, the band embraces a confessional diary-style lyricism that veers gently into abstraction more than once as the earnest pangs of regret peal in almost crystalline purity. Whether it's the tumbling finger dynamics and clear, lilting vocals on “ramune” or the immense instrumental builds and vocals runs on “say square,” california kickball is a run of just quality, occasionally anthemic, and frequently beautiful, jazzy, mathy emo that’s just as technically impressive as it is pleasant. For long walks where you can see your breath or half cloudy days spent lying in the grass, girlsnails has you covered. 

Elias Amini - @letsgetpivotal

Glitterer – Rationale

Anti-

I’m a little shocked to say that Glitterer’s third record, Rationale, is my favorite of the year so far, given I was never a Title Fight girlie. These songs sucker-punch punks with pop perfection. My favorite track, “No One There,” smuggles one of the best hooks of the year under the guise of a vocal cord-straining shout of the title. Not only are the songs catchy as hell, but the hooks are full of probing questions about how best to exist around each other. From the incredible one-two of “There I was again / making everything about me in the end,” which opens the album, to the life-affirming “this is what I’m supposed to do / nothing else I know is true / ‘cause passion is arbitrary” on “The Same Ordinary.” If you’re craving pit-stirring shout-alongs, Glitterer has you covered.

Lillian Weber - @Lilymweber

Gulfer – Third Wind

Topshelf Records

I’m starting to get the sense that emo music isn’t the coolest genre in the world. It's embarrassing, unsustainable, and not a label that many bands lean into or wear with pride. When I first discovered Gulfer back in 2018, Dog Bless quickly became a formative math rock release, an album that also felt like it capped off an era of emo in a way that is really only visible in retrospect. One pandemic later, Gulfer has released a self-titled record, a split, and a handful of sparkling singles that all built out the Montréal group’s precise sound. Turns out that was also the proper amount of time to marinate and mutate into something that pushes far beyond the restrictive realms of emo or math rock. Third Wind is a spectacular indie rock album that sees a band exploring the bounds of their influences to create something wholly unique in a space where that sort of exploration is not always well-received or rewarded. There’s so much to love here: the immaculate poppy sensibility of “Clean,” the autotuned articulation of the climate crisis on “Cherry Seed,” the hardcore outpouring of “Too Slow,” and the hypnotic repetition throughout “No Brainer.” How about the way lead singer Joe Therriault plays with his word choice on “Prove,” stretching the song's title out, lilting back and forth on the “oooooo” until it becomes completely unrecognizable. This is all backed by unparalleled instrumentation that, yes, has a background in emo and math rock, but also feels indebted to shoegaze and indie rock in a way that makes it feel far more than the sum of its parts. A new act for a band who already proved themselves to be some of the greatest to ever do it. 

Taylor Grimes - @GeorgeTaylorG

Read our review of Third Wind here.

Hannah Frances – Keeper of the Shepherd

Ruination Record Co.

Hannah Flores has been releasing emotionally naked folk records for over half a decade, reckoning with the loss of her father across five projects, but her latest feels like a reintroduction. On Keeper of the Shepherd, Frances doesn’t grab your attention so much as she takes your face in both hands and holds your head to hers. Take the opening track “Bronwyn,” where a full rock band crackles and coils around her multi-tracked howls in an all-consuming whirlwind that calls to mind the best of fellow full-voiced powerhouses such as Weyes Blood or even Joni Mitchell. Repeated Christian imagery throughout the deceptively jaunty title track and “Vacant Intimacies” captures how truly distant the love of God can feel beside the fresh absence of someone whose love was tangible. Yet each of these seven songs comes with a personal revelation on how to live not just with loss but how to live as your own person. There’s a tendency in art to mythologize suffering, but Keeper of the Shepherd is a document of healing and moving forward. Hannah Frances knows that the most beautiful art often comes from a place of clarity and confidence that suffering cannot support, which is why on “Haunted Landscape, Echoing Cave,” even as she mirrors the climax of its bookend, she simply declares, “I am leaving.” We’d all be wise to follow her. 

Wes Cochran - @ohcompassion

Knifeplay – Pearlty (2024 Remaster)

Topshelf Records

Knifeplay’s uniquely raw and emotional shoegaze is the perfect soundscape for quiet days inside, long car rides in dreary weather, and abrupt moments of self-understanding. Pearlty originally came out in March of 2019, only about 1,800 short days ago. In that time, Knifeplay has accomplished the difficult feats of releasing their 2nd full-length album, getting signed to a label, and remastering an already amazing album. The timing of the remaster is a bit poignant to me because I started graduate school around the time Pearlty came out. The album is so heavy with emotion that it could drown me if I let it. It’s sonically in the sweetest spot of ambient and active. My personal favorite songs to get lost in are “Suffer” and “Lemonhead,” both of which are just long enough to fully re-contemplate dropping out of school for the nth time. Pearlty’s remaster has given me some new perspective on my “life timeline” and has soothed months of accumulated burnout. It is a beautiful product of a band’s attention to the details of their craft, and for me personally, it is a signpost that says, “Five years down, you’re almost there.”

Braden Allmond - @BradenAllmond

Tapir! – The Pilgrim, Their God and the King of My Decrepit Mountain

Heavenly Recordings

Somewhere in the confluence of centuries of myth and folk music is Tapir! (exclamation point required). After unfolding over the past couple of years, the London six-piece strives heavenward on The Pilgrim, Their God and the King of My Decrepit Mountain, their debut record presented as a three-act musical quest. The first two “acts,” released in 2023, fell under my radar, so I encountered the LP in continuity, not piecemeal — I encourage you to do the same. Not because Tapir!’s pastoral anthems can’t stand on their own, but because of the feeling that flows in as the final chord of the 7-minute closer “Mountain Song” rings out. The band recognizes the subservience of narrative to composition and allows the orchestration to speak for itself. Lore and lyrics capture equal aspects of the story being told; the group is wise enough to opt for balance over proggy density. As they swim through seas of sound and summit the grassy knoll, the listener is guided every step of the way by a comforting presence, ephemeral and silent. Get lost in the fantastic, knowing Tapir! will help you safely return from your travels.

Aly Muilenburg - @purityolympics

Read our review of The Pilgrim, Their God and the King of My Decrepit Mountain here.

Theophonos – Ashes In The Huron River

Profound Lore

Absolute societal degenerate type shit. Years-long diet of sewer rats type shit. Prison stabbing blood loss type shit. Seedy cult ritual docuseries type shit. Black tar cartwheel type shit. Scanners-level cranial burst type shit. Sludge-flooded dungeon type shit. Crime scene photo developer type shit. Wearing the skin of your enemies type shit. Kool-Aid Man Kamikaze piloting himself into the walls of the factory that made him type shit. Convicted criminal pump-up playlist type shit. Thinking about car bombing the DMV type shit. Nightmarish boss battle type shit. Hydroplaning into Hell type shit. Boot-stamping every proud boy in the tri-state area type shit. Laser removing a tattoo you got to cover up the scar of an unconventional piercing type shit.

Logan Archer Mounts - @VERTICALCOFFIN

Waxahatchee – Tigers Blood

Anti-

The sixth album from Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield, Tigers Blood, brings the singer/songwriter’s country sensibilities to the forefront. While it's not the first Waxahatchee record to draw upon Crutchfield’s Southern upbringing, the feeling is omnipresent throughout this album. Deep into her career, Crutchfield’s songwriting continues to get better and better. In addition to the wildly catchy singles, Tigers Blood is full of great tracks, one after the other. Additionally, Crutchfield’s phenomenal voice is aided throughout the album by the recurring presence of MJ Lenderman on guitar and backing vocals. We may only be a quarter of the way through the year, but Tigers Blood has set the bar high for 2024.

Nick Miller - @nickmiller4321

Yard Act – Where’s My Utopia? 

Island Records

Everyone I know had a shit winter. Whether you’ve got SAD or are just sad, the lonely months seem to hit deep this year. All winter, I was grabbing for fuzzy comforts like Greg Mendez, Nirvanna The Band The Show, or the “Hell Naw” dog. I was trying to shake the doldrums, but nothing could get ‘em loose – until I listened to Yard Act’s riotous, effusive, and nimble new record. Plenty of punk-adjacent bands have made their dance records in the past few years (Turnover and Parquet Courts being the ones to commit the hardest), but nothing has been as wide-open, voracious, and filled with pure joy as this record. It’s the celebration of reinvention, an ode to the bloom. It’s filled to the brim with danceable hooks – like the chorus of “Dream Job,” which sounds like a sample from an iconic disco song that doesn’t exist, or the earwormy, ever-descending chorus of “Petroleum” – because, as spelled out in lead single “We Make Hits,” “We’re all gonna sink. And we just wanna have some fun before we’re sunk.” Where’s My Utopia? answers its titular question with a shapeshifting joy-spreader of an album. It’s an intellectual, physical, and emotional utopia that can only be found on the dance floor. An invitation to shake the doldrums while we still can. 

Joshua Sullivan - @brotherheavenz

Swim Into The Sound Acquired by Condé Nast

WILMINGTON, NC and NEW YORK, NY, Monday, April 1, 2024 

Condé Nast announced today its acquisition of Swim Into The Sound, the leading provider of emo album reviews, DIY music takes, and semi-professional write-ups. Swim Into The Sound will be the latest brand added to the company’s media portfolio, existing alongside relatively esteemed publications like Pitchfork, WIRED, and Gentleman’s Quarterly. As part of this transition, all of Swim Into The Sound’s content will be brought over to Bon Appétit due to a massive overlap in audience.

Founded by Taylor Grimes in 2015, Swim Into The Sound is a music blog focused on emo, punk, and independent music. Through in-depth and uniquely voiced reporting, the site dives into the culture and stories of the music industry, providing a distinct and authoritative point of view. 

Grimes will move to a senior position within Condé Nast as part of the acquisition, along with the small handful of writers who agreed to stay through the transition. On the acquisition, Condé Nast said today in a press release:

“Swim Into The Sound is one of the least-respected music publication brands and seamlessly complements Pitchfork and Ars Technica to create the premier group of leading editorial brands covering the emerging dork-emo music sector,” said Deborah Brett, Global Chief Business Officer of Condé Nast. “Swim Into The Sound’s unique and moderately engaged audience of music enthusiasts also creates new opportunities for our advertisers.”

When asked about the acquisition and whether or not this went against his blog’s stated ideals, Grimes had this to say from behind a pair of Balenciaga shades:

“Fuck y'all. I got my bag, I'm out! Have fun squabbling on Twitter, I’m going to go live on a man-made island off the coast of Mexico, see you in the funny papers!” He then proceeded to blow a puff of cigar smoke in our reporter’s face before cackling and peeling out of our parking lot in a 2024 McLaren 750S, adorned with a bumper sticker reading ‘eat my dust, jabronis.’

Cheem – Fast Fashion | EP Review

Lonely Ghost Records

A couple of years ago, I decided to make the journey from Los Angeles to Sacramento to stay with some friends, using a Coheed and Cambria show in Berkeley as the perfect excuse for a little cross-state adventure. In an attempt to keep travel expenses down and being the perpetually car-less wonder that I am, this trek was to be made via Greyhound bus. Traveling from LA to Sacramento on a public bus is just about the longest trip you could possibly imagine, which necessitated an equally long and engaging collection of songs to pass the time as I took in the great, wide nothingness of central California farmland. 

It's no secret that I love making playlists, especially for travel, so before that trip, I decided to make a collaborative playlist and asked friends to add whatever they were jamming to at the time. Among the additions to this playlist, my friend Sierra of the New Jersey band With Sails Ahead added a song called “Pay2Play” by this band Cheem who had somehow completely slipped under my radar. If their name and bright, stylistic album cover weren’t enough to pique my interest, the music itself felt like dunking my brain in Liz Blizz flavor SoBe and impaling it like the Neversoft eyeball logo that pops up before the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater title screen. 

Listening to Cheem for the first time was like nothing I had ever experienced before – a seamless marriage of early aughts pop-punk vocals, nu-metal rapping, and the tightest rhythm section I had heard in ages. I was immediately arrested by how the band effortlessly shifted from hip-hop to ska to punk and myriad other genres, not only between songs but within the songs themselves. I’ve always found myself drawn to music that plays with various genres and subverts expectations, unafraid to test boundaries, and the way Cheem was not tethered to any one specific style quickly cemented them as one of my all-time favorites in the DIY scene. 

As the relationship between artist and listener has evolved in recent years with the advent and expansion of social media, the discussion of music classification rages on more fervently than ever before. Music fans have become so comfortable having instant access to the artists they listen to, and with that access comes the ability to make these artists aware of every conceivable opinion a listener could have on their music, unfortunately including this onslaught of hot genre takes. I consistently see this happening to the band pulses. and the endless list of genres they are told they are despite being very clear about how they classify themselves. Cheem is another one of these bands that is constantly testing the limits of genre classification. 

The members of Cheem have clearly grown up with an appreciation for multiple genres of music, and you can hear that love incorporated in their songs. In the past, I’ve described them as “a jazz band disguised as a nu-metal band disguised as a pop band.” Funky bass grooves, sharp and textured drum shuffles, heavy riffs, and the smoothest execution of the two-singer style – rapping blended with dynamic vocals reminiscent of a few particular pop-punk vocalists of yesteryear. Even within their last LP, Guilty Pleasure, their sense of style and genre is broken down and rebuilt countless times across the record’s 22-minute runtime. Cheem are a fierce amalgamation of the countless artists who have inspired them, and their latest EP release, Fast Fashion, maintains this versatile approach to their creative process, expanding on it in a fresh, explosive way. 

Immediately, listeners are thrown into this latest Cheem experience with a relentless, biting riff that is soon joined by the band’s rapper, Skye Holden, and it’s clear that “Bootleg” is nothing like the two singles that preceded the EP. Instead, it leans far more into the band’s heavy rock and hip-hop sensibilities, hitting me more like a song straight out of the Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island soundtrack. There’s a freedom in Cheem’s approach to style that allows for the most creative descriptors of their music that are never too far off the mark.

The groundwork laid in the intro track is juxtaposed by “Motorola Razr,” which perfectly encapsulates its name, boasting a distinct, mid-2000s sleekness. This track features the commanding and mesmerizing drumwork I’ve come to love from the band, frenzied pop vocals gliding over them, and irregular keyboard notes sending the listener back to a time when owning a flip phone was one’s coolest quality. Gabe Weitzman’s production on this EP amplifies each song’s most note-worthy aspects, particularly in how gorgeously every bass note and keyboard ping of “Motorola Razr” accents the main groove. The band packs their songs so neatly with various textures, and it's always a treat to hear tracks like this that let every single detail shine. 

The star of Fast Fashion for me, from first listen to every revisit, remains “Jock Horror.” It simultaneously reflects everything I love about Cheem’s signature style while continuing to defy expectations, and what we’re left with is a dark, cynical, hardcore banger. The thick textures are all there, from subtle electronic effects to consistent record scratches, all anchored by sporadic, distorted chords. Lead vocalist Sam Nazaretian’s buttery vocals sail across the pop straight-aways to balance out Skye’s harmonies and rap breaks. Approaching the end of the track, when you think there couldn’t possibly be any more surprises, Sam slides in with the cleanest “oooh girl” vocal lines I’ve ever heard. Even calling them an “earworm” is doing them a disservice. They are operating on a level as a singer that I genuinely believe future generations will look back on with the same reverence as Patrick Stump. “Jock Horror” delivers hip-hop sensibilities, hints of nu-metal, gnarly breakdowns, and more – a stylistic modern masterpiece that could be plucked from several different eras of music and is exactly what makes Cheem such a memorable act in our current musical landscape. I do think “all good things must end” because, unfortunately, this song does. 

This latest offering from Cheem acts as a powerful reminder that not only is genre usually an unnecessary way of defining music in our current climate, but in Cheem’s case, it makes absolutely no sense to confine them to any one specific box. As a writer who actively suppresses using the term “vibes” in her writing, I can’t help but describe this band as running purely on vibes alone. They don’t have time to concern themselves with inconsequential things like genre when they’re hard at work fabricating stylistic bangers straight from the Cheem pop factory. There is something in this EP for everyone, and contrary to what the title would suggest, Fast Fashion is a versatile and calculated collection of songs that will not be wearing out any time soon. 

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Ciara Rhiannon (she/her) is a pathological music lover writing out of a nebulous location somewhere in the Pacific Northwest within close proximity of her two cats. She consistently appears on most socials as @rhiannon_comma, and you can read more of her musical musings over at rhiannoncomma.substack.com.