Swim Into The Sound's Greatest Hits: A 400 Article Celebration

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With this post, Swim Into The Sound has officially published 400 articles! That’s pretty wild to me, especially considering we just hit 300 a year ago last May. Since we’ve celebrated 100 and 200 with similar fanfare, I figured it’s only fitting we continue the tradition and celebrate this as the landmark occasion that it is. Outside of just “cool number,” these intervals offer a nice reminder to look back and appreciate how much hard work has gone into this site and all the passion that’s helped us get here. 

Our first-ever review was published back in 2015, and while I don’t necessarily recommend you go back and read it, I think it’s important to recognize where you came from, so I’ll link it here for completeness’ sake. While I consider June 15th, 2015 to be the true birthday of this site, it wasn’t until 2016 that I really committed to updating it regularly. If you were curious to learn some stats, those 400 articles stretched across nine years add up to roughly 640k words. A majority of those have been written by me, but also includes dozens of other contributors, guest writers, and friends who have been kind enough to let me publish their work.

2024 has marked a bit of a sea change for this site as I move from Swim Into The Sound’s primary writer to more of an editor-in-chief-type role. Working with a team of writers that’s now 20- to 50-strong has been a blast because it’s allowed us to be more prolific than ever. There have already been several weeks this year where we’ve been publishing a review, round-up, or something every day, and that’s amazing to me. Not only has Swim Into The Sound been more relevant and up-to-date than ever, but it’s also felt amazing to connect so many writers with opportunities to write about music they’re passionate about. That’s why this whole thing exists. 

Speaking of which, I’m currently in the process of finishing up a bigger project, something more involved and more expansive than anything else this blog has ever published. So, when I’m not working my day job or editing other people’s work, that project is where most of my time and creative energy has gone. I’m beyond excited to share that in the coming weeks, but for now, I wanted to pause and reflect on the scope of 400 articles published over the course of nine years. 

While I’m immensely proud of this body of work, I also recognize that 400 articles is a lot of writing to chew through. Just look at this unwieldy page that lists everything in one place. I don’t think anyone besides me has read everything published on Swim, but if you’re out there, I want to meet you. Are all of those articles winners? No. Am I proud of them all? You bet your ass. It’s hard to quantify how much work goes into writing, editing, programming, and promoting an article. I do my best to make sure everything is said in earnest and that the music we cover is something I can put my weight behind, written about by people who mean it. 

Since there’s such an unwieldy amount of writing on this site, and we’ve been publishing more than ever before, I thought it might be nice to highlight some of my favorite things I’ve written over the last nine years. There’s always our Favorites tab, which is designed to showcase some of these articles, but I figured it could be fun to re-surface some of my personal favorites with a little bit of director’s commentary. I hope you enjoy this greatest hits collection, and if you’re reading this, thank you for supporting Swim Into The Sound and helping us get to 400 articles. I’ll see you when we break off the next hundo. 

Hey, did you guys know I like Wednesday? How about MJ Lenderman? Those two are some of my favorite artists currently working, and together, they’ve already made a sprawling collection of music that articulates a hyper-specific type of southern living. It’s desolate and dilapidated, collaborative and caring, humorous and honest, breathtaking and beautiful. This article attempts to recount my fandom of these two bands, their body of work, and the charming semi-fake cross-sectional genre their music has spawned. 

 

When it comes to writing about Sufjan Stevens, you know I had to lean in with a long-winded title and an overly-earnest explanation of my adoration. While I adore Carrie & Lowell, Illinois, and Age of Adz, I’ll always be a Michigan Boy in my heart of hearts. In this nearly 4k-word essay, I detail the hyper-specific way I fell into Sufjan’s music and delve directly into the masterwork that is his sophomore album. I even made a bunch of phone wallpapers out of the album art if that’s your type of thing. 

 

I love the indie/math rock outfit Minus The Bear. Throughout most of high school, college, and my twenties, I’d catch MTB in concert every time they came through Portland as they wound their way north back to Seattle. In this post, I rank all of their 11 official releases and use that as an opportunity to extol the virtues of various songs across their almost two-decade-long career. It’s long and heartfelt, but I still agree with the ranking to this day, so it’s nice to know I’m consistent.

 

An Introduction To Post-Rock

Post #132
Published April 24, 2020

I love putting people on. There’s no better feeling than recommending a band or album to someone and finding out that it connected. With this article, I wanted to give people an entry point into the post-rock genre. Since it’s largely instrumental and has tons of legacy acts, it can be hard to know exactly where to start with music like this, so I attempted to take my decades of fandom and hone down to an album (or two) from some of the genre’s most essential bands. The result was a collection of nine albums that will hopefully open the door to exploring each of these artist’s phenomenal discographies and the genre as a whole. 

 

Here is one of the first times I ever waded into music “theory” on this site. I say “theory” in quotes because it’s all very floaty pontificating, not music theory in the traditional, educational sense. Instead, what you get is a ten-point outline of how we come to like (or dislike) records. I pull from pop music, hip-hop, indie rock, and more to explore the concept of “growers” and how many extra-musical factors come into play with our fandom of any given artist. It’s a vaguely scientific analysis of what “liking” an album means, and I’m still proud of how thorough this feels.

 

It Gets Brown: Swim Into The Sound's Guide to Ween

Post #47
Published January 24, 2018

Have you ever wanted to get into Ween? You know, the glue-huffing Spongebob-adjacent duo that changed the face of Alternative Rock for a brief window back in the 90s? They have a massive body of work that is vibrant, goofy, and hard to pin down. Their early work is rough and haphazard, but their later work loses some of the group’s youthful shine. As such, they have an ambitious discography that can be difficult to navigate, but with this piece, I try to lay out a path for prospective listeners to jump into their music with both feet because I truly believe it’s a journey worth taking. 

 

The Wonder Years changed my life. Hearing The Upsides for the first time in my senior year of high school didn’t just comfort and compel me; it tipped life’s hand and let me know what I could expect throughout college and my early 20s. That band remains incredibly special to me, but their sophomore album will always be The One. If you want to learn why (or read about my failed high school relationship), this article is for you. 

 

I don’t write many anniversary pieces for this blog, but I have a special connection with Tunnel Blanket. The third album from post-rock mainstays This Will Destroy You is a largely wordless meditation on death, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a lot to say. I wound up writing this love letter to their seismic third album, and by the time I finished the first draft, I realized that the record just happened to have a birthday coming up. So, with that happy coincidence falling into my lap, everything lined up, and I published my first-ever anniversary review ten years on the dot.

 

Okay, let’s do a silly one. Back in 2018, Migos were untouchable. Everyone was listening to “Bad and Boujee,” doing the dab, and whipping up stir fry. In the midst of Migos Mania, the group released Culture II, a two-hour affair that packed 24 songs into one release, for better or worse. In listening to the whole thing, it’s hard to ignore how often Offset name-drops Patek Philippe. It’s such a distinct combination of words, and the rapper does deliver them well, but after a while, the name starts to lose all meaning. Here, I try to compile all of the rapper's references to the watch brand in an attempt to answer the question, “Does Offset own a Patek Philippe?” I also took a bunch of old Patek print ads and put Migos lyrics over them, so that’s still funny to me. 

 

Justin Vernon’s Ascent Into The Artificial

Post #99
Published April 7, 2019

Like any good Millennial, I have an unwavering affinity for Bon Iver. Like so many other people in 2007, I heard “Skinny Love,” and it shook me to my core. I followed his career closely, eventually culminating in an absolute masterwork with 22, A Million, an experimental and electronic album that couldn’t have sounded further from the folksy strums of his breakthrough. In this article, I chart that journey and make a case for both ends of this spectrum being equally beautiful.

 

I love Portugal. The Man. That’s a sentence that’s even more embarrassing to say now than it was back in 2017 when I wrote this article, but let me explain. PTM was one of the very first overtly “indie” bands I ever loved, and the fact that they’re essentially a Portland group filled me with an immense amount of hometown pride. I love their early proggy post-hardcore stuff, I adore their 2010s dips into psychedelia, and I even admire them for everything they’ve been able to achieve in the last half-decade since cementing themselves as an alternative rock mainstay. In this article, I rank every one of their studio albums, though, again, it was really an excuse to write about how much I adore each one of their records.

 

The Stark Maximalism of Sufjan Stevens

Post #119
Published January 7, 2020

Okay, one more Sufjan post. What can I say? The guy’s influential to me. Here, I focus on the Carrie & Lowell era as a suite of releases, stacking the original album side-by-side with the accompanying live album and collection of B-sides and demos released throughout the back half of the 2010s. What drew me to this body of work is how you can hear any given song scale up or down; you get these beautiful original versions on the LP, then bombastic renditions when performed live, and somehow even more quiet and careful versions when the same songs are in demo form. It’s a true marvel, and I’m grateful to follow an artist who treats his own work with this much reverence. 

 

My Favorite Type of Song

Post #214
Published November 19, 2021

We’ll end this with my favorite. Not necessarily my favorite thing I’ve ever written here, but a post about my favorite type of music. Specifically, a song that is long, winding, and wandering, preferably with a big, expansive, searching instrumental. It’s not quite a jam, but it’s not not a jam. In this post, I simply try to articulate what that feeling is and why it hits my brain so nicely. 

And there you have it: a baker’s dozen of essential Swim Into The Sound articles for your reading enjoyment. I hope you have had fun on this walk down memory lane, and thank you again for helping this site achieve such a landmark milestone. Now it’s onward to 500!

Pardoner, Nick Normal, Guitar, Shoplifter, Cherry Venom | Concert Review

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How does one find themselves at the White Eagle Polish Hall – a mid-size event space for weddings and semi-pro wrestling – in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, at 7 pm on a Thursday night? If that’s where SF punk stalwarts Pardoner are playing, that’s how! Pardoner kicked off their west coast tour with lo-fi shoegaze act Guitar and egg punk weirdo Nick Normal (both from PDX) in Vic on May 9th. Add on support from a couple of local bands – the up-and-coming Shoplifter and first-timers Cherry Venom – and you have a killer bill.

Victoria is a midsize city with an outsized music scene, and the locals’ craving for exhilarating live music is insatiable. But Victoria is also out of the way and seagirt, only accessible for touring bands by ferry, so Thursday night’s show did not come easy. It is thanks to Shoplifter’s Curtis Lockhart and his confidantes Cam and Amber that Pardoner and crew even made it here. The night embodied a real DIY ethos and made me proud of the Victoria music community.

Shoplifter

Opener Cherry Venom made their debut, a humble three-song set channeling the spirit of Kim Deal and Tanya Donelly. Miraculously, the band was immune to first-gig jitters and held a steady tempo, letting the melodic rhythms, roaring guitar, and stabbing bass have their space while the eponymous Cherry’s vocals teemed with righteous indignation. Setting the stage for Pardoner is a tall order for a first show, but they were up to the task.

Shoplifter is the aforementioned Curtis and Cam, joined by the inimitable Matt E on bass, who was pulling double duty with Cherry Venom. Evolving out of their pre-pandemic project Numbing, Shoplifter hypnotizes with drop D riffs that marry post-rock balladry with post-punk drive. Imagine if New Order and Unwound had a child who listens to a lot of Hotline TNT. Curtis’ understated demeanor couldn’t overshadow his enthusiasm – to be playing this gig, to be opening for Pardoner, to see the audience of friends and strangers who showed up for the endeavor. “This was a really hard show to put on...I’m a mess,” he said, sweat beading on his forehead. A subtle smile revealed his feeling of triumph as the band blasted into their final tune.

Middle acts Guitar and Nick Normal are a bonded pair—they share members and equipment, swapping band leaders and instruments between sets. Playing in a thousand different bands is a core part of being in a local scene, and this hodgepodge arrangement gave us Victorians a glimpse into the kindred Portland scene a few hundred miles down the coast.

Guitar

I was most curious to see Guitar live – they’re the solo project of Saia Kuli, and their recent release Casting Spells On Turtlehead garnered buzz for its unique contribution to the shoegaze boom. How would he recreate that brand of noisy, highly composed, layered bedroom recordings live? Against all expectations, Kuli opts for a kind of anti-Strokes approach, taking over lead vocals while his band cranks away. The songs translate well – two guitarists meander and mingle with heavy chorus pedal riffs, extended intertwining lines of discordant guitarmonies that sound like a discombobulated Polvo. Kuli’s low-register vox give off Protomartyr vibes, and his presence as band leader is lowkey; so lowkey, in fact, that he even left the stage a few times to let the volume swell so the jams could have their space. At first, Kuli’s deep voice and mellow vibes sounded sarcastic and disinterested – “You could be anywhere else in the world tonight, but you’re here,” he intoned – but by the set’s end, his gratitude to the crowd and the openers felt genuine.

After a short break and a band member shuffle, Guitar’s guitarist is suddenly playing drums and singing – he's the eponymous Nick Normal – and now Saia is playing lead guitar. From the heavier drone of the previous acts, Normal’s band shifts into a higher gear with tunes that want to scratch your face off – Devo-inspired egg punk, straight hardcore rippers, skronky Andy Gill-style guitar over melodic post-punk bass lines, a bit of synthy weirdness sprinkled in. Mr. Normal on drums is an arresting presence, a real drummer’s drummer with virtuosic timing and panache that steals the scene. It took me maybe 90 seconds after his set ended to snag his soon-to-be-released tape.

NICK NORMAL

Then came the main event. Pardoner’s demeanor, guitar tone, and vocal stylings all scream “SLACKER!” But like any slacker rock band worth their salt, they undermine the moniker with a high-effort and tight-knit performance. Max and Trey trade solos and Thin Lizzy harmonies as they swell from distorted jangle to hardcore ferocity. Both sets of vox are true to the records with a tuneful, tongue-in-cheek nonchalance. The crowd was ramped up and grooving (the partition between drinking and non-drinking sections long since disregarded), and the improbable night of music came to a roaring, exalted climax. While a good share of Pardoner’s tunes are about the dispiriting state of the contemporary indie scene (their newest single is a jaded screed on the “Future of Music”), you could tell they were giving their all—an inspiring, infectious performance.

My only complaint, and the restless crowd clearly agreed with me, is that Pardoner's set was way too short. 20 minutes and done! We were shouting tracks by name (I would’ve loved “When She’s Next To Me”); though clearly tempted to play a few more, they dutifully packed their pedals and cables without another note. It was 10:05 pm in a residential neighborhood, so maybe there was a curfew? But it doesn’t help Victoria’s musical inferiority complex to feel cheated out of a fuller set from one of the coolest bands to venture out here.

That minor grievance aside, it was a hell of a night, and I left the show with my cup full – local bands and touring bands putting on amazing, diverse, original sets with the coolest guitar sounds imaginable and a heart-pumping energy.

Pardoner

What’s the takeaway? Touring bands: give the smaller towns a chance! For an extra stop on your tour, you’ll sell a few more tapes and shirts (and come home with a few more Canadian bills than you expected), maybe crash on one extra floor – but you’ll be doing an act of musical outreach to an underserved community of fans. And local fans: shoot your shot! Message that touring band on IG, hit up your local Polish hall or bowling alley about putting on a show, and cross your fingers. I grant that the economics of touring and throwing shows is tight (I hear the White Eagle Polish Hall charges an arm and a leg), and quite frankly, I’m not sure that Curtis broke even in his investment, but if your town has a good music scene and good vibes, it’s very much an “if you build it, they will come” situation. Invest in your local scene, and it will invest in you.

Matt Watton (@brotinus) is an inveterate music fan and erstwhile academic. An American ex-pat currently living on Canada’s West Coast, you can find him listening to tunes, writing about albums, or making a racket in Slugger. Other passions include baseball and shawarma.

Amen Dunes – Death Jokes | Album Review

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Sub Pop Records

Let’s get this out of the way: Freedom from Amen Dunes is a real IYKYK album. One for the heads, if you will. The record was critically acclaimed upon release, yet it felt as though I never really heard people talking about it. I'd see a post here and there online, but other than that, I was left to enjoy it in relative solitude. 

Freedom is a freewheeling exploration of what rock n roll is and what rock n roll does, pulling from past sounds and textures, then peeling back the skin to show what’s underneath it all. Everything Amen Dunes does on Freedom can be summed up on “Blue Rose” as Damon McMahon sings, “We play religious music, don’t think you’d understand, man.” 

The music that Amen Dunes makes is indeed religious, as it seeks to blend elements of some sacred plane with the beauty and nastiness of our mortal world. McMahon does this through a raga-like vocal approach, bringing a droning quality to how he forces out syllables. For me, it’s this way of singing that transfixed me on my first listen six years ago because it felt so strange. There was something seemingly so familiar about his voice yet also so foreign at the same time, almost like a more visceral David Gray. I’ve been trying to put my finger on what McMahon’s sound reminds me of, but whenever I think I’ve found the answer, it escapes my grasp, and I think it’s this constant chase that’s been drawing me back to Freedom time and time again without growing bored.

For the last few years, I’ve been eagerly waiting for when Amen Dunes would return with new music. I absolutely needed to know what the next move would be. How would McMahon follow up an album that had such an immediate and lasting impact on my life? 

McMahon briefly tipped his hand in 2021 after signing with Sub Pop when he released “Feel Nothing,” a trippy dance track that sounds like it could fit on Freedom while also pointing toward a new direction. While I loved the song, I was unsure what it meant for Amen Dunes due to its status as a loosie. Would they stay in the lane that Freedom created, or would they journey into uncharted waters? Both options are exciting but also come with certain anxieties as a fan. By continuing to explore the same sounds, I would get to keep enjoying what made me first fall in love with their music, but with the risk that it begins to feel stale. However, if they take a sharp left turn, I might love the new music, but I also run the risk of becoming disconnected from the artist. 

Damon McMahon chose the second option, and it was well worth the risk. Amen Dunes's new album, Death Jokes, is a chaotic and thrilling record that not only marks a new chapter in the artist's career but is an album that only McMahon could make. Gone are the bright and grandiose guitar anthems, and in come a collection of songs built from samples, drum machines, and glitches. Interwoven amongst all the frenzy and noise are mantras that push back against the malaise that many of us feel toward society’s fraying fabric. 

On the ethereal jam, “Exodus,” McMahon remarks, “You say life is hard. Well, at least you think it is. But it’s a joke. Some day we lose it. So use it.” He’s hanging on every syllable, pleading that we emerge from this prolonged brain fog to see what’s in front of us and embrace the present. 

This idea of embracing life is central to the album’s spirit as McMahon meditates on the importance of existence, concluding that, yes, it means everything, and also, no, it means nothing at all. After mentioning someone’s passing on “Boys,” McMahon challenges his audience, saying, “Do you really want it? Oh, you always said you would.” It’s as if he’s saying, ‘You’ve seen how quickly it can all go away, so why aren’t you willing to cherish the only thing you truly have?’

His challenge is present in the music itself, resembling the information overload of our endless scrolling. Between the samples, the beats, and McMahon's elongated vocal approach, I found Death Jokes to almost be impenetrable on my first listen. Amongst the sonic maelstrom, I had to cling to fleeting phrases in order to make some sense of it all. With each listen, I found new moments to latch on to, and slowly, I was rewarded for my presence. In the end, I'm thankful that McMahon has gone in this uncharted direction because he has taught me that to truly appreciate a person's art is to ride the wave where it takes you. 

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.

So Totally – Double Your Relaxation | Album Review

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Tiny Engines

“Time is a flat circle,” a dirty, disheveled Matthew McConaughey said in the television show True Detective. If you’re not distracted by his messy hair and the thousand-yard stare from his character, he was really onto something. This also applies to music, which is influenced by cyclical trends, scenes, and waves just as much as any other art form. As a fan, it can be exhilarating to watch a specific type of sound catch as artists build off the shared inspiration in their own unique ways. Of course, once something gets big enough, every record company and their mother wants to capture that sonic inferno, and indie rock is no different. The shoegaze scene is exploding right now, with bands like Wednesday, They Are Gutting a Body of Water, and Hotline TNT leading the charge toward a heavy and hazy new era of rock music.

So, with this trend being the "Next Big Thing" in rock, imitators are bound to come out of the woodwork replicating atmospheric vibes that are inauthentic and empty at their core. However, the Philadelphia quartet So Totally is up next, not just in riding the wave of shoegaze but in pushing the sonic scope of the genre forward, reminiscent of their Pennsylvania counterparts like Spirit of the Beehive and Feeble Little Horse. But the band isn’t a Johnny-come-lately in the shoegaze neighborhood; they've been living on this block for quite some time. Just look at their 2019 record, In the Shape Of…, and you'll discover those very same scuffed-out guitars turned up to max power. The same goes for the group’s debut EP, A Cheap Close-Up of Heaven, from 2016.

Before they became a band, the members of So Totally initially connected over their shared affinity for the band Land of Talk, which would explain how they have such a knack for creating ear-wormy melodies. Their distinct sound coalesces around singer/guitarist Roya Weidman’s silky vocals, strategically tucked underneath glistening guitars and powerful grooves. Her bandmates, guitarist Matt Arbiz, bassist Ryan Wildsmith, and drummer Joe McLaughlin, can set the table better than any waiter at Nobu with their chameleon-like instrumental blend of dream-like pop to heavy shoegaze. It's a sound that leans heavy into the 90s, think My Bloody Valentine having a situationship with The Breeders and The Pixies. 

So Totally’s sophomore album starts with “Welcome Back,” which feels like a sample platter offering all the band's ideas wrapped into one song; it's a rhythmic, vibey excursion that whisks the listener away with no idea where they’ll end up. The way the music seamlessly intertwines from a blissful dream to razor-edge guitars is a pure delight, all the while, it seems like Weidman is singing through a walkie-talkie. The lead single, “Distinct Star,” leans towards shoegaze with a pop spin; from the melodic distortion to the whispery vocals, it's a mix that goes down smoothly. “Doz Roses” is a song that showcases this band's potential with searing guitar sounds jam-packed with hypnotic melodies from Wiedman, creating an immersive experience you never want to escape. 

So Totally pays tribute to the vintage alternative rock sound of yesteryear with “Weak To Leaf,” which sports shredding solos and mega walls of noise, resulting in a song that’s reminiscent of early-90s Smashing Pumpkins and also one of the best on the entire record. Mid-album cut “BTW” has a dreamy intro and mystifying vocals that intertwine with glimmering guitars, giving the feeling of drifting away on a nimbus cloud. A couple of tracks later on “Baby Step To Revenge,” Wiedman's hauntingly blissful melodies ride a wave of atmospheric, moody music. The song feels more like a cinematic excursion, instantly ready to elevate any late-night drive. 

The title “Double Your Relaxation” was taken from a self-hypnosis tape, with pieces of the recording inserted throughout the album. The phrase refers to “the exact moment one can enter the psyche and become susceptible to influence.” This phrase offers insight into how So Totally creates their music: lulling the listener into a sense of comfort and openness so that they can carve their riffs and melodies somewhere deep in their psyche. It's a clever spin on the shoegaze genre, keeping things fresh for the listener without feeling too redundant, especially given this recent influx of pedal-heavy music. The songs might challenge you on first listen, but once you become accustomed to their sounds, you will want to stay fully immersed in their world. Between the hypnosis tapes woven throughout and the brooding vibes of the record, it starts to feel like something you could imagine Batman playing to psyche himself up right before he jumps across rooftops hunting down supervillains.

The Bandcamp genre tags for Double Your Relaxation are all the evidence you need to witness this band’s lofty aspirations: “doom love,” “grunge wedding,” “dream pop,” “rock,” and “shoegaze.” You can do nothing but admire their ambition, not wanting to wash, rinse, and repeat the same shoegaze music that has taken over social media. Take the music video for the vibe-heavy ballad “Strange Way,” which is a freakish mix of stop-motion animation and film that looks like a psychedelic's wet dream. This isn't some copy-and-paste by-the-numbers shoegaze band, you can tell how seriously they take their craft. Double Your Relaxation is an album that not only respects and honors the shoegaze sound of the past but pushes the genre forward into a brighter future.

David is a content mercenary based in Chicago. He's also a freelance writer specializing in music, movies, and culture. His hidden talents are his mid-range jump shot and the ability always to be able to tell when someone is uncomfortable at a party. You can find him scrolling away on Instagram @davidmwill89, Twitter @Cobretti24, or Medium @davidmwms.

GUPPY – Something is Happening… | Album "Review"

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Lauren Records

I should warn you. I’m pretty passionate about the band GUPPY. 

Last year, I saw GUPPY live for the first time when they came to San Francisco to open for Chris Farren. Halfway through the set, I turned to the people next to me (acquaintances from a Discord server) and yelled, “THIS IS YOUR FAVORITE BAND NOW.” I was just stating the obvious. Afterward, I went up to the band to introduce myself. “I love you,” I said to J, the front person and primary songwriter. “Thank you,” they said sensibly. “I just don’t understand why they aren’t the biggest band in the world,” I said to my husband Ben in the car on the long drive back to San Jose. “How could anyone hear them and not love them?”

GUPPY is J Lebow (vocals and guitar), Ian Cohen (drums), Kabir Kumar (guitar) and Marc Babcock (bass)

I think the magic of GUPPY is their friendship. The four band members have the kind of friendship that feels rare for adults; effortlessly shifting between “your mom” jokes and real-ass intimacy. That’s pretty much what their music does, too. Each member is essential to the group chemistry and unapologetically themselves. They listen to each other when they talk and when they play. Being at a GUPPY show feels like being a weird kid in middle school and then finding a group of older, cooler, weird kids you can be yourself around (yes, I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower at a formative age). It’s a safe space.

It’s also a FUN space. After all, this is a punk band… kind of. “Texting and driving and driving and texting // I’ll be arriving while driving while texting,” J talk-sings on “Texting & Driving” over a funky bassline and percussion that sounds like it may involve a cowbell, bongos, and/or horse hooves. The fun is always fun, but it is never only fun; that is to say, every GUPPY song has additional emotional depth and purpose beyond their ridiculous antics and zesty one-liners - of which there are many (“I’m catching Kony. It’s me - I got him // I made a trade for Osama Bin Laden // Mission accomplished because America’s awesome // They wrote the scripture and I’m just their golem” - seriously, listen to "Texting & Driving").

With a trademark mix of stubbornness, mischief, and good-natured introspection, GUPPY is a perfect candidate for the “tenderpunk” genre label patented by illuminati hotties shredder Sarah Tudzin, who, oh yeah, also happens to be GUPPY’s producer. GUPPY’s new album Something is Happening…  has an undeniably punk spirit; there are themes of resistance and rebellion, there are loud guitars and yelling, there is a song called “I’m Fighting a 10 Foot Tall Nancy Pelosi” that goes out repeating the line, “I’d rather eat the pavement than lick your boot.” But there are also quiet moments of self-soothing, earnest vocals softened by tight harmonies, and a little too much silliness to come across as properly tough. Tudzin lets the huge songs be huge and the tender songs be tender (holy dynamics, Batman) and always lets GUPPY be GUPPY. It would be hard to stop them.

Something is Happening… documents the struggle of trying to be emotionally vulnerable in a way that feels much more relatable and believable to me than anything designed to fit in on Spotify’s “sad girl starter pack” playlist (I will now refrain from complaining about how everyone is ripping off Phoebe Bridgers because I’m tired of hearing everyone complain about how everyone is ripping off Phoebe Bridgers.) “Feelings, they cannot kill you,” J sings on the title track, articulating a pretty good thesis statement to summarize the album*.

*I should warn you. I actually know that this is the intended thesis statement of the album because I heard J say it to lead guitarist Kabir Kumar while we were at their house practicing for a Sun Kin show. That’s right, despite my overall weirdo behavior in San Francisco, we all became friends and collaborators and are actually playing together at that same venue where I first saw them in just a few days. That’s also right - I am totally cheating at music journalism right now with a bunch of insider information. I’m sorry if you made it this far without realizing that and now feel cheated. Let’s look on the bright side though: I am totally cheating innovating at music journalism right now with a bunch of insider information.

(I will now shut up for 2 minutes and 30 seconds while you listen to the title track of Something is Happening… which also happens to be the first track on the album and the first line of the first song on the album. Isn’t that cool? Is there a word for when the first line of an album/book/movie is also the title? Wow, that slide guitar is beautiful. I’m so excited that you’re listening to this album, I really think you’re gonna like it because it’s very good.)

From “Something is happening…”:

Something is happening…
don’t know what it is
But I think I could like it
if I just learn to let it in

If I don’t like it
If it’s not good
Letting it in now
I think I still should

Feelings they cannot kill you
even feelings that want you dead
Living here in this moment
the clouds have come down to my head

Damn. Right, so, the magic of GUPPY is their friendship. The other magic of GUPPY is primary lyricist J’s unique ability to view the world with an outsider’s detachment that is somewhere in between “childlike wonder” and “the blue alien guy with horse hooves and tentacle eyes in Animorphs who has to morph into a human and try to act normal.”

That latter is especially felt when they describe matters of the human body, which happens, like, a lot. J’s ability to communicate their emotions through descriptions of physical sensations, and their ability to notice these things to begin with, is totally baffling to me as a songwriter and as a human**.

**I should warn you. I am a giant prude. I am totally weird about various human body things, in fact, really do not even like typing the word “body” this much, and find several lines from this album super uncomfortable, which just makes them all that more impactful.

From “American Cowboy”:

Standing in front of an open fridge, trying just to keep my chill
Putting my hands in my roommate’s yogurt for something I can actually feel
My hands are feeling sticky
but I’ve got no regret
‘cause all my thoughts and actions
are the fucking best
I’m an American cowboy
and my stomach hurts like shit
I’m gonna find out what you love, and I’m gonna demolish it

Seriously, doesn’t that give off the vibe of someone who is new to having hands? (Someone who is used to having hooves, perhaps?) I have often wondered, "How the hell does J's brain work?" “Wondered” is the wrong word; more like “aggressively interrogated” both J themself and other people close to them. I feel that if I could document the answer to this question, it would be a great scientific breakthrough, and we could use this information to benefit the human race.

I am not alone in this thought. I once heard Chris Farren ask Kabir, "Has J ever made normal music before?" For some reason, my gut reaction was to get defensive, and I said, "Have YOU ever made normal music before?" (narrowly escaping “Has YOUR MOM ever made normal music before?”), but then I immediately realized that this was a very good question that I also wanted to know the answer to. Later, I asked J a version of this question and they told me about the first song they ever wrote. I can’t remember what it was now, but rest assured, it was totally unhinged. It’s funny that Chris Farren is now in here for a second time. I hope he doesn’t mind. You should stream Chris Farren.

Sandwiched in between the vivid sensory descriptions of mundane-ass everyday stuff, you may occasionally find poignant reflections on the human condition on “Something is Happening…” Personally, I find them to be more impactful that way.

From “Mayor Pt. 2” (also see Mayor “part 1”):

Why does it smell like scrambled eggs when I’m driving on the freeway?
What’s the difference between love and hate when I feel it in my body?

Ok, but why does this remind me of that one Mary Kate and Ashley song, and also, why do I feel seen and heard and deeply touched by the fragility of life and the ways that grief can hit you at the most unexpected moments triggered by a familiar smell or taste and the crippling pointlessness of sitting in traffic?

Who makes the finest pizza? What killed the dinosaurs? Why does it smell like scrambled eggs when I’m driving on the freeway?

“I don’t care if it’s stupid, it still means something to me” J sings on one of the album’s sillier songs, “Candied Pecans.” I get the feeling that if something means something to any member of GUPPY, then it means something to them all. That’s friendship right there.

Mission accomplished because America’s awesome

IN SUMMARY

Animorphs is a science fantasy series of youth books written by K.A. Applegate and published by Scholastic. It is told from the perspective of a group of kids and one blue alien guy with sick tentacle eyes and horse hooves who has to morph into a human to fit in. The blue alien guy isn’t that great at being a human, but he’s trying his best to navigate the new sensations of walking on only two legs, communicating with words instead of telepathy, tasting and smelling stuff, and eating food. Also, sometimes everyone morphs into animals and fights other meaner aliens to save humanity. Then they morph back into humans and ignore all their trauma. 

Something is Happening… is an indie rock album by the beloved LA-based talk-sing band GUPPY, produced by Sarah Tudzin (illuminati hotties shredder and producer wizard) and released by Lauren Records. It is performed by a group of best friends and narrated by front person J. Lebow, who is a human with a lot of empathy and imagination. J is trying really hard to navigate human stuff like figuring out what to do with their arms, doing laundry, telepathically communicating with animals, tasting and smelling stuff, and eating yogurt. Also, sometimes they morph into a dog and/or fight a 10-foot-tall Nancy Pelosi to save America. Then they morph back into a human and process their feelings through songs.

GUPPY – Something is Happening… | Album “Review” is an article written by Katie McTigue and published by Swim Into The Sound. It is told from the perspective of a girl who is a fan and friend of GUPPY, and also has a sick band, and has decided to pretend to be a music journalist for some reason. Katie isn’t that great at being a music journalist, but she’s trying really hard to write something that sounds smart and has journalistic integrity despite being super biased that GUPPY is the greatest band in the world. Also, sometimes she morphs into a dog and/or fights a 10-foot-tall Nancy Pelosi to save America.

Katie McTigue is in the band Pacing or maybe is Pacing; idk, branding is weird. You can find her @pacingmusic on Twitter and Instagram and pretty much everywhere.

Get tickets to see GUPPY with Pacing on 5/23 in San Francisco!