A. Lee Edwards – Interpreting Heart Sounds, Vol. 1 | Album Review

Self-Released

The first 30 years of A. Lee Edwards’s career took place partially behind a sheer curtain of enigma. His first project, Lou Ford, was named after a fictional character in a book but served as a makeshift persona for Edwards himself. His next project, The Loudermilks, was named after two gospel singers from the 50s (who themselves were using a stage name). Both Lou Ford and The Loudermilks were sonic brethren with The Jayhawks, The Old 97’s, and Uncle Tupelo—twangy indie rock with pedal steel guitar.

On Interpreting Heart Sounds, Vol. 1, Edwards finally pulls back the curtain.

It’s stripped back and mostly simple. The instruments lean more analog (acoustic guitars, banjo, fiddle) with some virtuosic pedal steel guitar and brushed shuffle drums for good measure. Where Lou Ford was a beer-soaked wood floor and a neon Rolling Rock Sign, Interpreting Heart Sounds is a screened-in front porch, a mug of Darjeeling, and the newspaper. The music is slower but more deliberate. It’s gentler but more tender. It’s not quite as urgent as the gritty alt-country tracks of yore, but there are times Edwards shows he can still swing. This is music to dance with your honey to, sometimes cheek-to-cheek slow dancing and sometimes twirling and toe-tapping.

Changes which some may attribute to age, Edwards attributes to wisdom. He’s sober now, and he lives in the mountains. Where he used to write about the great unknown chasm of life, Edwards now stands on the other side, clear-headed and with the experience of a road-tested traveler. Edwards’s career is so full-circle, in fact, that Interpreting Heart Sounds includes a re-record of a song from Lou Ford’s second album, Alan Freed’s Radio. While the first version of “Move Up to the Mountains” (recorded in 2000) is an upbeat board-stomper of a saloon tune, this new version is sweeter and more reflective. On the former, one hears in Edwards’ voice a longing to leave the chaos of life behind. On the latter, he left long ago. He shakes his head and chuckles at his younger self.

There is a real warmth to these recordings. On tracks like the opener, “Ride On,” and mid-album cut “Get Out, Get In,” one can sense the players making music live in the room together, perhaps all gathered around the same cluster of microphones. The collected decades of experience of the musicians on this record are on full display. The musicianship is tight, but the arrangements are playful. This speaks to an artist who has no interest in proving himself to anyone anymore but rather wants to tell stories and make a statement about his career—take it or leave it.

As if Edwards’s songwriting and the band’s musicianship weren’t enough, the album was mixed in Aberdeen, Scotland, by the legendary John Wood, who produced albums by Nick Drake, John Cale, Fairport Convention, and Richard and Linda Thompson. Whatever special sauce Wood used on those records can be heard here.

Interpreting Heart Sounds, Vol 1. is a product of what came before. We don’t get the measured tenderness of A. Lee Edwards without the raucous youthfulness of Lou Ford. We miss out on the breezy harmonies of Heart Sounds if we don’t first have the dual-lead vocals of The Loudermilks. The record is an ode to reflection, paying homage to past lives by giving the listener both space and grace to contemplate. It’s a fun listen that soothes. It’s a perfect companion to a summer drive, whether you’re coming or going.

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Caleb Doyle (St. Louis, MO) is a music writer and dive bar enthusiast. He would love to talk to you about pro wrestling, your favorite cheeseburger, and your top 10 American rock bands. You can find Caleb on most social media @ ClassicDoyle, or subscribe to his music Substack, Nightswimming, HERE. (nightswimmingblog.substack.com)

Art d’Ecco – Serene Demon | Album Review

Paper Bag Records

2025 marks a handful of anniversaries for iconic British albums, including 1975’s Young Americans by David Bowie, 1985’s Meat Is Murder by The Smiths, 1995’s Different Class by Pulp, and 2005’s Silent Alarm by Bloc Party. Canadian artist Art d’Ecco seems to pull influence from all of them, in addition to the great British-influenced New York albums like 1970’s Vintage Violence by John Cale, 1980’s Remain In Light by Talking Heads, and 2005’s self-titled debut by LCD Soundsystem. The cross-sections of art rock, new wave, and post-punk that make all of those albums memorable are Art d’Ecco’s genres de jour on his fourth album, Serene Demon, playfully finding the balance between vintage alternative and modern indie dance.

I first caught wind of Art d’Ecco via an Anthony Fantano co-sign on his last album, 2022’s brilliantly titled After The Head Rush. I remember enjoying its sonic throwbacks to the dancier side of post-punk, channeling pioneers like Gang Of Four and The Teardrop Explodes. For one reason or another, the album didn’t stick with me for very long, which is an unfortunate side effect of the modern music era–pummeling consumers with albums week after week all year long. When I first heard that Serene Demon was on the horizon for 2025, I hadn’t even realized it would have been three years since his last record, but in that time, the group has grown its sound even further. The post-punk lean is still there on tracks like “The Traveller,” but the bulk of it goes much more alternative disco and glam, similar to Roxy Music and Sparks, signified immediately by the opener “True Believer.” It almost sounds like a gussied-up version of “Moving In Stereo” by The Cars, trading in the plodding synth tones for a tasteful brass section.

“Cooler Than This” has an orchestral synth lead that feels plucked right out of “Lullaby” by The Cure, but its quirky horns and dance groove make it more reminiscent of “The Lovecats” or that weird “Close To Me” remix. d’Ecco delivers a smoky, New Romantic falsetto that really ties the track together in a unique way, capped with funky callback chorus vocals over the outro. This back-to-back with “Survival Of The Fittest” makes up the album’s tightest eight minutes; a driving bassline and drumbeat anchor the track, with d’Ecco absolutely nailing the phrasing on the chorus: “The faster life comes, the shorter it stays / The longer it bends, the harder it’ll break / So c’mon get ready, hold your feet and hold steady / Or you’re gonna get a beatdown.” It’s a rhythmic masterclass from top to bottom, something that he is an expert craftsman at throughout the entire record. “Tree Of Life” doesn’t slow things down at all, going full frenetic indie disco that fans of Scissor Sisters could absolutely get behind.

Side 2 of Serene Demon is just as creative but in a much different way. The dark and jazzy instrumental “Meursault’s Walk” gets into an almost prog-rock zone, with swirling synths over the horns and bass leading into the album’s epic seven-minute title track. Like a classic art rock centerpiece, it goes through different movements and phases, from the tender introduction into a balls-out ensemble bridge, culminating in a disco-fueled coda echoing David Bowie’s “Station To Station” or Donna Summer’s version of “MacArthur Park.” Lyrically, d’Ecco reflects again on the passage of life: “Unruly despair, when life’s precious moments disappear out of view / You say it ain’t fair, I hardly noticed when it hung around.” Contrastingly, the pop-centric “Honeycomb” follows and goes full T. Rex, at first standing out from the rest of the album, but given the context of the ‘70s glam music that he’s pulling from, it isn’t a far cry from the harder-edged dance tracks.

While I do enjoy every song on this thing, the bombastic first three songs in its second half feel a bit disparate from the standout tracks in the beginning, which have much more in common with the album’s final moments of “Shell Shock” and “A Change Of Scenery.” The bass-led closing tracks, if pushed up closer to the album’s first half, maybe would have made the album flow a bit better, with the suite of “Meursault’s Walk” and “Serene Demon” giving the album an unforgettable closing chapter instead of them hanging in the middle. But bold choices are what make Art d’Ecco’s music stand out from his contemporaries, so I might have to put my personal sequencing preferences to the side.

Serene Demon is exactly my kind of album: while its influences are clear, it finds new avenues to take them down, and it’s not just another '80s-flavored indie synthpop album either. Speaking further on those influences, Art d’Ecco channels artists and styles that I’ve loved for years and don’t always hear checked in modern music, especially from younger artists. He’s is the perfect example of what makes new music exciting, by taking what’s preceded him and giving it a new life all its own, a life that may pass quickly but is worth stopping to enjoy.

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

Rapt – Until the Light Takes Us | Album Review

Start-Track

There’s plenty of music that’s designed to pull you into the past, but it’s rare that I find myself truly transported. I don’t mean this as a dig; I’m just saying that pastiche—even when well done by an act like The Lemon Twigs—is identifiable as pastiche. Listening to these kinds of referential artists is a bit like being on an amusement park dark ride; it’s fun to suspend disbelief and let a certain guitar tone conjure up images of the 90s in your mind, but finding out what you’re listening to was actually made in 2023 by some kids in Ohio is usually no more surprising than the lights coming on to reveal that you’re not actually in The Hundred Acre Woods. 

In Rapt’s Until the Light Takes Us, I found something different. Here we have a record that actually does transport me to the past, not because of any sonic hallmarks or tips of the hat, but because it legitimately feels haunted. This feeling grabbed me early on in track two, “Attar Of Roses,” where Ware sings, “The angels wept for a thousand days / For cities of blood had passed by their wings / Attar of roses paved the waving fields / A city was formed when they fell from the hills.” It sounds like the recounting of an old legend by someone who was there for its inception, the kind of tale you’d hear sung by a medieval bard. Even when the stories take a more personal bent, they sound like they’re coming from a village of old, like on “Fields of Juniper,” where we hear, “And there stood a cross in the center of town / It’s shadow lay heavy across the stone walls / You took my hand and said you’d climb / So I’d see you as a martyr that lived in our time.” The conviction with which Ware spins these tales is both eerie and appealing; it had me hanging on his every word. 

As far as instrumentation goes, the nylon string guitar is Ware’s weapon of choice throughout the record, its soft arpeggios the perfect timbre to wrap itself around his yarns. Though the guitar plays well with others, like when the piano joins in on “A Theory Of Resistance,” it really shines when it’s left to stand on its own next to Ware’s voice. In these moments, when the record is at its most barebones, its intimacy reminds me a bit of 70s singer-songwriters like Labi Siffre, a quality that always makes my ears perk up. 

That said, I really enjoy the track “Making Maps,” where we get to see a full-band version of Rapt that is a bit more contemporary in its sound. Its contrast in style from the rest of Until the Light Takes Us makes for a great palette cleanser, and it features what is probably my favorite lyric on the whole record: the devastating line “My cousin died in the morning / He didn’t even feel the sun.” It’s so simple but so affecting, bringing forward thoughts of the coldness of death and early mornings in a way that made me shiver when I first heard it.

The way that everything comes together on Until the Light Takes Us is beautiful. When I say it’s haunted, I want to be clear that I don’t mean it’s the sort of thing that might give you a fright in the night; what I’m getting at instead is that the work feels so timeless and discusses death so intimately that it’s impossible for me to look at it and not see an otherworldly gleam emanating off of the whole thing. It feels like a record made by someone with an actual connection to the metaphysical world, not just someone who philosophizes about it. To have the gift of that connection—be it real or perceived—shared with you through the music is a very special feeling, and it’s one that sat with me long after the last song had stopped playing. 

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Josh Ejnes is a writer and musician living in Chicago. He has a blog about cassette tapes that you can find here. He also makes music under the name Cutaway Car.

Big Girl Are Ready to Be Your DIY God

Self-Released

Big Girl’s performance was the crux of a protest show held during last year’s South By Southwest, where a slew of punk-adjacent acts gathered to play a thrashing, beer-soaked free set under a highway. On stage, frontperson Kaitlin Pelkey is flanked by two backup singers, Christina Schwedler and Melody Stolpp, whose sharply coordinated moves set a ferociously campy scene. Their show is quite the production, with multiple guitars, choreography, and Pelkey’s powerhouse vocals wrangling the chaos. The singers’ frenzied dance lights up the band’s layered rock sound, miraculously weaving a biting punk aesthetic out of melody and perfectly timed movements. How the hell did Big Girl come up with this strange concoction of a live show? “Be truthful and be stupid,” frontperson Kaitlin Pelkey says. 

At the dyed-red heart of Big Girl’s songs, Pelkey’s voice contorts and swirls, never missing a note, yet not quite content to settle on one for too long either. The band’s new single, “DIY GOD,” finds expressive electric guitars chugging, sparkling, and wailing in Pelkey’s wake, trailing her like the briefcase chained to her wrist in the music video. There’s something a little unsettling about the tone of her voice: although pretty, her melodies are a little loopy, a little queasy, channeling ghosts of glam rock past in a way that counterbalances the songs’ scuzzy instruments. Turns out, a touch of theatrics is the perfect canvas for the NYC band’s very real experiences and emotions.

"DIY GOD" is just the first taste of a forthcoming EP called DYE which is coming later this year. Pelkey wrote most of these songs in 2020 in the midst of her mother’s dire health crisis, which she eventually succumbed to, passing away in 2021. “A lot of the stuff I write about is pretty heavy, pretty dark,” admits Pelkey. Paradoxically, the depth of her painful moments fuels the panache that sets Big Girl apart. “Just remembering that you have to keep the joy in your story - it actually elevates it,” she says about the maximalist aesthetic of their live performances and forthcoming EP. Pelkey’s songs strike a remarkable balance between maudlin and cathartic, both extremes fueled by the same deep well of emotion. 

Red keeps showing up in Big Girl’s new era, whether seeping out of Pelkey’s freshly colored hair in a sink or lighting up her energy in an angry swath. “It’s bloody,” she says about the motif. Dyed-red hair isn’t just a stylistic choice, she elaborates: it’s “transformation on your own terms…bringing color to a place that once had none.”

Photo by Tess Fulkerson

Big Girl’s guitarist Crispin Swank produced DYE with help from Justin Pizzoferrato (Speedy Ortiz, Dinosaur Jr., Pixies), who had also helped them bring their debut album, Big Girl vs. God, to life. They knocked the EP’s five songs out in just three studio days, tightening up their sound from the manic sprawl of older songs like “Big Car Full of Mistakes.” In contrast, “DIY GOD” sticks with just one time signature throughout—although don’t expect a clean-cut indie rock track, with Pelkey’s voice maintaining a dash of drama a la Puberty 2-era Mitski. The single is a lurching, groovy confessional, culminating in Swank’s guitar shredding Weezer-style behind exasperated choruses. “No one can fuck it up like I do,” Pelkey sneers, summing up the EP’s flamboyant existential crisis in a single line. 

Disassembling—hitting a wall and starting over—succumbing to weirdness and chaos. It’s all a part of Big Girl’s journey through DYE. Quitting a job on a sunny day, dyeing one’s hair just to feel something. Despite the band’s larger-than-life sound, their struggles are the same as everybody else trying to find meaning in an uncertain era. Big Girl’s snark is just one stripe in a swirl of deep experience: grief, joy, and rage at the horrors of our modern world. But what better vessel for angst than sharp, relentless rock songs?

“So watch me burn it all ‘cause I’m so bored that I told you the truth,” Pelkey howls on “DIY GOD,” wrestling with the apparent futility of… well, everything. The final scene of the music video shows Pelkey thrashing in the waves on the Miami shore, melodramatically raging against the impossibility of art, of joy, of any hope at all. The song answers its own question in a flash of graffiti in the middle of the music video: “Red Hot Salvation.” With their newest songs, Big Girl’s underlying belief shines through that creating DIY art is, in and of itself, the salvation that they seek.

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Katie Hayes is a music writer and karaoke superstar in Austin, Texas. She is from there, but between 2010 and now, also lived in Lubbock, TX, Portland, OR, and a camper. Her life is a movie in which her bearded dragon Pancake is the star. You can check out her Substack here and some of her other writing here. She’s writing a book about growing up alongside her favorite band, Paramore.

Adventures – Supersonic Home | Album Retrospective

Run For Cover Records

Supersonic Home, the first and only album by Pittsburgh rock band Adventures, turns ten years old today. I’ll admit part of me feels silly even sitting down to write about this record because its appeal feels entirely self-evident. It’s hard to imagine someone putting this album on in 2025 and not immediately getting swept up in its brightly colored pop-punk grandeur. Because of that, if I can get even one or two people to hit play on this record, then I’ll have done my job. 

In many ways, this is perfect rock music and an unbeatable arc for a band to have: a couple EPs, a couple splits, one full-length, and then calling it a day to let that body of work speak for itself. Granted, the members of Adventures have since found more success in other projects, which makes their discography a bit of a time capsule, but I suppose that self-contained nature is at least some of the appeal.

Just to set the table, Adventures were a five-piece rock band from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The project began with three members of metalcore act Code Orange who obviously wanted to make slightly softer, more straight-ahead rock music. Due to the sizable overlap in members, Adventures is sometimes viewed as an offshoot of Code Orange, but other than the occasional shout here and there, it’s near impossible to hear any connection between the two. 

Despite the disparity in genres, it makes total sense to look back and see how Adventures spawned. Initially known as “Code Orange Kids” before shortening to just “Code Orange” in 2014, the members of Code Orange had been (perhaps unwittingly) thrust into the northeast scene. Even though they were making spine-crushing metallic hardcore, they also put out music on Topshelf Records and (somewhat famously) shared a four-way split with Tigers Jaw, The World Is a Beautiful Place, and Self Defense Family. This adjacency to “scene” music placed them within reach of labels like No Sleep and Run For Cover, two titans of the 2010 indie-emo sphere who wound up helping Adventures release their music. 

The band’s early EPs, 2012’s Adventures and 2013’s Clear My Head With You, were centered around moody melodies and Reba Meyers’ despondent wail. The lyrics were surprisingly emo, expressing feelings of inadequacy and adolescent frustration. Occasionally, things would peak in a scream or a slow-bobbing breakdown, but for the most part, these were very emotional and overwrought songs, slathered in a solid layer or two of grungy distortion. 

By 2014, Adventures were moving a bit more strategically, shifting labels, partnering with peers, and staking out a sound right at the peak of the “soft grunge” explosion. At the beginning of the year, a split with Run Forever marked the group’s final output on No Sleep. By October, a split between Adventures and Pity Sex instantly solidified the group as part of Run For Cover’s Shoegaze Canon, something I could really only place in retrospect. 

In February of 2015, Adventures released Supersonic Home onto the world, offering a ten-track exploration of the interpersonal that still sounds as fresh today as it did ten years ago. When I was still a dumbass 21-year-old emo (as opposed to a dumbass 31-year-old emo), the band that Adventures reminded me of most was Tigers Jaw, specifically any key-board-heavy song where Brianna would take lead vocals. Today, I hear a lot more second-wave emo in these sounds, with clear nods to early Jimmy Eat World and (perhaps imagined) evocations of bands like Saves The Day, The Get Up Kids, and The Promise Ring. 

In contrast to their early EPs and splits, Supersonic Home moved into a much less angsty territory. The music was still as open-hearted and confessional as those early songs, but the choruses were sharper, and the instrumentals were more driving and muscular. While Reba Meyers was still the primary singer, vocals were now much more of a shared effort, with Kimi Hanauer clearly coming into her own in the few years since their first output. Together, their vocals entwined over upbeat instrumentals that sit somewhere between 90s alt-rock and modern pop-punk. This was baggy shirt, flannel-clad rock shit for sure, but it also feels like music made to be held on a compact disc. 

If you want an ideal setting for a listen of Supersonic Home, I recommend waiting for the first sunny day of the year and going for a walk with this playing on your headphones. Maybe it’s just due to its February release, but I’ll always associate this album with the beginning of the year, often reserving it for one of those first days you can wear shorts (or at least shed your jacket). There’s nothing quite like stretching your legs, feeling the sun on your skin, and letting the sounds of Supersonic Home flow through you. I genuinely feel fortunate that this has been something I’ve been able to return to year after year for the last decade without tiring. 

From second one, it’s impossible not to get wrapped up in that opening drum roll on “Dream Blue Haze.” After four minutes of building and building, how can you not want to belt along “Your Sweetness” by the time that final refrain rolls around? 

Looking at the lyrics for a song like “Heavenly,” it’s amazing how far the band can go off so little. The verse is literally ten words, yet the outpouring at the end of the song when Meyers belts “He’s a swarm / he’s a swarm / I am unforgiven” is as hard-hitting as any breakdown Code Orange ever concocted. 

I could name practically any track off this album and burrow into its brilliance: the awestruck “Longhair,” the charged-up “Absolution, Warmth Required,” the bouncy closing title track. Throughout every one of these songs, the band casts an energetic blue-tinted spell on the listener, whisking them away into a hand-crafted, watercolored world like the one seen on the cover or in their music videos. Throughout it all, Reba and Kimi maintain a beautiful interplay, trading vocals, harmonizing, and adding a soft compassion to every song that bounces off the punky guitars beautifully. 

While part of me is sad that we never got anything more from this project, the collective hour of music we got from it is worth it. Probably for the best that the band didn’t keep returning to the well and diluting it with redundant music and touring, after all, their day job in Code Orange was calling the entire time. I guess what I’m saying is sometimes it’s better to know when to throw in the towel and put a period at the end of everything. To that end, I’ll leave you with the Wikipedia description of their vague-at-best ending, which never fails to make me laugh.