Smut – Tomorrow Comes Crashing | Album Review

Bayonet Records

Look, Smut kick ass, plain and simple. Tomorrow Comes Crashing is the band’s third studio album, which puts the Chicago-based quintet back into the muck, returning to the sludgy sound of their debut. It’s a type of album where, when I hear the songs, I get a feeling that the band knows exactly who they are at this point and are firing on all cylinders toward that actualization. The group recaptures some of their original DIY aesthetics while also incorporating new tricks they’ve learned along the way.

Smut’s previous record, How the Light Felt, sifted through the intricacies of 1990s dream pop and alt-rock, with more of the songs erring on the dreamy side of things. They smoothed out the rough edges found on their debut for an enjoyable second entry in their catalog–it was as if The Sundays had a lost album that was discovered in an abandoned storage unit and finally made its way onto streaming services.

Tomorrow Comes Crashing has similar elements to their previous records but now includes monstrous eruptions of distorted rock that bring the band to an apex of their sound. Vocalist Tay Roebuck, guitarists Andie Min and Sam Ruschman, bassist John Steiner, and drummer Aidan O’Connor tap into the sonic influences of their predecessors to create 34 minutes of pure rock ecstasy. The first step to achieving this sound was to enlist Aron Kobayashi Ritch as the production assistant, who turned the volume up to max power, giving the songs enough electricity to make Ben Franklin blush. Ritch has been on a hot streak of his own this year, with credits on the recent albums from Momma, Bedridden, and Been Stellar.

The single, “Syd Sweeney,” is something I could easily imagine on a 90s episode of Beavis and Butthead with them shaking and gyrating on their couch while watching the music video in between calling each other “fart knockers.” The song has all the ingredients of a certified banger, from the fuzzed-out 90s guitar riffs to the sludgy thrash metal outro, accompanied by some expert wailing from Roebuck. Not only can you throw your neck out headbanging to the track, but dig into the lyrics, and you’ll find a message about the objectification and stereotypes of women in art. A-list actress Sydney Sweeney is the namesake evoked as the shining example of being uber-talented in her own right yet still viewed solely as a sex object by some. For me, the sign of a talented band is when you can combine engaging music with lyrics that convey a distinct message that holds meaning for the artists.

What stands out to me throughout Tomorrow Comes Crashing is the voice of Tay Roebuck, who has an incredible range, accompanied by an unpredictable Tasmanian Devil-like energy. Her versatility is evident across the album; you can hear someone go through all the emotions, from a yell to a cry to a plethora of blood-curdling screams. On the 90s-inspired ballad with an edge, “Dead Air,” Roebuck’s voice rides the wave of crisp basslines with such effortless ease. A few tracks earlier, on the explosive, twisting metal riff opener “Godhead,” she belts a horror movie-like yowl that offers a thrilling, speaker-rattling moment. 

There’s a lot of fun to be had on the in-between songs, “Burn Like Violet” has guitar riffs you would hear in an 80s action movie scene. When I hit play on that song, I can just imagine a shredded Patrick Swayze in a bar fight throwing a jabroni onto a table, sending them through a bevy of glass mugs. “Spit” is a rough and rowdy song laced with chunky metal riffs and the perfect amount of fuzz. Each track also hosts an intoxicatingly catchy chorus that makes me just want to keep hitting repeat nonstop.

Ghosts (Cataclysm, Cover Me)” is the band tapping back into their dream pop sound, which, by the evidence of their second record, they are entirely at ease revisiting that brimming well of inspiration. The song has a moody, Gothic feel, accompanied by hauntingly executed echoes of Roebuck, making this a staple track that should be on everyone’s Halloween playlist this fall.

The realization of the trials and tribulations a band encounters while trying to live out their dreams is the focus of “Touch & Go.” The mid-album cut shows the things people don’t see beyond the shows, like flooded basements ruining your gear or inhaling burnt coffee in Anytown, USA, and having to manage your van breaking down while trying to make it to the next gig. The will it takes to persevere in your aspirations of becoming a full-time musician is harder than ever these days. Smut are well on the way to achieving their dreams by relentlessly evolving their sound to newer heights with each album cycle. The record itself is pure, unadulterated fun, but what separates this group from the pack are the detailed lyrical messages behind the kick-assery. While Tomorrow Comes Crashing feels expertly timed as a summer release with red-hot, sizzling guitar riffs and thunderous choruses, that depth beneath the surface is liable to keep drawing listeners back, rewarding them for many seasons to come.


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 to always 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.

Dance Myth – The Shapes We Make | Album Review

Say-10 Records

When I was 19 years old, I first heard Listener’s album Wooden Heart Poems, and it made me realize that listening to music wasn’t good enough. Wooden Heart Poems was an invitation to write, and I needed to accept that invitation. I started writing my own songs and poems, often putting on Wooden Heart Poems as inspiration when I couldn’t find words on my own, borrowing lyrical motifs and stretching them until they resembled the shape of my own heart. Fifteen years later, I’m listening to Listener’s songwriter, Dan Smith, as he presents his new project, Dance Myth, and I’m struck once again as though I were still the 19-year-old finding er voice for the first time.

In many ways, The Shapes We Make feels like coming home, which is appropriate for a record that deals so much with death. Dan’s voice has hardly changed in the 15 years between my introduction and this new record, which makes this album feel deeply familiar from the first word said in the passionate spoken-word style that he’s built a career around. There’s a cadence to his vocal delivery that feels like a wave, scored by guitars, trumpets, synths, keyboards, and a multitude of other supporting instrumentation ebbing and flowing to create vast dynamic shapes that draw your attention towards the emotional urgency of his words.

If you miss some of the lyrics, as I’m sure many of us frequently do on initial listens of a record, you'll still catch that wave, but the true richness comes from diving in. Most of the record’s lyrics read like letters, diary entries, and memories. They’re correspondence between the writer, the listener, and unnamed third parties. The record reads as an invitation to converse with the music as it pleads, reassures, convicts, and comforts. In many ways, it echoes Levi The Poet’s 2014 release Correspondence: A Fiction, which similarly used dramatic scoring to support poetry about love and loss in the form of letters.

On The Shapes We Make, Dance Myth seems to speak directly to us, the listeners, imploring us to join in the shared humanity that makes us complete as people, flaws and all. In the album opener, “Gentle, Gentle,” you hear Smith plead, “Forgive yourself. If you can. For who you’ve been. You didn’t know then.” It’s an invitation to actively participate in the divine practice of grace rather than standing still in our regrets, our pasts, and our mistakes. This song offers a lesson I’ve had to learn time and again in therapy: to forgive oneself—a lesson that bears repeating, as it simply cannot be internalized the first time you hear it.

It’s often unclear whether Smith intends the songs and poems to be pointed at “you,” a specific individual, or “you,” the listener, but to my ears, it feels as though he’s speaking directly to my soul. It often feels as though Smith has chosen to sit down with each listener, allowing us to listen and meditate on the words he has carefully laid out. Even when the lyrics clearly show that a letter is for a specific individual whom the listener can never know, Smith still finds a way to make it feel universal in its specificity.

Lead single “Little Bird” reads like a eulogy, with Smith taking time to share about the pain of seeing a loved one leave this life. It serves as an apology to the subject of the song as he exclaims, “Sorry you couldn’t make it to where we were.” It isn’t all bleak, though. He celebrates the evaporation of life in death, referring to the dead as going “back into everyone I meet.” There’s a universality in the specificity of this piece, as we see a particular person cemented in the lyric. It begs us to share in the specificity that engulfs our lives, Smith confidently trusting that the listener can swap out the details to match their own loss, grief, and desire for peace.

We shift from grief to fear by track six, “This Accordion Life,” as there’s a palpable sense that something is wrong; Smith describes the way he’s seen by others as “just the shape of smoke from setting myself on fire” followed closely by exclaiming that tomorrow and the past are both terrifying. He leans on the hope of getting better, knowing that the only path forward is simply to keep going, a lesson that many minority groups have heard over and over in times of tribulation.

To speak personally for a moment, I want to mention that I’m a transgender woman, which has deeply shaped the way I view this record. In my experience, being trans is largely about self-identification. It’s about looking in the mirror and deciding who you want to be– no, rather, it’s about realizing who you are. Near the end of “This Accordion Life,” we hear Smith exclaim, “It’s embarrassing. All the times I’ve hidden or was made to feel I should hide any of the ways I shine. Told everyone I’m fine, and believed that lie myself.” It feels like a dagger in my heart as I sit in wonder and regret, asking myself why I took so long to find the ways that I should have been shining my entire life.

We return to death on “Dry County” as the pronoun shifts from “I” to “she” to “we” to “you.” The “I” represents the personal response to grief. “She” represents the person who was “waving like she had to go, and so she left.” “We” shows the intimacy of memory as Smith reflects on the past that was shared. Finally, “you” represents him speaking to a mystery audience who appears to be nearing death themselves. There’s a peace to the way that he speaks of death, as though he knows the comfort and fear that comes with that extraordinary adventure, choosing to optimistically opt into comfort in the great disappearing.

Finally, on the closing track of the album, we hear him end the record by singing “Tie me up, untie me,” appearing to reference mewithoutYou’s track of the same name, where lyricist Aaron Weiss sings that exact phrase, followed by “all this wishing I was dead is getting old.” Smith follows his phrase differently, however, finishing with “tie me up again.” I can’t begin to interpret what he means in that final moment of the record, but to me, it feels like a refutation of “all this wishing I was dead” that Weiss presented, choosing to emphasize the hope and joy of living a life that’s wild, urgent, and desperate for individual expressions of love.

The Shapes We Make is the record I want to hear while driving home from the gig or sitting in the line of cars as they leave the festival I’ve been at all weekend. Importantly, for me, it’s a balm that delivers contemplation through the noise, reassurance in times of hardship and grief, and peace in a time of wars: old and new, literal and figurative. 

It feels like an exhale. A restoration. An invitation.

“So, if you are alive, raise your hands. Keep them open. Reach out for anyone.”


Noëlle Midnight (e/er) is a transgender podcaster, poet, musician, and photographer in Seattle, WA. E can be found online with er podcast Idle Curiosities, tweets on Bluesky at @noellemidnight.com, photos on the Instagram alternative Glass at @noellemidnight, and movie reviews of varying quality on Letterboxd at @noellemidnight.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Phantom Island | Album Review

p(doom) records

Well, well, well. Once again, we find ourselves back in the Gizzverse. It wasn’t even a year ago that I was here telling you all about how death, taxes, and King Gizzard are life’s only certainties. And what did they go and do? They proved me right.

The Aussie psych-rock experimenters’ 27th(!!) album, Phantom Island, started with extras from the Flight b741 sessions. These songs were born out of the same hyper-collaborative energy as b741, but the band felt like they needed something else to be complete. After linking with the LA Philharmonic during their 2023 marathon show at the Hollywood Bowl, the Gizzards realized that live orchestrals were exactly what they needed to complete the circle. They connected with Chad Kelly, who created arrangements to accompany the meandering jams and stitched-together hooks locked in the Gizz vault. 

Phantom Island reimagines Gizzard’s home-grown rock-centric sound, filtering it through the lens of an opera house symphony orchestra. The symphonics are overdubbed atop the messy, chaotic jams, creating a mix of meticulous arrangements and free-wheeling improv that feels quintessentially Gizzard. Stu Mackenzie used a Tascam 8-track to blend the two sounds, combining them into one rock orchestra mashup. Phantom Island propels the sky-high, airborne stories of b741 into outer space. Gizzard broke through the atmosphere, sending their sound and their stories to another dimension. The result is an album that feels animated and colorful, even with its more insular narratives. When I close my eyes and listen, this feels like the soundtrack of its own movie or musical, bouncing between styles without losing cohesion. Would I be surprised if they turned this into a stage show? Not even a little—why shouldn’t King Gizz have their own Gamehendge? They dropped a “making of” documentary on YouTube last week, a 13-minute look into bringing the orchestrations into their cosmic sprawl. On the other side of the glass wall, the Gizzards sit on a couch in their flight uniforms from the “Le Risque” music video, heads hanging back as they listen to their jam fragments intertwine with the lush strings or grooving horns.

I’ve always loved King Gizz for their instrumentation. The high school band nerd in me is partial to Mackenzie’s penchant for flute, but I also remember being entranced by their dueling drum sets the first time I saw them live (Brooklyn Steel 2018, I almost passed out because I got too high). Gizz has always had inklings of symphonics in them, but Phantom Island is spacious, giving them more room to go on rambling tangents, switch from biker rock to chamber orchestrals, and delve even deeper into a narrative throughline. The album takes the listener on a journey from outer space to the underworld, with tales of being lost at sea (“Aerodynamic”), flying in a spaceship (“Spacesick”), or speeding down an anonymous open road (“Eternal Return”). Each song chronicles a different adventure and sometimes a different adventurer—whether or not the characters across the record are the same person, they’re all on their own journeys within the same greater universe.

Phantom Island opens with the title track, a jazz-funk jam that provides us with our setting: a feverish dreamland where nothing is what it seems (“Is this mental confusion or have I finally found my purpose?” and “The palm tree’s looking at me funny with a sideways belligerence”). The song unravels into its own miniature rock opera (“Phantom Island / Insane asylum” is now what my brain plays while returning to factory settings), making it clear early that nothing on Phantom Island is what it seems. 

The strings take center stage by the time we get to “Lonely Cosmos,” arpeggiating through unsettling minor chords and mixing with flute before fading into a sole acoustic guitar. It’s the send-off into space and the subsequent realization of your prolonged solitude. Where b741’s existentialism was strategic and hidden, Phantom Island gets right down into it. The unnerving string theme returns after the line “Are we alone in this cosmic effigy?” bending into its own dark, tangential underworld before yanking itself out of it, propelling back into its punchy acoustic melody with the line “I’m inhaling stardust.” It’s so casually random that I can’t help but chuckle. It’s that constant back-and-forth that keeps you on your toes, even when the orchestrals are at their most overpowering.

“Eternal Return” and “Panpsych” are the most b741 of the bunch, leaning psychedelic rock while still using the orchestrals as a central counterpoint. “Eternal Return” mixes spiky guitars and saxophone with sweeping strings and double-tracked vocals, creating a 360-degree sound that speaks to the song’s theme of being “on a round-trip perpetual.” “Panpsych” is equally as fuzzy and jam-centric, with flute tying the main theme together through cryptic lyrics (“The wind whispers secret message for those who’ve grown ears to hear it”).

Gizz holds the theme of “Lonely Cosmos” close through all of Phantom Island’s wandering journeys. Subsequent tracks place their characters in isolation, stranded or lost or eons away from anything familiar. “Spacesick” follows a nauseated astronaut on his first trip to space, already fantasizing about being back at home. “Aerodynamic” finds a lone sailor contemplating his last moments at sea. “Sea of Doubt” combines twangy country rock with pensive introspection, toying with anxiety, uncertainty, and the need for friends to help bring you back to yourself. Its opening is so bright and eager that the first lines, literally being “I’m on the edge of a cliff,” have delayed impact. The airy delivery, combined with the crisp guitar tones and trilling woodwinds, conflicts with the tension in the lyrics, namely in the lines about anxiety landslides, mind forests, and treading water. Two-thirds of the way through, the strings pull away, leaving just acoustic and vocals. A sweet falsetto, a harmonizing flute, a sigh of relief. “Here comes the sun to clear the fog / Here comes a friend for me to lean on”—bordering on corny, but its simplicity and gentle sincerity tugs at the heartstrings, an unexpected softness from the same guys who conjured sludge, fire, and thrash metal on PetroDragonic Apocolypse just two years ago.

By my twentieth trip around Phantom Island, it became clear that the whole journey could very well just be in my head, and that is precisely the point. The album drifts between structure and instinct, between story and sound. You can follow the narrative if you want, or simply let the whole thing wash over you. It will consume you regardless. The deeper you go, the harder it is to tell whether you’re hearing a rock record dressed up in strings or a symphony unraveling into a jam. Either way, we can take comfort in the fact that the Gizzverse keeps expanding. 


Cassidy is a culture writer and researcher currently based in Brooklyn. She loves many things, including, but not limited to, rabbit holes, Caroline Polachek, blueberry pancakes, her cat Seamus, and adding to her record collection. She is on Twitter @cassidynicolee_, and you can check out more of her writing on Substack.

Spice on the Side: A Conversation With Blue Cactus

Photo by Steph Stewart

With their third full-length album, North Carolina’s Blue Cactus has built on the rock-solid Classic country sounds they developed on their first two records—and they’re getting a little weird with it this time. Believer feels like what happens when you doze off on the screened-in front porch after putting a little something funny in your sweet tea. The familiar sounds comfort you, but then your mind drifts to something a bit more exploratory and cosmic.

Steph Stewart’s vocal range is truly impressive, and her songwriting style builds the perfect framework for it. Mario Arnez lays down some classically Sun Records style guitar work, but isn’t afraid to let Trey Anastasio influence the tone or experimentation.

Believer is comforting, gentle, and contemplative, and it brings surprise after surprise that welcome multiple relistens. It’s a fantastic summer album that blurs the lines between country music subgenres.

It was Steph and Mario’s first time in Kansas City, and I was lucky to welcome them to the Heartland. We sat down at Slap’s BBQ on the Kansas side, before their show at The Ship on the Missouri side. We talked about Believer, Hurricane Helene, Weird Al, cheesecake, and State Parks. Blue Cactus is finishing their tour up in the Northeast and New England through July.


SWIM: I mentioned earlier, Blue Cactus has a very classic sound. There is that Patsy Cline element, that kind of squeaky-clean Nashville Sound, especially on your early records. But the music has really evolved.

Steph, you’ve talked about the women of Lilith Fair being a big inspiration, and Mario, you've talked about your early experiences with Weird Al’s music being a big inspiration. What is the importance of having diverse influences and a variety of tastes outside of country/Americana music?

MARIO: I don't think you can separate anything, especially these days. Just having so much music available to us and growing up in the 90s into the 2000s where we were getting a lot of whatever MTV was feeding us, I grew up with a lot of the popular stuff. And then, yeah, Weird Al’s survey of Pop music, mixed in with a little polka, just kind of opened me up to all kinds of music.

SWIM: Those polkas really introduced me to a lot of songs that I hadn't heard before.

STEPH: And I think with Lilith Fair, I was really drawn to other women making music when I was coming up. So that was pretty influential, and there were just so many different styles of singing.

My family was really big into karaoke, so that's how I got into performing in front of people, doing that with them. We would go almost every Wednesday night to the Dragon Palace. It's this American Japanese restaurant in Hickory (North Carolina). We would just sing karaoke there, and it got me to enjoy the limelight a little bit. I would try out all kinds of songs. And my dad got a karaoke system at the house. First, it was like LaserDisc, and then he eventually upgraded to the same thing that they had at the karaoke bars. So I would basically practice at home, really just trying to imitate people. I think that really strengthened my voice a lot. I got a pretty big range from that. I mean, I was singing everything from like Sarah McLachlan, to the Cranberries, to Jewel, and of course, Patsy Cline and 90s country like Shania Twain.

I think it just got me trying stuff early on. I didn't have formal voice training, but I feel like that was it.

Photo by Caleb Doyle

SWIM: You both mentioned the 90s. I've noticed that, specifically what you might refer to as alt-country, is having a big moment. Country music, Americana, and folk are all having a bit of a moment right now, kind of a Renaissance. My theory is that it goes back to the fertile period for country music in the 90s and 2000s, which I think was an inspiration to people our age.

Especially in your home of North Carolina! MJ Lenderman and Wednesday are from Asheville. Fust is from Durham. North Carolina is really a breeding ground for this genre and its subgenres.

What is the importance of community for fostering a scene like the one in North Carolina?

STEPH: I think our immediate community has just been such a huge support. It's hard putting out a record! Having something like Sleepy Cat Records, which is really just a group of friends who are also musicians, and they believe in your work and want to see it get out there, sometimes that’s what it takes. It's hard to know how much of a drive I'd have at this point if it weren't for them. We all play music with each other, too.

Our drummer is one of the founders of that label! He's literally the backbone of the band and a pillar in our community. That (the community) really does make this all feel worthwhile. Like I said, I don’t know if I’d still be doing this if it weren't for other musicians in general.

The night before last, we stayed at our friend Dylan Earl's house, and he’s stayed at our house multiple times. It’s so important to have this network of a road family who also know what it’s like and do this, and we just help each other out.

It's just really restorative to be in that company of people who get it and give you a place to relax. We didn't even want to go downtown and walk around. It's like, no, let's just sit on your front porch!

MARIO: There are a lot of other bands and folks running labels in The Triangle (North Carolina’s “Research Triangle,” comprised of Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill, and everything inside the triangle that those cities form). There are great studios and a bunch of different festivals and live events going on. So there are a lot of folks that you end up interacting with over the years being in the scene. It feels like a nice, dynamic place to be!

STEPH: Recently, the previous governor enacted new funding to go specifically towards North Carolina music. So they have a whole Arts Committee that basically oversees it, and there's this new financial support, which is so critical. We've been fortunate to work with that organization, Come Hear NC, and they've helped fund projects the labels put together. This can give that extra amplification as an artist in that area, which is really great.

SWIM: It's crucial to what you do! There are conversations about why there's a dearth of artists and musicians in some places, and it's like, well, people can't pay their rent. So if you give people money to do those essential things, they can be making art instead of working doubles every weekend.

On the same token as your community, late last year, Hurricane Helene ravaged the Southeastern part of the country, largely in places like Western North Carolina. Blue Cactus contributed to a 136-track compilation album, Cardinals at the Window, which gave 100% of proceeds via Bandcamp to relief efforts in NC and greater Appalachia.

What was it like to have so many musicians contribute to this thing that was supporting your home? And what role do artists play in a disaster of that magnitude?

MARIO: People absolutely turn to music when they need something to pull them along. I mean, there’s absolutely no substitute for federal funding and disaster relief. But yeah, in the small ways that we can help, it was a no-brainer to contribute to that (Cardinals at the Window).

We also bought chainsaws and sent supplies all over North Carolina. There are some great mutual aid organizations around us that we were able to connect with quickly.

STEPH: Overall, the touring lifestyle is very much in the ethos of mutual aid.

Staying at each other’s houses and helping out however you can, that’s just sort of built into the way a lot of musicians live. So the immediate reaction when something that devastating happens is like, how can we help people? And, yeah, of course, federal aid.

Marshall, North Carolina, was almost wiped off the map. The river got completely rerouted. A lot of those people were musicians that were friends of ours. So they basically had to act as first responders. And we were just in touch with them, like, what do y'all need from where we were at?

SWIM: We just had a huge tornado come through the north part of St. Louis City. That was like three weeks ago, and they just got federal funding in some small way. People have been up there every day cleaning up people's homes, you know?

STEPH: I'm sorry that happened. It just feels like it's become more and more common.

SWIM: I know. Unfortunately, I think that's what they were telling us about climate change. And nobody in charge really took it seriously.

Anyhow, for a more, um, uplifting question: Do you have an album or a song that you go to when you want to roll the windows down and drive around?

STEPH: I really love Bill Withers’s “Lovely Day.” It's one of my forever favorite songs, and that song really does help me get my day off to a good start. I should probably be listening to it a little bit more lately, because I just have to wake up and go, and I think I need a little bit of a morning soundtrack some days.

MARIO: I've got polarizing opinions here. When I need to drive, we've got a long stretch and we need to go, go, go. If I need something that I know I'm not gonna be flipping tracks or anything, I just put on some live Phish.

SWIM: Oh hell yeah. I love to hear that!

STEPH: Yeah, he listens to that a lot.

SWIM: Love to hear that. I was just listening to The Gorge ’98 this week.

MARIO: Great year.

SWIM: Great choices, both.

For the new album, Believer, Steph, you took some original photos, and Mario, you used those photographs to make some graphic design art on the cover and inserts. In addition, this is your third full-length album, and you’ve been making music together for at least eight years. Does the music and the act of putting together an album feel more personal now?

MARIO: Absolutely. I feel like this is definitely the most elbow grease we've put into a release, on a personal level. It feels like with every release, we’ve figured out how to put more of ourselves into the music.

We also just try to spend a little bit less money along the way! But yeah, over the Pandemic, we kind of picked up other skills.

STEPH: Yeah, I’m a perpetual hobbyist. I feel like I'm constantly finding new art forms that I want to dabble in and learn how to do. So it just seemed like, well, these photos look great.

We both felt those photos really made sense with the theme of the record. The whole process of taking those pictures was wild because I was kind of disappointed. The field had started to die. All these sunflowers were just dying. And I had black and white film, and I thought I would get something different initially.

It was like, well, I'm here. I might as well just take some pictures and see what happens. As I was walking around the park, there were so many birds there. A lot of goldfinches and other pollinators. It felt like those sunflowers were more full of life at that point than they were when they were in full bloom. They were about to drop their seeds and create food for all these birds.

It's funny how you look at something on the surface and don't initially see that kind of beauty in it.

SWIM: Yeah. It's like reframing what we think about the cycles of nature.

I think it's in The Great Gatsby where he talks about how “life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the Fall.” We think of the fall as everything starting to die, but it’s really this big clearing-out. Readying for what's to come next.

Have you picked up a live performance hack or tip?

STEPH: This isn't anything that revolutionary, but I almost always have to sing along in the van on the way there, so I warm up my voice. I don't do a lot of formal warmups, but I love singing before we’re actually on stage, and singing other songs that aren't ours.

Reba McEntire is a really good warmup because she's got this incredible range. If I can sing one of her songs, then I know I'll be ready.

MARIO: Shake off the cobwebs. If you've been driving for a couple hours and you've just been sort of a hermit for over half the day, you really gotta clear out the cobwebs. Either start talking out loud all of a sudden, or do some stretching. I feel like that's number one, just to make sure that we're not feeling like we're still rolling out of bed all day.

STEPH: Staying in State Parks on this tour has been really helpful. Most of the time, we'll have time to go on a nice walk. It helps me feel really awake and ready, for sure.

SWIM: What's the most recent physical media you've bought?

STEPH: Hmm.

MARIO: Clothes?

STEPH: No, those don't count.

It's been a little while now, but I did buy a Linda Ronstadt record at the Fuzzy Needle (in Wilmington, NC).

Photo by Caleb Doyle

SWIM: If this album was a dish or a meal, what would it be?

STEPH: Hmm. Interesting. Well, maybe this is just because I like it, but I definitely think the dessert would be cheesecake. Let's just start there.

SWIM: That's the way to do it. Start with dessert.

STEPH: Mm-hmm. Cheesecake and probably not plain cheesecake. I think it would have some kind of like raspberry sauce.

[to Mario] What kind of a main course are we talking about? Or an appetizer, for that matter?

He is the cook in our family.

MARIO: This is just funny. This comes back to the question of influences versus what the music actually sounds like.

It doesn't feel like it would just be some everyday meal that I'm whipping up. Yeah. We're talking something outside the norm!

Okay…we open with a Greek salad…

STEPH: I think that sounds great. I don't know why I'm thinking fried chicken. [To Mario] Are you thinking fried chicken?

MARIO: Sure!

STEPH: Okay, and then you're gonna need a couple of sides with that.

MARIO: This is not turning into a James Beard meal...

STEPH: I feel like we should really put more thought into this!

SWIM: It’s eclectic, though!

STEPH: Maybe hot chicken! But not too hot.

MARIO: Like a two on the spice? And you can add your own?

STEPH: Yeah, you can add your own spice. It'll be spice on the side.

I feel like there are a lot of shifts on the record. So, you do have that country kind of twangy stuff right at the top. That feels like hot chicken. But then you're getting into the synths and swirly stuff, and maybe that's like some kind of mashed potatoes, but they're not your classic ones.

There's gonna be something a little special left of the center. Yeah. [To Mario] What would that be?

MARIO: I mean, I don't mess around with truffles…

STEPH: No, I don't like those either.

MARIO: I think a James Beard type would do that, but I wouldn't!

SWIM:. Maybe just not a smooth mashed potato. Maybe there's some chunks.

STEPH: You like a chunk?

SWIM: Oh, I love a chunk.

STEPH: You can tell they're real potatoes!

SWIM: Mm-hmm.

I also love the fact that this answer took thought and collaboration. I think that speaks volumes of the record. It's one of those records that, at the end, you kind of do finally exhale.

It is comforting, it's dreamy, it kind of has your head in the clouds a bit, but then there are some experimental aspects to it. And that makes it so fun!


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.

Swim Into The Sound Turns Ten

As of today, Friday, June 13th, 2025, Swim Into The Sound is officially TEN years old! Since I just waxed poetic about the site for our 500th post a month ago, I’ll try to keep this short and sweet. 

After going back and forth for a while debating how to best commemorate this birthday, I decided it’d be fun to ask the Swim Team what their favorite album of the last ten years was. We’re counting everything from 2015 to 2025, and because I’m a real dork with it, we’re also only counting the window that this blog has existed: from June 2015 to June 2025—the last ten years to the day. I’ve organized everyone's answers in chronological order (Thank you, Lillian), and we’ve got some fun stats at the end for the Heads (Thank you, Braden), so keep reading after the roundup.

Before we get to the proceedings, I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for being here; thank you for reading, sharing, writing, and supporting this little website. It means the world to me, and I am continually ecstatic to have this outlet to talk about the music that I enjoy and believe in. I think all the people you’re about to read would say the same thing. Thanks for ten years, and thank you for caring. As always, I hope you find something here to love. 

Please enjoy this journey through the past ten years guided by your trusty Swim Team. 


One Direction – Made in the A.M.

Columbia

Released November 13, 2015

One Direction hated being in One Direction by the end of it, and in 2015, they broke up. They actually never formally did this, but they released Made in the A.M., which is the closest they could get to ending things. One Direction songs aren’t vapid, but they are vague, leaning into the searing Bo Burnham analysis, “I love your eyes and their blueish, brownish, greenish color” at their weakest. There’s always some love that they want but can’t have. Made in the A.M., however, feels uncomfortable in that structure. Songwriter and appointed Cheeky One, Louis Tomlinson, used that framework to craft a goodbye rather than their usual popstar mystique. Finality underscores songs like “Love You Goodbye,” “History,” and “Walking in the Wind,” becoming bittersweet letters to fans rather than their usual tortured, lovesick songs. 

The whole album sounds Un-Direction as well, with a rounder, synthier, stomp pop sound, something that matched their contemporaries rather than their discography. I love Made in the A.M. for that weirdness, even that title —a begrudging nod to the fact that all this was recorded in the grueling early hours of the morning on their tour bus as they traversed the world without Zayn Malik. And then that was just it. A couple live performances, a lackluster rollout, no tour, and a promise that the band would come back once they were off a needed hiatus. Now, 10 years later, the band won’t and can’t come back, but in the words of One Direction’s final song, “A.M.,” it’s okay because “I'm always gonna look for your face,” and as a forever Directioner, I really will always look for them.
– Caro Alt


Aesop Rock – The Impossible Kid

Rhymesayers

Released April 29, 2016

After much intensive deliberation, I feel confident that Long Island rapper Aesop Rock’s seventh album, The Impossible Kid, probably holds the most emotional weight to me of the thousands of albums I’ve heard since June of 2015. Originally my #3 record of the year after its release, it’s a proof of concept that tastes change and grow stronger over the years, and an album you listen to a handful of times in a 365-day span doesn’t have to be confined to that timeline.

Aesop Rock has been my favorite rapper since 2012’s Skelethon, and when The Impossible Kid dropped four years later, I was out of college and living on my own, making the first real transition to conscious adulthood. While much of Aesop Rock’s lyricism is abstract and conceptual, this album is his most directly personal across his discography, referencing multiple stories from his childhood and tributes to longtime friends and family. Particularly the song “Blood Sandwich,” the second verse of which Aes raps about his older brother being denied tickets to see Ministry, deeply affected me. Hearing two of my musical loves intersect in this way resonated with me, as I had gone through a similar experience when I was younger.

Whether he’s criticizing the ins and outs of the rap world (‘Dorks’) or boasting about his cat (‘Kirby’), Aesop Rock shines on The Impossible Kid in a way that is so specific to this album only. From a technical standpoint, it almost feels like he’s still trying to one-up himself, like on 2023’s head-spinningly impressive Integrated Tech Solutions, and even his just-released Black Hole Superette. But to me, there isn’t a rap album that speaks more to nerdy, introspective, and emotional youths than The Impossible Kid.
– Logan Archer Mounts


The Hotelier – Goodness

Tiny Engines

Released May 27, 2016

In 2016, I worked my first full-time job as a residence director at a private college on Long Island. I didn’t live far from my alma mater, so I was in this liminal space of young adulthood, where many friends were still at school while I worked a day job taking care of people just like them. It was a year of transition. I was shedding relationships, beliefs, and happiness.

My constant was music. The LI emo scene was instrumental for me. I had left all of my childhood friends in the city to make new ones at college. We moshed to easycore, pop-punk, post-hardcore, and what is now called “mall emo.” Being away from old friends, I grew perpendicular to them and my younger self. I became way too into my head. I needed to get out of it and touch grass.

Goodness came out just over a year after I graduated college. I felt ennui on Long Island, in my job, in my relationships. I couldn’t envision a life for myself there; Brooklyn, changed but still mine, beckoned me. I quit my job over some bullshit miscommunication about my dog, and didn’t look back.

The Hotelier kept me company on that final drive back to my parents’ house. With Franklin the pug in shotgun and my life packed into the backseat and trunk of my Civic, I yelled “I don’t know if I know love no more” to “Piano Player” while I sped down the Southern State Parkway. I embraced agnosticism on “Two Deliverances,” meditated on “Sun,” and considered death on “Opening Mail for My Grandmother.” I mourned a forever-lost love on “You in this Light.” I felt that chapter of my life close on “End of Reel.”

Revisiting Goodness now, I bloom in gratitude for that time, for this album, and for my life.
– Joe Wasserman


Touché Amoré – Stage Four

Epitaph Records

Released September 16, 2016

It was brutally hot the day my grandpa died. I had driven to his house to say goodbye, knowing that this would be the last time. I clasped his fragile hand and smiled through the tears that burned like fire in my eyes, trying to memorize every painful detail of those moments. Afterwards, I dragged myself out to my car in a haze, sliding into what felt like an oven as I gingerly closed the door. The silence was deafening, and I couldn’t bear to sit with it. The only album I wanted to listen to was one that had already carried me through years of pain and grief – Touché Amoré’s Stage Four. The album is both sonically and topically heavy, tackling the loss of frontman Jeremy Bolm’s mother to cancer. My grandpa died from cancer as well, and as I watched him suffer and wither over the course of a year, I returned again and again to Stage Four. I found myself taking comfort from Jeremy’s words as my heart screamed that I, too, knew this pain. Dense and beautiful, each song soars to massive emotional heights and crashes into frantic, melodic choruses as brutally honest lyrics about grief thread through the entire record. I was fractured like glass on that hot September afternoon, but Stage Four pieced me back together.
– Britta Joseph


Bon Iver – 22, A Million

Jagjaguwar

Released September 30, 2016

I was not thriving when 22, A Million dropped in September of 2016. I was living in a townhouse packed too-full of college dudes and scrambling to maintain a relationship that was winding down to its inevitable end. My undiagnosed scrupulosity (religious OCD) had reached a fever pitch, and I was functioning at peak neurosis, all atoms vibrating and neon.

I don’t know if any record has affected me so viscerally on a first listen. It might be over soon. God, I hope so. The new songs were beautifully damaged, everything pushed into the red, held together with desperation and scotch tape, as fragile as I was. While Vernon’s voice and the indie-folk-mad-scientist production were the first things to grab me, the occult symbolism and numerology proved genuinely unsettling; having grown up in a fundamentalist Christian sect, becoming obsessed with an album that quite literally takes you to hell and back was functionally my own bizarre, self-administered form of exposure therapy. I think 22, A Million is possibly one of the most influential records of the past decade, but I’m writing about it because it feels like it was made just for me. At the risk of overspiritualizing, its existence feels damn near providential. Well it harms me, it harms me, it harms me, I'll let it in.
– Nick Webber


Black Marble – It’s Immaterial

Ghostly International

Released October 14, 2016

I sometimes accidentally Pavlov myself into enjoying things. Half a decade ago, I had one too many jumbo margs, promptly threw up on the sidewalk, then trudged three long blocks home. When I fell on my bed, I thought, “You know what would really help these spins? Some electronica from New York.” I don’t listen to electronica or anything adjacent. At least I didn’t use to. I fell asleep, and in my drunkenness, I looped the album and immediately lost my phone behind my bed. I was too uncoordinated to stop it from playing for eleven full hours (surprisingly, I wasn’t too drunk to plug my phone in beforehand). I woke up a changed man, with a newfound distaste for tequila and a burgeoning love for a genre I never paid much attention to before. 

These tracks have been with me for most of graduate school, and I have memories—good and bad—for each. I listened to “Frisk” 27 times in a row, mid-Covid, figuring out a single statistical mechanics question. Black Marble conjures full cities and surrounding landscapes, using understated vocalizations that seep into and become part of their masterful, bass-forward, fully synthetic creations. Through years and mile-high waves of self-doubt, It’s Immaterial is the buoy that has kept me afloat.
– Braden Allmond


The Menzingers – After the Party

Epitaph Records

Released February 3, 2017

When I think about records that have had a profound impact on me over the last decade, the fifth studio album, After the Party, by American punk rock band The Menzingers always finds its way around the top of the running every single time. Introduced to me during our junior year of college by my best bud and all-around punk enthusiast, Avery, I was immediately arrested by The Menzingers’ effortless song structures, candid lyricism, Irish-Catholic sensibilities, and the way the band unapologetically exudes “Americana.” After the Party tackles the daunting themes of growing beyond your reckless years, facing a new decade of adulthood, and reconciling with the most regrettable aspects of yourself – delivering it all in a way that kicks my ass upon every subsequent listen, but always manages to keep me coming back for another round. As I stare down the barrel of thirty-years old just a month from now, I find myself coming back to the repetitious line “Where are we gonna go now that our twenties are over?” from the album’s opening track “Tellin' Lies.” I’ve never been more uneasy about entering a new stage of my life than I am now at the edge of my twenties, but I’m also holding on to this comforting notion that the party ain’t over. Even though ultimately deciding on my “favorite” album of the past ten years feels impossible, I can’t think of another album that so accurately represents those years, nor feels more ubiquitous across them than After the Party
– Ciara Rhiannon


SZA – Ctrl

Top Dawg Entertainment

Released June 9, 2017

Ctrl came out on my last day of high school. SZA’s full-length debut is now regarded as one of the most important releases of the 2010s, and it is certainly one of the most important releases of my 2015–2025. While a lot of albums from my teens exist in one fixed point of my memory, Ctrl has wiggled its way into every moment of change I’ve found myself in since its release. It played in my headphones on my flight to college, on my walk to my first class. It played at a consistent, low hum that emanated from my bottom bunk. I’ve screamed the words to “Prom” in mid-summer euphoria, windows down, sun out, ocean in my hair, driving a little too fast over the bridge. I’ve had pensive, tearful sunset walks to “20 Something,” wondering if I was ever gonna get my shit together. SZA has a way of making the most specific of situations feel universal, of summing up a generation's worth of anxieties into a few sparse lines (“Fearing not growing up / Keeping me up at night / Am I doing enough / Feels like I’m wasting time” couldn’t sum up my existential worries better). I mean, “Normal Girl”???? It’s like SZA ascended from the heavens and blessed girls everywhere with the soundtrack of their early adulthood.
– Cassidy Sollazzo


Manchester Orchestra – A Black Mile To The Surface

Loma Vista Recordings and Favorite Gentlemen

Released July 21, 2017

I sometimes get emotional thinking about all the people in my life who have loved me, who have cared for me when I was difficult to love or self-destructive. I’ve made it so hard on so many people, but I’ve been loved deeply. I especially appreciate this because we live in a culture that seems to communicate that love is earned. If you’re convenient, if you keep the scales balanced, don’t take more than you give. If someone can use you or extract something from you, then you’ll be loved. But I’ve been given so much grace. What the fuck.

Andy Hull has this ability to write songs about people who are ugly and hopeless, but you end up caring for them and identifying with them and wishing them well. You end up growing eyes to see the lonely and broken people around you. The folks that seem to get pushed out from the middle of the circle. This is the sort of album that makes me think maybe we can all learn to grasp Each Other and grasp God and grasp Love and actually make sure that none of us go it alone. 
– Ben Sooy


Amen Dunes – Freedom

Sacred Bones

Released March 30th, 2018

Freedom is my favorite album of the last decade because, no matter how many times I listen to it, there’s always something new that I haven’t considered or noticed. It’s an elusive album for me. I can never quite put my finger on what's really going on with it. Is it a mystical bent on classic rock? Maybe it’s a long-lost adult contemporary album from the turn of the millennium, a dark and beautiful companion that might slide into a radio rotation filled with David Gray and Dido. Whatever it is, Damon McMahon gets it the most correct when on “Blue Rose” he sings, “We play religious music, I don’t think you’d understand, man.” He’s right, trying to wrap your mind around this music isn’t the point. It’s not present in our realm for the sake of classification and dissection; it’s here for experiencing and feeling. If your senses have not been graced by Freedom, then I suggest giving it a go on your next road trip, preferably a summer one, bonus points if it’s along the coast. That’s where you’ll sink into its essence. 
– Connor Fitzpatrick


Parquet Courts – Wide Awake!

Rough Trade Records

Released May 18, 2018

Although released in 2018, I didn’t get around to Wide Awake! until 2020. Global pandemic, lockdown, nationwide protests over police killings. You remember. In the early days, it was a time to escape the rhythms of modernity and sublimate myself into the couch, subsisting on government checks, homemade mai tais, and Mario Maker 2. It’s there in my complacent crysallis that this album came like a nasty right hook to the spirit. 

Dense with aphorisms both didactic and daring (“Travel where you are, tourism is sin” from “Tenderness,” or “What is an up-and-coming neighborhood and where is it coming from?” from “Violence”), the record, and its title track, serve as a clarion call to move and embrace and rage and shake loose the complacency. The record sounds like Parquet Courts, but their collaboration with Danger Mouse pushed their “Sonic Youth by way of Pavement” sound to new heights, yielding such joys as the 70s dance rhythms of “Wide Awake” or the pristine, soaring hopefulness of “Freebird II.” Part political polemic, part personal wound-bearing, each track on Wide Awake!, from its opening screed (the Tom Brady-hating collectivists’ handbook “Total Football”), to its closing track (the drunken bar singalong anthem “Tenderness”) the album is an anathema for alienation, a record that proves more and more valuable as time goes on. We don’t need any more televised killings or a global pandemic to shake ourselves awake. We’ve got all the tools here. 
– Joshua Sullivan


KIDS SEE GHOSTS – KIDS SEE GHOSTS

GOOD Music, Distributed by Def Jam

Released June 8, 2018

In a lot of ways, KIDS SEE GHOSTS was the last hurrah of an era. Still years out from Kanye West torpedoing his career down the toilet, the 2018 “Wyoming Sessions” that brought sudden turbo-charged energy to the hip-hop genre with five weekly records from GOOD Music artists, including the legendary Queensbridge MC Nas, and even this group representing the friendship between Kid Cudi and Kanye. I reminisce about this time period fondly.

Cudi and West have a cosmic spirit within them that rises to the surface on each song throughout. They both bring out the best in each other, much like legendary actors Robert De Niro and Al Pacino do in the crime thriller Heat. KIDS SEE GHOSTS is only seven songs, clocking in at 23 minutes with 0% body fat. Together, they produce a psychedelic blend of pure, unabashed artistry at its finest. “Reborn” is a spiritual masterpiece of two guys standing at different crossroads in their own lives. West tapped into a realness and heart with his lyrics, but Cudi steals the show, sounding like he’s found the peace that has escaped him for his entire life. The “Keep Moving Forward” lyric could have been a mantra Cudi used during his own dark days. This song is something I listened to almost religiously, and have applied this phrase to my own life to this day. Tough times don’t last forever; there’s always hope on the horizon if we keep moving forward.
– David Williams


Gouge Away – Burnt Sugar 

Deathwish Inc.

Released September 28, 2018

Gouge Away’s sophomore album, Burnt Sugar, is the sound of drifting bodiless through a life. It is the only album I can listen to when I feel like no matter how much I scream or cry or beg nothing will change, like when I can’t bear to get out of bed in the morning but have to get up because I’m out of sick days at work after I’ve used them all up on the countless depression addled exhausted mornings before this one, like when I’m a ghost, because no other album makes me feel less alone. This album sounds suffocating, like a hand around your neck as Christina Michelle screams of the ways she tries to stay grounded. If you need an album to keep you company, I’d suggest a whiff of Burnt Sugar
– Lillian Weber 


The Happy Children – Same Dif

Self-Released

Released June 18, 2019

Aside from some ambient essentials and recent Beatles reissues, this semi-obscure album (if you didn’t live in Minneapolis in 2018) has filled my headphones more than any other over the past decade. A decade of scrobbling doesn’t lie. The Happy Children were usually a trio, founded in the late 2010s by Caleb Wright and Mitchell Seymour. The group bubbled up with a mix of damaged art rock and the washed-out electronics that Wright would bring to his future production work. Their parting gift was a compulsively listenable, dynamic octet of songs, mapping the beginnings of dozens of paths not taken.

Same Dif remains a small miracle of experimental pop and marvelous weirdo rock about loving your friends, released at the crest of a surging wave of Minneapolis DIY music. For some strange streaming reason, the piano-pop closing track, “Bubblegum,” has 25 times more streams than the banger single with a video. It’s a pinball machine of a record, full of oddly hued lightbulbs, chiming jingles, and generous sound design; refreshing in how baffling it feels for the songs to get stuck in your head for days. The Happy Children ended just in time, precisely when they meant to, with a marvelous swan song.
– aly eleanor


Purple Mountains – Purple Mountains

Drag City

Released July 19, 2019

David Berman’s Purple Mountains is the authentic account of a man with nothing more to lose. There is a lot of pain found throughout the album with songs like “All My Happiness is Gone” and “Darkness and Cold” providing little to no hope or comfort. Berman’s songwriting on Purple Mountains is vulnerable, unflinching, and blunt—the most straightforward and least obtuse lyrics of his career. There’s little room for interpretation with lines like "the end of all wanting / is all I’ve been wanting" in album opener “That’s Just the Way That I Feel.” Thankfully, Berman’s opus is full of his signature humor and astute observations to balance out the ever-present sadness. 

Self-loathing is often met with incredible self-depricating wit: "If no one's fond of fucking me, / maybe no one's fucking fond of me" Berman states on "Maybe I'm the Only One for Me.” Punchlines and comedic scenes regularly couple moments of despair. “I nearly lost my genitalia / to an anthill in Des Moine” is a really funny thing to say shortly after saying “this kind of hurting won’t heal.” This needed comedic relief on the bummer numbers takes a break when Berman pivots toward the mundane. Scenes of snow falling or grief-stricken recollections of his mother are treated sincerely, resulting in perhaps his most serene and beautiful recordings. 

The loss of love, God, and spirit permeate Purple Mountains, but penultimate track “Storyline Fever” (a top 5 Berman song, if you ask me) gives us a glimmer of optimism that makes the album worthy of repeat listening: “you got to find a way to make it work / 'cause defeat is where your demons lurk.” 
– Russ Finn


Walter Mitty And His Makeshift Orchestra  – Puddles of Alligators

Making New Enemies

Released September 6, 2019

When I was first introduced to Walter Mitty and His Makeshift Orchestra, I had largely outgrown my hardcore/mall emo phase and was going through my indie fuckboy college era. That said, my frame of reference for “indie” was relatively narrow, mostly guided by whatever my Tumblr feed was currently obsessed with: Mac DeMarco, The 1975, Arctic Monkeys – not necessarily “indie” in the traditional sense, but I took the feed as bond. You can only imagine how my world was changed when I learned of DIY culture through Walter’s music, how everyday people were making art while working jobs or going to school, playing shows at houses and garages, printing shirts in their backyards. I’m blessed to have been introduced to DIY culture with Walter’s music, which I still listen to over a decade later. Puddles of Alligators is a collection of B-sides and loosies, some of which are staples with the Walter heads, while others made their debut with this release (the backyard performance of “Mellow” went platinum on my YouTube, years before this collection dropped). Even in a collection of loosies, Walter’s sharp songwriting and rhythmic guitar shine bright. And knowing that it’s just a bunch of buddies making music together, without a studio or contract forcing them to, makes it nothing short of magical.  
– Nickolas Sackett


Charli xcx – how i’m feeling now

Atlantic Records

Released May 15, 2020

At the end of 2019 and the start of 2020, I graduated from college, married my forever wife, and started my first big-boy job, all in the span of four weeks. I was working as a design engineer for a small company in a small Texas town outside of Austin. I was fresh on the scene and eager to please, which meant that once I was able to work from home, I was working all the time. I don’t remember exactly when I first listened to how i’m feeling now, but I do remember the shift that happened to me once I did. Before Charli, my go-to focus music was Frank Ocean’s Blonde and the soundtrack to Prince Avalanche. how i’m feeling now became a companion during the early mornings alone at the office, playing catch-up, and throughout the nights working from home while my wife was on a night shift. Charli’s familiar pop music sensibilities stuck me in the glue trap for the ripping saw-blade production to leave my eyes darting side to side, trying to trace its path. My After Charli Period has been filled with the PC Music universe, a massive amount of Whole Lotta Red, months of hard bop and free jazz, and whatever is playing on NTS Radio. This album is important to me because it marks a shift in my brain – a shift in how I see and value music. What was once a single-sided experience of sound waves hitting me now has the ability to be a two-way street. I realized that someone has to be wriggling around in that glue trap for the songs to really have impact. 
– Kirby Kluth


Slaughter Beach, Dog – At the Moonbase

Lame-O Records

Released December 24, 2020

I’ve always loved the way that training lineage is tracked in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, providing a family tree of student/teacher relationships that directly connect modern practitioners like Mikey Musumeci to Carlos Gracie and the sport’s creation. Although Gracie passed away before Musumeci was born, we can examine this lineage and see how his impact was still felt through osmosis, with the knowledge the old master passed on to his students working its way down the line to those pursuing the sport today. Rock music doesn’t feature this same kind of rigid hierarchy, but I think it’s at its best when you can discern a similar sense of history from it. This is why At the Moonbase is such a special record; it’s the place where Slaughter Beach, Dog’s sound transcends the current moment and connects with the legacy of all the great singer-songwriters who came before it. 

There are some more obvious sonic connections here—for example the way the spoken word delivery on tracks like “Do You Understand (What Has Happened to You)” and “Song for Oscar’s” bring to mind the work of Craig Finn—but even beyond that, the storytelling throughout the record calls back to the tradition of artists like Harry Chapin and Jim Croce (not to mention there is literally a song called “Van Morrison”). The album serves as a continuation of a bardic style that for so long has been a bedrock of popular music, doing so with a fresh sound pushed forward by Jake Ewald’s incredible arrangements. “A Modern Lay” is a masterclass in songwriting. “My Girl” does so much with so little. Not one bad song on the record. Thank you Slaughter Beach, Dog. 
– Josh Ejnes


Porter Robinson – Nurture

Mom+Pop 

Released April 23, 2021

Sometimes a record comes along at the right place and the right time, setting off a chain reaction that completely shifts how you view music and the world around you. It was the spring of 2021, and the northeast weather was starting to loosen its cold grip. I had just received the first dose of the COVID vaccine, and I began to see some of my friends in person again for the first time in over a year. Coming from someone who listened almost exclusively to heavier music at the time, the soundtrack of my reintroduction to the world came from a sonically unexpected place: a glitch pop album. 

I consider Nurture to be a landmark record in my journey not just as a music listener but also as a human being. I found myself moved by Porter’s lyrical articulations of feeling alive for the first time and holding what you love close to your heart amidst a comforting blanket of electronics. It shifted my brain from a sizably individualistic worldview to a more communal mindset, guiding me to fully appreciate and support the people in my life that made me who I am. The record encouraged me to seek out more versions of this glitchy yet exciting style of music, leading me down the road of alternative music and eventually landing me into a more well-rounded musical palette. I feel indebted to this album for making me a better person and giving me the confidence to confront my fears head-on. 

TLDR: If you knew me before Nurture, no you didn’t.
– Samuel Leon


Wednesday – Twin Plagues

Orindal Records

Released August 13, 2021

Even though this prompt was my own damn idea, I had the hardest time whittling down to decide what album was truly my favorite of the last decade. At times, I found myself waffling between Psyhopomp, New Hell, and a slew of emo bullshit (complimentary). Ultimately, I wound up pulling Wednesday’s sweltering third album, Twin Plagues. I’ve written at length about my love for this record as well as this band, and it’s been an affirming thrill to watch this crop of North Carolina artists rise to worldwide indie rock prominence over the last few years. While I have love for everything that came afterwards, Twin Plagues will forever hold a special place in my heart as an album that helped me through a dark time and inspired me to find the strength to pull myself out of it. The true testament is that I can listen to the record today and not be dragged back into those depths. I still get swept up in the shoegaze crush of the opening title track. I still am mesmerized by the seesaw riff in “Handsome Man.” I still think “How Can You Live” is one a goddamn miracle of a song. Much like Sufjan’s Michigan pointed me to Detroit years before, when I found myself moving to North Carolina in 2023, I looked to Twin Plagues as a sort of affirmation that I was heading in the right direction. After two beautiful years in this state, it turns out I wasn’t wrong. 
– Taylor Grimes


Alvvays – Blue Rev

Polyvinyl Record Co.

Released October 7, 2022

I’ve been listening to power pop and indie rock for longer than I’ve known what either was. R.E.M. was the first band I ever knew the name of, and from that point on, I was raised on a steady diet of ’80s and ’90s alternative courtesy of my Gen X parents. I’d hazard a guess that the masterminds in Alvvays had a similar upbringing because Blue Rev plays like a crash course in the sound of the first twenty years of my life. The guitars alternate between a supercharged fuzz and the vibrant jangle that I fell in love with as a child in the backseat of a beat up Honda Civic. Every synthesizer feels handpicked to evoke a specific memory in my mind. Oh you like shoegaze? Hit play and you’re immediately hit with “Pharmacist.”  Maybe you’re a lifelong new waver - that’s okay, “Very Online Guy” and “Velveteen” have you covered. If the R.E.M. shout perked your ears up, crank “After the Earthquake” up to max volume and then wonder why you’re still reading this instead of bouncing off your own walls.

All that would mean dirt though if it weren’t for Molly Rankin’s constant towing the line between wry wit and genuine pathos as both a singer and songwriter. In true power pop tradition, she’s able to wring both a laugh and a tear from her listeners, sometimes even with one twist of a phrase. On Blue Rev, she invokes heroes that range from Tom Verlaine to Belinda Carlisle to weave 14 perfect vignettes of loneliness, longing, and waiting. As someone who was entering their third decade far too used to disappointment, wasting time waiting for life to start, hearing an album I’d been anticipating for almost half a decade knock it out of the park was a near revelation. I’ve changed a lot in the two years since Blue Rev’s release, and my taste with me, but if I ever do reach back, it’s likely with Alvvays: all my favorite records and the boy I was rolled into one 38 minute package that ends with a dare: “Now that you’re around, take another shot.”
– Wes Cochran


Arm’s Length – Never Before Seen, Never Again Found

Wax Bodega

Released October 28th, 2022

This one grew on me in ways that growth is painful, yet cardinal. Akin to when you’re forced to accept that someone will never be the same as they once were, putting down your suffering dog, the bone-stretching growing pains while lying in your middle school bed at 3 AM. It feels like I’ve ached through a great deal of that sort of growing in recent years, in that same sense: that growth is often painful, yet essential. 

What they don’t tell you about entering your mid to late twenties is the heap of emotional weight you suddenly bear as your frontal lobe fully develops, plopping all your demons and skeletons front and center for you to deal with amidst the rest of your shiny new adult responsibilities. Never Before Seen, Never Again Found found me tangled in uncomfortable growth, and even though it’s an emotionally painful listen, it’s completely necessary. The album is vulnerable in every way that I hope to be, airing out tumult with grief, religion, and identity. Arm’s Length crafted an all-timer in this one– a modern day Home, Like No Place Is There– with not a single skippable track in sight. This is the type of album that you put on at your lowest; to go blow-for-blow with your dread. It’s strange that we tend to listen to sad music when we’re sad. Perhaps we need to simmer in the sorrow and wallow in the bad luck before we can rise and ask ourselves, “Is it just my luck?” 
– Brandon Cortez


Basque – Pain Without Hope Of Healing

No Funeral Records

Released March 22, 2024

When compiling a list like this, I am stressed. My favorite albums, even my favorite favorite albums, are often a moving target. Like a sequestered pond hosting a slew of migratory birds, the songs I become most passionate about are subject to climate, to season, to temperature. One flock leaves as soon as June hits 98°, another to arrive when a fall sunset triggers a wistful memory. So even though the last ten years have hosted an almost uncountable number of classic, iconic, and incredible albums, I am beholden to my obsession of the past year; this flight of fancy that has consumed me fully. And perhaps next year I’ll think myself insane for believing it, but the final Basque album is effectively perfect from start to finish. An unreal meditation on the agony of self-loathing, the album's lyrical despondency would feel too much if every performance on it weren’t a pitch-perfect match. With vocals that howl and shriek in perfect tempo, guitars turn on a dime while bouncing and wailing, a bass that hammers like knuckles to plaster, and what has to be one of the greatest drum performances ever put to record in this genre. Pain Without Hope of Healing is easily one of the finest screamo records of the last decade.
– Elias Amini


Swim Into The Stats

Hello, and welcome to the nerdy part after the article where we talk about STATISTICS. Think of this like the scene that plays after the credits–a fun little bonus for the real heads that want to stick around. This is a spiritual successor to something we published at the end of last year called “Swim Into The Stats.” While that article focused almost exclusively on 2024 in review, we are now shifting to look at the entirety of this blog’s run over the last decade. Thanks to Braden Allmond for wrangling all this data and rendering these spiffy charts; it’s a trip to see this website’s history condensed in such a visual way. 

First, here are all the articles we've published over the last decade, displayed as a noodlepoint scatter plot with a different color for each year. It’s cool to see this rise (more or less) year after year as I began to take the site more seriously and also feature more contributors. It's also interesting to see my life in the gaps, such as moving across the country in the fall of 2023 or absconding from all responsibility in July 2024. 

This git-style plot shows a grey box for every day in the last decade, and a blue box for every day Swim posted. It makes sense that Friday is usually spoken for, given that’s when new music releases and we like to be of the moment whenever possible. You can also see my commitment over the last couple years to not really post anything on the weekends. 

Focusing just on 2025 for a bit, it feels like we’re moving at a pretty steady clip. Most of these are reviews, which makes sense, but I like seeing the interviews, features, and roundups strategically scattered throughout. 

Examining the number of unique authors in this bar chart is probably the easiest way to illustrate how collaborative this site has become. Sure, it’s still me running this thing, editing and wrangling reviews, but it’s all the beautiful, lovely people above (and throughout our ten years) that have brought a wealth of voices, perspectives, and tastes to the forefront. 

Finally, let’s end with some dessert. This delicious pie chart shows a breakdown of total articles by year. It’s wild to see 2024 taking up over a quarter, but other than that (and a slender 2015 and 2016 as we got off the ground), everything else feels pretty evenly split.


Finally…

There ya have it. Ten years of albums from our esteemed Swim Team, some retrospective charts to show off our growth, and a whole lotta gratitude on my part. I’ll just say it again, especially if you made it this far, but thank you for being here. I love music, and running this website is just something that makes sense to my brain. I gotta get this adoration out somewhere, and the fact that anyone reads this regularly, contributes, or cares in any way is a little bit brain-breaking to me. 

Whether you’ve been reading for years or are totally new, thank you for being here, and thank you for helping us get here. Here’s to Ten Years of Swim.