It's You! It's Me! And There's Dancing! – Tell Me All About It | Album Review

Self-released

There are a few things that are guaranteed to set off my “hell yeah” meter. One of them is bands from Portland, Oregon. Even though I haven’t lived full-time in the Pacific Northwest since 2018, I’m still a Portland native who feels a strong sense of pride for any cool art coming from my hometown. Second is short-ass albums. The shorter the better, honestly. I recognize 40 minutes as the standard, but if you can deliver an equally impactful experience in 20-some minutes or less, I’m all for it. Third is emo music, which feels pretty self-explanatory, especially if you’ve ever talked to me in person or read this site before. It should come as no surprise, then, that when Portland band It's You! It's Me! And There's Dancing! dropped a 14-minute scorcher of an album on Valentine’s Day, I ate that shit up like it was a gourmet meal. 

Though the band is named after one of the most famous Los Campesinos! songs, the music on Tell Me All About It isn’t really emo in any traditional sense. Instead, the songs tend to lean into a more shouty punk direction. Maybe a touch of Orgcore, a hearty helping of screamo, and a dollop of post-hardcore. But fuck that, these labels are all just marketing terms anyway, right? Instead, I’ll just sum things up with the group’s bio on Bandcamp, which labels them as “Some kind of guitar music from Portland, OR.” Once again, I say hell yeah.

Introductory song “II” kicks off with a tempo-setting guitar lick; essentially a 30-second acclimation to get the listener up to speed before the triumphant bombast of “Work Hard or Suffer Every Day of Your Life,” which itself is only 49 seconds long. The lyrics offer glimpses of beauty to be found out in the world, but these natural blisses are tempered with the knowledge contained in the song’s title that we’ll be stuck either working or suffering for the rest of our lives. As vocalist Cxh barks about trying to be a better person in all walks of life, the guitars point upward in a riff that feels like an angelic counterpoint to the scratchy punk vox. 

The immediately following song, “Tenderness,” shows no signs of slowing down, opening with a chuggy circle pit riff that slashes forward as the band articulates the pain of letting down someone that you love. “It’s harder for me, to throw a punch, than take one,” goes one line in the first verse, mirrored by a brief scene in the following verse, “I admire the way you’ve learned to fight / And I’ll be standing at ringside to wrap your hands / With tenderness.”

On the two-part “Ruminate // Ward,” the band plays up their minimalist side, giving the listeners slight breathing room as Cxh spins witchy imagery in their Ian Shelton-esque bark. The 24-second “For Whomever” acts as a sort of mid-album epilogue before the ascendant guitar theatrics of “Softer Sympathetic” bring us up to the stars. There’s another moshpit riff to keep the restless energy coming, almost like they have to pack as many notes into their allotted time as they possibly can, but maybe it’s just because they know what’s coming next. Penultimate track “Great Collision States” offers gruesome car crash imagery as a means of depicting the desire for change and only being met with stagnation. It’s a frustrated and honest song that grapples with much more than the lyrics first let on. 

The album’s best moment comes in its final track, “Here Comes the Hurrah,” where every couplet offers a goosebump-inducing morsel of prose as the band spins up one of their more pop-punk-leaning instrumentals. After all’s said and done, the sweat and beer and blood have spilled across the basement floor, It's You! It's Me! And There's Dancing! send the listener off with plenty to think about, including a kiss-off to bad friends, misplaced trust, and the innate power of New Jersey. 

This is all on top of the rest of the release’s veiled frustrations at the state of the world. Even from one of the most progressive cities in the country, Portland is still plagued with rampant ICE activity, feckless leaders, and an ineffectual population where some are trying their hardest and others not at all. Tell Me All About It is uniquely Portland, undeniably hard-hitting, and wonderfully emo. 

Even with bellowed rough-around-the-edges vocals, there’s still a lot of beauty, brightness, and consolation to be found here. I think when you live in a place as gloomy and demoralizing as Portland, you learn to look extra for those little outcroppings of light. I think when you live in times as dark as these, you have to harness every bit of strength and community you can find. It may only be 14 minutes, but Tell Me All About It offers an outlet, a shoulder, a fist, a shield, and a parade. 

Heart Sweats II: Another Swim Into The Sound Valentine’s Day Mixtape

Rip open that box of chocolates, pour out some red wine, and grab a handful of chalky heart-shaped candies, ‘cause we’ve got a lovey-dovey Valentine’s Day roundup for all you hopeless romantics out there. In celebration of the world’s most amorous holiday, we asked the Swim Team what love songs are hitting them particularly hard right now. Much like last year’s edition, the result is a beautiful and wide-ranging mixtape from the Swim Team directly to you. 

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Alien Boy – “Seventeen”

Get Better Records

Falling in love is stupid. It’s one of the most senseless things you can throw yourself into, but that’s how it has to be. Love is going to embarrass you, humble you, and terrify you; it's going to make you act crazy and hurt in ways you never thought possible… It’s also the best thing in the world. Before there can be love, there must be that weird liminal period where you’re not sure what’s going on within yourself or with this person. You’re not sure if this feeling is one-sided or just something you’re thinking too much about and building up in your head. Most people call this the “crush” stage, and it can be just as exhilarating as it is disastrous.

That feeling of a new relationship, of fresh, dumb, pure emotional adoration is captured perfectly in “Seventeen” by Alien Boy. It’s a song embodying the feeling of adolescent love, the type of love that takes over your body and abducts your mind. The bouncy guitar jangle acts as the heartbeat while the bass and drums add a propulsive, restless energy like a leg you can’t stop bouncing. Every waking moment, you’re consumed with this sense of possibility; all the imagined realities and possible futures. You need reckless abandon. You need to let it out, or you’re gonna implode. You’ve gotta love like you’ve never loved someone before. It’s all or nothing.

– Taylor Grimes

Brahm – “I will find you”

Self-Released

Screamo is not typically the place you look to for romantic love songs. Despondent longing, sure, plenty of examples there, but espousals of deep care and adulation not rooted in agony can be a bit hard to come by. Which is really a shame. A genre as complex and passionate as this owes itself to have at least a few tracks that explore love in its connective tenderness. This is why when Brahm released “I will find you,” I was very quickly moved to tears. Here, so much of what makes this music powerful was being channeled into a grand exultation of the relationship between the singer and his now-fiancée, concentrated into an incantational promise: “I will find you / In every lifetime / Just like we / Were always meant to.” Screamed, repeated, driven up into a crescendo: “I will find you” is one of the few screamo songs that feels truly pure in its love while claiming and owning all the sonic intensity one can expect from a legendary band like Brahm. Tender, subtle, gentle, then explosive. Though few in number, screamo love songs are immense and absolutely worth weeping over on our most saccharine of holidays.

– Elias Amini

The Meters – “Mardi Gras Mambo”

Warner Records

Every few years, like this year, Valentine’s Day coincides with the final round of Mardi Gras festivities. It always kind of irritated me when that happened. Mardi Gras is such an insular holiday with days upon days of nonstop partying and local antics, while Valentine’s Day’s appearance always felt like it was abruptly intruding—a pink and red reality check while I’m dealing with purple, green, and gold. I have softened on this position over time and have personally compromised by including Mardi Gras songs amongst my pantheon of the greatest love songs. When measuring how much love I feel towards my favorite Mardi Gras songs, I think I love The Meters’ cover of “Mardi Gras Mambo” the most. Quite frankly, the little funky keys part at the beginning is one of the most beautiful things put to wax and best enjoyed with a daiquiri in hand. It's an old song, somewhere around 70 years old, meaning that it’s been played for generations of New Orleanians like me. This means that everyone knows it, everyone sings it, and everyone does the same little dance to it while standing on the streets. Love is in everything, and love is everywhere, but love is especially in the Mardi Gras mambooooo down in New Orleans.

– Caro Alt

ManDancing – “I Really Like You (Carly Rae Jepsen cover)”

Something Merry

Sometimes people joke about Carly Rae Jepsen being the queen of emo, except I’m not joking. In 2015, she blessed the world with an instant-classic pop album, Emotion, absolutely overflowing with timeless desire, courageous sincerity, and selfless love. Three short years later, Something Merry and 15 talented artists orchestrated a cover album, with all proceeds donated to Immigration Equality.
EMO-TION redirects the original album’s skyscraper-high pop sensibilities into intimate articulations for any occasion. In their cover of “I Really Like You,” ManDancing takes the already perfectly unsure, desperate, brave lyrics and fills them with bated breath, yearning, and a passion literally begging to be met. The guest vocals from Em Noll in the chorus mirror lead singer Steve Kelly’s feelings, not knowing if falling so fast is a good idea, and not really caring. 

I met my partner at a rock concert, and after our second date, 72 hours later, I said to her, “I think we’re in trouble.” What began as innocently getting to know each other quickly spiraled into a long-distance relationship spanning the Atlantic Ocean. These days, our distance only spans Iowa, and even then, we’re lucky enough to see each other almost every month. This song reminds me of when we met, let go of everything, and fell for each other. 

ManDancing, king of this single; Carly Rae Jepsen, queen of emo music; Annie Watson, queen of my heart.

– Braden Allmond

Oso Oso – “skippy”

Self-released

This just in: love is just liking everything about a person?

I like how you’re a little messy when you’re in your comfortable spaces–like how you leave your socks by my bed, yet you’re so put-together everywhere else. I like how you know that I can be a bit of a fuck-up sometimes, but you see who I am on the inside and, even more so, who I’m trying to be on the outside. I like the songs you show me, even when I don’t like the genre. But I like them because you showed them to me. I like how every melody of every song I hear is a sunny-bright hook, like literally every line of music and lyrics in “skippy” by Oso Oso. With you in the world, every song is catchier, every bite tastes better.

Most of all, I like the way that it could only be you and that you knew it before I did. I might be late to our party, but I’m grateful and lucky to go with you on my arm.

– Joe Wasserman

Touché Amoré – “Come Heroine”

Epitaph Records

I’ve never been one for love songs. I often find them saccharine, bogged down by cliche emotion and sticky with reductive lyrics that I’m sure I’ve heard elsewhere. I’ve been in love with my husband for nearly a decade, and it’s nearly impossible to find a song that accurately captures the enduring and torrential force of that kind of love, yet Touché Amoré manages to do just that in “Come Heroine.” The song crashes forward like an avalanche, rushing headlong into a crashing ocean of honest declaration: “You brought me in / You took to me / And reversed the atrophy / Did so unknowingly / Now I’m undone.” I’ve repeated this raw confession countless times, the rhythm of my heart counting the syllables. Love has disarmed me, shown me my weaknesses, and simultaneously strengthened me. “When I swore I’d seen everything / I saw you.” And even after a decade, seeing my husband every morning feels like the first time I realized I was in love with him. Even when the day comes that I finally have seen everything, I know it will still pale in comparison to him. Maybe I am one for love songs after all. 

– Britta Joseph

The Smashing Pumpkins – “Stand Inside Your Love”

Virgin Records

What does it actually mean to actually stand inside someone’s love? The hell if I know, but what I do know is that in the Y2K era Billy Corgan still had his fastball when it came to writing pop songs. “Stand Inside Your Love” is a shining example of this. It’s catchy as all get out, the lyrics are simple and easy to remember, I mean, I don’t know what else to tell you, it’s just a groovy listening experience. Those classic Pumpkins' new wave guitar textures still hit like an anvil to the heart to this day. It’s one of those love songs that still has some oomph when listening. Do yourself a favor and play this for your partner for Valentine’s or cruising around town on date night. You can thank me later. If they love the song, tell them that David sent you. If not, lose my number.

For extra credit, if you’re into the vaudeville subgenre, this song’s music video will scratch every itch you could ever imagine. 

– David Williams

Kings of Leon – “Find Me”

RCA

My partner and I have been together for almost a decade, which means there are a lot of songs to choose from that have been cornerstones to our relationship. I’d been finding it difficult to choose the best one to write about this year, and I suppose it took the pressing deadline of this article’s publish date to bless me with the source. Kings of Leon have unabashedly been one of my favorite bands since I was in grade school, despite their more recent material falling a bit flat for me. But it’s actually a song from their 2016 album WALLS that comes up quite a lot in our musical lexicon with one another, a song that finds the Followill family doing their best Interpol impression, of all bands. “Find Me” is without a doubt the best piece of music the band has released in the last ten years, an upbeat rocker that doesn’t mute Caleb’s signature voice like their other latest singles do. The chorus, which is largely anchored by the question “How did you find me?”, is an effervescent feeling we share and echoes the gratitude we carry that we found each other at all. In the second verse, Caleb pleads, “Take me away, follow me into the wild with a twisted smile, I can’t escape. And now I got you by my side, all my life, day after day.”

The WALLS Tour was one of the first concerts we ever went to together, and the jolt we got when they played “Find Me” kept us going throughout the rest of the 2+ hour set. I am gushingly lucky to have found my one, even if the “how” of it all doesn’t have a definitive answer. Although, it may be hard sometimes to find each other at Costco.

– Logan Archer Mounts

Angel Olsen – “Spring”

Jagjaguwar

“Don’t take it for granted, love when you have it,” is a line that has felt like a mantra ever since my first listen to this track on Angel Olsen’s 2019 album, All Mirrors. Sometimes the songs most indicative of love are the ones that describe the spaces in between it, the moments longing for it, and the times when it’s found, even if its presence only exists in a brief moment. “Spring” is downtempo enough to soundtrack a slow dance, but as the keys and orchestral production swell, it’s easy to get lost inside of due to its musical syntax and structure. It’s the auditory equivalent to the head rush of a kiss; it overtakes you but brings you back down from it gently. Even as Olsen reflects on others who may have found “it,” her optimism reaches the song’s ultimate peak of vulnerability as she plainly asks for it: “So give me some heaven just for a while, make me eternal here in your smile.”

– Helen Howard

MUNA – “Kind Of Girl”

Saddest Factory Records

Valentine’s Day can be hard when you’re single. I spent most of my twenties in a committed relationship, and now I can’t remember the last Valentine’s Day I celebrated that lined up with me being in a romantic relationship. However, even if you’re not romantically entangled on February 14th this year or any year, what’s most important is your perspective. I’ve been in and out of relationships quite a bit since my last major relationship broke off, and when any of those relationships have fizzled out, I found myself clinging to negative self-talk as I often do. “Kind Of Girl,” off of MUNA’s self-titled record, is a song I cling to when I need a reminder that it’s more important than anything to treat myself with grace and accept my flaws as human. Despite their catalog being full of sad queer girl music, this track takes a softer approach to sitting with your emotions. I’m the kind of girl who feels her emotions so intensely, both when falling in and out of love, or even in the presence of the slightest crush. A connection can simply run its course, yet I have to tell myself all the ways I should’ve done things differently and that I’m better off avoiding further entanglements. I’m glad I have MUNA to remind me in those moments that I need to love myself harder. I need to be gentle with the kind of girl I am, maybe lean into one of my many hobbies, and keep my heart open to the next person who wants to connect with me – and this time, let them. 

– Ciara Rhiannon

A Dive Into The Deep End With Pool Kids

Photo By David Williams

The art of being a showstopper is not something that is easily quantifiable. There’s no math equation or magic formula you can use to determine when an artist attains this mythical status, but you probably know it when you see it. In a world where inflation has hit concert ticket prices harder than a Mike Tyson hook to the ribcage, fans have to pick and choose which shows they attend now more than ever. People are looking for a reason to leave their house, and when they do, they want to have an experience. That’s where the showstopper comes in, giving the audience an uncompromising performance that’s unmatched by their peers. The audience wants something memorable that they can tell their friends about — something they didn’t know they needed, maybe something they didn’t even know was possible. 

That’s where Christine Goodwyne, Caden Clinton, Andy Anaya, and Nicolette Alvarez enter the conversation. The quartet hailing from Tallahassee, Florida, make up the rock band Pool Kids. I had my head blown off seeing them perform their latest record, Easier Said Than Done, on their headlining tour this past fall. I can confirm that a song like “Leona Street,” with its pop-flair chorus, hits just as hard in person as it does on the record. In comparison to their first two albums, which leaned into the group’s mathy emo tendencies, I get the sense that Pool Kids allowed themselves more freedom on Easier Said Than Done, which also means they had new avenues to go absolutely batshit on stage.

Photo By David Williams

In concert, the band elevates their music in the best way possible, bringing an unlimited amount of energy to the stage and demanding it in return from the crowd. This was a throwback type of performance from a band that is clearly a master of their craft and fan engagement. Goodwyne had the fans in the palm of her hand as she crowd surfed and made her way to the middle of the room, essentially singing in the eye of the storm. All the while, Anaya was gesturing to his ears for more noise from the fans, like he was mid-80s Hulk Hogan hyping up the crowd.

Even with their fierce and precise instrumentation, there’s an unpredictability with Pool Kids that makes them worth the price of admission. At the show I went to, Christine Goodwyne got engaged on stage with her now-fiancé. If that isn’t unpredictable, then I don’t know what is. 

Last fall, before their sold-out show at Lincoln Hall in Chicago, I got a chance to have a photoshoot around the venue with Pool Kids. Christine Goodwyne responded to my questions via email about everything from their approach to live shows to dream bands to tour with and getting engaged on stage. 

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Photo By David Williams

SWIM: What's the last show you saw that lit a competitive spirit and made you want to practice harder for the next time you went to the studio? 

GOODWYNE: I don't know that I feel “competitive” in those situations; I see it more as feeling inspired. I love it when I go to a show and find myself feeling inspired and motivated to get home and work. I definitely felt that way watching Foxing at Thalia Hall, which was literally the last show we played. I always say that I feel inspired by so many of the bands we play with, but I really do mean it in a literal sense. I see other people’s ideas and the way they do things then it makes me feel excited to go back home and work on ways to make our show better. 

SWIM: Is how you approach creating music today different than how you approached your debut record in 2018? 

GOODWYNE: Definitely. For our debut record, I was trying to finish it as quickly as possible and didn't really know how to pick a song apart or experiment with structure and presentation. I would just kind of write random guitar parts and smash them together, which I think gave that record a more math-rock feel that some people like. I also wrote most of the vocals after figuring out the guitars. Now I figure out vocals as I’m fleshing out the guitar and general structure. I also tinker with the songs a lot more before deciding on what to bring to the band, and then we have fun tinkering even more as a full band. But yeah, the biggest difference is definitely that it’s not just Caden and me anymore, so there’s a lot more insight and input and exploration with all four of us once we get in a room together.

SWIM: Easier Said Than Done has countless fun, sing-along choruses, with the standout for me being "Leona Street." Are there any bands you listened to growing up that influenced how you create a fun pop song? 

GOODWYNE: I didn’t really start getting into pop music until my adult life, I would say, a few years after starting the band. I had a lot of catching up to do, I got really into Charli XCX and Lady Gaga, and now I can appreciate a lot of Taylor Swift, too. But when I started getting into that kind of music, that’s definitely when I started to pay more attention to song structure and writing an actual chorus, and what makes a chorus or a hook “catchy.”

SWIM: Can you tell me about your vision going into making Easier Said Than Done: the topics you wanted to approach and how you wanted the songs to sound sonically?

GOODWYNE: I don’t know that I’ve ever sat down before writing a record and decided ahead of time what topics I want to approach. I feel like I’m just always slowly writing songs, and whichever ones aren’t ready in time for the studio on the current record just get carried over to the next. As far as subject matter, not to get all Rick Rubin or spiritual about it, but I sort of feel like I don’t have much of a choice in what ideas come to me. I’m kind of just at the mercy of whatever lyric ideas pop into my head, and then I just have to take that and run with it. I never in a million years would have planned to write a song like “Dani,” which is about a childhood friend’s trauma, but the lyrics just started coming to me, so I was like “welp, here we go I guess.”

SWIM: Your live show is an incredibly fun experience worth the price of admission alone. In this day and age, shows are about stage presence and keeping the fans engaged, which you all seem to be students of the game in that regard. How did you all develop your stage presence? Is it something that happened naturally, or did it take time to develop? 

GOODWYNE: That’s a great question. We actually used to be super stiff on stage, and I remember the moment where that really changed. We were going on one of our first tours with Mom Jeans, and a friend who had also toured with them was like, “You just have to go absolutely crazy on stage to keep their attention. They see you as a barrier standing in between them and who they really want to see, so you just have to go absolutely crazy.” We all sort of looked at each other before going on stage and were like, “fuck it, who cares if we look stupid, let’s just go fucking crazy.” Andy already had a great stage presence at that point because he had been touring for a long time before that, but I remember that show being sort of a breakthrough for Nicolette and I. We realized how much better it made the show, and we just started doing that every time. 

Photo By David Williams

SWIM: Who is on your dream list of bands you would love to tour with in the future? 

GOODWYNE: I’ll spare you the list of 100 bands, but ones we’ve been talking about more recently have definitely been Wet Leg, Mannequin Pussy, HAIM, Amyl and the Sniffers, Japanese Breakfast, and Wednesday… there are so many more, though. 

SWIM: Biopics seem to be the latest rage recently from movies about Bob Dylan, Pavement and now Bruce Springsteen in the past year. What's your favorite music biopic film and why?

GOODWYNE: I sort of live under a rock and don’t think I’ve seen any true biopics, but we definitely love a good music doc. We LOVE Some Kind of Monster, as well as Mistaken for Strangers, both of which were shown to us by Andy.

SWIM: Lastly, congratulations to Christine on getting engaged at the Chicago show! What an amazing moment that must have been. Can you describe to me the emotions you were going through up there on stage while everything was happening? Did you have a heads-up that something was up, or were you totally in shock? 

GOODWYNE: Me AND THE BAND both had no idea it was going to happen, haha. He didn’t want there to be any secrets in the van because he knew I would grill everyone if I sensed something was up, so he really kept it a secret. I did know to expect a proposal within the year or so, and I had even dropped hints about wanting an on-stage proposal… but for whatever reason, it just did NOT cross my mind to expect it that day. I was watching him sing and dance for the whole set, and then he disappeared for like the last three songs. I asked the crowd, “Where is Nick??!” and when he walked up onto the stage, I thought he was just showing me ‘here I am, babe!’ but right before he grabbed the mic, I saw that his facial expression was very focused instead of funny, and that’s when I realized what was happening haha. He nailed it. 

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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.

Ratboys – Singin' to an Empty Chair | Album Review

New West Records

Snowed in. Roads iced over. Trying on New Year’s resolutions and dropping New Year’s resolutions. What else is there to do at this time of year but think about last year? Openly celebrate what went right and privately obsess over what went wrong. Why did that one thing happen? How can you make sure it never happens again? Why did they say that to you? What should you have said back? Why didn’t they talk to you after that? Why didn’t they listen to you? Why didn’t you try harder to make them stay?

Julia Steiner, frontwoman of Ratboys, got the title for the band’s latest album, Singin' to an Empty Chair, from a therapy tool called The Empty Chair Technique. The premise of the exercise is simple on paper: you imagine that someone you want to have a difficult conversation with is sitting right across from you, and you have that complicated conversation. Alone. But this is obviously easier said than done. Actually mustering up the courage to verbalize the words you have kept buried for so long, to even say them by yourself, is intimidating. Gathering the courage to admit wrong, to share a secret, to ask for better, to try again, is an impossible feeling. Ratboys know this well.

Singin' to an Empty Chair is the sixth album from the Chicago indie stars and their first release on New West Records. This album also marks their second collaboration with Chris Walla of Death Cab for Cutie, who also produced 2023’s The Window. Steiner described their last album as a “dedicated and intentional process,” the product of a meticulous couple years of writing and rehearsing before recording anything officially. Singin' to an Empty Chair offers a different perspective. Bassist Sean Neumann describes this record as a quilt – a collection of songs written in different places and recorded in different spaces. This patchwork approach is pieced together by songs describing half-conversations and one-sided admittances, all sewn together with their signature mind-bending guitar and twangy lilt. 

Photo by MILES KALCHIK

Where were you while we were getting high? Wanna go for a ride? On “Open Up,” Steiner adds to the canon of great rock music questions when she asks, “What’s it gonna take to open up tonight?” She asks this over the confident strum of a guitar, but as the song builds, Steiner’s bright voice is interjected by sparks of the rest of the band, a moment of fuzz here, a kick drum there, before building into a folksy jam. The whole band is firing on all cylinders, and the only place to go from here is the stars.

Ratboys’ greatest sleight of hand is their cosmic bend, and they are very precise with how they blend it into their twang. On their last album, Ratboys took listeners to the brink of the world on “Black Earth, WI.” On Singin' to an Empty Chair, Ratboys avoid their own beaten path but find a new supersonic twist on “Light Night Mountains All That.” The song starts by sweeping you off your feet, sending you into a vortex of Dave Sagan’s swirling guitar and the uncanny rhythm of Marcus Nuccio’s drumming. At first, Steiner’s voice steadies the spinning, repeating an increasingly frustrated accusation that “you didn’t care.” Her voice, while always clear and measured, builds and builds until it’s blistering because “you didn’t care / you didn’t care / you didn’t / care!” This irritation seems to blow a hole in the vortex, turning Sagan’s guitar into something more intergalactic. 

The music video released alongside this single matches its extraterrestrial spin. Styled like a found-footage horror film, some kind of haunting evil forces invade while the band plays their song. The ghouls flicker in and out of the video, almost like they’re interfering with the signal, until they’re playing the song too. This cataclysmic feeling Ratboys spin is one of their most exciting tricks—a soundtrack for the final frontier. 

Just because we’re singing to an empty chair here and embracing conversations we hesitate to have does not mean that every imagined conversation has to be upsetting or frustrating. It’s hard to admit how much you love someone, too. In “Penny in the Lake,” serene optimism is conveyed through berry pies, Ringo Starr, and the breathless crow of a rooster. “Strange Love” is an earnest confession that conjures slightly sweaty palms, and “Anywhere” evokes a vulnerable, but freeing feeling, like admittance with avoidant eye contact. 

The title of the album appears in “Just Want You to Know the Truth,” the album’s 8-minute bittersweet barnstormer. Across a mournful pedal steel, Steiner weaves snapshots of a past she can’t return to: construction sites, lasagna on Christmas Eve, and Antiques Roadshow. The emotional core of the album is buried somewhere in the sawdust of this song, between Steiner’s aching lyrics and Sagan’s biting guitar. The resonance of the Empty Chair Technique is laid bare as Steiner grimly sings “A couple some odd years ago / You said, ‘Sweetie take your time’ / So now I’m singin’ to an empty chair / Bleedin’ out every line.” It’s a punishing admonishment about forgiveness and time, combined with a cathartic release of finally saying something, even if it's alone.

The album closes with two opposed songs. The penultimate track, “Burn it Down,” while starting syrupy, turns incendiary as the band unleashes a fury they have tamped down for five albums. Steiner gives in to the doom built up by the song’s ferocious sound, just for a moment, saying, “It’s always been this way / It’s never gonna change.” But this anger washes away. The album ends on “At Peace in the Hundred Acre Woods” offering a bookend to the breezy sound that it began with. It’s a swaying, reassuring song, something that is supposed to play softly from a speaker on your patio while you’re talking to an empty lawn chair. 

On “Just Want You to Know the Truth,” Steiner sings, “Well, it’s not what you did / it’s what you didn’t do / I just want you to know the truth.” It was here, as I was caught in my thoughts about 2025 and my weirdest, lowest points, that I understood the Empty Chair Technique. It’s not just about addressing the truth, but verbalizing what you need to get to the truth. Since then, I’ve been thinking about who I want to talk to in the empty chair next to me. The blue one next to the couch I’m writing this on. What truth do I need to be made real? What about you? Who is in your empty chair? What do you want to tell them?

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Caro Alt (she/her) is from New Orleans, Louisiana, and if she could be anyone in The Simpsons, she would be Milhouse.

Blackwater Holylight – Not Here Not Gone Review

Suicide Squeeze Records

When it comes to stoner rock, sometimes it feels like there’s little room for the form to expand. So often, bands fall into tar pits as they rehash the same trite lyrics and recycle the same five sludgy riffs. For titans like Sleep, this genre can be taken to bong-ripping heights, but other acts like The Sword iterate until they become parodies of their earlier, more exciting selves. If they are averse to marijuana mysticism, a band might instead go down the path of the thousand-dollar leather jacket and embrace more of a desert rock direction. Queens of the Stone Age make this look cool, but most of the time you’ll end up sounding like Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. So how do you inject new life into a style that often reads as riff-by-numbers? You abandon it almost entirely.

That’s exactly what Blackwater Holylight have done. On their first two albums, the Portland, Oregon, group’s sound was dripping in bluesy, chugging 70’s hard rock. They were proficient in their Sabbath worship, but not altogether original. In fact, 2019’s Veils of Winter is so entrenched in the desert-doom sound that it literally has a song titled “Motorcycle.” These are good albums, but it’s clear that the risk was there for them to become trapped in the endless cycle of cannabinoid riffage. The band’s third album, Silence/Motion, was a massive reimagining of their music as the group became darker and more dreamlike, adding in elements of prog and shoegaze. The result is something simultaneously refined and menacing, but what makes it so impressive is that it’s very clearly the same band that made the first two records.

On Blackwater Holylight’s new album, Not Here Not Gone, the group is continuing to evolve their artistry while remaining true to their roots. After relocating to LA and working with producer Sonny Diperri (Narrow Head, DIIV, Emma Ruth Rundle), the trio has cultivated a vicious doomgaze sound that is equal parts punishing and ethereal. The album opens with “How Will You Feel,” which immediately signals that Blackwater Holylight is continuing to push the limits of their expression. The track features fuzzed-out, crunchy guitars that are more akin to early My Bloody Valentine than Truckfighters as singer Sunny Faris’ voice floats serenely above the chaos. 

On tracks “Bodies” and “Spades,” guitarist Mikayla Mayhew blurts out concussive, mosh-inducing riffs that are backed by airy synth work from Sarah McKenna. It’s this constant contrast that makes the songs on Not Here Not Gone so engaging; just when you think you’ve got them figured out, they shift into a new direction. Single “Fade” finds them branching out into the vast world of post-rock with a confidence that would have you think they’ve been making songs like this for twenty years. Album interlude “Giraffe” is the band’s biggest experiment yet as they jam over a beat from Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio. The collaboration results in a slice of industrial rock that could fit in seamlessly on the tracklist of The Fragile. Despite all of these progressions, Blackwater Holylight hasn’t forgotten that, at the end of the day, they descend from Black Sabbath. This is best heard on the seven-minute closer “Poppyfields,” which weaves elements of black and doom metal and gives Eliese Dorsay an opportunity to truly beat the shit out of her drums. All of this is done in the service of creating a brooding, tension-filled piece that ends the album on a powerful note.

All of this is what makes Blackwater Holylight such an impressive band. Rather than coming out of the gates hot on their first album or two and then fizzling out in attempts to recapture that energy or flailing through desperate experimentation, the group has steadily and deftly adapted their sound. They’re the kind of band that makes you want to continue to follow their career because you’re actually excited to hear what they’ll do next, rather than clenching your jaw in hopes that they stick the landing. While Blackwater Holylight might not be a textbook desert rock or stoner doom band anymore, they fit in at Austin’s Levitation Fest as much as they do at Roadburn in the Netherlands. Blackwater Holylight refuse to be contained by the constraints or expectations of genre, charting their course on their own terms. They're far from the first musicians to do this, and they're certainly not the last, but in a genre that is loaded with copycats, they're a shining example of changing and molting until you reach the truest version of yourself. Odds are, people will recognize that and be drawn to it because when everything else can be found in excess, the things that are actually unique speak for themselves.

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