Abacot – Songs About Problems | Album Review

Abacot and Many Hats Distribution

It’s been almost three years, but I still remember where I was when I first heard Abacot’s EP Promo 2023. I had just hiked over a bridge for a mile in direct sunlight, and it was only getting hotter as I tried to get through my dreaded commute. I made the mistake of wearing a cloying polyester dress, and mosquitoes were tearing me up as I descended the endless Woodley Park-Zoo/Adams Morgan escalator. Ultimately, it was just a regular Tuesday in July. I waited for the train, squeezed in, and, naturally, the A.C. was out. I checked my phone while crammed between two businessmen and saw that Swim Into The Sound had reviewed a new EP from a band in the DMV, so I listened to the whole thing through the rest of my commute. I was late for work.

It’s been a couple of years and change since I was sweating it out on that train, and Abacot has returned with a follow-up to that EP today — Songs About Problems is here in all of its bright and bitter glory. For those out of the loop, Abacot is a project helmed by Claudio Benedi, the former frontman of D.C.’s beloved Commander Salamander. Abacot always feels like a true puzzle piece to understanding the larger regional rock sound: this album was produced and engineered by Ryland Heagy, and better yet, when they perform live, their shows are stacked with familiar faces from the world of DMV music (think Combat, think Origami Angel).

Songs About Problems picks up where Promo 2023 left off. While it still features the three songs from that initial EP (with some rerecording), the concentrated misery underpinning all of Promo 2023 is expanded into a rounder emotional release. Benedi totally recontextualizes the initial project – one born out of grief, betrayal, and banality – and transforms it into an examination of difficult personal growth after these dark moments have passed. Beyond the inimitable ear of Ryland Heagy, this album was mixed by Drew Portalatin, the mastermind behind Origami Angel’s mixtape The Brightest Days and Combat’s instant thrasher classic, Stay Golden. It was also mastered by Will Yip, fresh off his Grammy win for Turnstile’s NEVER ENOUGH —a combination that instantly pushes Songs About Problems into an echelon of undeniable ragers.

Sonically, Songs About Problems starts somewhere in 2001 or maybe 2003; I’m still debating the exact year, but it was definitely when you could buy checkered wristbands at Hot Topic, guys in emo bands wore collared shirts, and it was mandatory to spike your hair like Deryck Whibley. The lyrics of “Remember When” match this nostalgic sound as Benedi reflects on the distance between him and a former friend. What starts as something The Starting Line-adjacent switches up mid-song, and Benedi shows off his guitar prowess, a sound distinctly reminiscent of that early ‘20s emo sound he helped popularize, across the bridge.

The frustration of “Remember Me” softens into “One Way Street,” a daringly optimistic song. Benedi is a very talented musician, and one of his undeniable strengths is his ability to create absolute earworms. After just one listen to the chorus, I caught myself singing along to that helplessly catchy, “And I’m yours / are you mine?” on the second spin. The song chugs along, evoking a kind of Fountains of Wayne-style build before opening into “Check Engine Light” and “Vertigo” from Promo EP. 

These songs have lived on my shelf and in my playlists for three years, and they are still just as electric as they were when I first listened to them on that Metro ride. I’ve thought about “Check Engine Light” every time I can’t get my car engine to turn over when it gets a bit too cold out. “Vertigo,” devastating yet unafraid to get a little King of the Hill-theme song with it, has been perpetually stuck in my head since the first time I heard Benedi sing “I see all your lies / I see through your disguise!” 

After revisiting these tracks from the Promo EP, we have some songs that totally reorient the Abacot project from something wrought with nausea and exhaustion into a broader, more pop-bent with begrudging positivity. “Vertigo” launches into the anthemic, arena-rock “Show You,” molding Benedi’s shapeshifting agony into a single question: “I freed my heart / what about you?” On “Iridescent,” he flexes his Bowling For Soup-y humor over a song that could easily soundtrack a Tony Hawk Pro Skater game, and the synths on “Drifter” take the whole album to Saturn and back.

In Swim Into The Sound’s initial review, Taylor Grimes aptly diagnosed how “When people think of ‘emo music,’ they tend to think of sappy, tappy, whiny bullshit. That’s all well and good, but it’s SUMMER, and the people need something light, something they can sing along to with the windows down.” That’s what “Horror,” the third song from Promo EP, does. While the other two carryover songs are visceral in their anguish, “Horror” is hauntingly hopeful. Benedi soars into the song as he sings, “If we’re going to make it / I know we’re gonna make it to the end.”

“Horror,” in this new context, provides the perfect aerial arc for the album’s ending on the titular “Songs About Problems.” I wouldn’t call it a positive or even a helpful song, any more than I’d call this album particularly optimistic, but it’s honest and self-assured. Benedi doesn’t necessarily regret these difficult years, but that doesn’t mean that the outcomes don’t still hurt. Instead, he diffuses what frustrates him the most and recognizes it in others. We will get through this together.

I don’t live in D.C. anymore and no longer have to do that long commute, but for one day, I wish I could do it one more time, listening to Songs About Problems.

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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.

Cover Collector – February Reds

Design by Ryan Morrissey

I don’t know about you guys, but I love a good album collage. One of the first things I do every Friday is head over to tapmusic.net and render a 4x4 chart of the albums I listened to most over the past week. At the end of each month, I do the same thing with a 5x5 that recaps my previous 30 days of listening. By the time December rolls around, I look forward to recapping the last twelve months with a gigantic 10x10 grid in an unwieldy encapsulation of the 100 albums that defined my year. 

Is it a little self-aggrandizing? Sure, but it’s also a fun way to see a quick snapshot of what my last week, month, or year has sounded like. At its best, this practice has led to fun conversations and solid recommendations going back and forth with friends as we bond over specific albums. Sometimes it’s that shared love over a deep pull from years gone by, other times it’s just noticing trends with a recent fave that seems like an unshakable presence week in and week out. At the very least, I suppose it’s satisfying to see a bunch of records that I feel an affinity toward lined up and embodying a specific stretch of my life. 

At some point near the tail end of last year, I conceived of a more communal way to bring this love of album collage to life. Because, sure, getting a live readout of your listening history is cool, but this is also about album art, an essential part of the experience and something us nerds can fixate on just as much as the songs that sit beneath the cover. As such, I’m excited to welcome you to the second edition of Cover Collector: a monthly installation where the Swim Team discusses some of our favorite albums based on album color. For February, we’re writing about amorous reds. 

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Tinted Windows – Tinted Windows

S-Curve Records

We can stop making pop music. We already reached pop perfection in 2009. Oh, you don’t remember? That’s okay — do the names Adam Schlesinger and James Iha ring a bell? What about Taylor Hanson and Bun E. Carlos? Does Josh Lattanzi mean anything to you? Well, it all should. It’s 2026, and I am demanding a cultural re-evaluation of Tinted Windows by Tinted Windows. 

I would go so far as to say that this supergroup released the best pop album of the 21st century. This is the kind of confidence I have to maintain if I am fulfilling my duty to defend this forgotten band’s honor. But this is an easy task to maintain when I’m dealing with an album that has “Kind of a Girl,” “Can’t Get a Read on You,” “Doncha Wanna,” and “Take Me Back.” All of these songs are loud, goofy, tight, and perfect — a knockout Schlesinger combo uplifted by Hanson’s sheer excitement to Not Be A Hanson along with a litany of power pop veterans. The song nearest and dearest to my heart is “Messing With My Head,” which has been my favorite song for almost 20 years. It’s all about the guitars; the incessant riff chugging under the song, the squeal of the strings replying to Hanson’s pleas, the guitar solo before Hanson’s pronunciation of “you” in the bridge. Pitchfork unfairly gave this a 3.5, but with your help and a $5 subscription, we can get that reader score up to a 10. 

– Caro Alt

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – Nonagon Infinity

Flightless

Nonagon Infinity is a rare album whose title and cover art mirror its structure. Nine songs, each represented by one vertex of the nonagon on the cover art, are designed to be looped infinitely, with the last track seamlessly connecting to the first. Each vertex of the nonagon connects to every other vertex of the nonagon, instructing the listener that you're supposed to view every song as being connected.

Nonagon Infinity marked a shift for the seven-piece Australian multi-genre experiment, as eight albums into their career they departed from the psych, jazz rock, raja rock, dream pop, and garage rock that they were known for, taking a mishmash of those elements that defined the albums prior to this and twisting them into something louder, darker, and more energetically exhausted than anything we’ve seen before.

This was the band's first experiment with heavier music, a theme we’d see expanded later in their career with the albums Infest the Rats Nest and PetroDragonic Apocalypse. From the first notes of “Robot Stop,” you hear the intensity come through, as vocalist and lead songwriter Stu Mackenzie opens with a chorus that recurs throughout the whole album, not just this song. It’s fast, it’s energetic, it’s designed to start a mosh pit, and it’s in 7/4.

As Stu opens the album singing “my body’s overworked” and “my coffin’s all I see lately,” we begin to get the feeling that the band is tired. They've spent the past four years releasing eight albums while touring, and they're ready to take a break, which, from the future, we know never comes. They follow this album with a five-album year, spanning microtonal music, narrative progressive metal, psychedelic pop, polymeters, and more.

Nonagon Infinity opens the door to the rest of King Gizzard's work and stands as a fantastic entry point if you love heavier music and want to start digging into this ultra-prolific band’s extensive discography.

– Noëlle Midnight

The The – Dusk

Sony Music

For years, I have spouted that the two most underrated bands of all time are Shriekback and The The, and I still wholeheartedly believe that. Both are British new wave-turned-alternative rock groups that started in the 80s, developed minor club play success in the States, but each only had two albums in the 90s. For The The, the brainchild of musician Matt Johnson, most people champion their first two albums: 1983’s Soul Mining, featuring classics like “This Is The Day” and “Uncertain Smile,” and 1986’s Infected, whose title track is easily one of the hardest rocking dance singles of the era. My favorite in their relatively compact catalogue has always been 1993’s Dusk, a more guitar- and singer/songwriter-based album that expertly helms the band’s transition into a new decade.

The record opens with one of my all-time favorite three-song runs: the dramatic, partially spoken-word “True Happiness This Way Lies,” the hopeful ballad “Love Is Stronger Than Death,” and the blues-influenced single “Dogs Of Lust.” Johnson’s reflections on the world and his place in it on tracks like “Slow Emotion Replay” and “Bluer Than Midnight” have always resonated with me, and the closing track “Lonely Planet” hits as hard in 2026 as it did whenever I first heard it: “If you can’t change the world, change yourself,” the refrain posits. The The would only be sporadically active after this album, including a 2024 comeback album, Ensoulment, and a tour to support it. While I appreciate everything Johnson does musically, Dusk will always be the high watermark.

– Logan Archer Mounts

Citizen – As You Please

Run For Cover Records

Everybody and their mother talks about Youth as the quintessential Citizen record, and for a second, I was going to write about that as well. However, I wondered what else needed to be said about Youth, considering their third record, As You Please, is sneakily just as well written and not as sneakily much more red. Citizen’s movement into hazier forms of alternative rock was encapsulated quite well in their first two records, but As You Please showcased the gravitas of their emotional outlook on the world in a more mature way than Youth, though not as crushing as Everybody Is Going To Heaven. Tracks like “Jet” and “Fever Days” get the heads bobbing, but the spacey tracks like “World” and “Control” feel more akin to a Sunday Drive tracklist than a typical Run For Cover record. There’s also the fan favorite “Flowerchild,” which caps the record off with an acoustic-turned-punk anti-Valentine’s Day song. It’s a great journey to dive headfirst into and an overlooked example of what makes Citizen such an interesting group.

– Samuel Leon

The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Electric Ladyland

Sony Music

When I was a mere toddler, my parents would play all kinds of records to help me develop my own distinct musical taste. There was one artist my mom chose that stood out amongst the rest for a fresh-out-the-box baby David: Jimi Hendrix. Every day I would dance away in my all-white Huggies to songs like “All Along the Watchtower” and “Foxey Lady.” My mom has recounted this story about me prancing around to some of the best psychedelic rock ever created about a zillion times to my family, friends, and even complete strangers at the local Jewel-Osco. Fun times! Present day, now as a fully grown adult, I hold Jimi Hendrix in a special place in my heart.

Electric Ladyland, being the final full-length studio album before Jimi Hendrix tragically passed away, is a clinical masterpiece in artistry. “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” has my favorite guitar solo I’ve ever heard. There is a true rhythm to each stroke that I never know where it’s going to go, even though I heard it thousands of times. Jimi Hendrix is the Wilt Chamberlain of rock music. He changed how the game is played, holds damn near every record, and oozed pure charisma (do yourself a favor and look at that beautiful blue silk kimono he wore on The Dick Cavett Show).

Listening back to Electric Ladyland, you can hear how Hendrix's guitar skills were limitless. Songs like “Long Hot Summer Night,” “Gypsy Eyes,” and “Rainy Day, Dream Away” are iconic psychedelic jams from a man at the peak of his powers. This makes reliving all those stories dancing as an infant worth it.

Thank you, Mom! 

– David Williams

Third Eye Blind – Third Eye Blind

Elektra Records

I confess to being a silly guy for this one. I spent an entire subway commute scrolling through my library for my red album. When I happened upon Third Eye Blind’s eponymous 1997 debut, I felt ridiculous: it was always this one.

I saw 3EB at Jones Beach when I was nearing the end of my college career. I went with an on-again, off-again girlfriend; we’d had a complicated relationship due to our own traumas and the challenges of growing up. Now that I recall this memory, I feel the rain pouring on my skin, mixing with my tears as they played “Motorcycle Drive By” and “How’s It Going to Be.” In my mind’s peripheral vision, I recall her looking up at me with love and sadness. Only now do I realize that this night together and this concert we shared were the end of our relationship. It was beautiful, and now I look back on it fondly and with gratitude.

Only now, too, do I realize how meaningful and formative this album was and continues to be for me. Everyone sings along to “Semi-Charmed Life,” “Graduate,” and “Jumper,” but the singles are truly just the tip of the iceberg. “Losing a Whole Year” is an incredible opener, bookended by the equally gutting and somber “God of Wine.” “I Want You” translates lustful love into perfect pop rock—only for “The Background” to finish the story with the perfect break-up ballad right after it. How is a band’s debut this good? I remain flabbergasted by it.

As thankful as I am that this album soundtracked my growing up, I’m grateful to be able to listen to it now, sing along, and feel all the emotions without the pain of nostalgia. Instead, there is only awe.

– Joe Wasserman

Fiona Apple – When the Pawn…

Epic Records

When the pawn hits the conflicts he thinks like a king
What he knows throws the blows when he goes to the fight
And he'll win the whole thing 'fore he enters the ring
There's no body to batter when your mind is your might
So when you go solo, you hold your own hand
And remember that depth is the greatest of heights
And if you know where you stand, then you know where to land
And if you fall it won't matter, cuz you'll know that you're right

My love for Fiona Apple’s second album knows no bounds. It came to me at a very ~mental breakdown~ time in my life. I was 22, the same age Apple was when the record came out, and was equally masochistic and self-sabotaging. I felt like a floating head, watching my life unfold while I did nothing, unable to even consider having a positive thought. The saunteringly propulsive opener, “On The Bound,” became my favorite song to play on a loop while lying on my bedroom floor and staring at the ceiling. Any album with “Paper Bag” on it is going to be good (the line “He said ‘It’s all in your head’ / I said ‘So’s everything’ but he didn’t get it” alone should have gotten Apple a Pulitzer), but When the Pawn… is relentless from top to bottom. “Fast As You Can” makes me lose my breath with its urgency, kicking into overdrive after the looping drawl of “A Mistake.” Apple gets to the heart of both relational and internal toxicity, showing she’s fighting a battle with herself just as much as with the rest of the world. The smile she’s flashing on the blood-red cover masks the inner turmoil rumbling beneath.

– Cassidy Sollazzo

Kyuss – Blues for the Red Sun

Elektra/Asylum Records

When I think of red albums, my mind pretty quickly jumps to Songs For The Deaf by Queens of the Stone Age. It’s mainly because that record utterly blew my mind in middle school and continues to loom large in my life to this day, but it’s also because it’s pretty solidly red. While I entered this document fully prepared to write about one of the greatest records of 2002, I was met with a sudden flash to another Josh Homme project from a decade earlier, and that’s Blues for the Red Sun by Kyuss. On their sophomore record, the foundational stoner rock band tightened their screws in a stair-step discography where I truly view each record as a step above the last. On their debut, Wretch, the band arrived scuzzy, caked in beer and desert dust. One album later, they got druggier and spacier, dropping most of the thrashy elements in favor of chasing the almighty riff. From the opener, “Thumb,” it’s clear the band has honed in on the perfect tone and then proceed to spend the next 45 or so minutes slowing things down, stretching things out, and cranking their amps to earth-shattering levels. There’s still some chugginess like the iconic “Green Machine,” but tracks like “Freedom Run” and “Thong Song” show a surprising amount of restraint (shocking, especially given the latter’s title). Rather than throw every note at the listener in an attempt to whisk them off into heavy metal nirvana, Kyuss learned it’s much more gratifying to go the opposite way and descend into the smoky pits. A remarkable record that still sounds best played loud as fuck, nodding along, and flying down the highway. If you can manage all those things at once, all the power to ya. If you can’t, you’ll always have Blues for the Red Sun.

– Taylor Grimes

If we’re talking solid-color album art, there’s one band that stands above the rest, and that’s Weezer. Across fifteen studio albums, more than a third of their discography is made up of self-titled albums that fans simply refer to by their color. Each features the band members lined up staring down the barrel of the camera against a solid-colored background. In this recurring section, we’ll address the elephant in the room that is Weezer’s discography.

Cue the guy standing up in the courtroom meme: Side A of Red Album is the second-best Weezer material. Everyone knows the singles “Troublemaker” and “Pork And Beans,” which are very Weezery songs that fit perfectly in their rotation of hits. But “Heart Songs” has always been a crown jewel of the Rivers Cuomotolog (Rivers Cuomotic Universe?), a perfect song for music nerds like me, riddled with references to everyone from Judas Priest to Rick Astley. I’m pretty sure Red Album was the last CD I ever listened to on a Walkman, and boy, did I use the track repeat function a lot for that one.

Admittedly, I do think the album falls apart in the second half, save for the finale “The Angel & The One,” but then the deluxe version is full of incredible bonus tracks. If they had swapped in those songs, this would probably be a perfect 10 record for me. I think “King” has to be an all-timer non-album track for any band. And “Miss Sweeney” was on rotation for me years before a certain Sydney was making accidentally racist jeans commercials.

– Logan Archer Mounts

Drug Church – Cheer

Epitaph

I love heavy music. I especially love heavy music that channels pure, raging emotional catharsis. Drug Church, to me, is the ultimate raging-emotional-catharsis band, and Cheer is my favorite album of theirs. Every bitter lyric, sardonic riff, and sneering song title hits exactly how it should: a brutal uppercut to the slack, flaccid jaw of an apathetic and self-righteous society. Tracks like “Unlicensed Hall Monitor” unapologetically critique those who ignore the beam in their own eye so they can point out the dust in others’: “There’s a guy in a group chat with Klansmen telling you how to live / Just a matter of time before he’s the one twisting in the wind / A grown man who can’t handle his shit.” The preceding song, “Weed Pin,” is a scathing condemnation of career culture and the endless cycle of mediocrity it creates. “Pay shit rates, get shit labor / I should have started a chemical fire… / I should have burned this place to the ground.” Losers beget losers beget losers. History repeats itself, and a chemical fire burns Rome to ashes. 

The deep red cover of the album features a trio that are jarringly posed: they appear undead, naked save for grotesque body paint and an unsettling collection of harnesses and wire. If you dare to look closer, you’ll realize that they’re all the same man, triplicated in different positions. The crimson paint (blood?) splattered across the mask, obscuring each face, only adds to the general unease of the skillfully executed artwork. Even with their visages obscured, the figures seem to be leering at us, taut with rage. Because Cheer blatantly critiques society and condemns both the worst and the self-proclaimed “best” of us, it’s not difficult to imagine that the zombie-like figure adorning the cover is meant to be an Everyman. Painted, holstered, harnessed, and violent, we all know him: maybe we are him.

– Britta Joseph

Mowmow Lulu Gyaban — 野口、久津川で爆死  [Noguchi, kutsukawa de bakushi]

Lively Up 

I say this with the highest regard; I have no idea what’s going on in this album. Not just because it’s in a language I don’t speak, but because its alt-noise-funk sound is completely unique. The combination of manic lyricism, ripping basslines, and frenetic drumming results in a record that escapes easy description or conventional genre labels. Released in 2009, 野口、久津川で爆死 was Mowmow Lulu Gyaban’s first album on a label, followed by touring, several more albums, and well-deserved notoriety within their underground niche. Trying to figure out what makes this band work without knowing Japanese has been tough, but from live videos, I learned the drummer is also the main vocalist, explaining much of the energy charged in this 44-minute package. For me, the last track ties the whole album together and is a key reason I’ve kept it in rotation. It starts as a more subdued song, maybe hinting at a contemplative closing, but it slowly devolves into loosely constrained chaos, with two singers narrating the same lyrics of (if Google Translate can be trusted) a mostly mutual breakup. The track closes on speaker feedback and a call-and-response shout along from the audience, the perfect endcap to the entire experience.

– Braden Allmond

Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

UMG

Fuck Kanye West.

This is not a plea to “separate the art from the artist.” This is not an attempt to identify a threshold in the Kanye West timeline where he “went too far,” thus exonerating anything before that statement or behavior. Both of these efforts are futile.

I haven’t listened to Kanye West’s music in years. I never wanted it to show up on any Year In Review report. I didn’t want my neighbors or people on the street to hear me listening to it. Mostly, I didn’t even want the $0.0000000034 per stream to go to him. And it’s a real shame, because from 2004 to 2011 Kanye West had an absolutely immaculate 6-album run. GOOD Music and Yeezus and even The Life Of Pablo were great too, but by that time Kanye’s behavior had blown well past “provocateur” into “complete asshole.” What began as mostly just asinine complaints about being under-recognized at award shows (culminating in the now-infamous “Taylor Swift imma let you finish” moment) got more and more outrageous and indefensible. At one time, Kanye’s biggest beef was with Bill Hader (Hader, both an SNL cast member and a South Park writer, drew Kanye’s ire in MBDTF). Most recently, Kanye took out a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal where he went long on his 2002 car accident, the damage it did to his frontal lobe, and his struggles with bipolar disorder. It’s a surprisingly lucid statement from Kanye that ends with a number of apologies and a plea for patience. Coming from a man who claimed “slavery was a choice,” expressed his “love for” Adolf Hitler, claimed to have “dominion” over his wife Bianca Censori, and put a swastika on the cover of his latest album, it feels like too little too late. It’s not only too late, it feels disingenuous and insincere, and to the skeptics is a pretty poor attempt at image rehab in the lead-up to what will likely be a new album.

I’m sympathetic to mental health issues! I’m sensitive to personality disorders! If Kanye West has issues severe enough to make him say even 20% of what he’s said in the last 10 years, his gobs of money should be able to get him the help he needs. And I hope he does!

Until then, it’s a damn shame Kanye’s aggressive attempts to make himself the main character of history have completely ruined an incomparable body of work–including his magnum opus, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

I’m sorry this piece wasn’t really about the album at all, but I wanted to say it’s really annoying that I can’t even listen to some of my favorite albums anymore because the guy who made them is a megalomaniacal asshole.

– Caleb Doyle

Against Me! – The Disco Before the Breakdown

No Idea Records

Bodies spilling over each other in a grainy photo, washed in red. Mouths shouting. Fingers pointing. People are reaching to lift up a fallen bass player. The cover of The Disco Before the Breakdown captures what listening to early Against Me! feels like: like you could fall apart at the end of this chorus, but you know everyone singing along will be there to pick you up. The music is this scrappy, ferocious beast that surges forward with abandon while Laura Jane Grace screams her confessions. Grace has never sounded more desperate for absolution than she does on “Tonight We’re Gonna Give It 35%” when she sings “it’s got me on my knees in a bathroom / praying to a god I don’t even believe in / ‘well, dear Jesus, are you listening?’” When I’ve been that desperate, The Disco Before the Breakdown has filled me with a sense of triumph in the sorrow.

– Lillian Weber

Best Witches – Jail

Self-released

Jail by Best Witches has probably the single strongest opening minute of any emo revival act I can think of. Leading off with the drumset, after two seconds of guitar whine, there’s immediately a wayward, forlorn, and simple lead melody. After a tight 40 seconds, this promising setup is abandoned and replaced by two bars of strumming that sound like the stretch before a wind sprint. By the 60-second mark, we’ve gotten some very righteous arpeggios and our first lyrics “I would go out tonight, but we’re stuck playing at the house. Shit, there’s a glow stick, let’s check this thing out.” After a small regathering, we’re rolling again, and at the 1:20 mark, we get the terrible realization that this song is a eulogy for a lost pet: “Raleigh’s foaming at the mouth.” By the end of the second minute, everything but guitar has pulled away, meandering through the opening lick. Slowly, the momentum is built back, and by 2:45 we’re close to full speed again, though this time with more restraint, and the lyrics “No more running around, no more barking about all our favorite toys we can’t live without.” The final 90 seconds are spent repeating the line, winding down the drums, and taking their feet off the gas, gently giving way to full atmosphere, and the start of the next song. This whole EP is great, but “Margot’s Song” is awesome.

The energy this group brings to their art is infectious, and reminds of Olde Pine and Dikembe (still active!), two bands from around the same time. In classic emo band fashion, these guys made incredible music together for about a year, then called it quits for good. Shouts out to Trevor from Hays for showing me this EP like 7 years ago!

– Braden Allmond

Turnover – Peripheral Vision

Run For Cover

Turnover’s Peripheral Vision was a point of contention for longtime Turnover Heads such as myself. Today’s emo kids might find it hard to believe that the Virginia Beach unit was largely a pop-punk group before their hard pivot to dreamy indie soundscapes. These same kids are the ones confused as hell at the Turnover gig when thirty-somethings are screaming “play Sasha!” just to piss off Austin Getz. 

Peripheral Vision indeed altered the band's trajectory in ways unimaginable for a pop-punk/emo band at that time. The release sparked curiosity for newcomers and confusion from longtime fans. While I love PV and its hazy attitude, at the time I was more enamored by the band's first full-length, Magnolia, and felt a bit slighted that Turnover chose to ignore all their music before PV. 

It was a hot-as-heck spring day in El Paso when Turnover trekked in alongside acts like Citizen and Sorority Noise. I was ecstatic to finally catch a glimpse of my favorite band, and in my often-overlooked hometown no less. The show essentially ended up being a full playthrough of PV from start to finish, with little acknowledgement of any other music in their discography. I was bummed to say the least. Ten years later, the album has reached near-legendary status amongst many audiophiles. Fast forward a decade to a rainy spring day in Albuquerque, when my fiancée and I attended the tenth anniversary gig for PV, where the front-to-back playthrough of the album was entirely expected. Lots of things have changed in the ten years between those gigs, but what hasn’t changed are two things: PV remains an absolute banger in ways unfathomable, and I still love Magnolia more. 

The gig was euphoric, and ended with a few offshoots from random albums and EPs; however, the last song performed was arguably my favorite off Magnolia, “Most of the Time.” My high school self felt vindicated– in the sense that I was able to experience a pre-PV song live, and that the band chose to acknowledge who they used to be when I fell in love with them. 

– Brandon Cortez

my better half – mybetterhalf.

Trash King Records

This self-titled EP from Seattle emo band my better half is short and not-so-sweet. Instead, you can expect each of the five tracks to reach inside of you, rip open something unresolved, and then grant catharsis through raw vocals and distortion. Despite being a relatively recent addition to the scene, my better half has effortlessly garnered a following and embarked on a West Coast tour.

On mybetterhalf., vigorous drumming and heavy guitars take turns with somber, melodic moments of reflection. The vocals convey a desperation that’s timeless to the genre, with lyrics that could have been scribbled at any point in the past 30 years. In beloved emo fashion, my better half frequently layers spoken word and dialogue over melancholic instrumentals–opening the EP with an ominous twist on one of Agent Cooper’s notorious voice notes from the cult-classic TV show Twin Peaks. 

My better half is young, and their songs will take you back to the same point in your own life. Their most popular track, “Work and Progress,” begins once again with spoken word: “Yesterday I graduated / today, I’m alone.” This leads into a bittersweet commentary on the familiar experience of coping with, or rather, resisting change. Closing out the EP, “A Shipwreck I’ve Seen” hints at the ending of something more brutal than graduation and the crushing weight of uncertainty that comes with it. It’s a gritty, intense track with traces of both metal and hardcore, leaving room to breathe only during the brief, contemplative mid-section.

mybetterhalf. is the band’s only released work so far. In just five tracks, my better half has curated a heart-wrenching collection of life’s most difficult emotions and channeled them into an honest, authentic gem amongst the scene. 

– Annie Watson

The Chemical Brothers – Come With Us

Virgin

I was an AV club kid in high school, a pursuit driven 50% by my interest in audio equipment and 50% by my desire to skip out on class. On the day of events like the school talent show or battle of the bands, my friends and I would be given all-day hall passes to set things up in the auditorium; this all-day work window was something I insisted on, but I can admit now that it was, in most cases, not necessary. Sometimes the setup took less than an hour. This left us with a lot of time to screw around, and much of that screwing around involved playing Come With Us really, really loud over the PA system. In my head, I can still clearly hear the opening of “It Began In Afrika” bouncing off the walls of the empty auditorium as we sat in the light booth haphazardly messing with fresnels and avoiding chemistry class. “Star Guitar” is definitely a song best enjoyed at a late-night rave, but I’d argue that listening to it in the middle of the day when you’re supposed to be in AP English ranks a close second. Nostalgia aside, I still think Come With Us is a super enjoyable album, definitely the release from this era of electronic music that I return to the most. Great guest vocals from Beth Orton on “The State We’re In” and Richard Ashcroft on “The Test,” lots to sink your teeth into in general. Don’t think that I’ll ever get tired of it.      

– Josh Ejnes

Fall Out Boy – Folie à Deux

Island Records

My love for the band Fall Out Boy is deep and well-documented, beginning at an early age through rhythm games, as is often the case for me – whether it was “Dance, Dance” on Dance Dance Revolution or “The Take Over, The Breaks Over” on Guitar Hero: On Tour. Despite regularly watching the music videos for “I Don’t Care” and “America’s Suitehearts” on Xfinity On Demand in junior high, I did not become a vehement lover and defender of their fourth record, Folie à Deux, until a handful of years ago.

Fall Out Boy's final record before their five-year-long hiatus in 2009, Folie was a notable departure from many elements that fans came to expect from the band: a more collaborative writing approach, more worldly lyricisms, less emo songwriting and more focus on various genre influences, as well as lead singer Patrick Stump desire to move away as the focal point of their songs. It’s no wonder that Folie was received less positively than its monumental predecessor, Infinity On High. To this day, Folie remains the underdog of their catalog, even among the band members themselves, but I love an underdog.

Folie à Deux excels in every aspect of Fall Out Boy that I adore, and its multitude of features and collaborators only expand on that. Stump is firing on all cylinders vocally and delivering a performance of a lifetime on this album, a preview of the comparable vocal performance on his 2011 solo record, Soul Punk. Pete Wentz’s lyricisms are, to my estimation, the best of his career, focusing on American psychosis and commentaries rather than emo love songs. Joe Trohman, despite his struggles with drug abuse during the recording, complements the melodies and instrumentation with his virtuosic guitar playing. At the same time, Andy Hurley’s drum parts stand as the most iconic in the band’s history. 

Despite enjoying the albums that preceded it, I genuinely see Folie as Fall Out Boy’s magnum opus that they could have hung their collective hats on forever. Especially with “What A Catch, Donnie” acting as an emotive love note to the band’s most notable triumphs thus far. Folie à Deux is proof that it pays, at least artistically, to destroy your creative mold and see what masterpieces can be crafted from its pieces. 

– Ciara Rhiannon

My Sister’s Fugazi Shirt – Man Fears the Darkness, and So He Scrapes Away at the Edges of It With Fire

Self-Released

Although I have long since fallen out of the anime world, Neon Genesis Evangelion remains one of my favorite works of all time (so much so that I dragged my girlfriend, who has never even heard of the show, to watch the agonizing End of Evangelion at a theatre). In Man Fears the Darkness, and So He Scrapes Away at the Edges of It With Fire, My Sister’s Fugazi Shirt uses lo-fi hip hop, a genre often reduced to inoffensive background vibes, as a mirror to reflect the true essence of Neon Genesis, the characters, and their struggles in making sense of a broken world.

Virtually all of the samples on the album are lifted straight from the anime’s dialogue, with whole songs being dedicated to a specific character or scene from the show. Even though the instrumentals themselves are gentle enough, the sampling evokes some of the more emotional moments of the series, making it hard for the album to be thrown on as a ‘chill radio to relax and study to.’ Instead, the catharsis of the show bleeds into the album; Shinji literally endures the end of the world and finds a way to continue living. In that sense, Man Fears the Darkness is a strangely comforting album, despite the bleakness that blankets Neon Genesis Evangelion. It’s no surprise that people are so passionate about the show; these characters are reflections of us and the strength that each of us is capable of. Let this unsuspecting collection of songs remind you of that strength. 

– Nickolas Sackett

Honorable Mentions

Hey, we can’t write about every album with this color, so here’s a list of some more that we feel like we should mention.

• Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf

• Pool Kids – Pool Kids // POOL

• Andrew Bird - The Mysterious Production of Eggs

• Antioch Arrow - In Love With Jetts 

• The Fall of Troy - Doppleganger

• Coheed and Cambria - The Father of Make Believe

• Flycatcher - Wrench

• Snail Mail - Habit

• Cory Hanson - I Love People

• World’s Worst - American Muscle

• Young Thug - Barter 6

• Man Overboard - The Human Highlight Reel

• Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights

• Migos - Culture II

• The White Stripes - Elephant

• Beach House - Depression Cherry

• St. Vincent - MASSEDUCTION

• The White Stripes - White Blood Cells

• ScHoolboy Q - Blank Face LP

• Snail Mail - Lush

• Heart Attack Man - Fake Blood

• Wilco - Cruel Country

• Lil' Wayne - Sorry 4 The Wait 2

• Russian Circles - Empros

• Queens of the Stone Age - ...Like Clockwork

• The White Stripes - The White Stripes

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.