saturdays at your place – waste away

Many Hats Distribution

Did you know that this summer is actually the 40th anniversary of emo? At least kind of. It’s the 40th anniversary of Guy Picciotto taking the stage at the Chevy Chase Community Center and unleashing Rites of Spring on the world in tandem with D.C.’s Revolution Summer. That summer is a bit shrouded in folklore, but there’s this one recurring memory about that early Rights of Spring show that has always stood out to me. When the band performed their last song, “End on End,” the whole crowd started to chant a final “whoa.” Those couple moments of crowd participation from one song were so potent that it’s documented all over zines and interviews. I know what is and isn’t emo is pretty debatable, but that specific interplay between a crowd and an artist is perhaps the most sacred aspect of emo to me. Forty years later, saturdays at your place is keeping that part of emo’s heart beating — I’m confident that their new single, “waste away” will be chanted forever.

It’s been about two years since Kalamazoo’s emo stars released their last songs, but as of right now, July 8th, 2025, the drought is officially over. Today, the trio dropped “waste away,” an upbeat plea to disappear and the first single leading up to their new full-length album – these things happen. The good news doesn’t stop there, because they also released a sweet (pun-intended) music video to accompany it, co-directed by Michael Herrick and Hot Mulligan’s Tades Sanville. Think The Town but with more ice cream and only one gun.

“waste away” opens on a stellar riff that would make their Midwest contemporaries proud, but it’s the lyrics that really grabbed me by the shoulders. There’s always been a notable directness to saturdays’ lyrical outlook; it’s honest and maybe a bit pointed, but the most important thing is that it’s direct. I think about short retorts like “tarot cards’” “Well, I don’t like me too” or the unsparing admittance from “eat me alive” that, “I’ll do anything to get you out of my room.” This time, the band offers something darker — Esden Stafne’s grim but plain, “I wanna waste away ‘til I’m nothing but a memory.” The whole song follows this line of thought, fantasizing about life going on while you stare at the ceiling, comforted by nothing happening. 

The lyrics start as almost helpless, with the song stripped down to match that loneliness, but this is saturdays at your place, so the song doesn’t dwell there. Instead, Gabe Wood’s drums pick up to a thrashing beat, and Mitch Gulish’s guitar crests as Stafne argues himself into a begrudging hope. What is immediately clear, though, is that the track is missing the audience. By the last minute, the band is laying the gang vocals on thick with lines like “remind me, to remember, that this won't last forever” and “can we really count on that?” These are lyrics that practically demand an audience to scream them back – they’re already envisioning the crowd as an invisible fourth member. Luckily, if their last couple of years on the road prove anything, it’s that audiences are more than ready to lend their bodies, voices, and energy to saturdays at your place. Emo changes a lot, sure, but that artist-to-audience reliance is permanent. It’s been there since the beginning, and it’ll be here forever. We can count on that.