Sunflecks, a folk band based in Bellingham, Washington has created a gentle and comforting examination of the world around them in their album Fools Errand, released with the indie record label bud tapes. Caroline Chauffe of hemlock describes it as “a memory box pulled out from under the bed.” The impressive debut invites listeners to take the long way home and slow down with their cup of coffee in the morning.
The group is fronted by Forrest Meyer, the songwriter and vocalist for all tracks on Fools Errand. The album features bass by Augie Ballew, drums by Amanda Glover, piano by Aiden Fay, violin by Harlow Isham, and pedal steel by Logan Day. It was mixed by Nich Wilbur at The Anacortes Unknown, and mastered by M Deetz. After Fools Errand released on March 28, 2025, the band played a cozy album release show on the 29th at Honeymoon Mead & Cider, in Bellingham, Washington.
“Proximity”, the first single released off the album, is accompanied by a fuzzy, darkly lit music video in a living room, with a projector shifting backgrounds, and duplicating Meyer as he sits in front of it playing guitar. The track feels both hopeful and painful at once, with meaningful lyrics about connection such as “walking in proximity / saying much of anything / relating unfamiliar things” (Proximity.) It features gorgeous instrumentals, with violin and piano blending perfectly.
Meyer recognizes the beauty in simple expression throughout Fools Errand, with lyrics such as “What’s left when all I can say is I love you / and I miss you” (What’s Left.) Although the energy is comforting and hopeful throughout, the songs create a safe space to mourn losses as well. There is beautiful imagery of meaningful conversations with loved ones, light through the window, wishing wells, and the practice of patience, through waiting for tea and the shifting of seasons.
While every song has its own wonderful distinctions, there is a shared pattern of starting simple and building in instrumentation over time. This provides a grounding feeling while listening. Meyer tackles similar situations through different emotional lenses, with the lyrics “now I see new colors / as you hold another” (Sunburst) and “take some space to recognize the space you made” (Take Space.)
Fools Errand is the perfect reminder to accept change, notice daily simple comforts, and always remember your headphones when leaving the house.
It is available to listen and buy as a cassette and digital album on Bandcamp.
Every Wednesday, the ugly hug shares a playlist personally curated by an artist/band that we have been enjoying. This week we have a collection of songs put together by Albany-based band Bruiser and Bicycle.
I feel an advisory is required before peering into the world of Bruiser and Bicycle, an Albany, New York-based progressive folk ensemble. On October 8th, 2025, the band released an experimental approach to the traditional rural tunes of Americana, Deep Country. Their pastoral themes, intermingled with pop and rock, inform a new method of songwriting and production. A completely unique medley, belonging only to their name.
Flying freely in their whimsically constructed, musical plane, is “O’ There’s a Sign.” Gliding swiftly from start to finish, it lands in the third slot of the record, with a fast and abrupt arrival. The interior of the third track moves with fervor, featuring soft vocables that, unknowingly and excitingly, jump to overpowering proclamations and unheard-of questions like, “Who can flip a bottle on its side?” Bruiser and Bicycle never allow for comfort. There are too many moving parts to just idly sit by and passively consume their sound. To listen to the four-part ensemble, one should be keen and observant, on the lookout for the next unexpected, jerking turn.
With their closing track and record title, Deep Country, they continue to use whimsy to build their distinct image. Theatrical voices sporadically holler in the background of the melody, chiming in to spackle any holes of silence. But, one voice drives the album’s bucolic theme by slowly chewing through the lines: I’ve been out, in the fiery heat of the desert / There’s a peculiar rhythm / Arcadian or wisdom. Glistening at the tail end of the track: rapid strums and feathery adlibs to lighten its hefty precursor.
As a result of these humorous voices, the album gives the impression of a score. Playfully sounding over transient bits that feel awkward in the moment, but funny upon reflection. Films such as Juno or Little Miss Sunshine come to mind.
Proliferating from characteristics of the south, Bruiser and Bicycle portray themselves as a woven tapestry—a traditional practice blended with different materials. Their rustic-indie folk feel leans into a familiar sound, yet offers an exciting jumble of eccentric voices, introspective repetition, and jabbing humor. The unpredictability of the group amplifies any intrigue going into a listen. The chase of pinning down a meaning or general idea of the band will never tire you. Be aware, be alert, and be on the lookout for what’s to come from Bruiser and Bicycle.
You can listen to Bruiser and Bicycle’s playlist HERE!
You can find Deep Country and the rest of their discography below.
Music holds the power to wake us up, lull us to sleep, or transport us to dreamlike realities – Adeline Hotel’s new record Watch the Sunflowers unwraps a unique culmination of all three. In a long string of critically acclaimed releases out of Ruination Records, Dan Knishkowy is no stranger to the quiet spell it takes to create a record that feels dense yet holds the ability to float on air like this. Here, he’s less concerned with revelation than presence – the slow, patient art of noticing.
Where earlier Adeline Hotel albums drifted in the gentle haze of folk minimalism, Watch the Sunflowers feels almost meditative. Knishkowy sits somewhere between the fragile intimacy of Sufjan Stevens and the pastoral melancholy of Nick Drake. His voice, both literal and compositional, feels steadier, communal in spirit – like a speaker straight from the soul.
The opening track “Dreaming” sets the pace – as Knishkowy speaks directly to the listener: “some things take a little while”. A slow-building lattice of fingerpicked guitars that seem to shimmer in and out of sync. While Whodunnit’s openers were tentative, this one feels confident – an invitation that is reflective and authentic.
Stretching out the stillness, “Nothing” layers brushed drums and soft synth into something reminiscent of early Iron and Wine, yet with a maturity in the arrangement that hints at the slow and steady growth over the past few albums. The refrain feels like a heartbeat: steady and unhurried. While his voice blurs at the edges, a reminder that vulnerability can live in conjunction with strength.
“Swimming” catches you mid-current, tumbling you into its stream. Guitar fragments appear like sunspots, somewhere between longing and amusement. At the center of the record, it’s a track that could feel heavy handed. Instead, its light – buoyant in its sadness, as if noticing the color of the leaves as the storm passes through them.
“Ego” strikes differently. Accompanied by the sly tension of the piano, Knishkowy begs the looming questions of the human experience: “Do I need to be kind?”. It pulses, even slightly ironically – as if he’s testing whether or not you’re paying attention. The track introduces a shift, with hidden twang and undercover woes – it exemplifies a willingness to deconstruct and rebuild. The shift continues into “Just Like You”, which reimagines sound into the nostalgic experimentation of the early 2010s. You feel transported to somewhere serene, familiar, comfortable. It’s a kaleidoscopic experience that melts together into something nearly indescribable.
“Spaces” returns to the album’s homebody heartbeat, offering reflection on the gaps between moments and people. The instrumentation is sparse, allowing the space to resonate deeply. The final title track “Watch the Sunflowers” closes the album with a gentle crescendo, leaving a lingering sense of warmth and resolution – the perfect ending to a record that moves carefully between reflection and the light.
William Blake quotes “As a man is, so he sees. As the eye is formed, such are its powers.” Knishkowy understands this intimately; Watch the Sunflowers isn’t about what’s seen, but how it’s seen. Stillness can sharpen sight, and the smallest moments can open to infinity.
You can listen to Watch the Sunflowers out now as well as order it on vinyl via Ruination Records.
Indie-folk band Florist captures the heartbreaking magic of being alive in their newest album Jellywish; ten soothing, ambient tracks that act as a friend who shares a moment of understanding for listeners. While comforting, the album reminds people to remember that so much of the suffering in the world is created by humans, and that there is a constant, desperate need for change.
Florist is a friendship project based in Brooklyn, New York, made up of four members: Emily Sprague, Rick Spataro, Felix Walworth, and Jonnie Baker. Jellywish was released on April 4, 2025 under the record label Double Double Whammy. It was engineered by Rick Spataro, mixed by Alex P. Wernquest and Rick Spataro at Basement Floods, and mastered by Josh Bonat. The beautiful album artwork was created by Vera Haddad.
All songs are composed by Sprague, who described the album as “different from past Florist releases in that it does not offer the solution of inner peace or beautiful conclusions.” Many of the songs make this clear in a simple way, such as the line “should anything be pleasure when suffering is everywhere” in the first track “Levitate.” Sprague manages to blend hope and pain in a way that creates an immersive experience in empathy and humanity.
The album flows very intentionally, beginning with the quiet, acoustic song “Levitate” and ending similarly with “Gloom Designs,” accompanied by soft guitar and rain noises. The instrumentation ebbs and flows throughout, ranging from clear vocals, fingerpicking, and soft piano, to gritty guitar solos, light percussion, glitching background noises and distorted vocals. While the accompaniment remains minimal throughout, it is never too simple. Both the instrumentation and stylistic choices shift between hope and sadness in a way that mirrors the real world. The meditative songs resemble poetry, often lacking choruses but containing repeated lyrics to get lost in. The lack of structure is reminiscent of the societal topics and themes of the album.
Turning intimate moments into something relatable, Sprague tackles how much love and hope can be found in the world, without shying away from the many harsh realities. They write about love in a poignant way, with the lyrics “there’s no evil in your eyes” in “Sparkle Song” and “it’s been a long time since we laughed until we cried / it’s been a short time in the entirety of life” in “Gloom Designs.” “You cut your hair off and started to glow” captures the feeling of watching someone become themself and loving them more for it in the track “Started to Glow.” Death remains a steady theme, reminding us that everything is temporary, but that there is so much to love in the meantime. The album invites listeners to accept their emotions without shame.
Lyrics about the natural world add vivid imagery to the listening experience, with descriptions of rivers and waterfalls, red sunrises, the desert sky, and morning dirt. While Jellywish is lovely at any point of the year, it provides a comfort to the winter months, with descriptions of gardens dying in the freezing cold and ice. In addition, the song “Jellyfish” asks the question “will there still be winter in a year?”
On the surface it seems like Florist has created a new, magical reality to escape to with this album, until you realize these slices of life portrayed can be found just outside the window. A reminder that you can be small and important at the same time.
You can listen to Jellywish out now as well as on vinyl and cd.
Laveda’s Love, Darla opens in a haze – distortion pushing against reality, vocals in between presence and distance. A feeling only capable in the fading summer hours of this early autumn album. The Albany group is no stranger to working in pieces, creating records that stand on a strong hill of no resolution. For duo Ali Genevich and Jake Brooks, instability is not a flaw so much as it is a pedestal – shaping every note, every pause, every moment that pushes against the noise.
The record unfolds starting with “Care” – which doesn’t provide so much as the title may suggest. The guitars are ragged, distortion pulled nearly threatening collapse, with vocals sounding half-dubbed from an alternate tape. It sets the stage as a mosaic of disorder and shoegaze revivalism. Not unlike the rawer moments of their influences like Paper Lady and Holding Hour, Laveda chases the sensation of the unsteady. The impulse extends with high velocity into “Cellphone” and “Strawberry”. These songs feel made for the VFW Hall, the local house show, the dusty dive bar where the PA system will blow out.
It’s the quiet moments, however, that complicate and bring a certain fragile depth to the album. Songs like “Dig Me Out” slow the frame, with admissions like “I know you’re gonna kill me / I need your love it’s endless” cracking the worship of volume with matter-of-fact clarity. It’s not a plea, but a Didion-like observation. It’s one of the only times we find comfort in the record, in a bizarre way – as the honesty feels buried within us, too. The almost hushed nature reappears in the closing track, asking “when you come around, will you think of me?”. Beneath a rock hard surface, the album ultimately serves as a love letter.
Yet, lyrically, Laveda avoids the temptation towards confessional sprawl. The words arrive clipped, anchoring the sound rather than explaining it. Self doubt, dislocation, the struggle to inhabit one’s own life; they’re all present themes, but rendered bluntly, almost sparsely, while the guitar does the emotive work. In this way, this record is separated from the melodrama of its peers: the restraint is sharp and cutting.
Laveda’s Love, Darla feels like the kind of record you stumble into sideways: half-buried on Bandcamp, just caught on your college radio that still gets it right now and then. This record belongs to the East Coast DIY circuit, where distortion is structural and vocals barely cling to the surface. Give it a listen on Bandcamp and check out their current tour dates!
You can listen to Love, Darla out now as well as get it on vinyl and CD.
“If it meant that much to you, would you say it, would you shy away?” Carolina Chauffe asks this not as a challenge, but as a kind of prayer. Their voice doesn’t seek an answer; it simply opens a clearing for one. This is an invitation anyone who has spent time with hemlock knows well. There is no backing away—only a breath reaching towards you, hands grabbing the warm fabric draped across their body to wipe the fog from your glasses, so you can see how delicate yet beautiful things are when you allow someone else to see you, too. And then, when a hemlock song ends, the wires are tucked behind your ears again. The world feels a little nearer, like you’ve been returned to it. This is the gift they give: revealing precision, refusing possession.
The five songs that make up Orange Streak Glow appear as bursts of light. Sometimes brief, sometimes steady. One may be the extra birthday candle, wedged into the layered sponge. Proof that the laces stayed tied for another lap. The next, a bulb that flickers back on, revived when you jostle the shade. And then it’s a color stretched across the sky, or smeared like a melted popsicle on hot pavement. Or perhaps you’ll see it as the kind of light that lives in storage: a tangled string collecting cobwebs, placed in a box beneath the stairs, until December arrives and the glow is asked to return. And what a miracle it is when you plug that string in, and each tiny spark strikes—ready to be temporarily wrapped and tucked around a tree standing straight and tall. Already dying, but displayed and danced around for a moment, as if it could not be more alive.
There is a glow, too, that arrives in the middle of the night and lights up a screen. A notification that makes you sit up, unplug, and walk over to the fire, letting the flame catch in the corners of your teary eyes. This is how I was introduced to “In That Number,” a song that mixes the familiar, “When The Saints Go Marching In,” with a feeling that pours out like smoke from a chimney. Now awake in a pitch black room, I removed myself from a twin-sized bed that was not mine, scared to be the stranger leaving stains on white pillowcases. Before I knew it I was curled up on the floor with my hands cupped beneath my face, rerouting the tears through the creases so I could watch them disappear down my sleeves. In the background, whistling like a teakettle, I could hear Maya Bon (of Babehoven) confidently coo: “I’m not scared of the water / I’m here comin’ back down / Feel the burn, face the fire,” and every word rang true. I was not scared of the stream coursing through me. Nor was I scared to realize I wanted something to reach out and touch me, unafraid to squeeze my soaked palm.
What does it mean to ask for that contact? What does it mean to offer it? Nestled in the center of the EP, I hear Carolina circle the same sentence, ink digging deeper into the page, “I am a clothespin and you are the laundry line,” and like playing musical chairs, I start looking for my line, wondering if I’ll find it before the music stops. I ask myself: What spool can I wrap around? What ear will hold my voice when I cannot listen anymore? I send a signal (a burst of light) to someone I’ve begun stacking piles of laundry beside: ‘What do you make of this lyric?’ They respond and talk about what provides structure and what provides support. I propose that maybe it’s about how we view our purpose. I am gently reminded that there are clothes involved too and someone must be mindful of the weight as they are hanging them. The spring between my two fragile limbs decides it wants to hold on tighter and longer. Binding is less daunting when you are choosing to endure and weather the same storms together, finding there is light in the shared strain. Or sometimes, there’s no strain at all. Just light.
The songs on Orange Streak Glow echo both the pain and the pleasure that come with admitting you have been altered by something—by someone. They are songs that understand that all communication is an act of faith. That to name something is to risk misnaming it. That in the end, the words that slice us open might also stitch us back together. That we hold the same power that someone holds over us. Because the truth is the safety we find in honesty might someday become the thing that tells us we need to pack up and leave. Taking what is now unburied with us, along with a basket of our deconstructed fragments, eager to hold onto something again.
In the days before hemlock’s latest EP landed like a feather in my lap, I was hiding away in a town near Hudson, NY, not far from 12lb Genius, where it was recorded. I was stumbling and circling the same sentence, tracing the thin lines between my teeth with my tongue. I was looking at a faded ‘You Are Here’ mark on a map, not really sure where ‘here’ was, or where ‘there’ was either, for that matter. The rain followed me and sometimes I was too slow to outrun it. Wet leaves stuck to my socks and became the inner linings of my boots. I found a frozen blue raindrop one morning, after the storms passed, and put it in my pocket. Something told me that even if I were to hang my jacket on the line, that one drop—if it ever thawed and pooled—would not dry. It would stain, it would burn a hole, it would leave a mark. And I wanted nothing more.
So what does it truly mean, to look at something you long to care for and reflect it back, offering structure and support? To say you will choose something even if it doesn’t choose you back? The first time I held the title track in my ear, in those final moments before the engine turns off in the driveway, I thought: This is the hemlock I know. A season returned, a holiday, a solid oak. There are some people who don’t just reach out for you, but remind you that it is possible to place your own finger on the map. They show you that what surrounds you has a pulse—hums—and you are welcome to join its choir, as both a listener and participant. It’s there, somewhere between the glow and the dark, as something you cannot see chirps, that you realize you were never outside of the equation at all. To choose nothing is not an option when every rustle has its own weight. What better choice is there than to take the thing you long for and turn it into a melody of your own? While there’s no knowing, you might just find that someone will push past the branches, look right at you, and sing it back.
Where did your summer go? Not just this one, but all the long ones in the past: you look back through hazy memories, blurred by six-packs of Miller High Life, “a pinch of good luck / a hit of bud,” the seesaw back and forth between the mundanity of your shitty job along with the joys and perils of your weekend haunts, and playing guitar in bed. The trip you had planned and failed to take with your friends recedes in the distance. We’re Headed to the Lake from Guitar doesn’t just take us into the lake: its songs circle its edges, reflecting the frenetic energy of youth via the twists, turns, warmth, and searing heat all present in the songwriting.
Following last year’s Casting Spells on Turtlehead and his 2022 self-titled, Guitar, the solo project of Portland musician Saia Kuli, expands and refines his maximalist bedroom rock project with this new LP from Julia’s War. At its core, Guitar’s music is fuzzed-out indie rock, but while the album retains the self-produced quality of his past work, there are some noticeable changes, with Kuli looking back to push his music forward. “It’s kinda corny,” Kuli admits over email, “but this album really was me going ‘back to my roots’ both sonically and lyrically. That’s why I think it made sense to focus-in on places from my past and present.”
It’s hard to pinpoint Guitar’s pretty idiosyncratic sound. As an artist, different aspects of Kuli’s music have been described in the past as slacker rock, post-punk, no-wave, “warped shoegaze,” “negative, angular rock.” Pointing to his label contemporaries, both formerly on Spared Flesh and currently on Julia’s War, gives you a rough constellation of where his music is located. All of this is genuinely helpful, though I find that pointing out three major strands to his songwriting is most useful for wrapping my head around Guitar and this project in particular: 1.) Guitar as a producer, 2.) Kuli’s involvement in Portland DIY, and 3.) his adoration of 80s and 90s indie rock.
Especially with his last EP, past coverage of his work have rightfully acknowledged Guitar’s hip hop origins, making instrumentals for his brother kAVAfACEunder the moniker of KULI. It feels most evident with the Stones Throw Records-type samples he’s often included in past projects, but you can sense his talent as a producer by his use of Ableton as a central tool in his songwriting in the past: his jagged songs get much of their character from Kuli dramatically shifting the listener between different dynamics, using bizarre guitar tones, and introducing other weird sounds that you might only land on by scrolling through a list of synth patches and dragging them onto the Arrangement View of your DAW. These sounds are littered across the entirety of the album. The third and final single “Chance to Win“, featuring sweetly-spoken vocals from Jontajshae Smith (Kuli’s wife who he’s featured on the standout track “Twin Orbits” from Casting Spells on Turtlehead and other tracks on his self-titled), which by the end of the track features these floaty violin synth stabs that weave in and out of the bass groove that remains. The end of “Counting on a Blowout” repitches a vocal sample of a “hahaha,” chopping it up alongside the final riff.
But with this in mind, it’s important to note that this album feels pretty distinct from his last project precisely because of Guitar’s different approaches to engineering, mixing, and production. “Largely due to my friend Morgan [Snook] (who co-produced the album), I played parts all the way through in one or two takes (instead of looping and chopping takes), had a real bass (as opposed to pitching down my guitar), and my homie and former bandmate Nikhil Wadha laid down ripping drum parts for all the songs,” Kuli explains. Influenced by touring with the previous EP, this project was written with a live band in mind, and it’s felt.
Things sound noticeably brighter than before, opening the floor in the mix for more foundational elements of his music to shine a bit more. Programmed drums are traded in for Wadhwa’s tasteful live recordings on kit, giving the album newfound energy. Instead of the warped and pitch-shifted murmurs he would often deliver in his early work, Kuli’s vocals are much more at the forefront, evidenced by his initial two singles. Kuli’s goofy, easeful scatting on “Pizza for Everyone” feels like a vocal line Stephen Malkmus might sing; he belts out emo harmonies on the heart-pumping “Every Day Without Fail” (in addition to the hardcore screams at the end screamed with vocalist Zoe Tricoche). Instead of replacing the weirdo charm of his previous work, the more polished production on the project, done alongside this broader list of collaborators, actually enhances the wide breadth of ideas Guitar has always explored throughout his work.
“This album was shaped by Portland in a big way,” Kuli declares. “I think part of that was a reaction to people thinking we were a Philadelphia band a few times on the East Coast and in the Midwest. That’s something I definitely take as a compliment, but it also made some hometown pride well up in me.” The aforementioned collaborators aren’t brand new. In addition to his production, Kuli cut his teeth in Portland’s DIY punk scene, playing with artists like Nick Normal, Gary Supply, and alongside his former labelmates on the unfortunately defunct local label Spared Flesh, that gained him associations with the egg punk and DIY rock and roll associated with underground rock tastemakers like Tremendo Garaje and tegosluchamPL.
This grimy, weirdo rock energy is infused throughout his work, and when we’re plunged into dissonance, it never feels out of left field since it already feels like we’ve been there from the start. The warm acoustic plucks at the start of “A+ for the Rotting Team” lead into a singsong-y buildup before Kuli remarks “time to go,” and a dissonant riff rings like an alarm before shuffling us into the power pop of the rest of the song. His song structures will have an A section that goes into a B section that goes into a C section into a D section, often never looking back (the lead single “Pizza for Everyone” lands far from where it starts) – out of a playful sense of indulgence and a gut instinct for the most interesting place for each song might go. Late 80s and 90s indie rock, the jangle and pop sensibilities of artists informed by the C86 / Glasgow scene like Jesus and Mary Chain, Teenage Fanclub, and more, but most evidently the lo-fi playfulness of American cult indie darlings like Pavement and Guided by Voices, the latter of whom Kuli has frequently cited as an influence in the past. This third pillar of Guitar’s music feels incredibly clear on We’re Headed to the Lake, where Kuli often sounds like he’s invoking Robert Pollard on several tracks, both in voice and creative tendencies: Kuli is also a songwriter brimming with a million ideas that he’s compelled to explore, even the short sparks of inspo. Tracks like “Ha”or “Office Clots”, with their brevity, serve less like interludes and more like the concise, brief song ideas of Bee Thousand. This influence is worn on the sleeve of this album. Kuli’s love for the lo-fi, slacker, and jangly indie rock infuses the project with a sun-drenched nostalgia that, when paired with a lot of the lyrical ideas that Guitar explores, gives the whole album a conceptual unity that’s been somewhat missing compared to the more mixtape-y nature of his previous projects.
Kuli’s desire to look backward is important thematically to this album, with his appreciation for his home showcased by the sentimentality for specifically his weekend haunts. “When I think of Portland, it’s specifically the rundown parts of town that lack Portlandia shout-outs that stick out to me. Corner stores, self-serve car washes, pawn shops, payday loan places, etc.” Kuli envisions Benson Lake a little while east of Portland when referring to the album’s title. “Really only a place you go if you grew up here, and it’s mostly families of the working-class sort that hang out there and barbecue and cool off.”
As Guitar looks backward to the places he grew up, some classic motifs arise: youthful desire, an insatiable need to hang out and escape boredom despite your empty pockets (“Nickels in the furniture / but no cash”). Sometimes Kuli leans into a serious sense of disquiet from that restlessness through his lyrics, as he croons on “A Toast For Tovarishch”, “I can’t sit around and wait.” In other songs there’s a sense of playfulness toward invoking youth, like in the tongue-in-cheek refrain of “The Chicks Just Showed Up” that point to the simple wins in life that change things for the better: “The chicks just showed up / they’re super tough / the coffee’s free.” Kuli frequently references games throughout the project, both invoking literal images of sporting events, like seeing another person on the jumbotron in “Pizza for Everyone” or winning a parlay in the “The Chicks Just Showed Up” (“cha-ching”), but also more gestural images and mantras that apply beyond a field, like new seasons beginning, striving to not “give up just yet” at the end of “A+ for the Rotting Team”, and going for broke in The Game Has Changed.
Guitar continues to do the latter with his guitar work: Kuli’s focus isn’t on virtuosic solos — although he displays some impressive chops throughout the project, with highlights on the Weezer-y “The Game Has Changed”, where the acoustic meanderings in the verses are later traded for a scorching lead line by the climax of the track — but instead on stuffing songs to the brim with shrewd guitar lines that call, respond, and bend to each other in interesting ways. In the center instrumental break of “Cornerland”, Kuli pits two spider-y guitar lines against each other on each side of the stereo mix, both racing in parallel to the driving bass line in the middle. The main guitar riff for “A Toast For Tovarishch”, though its continuous pedal tones maintain a warmth throughout the track, reveals a sense of unease with its stilted phrasing. Kuli is undeniably great at his instrument, but the real strength of Guitar’s guitar is the arrangements. This album continues Guitar’s sharp decision-making when it comes to stacking complementary guitar parts on top of and in response to one another and knowing when to hold back so those explosive moments of layers stacked upon layers feel even grander.
The ninth track on the album, “Pinwheel”, is a great encapsulation of the whole project: the lo-fi yet newly polished mix, the expansion on both his own style of songwriting and indulging his influences, the sound of youthful angst, and a maximal showing of all his cards by the end. In opposition to “Office Clots”, where Kuli is “stuck on the carousel,” rotting at work, this song spins the other direction. It’s a continuous buildup of elements, starting with spare, downstroked guitar chords, with Kuli looking through his memories and recalling his need to prove himself, “Now we got them where we want / All the usual weekend haunts / distant memories / we curse you first / we’ll catch up, somehow,” building and building until the final hook: “How we multiply / we formed a line / tear in your eye / need to send it off.” The song culminates with my favorite instrumental outro of the year, with the drums finally arriving to catch the groove of a brick-headed, gloriously simple chord progression, glistening synths soaring overhead, and a monstrously saturated, low-end lead guitar that brings us to the song’s end. It feels like fireworks set off over water.
We’re Headed to the Lake sees summer spinning again and again, the endless taking of risks to fulfill that “need to send it off,” to jump into that water. Guitar treads the usual weekend haunts, ground that’s been walked before, both by leaning into his beloved influences and by maintaining his other various idiosyncratic approaches to songwriting, bringing us bleeding-edge indie rock colored both by his eccentricities and memory. Even as we move into autumn, We’re Headed to the Lake brings us back into the heat anew even as we often meander away. “The sky glows in my window / the mind wanders from the light / it’s alright.”
You can listen to We’re Headed to the Lake anywhere you listen to music as well as order cassettes and CDs from Julia’s War.
Written by Patrick Raneses | Featured Photo by Ryan Belote-Rosen
Charlotte’s own Motocrossed – a seven piece made up of members Blaire Fullagar, Carolyn Becht, Colin Read, AJ George, Todd Jordan, Austin Currie, and Sofie Pedersen – make sounds that make me miss the southern music scene so deeply. Recorded mostly in bedrooms and basements, you can hear the closeness in every take. It’s humid and handmade; a mosaic of rural quiet and cathartic noise. As if the fragile spaciousness of Florist met the unpredictable nature of Advance Base, it settles into the scene with a precision rarely even touched on the first try.
The opening track, “A Mouse in the Field of Our Benefits” unspools slowly, tracing a feeling of smallness into something beyond our reach. Fullagar sings with a voice that is simultaneously definitive and searching with gripping lyricism, begging questions like “were we meant to see these lives play out on screen?”. The song’s pacing is omniscient of the classic slow-motion folk – unhurried, modest, but piercing when it lands.
“Crows Come Down” is brief but essential. The stripped arrangement gives the lyric space to breathe; “something’s gotta grow, if you water at its roots”. It feels less like a studio snippet, and more of a field recording, transporting us to the vast lands under a Carolina sky.
Songs “Drown (Country Grl)” and “Yearning” show range with restraint. The form aches with late-night jam energy, like a Hailaker track warped by the heat and eaten by the cicadas. “Yearning” certainly drifts towards dream pop, guitar melding together until the words are barely held. There’s a teetering between confession and abstraction that carries the soul of the south without leaning heavily into nostalgia – think more Dear Nora than Dolly.
Ten-minute track “Possum Dog” serves as the record’s center of gravity; messy and gorgeous. It moves like a childhood fever dream, parts shimmer, parts collapse. The moments are caught rather than built, making a statement in the strum, clash, and twang. It carries an emotional sprawl where memory feels half-erased, never gone.
By the closing tracks – “Motocrossed” and “Under the Moon” – the band leans into the looseness. The title track feels like friends tumbling through an inside joke, while “Under the Moon” exhales everything, and leaves nothing to be unsaid. It’s patient, unresolved, and strangely comforting in its indecision.
But Motocrossed isn’t just another lo-fi diary from the south. It’s sharper – more deliberate in its unraveling. These songs don’t wander out of lost conscience, but a search for something greater. Each cracked voice, creaking bass, crawling beat – it all feels right. This is a debut that doesn’t beg for attention, and rather earns it through intimacy, through the courage to stay small in a world of high gloss and sheen. In a space that can be dominated by the artificial, Motocrossed makes the quiet, confident argument for the deliberate in music.
Motocrossed was released on October 3rd via Trash Tape Records. You can listen to Motocrossed anywhere you find your music!
‘Talulah’s Tape’ is a swirling tapestry of trebly pop demos that conjures the best of Midwestern suburbia and its bubble gum-tinted memories of adolescence. It sounds like recess fourth downs—where strategy boils down to “Go out long,” like little fingers caked in loamy dirt searching for roly-polies, like popped driveway tar bubbles, and dreadful school hot lunches. It’s a record that hisses, shakes, and nervously asks to dance. It is the sound of youth; it is the sound of the youth beat.
The Indianapolis music collective formerly known as ‘Talulah God’ offers forty-five minutes of beautiful twee pop songs on their debut record. The record, ‘Talulah’s Tape,’ is a collection of sixteen warm 4-track demos recorded by the band over a four-year period (2021-2024). Despite the record finding its origins in scattered demos, it never feels desultory. Every song and every non-sequitur feels perfectly necessary and is sewn in a way that simply makes sense. Each part fits the technicolor whole; it exists as a series of frames that, when run together, create a coherent and honest picture.
The record begins with ‘Down on Me,’ a charming gem of a pop song fit for a tween coming-of-age film. The guitar is jangly, and the harmonies and melody are delicate. The lyrics are fragile and earnest, projecting a distinct sense of longing—a theme throughout the record. Despite this, the instrumentation and melody draw warmth; it sounds like the first breath of sun coloring the sky’s uniform of TV-grey. ‘Wallace,’ another standout track, finds the Good Flying Birds turning the gain up on their amps for a fuzzy, driving number that demands attention. ‘Every Day Is Another’ is a beautifully delicate love song that separates itself from the rest of the tape by featuring a drum machine as opposed to acoustic drums. This works beautifully for such a fragile number that elicits the more anxious moments and pitfalls of coming of age. The lyrics read like a diary entry, or the words you’d wish you could write in your crush’s yearbook.
In between the earnest tracks exist many sound bites, which keep the listener on their toes and give the record a distinctly fresh and modern edge. “Bruh,” Spongebob clips, and various other comedic sound bites read like a Gen-Z brain-rotted Robert Pollard, and I’m absolutely certain that the listener, like I, will be 100% here for it. The songs dance between echoes of ‘Guided by Voices’ in the catchy choruses and treble, the candy-coated shimmer of ‘The Pastels,’ and Glasgow’s twee pop scene.
‘Talulah’s Tape’ is a beautifully earnest and well-crafted record. It sounds like the soundtrack to a tween coming-of-age film you watch and love, then forget about for twenty years until a rainy afternoon matinee with your family reminds you of just how good that soundtrack was. If this is the future of the Indiana music scene, it makes me not so hesitant to want to come home on breaks. The young vignettes that I’ve assigned to the candy-colored melodies are ones I wish I could live in forever—little popped tar bubbles I’d gladly occupy. I adore this record, I adore ‘The Good Flying Birds,’ and I cannot wait to see what they do next.
Talulah’s Tape was originally released on Rotten Apple in 2025. It is set to be reissued October 17. You can preorder Talulah’s Tape now one vinyl, CD and cassette.
As Summer wrings out its final moments of heat, allowing for the subtleties of Fall to appear, Deadharrie introduces Slow Rock, one of two albums released just this year alone, on September 9th. William Harries, the name orchestrating the sound and image of Deadharrie, assembles a concept so candidly raw. Throughout the album, you’ll feel their disheveled demeanor peak through whichever digital veil you stream from. Enhanced by unsettling nostalgia and exciting experimentation, the Florida based artist offers a cohesive, yet daring, addition to their discography.
Hidden in the third slot of the track order is the album’s shining jewel: “New Creep.” We’re taken out of the stumbling rhythm found in the surrounding numbers, and pushed into a confrontation with the aggressive melody. Eventually overpowering the senses, “New Creep” uses its outstanding guitar solo and full volume to keep you under its influence. Where other areas of the album ease the listener, Deadharrie takes the liberty to feed a flame of rage and confusion in this piece.
“Nightshade” allows for a more introspective look, with lines like Beat to submission / Impatient mind / Lean on my family / When times are tough / Will love resolve me / Am I enough? The five minutes allotted to “Nightshade” paints Deadharrie to be the guide through a psychedelic night filled with reflection, regret, and curiosity. The hallucinogenic feeling rises as Deadharrie’s percussion shows the fun in freedom. Our trip is safely brought down by a shimmering lullaby-esque strum.
Introducing the album is “Alibi” in all its slow rock glory. Deadharrie sets the tone of the album with an intimate and relaxed voice–-the artist renders a space for the listener to feel clued in on something only they’re aware of. The secrecy behind the interaction between Deadharrie and the listener secures trust and comfortability. Immediately we’re familiar with the gentility of the soft pace, but eager to explore different sides of the artist. Which is shown in the contrasting track, “Fumble.” Electric strings instantly permeate your hearing and vision. All you see and feel is the effect of Deadharrie’s relationship with music. If “Alibi” is an introduction to their work, “Fumble” can be considered an introduction to the reason behind their work.
Harries approaches each track with creativity emboldened by reflective lyricism. On Deadharrie’s website, Harries mentions, “I really puke this stuff out in the best way. Songwriting feels a lot like throwing up.” Deadharrie’s alluring music production can be accredited to their unfiltered methods. Creating without thinking. Living without guessing. As precise and honest as the title itself, Slow Rock, Deadharrie exemplifies the transparency needed in music today.
You can listen to Slow Rock now anywhere you find your music.
the ugly hug 