Back in August, songwriter Jake Brower shared his latest album Long Term Wave via the Athens, Georgia label, Attaboy Tapes. Releasing colorful home recordings since 2014, Long Term Wave is just as much about the process as it is about the product for Brower. Following the release of his previous album Psychofunky Dancing back in 2023, prior to his move from Athens to Chicago, Brower brought to these songs a challenge to reshape what he considers to be his given perspective; a statement of being stuck in the here and now and being okay with that for once.
Performing in a more stripped-back nature, Brower brings both conscious and explorative poise to these gentle tunes, enduring melodies and engaging simplicity, as he sets out to define the feelings and beings that he takes inspiration from in his day-to-days. “Every little task is made up of a million other little annoying tasks. The pressure from the cooker hits the looker at last” – Brower’s convoluted melodies are no more of a chore than they are a natural progression, where movement and language swirl together like a potion, a remedy, a blend of simple ingredients that perform such a poignant task in such a short time. But it’s in these transparent moments, regardless of how fleeting, where Brower’s musical instinct paints a picture much larger than we could have ever expected.
We recently got to catch up with Jake Brower on a cold Chicago day to talk about exploring his expressions, alternate dimensions and how his neighbors shaped the way Long Term Wave sounds.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You recently put out Long Term Wave, which is not your debut, but your first full length in a while. Is that right?
I released an album in 2022 called Psychofunky Dancing that I kind of consider to be a debut, but I’ve been recording and releasing music for over a decade now. Psychofunky Dancing is more of a fun, psychedelic album that sort of propels the listener into a weird alternate world. I made it almost 100% on the GarageBand app on my phone, so it’s very lo-fi and poppy. And then Long Term Wave is sort of like a response to that I think. I wanted to challenge myself to write songs that were rooted in my real day to day experiences, and have them be very direct and stripped down.
Coming into this record with the intention of writing something that’s more personal, more rooted in yourself, was that a challenge for you? Did it feel weird at first?
It was definitely a challenge. I spent about three years working on the album. It’s not that the recordings or songs themselves are super labored over, they’re very simple and bare bones. But it just took me that long to figure out how to shift my songwriting and style to be able to convey what I wanted. Over those 3 years I wrote about 30–40 songs, and experimented with tons of different versions and variations of things. And then the 13 songs that ended up on the album were the ones that really rose to the top of that group.
I mean, just by sheer numbers of songs you were working with and practicing, what sort of things were you picking up on that you knew you needed to work on? Were you able to decompartmentalize what you wanted to hear vs. what you were hearing?
I really wanted the songs to have an emotional directness to them and wanted them to speak to the real dynamics of my everyday life. I also wanted to make sure that they were still playful and funny while at the same time being emotional. So, out of all of the ones that I was working on, the ones that I ended up prioritizing were the ones that came as close as I could to that balance.
That’s funny, I wrote humor and heart in my notes. Even though these songs are so strikingly personal to you, it creates this place that people are able to feel comfortable in. Where does that humor sit in your way of expression?
I think the humor for me is an important counterpoint to the emotion in the songs. A lot of the challenge for me is in trying to write songs that are rooted in feelings, but that avoid sentimentality or the typical tropes of emotionality. Another way I think I do this is by rooting the songs in banal domestic experiences. So it’s like, okay, this song is about laundry, but it’s emotional at the same time.
Does it create new depth for you? To be able to explore the ways that you could describe doing laundry, almost characterizing it as you slow down? Does it help you to be present, rather than approach laundry with indifference?
Yea, that’s exactly what I was trying to do. I really wanted a listener to be able to gain a sort of heightened perspective on the everyday. And it’s also personal for me, too, where the process of learning how to write these songs meant that I had to learn to attune myself to those little dynamics that are going on all the time. There’s this song on the album called “Can’t Play Tambourine,” that came out living in a multi-unit apartment building, and not wanting to disturb my neighbors when I play music. There’s a line that’s like, “my upstairs neighbor likes to play the acoustic guitar. I hear the way it sounds when it comes through the walls, and I don’t want to be like that”. It’s about the self consciousness that I’m feeling as I’m playing and recording the song that the listener is hearing.
That says a lot about you too, like how you explore your place in the world. I like how you said alternate dimensions, with this album being very much stuck in the dimension that we have. Was that something you were searching for prior to this record? Were you trying to understand something that just wasn’t super comprehensible to you at the time?
Yea, I think I was looking for a way for my songwriting to help me tap into the present. Like opening up portals in routine experiences.
Do you think your writing is more of a method of exploration or explanation? I mean, do you feel settled at all when you finish? Or do you feel like it pushes you further down the rabbit hole?
That’s a really good question, I think it’s both. I do feel like when I finish a song, especially one that resonates more deeply, it feels like a little token or something that I can have and carry with me. But that process never really comes to a resolution. I’m always churning and I love writing songs. So, it’s a good problem I would say!
Do you find comfort in that? That there’s always more work to be done? Or maybe the comfort in that there’s always gonna be the next one?
I think so. I mean, I think right now songwriting for me is sort of like a life practice. My songs are always basically written in my head, while going about the daily tasks and work of my life. I never really write a song by picking up a guitar and strumming and creating something intuitively like that, like Paul bashing out “Get Back” in the documentary. It’s something that I just kind of carry with me through the day. I love how writing is portable, like a language game that I can play. A lot of the time I’ll write a song completely in my head over the course of a few days, and then only after it’s fleshed out I’ll get my guitar and figure out what the chords are. I’ll do that in front of a mic, and then the recording that ends up on the album might be one of the first few times I’ve played the song.
And you just self-record in your apartment?
Yes, I just self-record. It’s important to me that it feels true to the small bedroom that I record it in, so there’s no drums or instruments on this album that weren’t true to that space.
Do you think your worry of disturbing your neighbor influenced the way the album sounds?
Very much, yes [laughs]. I wanted to adapt my music making to my life, rather than trying to find a way to get to this ideal sound that wasn’t really related to my circumstances. Playing at a softer scale so I didn’t disturb my neighbors ended up very much shaping the aesthetic of the music.
Have you been playing shows in Chicago?
No, I’ve been playing and collaborating with some friends, and we might try and start playing some shows together. But performing isn’t really a huge driving motivation for me. I’m also a painter, and I almost think of my music as similar to painting, where it’s just this experience of making this thing, coming back to it and layering over time. Writing and recording are the things that I connect deeper with, rather than performing.
So, how do you feel when something gets put out once it’s out of that creating process and considered finished?
A lot of the time when I put something out, I feel like I just really want to make the next thing to correct for what I could have done differently on it [laughs]. With this album, it was such a process of figuring out a new method of writing and working. Now that it’s done, I can see the bigger picture and feel like I’ve gained some confidence from that. I feel excited to keep exploring.
You can listen to Long Term Wave out now via Attaboy Tapes.
Rug is nothing new to the Columbus scene, having been frequent participants in their local live show circuits for some time now. But just recently they became the latest in the cities calvary of creatives with the release of their new self-titled EP back in October. Made up of members Alice Wagoner (guitar, vocals), Jenna King (guitar), Elliott Hogue (bass, production, mixing) and Jonah Silverman (drums), Rug also brought in Abel’s Isaac Kauffman to help record and mix these tracks, laying it all out within their type of midwestern rock n roll fluency, where the blend of dynamic noise and earnest storytelling find revelries in the caricatures that foster life in the middle country.
These songs are reluctant for any immediacy, each track wholeheartedly animating the tiny yet tricky grievances of growing up, dragging its feet towards any concrete answers before lost to false memory or arbitrary nostalgia. “What’s this for, being so sore and so tired? Do I really feel this way or just or is it comfortable?” opens both the EP and the song ‘2%” with a blank space; a moment to revel and resent, to formulate and to sabotage, to break and to heal in your own time, at your own pace. Throughout it all, Wagoner’s voice drips from the tracks like blood from a freshly scrapped knee; the combination of rumbling distortion and sincere melodies both holding a place of fondness for rebellion and self-determination in the loathing territory between young adulthood and foolhardy youth.
We recently got to ask Rug about their self-titled EP and how the project came to be.
This EP has been a long time coming for you all. How does it feel to get this project out?
It feels really great to get this project out. These songs are what really catapulted Rug into a project so they mean a lot to us as a band. We wrote these songs back in 2023 and have been sitting on them since so it’s been a long time coming.
I know this group has gone through some changes since the initial formation, making the move from Athens, OH and joining the Columbus scene, as well as a few lineup changes. How did you embrace these shifts in the project, and did they have an effect on the way you approached making and releasing this EP?
Yeah we have had a lot of changes since the start! In 2024, our drummer moved out of state, and Elliott, who played bass, switched to drums. I knew our new bassist through her solo project, Coralilly, and it all just kind of worked out. When we first switched up the lineup we were worried things wouldn’t mesh the same as they did before, but any worries we had really faded away when Cora joined, she’s the best.
Joining the Columbus scene has been really great– everyone we’ve met has been super supportive and we’re really happy to be a part of this community. We honestly got super lucky with meeting some great people who really try to lift us up, so it’s been a really smooth transition.
Joining the Columbus scene really helped push us to put out the EP. Like I said, we had been sitting on the songs/recordings for a while. Athens is a college town which means a lot of the bands around here are temporary, so it’s really easy to get caught up in playing shows all of the time instead of recording and giving more longevity to your work. I think since the move we’ve really been prioritizing taking a step back from shows to hone in our skills and songwriting, as well as put out the EP and beginning to record future releases.
You included a lot of big players from the Columbus area to help bring this record to life. What was your introduction to that scene and what influences did you bring from those you worked with into this EP.
I think the people we can give the most credit to are our friends from Villagerrr and Abel. We recorded the EP with Isaac from Abel and he mixed it as well– so he is to credit for that whole process and we can’t thank him enough. We had played a couple shows with Abel in Athens when we first started playing out, and thought their recordings sounded great. He reached out and asked about recording a single for us, that being 2%, and then we later recorded the EP at his house because we were really happy with the way things turned out. All of their recorded stuff is fantastic, and they were really our first leg into the Columbus scene.
As for Villagerrr, we had all been huge fans of them for years. We ended up playing a couple shows with them in Athens and just built a relationship with them over time. Eventually, we ended up doing a weekend run of Ohio shows with Villagerrr back in March, and that was a great experience. We also had some mutual friends from another Columbus band, A-Go-Go. So we all just kind of ended up quickly building this community of all of these talented people pretty quickly.
You have been playing shows for quite awhile now, both full band and as a solo acoustic outfit. Where did these songs live in the live shows you played and did the back and forth of full band and solo influence the way you sit with these songs now?
We’ve been playing shows for a couple years now, which is crazy to think about. Most of our shows are plugged in with distortion and loud drums and the whole thing, but the root of all of our songwriting comes from just playing on an acoustic guitar. I think that’s why we love playing the occasional stripped back and all acoustic show– it allows us to return to the origin of the songs in a collaborative way. A lot of our inspiration in songwriting comes from folk and country music, so it’s really exciting to reimagine our songs in a new way each time we play an acoustic set.
What has putting this EP out meant to you all? Has it offered new things to explore in your lives as individuals and as a creative group? What are you looking forward to as Rug continues to grow?
Releasing this EP means a lot. Although we have been sitting on these songs for a long time, they are the first songs we wrote and performed for Rug and it’s cool to put that out into the world. We’re all at a very different place now then we were when these songs were written and recorded and our songwriting has developed so much as a band, so I think we’re just excited to keep moving forward. I think this has offered new opportunities in a way that we have something to show for ourselves now. Even though these songs were written a long time ago, we all think it’s important to have a physical record of the progress we’ve made over time. It’s also been rewarding to complete and release old Rug songs so we can move on to recording our new stuff. I know we’re all really interested in touring and playing more shows out of state as well, and are really excited to get back into playing shows in 2026!
Last week, Boston-based Main Era explained to me that their ability to cultivate cohesion within a sonically extensive record is akin to the complexity and dimensions of a human being. They were matter-of-fact about the idea, and I suppose it should feel like somewhat of a derivative notion; people can be multifaceted without bursting at the seams and presenting like a pile of disheveled dissonance, of course the music they create can too. However, in a climate where art is so heavily ambushed by pressures to fit into a niche, to confine into algorithm-approved margins, to be cunning and different but still palatable, the mere act of remembering that music can be a compounded reflection of the humans who create it is grounding. Main Era views the project as a functioning organism rather than a flat canvas. They refuse to tether it to any aesthetic or vision or purpose, and, based on the diverse nature of their discography, they also refuse to tether it to itself.
“I do not know if we have arrived at ‘a sound’ because I don’t even know if that’s the point. I am not sure if there is a destination,” Willie Swift explains. “Since the beginning, I think this band has had an ethos of creating a living, breathing sort of project – something that was growing with us and had its own life. This project may be in its adolescent years, it still has a bit of that teenage angst, but I think it’s really starting to gain its own consciousness perhaps.”
Main Era consists of Willie Swift, Maeve Malloy, Jack Halberian, and Gigi Greaves. It also consists of their mutual and individual excitements and, feeding off of the chapters of their lives, phases, states, interests, etc; occasionally freezing them into the form of recorded music without ever freezing Main Era itself. When Willie and Gigi began the project four-ish years ago (I suppose this would be Main Era’s fetal – if not prenatal years) it honored their then-excitement about rapping and trap beats and served as an outlet for mutually experienced breakup woes. They added Jack around the time they decided to start playing shows, and then Maeve cemented the project in the summer of 2022.
“If you go through the discography, there is definitely an evolution and there are still older tendencies or ideas that we used before that we expanded or improved upon, and then also newer things that we were inspired by,” Maeve notes. “We’ve never been like, “oh we’re going to be a rock band”, or “we’re going to be a shoegaze band” – though we did just inevitably fall under that umbrella and scene because it made the most sense sonically. But still, there has never been a goal like that, and, at least for me, I love the idea of just creating your own thing.”
Main Era is set to share new record Four of Wands next month. The record features tracks mixed by Nate Scaringi and Cameron Woody, as well as cover art by JJ Gonson. They shared first single, “Double Dragon”, last month, and the entire record will be released January 23rd via Interluxe Distribution – an independent tape label that Main Era runs out of Boston.
Four of Wands is comprised of four tracks; three of which teeter around ten minutes in length, and one that sits just under two minutes. Averting from the standard ten-or-so track record of three to four minute songs reflects an insolent ‘do whatever the hell you want’ ethos owned by likes of Sonic Youth, one of the bands that Main Era cited as an inspiration while creating Four of Wands.
“Sonic Youth has always been a muse of this band.” Willie notes. “At this point, it is less about the exact sound and more about making whatever you want and playing it however and by any means necessary, regardless of your skill level.”
Alongside Sonic Youth, they gushed about a handful of artists they were excited about amidst writing and recording Four of Wands, which ranged from Electric Wizard and Boris to Jay Dilla and Sprain. Main Era also heavily centers the importance of live music; citing their tour with Brooklyn-based Wiring and a show they played with Kansas-based Flooding as heavy inspirations as well.
Passion and excitement serve as a sturdy compass for the music that Main Era creates, though not because they merely replicate whatever record is stuck in their head at the time. Rather, they find success in the authenticity that parallels honoring one’s own interests. They use enthusiasm as a fertilizer for their own art instead of appealing to what may be expected of them, or what might get them on a curated playlist titled “Shoegaze Now”.
“It’s such a thing that when bands change their sound, people get upset, and they’re like ‘well this isn’t the band I know and love’,” Maeve tells me. “For us, if you are into Main Era, you just have to know it’s going to be different each time.”
Their ability to compound themselves as individuals into a band that’s a multidimensional entity of its own is largely a result of their comprehensive approach to art, of which spills into how they write music as well. “It’s like putting a puzzle together, and finding out what ideas go well together,” Maeve explains. “We also take inspiration from the concept of creating a composition as opposed to writing a song. With a composition, you are telling a whole story and there is really a beginning, middle, and end. I think having that idea creates a more seamless flow between tracks.”
By centering composition in their songwriting and binding the record through cohesive instrumentation and tones, Main Era paves an avant-garde outlet where their ranged ideas and excitements can flourish in a sensical way. The record jumps from moments of stifled sludge to stripped back acoustic stretches to frenzied patches of discordant instrumentals. It touches on a ridiculous amount of textures and emotions and styles of music, and yet, it still manages to surface as an effortless listen. Not in a palatable, outlet-mall-music way; but in the sense that it’s hard to detect when one song ends and another starts. It all just feels like one holistic experience, and one distinct story.
“A loose concept story behind the lyrical content and flow of the album follows this character that undergoes a procedure to remove his memory,” Willie explains of the story within Four of Wands. “By some mistake, his memory is retained, but his identity to everybody else is removed. Like a ghost.”
Although they have no interest in a hardened sound for Main Era, the band is excited about the direction Four of Wands has taken them in, and how it bridges gaps between their live sets and recorded music. “Hopefully this is the first time that people actually like the recorded music as much as the live performances,” Maeve jokes. The band always prioritized their live music, and although they may feel some of their streamable discography does not live up to what they bring to a DIY show, there is something deeply refreshing about this (self-proclaimed) incongruence. Main Era prioritizes connection and tangible experiences over cultivating an online reputation. It’s a refreshing ethos, and one that’s certainly present on their forthcoming release.
“I just really love that we can make something that [causes] real reactions in people, and real emotions.” Jack notes. “It’s very beautiful, and artistically, that’s what I feed off of the most.”
The next opportunity to experience Main Era live is this Thursday, 12/18, at a benefit show and food drive in Boston. The show was put together by Maeve, and Main Era will play alongside wedding gift, makeout palace, DINOS, Ashy Finn, and K.O. QUEEN, raising money for Warm Up Boston, LUCE Hotline, and Food Not Bombs. You can find more information on the show below.
Amongst Chicago’s most invigorating and animated scenes comes the band P. Noid, founded by Saskia Lethin and Jack Abbott, who just over a year ago released a tape called Penelope Noid via GIANT—BEAT. These songs are wiry, but tough as the drums kick rocks and the melodies linger, live and prosper in the divots of whatever was dented on impact. It’s a crash course in infatuation; live fast, dream big, die hard, where pop songs have acne scars and the cigarettes taste like those leftovers you’ve been dreaming about in your fridge all day. Having played in several other bands around the city’s dentures, heralding fame from Bungee Jumpers, Answering Machines and several more, Lethin and Jack write songs with loose charisma, unrestricted in the realms of lo-fi recordings and day-job-daydreams. P. Noid revels in the genuine excitement of rock and roll, generous enough to capture it in a jar and share it to the rest of us to sway, thrust and jump to till the morning comes back around for one more hit.
We got to ask Saskia and Jack about one year of Penelope Noid, blending mediums and saving any residue that may be left behind.
Approaching one year of your album Penelope Noid, how do those songs fit in your lives where you’re currently at? What does that project mean to you now that it’s been out and about for a while?
Putting it out was like popping a big pimple. It was a lot of angst but now we’re feeling more feisty. And we wanna replicate what we did for the recording where we did it all in one night because the songs do well with like low-stakes spontaneity. But more rocking less rolling. Penelope Noid will forever be cherished within our hearts but it’s time to put something new out for sure.
Did you have any goals when you went to make Penelope Noid? Anything you tried out or wanted to come across?
No. Like we said low-stakes and spontaneous punk rocker vibes. But what happened happened. And life is an experience you can’t really control how the dice roll you know? Because it’s all in gods hands at the end of the day.
Do you two have prior experience making music? If so, how did that come together when starting p. noid?
We’d already written songs for Bungee Jumpers before this. I, Saskia, used to write these atrocious gay songs and it didn’t ever feel like i improved. Jack came out of the womb with an guitar and has literally never stopped shredding so honestly he legally has to play in bands because otherwise he’s just annoying and loud. After we did bungee jumpers I gained some confidence and then wrote this stuff and since jack wouldn’t shut up so i put him behind the drums. And he gets paid a hell if a lot like you don’t even want to KNOW how much money this guy rakes in.
You both are involved in different creative mediums outside of your music. Do those experiences inspire what goes in and comes out of your music? Is there anything your interested in experimenting with?
One of the most fun things about being in a band is getting to make the art. Life is an experiment and the artwork is the residue of Experience.
Playing shows frequently around the city with both local and touring acts, do your songs find their way through live shows? Do you use the space to try anything new?
Fun’s residue is simply intoxicating. Which means that wherever we go and whatever we do… Fun will follow! And rock ALWAYS follows fun. So when we’re playing shows it’s a fun time. You should come see us. We are playing at the metro tomorrow. Who knows what lies ahead. All we know is 1. Money 2. Fun 3. Residue 4. Women
The phrase “man power go” is both sampled on the album and is used in your instagram bio. Where did this phrase come from and how have you utilized it to fit what p. noid is to you?
Because sometimes a man should use his power to get out of here. But we use our power to go crazy and rock. It’s just a sentiment and a thought. A bit of residue perhaps. It used to make us laugh a lot but now it’s just sinister.
Do you have anything planned for the future? Anything you’re excited about?
Bungee Jumpers tour P Noid new tape. Actually, new tapes for everybody. In the next coming months. And we’re starting several new bands. Lock in. We’re jealous of you because you get to experience all the residue. We’re just here for the money and women.
Just over one year ago, a band called Meredith released a one-off album titled Seventeen, a ferocious, yet endearingly mindful collection of songs that now lives on as moment captured in time. Formed by Carolina McPhail (guitar and vocals) and Leon Gateley (guitar) as a way to jam and experiment with noise during lockdown, Meredith became a full force with the inclusion of Jake Haslam (drums) and Lucas Saunter (bass and production). Parting their separate ways prior to its release, the beautiful boldness of Seventeen has lurked in the corners of Bandcamp, sometimes let slip by word of mouth for over a year now, deafening those ears that are lucky enough to stumble upon it.
McPhail, originally from Jersey in the Channel Islands, now lives in New Orleans, where she is getting her PhD in French. Before Meredith was even an idea, McPhail had a project of her own called Allison’s Gate, that was as seamless in expression as it was engrained in McPhail’s messy creative process. Bare, yet empathetic, Allison’s Gate builds upon the opportunity of open space, where tinged guitar strings rattle and sullen pianos play protected in its lo-fi voicings. Meredith, on the other hand, found its footing in the immediate depth of gripping feedback and melodic wear and tear of welting guitars so pervious you can pick at them like scars. Writing about her time in boarding school, the songs simmer with that teenage potency, where emotions sometimes feel too big to put into words. But while new textures form underneath and each sonic strain plays out with gradual depth, Seventeen leads its bruised temper step-by-step with the nuance only acquired by care, patience and time.
We recently got to chat with McPhail about the making of Seventeen and where it lives one year later, starting her own label, Daughter of Pearl, and what’s next in her creative world.
Carolina McPhail
This interview has been edited for length and clairty.
You recently just passed one year of Seventeen being out in the world. How did it feel just initially getting it out at that time, and how is it feeling now?
I was really happy to get it out there, because we had had it for a really long time, more or less finished. It took a really long time to sort out the mastering and was hoping to release it with a small bandcamp type label, but the communication became a bit weird, and I thought, why don’t I just release it myself? So I started this small label, Daughter of Pearl, initially just to release this Meredith record, and I was glad that I did it in that way. It was difficult to figure out how to get people to listen and notice that it was out there. I have quite a lot of friends who make music, so it was nice to share it with them, because that’s kind of my community, both here in New Orleans and back home in London. The first music I released was under the name Allison’s Gate, which is probably now 10 years ago. They were all demo-y type songs that weren’t really designed to be played live, so I’ve started to enjoy the recording of a particular moment or a particular time. But it was just nice to put something out there again and see that it was there, and complete. It has kind of become a bit of an artifact, really, because me and Leon [Gateley] met during the pandemic and made a lot of music. And then I went back to England, and then he eventually moved to England later, but by that time, I’d already moved to the States. So it was this very particular time that we were making this music, and I wanted it to be recorded.
I was gonna ask about Allison’s Gate, because that was a project created primarily to play off of your own creative spaces, catching something that happens in the moment, as you said. Was Meredith something that came from that same mindset? Did that early stage of the project reflect that process or was it a shift for you?
It was definitely a shift for me in a lot of ways. Leon and I started playing in his apartment, just jamming these long, open-ended songs with two guitars. I hadn’t really played music in a while before that period of time. I had a few pedals that my friend Ryan had made and sent me and I wanted an opportunity to play with them and make lots of noise. We would go to this practice space that Lucas [Saunter] had in Jersey and would just make a lot of noise every week until it just became these songs that were really fun to play. I’d never really just played a lot of guitar and messed around with it in that way. I also got more into those kinds of heavier sounds through what Leon was listening to, and then later through what Jake [Haslam] was also listening to. But we didn’t have a goal or anything at all. It was mostly, you know, we can record these songs, so we recorded them. It took forever to put it out, and now we all live in different places. But it was just so much fun — Leon, Jake and Lucas are just unbelievably talented. I think what was so much fun about that period of time was just having that kind of chemistry when you’re jamming — the things that you come up with complementing the things that someone else comes up with in that moment, it’s this weird chemical moment that happens.
Did you guys get a chance to play live? Did that feeling of fun translate into other spaces beyond the practice room?
We played live maybe three times, I think. The first ever time we performed live was in someone’s garden. This was when it was just me and Leon, and then our friend, Misha Phillips [Smoking Room], played drums with us. It was in Lucas’s garden as part of this festival called Roselle Fest, which is basically just Lucas’s house, and a lot of musicians in Jersey. And that was really fun. And then we played once at the Blue Note in Jersey. And then we played once at Ivy House in London which was really fun. More so the fact that we were playing there and I got to show my friends than the moment of the rehearsal transferring to the live moment. When you’re rehearsing or jamming, your just in it so much more, you’re not thinking about it as much. I’d like to eventually get to a space where I can immerse myself in that type of playing even though I’m in public.
On your bandcamp, there is a very noticeable practice of gratitude in what this project became. You thanked those venues that billed you, the people who housed you, all these very specific things. Did that thorough practice of gratitude influence how these songs came to be, or maybe even what they are supposed to be in their own time?
In a way, I think some of the gratitude definitely came from a place of being sad that it was over. We knew we weren’t really going to continue, there was no possible way really to continue. There were a couple of differences that we had, but besides that, I was sad it was over. It kind of became a roll call of, like, thank you for this, and thank you for that. Not a roll call in like, a shallow way, but I’m really glad all these things happened and thankful for the people putting their faith in it, even though it wasn’t a huge thing. I guess I’ve been making music in different ways for a while, and I just kind of felt like I had different relationships with different people that had come through this and I just wanted to say that I appreciate them.
A majority of these songs are about your time in boarding school. Does it feel fitting, or even kind of weird, that this project is a one-off? That this project, which encapsulates that time of making it for you, came out of or was inspired by another important period in your life?
It’s funny that it’s not a solo album, you know? For me, it just kind of spills out. I genuinely think that what you’re deciding to make art about is often not really your decision. With most of these songs, we’d be playing in practice and I would just start singing, and then either the lyrics would be slightly written down already, or they would be completely improvised the first time that we play them. So, I don’t really choose to sing a song about my first relationship, or whatever it may be, it just kind of happens and materializes like that. At least that’s one of the ways that I have worked historically. It was funny because I didn’t want to sort of take ownership because the songs were songs that I had written the lyrics for, but it meant so much to me in a creative way that it felt very personal at the same time. But, we didn’t really have that much discussion about what those songs were about. We just made a lot of noise. And then when it was all done and dusted, it was like a ‘this is what these songs are about’ kind of thing.
Right, I guess if you’re always waiting for the right time, it’ll just never happen. Those feelings would just never come out.
Yeah, and I don’t really plan things out [laughs]. I’m starting to try to plan things a bit more. But with a creative project, it kind of falls together, in a way. But what I enjoyed about this project is the way that Leon and I both leaned towards the same kind of structures, and the same kind of sounds in a way that just gelled really well. There are songs that originated from me, there are songs that originated from him, and you can’t really tell. I definitely didn’t set out to make a coming-of-age album, or what my particular thing that I’m gonna try and say would be, it’s just going to happen that way.
Just embrace the mess?
Yeah, basically [laughs].
Do you have anything you’re working on musically? Or is it primarily label stuff for you these days?
I have two small Alison’s Gate EPs that I want to put out at some point. At first, I was thinking I should make more of a concrete project or whatever, or maybe I should just carry on the sort of personal tradition of making it quite scrappy. I’ve got demos from the past which I want to draw together and put out. And then I have a new project with my partner, called Time, but we haven’t done anything yet [laughs]. We’ve written a couple of songs, but we actually now have a practice space in New Orleans, which is fun. I have a few other friends who I’m gonna release things from on Daughter of Pearl, but I’m taking a bit of a break from it. I’m just quite disorganized, really, but I would like to do more. I’ve been lucky to watch some friends of mine, whose music I’ve seen grow in the most amazing, beautiful ways. But I’ve always been a bit more of a bedroom person. The most fun that I have is when I’m just producing at home. Not even necessarily playing or writing, but recording and jamming by myself. I just like capturing a particular moment — not really a live moment, but an intimate moment. But I did love making [Seventeen], and I feel very happy with how it came out in the end. I think it has become that artifact that I kind of wanted it to be. I wasn’t sure if anyone would find it. I sometimes get random messages on Instagram, and they’re asking when the next album is coming out? There was this guy, I think he was from Indonesia, and he was like, ‘can’t wait for more!’ [laughs].
I habitually watch shows from the back of the venue. Partially, because I am six foot three and a bit self-conscious about my predisposition for view obstruction, and partially, because I believe it’s the best place to absorb the crowd. There is an interesting dichotomy between the nature of music consumption as a solo act and as a live experience; throughout the day, I watch people with headphones wedge themselves between strangers on a train car, each tuned into their own self-serving listening campaign. Of course, there is a beauty to listening alone, and to the way it can help us make sense of our own minds – but I think music is at its most invigorating when you can experience the vulnerability of someone else’s art alongside a stranger. I love standing in the back as if the crowd in front of me is half of the event, and I love witnessing the collective catharsis that live music can generate. However, sometimes a set moves me enough that I subconsciously detach from the corner, absorbing the energy of the crowd from within it instead of observing with my back velcroed to the sound booth. I assume this would have been the case at the release show for MX Lonely’s “Beauty Lasts for Never”, although I will never truly know. I got stuck crammed next to the stage on my way back from outside, standing an arms distance from the stage (and unfettered by any unease that the proximity would otherwise trigger within me) at what was undoubtedly my favorite set of 2024.
I wrote that last year. It was shortly after I saw MX Lonely at Trans-Pecos on November 23rd, and I stashed it in a Google Drive folder of music thoughts that have never seen the light of day. November 23rd of this year, I spoke to MX Lonely on a cocktail of video chat platforms – using up my thirty free Zoom minutes before continuing our conversation about their forthcoming record via Google Meet. I wanted to reference my own stockpiled captivation; not merely out of the coincidental November 23rd novelty of it all (and certainly not because I was itching to leak an entry from my digital diary), but because throughout my conversation with the band, I was reminded of those feelings. Of how, for thirty or so minutes, I somehow forgot I was an uncomfortable person. Or at least, I forgot to let that self-assessment plague me. The most powerful thing music can do is alleviate us from ourselves – to siphon the weight of our own insecurities and anxieties, to help us feel less alone, or to even just help us feel anything at all; perhaps by thwarting into states of numbness and pulling us out of emotional auto-pilot. While any band can easily declare that they hold these ethos and intentions, from every experience I have had at their sets, I can attest that MX Lonely truly sees them through. “The band is named after my own little sleep paralysis demon. I would say that the monster that is most prevalent for me is loneliness and isolation and feeling disconnected, and I like to think that’s who we make music for, people who feel like that”, Rae Haas tells me. “To be able to have community and space for people who all relate to those themes is so incredibly rewarding. Selfishly, because that’s what I need, and unselfishly because it is bringing all these people together. You realize there is space in music for everybody.”
Brooklyn-based MX Lonely consists of Rae (synth/vocals), Jake Harms (guitar/vocals), Gabe Garman (bass), and a cycling of drummers over the years. They started the project about five years ago, and, in the fashion of most great bands, initially conceived it as a “for fun” endeavor. They began by learning a solo record Jake had released under the project HARMS, telling me the band did not come to fruition until a year or so later – around the time they collaboratively wrote “There’s Something About You That I Don’t Believe In” (which prompted a sort of “oh shit…” moment) and began playing small shows around New York.
Now, they self-identify as “Loud as Fuck”, which I would say is pretty accurate, though I find it necessary to emphasize that their noise never poses as inadvertent. There is something soft tucked neatly within MX Lonely’s propensity for swelled volume, as if the project is begging to subvert any predisposed notions you hold about music that is “Loud as Fuck”. They pull tunings from Elliot Smith, they take stage presence inspiration from drag artists, they harvest emotional delicacy from the subdued depths of their own minds. “I feel like we all [try to] take emotional music and make it pretty heavy and visceral and more of a shared experience. I think music this heavy and personal generally becomes something that is folky or more insular.” Rae explains.
MX Lonely’s emphasis on the potentials of live music and the shared experience it can offer is equally potent in their recorded music as it was in my gushy Trans-Pecos introductory anecdote. They are set to release All Monsters early next year, and while you cannot listen to it in full until February, every single track had been experienced by a crowd prior to recording. “I think it was nice we got to road test it, and also just focus on preserving what we consider to be an authentic, ‘band in a room’ sound,” Jake explains of the songs, of which all center the live experience of MX Lonely. “It’s essentially a magnified version of what the songs sound like when we play them all together.”
The result is not only a magnified version of what MX Lonely sounds like live, but a concentrated punch of the catharsis their live shows in packaged form. All Monsters is equal parts relentless and rewarding; it starts on a fervent note and maintains its intensity until the last second of hypnotic final track, “Whispers in the Fog”. Although the record is an undoubtedly charged front to back listen, it’s also far from monotonous, serving as a canvas for MX Lonely to explore various routes of heavier songwriting that all lead to the same destination (cascading emotional purge). Some tracks are cushioned by velvety, fuzzed out soundscapes, while others take on a drier form, owning their jagged edges and ever so slightly scalding you with them.
“I think it should feel cathartic in some way, but maybe not necessarily good while it’s happening, sort of like shadow work.” Rae notes. “A lot of people have described some of the songs on All Monsters as being racked with anxiety, sort of like this fist clenching thing that lets go.”
The record dismantles a lot of notions surrounding monsters, which serve as an all encompassing idea for the various antagonists that besiege our day-to-day. Some are external, but most come from within; they range from anxiety and addiction to loneliness and isolation, and they are far more daunting than any under-the-bed creature you may have conceptualized as a child. These are themes MX Lonely has explored before – found in the dysphoric haunting of “Too Many Pwr Cords” on their 2024 EP SPIT, and amidst the heartbreaking pleas of “Paper Cranes” on their 2022 record Cadonia, but on All Monsters, it feels as though they have achieved a resolution. Not in an overt way, you can’t expect MX Lonely to feed you secrets to fulfillment on a silver spoon of distortion lathered in magnetic bass lines and frothy synths. Rather, it feels as though the band have eradicated their monsters by merely acknowledging that they exist. Instead of running or attempting to suppress them, on All Monsters, MX Lonely confronts their own fears and vices head on; armed with some of their most cunning and dynamic songs yet and liberating years of shame in a thirty-seven minute, total adrenaline rush of a record.
We recently spoke to MX Lonely about their relationship to live music, building their own studio, and All Monsters, out February 20th via Julia’s War.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Manon: Jake – I read that you wrote “Blue Ridge Mtns” in high school, and put it away because it felt too vulnerable at the time. Over the last five years, how have you grown MX Lonely, not only as a project, but as a safe creative space and collaborative outlet where you are able to revisit old material or chapters that you may not have been comfortable doing on your own?
Jake: I feel like the band is definitely a pretty safe space for me to try ideas out, and there is a lot more reception for bringing in more vulnerable, emotional material than I have had in previous projects. Nobody has ever made fun of me for bringing an idea that was too “weenie”, I mean sometimes Gabe will be like “that’s pretty emo”…
Gabe: Yeah, but we know how to work it.
Rae: I feel like that was from the start. Everyone’s pretty open, everyone writes on the records, everybody brings in songs and ideas and as well as being critical and editing a lot, we try to be receptive to the vulnerability in the songwriting.
Manon: When you’re writing and recording, do you think about playing the songs live a lot? Is considering that experience very front of mind?
Jake: I would say so, I mean this album was cool because there were demos that existed since probably 2022, 2023, that were part of the crop of demos that became SPIT. But then we were touring really extensively for the first time, so we got the opportunity to play all of these songs, some of them many times prior to recording. Every song on the record was played live on those tours, and we got to see how people reacted to them. I don’t know how much it necessarily changed the structure, but it does change how you think about them.
Gabe: I definitely feel like when we were making the record, there was a lot more of the thought of “I don’t know how that will work live”, and that may have affected what we did. Whereas when you are just making music on the computer for a very long time, you might think about that less. Both SPIT and this record were very live focused. The next record might be like that, or it might not.
Manon: I also saw you recorded live versions of several of the songs, and you just put out one for “Big Hips”. Was that important too, to have maybe an alternate live version accessible at the same time as some of the songs and just having that out right away, or that was just maybe more for fun?
Rae: I think both. I think one day we would like to do an Audiotree or a KEXP, but until that opportunity happens for us, we figured we would just do it ourselves. I guess it was in lieu of, I don’t know, making TikTok videos or something stupid. We are all builders and do a lot of stuff in house so I guess that was our version of making a TikTok dance for “Big Hips”.
Manon: You guys also just built your own studio too, right? I would love to hear about that and your relationship to DIY as a band.
Rae: Gabe, you wanna lead on building the studio?
Gabe: I don’t know if this will make sense, but I feel like because of who we are as people, we are always a step behind where we should be, but it’s because we love having control of our situations and we love being able to do things ourselves. Like Rae said, we’re all builders. I’ll personally take on any project where I get to create something with my hands and I think there are always limitations with going to a studio that we didn’t want to have. We just wanted to have our own space where we can create things, even if it isn’t the most high end studio with a million dollars worth of equipment inside of it. We had the ability to do it ourselves, so we built it, and now we can make some records in it.
Rae: It’s nice not being at the whim of like other people too. Our band is not really a major music corporation’s dream, the stuff we make is weird and none of us are super rich or hot or cool, so opportunities are not going to come slamming down the door. But what’s so amazing about DIY and being able to build is you have the power and control, you’re not relying on somebody else’s studio or show or whatever it is. I think that’s really special.
Jake: We’d rather fail through the process slowly on our own, than have our hands overly held. A lot of bands in our position have management, all we have is a booking agent that helps us get some better deals and a platform to negotiate. But Rae does all our graphic design, Gabe does accounting and engineers the records, I do the sort of day-to-day emailing with people and keeping up with things, and I would say from that sense we are pretty DIY. And we also all grew up going to shows, for how built up Brooklyn is, I do feel like all of us have experience going to DIY shows when we were younger. I feel like that’s not as prevalent now, but there’s probably still stuff going on. Probably shit we don’t even know about.
Gabe: Yeah we’re not cool enough
Jake: We’re like “what about Trans-Pecos”
Manon: I love the way you approach the concept of monsters on this record. You inject a lot of nuance into something that, I think when you consider a more juvenile perspective of, can be a very black and white, good or bad, sort of thing. I’d love to hear more about, and why you chose All Monsters as the title for the record?
Rae: I like to think of monsters as the things that haunt us, the things that you personally need in your life to kill. A lot of this record feels like shadow work to me, but also I think you can have a lot of vengeance and just feel as though something is haunting you and sometimes that just needs to be released. So that’s the idea, releasing them to heaven, “all monsters go to heaven”. I think a lot of times, songs or a record all come through you, you feel sort of like more of a vessel or something and the shape, the image of what you’re trying to say becomes more clear. This definitely felt like one of those, where all these things kept coming up and as each song fell into place, I realized it was all about darknesses or things about yourself that you hate and want to kill.
Manon: As for shadow work – I know that is something that’s pretty prominent in your lyrics, but how do you feel that the style of music you make plays into shadow work as well, maybe as a catalyst for that process?
Rae: I like to think of the music as very releasing. You know when you’re really sad and you put in a record and cry? Maybe you’re going through something and you’re like, ‘I need to listen to Elliot Smith and weep for a second’, because he is really just harping on this emotion. I like to think of MX Lonely as music for someone who is neurodivergent and racked with anxiety or depression or whatever it may be, and then puts on MX Lonely and is able to feel those emotions with somebody else. It’s less lonely.
Gabe: MX Less Lonely
Manon: What are some of your biggest music inspirations?
Jake: People are scared to come across like a weenie saying Radiohead, but I think Radio Head, Pixies, Elliot Smith are my top three.
Rae: There are a lot of contemporary people I am interested in and inspired by. I think synth-wise, there’s an artist, Caroline Rose, they are a guitar player but they are also an incredible synth artist and an amazing album curator.
Gabe: I mean Radiohead, Pixies, but I also think there are a lot of newer artists that we are definitely inspired by, at least for this record. Curse the Knife, Downward, Trembler, Trauma Ray. But we also definitely like our nineties rock.
Jake: Yeah we can’t underline enough how important Pixies are to us as a band. Also Elliot Smith – we use the Elliot Smith tuning.
Rae: And the Kurt Cobain vocal tracking technique
Gabe: I thought you were going to say you use the Kurt Cobain tuning on your synth.
Jake: We do the blind double. It’s like when Butch Vig tricked Cobain into doubling, tripling, quadrupling all of his parts by saying ‘oh, you didn’t get it, can you do it one more time?’
Gabe: No he kept saying there were technical issues, he was like ‘ah, it just didn’t record.’
Jake: Yeah so that’s what we do with Rae, except they know it’s happening. But yeah, definitely the nineties, we also all like heavy music in general. Gabe and I love listening to really abrasive, terrifying, black metal and hardcore.
Gabe: Especially when you’re driving 80 miles an hour in the van and there’s a wind tunnel around you and you have been driving for ten hours. When you listen to really aggressive music you enter a different realm. The most important bonding point between me and Jake was when we first met, we were working together and we went on a twelve hour drive straight to Chicago to drop something off and we were just listening to music in a truck that had no ceiling. There was just wind gushing the whole time. I think that made MX Lonely what it is today.
Jake: It influenced the aesthetic of the sound.
Rae: For this record in particular, I was watching a lot of Dragula, which is a show by the Boulet Brothers. But I am inspired by a lot of drag artists, and the idea of monsters stemmed a lot from that. I also take a lot from drag artists performance-wise, like Hoso Terra Toma, A’Whora. My friends run a really cool collective, Sissy Fist Productions. There are tons of really incredible performers in Brooklyn right now, and that’s very exciting and cool.
Manon: I would love to hear a bit more about that, especially in the context of MX Lonely sets. You are so phenomenal live, and your shows have so much energy – what are some ways drag has inspired that, and also what do you hope to bring to a live set in general?
Rae: There are so many things that drag artists do, but when it comes to a lip-syncing, they really carry the songs more than anyone. I think I try to pull from that ethos when I step away from the synth. I almost think of it like a possession or exorcism – just really allowing for a space for a full body experience to happen and for it to be different than the record. I think there are a lot of performers that sound just like how they do on their records, and I have so much respect for that, but I also like to let the energy of the room and wherever we are and the emotionality of the music be a bit more paramount. I am thinking more about how it’s hitting people emotionally than getting everything pitch perfect, at least from a vocal perspective.
Jake: I’d say it’s like that in general and from a band perspective too. The best shows we have ever played are usually not the ones that are not-for-note perfect, they’re the ones where there is crazy energy in the crowd or the flow is really dialed in. You have also created the runway, I feel like that is a callback to drag.
Rae: Absolutely. I think a lot of times you can see music and get a bit dissociative, and I think the runway is a cool way to break people up. I also love when people aren’t necessarily watching you, maybe they are watching each other and moving with each other. That’s exciting to me.
This Sunday, the ugly hug and post-trash are partnering up to bring you Ugly Trash Fest, a night to celebrate community and independent music journalism while raising funds for OCAD. With that, a handful of local zine makers are sharing their work and selling their zines at the fest.
We got to chat with the creators behind Pink Slip, Jeststink, weirdgrrrlzine, Glitzy and Unresolved about their work and how they approach the craft. Make sure to stop by and stock up on some good reads!
Pink Slip, founded by Skylar, is a grassroots arts collective based in Elgin, IL. Over the years, Pink Slip has become a vastly influential and engaging collection of art, ranging from music, photography, graphic design and even live events. Skylar also works on other projects such as Nobody’s Diary, an exploration into an ‘everyone’s diary’, and Post-Scripts, Pink Slip’s periodical mini zine. Skylar also helps run a monthly zine club, an inviting space for anyone to get involved in creating zines. Skylar also plays in the Chicagoland-based band Spliff.
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Ugly Hug: What made you want to start a zine? What were your initial goals as you were getting started?
Skylar: I started Pink Slip as an avenue to showcase all of the amazing artists around me who lacked access to being published in print. Originally, it was going to be a small zine just photocopied at the library and circulated among friends. But it quickly grew into something much bigger than that! The community showed up for us, and it became a much more expansive and collaborative project. Now, I’m taking a break from running Pink Slip as a magazine, focusing on my own perzine Nobody’s Diary and hosting free community zine clubs.
Pink Slip runs as a submissions based collective. What do you think this brings to the table in regards to what Pink Slip has become over time? Have you seen it evolve with the more people who become a part of it?
Something we always wanted to foster was a sense that Pink Slip belonged to everybody, not just us. Opening up submissions allowed us to feature hundreds of artists from around the midwest (and the world!). The art that was submitted shaped the entire aesthetic and ethos of the zine, serving as a finger to the pulse of our communities.
I’ve been lucky to have many collaborators on Pink Slip as a magazine, and the various team members who have come and gone have left an indelible mark on each issue. The most current evolution of Pink Slip as a collective is focused on empowering others to create their own zines. Though our mission has been to widen print access for marginalized voices, we want to take it a step further and remove even ourselves as the middle man. Self-publishing means anyone can do it!
You also put out Post-Script, a periodical mini-zine made by you and your staff. How does Post-Script differ from Pink Slip? What sparked the inspiration to have a smaller, separate project to have in the works?
Post-Script kind of just falls into a more specific niche. Instead of submissions, it’s more of us curating what we think is cool about the Chicago scene. It allows us to dig a little deeper into what’s going on in the community. We definitely wanted something that felt a bit more journalistic, a bit more in line with what a traditional zine looked and felt like.
You recently partnered with Unmasked to host the Spill Your Guts event. How did this event come to be? What were the initial ideas behind it?
We had honestly been getting requests to do another open mic for so long! The Unmasked Coven approached us with the opportunity, and we saw it as a chance to showcase some talented locals while raising money for a good cause. For the most part, we’ve shifted from doing bigger events and instead try to craft warm, intimate spaces to connect meaningfully with local art.
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You also run a zine club for those looking to be more involved in the practice and in the community. How does one get involved in zine club and what can people expect when they attend?
Zine club is what Pink Slip is most preoccupied with these days! We host a free, all ages gathering at the Unmasked Coven once a month (usually on a Tuesday), and all are welcome. It’s a very eclectic and inviting group. Everybody is super nice. Nobody expects you to be anything you’re not, which is important, I think! You can be shy or loud, you can be a beginner or an expert zinester, you can just come to hang out if you want. The point more than anything is to connect as a community. Once we have that, we can actually show up for each other in meaningful ways and build coalition together. Come to zine club!!
Anything planned for Pink Slip soon? Anything you’re excited about?
Right now, I’m focusing on zine club for the most part. But I’ve sorta been testing the waters of Pink Slip as a distro, helping artists make/print their zines and tabling their work at events. And, of course, there are always more zines in the works. We’ll see what happens!
weirdgrrrlzine is the project of artist, writer and film maker, Syd Wrigley, who has been handcrafting this personalized series for four years now. Now 14 issues in, weirdgrrrl takes influences from riot grrrl, the art world and her own personal reflections, as Syd continues to offer new and unique ways to explore the world around her.
UH: weirdgrrrlzine seemed to have started out of personal exploration and a way to share your artwork. What made you want to start a zine? Have you seen it develop over time?
Syd: I first learned about zine making by watching the Kathleen Hanna doc The Punk Singer in 2020 when I was 16. Ever since that moment I knew I wanted to start a riot grrrl zine of my own. I was particularly inspired by how fun and collaborative the film made the zine process look. I’ve always made art and had an interest in writing essays and poems that I had never expressed before.
The event that actually pushed me to start weirdgrrrlzine was getting in a really bad car accident in my senior year of high school that left me unable to walk for some months. All of a sudden, I had a ton of free time and was super bored just being in bed all day, so I took the plunge and made the first issue of the zine in about a month. It was super scrappy and really poorly printed, and I feel like with every new issue you can see the gradual improvement. Now my process is much cleaner and there’s more planning involved, so the result (hopefully) feels much more intentional and professional. I still kind of love those early days where I was finding my footing in what I wanted and liked to make. The zine has gone through many iterations from being more diaristic to more journalistic and back and forth again.
This collective is a very personal glimpse into interests, thoughts, perspectives and tensions. Have you seen yourself grow in relation to the zine? Have you found yourself able to share more, or at least ponder more in your life the more you put into this zine?
I think that in the beginning of the zine I was mostly writing about all of this fear I had of becoming an adult, and how partial I was to being a teenage grrrl. A lot of the earlier issues were me writing about my sexuality as I was really exploring it in a way I hadn’t before, so everything I was going through felt so big and unprecedented. I think nowadays the more diaristic writing in my zines is a look back on my teenage years and contemplating those old feelings as the adult I was afraid to become, versus looking to the future and writing with so much fear and angst. Issues 4-8 of the zine became much less personal and were more based on my observations going to shows and seeing bands. Those issues became more interview focused as well, which came from me feeling more closed off to sharing what I was actually going through at the time of making them.
What is your relationship to art? How have you incorporated it into your work with the zine?
I’ve always been an artistic person for as long as I can remember, whether it was writing stories in elementary school or doing painting commissions in high school; now I go to art school which has basically made art my entire life. Since my college is interdisciplinary, I explore a lot of different mediums such as film/video, print, drawing, and painting; which all have played a role in the development of my zine into what it is today.
You often open your distribution of the zine to trades. Why is that important to you? Have you gotten any good trades out of it?
Typically when I release a new zine I only distribute it through trades rather than selling it. I’ve always been way more interested in sharing art and receiving new art instead of making a profit, especially when in my zines I am often talking about my love for other artists and makers. I remember some of my first trades and how special they were to me, how much they made me feel like I was connected to the world in a way I simply hadn’t been before. For volume 1 I sent one of my zines to Scotland and was in total in awe of that. I had never even been out of the country before and now the words I wrote would be across the world from me. I love being able to form these connections and make long term penpals from sharing art!
Because of these years of trading art/zines I have a pretty extensive zine library at home from all around the world! One of my zine pen pals sent me this copy she had of “Confessions of an Ex-Zine Editor” from @bubblegumzinearchive, which I hadn’t heard of before and is one of my favorites in my collection. For some Chicago based trades I adore my copies of Nobody’s Diary and Brain Graffiti, they both make me so excited about the zine scene here and I go back to them a lot when I’m feeling uninspired.
You celebrated the four year anniversary of weirdgrrl earlier this summer. What does this milestone mean to you?
Hitting four years of making weirdgrrrlzine means so much to me. Doing this for this long has shown me that I can actually commit to an artistic project for a long period of time which has always been something I didn’t think I could do. I started this zine when I was a senior in high school as a shout into the void, especially when I first began it and didn’t know who if anyone would read it. Now, I’m a senior in college still bubbling with desire to make something. Every zine I make is a love letter to my past self and the girl I used to be.
What’s the future of weirdgrrrlzine looking like?
I would love to make weirdgrrrlzine forever but I do kind of feel this itching that it has to end eventually. I recently made a bind up of issues 1-14 that totaled 221 pages, and it made me realize just how much time I’ve put into this thing. I think that making zines is this very therapeutic thing for me, and I can’t see myself ever letting that go. The future is bright but uncertain!
Jeststink is the brand-new project of photographer and creative Averi Love Little. Having recently moved to Chicago a year ago, Jeststink has become a curated diary of the sorts, as Averi spends time photographing their friends, sharing experiences and finding ways to blend the different parts of themselves into one cohesive collection. Jeststink will be selling their first ever issue at Ugly Trash this Sunday. Make sure to grab a copy soon!
Amaya Peña (Drummer in Starcharm) at Rozz Tox
Ugly Hug: You recently moved to Chicago, which you said allowed you to grow in your work with photography and community. What aspects of this city helped you grow in ways? Was there anything unexpected?
Averi: I feel like all of it was pretty unexpected. I didn’t know about anything that was going on in Chicago until I moved here and happened upon a really awesome music scene and a really great group of artists. I think seeing how much people are doing and how many things people are making just gave me the idea that I could do it too. It was all really slow and really simple, but looking back, I am really happy with what I’ve done and who I’ve met by living here.
Lu (Drummer in Instrument) at The Attic
Jeststink was made as an outlet for exploring your own creative interests and passion for photography. What sort of elements did you want to bring out on the page?
I definitely wanted it to be playful and lean into a sweet and intimate space. Presenting work can get so serious at times, and I wanted to stray away from that really hard. That’s when I started adding in all the other elements aside from my pictures, and I’m glad I did that because it made it a lot more fun for me to include music and silly drawings.
You just released your first issue of Jeststink, a huge milestone for you. What are you most proud of about this issue?
I’m mostly glad that my pictures are on paper and that I can give them to people. It’s really cool to be able to do, with so much of displayed photography being online – I really appreciate the simple approach of just making a book and being like, here you go, this is me, this is what I do, and you can hold it in your hands.
Lifeguard in the round at Thalia Hall
You incorporate a mix of concert photography and photos from your personal life in this issue. With you as the throughline for these different subjects, what do you hope people get out of your photos? How do they fit into what Jeststink has become?
To be very honest, I think that taking photos and processing them and crafting them into what I felt or what I saw is something I fell into and fell in love with outside of a subject in mind, and everything that comes out on the other side just is what it is – it’s me and it’s the things around me and it is very much filled with love on all sides. I think in my pictures and in making jeststink I hope that that love is visible.
You’ve explained Jeststink as “a little curated diary where all the things that make me feel like myself get to hang out together on a few sheets of paper.” What does it mean to share this personal project with others? Has it allowed you to make connections between the little bits that make up your world?
It really does feel like sharing a diary and a bit of my creative world and inspiration. It makes me really happy to see my stuff laid out alongside things that feel near and dear to me. I’m glad that I can have my work seen in a way that feels sweet and personal. It really does feel like sharing a diary and a bit of my creative world and inspiration because of that approach.
What’s next for Jeststink?
Haha, honestly, I don’t know – but definitely more.
Unresolved is the ever-expansive project of artist, writer and photographer, Eli Schmitt, who began the project back in 2021. Blending different eras of independent music, Unresolved has become a universal experience and communal understanding of what it means to be DIY. Twelve issues in, Unresolved is a time capsule of art, ideas and stories that feel both excitedly new and inspirationally timeless.
Ugly Hug: You released the first issue of Unresolved in 2021. What made you want to start a zine? Was this initially a solo project?
Eli: I made the first issue in 3 days when I was home for the summer. Horsegirl was playing a show at schubas with Lifeguard and they had the idea to sell their friends zines at the merch table and they asked me to make a zine for the show. I had made an underground newspaper in high school but never a full zine. I had seen Hallogallo and just been blown away with the design and the freedom in every page, that second issue was such a guiding light for me to learn about independent music and culture. I was so excited about all the work I saw around me so I wanted a zine to highlight youth visual artists so i made Unresolved, i interviewed kai for that first issue and thats how we became friends.
Your initial goal for Unresolved was to make a historical document that was both DIY and professionally done. How have you worked with those goals as Unresolved became a substantial community zine? Did you have to adjust expectations the more you learned?
I feel like over time it’s gotten way less professional. A lot of my references going into the project were art books and these very clean beautiful bauhaus design, i was trying to make a middle ground with clean and handmade but then that got kind of boring and i wasn’t really that happy with how the issues were turning out. I realized that to make beautiful art books you sort of need art book budgets for nice paper and binding and space and i just dont have those resources, im trying to cram as much as possible into 20 pages. I saw this zine show at the brooklyn museum a couple years back and realized that i needed to study my zine history and learn the art of making things look fucked up cause it isnt as easy as it seems, its a beautiful school of design that getting glossed over cause it seems careless but its really anything but, its a very considered chaos.
Screenshot
As you began to open the door to other collaborators, what impact did that have on the mission of Unresolved and the way you approached making it? What sort of contributions were you looking to include? Any you weren’t expecting?
It’s been really great to see so many new fanzines pop up around the country. New York has a couple, My Little Underground by Shannon McMahon is so wonderful and so is Compilation Nation by Sydney Salk, Duped from North Carolina by Lilian Fan and Annie Vedder and Test Patterns from Louisville by Lizzie Cooper. It has created this ecosystem of design and work that I think we all feed off of. I remember finding all of their zines before I knew them and just being blown away, the styles are all so similar and to feel this independent magnetism to fanzines and design felt really special. We’re all friends now and continue to inspire each other in a really healthy and productive way.
Each issue of Unresolved is such an indepth collective of art and creative input. Blending various genres, scenes and creative eras, what is your process of finding features, collecting artwork and piecing it all together? What do you look for?
I think that all we really have as artists is our tastes and curiosity, and we have to be true to those urges and follow them wherever they lead, not to second guess why we like something. I try to only interview people that I’m genuinely curious about, there are so many uninspired interviews out there where you can tell neither party really wanna be there and i can only hope that i can foster conversations that feel honest for the readers.
Your most recent issue was handmade on a risograph machine. What was that hands-on experience like for you?
It was amazing, before that i was sending my zine off to be printed by Mixam which had its advantages. Im terrible at cutting straight lines and being patient and they made everything perfect but making it all by hand it was so happy. I would get the zines back from mixam and be happy but always a bit disappointed like something was lost when someone else touched it and now its all me which feels very fulfilling, every mistake and smudge is real and comes from my heart.
Unresolved is known as the never ending zine of the art scene. What do you have planned for the future? Anything you’re excited about?
The ultimate goal is to make a full compendium of the zine with the best of each issue pressed into a full book, I love a lot of the work and conversations that ive had over the years but i think it would really powerful to have them redone in a cohesive style that can be held in your hands, im also making a special issue to go along with this compilation record im making, its called Red Xerox and documents the chicago youth music scene over the last five years and the zine will give the whole story of the scene or at least an unresolved version.
Glitzy is a conceptual and overly artistic approach to press and the coverage of the great Chicagoland music scene. Started by Mak Creden, Aly Westrin, Avalon Smith and Josie Stahler post grad navigation, Glitzy has become a space beyond the pages with live sessions, local events and community outreach. Glitzy recently celebrated the release of their second issue, opening up to contributions from many others, to create an engaging, thoughtful and artistic snapshot of Chicago DIY.
What made you want to start a zine? What were your initial intentions and how did you incorporate all four of your creative avenues into one project?
Glitzy was born at a time when the four of us were navigating post-grad life, unsure of our next moves, but finding ourselves craving creativity and community. We were certain we wanted to collaborate on a passion project together and landed on a music zine. It was a fusion of our interests (writing, design, photography, and filming) and a seemingly logical plan considering our shared backgrounds in college radio at WLUW. We’ve each had our own individual journeys in the Chicago music scene up until this point and decided we wanted to come together to tell the stories of the people and sounds driving it in a community-focused way.
You shared the first edition of Glitzy, Bloom, in the summer of 24, but you spent a lot of time building up to it by creating a community around engaging and extravagant ways of sharing music. What did you want to build up as you were approaching that first release? Did those ideas carry over to the physical edition?
We wanted to establish a corner of the community for ourselves and create a sense of excitement before diving into issue one. It was also honestly to give ourselves some time as we figured things out along the way.
You held a live session with Molly Carrberry, as well as hosted release parties for the community. What does it mean to bring this project off the page and into the world? Is this something you wish to do more?
Absolutely. One of the central pillars of glitzy is community, and we’d love to create more spaces where our community can gather around music together in the future.
As for sessions, we have multiple former film students on our team and live session production experience from the radio days– we really just wanted an excuse to set up sessions again to highlight the amazing artists in Chicago!
You recently just published your second issue, where you brought in a lot of new contributors. What does this milestone mean to you and how does this open door collaboration with others fit into where you view Glitzy and community?
While the first issue proved that we could make something together, the second issue proved that other people wanted to make it with us. Glitzy was always intended to be collaborative and ever-evolving. Involving new voices gave us new perspectives we never would have been able to create on our own.
In such a saturated world, zines and other hands-on projects are seen as the catalyst to cultural movements, offering ways to oust systemic barriers to participate and share diverse voices. Where have you found Glitzy’s voice resonating? Have you learned any lessons in regards to running Glitzy?
Glitzy’s voice seems to resonate in spaces where people are craving something tactile and personal. In a world where everyone is becoming more disconnected and jaded by AI, we have heard that Glitzy feels authentic, like something made by real hands with real care.
One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned is that running a zine is equal parts thrills and logistics. You can’t underestimate how much time goes into the backend– scheduling interviews and handling delays, creating spreads, posting on socials, renovating the website… there’s a lot of organizational work and planning that goes into glitzy
What’s next for Glitzy?
We’ve been taking the time to reflect on our past two issues as we begin looking ahead. 2026 will hopefully bring another issue of glitzy into the world, more interactive events, and ideally, some joy.
Written by Pat Pilch | Featured Photo by Kim Christoffell
Chicago by Rochester project Cusp might be the newbies in town, but they’ve begun to call the Windy City home. After COVID and life changes split the group back in 2022, the band quickly picked up gigging in the Chicago scene, adding two new members along the way. Their latest record What I Want Doesn’t Want Me Back is a sharp, guitar-driven collection of songs that shed light on life’s ostensibly dullest mundanities.
Leading up to Ugly Trash Fest benefitting OCAD at The Empty Bottle on Sunday December 7, both Ugly Hug and Post-Trash are running feature interviews with all four acts. Post-Trash’s Pat Pilch chats with Ugly Trash headliners Cusp about settling into Chicago, becoming a leader in the scene, and why you should never quit piano.
You were in Rochester, New York before coming to Chicago. Some old Cusp members split to Philly as Full Body 2, and then the rest of y’all came here, is that right?
Yeah, I was like probably four or five years from this point. 2022 is when we moved.
What sparked that decision?
Man, COVID played a big part in it. The Rochester scene was so vibrant, it still is. It’s definitely built back, but at the time COVID was at its peak, the independent venues and the DIY scene was sort of obliterated, plus COVID had upended a place in our lives, work-wise. Our bassist had run a small business that went under because of COVID.
We were young and we were pretty optimistic that we would get to be in a band again, but “where?” was the question. Gaelen had gone to school in Chicago, so he was familiar with the city, and it was a great decision. We’d been thinking about Philly too. I think every DIY band thinks of Philly at least once. I’ve been, and I had visited Chicago too.
Cool. What were you guys doing when you visited, like where’d you hang out?
We were in Logan, which is where we are now. I love the feeling of being in a quiet place in a loud place. I like that I can be in my apartment and it’s nighttime and it’s quiet. I also like having the knowledge that I’m surrounded by millions of people. I guess it depends where you go, but I think that’s tougher in New York to feel a sense of privacy or isolation. I guess it depends where you go.
Your lyrics are very self-aware. When did you start understanding the fact that you were becoming more of a leader within music? Has it affected how you’ve approached creativity?
I really don’t feel like a leader all too often and it’s only apparent when other people express that. It may feel that way to an observer now that I start thinking about it. We’ve grown in scale and in general interest since we started, which I think is what any band would hope for. If I look back on it, I can see that progression, but if I’m in the moment, I still always feel like a follower, even if I’m becoming sort of a leader to somebody else who’s in the beginning of their career.
But that has still impacted my songwriting because it’s still just a theme that is top of mind and it’s something I’m still writing about for this third record that we’re working on now. I think it’s more of a personality thing than it is a music thing, unless I have a revelation in my 30s that lets me be a true leader.
How did the band become a quintet and how have you established your roots here?
I started working for Reverb the first week we moved. When that job started that’s how I met Tommy and Tessa, they’re co-workers.
At Reverb we do this thing at work during company meetings where they play a person who works at the company’s band at the beginning of the meeting. Obviously, you can imagine there’s a lot of musicians that work at Reverb. Tommy heard one of our songs and hit me up in Slack and was like, “oh my god, that was crazy.” And I was like, “okay, you’re the drummer now.”
Tessa is also someone who I became friends with through work and I was a fan of her own original music. She’s a really talented pianist. Piano is actually my main instrument and I’ve been writing more and more keys and piano into the music. I was like, “okay, we need someone to fill that space,” and she was the choice.
Sweet. Did you play piano growing up?
Yeah, that was my first thing. My parents got me into piano super young. I was intensely into it for a lot of my childhood and my teenage years. Then I kind of rebelled against it in my teen years, and I should have just stuck with it. It’s very helpful for writing, and to be proficient on an instrument is a very good feeling. I don’t really feel that with guitar or even piano anymore. If anyone’s reading this, stick with your instrument or tell your cousin who’s like 10 to keep playing.
What are your favorite parts about Chicago? What are your favorite parts about the music scene? Just the city in general?
I’ve still so much to explore. You talked about self awareness, which I do think I have. And I think part of that is I’m a Chicago transplant. There’s so much that I have yet to see and explore.
But from what I have seen so far there’s a really great harmony of the amenities of transportation, access to great food and music and different types of people and their lives like that you don’t get in a mid to small sized city.
There’s a combination of that and pockets of quiet places and green spaces. The parks, the beach. For Matt and for me too, biking accessibility is really nice. It has elements of both a big city and a smaller city that check the boxes that appeal to me.
As far as the music scene goes, there was so much I was excited about before I even moved here. I listened to that first Moontype record. I was like, “Oh my god, I’m so excited to go to Chicago.” Melkbelly. There were so many bands that were already exciting to me before moving here. And the option to go out on any given night is awesome. You have so many venues or shows or things to do. And if you don’t want to, you don’t have to either.
What do you see in the Chicago scene that sets it apart from other places as far, the music scene and the DIY scene go and just like, kind of community?
From my experience, I find Chicago exciting in how accessible it feels. We came in and were the new kids. Our first show was at Cole’s and we played Golden Dagger, RIP. There’s such accessibility to an audience and to a room. I feel like I take it for granted now. In Rochester, there’s only so many spots to play shows, and a lot of them are gone now.
We felt so spoiled coming here. We already had an EP out, but we kind of walked in and were able to just do it. That feels rare. You can’t do that everywhere. And the people are nice too.
You can listen to What I Want Doesn’t Want Me Back out now as well as get it on vinyl via Exploding in Sound.
Chicago is on fire right now. From indie rock, to art pop, to jazz, the Windy City’s scenes detail its rich musical history. As of late, a lo-fi wave of straight-to-tape projects championing DIY and punk ethics has cropped up on the west and south sides. Answering Machines is one of many of those bands.
In the leadup to Ugly Hug and Post-Trash’s benefit fest this Sunday at the Empty Bottle, both sites are featuring each project on their respective sites. Answering Machines is our leadoff hitter this Sunday, and their twitchy, melodic punk will kick off the night. The band’s very own Jackieboy chats with Pat Pilch about the band’s origins, playing in bands with your friends, and making art accessible.
How did Answering Machines start?
In high school I was in bands with some of my friends. I wanted to write my own music and not stress out about it. So I started recording songs on my phone on GarageBand. I kept doing it and then I moved to Chicago. I met Adelaide, who plays drums. We started playing shows here. The first show in Chicago was at The Empty Bottle with Silicone Prairie.
Where are you from originally?
DFW Texas. I grew up going to shows in Denton.
What kind of bands were you in in high school?
I was in this noise pop band. That’s what we called it. But… It was like… It started off as like a noise rock thing. Then we got really into Deerhoof.
Sweet. Who are your influences? And what are you into right now?
For Answering Machines the main ones are The Zeroes, The Ramones, Television Personalities and Beat Happening.
Your tapes and downloads are pretty cheap. Tell me about that. Is accessibility and affordability important to you?
With punk music, it comes with the territory. Making it accessible, plus I want it to sound accessible to make. The songs are simple and something any ordinary person could do. I like that rather than something complicated or overproduced.
How do you record?
I record with a four track. It’s called a Korg CR4 but I just broke it, so i’m using a Tascam Portastudio. We just recorded vocals yesterday. On track one we recorded all the instruments live and overdubbed the other stuff. Second guitar and two vocals.
What kind of Tascam do you have?
I forgot what it’s called. It’s that gray one. You can only record one track at a time. It’s like… It might be a Portastudio MS-T01. But… I could be wrong.
You’re in a couple different bands. How does your community support one another’s creativity?
I just met a bunch of people on the shows here. And my roommate Saskia. We started a band called Bungie Jumpers together. Then she started writing her own songs for a band called P. Noid. So, we’re just like, “If you play in my band, I’ll play in your band.” Type of thing.
Are you in school right now? What do you do?
Yeah. I’m in my last year of school. And I’m studying printmaking and drawing. I’m also a dog walker.
How does your non-musical art influence your music, if at all?
I feel like one of the big reasons why I like starting a million bands is you get to make art for it. I love making flyers and all that. The accessibility thing definitely carries over for me. For most of my print and drawings, I primarily use a photocopier to make all my collages and I don’t use computers. So it kind of carries over.
Do you make zines?
I don’t think I’ve made a zine before. No.
Is that something you’re interested in?
Yeah. A little bit, but I feel like there’s other people who are doing good things with that. And I’d rather just focus on being in and starting a bunch of bands. I just started two new bands. One of them is a hardcore band. We’re called Mr. Crazy.
I started another band with my friends called Autofill, and another called The Experience. I only have like three songs each for each band.
What is lyrically driving Answering Machines songs?
Mainly what’s going on in my life. Trying to convert that into something more universal that people can relate to. But I also keep it like teenager-y and silly. I love Beat Happenings lyrics. Cool. They’re not thinking too much. It’s not like trying to tell some epic story or anything. I just like something that’s relatable, especially to young people.
You can listen to the self-titled debut EP from Answering Machines now.
Ugly Trash Fest will be held on December 7th at the Empty Bottle in Chicago. All proceeds from tickets and raffle will be donated to Organized Communities Against Deportation. Get tickets HERE.
The members of ira glass do not agree on everything. They have varying music backgrounds, varying listening tastes, varying stances on the accordion. They are four different people, after all – simply being in an experimental noise rock band together is not going to file down their differences and turn them into one homogenous organism. Nor should it, I cannot imagine the music would be nearly as enticing if it were produced by an army of clones. However, if there’s one thing the Chicago-based four piece can agree on, it’s webcore. They love ARGs and “low-res digital stuff”. They enjoy grueling scavenger hunts on archive.com, sifting through mounds of digital muck for something that resonates with them. They have created projections that collage videos sourced from Youtube rabbit holes. ira glass like making their own sense of the vastness of the web – spinning the overwhelming mounds of data it holds into a narrative of sorts, whether or not it’s decipherable to anyone else. Whether or not it’s even decipherable to them. “It’s like a willed, forced synthesis,” drummer Landon Kerouac notes amidst the webcore portion of our call. “A montage that doesn’t make sense but kind of works.”
ira glass’ approach to music is not too different from their mutually savored internet practices. In fact it’s essentially the exact same – though they would probably never say that, because they are not really the type of band to overly anatomize and delineate their own creative process. If anything, they are allergic to approaching music with too much cogitation, telling me that the act of intentionally striving to create something acutely new and never done before is a “nebulous, almost flawed way to go about art.” ira glass is not trying to forge some cunning new genre, in the same sense that they have no interest in tethering themselves to one that already exists. They just want to make music that they like. Music that resonates with them. Music that feels genuine.
The result is some sort of epic auditory Frankenstein; its appendages pulling both from the band’s external inspirations and “the id”. Out today, their caustic sophomore EP, joy is no knocking nation, is a sensical quilt that honors fragments and facets of their life at the time it was created. Some are discernible, like post-hardcore and jazz influences, wrath induced by infestations of faux-alternative characters, ambitions to experiment with unorthodox instruments, etc. Others cannot be outlined as easily, yet manage the same authentic impact. It’s an abrasive and charged listen, but never in a way that feels forced. The emotions are real, finding themselves in a sometimes crooked composition that winds up and down and adjourns when it needs to. It’s intense in a human way, and it’s honest without overly earnest lyricism.
“I just don’t like relying on the same old tropes, old school screamo doesn’t appeal to me,” vocalist Lise Ivanova tells me about her thoughts on lyrics. “It’s all very misanthropic or self-hating and I don’t feel that.” Instead of honing this sort of cynical pity-party poetry or accumulating shreds of intense vulnerability from their own lives, ira glass’ lyrics are detached and labyrinthine-like. They can be funny and intense and idiosyncratic, they can mean something to you if you’d like or they can just exist as another enigmatic component of the EP’s experience. It doesn’t really matter, the point is they exist in the same way as everything else ira glass creates; free from functional pressures and dilettante natures. It’s an ethos that glues together the eccentricity of their latest EP, and it’s contagious within the listen. Even in joy is no knocking nation’s harshest moments, characterized by discordant clamors of noise and shrill screaming, there is a lingering sense of comfort – perhaps even a certain catharsis, chipping away at the weight of various pressures and demands and self-inflicted factors that prevent you from just being your fucking self.
We recently spoke to ira glass about curating discomfort, “lame fake-alt people”, and joy is no knocking nation, out today via Angel Tapes.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Manon: I’d love to hear how you guys just started playing music together. How did you meet and when did you start ira glass?
Lise: I moved to Chicago in October of 2022, I had lived in LA prior and had been trying to start a band there, but LA was not really fertile for bands. So when I moved to Chicago, I was dead set on starting a band, and I put up a bunch of flyers within a week of moving here, recruiting for a noise rock project and Landon was among the first to respond. We met at Whirl Away Lounge on Fullers End and talked about our influences and then we later recruited Jill – Jill and Landon know each other.
Jill: We used to work together at this french cafe.
Landon: Basically, Lise and I met in this almost romantic way – like a flyer, but then our two other members we know from day to day life.
Lise: Kaleb and I go way back. We lived in Albuquerque and were in a band called Thrush, it was a fake band because we only played one show, but it was still a good band. Even though it was a Big Black rip off. That’s how I know Kaleb.
Manon: It was fake because you only played one show?
Lise: Yeah. We practiced so much more than we played.
Manon: You mentioned that LA was not very fertile for bands. How does Chicago compare, and how would you say the scene there in general has impacted Ira Glass over the years?
Lise: I think there are more normal people here that aren’t, like, evil. So it feels better playing here.
Jill: There is a lot of collaboration, everyone is really friendly and they want to play a lot of shows with you and help each other out.
Lise: People are very sincere and driven. I feel like LA is very isolating and everybody is on a solo venture but there are a lot of bands in Chicago and people want to get together and play music with others.
Manon: You mentioned this idea of sincere and “normal people”. I feel like there is a presence of that on this new EP – maybe some exasperations about not normal people, or specifically, “freakos with hand tattoos”. How would you describe your relationship to sincerity?
Lise: Disingenuous people upset me deeply. Yeah. There are social climbers everywhere and there are lame, fake alt people everywhere. I don’t think that is exclusive to Chicago.
Manon: It’s definitely not.
Lise: But, I think there is more of a working class here. I guess that has something to do with it.
Landon: I can’t speak on it lyrically, but with our music and the composition, I think we are not necessarily striving for something new because that’s a really nebulous, almost flawed way to go about art. But also wanting to create something that comes from deep down.
Lise: Something from the id.
Landon: Yeah. [Our composition] is both really innate and also meticulous and thought out. I think that sort of synthesis gives us a sense of sincerity. I feel like we just go, “what feels right?”, and then meticulously work with and edit that material once it has come out of the depths. Would you agree with that?
Lise: Um, I don’t know.
Landon: Okay. Disregard what I just said.
Manon: I can also ask a more specific question about composition. I feel like when you make noise music, the ‘noise’ part is often rather defining, but you have a lot of interesting complementing instrumentals, and I really like a lot of the jazz elements within this EP – especially in the end of “fritz all over you”… that song is stunning. I would love to hear about your general music inspirations, and the kind of sound you were hoping to cultivate in joy is no knocking nation?
Lise: When we first started, I was super influenced by nineties Chicago noise, like classic noise rock, Albini, the Albini scene. And then, I was simultaneously also getting super influenced by mid-late nineties, early two thousands screamo, like Drones, Dream, and Orchid. So I think our first EP, compound turbulence, was definitely more influenced by those things. This EP feels a bit more post-rock, experimental, and post-hardcore. I think we are getting more into the jazz influence. Jill is a jazz head.
Jill: Yeah.
Lise: Jill, go ahead. Jill did jazz band.
Jill: Yeah. Jazz band. Throughout college.
Lise: You come from a jazz lineage.
Jill: Yeah, a lineage of jazz musicians.
Lise: And we all like jazz. I actually wanted a horn because of Brain Bombs, the way they use horns is so different. It’s not influenced by jazz at all. But Jill brings a very melodic kind of influence that I appreciate. Anything else about our influences?
Jill: We all come from relatively different backgrounds.
Lise: Landon, you like a lot of modern and contemporary noise rock.
Landon: Yeah, I definitely admire a lot of the nineties stuff, and I think what is happening with noise right rock right now is super interesting. Bands like Sprain and Shearling. Also Chat Pile. Then bands like Spirit of the Beehive.
Lise: Prostitute.
Landon: Yeah, Prostitute as well. I don’t want to keep listing band names, but I think Spirit of the Beehive is a huge influence compositionally because they don’t really have verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge – you know, it’s not a very orthodox song structure, but it flows really seamlessly. I think for us, maybe instead of seamless, perhaps our song composition is a bit more stitched together.
Lise: Contrived.
Landon: Not contrived.
Lise: Difficult.
Landon: It’s more stitched.
Lise: It’s a laborious taste
Jill: We figure out how to mesh different pieces together.
Lise: We are kind of math influenced in that way. Yeah math rock is also an influence.
Landon: Yeah, it’s this combination of “how can we do upside down music?” and the crazy math stuff and also stay true to the ethos of noise rock?
Lise: The banging rock and roll of it all. Kaleb, what do you like? Kaleb likes dark wave.
Kaleb: I’m more into industrial and German wave stuff. My stint with noise rock is more like Birthday Party and Scratch Acid.
Lise: Aw those are great bands.
Landon: I think some of that comes in with our experimentation with instruments. I think my symbol stacks can definitely be in the industrial realm. I think our horns too, and there is an accordion on the EP.
Lise: Which you hated. And didn’t want to use.
Manon: Anti-accordion?
Jill: He doesn’t like Organs.
Lise: He doesn’t like accordions or organs.
Jill: It’s the harmonics, right?
Landon: No, no. For the accordion…it was simply… I was fine with the accordion…
Lise: He has a fear of sounding goofy.
Landon: It’s a bit of a goofy instrument…
Jill: And the whistle…
Lise: The coaches whistle. He didn’t like that either.
Landon: It’s a bit on the nose.
Lise: Whatever, no big deal.
Landon: I think that the willingness to experiment with instrumentals, like real, storied instruments, is very seventies industrial. Instead of saying “what plug in can we use”, it’s using a kazoo, or a whistle, or something like that.
Lise: We haven’t used a kazoo yet, but it’s in our future. Our near future. Or a harmonica.
Landon: I don’t like the harmonica either.
Lise: You don’t like the harmonica either? Damn Dude.
Landon: No, I’m just joking.
Manon: Did you use the whistle? Or is that also in the near future?
Jill: There’s whistles. One coach whistle, two little whistles.
Lise: There are buried straggler whistles towards the end of the big whistle.
Manon: There’s obviously a level of discomfort to noise music, is that something you enjoy?
Lise: Yeah, we are all generally kind of awkward and uncomfortable people.
Landon: I don’t like music that sounds too pleasant or harmonic. I think the dissonance is really pleasing when it comes to melodies or chords. A word that is used a lot is angular.
Lise: Do you like that word?
Landon: Yeah.
Lise: Landon likes the word angular.
Landon: Angular is cool. There are different flavors of discomfort and dissonance, and I think angular paints a very particular picture to the sort of dissonance that we like. It’s a more intentional discomfort.
Lise: Yeah that’s true, we like dynamics. Contrast. We live for the contrast.
Jill: It can’t all be uncomfortable. You have to lure them in.
Manon: What do you hope to achieve when you play these tracks in a live setting?
Lise: We don’t like banter.
Jill: We don’t talk. We don’t smile.
Lise: Yeah I feel pretty distant from the audience, or I shut the audience out. I don’t even see them, my eyes are closed most of the time. I feel like it’s purely a live display of our music.
Landon: We’re obviously doing this for a love of music. But as we love music in theory, I think sometimes being on stage is like a compulsion. I feel like when I am up there, I’m just reacting to things, and trying my best to keep up with it.
Lise: Yeah, it’s like we’re floating. It feels so dissociative.
Landon: Which is a very unique experience. It’s not the most pleasant, but it can also be crazy rewarding if it feels right.
Lise: We’re playing aggressive and sometimes difficult music. It’s not like the songs come from this place of deep, dark self-loathing, but it still is very emotionally taxing and cathartic.
Manon: So the actual nature of the music is more taxing than the lyrics. Your lyricism is awesome though, very eccentric and a bit convoluted. Can you tell me a bit more about that?
Landon: That’s all Lise, it’s a black box to the rest of us.
Lise: Shit, I don’t know either. I do a lot of unconscious, ‘spitting it out on a page’ writing, or I have done the classic cut-up thing where I try to take lyrics from elsewhere. I like the Melvins’ way of writing, just nonsense that is still really evocative. I think you can use words that do not really make sense and they can still evoke a really strong image, and I think that’s what I am trying to do with my lyrics most of the time.
Landon: As an observer and not necessarily the author, I think it’s sort of like vignettes in a way. Would you say that?
Lise: Sometimes. I’ve been known to write a vignette from time to time. I like to think about strange situations that I haven’t experienced myself and try to describe them. I think about other people’s stories a lot.
Landon: There’s a depravity to it in a way.
Lise: People have said that. I guess it’s depraved.
Written by Manon Bushong | Photo by Derrick Alexander
the ugly hug 