Category: Interview

Flooding Smothers Shame on object 1 | Interview

July 14th, 2025

Written by Manon Bushong

In Kim Gordon’s memoir, there is an excerpt from a 1988 tour diary that ends with the sentiment: “I like being in a weak position and making it strong.” It serves as a sort of conclusion to an unraveling reflection on gender and performance, on her relationship to playing bass and her own femininity, on wondering how she’s perceived next to dozens of boys with guitars she deems “ordinary as possible.”

The statement itself is simple, but I think it encapsulates exactly what makes Gordon one of the greatest female musicians in the sphere of experimental noise rock. I don’t mean that in a good-for-a-girl kind of way; rather, she is good because she’s a girl, because of the sharpness within her dissonant sound, the hunger within her seemingly wandering melodies, the harrowing authenticity wound into her abrasion. A perfected scream vocal is nothing without nuance, and the most compelling noise artists wield a caustic sound for subversion, not mere shock value. Among the contemporary artists cultivating dimension within auditory hostility is Flooding, and the Kansas-based project’s latest EP is a testament to their propensity for making weak positions strong. Out last week, object 1 is a sonically full display of satire, blistering yet astute song structures, and cunning juxtaposition.

Rose Brown, Cole Billings, and Zach Cunningham started Flooding in 2020, releasing their self-titled record the following year. While it leaned into a melancholic, slow-core feel, their debut also hinted at a darker and more intense sound – one Flooding would fully sink their teeth into on their 2023 release, Silhouette Machine. The latter revealed how compelling Flooding can be if they refrain from diluting their art for the sake of likability. “The first one was before I really knew how to write music; it was one of the first things I’d ever written, so I approached it in a way of ‘how do I make this what I want to hear,’ but I also still felt kind of pressured to make it palatable for people listening,” Rose tells me of Flooding’s early years.

While it’s true that Flooding’s more recent releases have veered in a creative direction often deemed “challenging,” there’s a slight contradiction in her statement – one that prods at longstanding discourse on music and palatability. The success Flooding has found by embracing a harsher identity speaks to the fact that Rose is not alone in the sounds she craves. Acknowledging the disconnect between that and the music she felt pressured to make for the sake of a general listener begs the question: why do these notions still pervade the industry so aggressively?

What makes art palatable? Is it comfort, something that can appease a wide demographic of perspectives? But what about successful media that isn’t “comfortable”. What about the prominence of violence in the film industry. Is violence palatable? What about sex, is sex palatable? An intro to marketing class will tell you it sells. But can it sell authentically? What happens when it’s not strategically packaged? When it’s honest, when it’s explosive, when it doesn’t prioritize comfort?

My biggest issue with the “palatability” conversation is how little faith it places in the general listener. Perhaps that’s an idyllic stance, but as I listen to Flooding, I have a hard time imagining a reality in which you do not take something from the experience; the hair-raising percussion, the catharsis of Rose’s vocal volatility, the eerie beauty of the chord progressions. Is it challenging? Perhaps. But why is that a bad thing?

When I asked Rose about performing such brash songs live, she explained it had been challenging at first, “I was just so nervous and shy, I wasn’t screaming back then. I was just trying to sing and I could barely do that then. Preforming is my favorite part of music because I like how it can evolve the songs and evolve you as a person too.” Flooding’s appetite for discomfort has been as a catalyst for their own growth, and their latest release encourages you to do the same. You can listen to object 1 anywhere now.

We recently chatted with Rose to discuss music inspirations, shame, and Flooding’s new EP, object 1.

This album has been edited for length and clarity.

Manon: I wanted to ask about the length of object 1—at 17 minutes, it’s a lot shorter than Silhouette Machine. I think something that makes your music so powerful is your contrast between delicate and abrasive. On your last album, you had a lot of time to really manipulate and explore those extremes. Was this project always meant to be an EP, and how did you approach creating a more condensed body of work?

Rose: The process was a lot different from our first two albums. The first one was before I really knew how to write music; it was one of the first things I’d ever written, so I approached it in a way of “how do I make this what I want to hear,” but I also still felt kind of pressured to make it palatable for people listening. For the second album, I really wanted to challenge myself with different ways of approaching writing music. I’ve always been an album person, I really like listening to albums, and that’s what I want to produce. This EP is a lot different. It’s very ironic and sarcastic, and I’m approaching a lot of subjects from different people’s points of view, so it felt right to make it a more condensed work. It felt so different from what we’d been doing that I kind of wanted it to be an endcap or a starting-off point for future things.

Manon: I read that the name Flooding comes from an intense, “face your fears all at once” style of exposure therapy. What sorts of fears or general notions were you hoping to contend with on this EP?

Rose: I’m talking about shame a lot, and I’m talking about shame from other people’s perspectives, because I think it’s pretty hard to explore if you’re just talking about your own shame. I feel like for me, the themes kind of come together and make sense after I’ve recorded everything and it’s ready to go.

Manon: I’m curious about the notion of fragility in “your silence is my favorite song.” I feel like your use of repetition there creates such an interesting skewing of the word fragile, it feels as if “I’m fragile” is a warning, especially in the context of your volatile song structures. What does fragility mean to you, and why did you choose to emphasize it in that song?

Rose: I think it can mean a lot of different things. When people think of femininity, they think of “fragile” in the way a flower is delicate. But there’s also the fragility of a bomb that could explode. The EP has a lot of contradictory elements, and I think that’s a very interesting juxtaposition.

Manon: You mentioned that for the first album, you were still learning how to write songs and were trying to create something more palatable. Since then, you’ve moved toward making what you want to hear. What are some influences that have shaped your recent releases—and yourself as a songwriter in general?

Rose: Thinking about our first album, I hadn’t really delved super deep into slowcore yet. People started referring to us as “slowcore” and I was like, oh shit, yeah, we are. So then I started listening to that. I also got really into screamo and hardcore because Kansas City has a huge hardcore scene, that’s just what’s around us. That definitely influenced our second album a lot. Recently, I’ve been really into pop music and jazz, so I tried to find a way to combine those elements with something that’s still kind of aggressive and noisy.

Manon: Then “object 1,” the track, has no lyrics. Since your vocals are such a powerful instrument in Flooding, how was your experience writing a song without them?

Rose: That’s maybe the only song we have without my vocals on it, besides like one interlude track. It’s also the only song we’ve ever all written together, me, Cole, and Zach. It felt a lot different to me. I approached playing guitar in a different way, where it wasn’t the main structural element. It felt weird to try to put vocals on it, and I couldn’t figure out what to do, nothing felt natural.

Manon: I feel like when you have a more experimental and noise-heavy sound, it often gets clumped into this category of “cathartic music.” Would you consider playing Flooding live to be cathartic?

Rose: For sure. It’s definitely an emotional experience for me.

Manon: Is it always? Or are there times when something you’ve written doesn’t resonate anymore?

Rose: Honestly, we don’t even play the songs we don’t want to, we have enough of a catalog now to just play what we want. It’s definitely different playing the new EP because it’s not as extremely personal as a lot of our past music has been, but it’s still cathartic, just in a different way. You get to act out the perspective of being a pop star, or just some arrogant guy who doesn’t give a shit.

Written by Manon Bushong | Photo by Fabian Rosales
Darryl Rahn is Having Fun Again | Interview

June 20th, 2025

Late last month, Darryl Rahn released a pair of singles titled “Silent Acknowledgement” and “There Ain’t You”. As the first bit of new music from the NYC-based songwriter since his previous LP titled Dusk was released back in February of 2024. Those tracks found Rahn both conscious and explorative in the midst of engaging stories, gentle tunes and enduring melodies as he set out to define the sounds, feelings and beings that he takes inspiration from in his day-to-days.

From the very opening, the groove of “Silent Acknowledgement” blows in like a gust of wind, beginning with a gentle sense of commotion as the instrumentation pushes towards the lighthearted melodies that soon follow. With that, Rahn begins to build off of a sense of familiarity, or the lack thereof, as he works out the terms of a friendship now distant. With subtle guitars that sear the soundscape, Rahn’s deliverance remains upfront, blending wit with conviction and irony with what has been assumed so far. “There Ain’t You” slows the pace but doesn’t muddle the experience. Embracing the softer tones in his tool belt, the track becomes fixated on the textures that bring out the tender longing that Rahn can so masterfully create.

But as he continues to look at what’s next, these songs have become a necessity for Rahn, creating a sense of space for him to play with. It’s not the sonic spacing in these songs per say, but rather the space he allows himself to have in his creativity, breaking away from formulation and expectations, and embracing what matters most when it comes to releasing music as a creative motive.

Meeting up with Rahn while he was on tour playing guitar with the Samia band, we got to discuss setting boundaries in his creative practice, what he’s been working on as of late, and the two new singles that he holds so dear.

This interview has been edited for length and purposes

So you put out two singles recently, your first bit of new music since Dusk, which was a little over a year now. How has that album stood with you, and how does it feel to put out new music?

Luckily, I still love that album for what it is, but I think that a couple months after it came out, and this happens every time I make an album, I’m into a totally different sound or approach. I get really tired of whatever I just made. To quickly answer the question, it feels really good to put out something new. But the main reason I did that is because I just finished making a new album with a proper band in a studio, trying to do it all right. It’ll take a couple months to mix and master and get it ready to a place of releasing, but I was just feeling so pent up that I made these two songs at home for fun. I was just thinking, I got nothing else going on right now, I might as well learn how to use my stuff better. And it wasn’t until I finished mixing them that I wanted to put them out right now. It’s very rare that I make something and then immediately have space and time to just put it out and still be excited about it. It was the perfect scenario where I haven’t done anything in a while and I’m not going to do anything for at least a couple more months, so why not just put out these things that I’m having fun with?

With being restless, do you feel like you exhaust these avenues that you take in the recording sessions? Like you said, you get tired with the style and sound of something, but repurposing it as ‘this feels fun, this feels fresh’, was that a new practice for you at all?

At least new as of late. For the past couple times I’ve made an album, I get to a point where I’m not having fun anymore because I’m just so focused on making the best thing I can and trying to perfect it to a fault where I strip the joy out of it. So, after recording this last album, there were a few days in the studio where I felt truly bad and just so caught in thinking about it all wrong. I needed to have fun to keep making music because I can’t keep working this way. The fun was just a necessity – if I don’t start having a good time making music again, there’s no point. So luckily, “Silent Acknowledgement” came to me pretty quickly and it felt different for me in a way where I don’t have a song with this feel. It felt really good to just do it at home and not have to worry about anybody else. Just try to make it myself.

In your writing, you do a lot of balancing expectations in your lyrics; what it means to love and to be loved, where you want your life to be at and where you are now, but also expectations that have exhausted the recording process for you. Have you figured out a way to approach them or hold them differently as you continue to write and continue to put out very personal music?

I’ve always had really high expectations, and over time they’ve changed a lot. Now my only expectation I try to have is just writing the best song I can, and not having any expectations beyond that. Because it’s always going to be wrong, even if it’s good. Even if the outcome is good, it’s never going to be what you think. Nothing has ever been how I expected it to be, and that’s been really good and really hard at times. It’s a blessing and a curse.

And then these two singles, “Solid Acknowledgements” and “There Ain’t You” are a really nice pairing. At their core, there’s this absence, and each song feels like a different way of holding onto that absence. Why did you decide to pair them together?

“Silent Acknowledgement” to me is about a friendship, and “There Ain’t You” could be about a friendship or a romantic relationship. What’s funny is that “There Ain’t You” sounds like it could be a breakup or something, but it was actually written because my girlfriend was out of town for a weekend, and I was just thinking that it would have been fun if we were hanging out [laughs]. “Silent Acknowledgement” to me, if anybody’s going to hear one, I’d like it to be this one just because it’s the easiest to chew on. But I wanted to add “There Ain’t You” because it’s a little less immediate – it felt like a good after song mint. I wanted to write this little bouncy jam, but I also write a lot of acoustic music that’s a little more introspective too, but that’s not all I want to do. I actually have an album that’s in the can right now, and I tried to cover every sound I like. So, this was like a mini version of that, where I could do it at home with my own skills. I’m always focused on albums and full-length projects, and this, I wanted to challenge myself to just be okay with releasing something small and bite-sized and still care for it as if it’s an album, but just have it be much more condensed.

So with that challenge for yourself, taking the space of an album where you have so much room to work with, but just focusing on two songs, what do you get fixated on to show that you can be expansive while also being restrained?

I get fixated on everything, but I still try to be really economical with words. I still try to make that the forefront of everything. How can I get this feeling across in the least amount of words and in the best pairing? This time I tried to focus on immediacy – I tend to get lost in the weeds with a song, seeing it build up through the end. But sometimes my favorite songs start immediately and you get the vibe right away. So I got really fixated on figuring out how I can make this a fun experience to listen to immediately, as opposed to how do I build it differently?

So these two songs are solely you in your bedroom. And then the upcoming album is first time in the studio for Darryl Rahn band?

No, not the first time, the last couple albums have been really piecemeal, like recording some guitars at home, do the drums at the studio, try to put it all together, etc. By the end, I would just get so burnt out. I could hear all this patchwork and not in a good way. And so, this time I really wanted to feel like me and my friends had played these songs together and I wanted to capture that. It was the first proper recording experience in a while, where the songs have been written and rehearsed, then I brought the band and the engineer in and captured it all live. I wanted something to feel really cohesive, like a statement of, like, ‘I didn’t mess around this time [laughs]’.

And you’re just making tunes with your buddies.

Yeah, it was a great experience! You know, there were some days where I felt really bad and hated what I was doing. I guess it just came from a place of being tired of my process. And so, to have friends there who were also invested in having it be a good project, because it’s theirs too, felt really healthy. I think it was really a positive thing to have other voices, because they really helped me make sure I didn’t just get so tired of something and not give it its best chance, you know? Because you need to see it through if you want it to go anywhere. They just help you care for things beyond the writing phase, which is really important. I just get so burnt out on stuff as soon as it’s done being written, just thinking of what’s next? And that can be a damaging way to look at art.

How do you combat that?

I mean, honestly, these two singles, it was me needing to do something else again. Just as long as I’m still taking in information, writing and really feeling like I’m releasing something, not just music, but releasing creativity, I feel revved up enough to have confidence in whatever I’m working on. If I feel creatively stagnant, I feel totally stagnant.

I had a question sent from our friend Nisa [Lumaj]. She was curious, asking, [Darryl] is one of our more prolific songwriters, always releasing and recording. It’s really cool to me that he’s always looking forward. I’m interested in what a songwriting day session looks like for him. Is there a specific ritual or does he write as it comes to him?

Oh, that’s such a sweet question. For a long time, I tried to just treat it like my job, even when I made zero dollars from it. I would get up early and I would try to free write a page or two just to get my brain going. And then if something stood out to me in that session, I would try to latch on to it and just see the idea through. But now I’ve become more hands off, where I know when I’m in the mood to write. But frankly, like in the past year or two, I started smoking a little weed at night and I realized that my ears and my eyes are a little more open with that. It helps me hear a phrase, even if I’m watching or reading something, it really helps me see an idea and bring it to song form.

Even without weed, I’ll usually be playing guitar and I’ll land on something that interests me in some way and I’ll go deep and get tunnel vision. I can’t do anything until the song is done, basically. Like with “Silent Acknowledgement”, I got that riff just from playing around at home, and I knew this was something I had to dive into, because I get physically uncomfortable until the song’s finished. It’s probably obsessive compulsive disorder, but it’s truly a drug to me. Finishing a song feels so cool to me still because every time it’s done, I don’t know if there will ever be one again. So whenever it happens, I’m so eager to get it out just to prove to myself that I can. And, you know, if I enjoy it at the end of that, then the song might be OK. But I’m always editing. I used to edit until something was quote, unquote, perfect, and I realized later on that I was ruining songs that way. There should be elements of imperfection that get to the root of a feeling, to just be a little more human.

Is that where the hands off approach is coming from?

I need to trust that there’s a point where you need to let a song be done because the feeling has left. The feeling is there, and the meaning is there, but the more you pick away at it, the more you can take away. And I’ve got to give credit to listeners more than I do, because they are going to hear a song and no matter what, attach their own meaning. So, if you try to hammer in too much of your own meaning, you’re just depriving the listener from their own story.

You’re on tour with Samia Band now. It’s not your first big tour, but how has it been?

Oh, I love it! I guess every tour I’ve done has gotten a little bit better in some way. And this one is not even for my own music, but to have this as my day job, I’m pretty happy. Samia is definitely the best boss I’ve ever had. But the shows are really great and Samia’s fans are so sweet. I’m probably similar to a lot of them because I was a Samia fan. I saw her show a couple of years ago on the last tour before I was in the band and it was one of my favorite shows I’ve seen in a long time. So being part of it now and trying to contribute to a great show is a pretty fun project every day. And it feels like I’m getting so much fuel, so when I go home, I’m going to feel musically energized.

You can listen to “Silent Acknowledgement” and “There Ain’t You” out everywhere now!

Written by Shea Roney | Featured Photo Courtesy of Darryl Rahn
Sister. Finds A Place in Eternity | Interview

June 19th, 2025

“For one thing, with all of our previous releases, we’ve always been at a point where we’re playing so many songs that aren’t even on the record that’s coming out. We often feel like we’ve moved so far beyond the thing that we’re releasing to the world,” Hannah Pruzinsky says, noting the frustration that occurs with the consistent forward motion of artistic practices and restrictions of time. “This record is the first time where that isn’t the case. It feels really exciting to just give something away and not be holding on to residual things.”

Sister. is the Brooklyn-based project of Hannah Pruzinsky, Ceci Sturman and James Chrisman, who are currently gearing up to release their sophomore record Two Birds out July 11th, marking their second release via NYC’s Mtn. Laurel Recording Co. Sharing their debut LP Abundance back in 2023, and a few straying singles here and there, Sister. has become a means of pushing the enduring process of their collaboration, all while further defining the project on their own terms. Playing with bits of maximalism, Two Birds is a record well-worn in, utilizing the exciting challenge of experimentation without hindering the deeply rooted intimacy of each track. Earlier this week, the group released “Honey”, the third taste test from the upcoming record and a display of just how well they can walk that line.

Caught within a loop, “Honey” begins with a steady build, embracing the group’s inherent talents and knack for sonic contusions that they often find themselves exploring. As a whole, the song feels rich and heavy, like thick ink blotches dripping on a clean sheet of paper. And once it gets started, it’s reluctant to stop the dribble of emotions that are no longer contained. And to their credit, “Honey” feels unpredictable in its direction, rearing both excitement and tension until the long-awaited release of the very last line, “oh honey, weren’t you moving towards eternity?”, becomes a stand-still thought caught up in all of the motion. As the group prepares to release Two Birds in a few weeks, “Honey” is a clear marking of a band that continues to push the boundaries of what they’re capable of, while still holding dear to what they know best.

We recently got to catch up with Sister., discussing new writing practices and the weight that lies within “Honey”.

SR: You guys have a new record coming out in July! How’s it feeling to finally get it going?

Hannah Pruzinsky: We’re really excited about it! These songs on the record are a lot of tunes that we’ve been working through in the live shows, so it’s been fun to be able to explore the arrangement so much.

SR: So they were given a lot of space before finalizing them?

HP: Yes, I think the oldest one is probably ‘Levity”, which I remember Ceci was playing on guitar as Felix [Walworth] and I were having a conversation like three years ago in our living room. Maybe about astrology or tarot cards or something?

Ceci Sturman: I think you had pulled [Felix’s] tarot cards and were reading them, and some of the words I found so moving and just started playing around with them. There’s a voicemail recording of the first time I ever played it, which I think is my favorite version of the song ever. It didn’t make it on the album, but the version that’s on the album is also extremely cool, and that is sort of just a James masterpiece.

James Chrisman: We recorded a good chunk of the album in live acoustic sessions. We did a lot of it in our studio, but there was some of it that was done in Hannah’s living room with all of us sitting in a circle. We tried “Levity” a few ways, but we couldn’t quite get there to be enough movement and momentum in it, because it’s quite a repetitive song. So I took that acoustic version and put it through this kind of delay where a part will get caught in the chamber and repeat, and then you can change the pitches of what’s caught – you’re kind of performing into the delay. But there’s actually very little material in the song itself, so it’s the performance of singing over guitars, and there’s the second performance of the production that’s really fun.

Photo Credit: Sarah Blesener.

SR: I do want to talk about the sound as a whole, because it does feel like you guys are coming into a more defined area for Sister., compared to that patchwork style of Abundance. As you went into recording these songs, what did you find yourself focusing on as you were piecing together what would be the sound of this record?

CS: I think that there’s a lot of maximalism which is a thing that we prefer – it’s sort of a sister. vibe. That definitely was true in Abundance, and I think in a lot of ways we wanted to replicate that and make it sound better. We’re all just a little bit better at the process.

JC: I mean, just a big difference is that we played everything as a band before recording it. There’s a way of making music that a lot of people do now, which is you play a song into a computer and then you try a bunch of stuff over it. I’ve done that. But we had figured out band arrangements for almost all the songs. Felix was much more in the mix this time from the beginning. That is a big difference between having stuff finished and then tracking drums over it versus building over a drumbeat.

CS: It’s definitely true with our last album, where we started playing it a lot after recording it, and we found out we liked some of the new versions a little bit more. I think we were just mindful of that going into this process and being able to play it so much and really figure it out. It has made a very cohesive sound, and we’re proud of that.

HP: Also, just a note on the writing of this album, too, it was much less those patchwork moments with songs coming from Ceci, coming from me or coming from all three of us. This time around a lot of the songs started off with Ceci and I meeting to work through things, as it was also a time when we had just moved away from each other. It was this connection to each other and our friendship through the songwriting. But there are also a lot more songs this time around where all three of us wrote the songs from start to finish.

Photo Credit: Sarah Blesener.

SR: What was that like having the three of you writing together start to finish?

HP: I’m always surprised by how easy it is. I don’t think I can do that with other people. I think there’s a lot of trust between the three of us, where we can propose an idea that maybe is a little silly, or feels harder to do with people that we don’t have this type of trust with natively.

CS: I was thinking about the process for “Blood in the Vines”, which is a song that we wrote together. James proposed an activity of writing a song in 30 min. So that truly was us just putting a timer on our phone and seeing what we come up with. It started with playing the guitar and throwing phrases around, and then at the end of 30 min we had the bare bones of the song, and we really liked the direction it was going.

SR: That’s an impressive practice. So you obviously have trust in each other, but as ideas started to come out of this moment, what sort of things were you trusting to either follow or quickly discard in such a short timeframe?

CS: I’m always trying to keep everything. And so, I’m like, ‘it sounds amazing. We got it’. They can attest to my falling in loveness with scratches.

HP: I remember the song at first felt kind of pop-punky in a way. That’s certainly not something we usually do, and I think we all knew we weren’t gonna go too deep down that rabbit hole. But it is fun for us to explore a different key that we don’t usually write in and see what kind of feelings and emotions or phrases come up with that. It really depends on the song we’re writing together what we start latching on to.

JC: I think in that case, the point of the exercise is to be guided by excitement and not intellectualize at all. I think a lot of creative practices people figure out that with editing, you have infinite time. But how do you get inspiration? And turns out there are ways to manufacture inspiration, and one of them is an artificial time constraint. If a Riff were stupid or something, that would be something to worry about after that timer is over. But in the meantime, you have something, and you can make it resemble something you like, because it’s something that now exists. That’s kind of the mentality behind something like that, because you’re just worried about things like, ‘is it me?’ and you sort of bypass that because you’re like, ‘Oh, no, I only have 10 min left. Who cares.’

Photo Credit: Sarah Blesener.

SR: I want to talk about “Honey”, the next single you are sharing. One thing that I’ve always admired about your guys’ lyrical writing is the way that you really put a lens on personal and interpersonal relationships. With that, I was really drawn into the opening setting of a kitchen, because it’s a very homey, intimate location. But as the song starts, we’re brought into this already antagonizing situation. What kind of portrait were you trying to create by using this location?

CS: “Honey” is a song that I wrote the lyrics for and I remember wanting to immediately place it in the kitchen because I read something where a songwriter talked about how having the setting in the first line can do a lot for the song, like placing someone somewhere. I’ve never done that, so I want to see how that could become a way of sorting through some conflict or interpersonal confusion that is really intimate, but very distant. I think of two people that maybe are trying to figure out if they really know each other or understand each other while they’re already in an intimate setting, and like how you can sort of navigate that familiar scene. I’ve experienced a lot in my life, where I’m just sort of getting to know someone, and the more you get to know them, the more questions you have about your compatibility, or about how you relate to each other, and how that makes you relate to yourself. Really playing with the sort of contrast between the intimacy in the home, and then the serious distance in the connection.

Photo Credit: Sarah Blesener.

SR: The avenues you guys follow with the sonic exploration really do a good job at creating that tension. A standout word that I grasped onto was ‘eternity’. In that phrase at the end, I feel like that’s when the lyrical and the instrumental stories really blend together to form this release. What weight does that word ‘eternity’ hold in this song? And how did you guys try to embrace that weight instrumentally?

CS: I wanted the last word to be something really drastic, and it is drastic [laughs]. But, I mean, it’s like asking the same sort of intimacy question where sometimes you start asking them and then you can’t stop asking them, and they just build and build and build and build. The weight of it is just very big.

JC: And a big element of that song’s arrangement was found when I was mixing it. I took Ceci’s vocals and put it through what’s called a space echo, which is another kind of delay – that’s when something catches itself and it creates an infinite generative signal. So there’s kind of a literal sound painting aspect of evoking infinity there. And that first sound you hear in it is actually Ceci’s voice going through that space echo. And a lot of that stuff climaxes more towards the end like a sound painting aspect of the lyrics.

CC: I love how the band worked on the song and created it to be so tension driven. The chorus has no words in it which is abnormal for our songs, especially for the songs that I’ve written. It’s cool to lean on the instruments and the feeling that’s driven to continue to build the song where the chorus usually does. I think that there’s a lot of questions in the song, and we just slowly keep building and building and building and building it up until the last lyric, which is ‘weren’t you moving towards eternity?’, which is a question to continue to ask yourself all the time. I’m always asking myself.

Two Birds is set to be released July 11th via Mtn. Laurel Recording Co. You can pre-order the album digitally as well as on vinyl now!

Written by Shea Roney | Featured Photo by Sarah Blesener
Charlie Johnston Is In Her Own World on Wolves Abound | Interview

June 16th, 2025

Early last year, Charlie Johnston released her debut album Wolves Abound. Although marking the first release under her own name, the Chicago-based creative has been writing as one half of Post Office Winter for some time now, as well as building upon the sounds of the ever-expansive group, Deerest Friends. Initially made as a school project, Wolves Abound came to be a snapshot of life – a picture book with a page dogeared for later. The songs that make up the album swirl together like a potion, a remedy, a blend of simple ingredients that perform such a poignant task in such a short time, as Johnston’s delivery of sonic textures and personal stories become painted by patient escalations that take these genuine tracks to the heights of folkloric dreams and potent whimsy.

We recently got to catch up with Johnston to discuss the album and its accompanying art pieces, the stories that inspired her and what comes next.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity purposes.

You have been writing music with the project Post Office Winter, as well as been a part of a few collabs, like Deerest Friends. But Wolves Abound is your first release under your own name. What made you want to do something separate from all those other projects?

I have always written and recorded music by myself, but I never had an outlet for it. I made this album specifically because I get a January term at school where you have to do a project, and I decided to just do music and art. I was home for the whole month of January, so I just did it in that month. So technically it’s a school project, but the only person who heard it is my advisor at college and then I advertised it as separate from that. I guess that was my motivation, but I’m glad I put it out because I am sitting on some more stuff similar to it that I’d like to put out maybe even this summer under the same name

What were the requirements of this school project?

It’s very, very open-ended. It’s just like, do a project. Some people go to Egypt and do community work, and some watch a movie every day. It’s really up to you to decide. It’s supposed to be about personal growth and whatnot, and this seemed like an easy option. This last January I wrote a children’s book, and that was my project.

When you decided to put it out, did this feel separate from your other projects? Did it feel more representative of you?

Definitely. There was no collaboration with anyone at all, and I found it to be really, really nice to just have it be just me. Sometimes the songs I write don’t warrant bringing them to someone else. Sometimes I have something, and it feels done. In Post Office Winter, too, we do our own art, we do our own recording – neither of us are great at drumming, but we have to be the drummers, because I just like having it in that bubble. I like collaborating outside for other projects, but I feel with my own stuff, I like keeping it close-knit and tight. And so doing it myself was a really enjoyable experience, and not just making demos, but like actually putting something out.

In the frame of that tight-knit bubble, what did that personal growth look like that you wanted to represent in the project?

I think a lot of what I wrote represents how I was feeling at the time, which was my first year of college. When I write songs and lyrics, I try to deliver exactly my subconscious. So what was coming out was reflective of that newness of college, and then coming back for a whole month in January and looking back at what had happened in the fall semester. It was just a great opportunity for me to just do art for a month, which is rare as you get older. These things don’t happen. And especially because each song has a supplemental art piece, I haven’t really focused on visual art since I was a younger kid. It was kind of like connecting back to being at home, being in the city, connecting back to my, I guess, childhood. Especially with the more whimsical and fantastical elements of the whole piece, getting more in touch with that side.

Dealing with the subconscious, and touching upon more heavy topics with such expressive imagery, what kind of stories were you inspired by going into this? What stories were you inspired to tell about yourself through this imagery?

I’m really inspired by folklore and fairy tales and kids’ books – whimsical stuff. I was really into Arctic imagery at the time, and that’s where all the wolf stuff comes from. Wolves and yetis have been a big theme in a bunch of stuff I do. I don’t know why, I didn’t grow up in the Arctic or anything, but I really like that magical realism of these things existing in a world with something else. Some songs are more veiled than others. “Someday in a House”, which is the last track, it’s very direct, thinking about my current relationships, and how these people will change when we get older and all that stuff. And then some of them are just silly, like “A Lullaby for Davis and Margie”, which is about when I met this vendor lady selling sock puppets. I got two of them, one I named Davis, and one I named Margie. They’re in love, and it’s about them. It’s just tongue-in-cheek making fun of the stupid sock puppets, but it’s still emotional, and it’s supposed to be a sweet track. I don’t want to take myself too seriously, but I do find it difficult to really wear my heart on my sleeve and say exactly what I’m thinking. So throughout all my songwriting, with every project I’ve done, it’s a lot of whimsical storytelling with a deeper significance inside of it.

I’m curious about the wolf-mind virus. It’s a lingering and almost interactive imagery throughout the writing of this record. Can you explain what that is?

The lyric ‘wolves abound’ is actually, and I didn’t realize this until recently, is part of a Bonnie Prince Billy song. He says something like, ‘there are wolves about’. I don’t really remember exactly where that phrase came from, but I was like, ‘oh, he said it. I guess it’s a reference then [laughs]’. Back in the fall, I was so into doodling wolves all the time. I don’t know where it came from. but I was like, ‘oh hell yeah, let me do more of this.’ Especially the titular track, “Wolves Abound”, in my head I was imagining giant wolves walking around, stepping on cars and knocking down trees. I don’t know why I thought of them in that way, but it’s carried through. I had a creative writing class this spring, and I freaking wrote about big wolves. My professor was like, ‘why are you writing about this?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know, because I want to, and I get an outlet too, and it’s fun for me.’

Each track has an accompanying piece of artwork that really brings out these stories. How are these pieces of art connected to the album?

The art that I made for the song “Wolves Abound” is representational of those big creatures. That was actually a screen printing design that I did. We still make shirts of it for Deerest Friends – everything’s connected, you know? [laughs]. And then I’ve always liked painting flames and houses because it’s fun to do it. You can see that in the “Someday in a House” art. “A Lullaby for Davis and Margie” is a wolf flying away on a plane, and the other wolf looking to say goodbye. That’s me flying away from home and saying goodbye to everyone and going back to school, or the opposite – that one was me putting myself into that art. I was just having fun figuring out ways to represent the music with one piece of visual.

Looking back on it now, how does it all feel? Does it feel like the start of something you want to keep working at?

Yeah, definitely. I think this was the project that has really led me into my own artistry – feeling like my art style and what I want to write and put out. And it might not carry through for the rest of my artistic life. But for now, I think it’s representational of this phase of my artistic existence.

You can listen to Wolves Abound on Charlie Johnston’s bandcamp. Find it below!

Written by Shea Roney | Photo and Artwork by Charlie Johnston
On How To Get Away With Nothing, Abel Cultivates Intensity by Slowing Down | Interview

June 6th, 2025

“We were really heavy for a minute there. For Dizzy Spell and that era we were so hyper-focused on what we can get out of our amps and our pedals, just the sonic width we wanted live and the thickness we wanted”, Isaac Kauffman explains of Abel’s 2024 record, Dizzy Spell.

The Columbus based band released Dizzy Spell just shy of a year ago, a record armed with an arsenal anxious intensity carved with heavy guitar and hazy feedback. There is an immediacy to the listen, as Abel wastes no time reaching a heightened emotional state as they shred through ridiculously catchy pop structures and pedal suffocation. It is an intense album in an all consuming way, thought drowning sort of way. The lyrics are poignant and often heart wrenching, but they are approached in a manner that feels distant, as the album succumbs to a sea of shoegaze-fueled dissocoation. On Dizzy Spell, noise is a lifevest. On How to Get Away with Nothing, Abel leaves this cushion behind, exploring new ways to manipulate their soundscapes as they prod at what can be found, and more importantly, felt, when they slow down.

Released last week via Pleasure Tapes, Julia’s War and Candlepin, How to Get Away with Nothing marks Abels shift towards a slowcore leaning sound. The stylistic decision stemmed organically, pulling from a chapter the band was in whilst they made it. “My bandmates go through phases, and I think it makes the most sense to take those moments and run with them”, Isaac tells me. “It really lends itself to emotional music when you take things as just a section of your life”.

The authenticity that comes with this philosophy can be felt through Abel’s discography. While How to Get Away with Nothing leans away from the density and shoegaze feel of Dizzy Spell, it also attests to the strength of the project’s identity, and their ability to experiment with genre without alienating the feel of Abel. Their “phases” do not come at a cost to the band’s ability to extract beauty from a raw and gritty sound, a consistent pillar in their releases.

How to Get Away with Nothing boasts a sound that is expansive, challenging and profoundly textured. It leaves space for near silence. It toys with manipulations of pitch and speed. It flirts with the thickness of Dizzy Spell. It experiments with a hyperpop feel. All of this could be a recipe for auditory whiplash, but How to Get Away with Nothing is grounded by the deliberate and balanced nature of its structure. Abel maintains an equilibrium while exploring various means to express melancholy, as well as a range of vocal approaches. Volatile deliveries scrape away at minimal guitar arrangements on “Dusk”, while on “Parasympathetic” earnest and gentle vocals exist in the shadows of a track guided by imposing percussion.

The record commences with warm and earthy lo-fi track “Grass”, which features twangy contributions from fellow Ohio-based project Cornfed. As implied by the title, it’s a song about grass, though the abundant plant is viewed as a concept rather than a reality, as Abel admits to a laundry list of fear that comes with walking barefoot in the grass. Fear as a barrier is carefully weaved into both Dizzy Spell and How to Get Away with Nothing, though the notion finds itself more crushing on the latter release. As they adhere to a slowcore style, drawn out moments of instrumental minimalism carve space for ideas to be questioned, and for emotional paralysis to be expressed through achy chord progressions.

“I think taking that into slowcore and slower songs lended itself to offer more of a minor space for lyrics”, Isaac reflects. “Although the lyrics still take up emotional width, I think we wanted to focus on keeping those tones and atmospheres that we created in a slower sense, and that lended to the emotional guitar parts having to be pushed. I feel like we’ve always had this kind of disconnected vibe to our songs, and I think that leaves our own playing styles and emotions on the table while also keeping the atmosphere thick”

The most devastating tracks on the record are followed by songs that toy with elements of hyperpop, and although they still tackle heart-break and dwindling self assurance, the blow is softened by their twinkly, bedroom-dance-party shape. Isaac tells me though he usually does all of the production and engineering for Abel, for How to Get Away with Nothing, the band collaborated with Quinn Mulvihill from Glaring Orchid, offering him extra time and capacity to experiment.

“I think that with the extra mixing help, I felt like I had more space and time to put some weird mixing energy into a few songs, and I wanted to do that just to break up the album in a way that felt different than using interludes or something like that”, he explains. “I think my melodies always come out in a pop way, and I think putting that over slowcore stuff is really good a lot of the time, but there are certain melodies where you’re like, how will this work over an emotional, drawn out guitar riff? It was almost just the easy way out to make something more poppy and more straightforward.”

The humbly deemed “easy way out” elevates Abel’s already textured sound, as well as the How to Get Away With Nothing’s intricacy as a whole. The hyperpop motifs and eccentric sonic manipulations contort themselves into moments that feels mechanical or almost alien-like, offering a complex juxtaposition to the album’s organic bones and painfully human lyricism. “I think there’s always been this production heavy side of Abel simply because I’m still teaching myself how to do certain things and I need to try it before I feel comfortable. So I think those hyperpop songs are just a testament to handling my growth,” Isaac says.

While it stands as proof to their skills as songwriters and range as musicians, above all How to Get Away with Nothing attests to Abel’s exceptional ability to harvest a poignancy in all that they create. You can listen to it everywhere now.

Written by Manon Bushong | Photo by Dylan Phipps
Pry Breaks Free on Wrapped in Plastic | Interview

May 28th, 2025

“Climb the ladder in the cage,” Simeon Beardsley leads in the opening track of Pry’s debut record, Wrapped in Plastic. Gently packaged in a soft wall of synthy sound, the line is the first of several zoo innuendos the record maneuvers in its exploration of self-sanctioned confinements and external surveillance. These metaphors exist alongside other forms of stifling visual imagery, ranging from intrusive ghosts to grotesque feelings of frozen, refrigerated meat. Conceptually, it’s a suffocating story; though I write that under the assumption you are reading the lyrics to Wrapped in Plastic in silence. If you have caught any of the singles Pry has trickled out thus far, then you would know there is nothing suffocating about the soundscapes they pave. Or maybe there is, but it’s a different kind of suffocation. A pop-driven spattering of sound. Fervent spats of drumming and potent guitar riffs. A hotboxing of synthesizer. Moments of almost silence that exist just as loudly as their maximalist counterparts. Out tomorrow, Wrapped in Plastic finds power in its nuance, shying from insulated timelines and distinct personal details as Pry yields a malleable listen of juxtaposition, sonic dexterity and disruptive wit.

When I met Pry members Amara Bush and Simeon Beardsley – at a coffee shop that happened to share a name with a track off Wrapped in Plastic – they were both a bit tired. Amara from a night at Knockdown Center and Simeon from a day spent estate sale shopping, which concluded with the hauling of a pull-out couch up into a fourth floor walk up apartment. In the face of depleted energy and minimal sleep, the duo’s ability to elaborate on the history of Pry and their trust-driven creative relationship remained unscathed. Between sips of iced coffee, they told me about past variations of the project, sonic shifts and being briefly pigeonholed as a “New York Shoegaze Band” (they are not opposed to this label…it just does not align with their own perceptions of Pry).

“This was my first time ever playing music with anyone. Simeon was just so open and welcoming, and we decided that in whatever context, we should continue creating stuff together”, Amara reflects on the start of their friendship; which began a typical New York tale of haphazard mutual friend introduction, catalyzed through the act of an Instagram story slide up. Shortly after, the two began meeting in the back room of a coffee shop Simeon managed at the time, writing songs, programming drum tracks and dissolving Amara’s apprehensions to creating music collaboratively.

The record is composed of nine tracks, some predating Pry, some written early on in the project, and some that came together towards the end of the album’s recording process. On Wrapped in Plastic, these songs find their most confident and full iterations yet. “It was a very unique recording process for me, I feel like it was the most I have collaborated with the producer”, Simeon notes of working with Ian Rose. “I was so nervous before, I was like ‘I’m going to have to sing these takes over and over again, this is going to be so embarrassing.’ Ian was so encouraging and really helped me break out of my shell,” Amara adds.

Though I noted that the record represents these song’s strongest iterations yet, like many aspects of Pry this verdict is hardly crystallized. In fact, it’s likely subject to change later this week, when the band occupies the late slot at Nightclub 101 on May 31st for their album release show. “I think I will be screaming more. I think before when we were playing shows I wanted to sound like the recording, but now I just want to have fun up there. It’s been really sweet to have Simeon and our drummer, Dave, really encouraging me to push myself. I would only do that in a space where I feel really safe,” Amara tells me. “If something feels boring, we can just change it,” Simeon adds. “That has been really exciting because we want the live performance to feel fun, and maybe we do something we haven’t done in rehearsal. It’s nice to have total freedom and be in the moment and just trust that we have each other’s backs.”

The malleability of their live sets, and the perpetual growth of these tracks represents the ways in which Pry is a space where Amara and Simeon can nudge at previously defined ‘comfort zones’, paralleling ideas of self-inflicted cages that Wrapped in Plastic works to contend. As swelling sonic atmospheres and charged vocals dig the duo’s own personal ruminations into sugary pop hooks, Pry patches gaps between their own multiplicities, or at least creates a space where various sides of themselves can coexist. For Amara, who tells me she never considered herself a singer in the past, this has also meant experimenting with a range of vocal approaches. Her deliveries stretch from tender in tracks like “Greener”, to the hostile feel the duo embraces in “Tether You”.

“I played ‘Tether You’ for the girl I nanny for, and she was like, ‘That’s not you! You sound weird,” Amara says.

Pry probes heavily into this idea of multiplicity on “World Stopped Spinning”, a track where the duo follow an intense guitar solo with a heated dialogue relying only on the word golden. “I don’t know how it’s perceived by people who don’t know me, but I’m a pretty sarcastic person, and I think we want the way we’re singing ‘golden’ to feel sarcastic,” Simeon explains. “I think the repetition makes you start questioning like, is it golden? That’s the hopeful intent. When you say something so much, does it start losing its meaning? I think that song is a hundred percent about that, and having a frame of reference for yourself that with time, you hear the same thing over and over to the point it may not have the same hook into you it once did. I feel like using repetition really makes you curious about what’s being said versus the substance of what’s being said.”

The skewing of a word through delivery is just one of the many ways Pry cleverly dismantles their own cages. It is not necessarily your sanity that they beg you to question, but perhaps the rigid outline of what you deem sanity to be. Or maybe they just want you to get out of your own head and have some synth-filled fun. You can find out tomorrow.

Written by Manon Bushong | Photo by Ivan Lagos
Wesley Wolffe Breaks Fixations on New Single “Words” | Interview

May 16th, 2025

If you have been following this site for a while now, you may have heard the name Wesley Wolffe tossed around at some point. Following the release of his sophomore album Good Kind back at the beginning of 2024, Wolffe’s sweaty and deliberate style of punk music has held a grip on those that have come across it, and those that have been even luckier to have caught the Wesley Wolffe band live in action. Today Wolffe returns with his new single “Words”, the first release he’s offering since his move from New Orleans to Brooklyn as he showcases his new band and marking the first taste of what is going to be a two song EP that he is releasing in full next month.

With a slick pronunciation of the drums, Wolffe’s roughly tempered wail comes through, unfretted and unguarded, as “Words” breaks apart instrumental fixations – shifting from an impenetrable wall to coordinated expositions of harsh post-punk melodies and commanding vocals. Playing with his longtime guitar maestro Jeremy Mock (Face of Ancient Gallery), Wolffe now introduces his latest bandmates Nick Pedroza and Sebi Duzian from Bedridden fame to bust open Wolffe’s dynamic and intuitive sound. “Words” is presented as a bad dream, a contusion of reality and what may lie beyond what we deem the subconscious. But after being diagnosed with OCD, Wolffe finds himself lingering in the paranoia that his brain plays with him, a white knuckled grip, a deck of cards slapped down beyond his command as he runs away, looking for a justification, a plea or an answer to anything that would ease the obsessions.

We recently got to catch up with Wesley Wolffe to talk about playing live with his new band, changing his writing process and how “Words” came to be.

Listen to “Words” premiering here on the ugly hug.

Shea Roney: You have two new songs coming out soon. The first two songs from Wesley Wolffe after you moved to New York. How are you feeling about it all?

WW: I feel pretty excited about it. I kind of have zero expectations for how it’ll do on the Internet just cause I think I had pretty lofty expectations for the last release. So this time, I’m just like, you know, whatever happens, happens.

SR: I know that balancing expectations was a challenge for you the past two album releases you had.

WW: Yeah, whenever I go back and listen, I mean, it’s cool and I really like the songs, but I think after some time passes you can approach your former releases with a clear mind.

SR: Looking back, I mean personally as a fan, I’m putting those records on quite often. But I can imagine them being part of you for so long, obviously anyone looks back and sees them differently. Is there a new light that has been shed on these previous releases?

WW: All the Good Kind songs I don’t really love the recorded version of them that much, but we’re playing a ton of those songs live. And recently, with this band, our live show has gotten really, really tight and much, much more aggressive. It was already pretty aggressive, but now it’s like we’re fully a punk band and we play these songs like a punk band does. And to me, that’s really exciting. So when I watch videos of us performing live in New York, I’m like, ‘oh, this is so fucking cool.’ But then I listen to the recordings, and I’m like, ‘damn it, just doesn’t hit the same’ [laughs]. But that’s also a really cool place to be, because I feel like it’s pretty rare for bands these days to sound better than their recordings, you know?

SR: Your music has always been aggressive, but saying it’s more aggressive live and having that need, that want and that pleasure you get from playing more aggressively, where do you think that comes from?

WW: I think for me, if I go to a show, and I’m watching a band, and they’re kind of just like statues and just sort of standing there, then I’m bored. So if I were to watch a band, I would want them to perform like the way that we perform, because we all move around a ton and scream and get in your face. And it’s also just exciting, like these songs are songs, like we’re not improvising, but the way that we play them now, there is a lot more room for just weird shit to happen. There’s just a new element that’s unpredictable. The way these guys will play it, too, because they’re all professionals, they truly make it their own. So, what happens is we end up playing them just really fucking hard and really fast, just because it’s fun as hell for us. To answer your question, I think it’s just fucking fun.

SR: So your new song “Words”, a lot of our conversations in the past have been about how your writing style has been this sort of detached lens, about these characters, but still aimed at you personally. Is this something that you have continued on as you start writing more songs?

WW: Recently, no. With every new song that I’ve been writing in the past year, I have kind of stepped away from that. Now, “Words” is just about a year and a half old, so the song is about a whole host of things. I’m the main character of the song, but it’s not necessarily about anything that’s ever happened to me before.

I wrote the song first and then wrote the lyrics later. The chords have a flat 5th, or a tritone, for every single chord in it, like an evil interval. The church, back in the day, that interval was banned because they thought it would summon the devil or something. It’s used to evoke a sense of unease, and it’s always one that I gravitate towards when I’m writing songs, because, you know, I feel uneasy a lot. The song is about paranoia and focusing on facial features and trying to read people. It’s like making up all these weird stories in your brain about what people might be thinking of you. The end of the song is about me getting pushed off of a cliff by this group of people because of something that I did, but I don’t know what it was.

SR: Did you allow yourself to follow this paranoia in ways that you didn’t see coming? Or was this story crafted with something you had in your mind previously?

WW: It just all sort of came to me. At that point in my life I was in New Orleans and I just recently got diagnosed with OCD. I was talking to my therapist about it, and just talking about all of the different ways that OCD can manifest itself, and one thing I was worried about was false memory OCD. The paranoia aspect, getting pushed off a cliff and murdered for something that I was unaware of doing was like, maybe I did do something, but I can’t remember it, or like, am I having false memory OCD? What’s the deal here?

SR: You mentioned that you wrote these songs a while ago while you still lived in New Orleans. Now living in New York, do these two songs represent a transitional period for you at all? Are there parts of you and New Orleans still in them, or are you looking to have them be a way to move forward?

WW: I wrote them in the midst of some OCD delusional spells. I think it’s understandable that I’d like to leave that in the past [laughs]. However, as you know, these are issues I’ll most likely continue to battle with for the most of my life. So they remain relevant to me. I see them less as a transition or more of a chapter closing. So I guess a way to move forward is a good way to describe how I feel towards em. These are the last songs I wrote in New Orleans that I plan to release. So I’ll be moving on pretty soon

You can listen to “Words” and Wolffe’s past releases everywhere now. The second single from the EP is set to be released next month.

Written by Shea Roney | Photo by Manon Bushong
Red PK is in Full Bloom | Interview

May 15th, 2025

Chicago, known for their erratic springtime weather, strikes once again. At first, what was once a bright and radiant mid-seventies day, the kind people dream about during the winter hibernation months, flipped into a sub-fifties wind turbine masterpiece within an hour. The vicious Chicago wind pierces our flesh like a Ric Flair knife-edged chop during the interview. Andy PK, who records music as Red PK, sits atop a hill in historic Humboldt Park overlooking the iconic skyline. There’s a feeling of endless amounts of possibilities in his burgeoning musical career, as there are skyscrapers in the mammoth metropolis.

PK welcomes me with his naturally warm smile on this blustery April evening, wearing a navy blue collared shirt, light wash jeans, and white low-top sneakers. Their hair is mixtures of orange, pink, and red like a perfectly scooped order of sherbet ice cream from Margie’s Candies. PK is still on an adrenaline high from a few weeks prior, performing in three separate bands (Free Range, Hemlock, Red PK) on the same night at the tucked-away hole-in-the-wall bar known as The Empty Bottle.

PK is a staple in the Chicago indie music scene, known for his powerful yet silky smooth live performances where he frequently plays on either guitar, pedal steel, or even both for numerous bands such as Free Range, Hemlock, Tobacco City, and under his solo work Red Pk which are his core four bands. But, there’s more; they’re also a touring guitarist at times for Options, Soft Surface, and starting this summer, Squirrel Flower. In each separate iteration, PK naturally melds his skills to whatever each band’s specific requirements are. There’s a reason why bands want PK around, he can shred guitar with the best of them.

This year, with their musical career blooming like a cherry blossom in spring, they quit their day job as a marketer to fulfill their dream of being a full-time musician. “I quit my job ultimately because I had no time for myself. I was saying no to gigs I wanted to do because I was working my job. Even on tours, I was working from the van the entire time. I would be on conference calls, five minutes before soundcheck, trying to wrap it up real quick so I can get out there.” PK says softly.

The sensation of being spread too thin can be a crippling feeling for anyone. Now, since the weight of a 9-to-5 job has been lifted, PK is starting to get a better handle on the freelance musician lifestyle with the assistance of a shared Google calendar with every band’s schedule. Maturing into their craft, PK is better now at keeping track of all their gigs and communicating more effectively on their booking dates. Also, realizing how critical it is to carve out personal time for themselves is necessary. These days, it centers on watching NBA Playoff games with Free Range’s Sofia Jensen.

Even when there are fleeting moments of struggle popping up every so often when keeping track of their gig calendar, PK can refocus themselves. “In times when I feel overwhelmed, I take a step back and ask myself, “What am I stressed out about playing music with my friends? I feel honored to have a bunch of work come my way. Five years ago, I never would have guessed that I would even be doing this stuff.”

Five years ago was when PK moved from the West Chicagoland suburbs to the big city in hopes of finding himself. This was a trying time with the COVID lockdown combined with a sense of being directionless from a passionless job and a search for a community connection. They turned to learning a new instrument with the hopes of putting themselves out into the world. “I picked up the pedal steel guitar, I always thought it sounded beautiful,” PK says.

Shortly after venues started to open back up in 2021, PK received their big opportunity that they were waiting for. Their first break came when the manager of the “Cowboy Crooner” himself, Andrew Sa, reached out to see if PK could do spot duty on pedal steel for a show. PK had only been playing the pedal steel for three months until that point. “I knew I could do that. I worked my ass off playing those songs a million times at home. After that, with Andrew, people started hitting me up to play in their projects.” PK says.

Through the phenomenon of twangy folk music, there was a surging need for pedal steel players across the city. For the next two years living in Chicago, PK became the “pedal steel guy” around the indie scene. But through that moniker, other artists started to notice PK’s prolific talent with the guitar. “I love pedal steel, but the guitar feels like it’s an extension of my body,” PK says. The two-year slow burn of becoming a full-fledged Ax man finally started to get some heat.

For guidance on his career, PK leaned on the community they were starting to build with the help of one of their best friends, recording engineer/musician Seth Engel. Engel served as essentially PK’s musical version of Yoda, minus the inverted style of speaking. The wise beyond his years veteran presence showed them the ropes around the local scene and connected him with like-minded people that gave them a sense of home.

“My family birthday parties or Christmas, after dinner we would get the guitars and sing songs together.” Think something similar to The Osmonds’ Family, but a thousand times cooler. Music was instilled at an early age for PK. They received their first guitar at age three from their parents. At age eight, they officially got their first lessons.

“Everyone in my family plays music, so there was always a lot of music going on at home that was like, definitely really influential to me.” PK reminisces. Through PK’s formative years, their father, who also played slide guitar in a lot of bar bands, influenced their early musical taste from the likes of guitar hero icons Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan. You can hear some of those classic blues riffs by PK sprinkled every so often on their projects with Free Range and Hemlock.

April 10th, Red PK’s gameday of being on the bill three separate occasions is here. A lot of preparation was put into all the performances to make sure they went off without a hitch. “I was rehearsing all day, every day, sometimes even three times a day,” PK says. The night couldn’t have gone any better. They were stoically strumming away from the opening set to the closing. They were in total command, like Steven Seagal in an action flick. I don’t think there was anything PK couldn’t have done that night at the venue. If they had asked them to sell popcorn or even to go start slinging vodka martinis behind the bar, there was no doubt they wouldn’t be able to execute it perfectly.

A celebratory feel was in the air the entire night. Free Range celebrated their terrific indie folk record Lost & Found, Hemlock celebrated their year-and-a-half journey touring, and of course, Red Pk’s five-year journey of not only becoming who they were always meant to be, but also doing it with the community and friends that they now love like family. “In a lot of ways, nothing’s changed. The vibe of my friendships is similar to that of being with my family; we get together and hang out, play guitar, and sing. I’ve felt such a sense of community, and I’ve made some of my best friends through the music scene. I cherish so many parts of that.”

So, what’s next on the horizon for Red PK? “I have my first solo record coming out this year. It feels like a culmination of a lot of firsts for me, so I’m excited to get that out there.” They currently have only two songs listed on their audio streaming pages, but that’s sure to change rapidly. PK promises to have some alternative folk elements, but also some power pop that will surely get people buzzing. They mentioned their affinity for the Y2k pop juggernauts Sugar Ray and having a desire to be in a similar ethos to them. The album sounds extremely promising, and they are looking forward to it being out in the world.

Finding one’s place in life is a grueling journey. Many people try to find the meaning of our existence and what they want out of life, but to no avail. The number of the actual amount of people living out their dreams is so minuscule that it can be frightening to think about. But there’s always hope behind that door. No matter your age or living situation, if someone puts the work in, they can find their purpose. There is a genuine beauty when a person finds that reason for being. Red PK has found that reason. This is a new beginning, just like a flower in bloom.

You can listen to Red PK’s previously released two song EP and other collaborations out everywhere now. Red is currently on tour with Free Range and is gearing up to play guitar in Squirrel Flower this summer.

Interview and Photos by David Williams
Looking Through the Clutter with Friendship | Interview + Guest List vol. 57

May 14th, 2025

“I mean, I have too much stuff,” Dan Wriggins says. “Shit, I’ve got a van full of too much stuff here,” shifting the phone to offer a glimpse to what was behind his driver’s seat; chair legs astray, boxes stacked with potential means, comforters keeping it all secure from the rough bumps of U.S. highway driving. En route from Iowa City back to Philly, Wriggins was parked, discussing a line he had stolen from folk artist Kath Bloom, recalling a time going through her garage that was also packed with too much stuff; “everything we have is given to us”, she said to him, the phrase now living on the song “Free Association”. “That line is something I wrote down while hanging out with her years ago. The song has nothing to do with her. It’s about other stuff, if it’s about anything really.” He continues, “it should go without saying that songs are usually lies. They are not a direct representation of things that happened.” It’s not necessarily a farce, breaking a “write-what-you-know” structure that every writer has been told at least once, but rather becomes an acknowledgment of the craft and how to embrace a story worth telling.

Dan Wriggins fronts the Philly-based group Friendship, who are sharing their highly anticipated new album Caveman Wakes Up this Friday. Following 2022’s beloved Love The Stranger, an album of epic road trip caliber. Marking the second release on their label home at Merge Records, Friendship continues to push the bounds of storytelling as Caveman makes a break for their most expansive release yet. Going further into the looseness of alt-country and Chesnutt-esque melodic fixations, there is a lost familiarity that a Friendship tune brings out from its hiding – the crunching of an unmarked gravel path, the intensity of humming a tune you can’t quite recognize. Caveman Wakes Up is littered with these feelings that begin to fill in the little gaps that we didn’t know were missing, and quite frankly, didn’t know were ever there in the first place.

“I think of it in the world of a Gary Larson The Far Side comic,” Wriggins says about the album’s title; primitive, comprehensive, funny –- a moment from the opening line off the standout track “Hollow Skulls”. A lot of the humor that resides in Larson’s use of Neanderthals is in the irony of trial and error, a glimpse at the earliest stages of habits that we consider to be of modern normalcy. Whether it be a spear falling short of a wooly mammoth with onlookers yelling “airrrr spearrrr”, or putting on a suit and tie to count rocks and sticks with corporate intensity, these quips become universal to cursing out junk radiators or watching dark clouds cover your wedding day, as Wriggins asks, “did people before us have the same grievances and annoyances that we do?” The line widens the lens from minor frustrations to asking if we’ve ever really learned how to balance very human concepts like dreams and expectations. “It’s sort of a joke about universality,” he says.

That universality is embedded in telling a good story, one that is easy to pick up, toss around for a bit, and put in your pocket for later on. These characters, some love-sick, some lost, other’s balancing grief with rusty reflections, feel like someone we know, but more importantly, someone we can see ourselves in. Wriggins’ writing gets coined often for playing with the ordinary, writing love letters of sorts to the mundane and the underappreciated, but it’s not something he particularly looks out for. “I’ve never really understood that,” he admits, questioning the description. “What do other people write about then?”

Whether singing of devotion or defeat, humorous quips mixed with an unpredictability that resonates just as casual as it is damning to the restless feelings in these stories, Wriggins doesn’t romanticize the specificity in the language he uses. But what Caveman does is build upon the spaces to confront whatever it is these stories set out to do. Where a song like “Free Association” plays towards love, yet we don’t quite know where it will lead. “I thought I was wise, thought I knew about love”, he sings, striking this contradiction in the very first line. But as a Friendship song goes, we put trust in the companionship that these feelings become, following each path that appears on its own, learning to question what we thought we knew, and knowing that the outcome will be worth it in the end. “In a real basic sense,” Wriggins says, “I think of it as you gotta follow the song wherever it goes.”

“If you started writing something that happened and that was about something that you felt really strongly about, like, if I came up with these lines because they had to do with this heartbreak. But then I get further in and write some more and end up writing a chorus that really has nothing to do with heartbreak and has something to do with some other emotion that I feel like I can write about better, well, then you gotta follow that. You gotta delete the first part that perhaps was what you started off intending to write about,” Wriggins says. “In a way it feels like a very technical way of writing. I know some folks who don’t like to do it this way, but if something actually happened that does come through in the song, it might just be a coincidence, you know? I certainly would always prioritize a really good line over something that truly actually reflects something that happened to me.”

“Anything you’re writing ever, you’re always looking for balance,” Wriggins recognizes in practice. “Sometimes you need to be heavy handed, but a lot of the time, if you’re saying something that’s too intense, you often want to, not make it lighter, but make it more reflective of the truth, which is going to be pretty complicated. So you might add some other type of detail. I think a problem that I still have is trying to put too much into a song,” he admits, the complications not lost on him. “I mean, this might be kind of cowardly,” he continues, “but I’ve really come to believe that the medium of popular song is geared towards communicating one emotion really strongly. That’s what a pop or a country song can do really, really well, better than any other art form. And of course, sometimes you want to be ambitious and you want to push what it’s built for, but at other times I feel like, man, I want to get back to basics.”

Beyond Wriggins’ writing, Friendship’s sonic explorations are brought to life by the crew he has surrounded himself with for almost a decade now, consisting of Michael Cormier-O’Leary (Hour, Dear Life Records), Peter Gill (2nd Grade) and Jon Samuels (MJ Lenderman and The Wind, Dear Life Records). Songs like “Betty Ford” and “Wildwood in January” play with patient pacing, finding solace in the contradictions of tempered folk music and former first ladies. “Tree of Heaven” rips the album wide open with Gill’s harsh, static tones and Cormier-O’Leary’s conversational drumming while the grueling demeanor of “Resident Evil” creates a stirring awareness to the intuitive focus that the band accomplishes on this record. Especially the experimentation with synthesizers and saxophone at the climax of “Free Association” stands out as a fresh new taste to the already rich arrangements that reside on the album. “Often if you try something that’s really out there in the moment, you’re going to think, well, of course, we’re not keeping that. That’s just me experimenting.” Wriggins says, recalling Gill’s idea to add in these new voicings on the last day of recording. “And once in a while you do keep it,” he laughs.

But over the years, as Friendship continue to push the bounds of their sound, it’s noticeable that there is a type of sonic progression that solidifies each album in its own territory. “You got to be experimenting with new things, both for yourself and for listeners,” Wriggins says. “But you also have to still be including stuff you’re good at because you’re the expert. Over the years I’ve been developing this theory that you have a spectrum,” recalling a time he was talking to Kurt Wagner, the stamina behind the prolific project Lambchop. “On one hand, you can keep doing the same thing over and over again that you’re really good at, and on the other hand, you could do a totally new project every single time you make something. If the next Friendship album was that we all decided to make sculptures, it would be pretty crappy, because we’re not sculptors, you know? But the other side of just doing the same thing over and over again kind of sucks, too.”

“The process of knowing what is really good and what to keep and what to cut for the production and the arrangement is a kind of democratic thing,” Wriggins says, discussing the functionality of the group. Each member has spent the better half of a decade practicing their craft in their individual routes, but when it comes to Friendship, it’s a constant back and forth on ideas. “I kind of trust their musical impulses better than mine,” Wriggins laughs. “But when it comes to lyrics, I do really know what I think is good. I’m usually able to hear it myself and say, yep, that’s the type of thing I would listen to. Of course, you always are second guessing yourself and doubting things. But often the doubt is like, well, this is pretty good. Could I make it better?” He continues, “I think the other guys especially really liked recording this one more than other ones because we’re just better at messing around. And hopefully we just keep on getting better.”

Embracing the characteristics that defined their past albums — the tenderness of Dreamin’, the solitude of Shock Out of Season and the camaraderie of Love the Stranger, Caveman Wakes Up is a powerhouse of enduring complexions. As each track fills the open spaces with both intuition and intensity, building up a collection of all the stuff they found and all that was once given, this band once again breaks the divide between what it means to experience and live art; a capture of the subtly, grace and often after-thought beauty that has become synonymous with the stories told by Friendship.

Along with this feature, the members of Friendship are taking over this week’s guest list at the ugly hug. Sharing The Cave Window, “three songs from each guy, all with some type of connection to the record itself, very loose inspiration.”

Caveman Wakes Up is set to be released this Friday, May 16th via Merge Records. You can pre-order the album now, as well as on CD and vinyl.

Written by Shea Roney | Photos by Charlie Boss
Sunflecks Build Trust on Debut LP Fools Errand | Interview

May 2nd, 2025

Sunflecks is the project of Bellingham-based artist Forrest Meyer, who earlier this month shared his debut LP under the name titled Fools Errand via Bud Tapes. Living a life pulled by creativity and moved by song, there is a casualty in the way Meyer interacts with music, having been writing, as well as working as a guitar repair hand at Champlin Guitars for some time now. But that doesn’t mean that the music that Meyer makes is lost from any sort of intense intentionality, but rather is as natural as his routine day-to-day, down to the breaths he takes without thought. Fools Errand embraces a collection of voices, a dedication to how music should be communicated between him and the open spaces in which he inhabits.

“And I don’t know what to do, my soul has a hole too, takin’ to leak out. Kettle is on, it’s singing its song, I grab a mug with Garfield on it” – an inherently brief story, but one that brings focus to both lingering pain and a singular moment of personalized characterization. There is something to be said when first listening to Meyer’s writing, where your own minor memories or complex feelings find ways to click with the images and individual lines that he writes such as this one. Sticking to the simple and worn in, Meyer recounts minor moments with clarity, like hanging out with a friend on “Proximity” or tossing a coin into a well on “Toss a Coin”. But this simplicity doesn’t get lost in a cluttered past, or even borrow from what may be in the future as it takes claim on the present, as open as it can be. It’s an album that not only plays with familiarity, but one that asks why these instances become familiar to us in the first place. Where placement and perspective are intertwined with who we’ve become; how much change has this Garfield mug really understood, and how does it see me now? Meyer’s words are experienced and beautiful, a dusty fortune, a prized keepsake to hold on to for when you need it most – and with each stagnant breath of musical instinct offered from his bandmates, Sunflecks paints a picture much larger than we could have ever expected.

We recently got to chat with Meyer about Fools Errand, restructuring collaboration within Sunflecks, and the practice of cone spotting.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Shea Roney: How does it feel to have your debut LP out? You had a nice run of tapes with Bud Tapes too!

Forrest Meyer: Feeling really good. We initially started with a 30 run of tapes, and they all sold out before the album was released, which was great that one single is enough to convince people to order one. So we did another run of 30 or so. I think there’s a couple left on Bandcamp, and I’ve got 12 here. It’s been a smallish run, but it feels like people have received it well and I’ve gotten a lot of nice words about it.

SR: That’s right, it was just one song! How does it feel that one song of yours has the capacity to build enough trust with people?

FM: During the recording of it I never really thought that “Proximity” would be the one. That one was funny, too, because we recorded that song in the session, and then when my drummer [Amanda Glover] and I went back to do the first round of mixing, we decided to fully re-record that song. So it’s just the drums and then I overdubbed the organ on top of it. It’s from a completely different session.

SR: What made you want to start over on “Proximity”?

FM: I felt like certain songs had too much going on in the first recording. The guitar part on it, the picking pattern changes for every chord, so it’s a complex guitar part that takes up a lot of space. But one of the reasons we re-recorded it was it just didn’t need the amount of instrumentation that the rest of the album had. It just worked well as a clean, small thing.

SR: What part of that sparsity do you think helped progress this song into something you were comfortable with?

FM: When you’re in a fun recording studio that has a lot of instruments in it, you’re going to feel like you should try and put melotron on everything. But then one of my bandmates had this idea for the album, because there’s six people in the group total, that we should have a song on the album where someone is not playing. Like, there’s one song with no drums, there’s a song with no piano, there’s a song with no violin, like everything comes in and out, but it’s all kind of equally coming in and out. It’s quite a fun challenge to figure out how to have a lot of instrumentation, but still keep a minimal kind of sound.

SR: How did this configuration of Sunflecks come to be? Have you been playing with these folks for awhile now?

FM: We’ve kept a pretty consistent band. I gathered all these people for that recording session for the most part, and the album’s been kind of a couple of years in the making. But I’ve been playing as Sunflecks as a solo thing for a couple years, and the lineup has been pretty consistent I’d say.

SR: You noted that this is a highly communal piece of work, taking inspiration from the people around you. What was the process of working with others, and in what ways did it push you to bring these songs to their newfound life?

FM: The way that this project has been run, for my part at least, is I write a song, or have something that feels good enough to bring to the group, and then we play with it a little bit and get everyone’s input and ideas on it. More recently, we’ve been going a lot deeper. We call it sectionals, it’s still the whole band, but say we’re orchestrating a violin and clarinet part for example, we’ll go in and all give ideas. It gets challenging when you’re in the group, but you’re working on a single person’s part of a song and then everyone’s just sitting around. But I think [sectionals] is a really cool opportunity to maybe ask Amanda on the drums, as someone who isn’t playing a melodic instrument, what do you think of what the melody’s doing in this part? Communication is always the hardest thing, but we’ve been working really hard on sharing opinions and preferences and ideas. It’s been a really cool and beautiful practice.

SR: What you were saying earlier, taking out voices every once in a while, did those sectionals help lead you guys to understand your sound and the roles of individual voicings, either in their presence or their absence?

FM: When I got the studio dates to record the album, half the band was invited with a two week turnaround to learn all the songs. There wasn’t a whole lot of time between, like, ‘hey, do you guys want to join a band?’ and then, ‘we have studio dates if you want to record?’. We recorded a fair amount of music, there’s a lot of really good stuff, but there’s almost too much really good stuff there. So in the mixing of the album, there were lots of decisions where I was sitting with the engineer, talking about, ‘we probably shouldn’t have pedal steel, piano and violin.all playing at the same time here, right?’. So mixing in and out certain things, depending on where they fit in the song, we wanted to be more intentional on the writing of the song, and then we mess more with harmony, or work out how violin, pedal steel and piano can play the same exact thing, but thirds apart, and maybe that would sound cool. We just wanted to practice more intentionality and listening and even experimentation as well. Especially hearing out everyone’s ideas and running with them to see where they go.

SR: A lot of the narratives you write seem to manage such large themes through such a miniscule and personal lens. What stories were the easiest for you to tell in terms of details, and did challenging yourself to think more locally help bring understanding to them?

FM: A lot of this album is processing. It’s very much using the everyday things that happen, like walking home — there’s a lot of walking on the album. I tend to write lyrics and songs that are very personal for me. It can be hard to talk with someone about complex feelings. So the way that feels better for me is I can sit, and I can use tonality and wordplay, because, like the human experience, it is very rich, but most of the time, you can only say one word at a time. And sometimes there’s emotions where what you’re doing is a happy thing, but there’s a sad undertone to it. It’s hard to communicate those things, so being able to have multiple tools in the toolbox to do that is important. In my head, I’ll toy around with words for a long time until something kind of clicks, and it feels like that’s what I meant. With the song “Proximity”, that song is about an afternoon with my friend Dolores, just listening to music. But the larger metaphorical meaning is thinking back on that time when I was in Olympia. It’s easy to be like, ‘wow! What a nice, beautiful time!’ But then there’s a lot of things around that time that were really challenging, but I’m not thinking about them as much as the nice little thing. A mirror is reflecting everything all the time, but you only see what’s directly in front of you.

SR: And as a listener, listening to your words about what’s in front of you really repositions your presence in a moment. How do you ground yourself and be present in your art and the way you approach storytelling?

It’s fairly automatic in a lot of ways. The way I’ve set my life up, it really surrounds music. I do guitar repair at a music shop, so every day I’m playing different instruments. So in the back of my head, I’m working through the chord progressions and just listening to so much music every day. As a writer and musician, there isn’t a whole lot of super scholarly stuff about my process. The people in my band I play with are all very gifted musicians, and most of them can communicate theory, and I’m starting to get there, but I just don’t think about that stuff. It’s funny when you go up to somebody and say, ‘I wrote this thing’, and then you play it and then they’re like, ‘whoa! That’s really interesting with the blah blah blah!’ I use music as a way to parse out my days. It’s our way of taking the things that I’m thinking and feeling and just trying to understand them – I feel like if I find the right sounds and tempo that make the words feel good and everything clicks, then it’s like, ‘well, maybe that’s how I feel?’ Also there’s so much play in it. It’s just a way to have fun, and I love the weekly excuse to hang out with my best friends and make music together in a scheduled way.

SR: I do want to ask about Champlin Guitars. In what ways has opening the door to your surrounding community impacted you both artistically and personally?

FM: Yeah, it’s a really beautiful thing! At the guitar shop we’ve hosted a lot of really nice shows. It’s kind of my way of giving back to the community. But these shows are also like a touring safety net for friends. A couple months ago, Lily Thomas was on tour, and a bunch of friends drove to Seattle to see her play. But it was when the LA Fires were happening, and they were supposed to go down south for the rest of their tour, but they had to cancel all those dates. So, with a two-day turnaround, we made a poster, found another person to play, and did a Wednesday show at the shop, and still a bunch of friends came out. In my mind, that’s the dream of what the shop shows are for. There’s a lot of trust and I’m eternally grateful for how sweet and thoughtful the Bellingham music scene is.

SR: And then I am curious about Cone spotting on your Instagram. What is this practice?

FM: It’s been going on for about two years now. Cone spotting is, I mean, especially now with the moral debacle of being on social media, it’s a nice thing to have so I can continue to let people know what I’m up to. I don’t have that much going on to please the algorithms, so the cone spotting thing started off with looking through my camera roll and noticing that I’ve taken a lot of pictures of traffic cones in funny situations. I posted those, but then I started seeing more traffic cones in funny situations, and I thought this could be a cool thing. I think there’s a funny aspect to it, and there’s the hunt for it which is really fun. But something I love is the cognitive dissonance of seeing something that’s supposed to be warning, something engineered to be obvious, but when it’s in the wrong environment, or not doing its job, those dissonant things are really fun for me. And it was a great foil to get away with posting semi-regularly without having to be directly personal. And then I started getting submissions and it grew into this thing where I feel like I accidentally trained people — it’s weird how many people think about me when they see a traffic cone. The amount of times that people have gone through the effort of seeing it, taking a picture of it and sending it to me. It became really interesting.

You can listen to Fools Errand out on Bandcamp now, as well as order a tape via Bud Tapes.

Written by Shea Roney | Photos Courtesy of Sunflecks