“Had to put the dog down / Ninety-eight degrees out.”
Philly export Soup Dreams comes out of the gate swinging with slice-of-life lyricism and classic guitar fuzz on their debut LP Hellbender. It is an amalgamation of intimate confessionals with songs like “Nothing” and “Dust”, and heavier, electric-driven offerings on “Stray Cat” and “Radiator Baby”. Country sensibilities meld with alternative roots in “Familiar,” where pedal steel cuts through lines about a sweaty bike ride home and playing hooky à la Wednesday.
The indie rock four-piece have gained notoriety through the embrace of the local scene, one that founder Isaac Shalit discovered after they graduated from Oberlin Conservatory in 2021. Joined by Emma Kazal (bass/vocals), Nigel Law (drums) and Winnie Malcarney (guitar), the group found acclaim in their first EP “Twigs for Burning.” With a myriad of musical backgrounds, Soup Dreams teeters the genre line, tied together by the rawness of Shalit’s vocals which somehow always sound like they are imparting a secret to the listener.
I sat down with Shalit to discuss the album and the major themes of Soup Dreams, which they list as, “queer and trans identity, magic and the divine, animal familiars, and the siren pull of the open road.”
“Hellbender” is your first full-length release. Were these tracks all written for the album, or combined from past projects?
IS: I wrote the songs over a 3 year period when I moved to Philly in late 2021. The newest ones I finished writing right before we recorded – the song “Nothing” was kind of figured out in the studio, and I remember it feeling so free and exciting, like there was electricity flowing around the room. At the beginning I definitely wasn’t thinking about recording an album, a few songs even predate the band itself. It was always a dream for all of us to do a full length though, so once the body of work started to solidify it was a natural next thing. The name “Hellbender” is from way before we had even a tracklist, or probably half the songs, and I put it in “The Shining” lyrics as a little easter egg.
The songwriting throughout these tracks is poignant and vulnerable, with lines like, “Still don’t know if I’m a person worth keeping,” serving a gut punch. Often, they’re set to danceable melodies. Is this juxtaposition purposeful? What’s your compositional process like?
IS: As a songwriter I’ve always suffered from bummer disease and one of my biggest fears is having a whole set of songs that just makes people stand and nod their head. I wanted to be in a band and rock out so badly. I think the influence of everyone else in the band does a lot to create that juxtaposition you’re talking about. I’m not always happy with how vulnerable the lyrics are, but it’s what comes out so there’s not a ton of control involved!
“Dust” is a notable moment of tenderness, tapping more into classic singer/songwriter sensibilities. Who are the greatest influences on this folkier side of Soup Dreams?
IS: I was blatantly trying to write a Hop Along song when I wrote “Dust,” and landed literally so far off the mark I almost don’t want to admit that was the goal. It was a moment in my songwriting when I was trying really hard to diversify my chord progressions and add interest there. But I was clearly listening to a lot of softer stuff too – Florist (intimacy and environment), Lucinda Williams (we mention her a lot, the goat), Diane Cluck (freakishness/whimsy), Lomelda (harmony/chord motion, tone).
Which track are you most excited to play in upcoming shows?
IS: We’ve been playing all these songs for a long time actually, although it’s our “new album” there’s a whole other crop of songs that we were just starting to break in at shows right before Hellbender came out. We had to re-learn how to play the album. We’ve always had a tumultuous relationship with the song “Stray Cat” – everyone kind of hates playing it and we joke that sometimes it feels like a humiliation ritual, but I really like it so I sort of make everyone keep trying. When it’s good it’s really good.
Tell me about the Philly DIY scene. How have they embraced you, and what do you hope to bring to audiences from that community when you tour?
IS: The scene is the whole deal honestly. Our whole sound comes from it. Whenever we’re in other cities for tour I can’t help but think about how we’d be different if we came from there. Philly has this scrappiness and aggressiveness, and love for each other, that you really don’t find anywhere else (at least in the radius we can cover in Nigel’s Subaru). Also Philly has hands-down the most trans and leftist music community. So I guess we are trying to bring that, like we’re bringing our HRT injections and a PFLP flag.
You can listen to Hellbender out everywhere now.
Written by Joy Freeman | Featured Photo Courtesy of Soup Dreams
Where did your summer go? Not just this one, but all the long ones in the past: you look back through hazy memories, blurred by six-packs of Miller High Life, “a pinch of good luck / a hit of bud,” the seesaw back and forth between the mundanity of your shitty job along with the joys and perils of your weekend haunts, and playing guitar in bed. The trip you had planned and failed to take with your friends recedes in the distance. We’re Headed to the Lake from Guitar doesn’t just take us into the lake: its songs circle its edges, reflecting the frenetic energy of youth via the twists, turns, warmth, and searing heat all present in the songwriting.
Following last year’s Casting Spells on Turtlehead and his 2022 self-titled, Guitar, the solo project of Portland musician Saia Kuli, expands and refines his maximalist bedroom rock project with this new LP from Julia’s War. At its core, Guitar’s music is fuzzed-out indie rock, but while the album retains the self-produced quality of his past work, there are some noticeable changes, with Kuli looking back to push his music forward. “It’s kinda corny,” Kuli admits over email, “but this album really was me going ‘back to my roots’ both sonically and lyrically. That’s why I think it made sense to focus-in on places from my past and present.”
It’s hard to pinpoint Guitar’s pretty idiosyncratic sound. As an artist, different aspects of Kuli’s music have been described in the past as slacker rock, post-punk, no-wave, “warped shoegaze,” “negative, angular rock.” Pointing to his label contemporaries, both formerly on Spared Flesh and currently on Julia’s War, gives you a rough constellation of where his music is located. All of this is genuinely helpful, though I find that pointing out three major strands to his songwriting is most useful for wrapping my head around Guitar and this project in particular: 1.) Guitar as a producer, 2.) Kuli’s involvement in Portland DIY, and 3.) his adoration of 80s and 90s indie rock.
Especially with his last EP, past coverage of his work have rightfully acknowledged Guitar’s hip hop origins, making instrumentals for his brother kAVAfACEunder the moniker of KULI. It feels most evident with the Stones Throw Records-type samples he’s often included in past projects, but you can sense his talent as a producer by his use of Ableton as a central tool in his songwriting in the past: his jagged songs get much of their character from Kuli dramatically shifting the listener between different dynamics, using bizarre guitar tones, and introducing other weird sounds that you might only land on by scrolling through a list of synth patches and dragging them onto the Arrangement View of your DAW. These sounds are littered across the entirety of the album. The third and final single “Chance to Win“, featuring sweetly-spoken vocals from Jontajshae Smith (Kuli’s wife who he’s featured on the standout track “Twin Orbits” from Casting Spells on Turtlehead and other tracks on his self-titled), which by the end of the track features these floaty violin synth stabs that weave in and out of the bass groove that remains. The end of “Counting on a Blowout” repitches a vocal sample of a “hahaha,” chopping it up alongside the final riff.
But with this in mind, it’s important to note that this album feels pretty distinct from his last project precisely because of Guitar’s different approaches to engineering, mixing, and production. “Largely due to my friend Morgan [Snook] (who co-produced the album), I played parts all the way through in one or two takes (instead of looping and chopping takes), had a real bass (as opposed to pitching down my guitar), and my homie and former bandmate Nikhil Wadha laid down ripping drum parts for all the songs,” Kuli explains. Influenced by touring with the previous EP, this project was written with a live band in mind, and it’s felt.
Things sound noticeably brighter than before, opening the floor in the mix for more foundational elements of his music to shine a bit more. Programmed drums are traded in for Wadhwa’s tasteful live recordings on kit, giving the album newfound energy. Instead of the warped and pitch-shifted murmurs he would often deliver in his early work, Kuli’s vocals are much more at the forefront, evidenced by his initial two singles. Kuli’s goofy, easeful scatting on “Pizza for Everyone” feels like a vocal line Stephen Malkmus might sing; he belts out emo harmonies on the heart-pumping “Every Day Without Fail” (in addition to the hardcore screams at the end screamed with vocalist Zoe Tricoche). Instead of replacing the weirdo charm of his previous work, the more polished production on the project, done alongside this broader list of collaborators, actually enhances the wide breadth of ideas Guitar has always explored throughout his work.
“This album was shaped by Portland in a big way,” Kuli declares. “I think part of that was a reaction to people thinking we were a Philadelphia band a few times on the East Coast and in the Midwest. That’s something I definitely take as a compliment, but it also made some hometown pride well up in me.” The aforementioned collaborators aren’t brand new. In addition to his production, Kuli cut his teeth in Portland’s DIY punk scene, playing with artists like Nick Normal, Gary Supply, and alongside his former labelmates on the unfortunately defunct local label Spared Flesh, that gained him associations with the egg punk and DIY rock and roll associated with underground rock tastemakers like Tremendo Garaje and tegosluchamPL.
This grimy, weirdo rock energy is infused throughout his work, and when we’re plunged into dissonance, it never feels out of left field since it already feels like we’ve been there from the start. The warm acoustic plucks at the start of “A+ for the Rotting Team” lead into a singsong-y buildup before Kuli remarks “time to go,” and a dissonant riff rings like an alarm before shuffling us into the power pop of the rest of the song. His song structures will have an A section that goes into a B section that goes into a C section into a D section, often never looking back (the lead single “Pizza for Everyone” lands far from where it starts) – out of a playful sense of indulgence and a gut instinct for the most interesting place for each song might go. Late 80s and 90s indie rock, the jangle and pop sensibilities of artists informed by the C86 / Glasgow scene like Jesus and Mary Chain, Teenage Fanclub, and more, but most evidently the lo-fi playfulness of American cult indie darlings like Pavement and Guided by Voices, the latter of whom Kuli has frequently cited as an influence in the past. This third pillar of Guitar’s music feels incredibly clear on We’re Headed to the Lake, where Kuli often sounds like he’s invoking Robert Pollard on several tracks, both in voice and creative tendencies: Kuli is also a songwriter brimming with a million ideas that he’s compelled to explore, even the short sparks of inspo. Tracks like “Ha”or “Office Clots”, with their brevity, serve less like interludes and more like the concise, brief song ideas of Bee Thousand. This influence is worn on the sleeve of this album. Kuli’s love for the lo-fi, slacker, and jangly indie rock infuses the project with a sun-drenched nostalgia that, when paired with a lot of the lyrical ideas that Guitar explores, gives the whole album a conceptual unity that’s been somewhat missing compared to the more mixtape-y nature of his previous projects.
Kuli’s desire to look backward is important thematically to this album, with his appreciation for his home showcased by the sentimentality for specifically his weekend haunts. “When I think of Portland, it’s specifically the rundown parts of town that lack Portlandia shout-outs that stick out to me. Corner stores, self-serve car washes, pawn shops, payday loan places, etc.” Kuli envisions Benson Lake a little while east of Portland when referring to the album’s title. “Really only a place you go if you grew up here, and it’s mostly families of the working-class sort that hang out there and barbecue and cool off.”
As Guitar looks backward to the places he grew up, some classic motifs arise: youthful desire, an insatiable need to hang out and escape boredom despite your empty pockets (“Nickels in the furniture / but no cash”). Sometimes Kuli leans into a serious sense of disquiet from that restlessness through his lyrics, as he croons on “A Toast For Tovarishch”, “I can’t sit around and wait.” In other songs there’s a sense of playfulness toward invoking youth, like in the tongue-in-cheek refrain of “The Chicks Just Showed Up” that point to the simple wins in life that change things for the better: “The chicks just showed up / they’re super tough / the coffee’s free.” Kuli frequently references games throughout the project, both invoking literal images of sporting events, like seeing another person on the jumbotron in “Pizza for Everyone” or winning a parlay in the “The Chicks Just Showed Up” (“cha-ching”), but also more gestural images and mantras that apply beyond a field, like new seasons beginning, striving to not “give up just yet” at the end of “A+ for the Rotting Team”, and going for broke in The Game Has Changed.
Guitar continues to do the latter with his guitar work: Kuli’s focus isn’t on virtuosic solos — although he displays some impressive chops throughout the project, with highlights on the Weezer-y “The Game Has Changed”, where the acoustic meanderings in the verses are later traded for a scorching lead line by the climax of the track — but instead on stuffing songs to the brim with shrewd guitar lines that call, respond, and bend to each other in interesting ways. In the center instrumental break of “Cornerland”, Kuli pits two spider-y guitar lines against each other on each side of the stereo mix, both racing in parallel to the driving bass line in the middle. The main guitar riff for “A Toast For Tovarishch”, though its continuous pedal tones maintain a warmth throughout the track, reveals a sense of unease with its stilted phrasing. Kuli is undeniably great at his instrument, but the real strength of Guitar’s guitar is the arrangements. This album continues Guitar’s sharp decision-making when it comes to stacking complementary guitar parts on top of and in response to one another and knowing when to hold back so those explosive moments of layers stacked upon layers feel even grander.
The ninth track on the album, “Pinwheel”, is a great encapsulation of the whole project: the lo-fi yet newly polished mix, the expansion on both his own style of songwriting and indulging his influences, the sound of youthful angst, and a maximal showing of all his cards by the end. In opposition to “Office Clots”, where Kuli is “stuck on the carousel,” rotting at work, this song spins the other direction. It’s a continuous buildup of elements, starting with spare, downstroked guitar chords, with Kuli looking through his memories and recalling his need to prove himself, “Now we got them where we want / All the usual weekend haunts / distant memories / we curse you first / we’ll catch up, somehow,” building and building until the final hook: “How we multiply / we formed a line / tear in your eye / need to send it off.” The song culminates with my favorite instrumental outro of the year, with the drums finally arriving to catch the groove of a brick-headed, gloriously simple chord progression, glistening synths soaring overhead, and a monstrously saturated, low-end lead guitar that brings us to the song’s end. It feels like fireworks set off over water.
We’re Headed to the Lake sees summer spinning again and again, the endless taking of risks to fulfill that “need to send it off,” to jump into that water. Guitar treads the usual weekend haunts, ground that’s been walked before, both by leaning into his beloved influences and by maintaining his other various idiosyncratic approaches to songwriting, bringing us bleeding-edge indie rock colored both by his eccentricities and memory. Even as we move into autumn, We’re Headed to the Lake brings us back into the heat anew even as we often meander away. “The sky glows in my window / the mind wanders from the light / it’s alright.”
You can listen to We’re Headed to the Lake anywhere you listen to music as well as order cassettes and CDs from Julia’s War.
Written by Patrick Raneses | Featured Photo by Ryan Belote-Rosen
“Gerfety is pronounced Grafitti” … Tommy, the guitarist and lead vocalist of Geferty tells me, “I work at an elementary school as a janitor and one day a kid tagged the word “Graffiti” and spelled it wrong, I thought that was funny. We’re also inspired by street art.”
Naming themselves a nonexistent word is where the singularity of Gerfety begins. The band’s new LP Fight Songs is a testament to the craft of creative songwriting. What began as a bedroom bandcamp project in 2023, has developed into a fully fledged LP. The trio — Tommy (guitarist, lead vocals), Dominic (drums, backup vocals), and Grant (bass, backup vocals) — worked on the album for two years. Now, Fight Songs is out on all streaming platforms via Candlepin Records.
Speaking with Gerfety, it became clear how the congenial comradery between the bandmates shaped Fight Songs’ sound. Immediately upon entering the “zoom room,” Grant apologized for being a minute late because he had to jump his car. In need of some help, he Facetimed Tommy and Dominic to show him how to perform the rote mechanic job. A few laughs later, it was obvious: friendship is at the heart of Fight Songs.
Photo by Braeden Long
Your record Fight Songs drops October 24th. How are you feeling about the release?
Grant: I’m excited. I feel like it’s a very nostalgic record. Our friend Korgan did a great job of doing the mix on it, it’s very professional.
Dominic: I’m proud to have made something with love, with my best friends. I also feel very grateful and lucky to be able to create and release music.
Tommy: We started recording in February of 2023. We’ve been working on it for a while. We’ve all been excited about the album, and we’re excited to put it out. For how long we’ve been working on it, it still feels good.
Your first EP was all home recordings, did your writing process transition between creating your EP Come Back Bright, and Fight Songs?
Tommy: Yeah. We wrote all the songs together in our practice room. I usually come in with a song, essentially 85% done, and Grant and Dominic help make it a rock song. Everyone writes their own parts, bass and drums.
What made you choose Fight Songs to be the single and title for the LP?
Grant: I feel like it was one the first songs we played together where we felt in our element. Fight Songs also had a lot of different elements to it, you can hear it in the song, and it was one of the first songs we did that on. It set the tone for the record.
Photo by Braeden Long
Throughout Fight Songs, you incorporate a variety of sampled sounds—from bird calls in “In the Movie” to lo-fi textures in Into the Bark, which remind me of Smog’s debut album Julius Caesar. For me, these choices create a sense of intimacy and closeness with you guys, the artists. What inspired you to include these kinds of samples in your work?
Dominic: It was all Korgan’s idea. He produced and did the synth work on the album. When we were recording, Korgan had a mic on the entire time we were recording and would record everything. We called it the “fuck track.” Sometimes we’d mess around just to get cool sounds.
Photo by Braeden Long
Because most of the synths and samples are done in studio, for upcoming gigs, how do you translate Fight Songs live? Do you try to stay true to the recordings?
Tommy: We make up for the lost instrumentation with whatever energy we bring to the performance; sometimes high, sometimes low. Grant likes to dance around on stage and we all like screaming in the mic when we’re supposed to be singing pretty. We’ve found a cool way of translating the songs live by playing with as little as possible, no pedals or anything. Sometimes there are woodblocks or shakers. Maybe that’ll all change, but for now, we have a lot of fun filling up the space with chaos or quiet.
What’s next for Gerfety?
Tommy: We’re playing a few release shows. We have shows on Thursday, Saturday, Tuesday, and the record comes out on Friday. It’s exciting.
Grant: We’re also writing what’s going to be our next record right now and plan to record it this winter.
Tommy: Gerfety is now a record only band. Bring back the long lost art of the record.
Fight Songs is out today, and you can pre-order it on Cassette via Candlepin records.
Written by Maddie Breeden | Photos by Braeden Long
Around the time Combat Naps released Tap In back in 2023, I got to interview Neal Jochmann about the project and his creative practice. Combat Naps was such a mystery to me at the time, first discovering the project playing in the legendary B Side Records in Madison, WI – doors be propped, tunes be cranked – where it was easy to get lost in the whimsy of these stories and melodies that often felt too good to be true. But there was an eagerness to the music that forfeited any and all expectations of what counts as inspiration, where each song plays so close to real life, allowing Combat Naps to be so accessible. And in that initial conversation, Jochmann reflected on the project as it pertained to its larger purpose, saying, “I have so many corny, sappy and sweet little things in my songs. But this is a punk music experiment, you know? Make it sweet. Make it obvious. Make it do that. Don’t shut that out. It might lead to a nice impression of versatility”.
To this day, Combat Naps continues to be something entirely of its own. Jochmann began exploring the versatility of the simple pop song back in 2016 as he began to frequently share songs on bandcamp, collecting EPs, singles and full length albums in this vast, almost obsessive catalog of DIY imagination and melodic extra-ordinaries. These songs became a clear and animated response to Jochmann’s creative spirit and passion to fill in the gaps of undesirable silence with something worth exploring. And sometimes these stories get ahead of him, but that’s where he prefers to be – an observant scythe, a determined pawn, a reserved dad crying to 2001: A Space Odyssey, a lucky individual lucky enough to have infinite luck – all characters that allow Jochmann to become an observer rather than the story’s maiden explorer.
Combat Naps returned this year with a major vinyl reissue of This Was the Face, an albumpreviously released digitally to bandcamp only, and now getting full treatment from Will Anderson’s [Hotline TNT] label, Poison Rhythm. This Was the Face is a tried-and-true pop joyride – door be propped, tunes be cranked as it goes. As a collection, these songs live in moments, flashes of thoughts scribbled on the back of a junk mail, gum wrappers or the cover page of your most current novel excursion, just to make a note before the thought is running right past you and straight outta town. And to his credit, the Madison-based project has held to that mission Jochmann once stated two years ago; this is a punk rock experiment, a release of linguistic agency, where Combat Naps revels in demonstrative boldness, empathetic deliveries, and what it means to give up control for once and work from the back seat.
I recently caught up with Jochmann after night two in Chicago while on tour with Hotline TNT.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
Alright Neal, I haven’t chatted with you since Tap In came out. That was probably almost exactly two years ago I believe. What’s new with you?
Well, a big new thing is this whole album that just came out now. The re-release of something I recorded last year, with a couple bonus tracks, and then this tour that you’re catching me on. That’s pretty new. And I also got two new cats this year. I got Simon and Penelope, and I love them. I want to just use them to sell records [laughs]. It could be a mutually symbiotic relationship. I love my cats. And then also I’ll post them, and then maybe people might be like, ‘oh my gosh, beautiful cats, I’ll listen to this song’.
You released This Was the Face last year, just self-released on the internet, and then you took it off. And now you’re doing this whole vinyl reissue followed by this massive tour. What were the conversations around these decisions like as it was coming together? Did you ever see this as a possibility?
Not necessarily, no. I mean, I didn’t think it would be done up this well. Basically what happened was that Julia saw Poison Rhythm’s call for submissions, and asked me to send a CD in. I love burning CDs, and I love mail. Turns out Will [Anderson] loves burning CDs and sending mail too. So I sent a CD with a bunch of music starting with a couple songs from This Was The Face. And then Will and I were chatting about things we liked, and he was like, ‘you know, I was thinking the next release could be a good reissue of that album. I was just game. Maybe it is an exciting listening experience to listen to something pressed to vinyl that was written not anticipating that. Maybe it’s kind of a fresh thing. Maybe there’s kind of a lack of expectation on the part of the musician, i.e. me. So I got it mastered through Justin Perkins for vinyl and everything. I always think it’s kind of interesting, like, what is it like to put out an album? It’s a very mini version of things I’ve seen other bands that I’ve known do. The sort of album cycle where you have a single and a video and you have a whole story.
Just your bandcamp alone, you’re a prolific cataloger of music. We call you a pop song factory over here. You just keep pushing out these excellent songs. But being a self-released artist for many years and now working with a label, was it what you expected? What was your mindset going into it? Were you game for anything or did you have expectations for yourself and the project?
I guess I just anticipated that it would be a beautiful vinyl album because I knew they were going to use Third Man Records pressing. And I think that my expectation was to use it as a spiritual exercise to kind of surrender to it a little bit. Because I don’t want to be the dogmatic guy who’s just like, ‘oh, there’s just always got to be shit out’ and you just throw it in there and it’s worthless. Because that’s not how I feel. I think I’ve only ever done that just because it’s just a habit. But I wanted to follow recommendations; let’s release it down this time, let’s release a video, try to learn that kind of patience and also try to use that as an opportunity to get a fresh perspective on the music. Because one of the disadvantages of putting things online immediately is that you don’t always give yourself a chance to think before you speak. That can lead to situations later where you’re like, man, that is kind of cringe to me now. It was validating to have a thing by the time it was released, I still kind of fucked with it. It was a cool kind of experiment, to give it that time. And then in September when it’s out, if I still like it, maybe I did a good thing and wasn’t just scratching a publication itch.
Once you took the original release of This Was the Face off the web, it’s been quite a long gap in releasing music for you. Now on the opposite side of that gap, and breaking that habit as you said, where are you sitting now looking at your back catalog but also looking at what could be next for you?
I’ve asked myself this question a lot. I guess there are some mornings it feels strange to just go right on back to more or less insignificant, unceremonious releases. And that has its appeal. Maybe there could be some sort of system whereby there are constant small releases of a type, and also, as a different animal, something worth being excited about – some massive statement that actually might sound rather different from the singles. It could be cool to try to split personalities and be like, I want to go deeper into both things. Maybe go even harder with the kind of first thought, best thought EP and throw it out there and just be proud of it. And then go even harder with something 40 minutes long that you’re not ready for. I don’t know, maybe the songs are longer than they’ve ever been. Maybe the songs are more non-fictional than they’ve ever been. You just kind of try to break new ground with the album and try to wave hi to people with the singles.
I love your lyricism so much because it feels like a healthy blend of nuance and nonsense. You create this world that is singularly Combat Naps. Do you find yourself placed in this world that is Combat Naps? In the world created by the amalgamation of stories, maybe even viewing them as a collection of linked stories?
Maybe like a king in a castle. Or maybe a journalist. A Studs Terkel, maybe? He’s this Chicago writer who made these amazing books full of first-person testimony. So, he has a book called Working, where it’s all interviews with people about their jobs, kind of this massive compendium of different first-person perspectives. And he also has a book called “The Good War”, which is all about World War II, and one about the Great Depression, called Hard Times. I think that’s kind of where I situate myself. I’m not really an authority on anything in the world, but I’m interested in talking to people in the world about what’s there. And that is kind of a justification for trying to write songs where I talk about experiences I didn’t have.
So you don’t think you have authority in the stories?
Ideally, you want to be an impassive observer, because that would allow you to write the surprising lyric. It would allow for some sort of simulation of ‘life is stranger than fiction’, where you’re just letting stuff happen, and you’re allowing things into the lyrics on the grounds that, yeah, if this is life, it’s stranger than anything I could come up with. So you’re allowing nonsense, for instance, things that don’t really quite make sense to you at first. And then I guess as it pertains to nuance, you’re allowing details that feel disproportionate to the story. For instance, like in the song “Queen N Pawn”, a small detail would be the orchard keeper has a scythe, and I feel like the scythe, I don’t know why they’re scything the streets, some sort of street sweeping thing, but allowing the scythe in there is a small detail that feels impassively observed. So I’m kind of excited by the story, almost in the way that Studs Terkel is excited by the first-person perspective of the people he interviews. So maybe something like that, a collection of first-person perspectives. But maybe a fictional version of that, kind of like Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, where they’re clearly all inventions of the same voice and limited as such. And so they can’t be nearly as good as Studs Terkel, but they can be like Faulkner. Where someone is trying to fracture themselves and getting some of the way there, but also failing, and not being faithful to the character at times.
Do you find yourself, as the storyteller, failing these characters at all?
I think so. I mean, that’s the little twinge you get when you’re singing the song, for instance, live in front of a bigger audience than you’ve ever played to. And you’re singing, and you’re like, is the character really flipping coins here? You get this little twinge, and it’s not really cringe, it’s just a little feeling of like, is that really what’s happening in the song? Am I telling the truth here? And I feel like that’s maybe what people refer to as authenticity in lyrics. That’s a lesson you have to learn the hard way by just getting up there and singing it. I don’t get those twinges very much from this set, luckily, because Logan [Severson] has selected songs that he thinks I’m delivering with conviction, that suggests I think I’m telling the truth in the song.
So, it kind of self-selects when Logan says, ‘we should do this song and this song and this song’. It turns out to be ones that I was able to feel were somewhat true. What’s interesting about this line-up that I’m touring with is it’s not the hometown line-up of me and Marley and Illich and Yvette. It’s hired hands who are able to do this big, long tour. But it’s people who have been to Combat Naps shows, so it’s interesting how that selection process happened. Because Logan just basically picked some songs. He was like, I think you should do this and this and this. And I was kind of like, you know, those are ones I feel comfortable singing.
And you said you felt good up there tonight. Way more relaxed than the beginning of this tour you mentioned?
I did feel good tonight. With the first few shows I remember we were being accurate. And then after one – one of Julia’s big insights that night was that we were very focused and we weren’t really looking at the audience at all. And tonight, it was fun to look at the audience. Of course it’s important not to read audience expressions and take much from that because people don’t display their emotions in their face. But it was fun to see impassive or kind of neutral audience members, unmoved audience members, and kind of sympathize with that and be like, you know, I am not moving very much either. And then see people who are dancing and being like, what are you dancing to? You know, it was cool to inquire that in the face of the audience. So that led to me being relaxed. Calvin, who played in early iterations of the band, showed me a voice memo of a song I wrote a long time ago about how I read expressions on people’s faces too much. I used to have that problem of if someone’s tired, RBF or whatever, I’m like, oh man, they’re pissed at me. You know, it’s just something you get to learn growing up, I guess.
Do you find that habit to write as these characters, almost as you’re seeing someone’s facial expressions and putting meaning into it, even though it might not be your story to tell?
Oh my gosh, wow, good connection. I think a clean way of saying it is that there’s kind of an entitlement to speech that is both queasy about the whole enterprise, but it’s kind of essential to doing the exploration. It’s fiction or whatever. But it describes a feeling that I have a lot about songwriting. My mom used to always say, ‘Neal, I just feel like you don’t really have anything to say’. And she said it lovingly, and this was in the course of complimenting me on my music. But I think about that every time I write a song, thinking, what do I have to say? I think arguing with that question is great. It’s very productive. What I took from her saying that is to simplify and maybe make a cleaner premise to the song. I think every song on this album has an easily summarized premise, and I’m proud of that. Like that fifth song, “Drifting Halfway”, that’s about being an early riser and knowing that that can wake people up. And that weird thing of like, I gotta get up and do stuff, but I wish you could sleep and I’m sorry.
You also run a YouTube channel called The Leafy Concern, dedicated to physical books. As a lover and a participant in literature, what does it mean to you having this, I’m going to call it an extracurricular, that’s outside of music, but still connected to the way you approach literature and the way you express yourself through literature?
It’s always vaguely connected to this desire I have one day of teaching literature or something. I always wanted to be like a cool literature teacher who makes kids love reading and books. But I guess it’s nice to be able to have that kind of validation from something. It’s not really validation; we’re kind of displacing attention onto these objects. I think that’s fun. I think maybe it kind of reacquaints you with the object as kind of separate from the artist, just like in a way that kind of reinforces a healthy separation. Because I feel like any attention, I get on those videos are not really because I ramble sometimes, they’re just want to see what’s happening in these works of art. And sometimes I give people a clue or give them my take. The book is kind of alive, you know? We don’t have to worry about ourselves. We just get to focus on that, and that’s kind of nice. It’s also just a nice excuse to keep a ledger in what I’ve been reading lately. I’m always dreading the day when I’m going to log on and do a video that’s like, ‘you guys should all check out my music video’. It turns out it’s just a long game to sell two vinyls.
You can listen to This Was the Face out now as well as order it on vinyl via Poison Rhythm. Follow along with the Leafy Concern here.
Samira Winter has always had a gift for turning daydreams into soundtracks, but on ‘Adult Romantix’ she sharpens her focus.
Now touring in support of the record, Winter’s live performances extend the record into something tangible, charged, and alive with feeling.
We caught up with the Brazilian-born, now NY-based artist to step into the album’s glow and talk about heartbreak, transformation, and how ‘Adult Romantix’ captures the strange, beautiful tension between falling in love and letting go.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
Lucie Day (The Ugly Hug): This album is about a lot of different things – about leaving LA, about love, about walking away from something and how that’s good for you yet sad. I was really interested in the way in which you created kind of a mini movie out of all of these characters and all of this lore. How much of it is autobiographical versus fictionalized? Do you see yourself in these characters, or do they exist separate from you?
Samira Winter: I’d say in general with Winter, it is kind of an extension of me but it’s something beyond me. I do feel like with this album, there’s an interplay – even with the whole movie idea – of “what is fiction”? What’s stemming from a raw emotion or something that in my real life has happened, but then became something bigger through a song? Sometimes it’s just a very subtle thing that then gets expanded on. A lot of this album, I think, was a time capsule. I pulled a lot from the over a decade that I lived in LA. So there’s also a little bit of the fictional side too, I’d say, incorporating these people that I’ve met, these characters, this energy.
LD: Archetypes of people that you meet?
Samira Winter: There’s the LA “California slacker-stoner” character that’s a surfer, and this type of shoegaze that was very Californian. Years of just seeing bands and going to shows. I think it’s a mix of both, but I would say some of it is actually not biographical. Some of it is truly just incorporating different characters and playing them out.
LD: Pulling the parts that are you and the parts that play off of what is you and what’s not.
Samira Winter: Yeah, I would say it’s a very nuanced thing and it’s hard to really say this is this, and this is this, but I’d say it’s a mix of both and it’s kind of an interplay too. With the lore and the characters, when I was recording the album I had it as one of my goals to explore different voices. When the album finished – I used to have a harder time when I had to talk about the record or explain “What am I gonna write in my bio?What am I gonna tell people?” And so I preemptively, when this album finished, sat down in my house in Brazil over the holidays and wrote an essay. I wrote themes and motifs and a treatment of what a movie would be for the album. I just kind of kept writing and writing and writing, and that was a huge part of the process that ended up informing all of my decisions when it came to creating the visual world. And so in that essay I would be like, okay, there’s the friend group in “Misery”, there’s the couple from the album. It’s all these characters that all belong to this world. It feels really good to have been able to make that all happen in a visual sense as well.
LD: Love is clearly such a large presence within the record. Was that something you think that you were consciously experiencing during the making of the album? Or did making the album bring that to the surface? Did you set out to make a record that was so filled with love?
Samira Winter: I would say with the way I make records, I’m not really setting out. I’m very much subconsciously just making a lot of stuff over a long period of time. I like taking a couple of years to make an album and writing and recording at different times. I think for me it did kind of happen, but yeah. I went through a breakup, and then after the breakup had all sorts of nostalgic feelings. There’s definitely also a level of the album that is a bit darker. There is a doom to it.
LD: I know you’ve talked a lot about gothic influences on the record.
Samira Winter: There’s that side of it, but I think at the end of the day it just felt like when I was packing up and being a nomad I was capturing all the different feelings and things that were happening. When I started writing songs it was kind of as if it was a diary, so I think there’s a level to life experience that ends up inspiring me. But I definitely didn’t set out to make it about love. When we finished the record, I started piecing together the dots that connected and the throughline. I liked the idea of adult romantics and pondering these things because I grew up in the 90s. Watching so many rom-coms and having so many fantasies ingrained in my head and taking everything with a grain of salt. Being like: What is fantasy? How far can you go with a crush? What are these different bounds of the platonic and the romantic?
LD: The album does feel like there’s a light and a dark- falling in love while saying goodbye, leaving something behind to move forward. In that context, do you see the album more as a record about transition or about acceptance?
Samira Winter: I’d say it’s both.
LD: I know that’s a really hard question!
Samira Winter: I wrote it in a transitory state.
LD: So that colors it.
Samira Winter: Yeah, that definitely colored it. But I think in a way, finishing it and releasing it into the world led to an acceptance because I felt like after releasing this album I’d been fully able to close the door to the past of my LA life. I’m a believer that it’s important to release music that you feel really crazy about, and that you feel really excited about. It’s important to release it because it completes the cycle. I think releasing the actual album, you know how people say it’s not mine anymore? You release it to the ether. So I feel like I’ve been truly, truly able to let go.
LD: You’ve said that writing these songs and then thinking about performing them was scary, because they were so vulnerable and intense. Now that you’ve been actually performing them, how has that been?
Samira Winter: I think it’s been getting easier now. The very first practice where I had to play “Just Like A Flower”, I had so many butterflies in my stomach. With all the songs. We’ve been on tour for about two weeks now, I think now it’s just an excitement. And yeah, it’s been really fun to play the new songs.
LD: I love that line in “Just Like a Flower”: “all a girl could want is a girl friend”.
Samira Winter: I love that line too! It’s true, and it’s really not talked about enough. All of the songs that I’ve written that have a girl theme or a girl character like “Just Like A Flower”, “The Lonely Girl”, and “Sunday”, I still get chills when I play them. It just touches my soul. It hits in like a… I don’t know. I think it’s something that people can really identify with.
LD: Speaking of throughlines, Portuguese has always been a throughline in your work. Do you think that there are other things in addition to that that have stayed consistent through all the work that you’ve made and things that you find comfort within as anchors within the making of something new?
Samira Winter: Yeah, I think with Winter I’ve been able to explore different things and some of those things I’ve explored I’ve kept in my palette. I’d say a lot of the throughline is this girl character that’s an extension of me, and it’s like seeing the world through the lens of a dream language. I think there’s definitely a lot of the daydreamer archetype in Winter, of this act of trying to stay in touch with a sense of purity and a certain type of innocence. I’m always kind of in search of streamlining and perfecting the dream pop, shoegaze – I don’t want to add a ton of genres, but the language of Winter and finding the unique way that I can keep moving it forward.
LD: You’ve talked about all of these movies as your inspiration. Out of all the ones (10 Things I Hate About You, Kids, Gregg Araki films), what movie do you think that Winter as a character would fit the best in?
Samira Winter: The thing is, every record that is Winter is a slightly different character. I think I’ve really gotten better at honing in my concepts and finding that clarity. For ‘What Kind of Blue’, that character is this French girl named Juliet Blue. ‘Adult Romantix’ is this couple. There isn’t actually a movie that exists that’s perfectly ‘Adult Romantix’, which I guess makes sense because I created it. Yeah, that’s a cool thing for me to kind of chew on- where it fits in. If I had more resources, time, and money, I would make the movie. You never know- in 20 years, who knows what’s gonna happen? [The process] is really for me. It’s way more satisfying than it just being me. I love having this thing beyond myself as a muse, you know? When it becomes more than you in a project. I think art is beyond you. Maybe not at first, but it becomes its own being. I do think it’s like something in the ether that comes through you, and you are the filter.
Check out more photos of Winter live in Salt Lake City.
You can listen to Adult Romantix anywhere you find your music as well as on vinyl, CD and cassette via Winspear.
Sonically, the most authentic of the underground bands are the ones that are recording themselves, gigging around, and making an effort to create an all-around good music community. Bullseye, a New York City-based outfit are doing just that. Bullseye are among some of the most exciting bands that seem to just be flowing out of The Big Apple. They are a newer band who are highlighting NYC’s current underground scene through their commitment to making genuine music, fronting the wave of New York-youth-bands that are keeping DIY alive. With the release of their self-titled first EP, the band has cemented themselves as one of the most promising, having recorded and produced the whole EP on their own. Certainly “on the target,” so to speak, with their embodiment of DIY.
I recently interviewed Jake Barczak, the band’s frontman, on the band’s influences, recording process, and upcoming shows, in hopes of putting their music onto the radar of fans of Pavement, The Spatualas, Guv’ner, and perhaps even early Mirah.
The Roundabout is our newest column put together by Ruby O’Brien, brining a focus to youth bands across the country.
First, I’d like to start out by asking you to introduce yourselves and what you each play. Tell me how the band came to be!
OK, well, I’m Humberto and I play the drums. I’m Clara and I play bass. I’m Oliver and I play guitar. I’m Jake and I too play a guitar and I sing. I just typed all those responses myself but they all say hello. The band formulated around my (Jake’s) songwriting attempts about 5 years ago during Covid… I made some demos that I sat on for a while, and then eventually formed a band around. It really came together when I reconnected with Oliver who I knew a couple years ago, and Clara who I played in a band with in Minneapolis when I was 12, and met a number of Texan newcomers to NYC, Humberto, Leighton, Tyler, and the like. All crazy talented people.”
What are you guys individually inspired by, movies, art, music, etc, and how does that relate to what you collectively sound like? Do you think that your individuality creates a cohesive sound or do you ever find that songwriting can be a little more chaotic? I think this Tour Tape you guys put together last March certainly has one unified sound: I’m definitely picking up Pavement or Butterglory sounds through most of the EP, but then there are one-off songs like “Shine A Light On” with the Casio drum machine that sound a lot like Helevetia or something like that.
I think we all bring different backgrounds to the band (hah bet you didn’t see THAT coming). I’m like hardcore into melody and song I feel… Oliver has the ability to take that and make it slightly or even significantly more evil (still sounds like sunshine maybe right) and Clara has her own stripe of indie rock she’s bringing on the bass. Humberto, too, brings a certain type of Rock n Roll background, and I think like an eye/ear for detail that comes from his jazz-level drumming capability and schooling in the ways of design. He’s our wabi-sabi guy, maybe. I think we have a lot in common, but also pretty heterogeneous tastes… which, if you play enough with a scrambled mix of influences, eventually something textured and shiny and awesome is gonna come out. Not sure that’s happened, but I feel like that’s what we might be capable of doing on a good day.
The EPs you guys have out so far tend to be a mix of lo-fi and hi-fi. Do you guys track everything yourselves? I’m curious what your recording process is like.
I tracked like 60% of the songs that are out on the internet already with my phone. People talk about this a lot, but the compression that a phone speaker/system does can be kind of juicy. Other tracks I’ve done with friends and band members. Jasper Leach recorded the second two tracks on the Bullseye EP with a computer + interface and played bass. Oliver recorded “Shine A Light On” in a similar way. The recording process is patchwork and kinda case-by-case.
When you sit down to write a song, who is generally coming to the band with the ideas? Or is the songwriting process a jam with lyrics that come later?
So far it’s me… but the door is open…… I hear Jason Shapiro is doing commissions for songs so…… maybe he will write the next release.
What was the most exciting show you guys have played so far and why?
We had a good time playing Bazooka Fest, put on by pal of the band Jake Whitener.” Jake plays in another awesome NYC band called the Sunshine Convention. “We played outside during a hot sunny day. Friends, Good Flying Birds (amongst many amazing other bands) were on that bill, we’ve been happy to share a stage with them… like 3 times? They rock a lot.
Where do you guys hope to take the band in the future? Do you want to be DIY, or something even bigger?
I just want to keep writing and putting out music that I like and following it and supporting those around me doing the same thing. SO whatever that looks like.
NYC locals can check out Bullseye at Bread & Roses DIY indie music fest at the end of September, which will be happening 9/26-9/28. If you aren’t based in NYC, have no fear. Bullseye is certainly on the come up and will be in your city in no time.
You can listen to Bullseye’s two EPs anywhere you find your music as well as snag a tape of their Feb ’25 Tour now!
Written by Ruby O’Brien | Featured Photo Courtesy of Bullseye
Generifus is the long-running project of songwriter Spencer Sult, who today is sharing Best Of, a collection encompassing twenty years of songwriting released via Perpetual Doom. Coming up through Olympia, where projects like Generifus have been acclimated to the ever-shifting scenes, Sult still manages to craft his own path through the years, building up a project of fulfillment and joy as he now reflects on his time sharing music.
I first became privy to Generifus after 2023’s release, Rearrangle, when digging through the catalog of Butte’s Anything Bagel and Portland’s Bud Tapeson their split release. This record became a haven of connections, a collection of formative stories that lived full lives within these lighthearted tunes. But with each release over the years, Sult’s words have stuck with both fondness and experience, like snacks for the road and change in your pocket, something to hold on to for when you need it most. With albums like 2012’s Back in Time or 2016’s Peace Sign Rising, his writing became rooted in both placement and perspective, where the minor moments of joy, confusion, heartbreak and clarity become a reflection point that we can all anchor to. With such a deep catalog to explore, Generifus paints a picture much larger than we can initially take in, but Best Of is an album built on gratitude, understanding the role in which sharing music has played in his life, and offering a space to look at how far he has come.
We recently got to ask Sult a few questions regarding the Best Of release, reflecting on his career and sharing music for two decades.
Photo by Sarah Cass
This interview was conducted over email
What does it mean to you to have such a long-term project? Did you foresee the longevity in this curation and creativity when you were starting out back in 2005? What made you keep returning to this little world you have constructed?
Having such a long running project makes me proud and also gives my life meaning, as the project and my life are pretty completely intertwined after 20 years. When I was starting out, I did not foresee anything in particular. The project began as mostly instrumental and ambient, I had no idea I would even learn to write songs or sing at that point. Once I started playing shows, things progressed gradually and everything I did from then on made sense under this project name. I sought advice about potentially moving to performing under my own name around 2019, but it didn’t seem to be a smart move based on the body of work I had already created as Generifus.
Looking back now at your catalog, are there any risks or shifts that you tried out and can look back on with fondness as a memorable moment in the project’s history? And vice versa, anything you can look back at and maybe laugh at and be okay leaving in the past?
Both in recording and live performance, starting to collaborate with other people on my music has been the biggest and most rewarding shift. I believe that listeners can recognize my music regardless of who’s playing with me, based on the mood and my presence, but many of my favorite moments on records are those played by others. My song “Wouldn’t I” where I rap a bridge is a bit silly and caught in a certain moment where I was trying to interpret Young Thug and Gunna in the way that Kyle Field had with Lil’ Wayne. It is slightly embarrassing now.
What sort of things were you discovering about yourself and the stories you were writing from as you were starting out? Has that lens shifted as you got older? Are you able to make sense of a path or linear growth through your catalog as you look back on it now?
When I was starting out, I relied heavily on imagery and metaphor for my songwriting content. Over time I felt more comfortable including personal references, while never being fully confessional or self-referential. The sweet spot that I have found success with has been to create vague but recognizable imagery coupled with specific relatable details. I think that the variety of songs has grown and changed along with me, not necessarily linear but definitely always shifting.
What were the conversations around creating a ‘Best Of’ album for Generifus? That practice feels rare these days, more of something you would pick up in an old CD collection. Does that nostalgia factor play into this release at all for you?
I had some great Best Of and Greatest Hits CDs such as Tom Petty and Fleetwood Mac and they are always a good entry point for any artist. Especially those who may not have physical music in constant print. Nostalgia was not a huge factor in deciding to work on this release, but I did want to create a good starting point for my large back catalog.
How did you go about choosing which tracks best fit this momentous project?
To choose the tracks for this album, I started with my Olympia-era releases as the earlier material was somewhat rough and not as memorable. I picked songs that were performed often, ones that I’ve received lots of good feedback on, some that have amassed relatively higher streams on Bandcamp and other streaming services, and some that were favorites of the band to play live. I tried to spread the tracklist pretty evenly from those albums from 2009-2023.
Beginning the project back in 2005 with a handful of self-releases, and then continuing on, working with new people, friends and labels more frequently, how did this project shape the way you approach collaboration and relationships, both in and out of music?
Relationships formed from musical collaboration are so important to me. When I listen back to the Free Ways album, for example, I think about the fun times we had recording it in Anacortes as much as the songs. I’ve toured and hosted shows, and made music with so many people over the years. This is the basis of my social life and most of my relationships. While there hasn’t been a ton of outside recognition or material success from playing music, the moments created and bonds formed have given my life deep meaning and significance.
You can listen to Best Of anywhere you find your music as well as purchase a cassette via Perpetual Doom.
Written by Shea Roney | Featured Photo by Sarah Cass
Today, Motocrossed share “Drown (Country Girl)”, the second single off their upcoming debut self-titled record out October 3rd via the legendary Trash Tape Records. Coming up through Charlotte, North Carolina, this band is nothing new to the surrounding scene, although there have been some notable changes. Originally named sayurblaires, the project was formed by songwriter Blaire Fullagar, leaning into territories of digital soundscapes and emo inspired song structures. But sayurblaires soon became a project embedded with collaboration, as Colin Read (guitar), Caroyln Becht (drums) and AJ George (guitar) joined the live crew, before shortly offering to the writing process for new songs between 2023 and 2024. What came out was this newfound level of alt-country chaos as Motocrossed became the next step for the NC musicians.
In a clash of noise, Fullagar asks, “Do you wanna walk and laugh along the streetlights? We can just talk and pretend everything’s fine,” her voice falling into the motion with both confidence and an underlying layer of trust that there is something below to catch her in case she gets ahead of herself. And with that, “Drown” becomes a team effort, a culmination of distinct voicings that each bring something unique to the track, and cultivating this scenic dispute of love, curiosity, heartbreak and comradery. In the same way that we all know that Walmart parking lots have the best sunsets, the amount of noise put into the environment brings out the best of each color; loose harmonies shooting the shit amongst distorted guitars, a fiddle doing what it does best, and the rich tones from a few sax runs pull us closer into the ruckus. “Country Girl, you’re my world. But I’m not sure you should be just yet,” feels messy, but pure, and you can’t help but admire that feeling.
We recently got to talk to Blaire and Carolyn about “Drown (Country Girl)”, shifting genres, and what this project means to them.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
You made music under the name sayurblaires for a while, but now shifting genres completely and now writing and performing under the name Motocrossed, what sparked you to want to reset everything?
Blaire: So, in 2023, we started the sayurblaires band, and we would play renditions of songs on the sayurblaires album as a full band. They were fun to play, but I feel like we kind of got detached from them and we started to write new songs. They were all just way different, because I switched to writing on guitar instead of just on my computer. They turned out a lot different, of course. And so, sayurblaires just didn’t feel right, especially because we formed the band, and then it felt like we all wrote these songs together by the time that they were actually written as a full band.
Carolyn: And it was so sonically different from what we were doing as sayurblaires, which was like, a digital, emo, screamo project, and this is, way different conceptually, unrelated almost. Not unrelated, but… we’re calling ourselves alt-country now.
Blaire: The songs that we would play, the songs that eventually became Motocrossed songs, we’d play them in the middle of the sayurblaires set, and it would feel really bizarre, honestly. So, it just felt right to switch to Motocrossed, and we’ve just played shows under Motocrossed, and we’ve only played Motocross songs since then.
Did you find that there was a shift in the shows you were playing and the crowds that were coming out?
Blaire: Yeah, when we were sayurblaires we played with bands like Your Arms Are My Cocoons and Awake But Still in Bed, which I don’t think we would have gotten those shows now. They probably wouldn’t have reached out to us. It was cool, I like those bands, and I do like emo, but ultimately, now, bands that I like a lot more are reaching out, and I feel like I’m just more in the scene that I’ve always listened to.
As that original four-piece, was it natural for everyone else to adjust to this all-country route?
Blaire: Yeah, I mean, I think everybody was super down for it, especially having the ability to write their own parts instead of the ones that I wrote for them. I think it naturally played out well. Like AJ [George], our guitarist, listens to a little bit of alt-country, but mainly they listen to a lot of really, really heavy shoegaze, so what they provide for the band is all the heavy parts. And then I feel like Colin [Read], our other guitarist and lap steel player, listens to a lot of everything, so Colin’s playing just kind of goes off of whatever the thing calls for. I think that it just naturally worked out perfectly.
With these singles, it sounds like there’s so many different voicings that you’re trying out, that it feels like it should be chaotic, but it works really well. Especially going from a 4-piece to 6 members and counting, how does this inclusion of new players represent what you wanted this project to be as you were continuing to shift and evolve and try something new?
Blaire: When we started recording these songs, I already had in mind that I wanted it to be a big band. I mean, I still want to keep adding people, I’m not against going up further. I just started reaching out to people to record on these songs that I had written. Like, the 8 songs that we have right now have probably gone through 6 or 7 versions each, just sounding different from having different people record on them.
With your new single “Drown”, you’re writing about a relationship of love and worry and complexity. What did this song mean to you as you were choosing singles and how did it come together?
Blaire: I write songs in a way where I will write one part, and then that part kind of sticks with me for a while. And then eventually, I’ll find another part that goes with it. So, this song existed as three separate parts. There was the beginning, and then the middle part, the country girl part, and then there was the end. And it came together nicely once I sat down and really wrote it. But, I’d say, more than anything, it’s just a love song. I’ve had a long on-and-off relationship for 10 years that’s messy and complicated, and that’s ultimately what it’s about. The album in general is a lot of love songs, but more than anything, it’s an album about being in love with music and the people around you. “Drown” doesn’t really feel like it’s specifically about one person in any real way, but I think it’s a good representation of the album.
You can listen to “Drown (Country Girl)” anywhere you find your music. Motocrossed is set to be released Oct 3rd via Trash Tape Records which you can preorder now!
Written by Shea Roney | Photos by Valentina Calderon
“Darla is sort of like your alter ego… the person you thought you were going to be, but maybe you’re not.” Is it a love letter? A letter from a former enemy? Or maybe a reflection of who we want to be? Love, Darla, the newest release from NY-based duo Laveda, perhaps comes from a place of wanting. We reflect on choices we don’t make, wondering how our life trajectory would’ve changed. Filled with noise and the hustle of city life, this latest project aches to be in our headphones as we walk across streets and alleyways.
The ugly hug recently had the pleasure to sit down with Ali Genevich and Jake Brooks of Laveda, to talk about Love, Darla and more.
Photo by Julia Tarantino
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Who’s Darla?
Ali: Darla is sort of like your alter ego or maybe that person that you thought you were going to be, but maybe you’re not. It’s the person that you wish you were.
Jake: If you made other decisions in your life in an alternate reality. She’s definitely a badass.
Is she the narrator of this album?
Ali: I would say so! It’s not always in a first person or omniscient sense, but I would say so. I think every song has a different version of her.
I wanted to talk about “Strawberry,” your latest single. You guys talked about how it is very formative in the evolution of your creative processes, where it gave to a fully realized sound after being tested live. When did you know that the track had crossed from being a live track to being a fully finalized version?
Ali: I feel like it was on tour. At some point, we took it out in March of 2024, and we had it and “Heaven” sort of demoed out. And we had an idea of what we wanted to do for the next record, but most of it wasn’t written. And we were like, “Oh, we should take these two songs out on tour and see how they feel in a live setting and make some adjustments and put our own little flair on things.” And I think that “Strawberry” had a very natural evolution, where we would play it, and vocally I remember trying some new things and straying really far from the original vocal performance that I did in the demo. So by the end of the tour, we had a version that felt very different. And just the energy that it was evoking, I was like, “Okay, I think I want the rest of the record to sort of feel like this.”
Jake: I think we knew maybe after our tenth show in Austin.
Ali: We were playing a lot of shows in one week and doing the songs three times a day almost. So, you have a lot of time to think about the set and think about what you’re doing, and you have a lot of creative freedom when you’re playing that much. I don’t know if I would recommend it necessarily, but it was fun in some ways. It was cool to spend that much time with one set too. I think that was about the time we figured it out and then the rest of the record came later, but that definitely inspired everything else that came later.
You talk about a feeling – with the context of New York, it kind of feels like walking around at 4 a.m. maybe with some dark alleyways. What imagery do you invoke from it? Is it intentional at all?
Ali: Definitely walking, movement in some way, I think just goes hand in hand with the record. Whenever I’ve been listening to some of my favorite records since moving here, it’s been in transit. It’s just sort of that chaotic movement feeling and headphones specifically. I think it’s like a very headphones listening sort of record, so you can just be in your own world, while everything else is moving past you.
I love that. You also mentioned playing unfinished songs during your sets – did audience reactions ever shape how the songs ultimately developed?
Ali: Definitely. With “Strawberry” specifically, I think my vocal performance had a lot to do with what feedback we were getting at the end of shows. I would have people say, “By the way, I really like when you would scream during that one song.” And it would be something that I was trying out, and so I definitely think I took that to my heart for sure. And I was like, “Well, I like doing that too.”
You guys also mentioned digital burnout before. How does it feel to navigate the tension of needing to promote yourselves while also being drained by this personal burnout that you guys experience?
Jake: I think it’s a never ending struggle. We’re on our phones a lot promoting. And I think that goes for everybody that does something that they like doing, I feel like American commercialism and capitalism bleeds into everything that we do. It sucks and it’s annoying. I think that digital burnout definitely is like the most modern way of experiencing being sick of capitalism. Music is supposed to be about hanging out with your friends and meeting people. That’s one of the things I really like about music, is that you go to all these small cities and towns and they welcome you into them, you know? And you meet so many cool people out of it. It’s such a local thing, playing music and going to different cities, you just meet all these people that are so present in their own reality. And so it feels weird and superficial to be doing stuff like that, and also having to be promoting yourself and selling a product. It’s a tough thing to navigate.
Ali: I’m excited that the label that we’re working with for this record were like, “Sure, selling records is good, but at the end of the day you should be focusing on the music.” It’s cool that they recognize it, whether or not we can do it. We all work day jobs, but I feel lucky to even be able to put out a record, and that people care about it.
I wanted to talk about one of your songs, “Cellphone.” I think that’s one of my favorites off your record. I got to look at the lyrics and I particularly like the repetition of, “I don’t need to know that my hair looks like a boy.” To me, it captures unsolicited critiques, projecting insecurity, narcissistic tendencies, and such. I was just wondering more about the story behind it.
Ali: Totally, I feel like you hit the nail on the head. It’s funny because when we first wrote that song, it was really just total gibberish that I was singing into the mic for the demo. And I just had this melody of “I don’t want to be your girlfriend anymore, I don’t want to be your boyfriend anymore.” And then I had the hair lyric, and was like “God, I should probably change that, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.” And then I remember for days, once the song was totally done, thinking I gotta come up with other lyrics. Then so much time passed and I was like, “I just can’t sing anything else there,” like it made sense to me and that’s what I was feeling behind it. It doesn’t matter what people say, but it’s just, like, why do we even need to think about it? It’s like, you’re upset about it, but you also don’t give a fuck at the same time.
You’re celebrating the record with a release show at Baby’s All Right – what does playing that stage mean to you?
Ali: We’re super excited, it means a lot!
Jake: We grew up as a band hearing the mysterious tales of Baby’s All Right and how amazing the place is. It’s kind of a milestone thing to play there. We played there once, opening for our friend’s band and now we’re excited to headline it.
Ali: The sound is so good there and the staff is so awesome. It’s gonna be the craziest Tuesday ever.
What do you hope people will carry with them about Love, Darla, especially after the show?
Ali: I hope they have fun! I hope they can release some sort of energy at the show, because the record is very fiery and a big release of energy. I hope they can let go of something and just enjoy themselves.
You can listen to Love, Darla anywhere you find your music as well as on vinyl and CD via Bar/None Records.
Written by Chloe Gonzales | Featured Photo by Mars Alba
“So hold on tight and see how they fly!” Time Thief is Providence’s new duo of Zoë Wyner (halfsour, zowy) and James Walsh (Dump Him, Musical Fanzine Records), who today share their debut self-titled mini LP via Lost Sound Tapes and Musical Fanzine Records. Wyner and Walsh last collaborated on dump him’s 2017 release Venus In Gemini, and soon after had a falling out and went their separate ways. But now starting fresh, bringing what they each know best to the table, Time Thief is a testament to both collaboration, friendship and the craft.
Reshaping their approach to song writing, Wyner and Walsh decided to switch off on vocal and instrumental duties for each track. What came out of that practice were six songs that flow like little doodles in a sketchbook, where people and places interact amongst the most nuanced depictions of the world and are never deterred to lead with a bit of whimsy. As the jangly instrumentation takes you for a light jog, keeping pace with the energy brought out from a beloved punk rock antiquity, Walsh and Wyner shine amongst their sweet melodies and intuitive harmonies. Although written with such care and experience, Time Thief bubbles like teenage daydreams, where moments of absurdity and humor weigh just as heavy as love, heartbreak and promises. And it isn’t long before Time Thief’s tunes stick to you like bubblegum in your hair and a skip in your step.
We recently got to catch up with Walsh and Wyner to talk about the new project, what collaboration means to them, and the album’s accompanying zine.
Having worked together in previous projects, but also coming from being friends to enemies back to friends, how does this project represent the spirit of collaboration in both of your lives? Do you find that collaboration in general has shaped the way you approach your relationships in and outside of music?
James: So, for context, Zoë and I played together in my old band, DUMP HIM, from 2016-2017 and made a record together then. For a bunch of reasons that we have since worked out and don’t even feel like my business anymore in the year 2025, that friendship ended really poorly and we didn’t speak at all for about 6 years.
In terms of your question, there are a few things that come to mind. I think the way I have conceptualized collaboration has changed drastically since then, both artistically and interpersonally. In 2016/17, I was 20 and doing what I thought of as a “solo project that other folks played in” and wasn’t really recognizing how much time, effort, and energy others put into the project. Maybe I wrote the foundation of the songs, but none of those songs would be anything but me and a guitar without the parts that others wrote. It’s really important to me that I properly understand and acknowledge the contributions of others in everything I do from here on out.
When we started to write songs for time thief, Zoë and I had already talked a lot about what worked for us in the past (and what didn’t). It became clear that with this project, it was really important to both of us that neither of us would be the main songwriter, and we thought it might be fun if neither of us had a set instrument that we played – one of us brings a song in, and the other adds an idea on whatever instrument we feel like. We recorded all these songs for three instruments, and play as a three-piece live with one friend or another joining us on whatever instruments they feel like playing, which means we end up in different configurations from one show to the next.
Zoë: I’m someone who has really strong aesthetic sensibilities / a LOT of strong opinions and it has been a really big but good challenge to put some of that aside for this project. It has definitely resulted in some fun outcomes that are not what I would inherently reach for myself; I’m really proud of the music we’re creating together.
James: And naturally, the way we all approach our bands is going to reflect the way we navigate our interpersonal relationships, too. I definitely had a lot to learn about collaboration in a lot of different ways when we first knew each other. I certainly would have said back then that community and relationships were important to me, and I had read a lot of like, anarchist theory and DIY punk manifestos that talked about how to relate to others, but I don’t think I quite figured out how to live by my own principles to the degree I thought I had back then. I think the key to a lot of it was really just learning to listen to others without projecting, and coming to my relationships as honestly as possible. I’m still learning!
Zoë: I relate to this last piece in a big way and am definitely still learning too!
What aspects of your respective styles, processes and backgrounds did you want to bring out on this EP?
Zoë: I don’t think that we had a ton of clear goals coming into this project around what we hoped to reflect sonically. We did talk a lot about the music that we liked (we do this constantly), and things that we were most proud of that we had written/recorded before, but past that we let things happen pretty organically. I’m someone who often will say “I want to be in a band that sounds like x, y, or z” and it never quite works out that way. I was a big sing-in-the-car kid (like, would constantly write 20 minute long rambling songs while on road trips that had no clear destination), and I still feel like a lot of my writing starts the same way it did then. I have certain melodic sensibilities that make sense in my head and it’s really hard for me to get past those/emulate other things I love and would like to be associated with. This does sometimes leave me wondering where my music fits/who my audience is, but I’m not totally sure how to go about this any other way.
James: For the most part, I wasn’t thinking about what I wanted this EP to sound like while we were writing the songs. I know we both wanted to feel able to let ourselves make music that felt true to ourselves, and I knew I didn’t want to limit myself in ways I had in the past. We love a lot of the same bands, and there are also a lot of bands that I absolutely love that Zoë doesn’t get (and some that she likes and I don’t care about). I tend to vibe with stuff that Zoë might find too sing-songy on one end of the spectrum, or too aggressive on the other. She tends to gravitate towards stuff that is a little more musically complicated (one of her first favorite songs was Mother Whale Eyeless by Brian Eno and mine was Baby One More Time by Britney Spears, she was raised by an audio engineer/musician and I was raised by a Bon Jovi superfan, etc). We share a love of C86/Flying Nun/indie pop, ‘00s Australian indie rock, early music (except she’s more Monteverdi and I’m more chant), and Grass Widow. I don’t think that all came through here, but I don’t want to sound exactly the same as all the bands we like, y’know?
Otherwise, I think the most notable conscious change I made was my approach to writing lyrics. I got deep into music via hip hop, mostly a lot of conscious stuff, and then feminist punk. Lyrics were what really won me over, and I used to think really hard when writing them. Zoë is someone who can sing along to a song without even realizing what the words mean until it’s pointed out to her. And when she writes lyrics, it’s all really natural, but still can be really poignant. I took some inspiration from her there and let myself go with the flow when writing this time around.
One of the singles you released called “A Brief History of Ordinary Letdowns”, you said, showed a different side of your collaboration. What did this sentiment mean to this song and the rest of the EP? Where did your differences as creatives bring out these songs, and did it take this EP to places that you didn’t expect to venture?
James: Zoë said that about the song, so she’ll have to clarify, but I think “A Brief History” is a bit softer than the other songs. That was the song on the record that was most inspired by Sarah Records bands like The Field Mice. I always think of Sarah bands (and the label) as being super vulnerable while simultaneously operating in a way that is punk as hell, which is really inspiring. I think a lot of people conceptualize punk as stuff with raw energy or a certain sound or look, and I don’t – for me it’s more about the principles involved. That said, I still used to be really self-conscious about writing softer songs. Like someone was going to judge me for not being punk or whatever. Which has happened, and I really don’t care anymore. I have a Sarah tattoo now, fuck ‘em (i’m joking, kind of). Anyway, writing this song felt like I finally figured out how to access that mentality creatively. Like, I asked Zoë to play mellotron! There are no live drums!
Zoë: Yeah “A Brief History” is the one time thief song where I feel like some of the sensibilities from my other current project, zowy (pronounced the same as my name in case you were wondering), came into play in a way that I really like. I have played in other indie pop/rock bands that usually consist of more standard rock instrumentation (guitar, bass, drums) – zowy is the first time where I’ve branched out and allowed myself to explore the world of synths, vocal processing, and drum machines. It was really nice to be able to bring some elements of that into this project, if just for a moment. I also love this softer energy coming from James. It really feels like they are being true to a different side of their songwriting tendencies that is so special to see!
You also made a zine to accompany the physical releases of this record, going into some background of the band as well as how the recordings came to be. Why did you two choose to preserve and document this moment of collaboration and creative process? Especially considering it gets pretty specific into your recording setup and equipment.
James: This record came out on a label I do called Musical Fanzine. The whole idea of the label is to get bands to create more joint audio + zine releases. I got into collecting physical media in the first place because I wanted to learn absolutely everything about what I was listening to. I would buy a pile of CDs of albums I had already downloaded, hoping that they’d all have robust booklets – or at least lyrics inside, and I’d always be disappointed if they didn’t. Booklets are kind of like zines in a way – I mean, I’m thinking about the booklet for something like Bikini Kill’s C.D. Version of the First Two Records. It totally blew my mind with how thoughtful it was. In encouraging bands to make zines, I’m trying to do my part to keep physical media sacred in a really online world.
Zoë was pretty against having any lyrics anywhere in the zine (we are polar opposites in that way), and tasked me with all the writing (she did the layout), so I just wrote about what I knew – since I recorded the EP, I focused on that. As someone who has been teaching myself about sound engineering a lot over the past 5 or so years (after discouraging myself for about a decade before that), I do a lot of reading about the making of records. I always wished that info was more accessible. Sound engineering is something that can be gatekept, and really expensive to get into. I’ve experienced that a lot. It can be especially hard to work up the confidence to try or figure out how to learn that shit if you don’t come from money or aren’t a dude. I guess I just wanted to show that if my dumb ass can figure this stuff out, so can some other random queer kid, and here’s how.
You go beyond the band in your zine, mentioning both influences and recommendations in your local Rhode Island setting. What do these spaces mean to you as members of the community?
James: I moved to Rhode Island in a bit of a whirlwind time of my life; it almost felt like I ended up here by accident. That said, I’m so grateful I did. I grew up in Eastern MA, which is prohibitively expensive now, and Providence really feels like the closest I can get to it in a lot of ways. The music community here is so welcoming and creative and there are truly so many freaky geniuses that really think outside of the box – I’m really grateful to share space with everyone here, and I think we just wanted to shout them out.
Zoë: I agree with so much of what James said. I’m a visual artist as well, and this is the first place I’ve lived where I don’t really feel as though there’s a ton of competition within the various creative communities that I’m a part of. Folks are really supportive and encouraging, which has opened a lot of doors for me as far as pushing myself creatively goes. It is hard seeing the city shift and change, with more echoes of Boston apparent pretty much every day. As someone who used to live in Boston and moved to RI about five years ago, I’m very aware of my part in this. I just hope that this sweet city can retain its weird, unique charm and not just become another tech bro destination.
James: That too. We also spend a lot of time hanging out at record stores around here (and I spend a lot of time at the local vegan deli/ice cream shop) and we’ve gotten to know the folks who run all of those places a bit. When we decided to put together a playlist of our inspirations, it felt incomplete without including influences within our own community. Besides, so many bands skip Providence on tour and I think I just want to encourage everyone to come hang.
You can listen to Time Thief anywhere you find your music as well as order a limited-edition tape or vinyl which comes with a zine about the album.
the ugly hug 