Every Wednesday, the ugly hug shares a playlist personally curated by an artist/band that we have been enjoying. This week we have a collection of songs put together by New York-based songwriter Zoë Pete Ford.
Earlier this year, Zoë self-released her latest album One Of The Guys, an album where each song drips and pools on the bar top like the condensation from your Miller Highlife, dampening your sleeves and any of those that sit there after. With gritty guitars and melodies that hum with the prowess of a neighbor’s old Ford Ranchero, Zoë’s songwriting is intuitive to the elements of a damn good story and those feelings that often get stuck between your teeth after chewing on its fat. Her lyrics, like old muddy boots, stay laced up as she walks through your house, picking up your knick knacks, eating from your fridge, rearranging your photos and leaving wet footprints all throughout just to see where she has gone. One Of The Guys is an album to be reckoned with, which our very own Autumn Swiers once said, “if you can hear her, you should fear her”.
About the playlist, titled “Hooks. spin it again”, Zoë shares;
i’m a hooks girl. gimme a good hook and chances are i can dig it. these songs all got me Hook line and sinker or with otherwise intoxicating melody. ive worn each of these tracks out on repeat and in most cases the albums they came from.
Every Wednesday, the ugly hug shares a playlist personally curated by an artist/band that we have been enjoying. This week we have a collection of songs put together by Toronto-based band cootie catcher.
cootie catcher make music that elicits nostalgia for a time of technological optimism. For iPod Nano childhoods and My Space pages flooded with photos we now deem “bad quality.” For people who grew up with the concept of the cellphone, but also watched it’s violent progression from a flippable device that facilitated Friday night plans to… whatever the hell you want to say about our contemporary relationship to the thin miniature screens that never leave our pockets. Earlier this year, the Toronto based four piece shared Shy at first – the album a swirling of indietronica in its most darling form possible. Brimming with eccentric glitchy elements and tech motifs, Shy at first imagines a sweet digital world where the tender fragments of humanity can still thrive. The record is earnest and conversational; lines like “my face is all corrupted html files” and an arsenal of eccentric electronic elements are softened by an endearing indie twee feel that leaves a smile on your face and a mark on your heart.
I met the members of Bloodsports at a Williamsburg bar last week in close proximity to their practice space – a location I am told is laced with band lore. I have no doubt that that’s true, nor do I doubt they could accrue lore at just about any bar they visit more than once. Five minutes and two mild french fry custody disputes into our conversation, I attempted to piece together the origins of their friendships, swimming in fragmented context and references to time spent in Denver and attending High School in Texas. I ultimately ask, but how they met and how long they have known each other is more or less fluff to what was the most crucial takeaway from our conversation. Whether the four piece are praising one another’s life altering music recommendations or rehashing heated contentions surrounding the use of an organ, the interpersonal relationships fostered by the members of bloodsports are well beyond the minimum threshold of closeness required to play instruments in sync.
Beyond being an endearing thing to witness as someone sitting in on pre-practice beers, the comfortability that exists within bloodsports is fundamental to what makes their music so compelling. It may seem melodramatic for me to ramble about trust in a piece about an indie band – as if they are engaging in an activity as high stakes as their namesake might suggest, but it is through this trust that their debut record manages such an emotional toil. You can point to moments of sheer chaos and total ‘pots and pans’ banging levels of corrosive noise, and you can attempt to credit them for the intensity of their music. The truth is, these bouts would be nothing without the band’s disciplined and drawn out moments of sonic austerity. They put equal emphasis on wielding the grace of four ballerinas as they do the raucous commotion of some early 2000’s scramz band. Whichever extreme they are in, or not in, they do so in sync – teasing tranquility only to decay it moments later and leaving their listener hooked in a space of liminal unease.
I heard bloodsports live before I heard their recorded music. They had been opening for MX Lonely sometime late last year – a time when I was still fleshing out some sort of understanding of Brooklyn’s bottomless supply of bands and often found myself lurking in the right back corner of Trans-Pecos with absolutely no context. And while I admittedly harbor a soft spot for bands found blindly, cherishing the “oh so retro” nature of discovering something before my Instagram algorithm shoved it down my throat, bloodsports remains one of the most seizing sets I have ever experienced this way. It was beautiful and chilling, the kind of music that knocks the air out of you and quiets your brain, even if just for thirty minutes. When it feels like the only states a mind can exist in today are gross overstimulation and jaded apathy, those thirty minutes are worth a hell of a lot.
The bloodsports I saw last fall, and the bloodsports you will hear on Anything Can Be a Hammer, is Sam Murphy (guitar/vocals), Jeremy Mock (Guitar), Liv Eriksen (bass/vocals) and Scott Hale (drums). I mentioned that interpersonal context was less crucial than the weight of their relationships, but I will offer a Sparknotes version to the best of my ability. Liv and Jeremy have been friends (and creative collaborators) the longest – the two went to high school in Texas together, where they wrote a song about yearning for an ex partner to rear in their marijuana habit and performed it at Monkey Nest Coffee House (home to the best chocolate muffins in Austin). Jeremy met Sam whilst they were both attending college in Denver – the same city he briefly met Wesley Wolffe, (a founder of Good English, the indie label putting out Anything Can Be A Hammer) who showed the earliest rendition of bloodsports to his then drummer, Scott. Scott was hooked, so hooked he managed to learn the earliest bloodsports songs on drums – which proved convenient when Jeremy and Sam moved to New York on a whim and decided to recruit members via Instagram Story. Liv and Scott more or less joined simultaneously (who actually joined first was a conversation left unsettled that night), and these additions occurred around the same time Sam and Jeremy’s Wayfair couch ruined Liv’s life.
The purpose of my prior anecdotal retreat was to emphasize the experiential ethos of bloodsports, which is just as present on Anything Can Be A Hammer as it has been every time the band gets on stage. It is the kind of record that seizes you wherever you choose to listen. It can raise hairs on your arm amidst sweltering temperatures on a crowded J train mid July, and it can trigger those tears you have been warding off for weeks while you search for Honey Nut Cheerios in a poorly lit Key Foods. Whatever reaction it might illicit for you is certainly not haphazard, given each track must pass a sort of poignancy litmus test; “I personally try to get into the headspace in practice where if I don’t feel something hitting me, then it probably is not going to hit live to an audience,” Sam explains of his approach to writing.
While Anything Can Be A Hammer bridges gaps between bloodsports’ current iteration and their available recorded discography, the band views the album (and the experience of recording it) as somewhat of a turning point for the project. “When we were putting this album together, we didn’t really know what we were going for. I think it feels like a jumping off point. I think what we are working on now and what we’re moving towards feels a lot bigger and more realized.” Jeremy says.
“I think the pressure and the whole ordeal of recording pushed us in the direction we are going now, which is definitely in the record,” Sam adds. “Especially the title track, which came together almost entirely in the studio. We are honing a lot more of a frenetic and crazy energy that still feels controlled, and I think we have found a place where we are all very comfortable collaboratively writing and putting things together.”
We recently sat down with bloodsports to discuss dynamics, the secrets to writing “edging music”, and Anything Can Be A Hammer, out tomorrow via Good English Records.
Manon: Tell me about your biggest individual influences
Scott: I’m kind of like all over the place. In terms of my drumming inspiration, I started out just learning classic rock songs. I loved John Bonham. But I think as I was becoming a real drummer, I was doing a lot of jazz and then also started playing in punk bands. Musically, my biggest inspirations are a lot of nineties post-hardcore bands, like Unwound. And just a lot of emo / post-hardcore drumming.
Jeremy: I think for this album, it kind of changed a bit. I was really into Swans’ Soundtracks for the Blind, and I wanted to throw that into the pot. I was really into Glenn Branca. Also, Women and Iceage are two of my all time favorite bands that I grew up listening to, and I think both of them made their way into my influences for this album. I feel like I have always worked with a lot of constraints when I made music – growing up I was really into Steve Albini and that whole approach of “oh, you just record something and then it’s live and then you don’t change it cause that’s inauthentic.” But with this album, there were a lot of third and fourth and fifth guitar parts, it was just a lot bigger. And I really tried to lean into that. It was also the first album that I have recorded in a proper studio, and that helped a lot.
Sam: Unwound is probably one of my favorite bands ever. That was definitely a reference point for me, especially vocally with a lot of the heavier sections and the screaming parts. I was listening to a lot of slowcore when writing the album. I love Women – Jeremy put me onto Women and it changed my life. Also a lot of post-punk
Liv: I guess early on, you know when you’re a kid and you just kinda listen to what your parents listen to and it takes a while to explore your own thing. I remember Bedhead was a really big record – my friend Reed showed me and I was like “oh, not everything is just Euro-pop like my mom likes”. So that was my first guitar music, and then he also put me on to (lint). I remember I had talked to Jeremy about that briefly in high school. The strokes were my end all be all then. Later, when I was in college, I got really into French Psych – where a lot of crazy bass lines come in. I didn’t play bass at all at that point, but that was the first time I actually noticed bass lines, because I had always been someone who focused more on vocals and melody. I had a friend who pushed me to pick up the bass when we would listen to that together. And definitely the classic 2000’s garage rock. That has always been my biggest influence and what I love the most. And then Jeremy and Sam put me onto Swans and Women and that was an absolute game changer – I was like “this is maybe the coolest music I have heard in my life.” Soundtracks for the Blind is easily one of my top three favorite albums of all time.
Manon: Anything Can Be A Hammer is heavier than your EP.I think one thing you do really well on this record is how you approach a more abrasive sound – you have a lot of great buildups, and then some tracks that are a bit more immediate. Can you tell me about how you honed that on this record, and perhaps how a prior bloodsports sound influenced it?
Sam: I think we wanted to focus a lot on dynamics rather than fitting as much as you can or how complex we can make the tracks. A lot of our builds are the same thing, just with dynamic ranges, which I think is really cool personally. With the heavier stuff, I think I wanted to have these slowcore-ish riffs, and just ruin them.
Liv: We do a lot of ruining. But in an intentional way.
Jeremy: Since the nineties, there has been a pretty solid relationship between slowcore and noise rock. Bands like Slint and Unwound. They are kind of one in the same.
Scott: Spiderland is one of my favorite records
Jeremy: Yeah I think an album like Spiderland, and a lot of the stuff I grew up listening to, still holds up today. I have always wanted to make music like that cause there is just so much possibility in it.
Scott: Having a push and pull keeps things interesting. I keep thinking about that one Hum song
(Liv and Sam): “Stars”
Scott: “Stars”. It starts out so fucking quiet and then it just goes
Liv: I feel like that music sounds so much more conversational and human. It’s not just one complete thought, it stops and flows and there are things that add onto or take away from each other. I think all these guys do that really well when they’re writing parts – it sounds very conversational. I feel like I can speak for the band, maybe I can’t, but I enjoy listening to music that has that push and pull between heavy and soft, and I want to play in a band where the music is interesting rather than just riffing on one thought or idea for three minutes.
Jeremy: I also think what I like and what I want to do more of is music that just makes you wait for it for a little bit.
Sam: It’s edging music
Liv: Redact that
Sam: No keep that
Scott: Edging indie rock
Jeremy: Not get all meta about it or whatever, but we are in this age of short form everything. So I like making people wait a little bit more. Not that we don’t all consume vast amounts of brain rot daily.
Liv: Speak for yourself, kid.
Jeremy: We don’t even do it that crazy. A band like Swans will make you wait half an hour. We make you wait three minutes.
Liv: If even.
Jeremy: Yeah, if even. So it’s not really on the same level, but that is definitely where we draw inspiration from. Music that is not so immediate.
Liv: I also feel like a lot of it is written with performance in mind. You have to tap into the slow parts, and then you get so much more in the headspace for the louder release.
Scott: I like listening to everybody, the jazz drummer in me feels a requirement to listen to everything that is being played. But being able to be really dynamic, and have Liv make big eyes at me when I am playing a little too loud during practice. But that rocks, because it means we are all listening to each other.
Liv: That is also part of what makes it more conversational. When we play we really do face each other and interact with one another and I think that adds a lot.
Manon: I know Liv mentioned a lot of these songs being written with performance in mind. Were you able to also play a lot of these tracks prior to recording them? And if so, did that further shape them at all?
Liv: All of them, except the title track
Scott: We were basically playing the album for a year before we recorded it
Sam: I do think they have changed a lot. Just from playing them live, and then they changed a lot after we recorded them. With writing them with performance in mind, I personally try to get into the headspace in practice where if I don’t feel something hitting me, then it probably is not going to hit live to an audience.
Liv: I think we never shy away from making adjustments like, just ’cause the song’s finalized in the record. If you feel something can be added to like, why would we let that constrain moving forward?
Manon: Where did ‘Anything Can Be A Hammer’ come from?
Sam: The title predates the lyrics and the songs, I just walked past a sign in Soho that said ‘anything can be a hammer’ in a shop or something, and it really stuck with me for some reason. I was thinking about it for weeks, and I was like, “what does that mean?” But once you think about something for that long, it kind of takes on its own meaning, which I felt was similar to a lot of how I wrote the lyrics on the record. I write a lot without really having an idea in mind, then as I am writing I look at it and start to understand what I am trying to say.
Manon: You are putting this record out on Good English Records, which is a new label. I would love to hear about that decision and your experience with them.
Sam: Nick and Wesley came to us, well Wesley just texted me one day and said “I have a proposition for you.” And he explained they were starting a label and wanted to put out the record. We met with them and we were like “this is awesome, I want to put out a record with my friends.” They have been really great, it has been so much fun and they’ve been killing it.
Scott: As a whole, they’re both just super active in the scene, even outside of music – they’re good at building relationships and being good homies to everybody
Sam: and they have so many more friends than we do
Liv: They are genuine music fans, like it’s their lifeline. They love it so much.
Jeremy: They pooled money together to build it. Any really great indie label is built on a labor of love, and you’re doing it cause you are just stoked on what your friends are doing.
Scott: Who else would I want in my corner, pushing my band’s record, than my friends who came up to me after I played a show to like, 20 people and said “that shit was so good” or “that sounded better than the last time I saw you.” That whole team, Kenzie and Miles and everybody believes in the records they’re putting out. They believe in us. That shit rocks.
Jeremy: I play in Wesley’s band and I’ve known Wesley forever, it just feels very much like a partnership.
Scott: I’ve known Wesley since I was buying him beers and getting him into my college campus to practice. I’ll trust him with anything.
Written by Manon Bushong | Photo by Luke Ivanovich
Every Wednesday, the ugly hug shares a playlist personally curated by an artist/band that we have been enjoying. This week we have a collection of songs put together by New York based project My Wonderful Boyfriend.
Today, My Wonderful Boyfriend shared new single, “I’m Your Man”. Before listening, I speculated it might be some sort of redemption for the penultimate track on An Evening With…, the EP that the Brooklyn based four piece shared earlier this year. That track – titled “Here Comes Your Man”, is a yearning drenched unraveling that pulls from the perspective of, well, not being someone’s man. My Wonderful Boyfriend has a knack for attaining sincerity through those charmingly arbitrary slacker-rock song structures, generating emotional friction through cavorting melodies and raw vocals prone to bouts of excessive repetition. This spills into “I’m Your Man”, leaving the contents of the track a lot less absolute than the title may suggest.
Despite its lyrical ambivalence and housed introspections of “I’m shaky because I’m not quite sure I’m your man”, the track in itself is far from timid. “I’m Your Man” starts on a punchy, over-caffeinated note and still manages an impressive build up over its five minute life span. It’s cushioned with charged da-da-da-da‘s and a stint of hallelujah’s, of which ultimately lead to MWB cramming twenty-and-some-change declarations of “i’m your man” within the track’s final thirty seconds. Whether “I’m Your Man” is a redemption or a continuation or ultimately entirely unrelated to the pining found on their January release is not something I can confidently conclude. What I can tell you, and with confidence, is that it is a damn good song. However, if my opinion is not enough for you to give it a listen (fair enough), then the track’s inspiration playlist – which jumps from Jane Remover to Playboi Carti to Pulp to Wilco – should do the trick.
About the playlist, My Wonderful Boyfriend shared;
“We started out trying to build a playlist of direct influences on “I’m Your Man,” but I guess had too much fun and went with more general influences and songs that make us excited to play, write, and listen to music.”
Every Wednesday, the ugly hug shares a playlist personally curated by an artist/band that we have been enjoying. This week we have a collection of songs put together by Brooklyn-based band Ringing.
If you are fond of distortion and reside in New York, chances are you have caught a Ringing set. The Brooklyn based four-piece has a knack for bathing introspective lyricism and spiraling melodies in rich sludgy atmospheres — a feat found in their live shows as well as their 2023 EP, Is It Light Where You Are?
Listen to Ringing’s playlist here!
You can check out Ringing on Bandcamp below!
Written by Manon Bushong | Featured Photo by Avery Davis
The first time we featured Lefty Parker in the Ugly Hug, it was for his visual art. He shared a few posters in a show flyer feature of our Newsletter, done in his medium of choice – Etch a Sketch. Its a creative tool that certainly garners novelty points, and anyone who has dabbled in one of those red boxes in their lifetime can attest to the fact that creating anything legible on there is an impressive feat in itself. But what Lefty is able to do on Etch A Sketch, and his ability to hone so much life through mere two dimensional scratches, is breathtaking. In a world pulverized by stimulation, it can often feel the price tag to attention is a never-ending slew of hollow maximalism. It’s exhausting, which is why I think today more than ever, we crave art that subverts excess. Art that is grounded in imperfection and art that takes a step back. I think that is what makes the “Etches” Lefty does so moving; the depth of sensitivity found in a portrait or animal or shower head juxtaposed against the perceived limits and simplicity of the medium. I would urge you to check them out if you have not yet.
This post is about Lefty’s music, but I choose to lead with that context because I like the parallels between his crafts. Today, Lefty announced his forthcoming record, Ark, sharing lead single, “Illusions”. It’s a story of staggering heartache through a deeply human lens; of asking the sky for answers, of the achey impacts of a memory saturated town, of the inescapable wear and tear that comes with being alive. Featuring Buck Meek, “Illusions” leaves a stubborn mark in the same way that Lefty’s Etch A Sketch pictures do – as tender vignettes unravel on a familiar folk canvas, the track is profound and touching without any sort of gimmicks. It rewards intentionality; with each listen the soft woodwinds and warm twangy melodies grow in beauty while the harmonized somber vignettes cut deeper. By rooting itself in an earnest simplicity, “Illusions” captures yearning in its most honest and delicate form. It’s refreshing and complex, and a lovely sliver of the kind of calloused storytelling we can expect from Ark.
Ark will be out October 24th. You can listen to “Illusions” now.
Every Wednesday, the ugly hug shares a playlist personally curated by an artist/band that we have been enjoying. This week we have a collection of songs put together by LA-based artist Izzy Hagerup of the project Prewn.
Following the release of 2023’s debut LP Through The Window, Hagerup has just announced her follow up album titled System, out October 3rd via Exploding in Sound. The music that comes from Prewn is as deliberately harsh as it is instinctively beautiful. Through The Window bound together lush textures and open spaces by building trusting relationships with dissident sound structures and absorbent lyricism. Prewn’s pulse continues to pump with the release of “System”, the first single off the upcoming album and accompanied by a music video directed by Sophie Feuer.
“System” opens like a cold sweat, where thick, briny strings dribble down like beads; dribble farther down your face than you would often allow before wiping away. It’s a moment that feels stuck in time, one that deliberates between peace of mind and a piece of mind that can’t quite fall into place. As the strings begin to take shape, offering a counterbalance to Hagerup’s melodic fortitude, you want to say that it sweeps you up into a dream-like state, but this is real life, and she knows that. The song soon breaks off as Hagerup belts, “just give your life away”, a chorus of searing words that give voice to the internal conflicts between mental struggles and the buttoned-up expectations that are often placed on us. It’s a stunning track that builds upon frustration with such intent as Hagerup’s singular voice becomes the benchmark for retainment and release, slowly bringing us back to that same moment of stillness from which we began.
About the playlist, Hagerup shared;
“Some songs that I’ve come back to again and again over the years”
Listen to the playlist here;
Listen to System here!
System is set to be released October 3rd via Exploding In Sound. You can pre-order the album now as well as on vinyl.
I have a tendency to fall into anecdotal rambling when I try to write about a project I find especially moving. This achilles heal is most inflamed when a song makes me cry – which does not happen super often – but when it does, I have to fight the urge to cite my own tears. It’s usually a desperate attempt to articulate the gravity of a track without turning to some dry technical dissection, but it doesn’t matter. No one gives a shit about the time I cried at my roommate’s roller blading competition, seated in a patch of grass above the park with Shallowater’s There is a Well in my ratty noise-cancelling headphones. So I will not tell you about it.
What I will say is that Houston based Shallowater is not doing anything new. At least not in a way I can cite on paper. Their soundscapes are familiar and rather organic, and I could write a laundry list of band comparisons ranging from emo and posthardcore to alt-country and slowcore, and they would all be valid. I suppose that is the real root of this apprehensive music journalism crisis I have so generously decided to include in this single review – the chasm between the abstractly unprecedented feel of a band and a reality that they are not technically doing anything unheard of. But perhaps that is the foundation for the most touching projects; an ability to pull from motifs seen countless times before and churn it into something that stops you in your tracks.
Today, Shallowater shared “Sadie”, the second single off their forthcoming record, God is Going to Give You a Million Dollars. The track starts on a gentle note, finding its footing in drawn out enunciations and a cautious rhythm section. As vocals grow in urgency, the soundscapes inflate into an eventual riff –lathered with mucky distortion, indulgent percussion, and a suffocating amount of poignancy. In the span of seven and a half minutes, Shallowater pursues this sort of escalation more than once, leaving you unsure of which buildup is the buildup. Perhaps the answer is neither? Perhaps the mud-slides of twangy sludge are less a destination than they are a means of amplifying slivers of delicacy and desperation between them. In the case of “Sadie”, soft vocals tend to cut deepest when they follow moments of sweeping cacophony. It’s enough to subdue even the sturdiest of poker faces.
You can listen to “Sadie” everywhere now, and pre-order God’s Gonna Give You A Million Dollars on Bandcamp.
the ugly hug 