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 Asheville-based artist Sean O’Hara.
Through all the noise, the loose distortion, the meaningful sonic spells and the interchangeable fidelities that play to their own strengths, the songs that Sean O’Hara offers are grown from an inherent sense of kindness. Where each song becomes a quiet reflection, a still moment that sticks to you like the hair of a dog, where each piece is picked off one at a time with the care and attention it needs. Sean’s debut release under his own name, 2023’s somewhere, was a warm buzz of excitement seared with feelings of longing and intimacy, but before that, he has been sharing music under the name nadir bliss since 2015. His mot recent releases consist of a split EP with Jackson Fig and a bandcamp album titled i don’t want to be alone, a collection of songs about loneliness and self,recorded on a tascam 488 over the span of two years on a farm in Virginia. Keep an eye out for more music to come from the Sean O’Hara camp in the near future.
About the playlist Sean shares;
I have a habit of writing songs with pretty fast tempos. Over the past few years, I’ve made an effort to listen to more mid tempo music to influence my approach to songwriting and try to slow it down a bit sometimes. On that note, I have grown a deep affinity for “baggy” music. It was pretty popular in the 90’s and early 2000’s, coming from the Madchester scene and evolving/mutating over time. This playlist is a collection of some of my favorite baggy beats.
Listen to the playlist here;
You can listen to Sean’s music anywhere you find your music. You can also order a tape of somewhere via Candlepin Records.
Written by Shea Roney | Featured Photo Courtesy of Sean O’Hara
Tanner York doesn’t walk into a studio so much as he drags it with him, through Asheville apartments, the recording studio at UNC Asheville and his parents’ attic, leaving behind a trail of tape hiss, cheap snacks and a surprisingly serious collection of pop songs. York is your music obsessed friend anxiously waiting to leave a party to sing along to Beach Boys Instrumentals in his Subaru after sipping on his patented “Tanner Two,” a self-prescribed two lager limit. He spends his days obsessively scrolling through microphone reviews on one tab and a high-speed game of bootleg Tetris in another, thinking of all the different ways he can create the perfect drum sound. But when he plugs his guitar into the AC30 tucked away in his closet and presses record on his Tascam 488 MKII, all that scattered energy coalesces as he reveals himself in this sacred space as a budding hero of modern underground pop. On Welcome to the Shower, his joyfully weird and emotionally sincere debut album, released July 20 via Trash Tape Records, York transforms his obsessive ear and chaotic charm into something startlingly clear: lo-fi pop songs that sound like inside jokes until they suddenly hit like memories.
Before Tanner York started recording as Tanner York, he fronted a high-energy noise-pop duo called Diana Superstar. The early performances leaned into pure showmanship and black midi-esque chaos. “I thought my destiny was kind of like the noisy, blow-you-away live show,” York says. The songs were short-winded but bursting with excitement and creativity–jagged, stitched-together ideas that didn’t always complement one another, but hinted at a restless, ambitious musical mind. Over time though, he shifted his focus inward, discovering his real obsession wasn’t spectacle—it was the song. The melody. The chord changes. “I started realizing that what I value most is writing something that could pass the acoustic guitar test. Something sticky, something strong.” That pivot marks his growth, not just in style, but in intention as well, as he learned to craft nuanced, coherent pop songs that stick with you long after the tape stops rolling.
Photos by Hana Parpan
That newfound clarity within his songwriting is what makes Welcome to the Shower so charming and so special. While the album brims with unconventional tape tricks and lo-fi quirks, it’s never a gimmick. York’s melodies are deceptively complex, his harmonies airtight. Tracks like “Girlfriend” and “Museum Broadway” are loaded with witty lyrical side-eyes—born from York’s interest in comedy and his brief but passionate detour into stand-up in Los Angeles—but they’re never too cool to not care. In fact, they care deeply, and that tension between irony and sincerity is part of what makes this record so endearing.
In “Museum Broadway,” York paints a surrealist portrait of suburban malaise, full of strange observations and tongue in cheek imagery: “The movie theater with a fuck-ugly mural / Beside the frozen-over pond.” These are the kinds of lines he’s mastered that evoke laughter before shifting into emotional clarity over a key change when he drops the dry detachment to sing “everyday I think about just moving far away from here but I don’t have the time.”
“Girlfriend” is equally clever, but more biting in its longing. It flirts with the melodrama but always lands somewhere painfully honest. “I heard she gave you a tattoo / of your dog that recently died” and “I could be everything she is” feel like throwaway one-liners until York twists them into a chorus that aches with restraint: “But you have a girlfriend / she loves you just fine.” It’s that careful balance between pettiness, humor, and vulnerability that makes York’s writing shine. His lyrics often read like someone trying not to cry by telling a joke and then accidentally revealing everything.
While the lyrics may lean toward playful or indirect, York admits that’s partly a protective instinct: “One of the ways that I get myself to trust a lyric is to make it funny. It’s almost an insecurity thing, where it’s like, ‘oh, if I’m being funny then I’m above sincerity, which I’m trying to avoid, but I really do love songs with funny lyrics. Bands like Squeeze have incredibly funny lyrics, but they also write such amazing pop songs. I’ve always thought that novelties are in the same artistic bracket as something that’s attempting to be serious because it’s equally if not harder to pull off correctly.” That looseness, both as a defense mechanism and a genuine stylistic tool, often leads to wryly observational lines that sneak up on you and leave a mark.
Photo by Hana Parpan
Last summer York spent a few months in Los Angeles, California working for a twitch streamer, Luke Taylor, editing his streams. He found himself at stand up comedy shows almost every other night trying out new jokes and meeting fellow comedians. Through this and by playing video games online, York found lots of personal inspiration by befriending many of his comedic and musical heroes.
“I was playing Fortnite with my friend Dan, who lives in New York, and one day he asked if his friend could join the lobby. It ended up being Will from Hotline TNT and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I love his music.’” York had recently become obsessed with Cartwheel, Hotline TNT’s latest album at the time. “In a lot of ways it felt adjacent to the goals I had where it was like the kind of Teenage Fanclub writing, pretty simple pop songs, but in the context of having super loud guitars and things like that.” The two began exchanging music and ideas over Discord. “From then on Will has been a big help for me, both giving feedback and also helping me navigate releasing a record and things like that. He’s been very wonderful.”
The process behind Welcome to the Shower is as loose and spontaneous as the music sounds. “I never wrote or recorded songs with the intention of them having a place on an album, which may explain the abundance of energetic songs rather than calmer ones,” York says. “I got very into recording with a Tascam 8-track cassette recorder after seeing the Elephant 6 documentary, and the immediacy immediately inspired me. I loved how it didn’t let me spend hours tweaking with settings. It forced me to think about the music first.”
He leaned into the tape’s limitations, experimenting with pitch shifts and speed manipulation. “Sometimes I’d record my vocals at a slower speed so that when I pitched them back up they’d sound higher. Recording on tape was really helpful because sometimes when I hear a song so many times I start to get sick of it and I start doubting it. I found that if I have a song and I’m starting to get sick of it, if I pitch it up a lot, it’s almost like listening to a new song and you get to hear the chord changes differently, it feels like you’re hearing the song as an outside listener. A lot of the time it would make me realize like, ‘oh, this is still a good idea. I just need to get out of my head.’ Sometimes I would just keep the pitch shifted version that way because I ended up liking how it sounded more.”
Some tracks like the fluttery, hook-laden “All Over Again” were written, recorded, and fully mixed on tape in a single day. Others, like the textured “Cut Out,” went through multiple demos and incarnations before arriving at their final form. Whether immediate or hard-won, each song is bound by a deep, almost mythic pull toward pop itself. The shimmering ideal of a melodic, emotional, and endlessly replayable song. “I became really obsessed with pop song structure and key changes and what makes a good melody,” he says. “When I listen to great pop songs, I get so much joy from listening to them over and over, and singing along in my car. I just wanted to make songs that could fit in that space.”
Photo by Geddi Monroe
With influences that range from The Beach Boys, Beatles, and XTC to contemporary weird-pop heroes like Sharp Pins, Combat Naps, and Chris Cohen, York isn’t reinventing pop so much as lovingly disassembling it and re-taping it back together, making it entirely his own. Welcome to the Shower reflects that patchwork spirit, full of jangly guitar tones, crisp comedic timing, and unpredictable but sophisticated chord changes, all stitched together into lo-fi power pop songs crafted with enormous care and an even bigger heart.
One of the album’s most striking moments comes at the very end with “Blarry,” a devastating closer that peels back all the irony and reveals York exposed in a way that feels almost disarming. It’s a song about compromise, about trying to hold onto something already fading. “Do I, do I remind you / Of those days and long, long nights / When someone made an effort to believe you?” he asks, before answering himself with the heartbreaking clarity: “I’d walk a thousand miles / for someone just to lay beside / for that alone I’d trade anything.” Just when you think the jokes drop away as the melody stretches out in a remarkable moment of unguardedness, you get a punch to the heart as the song abruptly ends in the middle of a line and you kind of want to strangle him.
Photo by Hana Parpan
Underneath all of the amusing remarks and the bent melodies, Welcome to the Shower is an album about longing and coming-of-age confusion. Its roots lie in York’s community in Asheville, at shows at Static Age Records, a local venue and record store that fosters a thriving music scene where York has seen and played with many of his heroes and made many of his friends, in conversations with older mentors, and in jam sessions with fellow UNC Asheville music technology students (now his live band). “With this record, I stopped trying to sound like anyone else,” he says. “I just chased the melodies I couldn’t get out of my head.”
Welcome to the Shower isn’t trying to prove anything, and that’s part of its charm. It’s the sound of someone falling in love with music all over again. Not for the aesthetic, or applause, but for the simple thrill of a well-placed key change, a sticky hook, or a lyric that makes you snort before it breaks your heart. Tanner York may still be figuring it all out, but if this record is any sign, he’s already miles ahead of the curve. His songs might start as jokes but they end as the kind you can’t stop thinking about for days on end. Welcome to the Shower is the perfect soundtrack to a hot summer night and the sound of someone arriving casually, hilariously, and with total clarity.
You can listen to Welcome to the Shower out everywhere you find your music. Pre-orders for your very own Tanner York CD are now open via the legendary Trash Tape Records.
Written by Eilee Centeno | Feature Photo by Hana Parpan
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 Eli Raymer of the Asheville-based project Good Trauma.
Along with playing in other bands such as Powder Horns, Tongues of Fire, Idle County and Trust Blinks, Good Trauma is Raymer’s place to be fully enveloped in his own little world. Releasing his latest album In Succession last year, where he embraced more broken folk structures, Raymer’s writing is where tension and intuition link arms and sincerity and distrust break the hold, beautifully capturing that triumphant feeling of making it through another rough day while still looking forward to whatever is next.
About the playlist, Raymer shares;
Here’s a playlist I curated for you! I tried to capture my daily listening perspective from morning to night, Breakfast to the bar, sensible to foolish.
Listen to Raymer’s Playlist here;
Listen to In Sucession and other Good Trauma releases out everywhere now! Tapes available at I’m Into Life Records.
Last week, a band I had been interviewing told me that the only relevant means of music categorization is region-based. It came up amidst some anti-genre discourse, and the take was less a blanket statement of “every band from Pittsburgh is making an identical style of music” way, and more so rooted in the touching impacts of community on art. I found myself marinating on that take heavily as I listened to this split EP by Tombstone Poetry, trust blinks. and Hiding Places, three bands who share ties to Asheville, North Caroline. Their timelines in the city do not boast an identical alignment, Hiding Places is now a Brooklyn based project and trust blinks. has only been in Asheville since 2023, yet an element of community touches and binds the entirety of the listen, creating a through line amongst a series of personal reflections and guarded thoughts.
We recently got to ask trust blinks., Hiding Places and Tombstone Poetry a few questions regarding their individual tracks, collaboration on this split and the impacts of community in Asheville, North Carolina.
trust blinks. is the project of Ethan Hoffman-Sadka who has been releasing under the name since 2021. Following the last LP Turns to Gold (2024) and two collaborative singles, Trust Blinks. returns today with two new songs, “Body Keeps Score” and “Dirty Dishes”. On “Dirty Dishes”, trust blinks. reflects on a childhood unblemished perception of the world from the thinned-out lens of adulthood. The tectonic gaps between a life where “astronaut” is an attainable path and a life where you co-exist with a roommate’s neglected mug in the sink are bridged in a rusty haze of lived in guitar and tender vocals, untethering the track from the extremes that it explores to establish an experience that leans a bit further into emotionally ambiguity. The weathering impact of lived experiences is a theme that trickles over on “Body Keeps Score”, where trust blinks. examines how hardships can only promote growth if we choose to not be defined by them. Tombstone Poetry makes an appearance on the alt-country leaning track, the initial contrast of Hoffman-Sadka’s brittle and delicate deliveries followed Burris’ sharply melodic twang ultimately filtered into one through a stunning moment of harmonization.
This is not your first split release, having collaborated with other artists like liverr, new not shameful and Suggie Shooter. Now with this 3 part split, even including Tombstone Poetry on one of your tracks, what does this kind of collaboration, and/or pairing, bring out in the music that you create? What do you take away from experiences like this?
Lately, I’ve been trying to collaborate with as many of my friends/inspirations as possible. I love so many different sounds it’s hard to keep track haha. With each split or mutually created song I think I pick something new up along the way whether it’s a new skill/interest or even the realization of what I don’t like. I haven’t been really feeling a succinct sound lately so I’ve been enjoying going with the flow and doing one-off tracks instead of albums. I’m always looking for ways to force myself to not take it all so seriously- which ironically takes quite a bit of work for me.
There is a lot of depth in these songs’ complexion, for instance, “Body Keeps Score” leans into the more alt-country style and “Dirty Dishes” embraces that more slow and harsh soundscape that filled past projects like Turns to Gold. When it came to the sonic build of these songs, was there anything new that you wanted to try? Any ways you challenged yourself with these recordings?
As cliche as it sounds, it’s been hard to resist leaning into the sounds of the South since I moved here. I wrote both of these songs around 6 months ago and just recorded little demos of them for Youtube without any much thought about what genre they were at the time. When it came time to really record them they both seemed to naturally gravitate towards different sounds. I knew I wanted to record Dirty Dishes with my friend Luna (Total Wife) and the goal in doing so was definitely to channel The Pumpkins, MBV, Lilies, Acetone and so on. I wrote Body Keeps Score with Caelan (Tombstone Poetry) in mind to sing on so I think I kinda built the song up around the sound of their voice I had in my mind. I’m still pretty new to incorporating instruments like banjo, violin or pedal steel into mixes so I think I struggled a little more with Body Keeps Score when it came time to record that one. I realize I still have quite a bit of work to do when it comes to genuinely approaching songs that are a departure from the usual wheelhouse haha.
“Dirty Dishes” floats this theme of growing older and becoming more despondent to your surroundings. What was the significance in the imagery you chose? Is there a thematic throughline with the grappling that “Body Keeps Score” goes through?
I really like when any art comes from a really simple place. I think Dirty Dishes’ lyrics came really naturally in that sense. In adulthood I find myself so manic and wrongfully attuned to inconsequential details like the noise or messes my roommates make. I probably was in the middle of some mental stupor and took a step back and realized how sad it was that our worlds become so much smaller as we grow older. The line ‘you could clean them but they’ll still pile up’ is all about how there’s always some new problem or fault I find with something or someone. I’m working on that!
With Body Keeps Score there is not really as much imagery going on. I just liked how those words paired together (from the book) and made a little play on the words. The lyric, “If the body’s been keeping score I’ve gone undefeated since I was born”, kinda says it all. I think sometimes I take pride in my hardships in an unhealthy way. Hardship can definitely help us grow but not when they become an aesthetic thing or a script we rely so heavily on.
Did writing and recording these songs help you feel more present in your day-to-day, especially when pulling deeper meaning from the mundane?
I think I gravitate towards writing lyrics as if they are mantras. In that sense, writing these songs definitely helped me feel a little lighter. It’s always nice to consolidate a philosophy or feeling into a 3-minute, materialized thing that you can say goodbye to. As for recording these songs, I can’t say they were as enjoyable. I started that process after Hurricane Helene and six months later I still find it hard to get into a certain flow. The prospect of sitting at my desk was and still is extremely daunting and at some point, I just had to set a deadline so I could let myself move on. I’m not as happy with Body Keeps Score (it feels a bit dramatic/forced) but I’m excited to take some space and work on new stuff/potentially approach recording the song again in the future.
Now a Brooklyn based band, Hiding Places began in Asheville as the project of Audrey Keelin, Nicholas Byrne and Henry Cutting. Following the 2024 release of single “Pulp”, Hiding Places returns today with two new songs, “Unfixing” and “Flooded Island”. Though the notion of a “bedroom” track is technically rooted in lack, there is often an impalpable depth and level of untouched emotional ruminations in music created in one’s own space. Amidst a circling fog of delicately layered vocals on “Unfixing”, Hiding Places simulates an unraveling of skepticism and preoccupation cushioned by tender, glistening guitar. This authentic “bedroom” quality spills over onto “Flooded Island”, which maintains a wispy sense of solitude as Keelin’s syrupy vocals sift through overbearing thoughts during a quiet shift at a woodshop.
There is a great deal of focus towards different sonic textures in these songs, but especially on “Unfixing” with its building layers and the roles the landscapes played on the track. Where did you challenge yourself in crafting this soundscape? Did the build up of instrumentation come naturally with the songs’ intentions?
Nicholas: So these two songs from Hiding Places came as from songs from our first album that we’re done recording now, and basically realized, hey, we need to fit this album on a record, and these two songs stuck out as having their own sonic qualities that work together, and we thought it would be fun to release them early on this project.
Audrey: I feel like I want to preface this by saying that these two songs were built from demos that I made in my room alone. They just both have that sort of energy to them, so I think all of the textures that we incorporated in this and essentially almost everything on this recording that was built on these bedroom demos, we’re just kind of experimenting and seeing how we can make them Hiding Places songs. And these songs were arranged and produced during the same time that we were arranging and producing and recording the entire album that’s going to come out sometime soon. But they set themselves apart because they are more like bedroom recordings, and they are just softer and more delicate and songs that we don’t really play live. They have this more experimental energy to them rather than like, you know, this is a song that we arranged as a band in the practice room, and this is a song that we play live, and this is a song that we get out a lot of energy with. But to more accurately answer that question, the song’s intention was just experimentation, just trying to get out a feeling. It’s honestly indescribable, and that’s why we make music.
Lyrically, there are phrases on “Flooded Island” that lean into that imaginative imagery that you have used in the past to grapple with more adult themes, as was the focus on your prior EP, Lesson. In what ways did utilize this type of writing to bring out themes buried within these songs?
Audrey: Flooded Island was a song that I wrote while I was working in a woodshop in Chapel Hill. I had a lot of free time because there were often times where there was nobody there and I could just make my own stuff, and sometimes I would use the job site radio to mix my demos in the woodshop. So I think that that song for me is imbued with that memory. Also just imbued with the memory of working my ass off in general, especially working my ass off to move to New York. That song I wrote before I moved to New York and I was just thinking about how much hard work it was going to be to move here. It’s also just like witnessing other people overworking themselves to survive.
This is one of the first Hiding Places’ releases where you are all once again in the same spot, but now living in New York. Has that shift in location changed the way you approach and interact with how you make music?
Audrey: I think that the move to New York has actually completely changed Hiding Places’ sound as a whole. I think that these songs and some of the songs that are on the album kind of mark an end of the remote Hiding Places that we’ve known for four years now. It’s kind of bittersweet, but I’m very, very happy that we live in the same place now because we can arrange music together and play it together and try it out and add new parts and test what feels most fun and exploratory live. With the shift in location though, I think the main thing that has been really revolutionary to Hiding Places is Michael Matsakis and recording and arranging with him. Having him produce some songs and play keys and organ and bass parts and even guitar parts in some songs, he’s just so tapped into this endless stream of creativity and curiosity that I admire so much and I’m so lucky to be around.
Nicholas: Audrey made these demos in North Carolina before moving to New York about a year ago, and we recorded the rest of the parts of the arrangements in New York, so I think they exist somewhere in between sonically, which has kind of been the story of the band so far. Now with Audrey in New York, though, we have the opportunity to play a lot more and write together here, where previously our process has been building on top of demos that either Audrey or I bring to the band. There are several songs on the album that we wrote from scratch together, so we’re kind of evolving how we build songs and sounds. It’s always funny, I feel like a lot of the songs we’re releasing were made a couple years ago, so it sounds different than the things that we’re writing now. But I think these are especially cool songs because of the way that they are really crafting a soundscape and are rather ethereal in their atmosphere.
With origins in North Carolina, this split album has its soul based in the South. Now living in New York, in what ways do these songs connect you back to Asheville and the way that that community functions?
Audrey: I appreciate that you asked about Asheville. It’s extremely meaningful for me to be making music and being in the same scene still with people who live in Asheville because it’s where I grew up and it’s where I feel like it’s the scene that raised me as a musician and also just as a person. I felt disconnected from it for a while ever since I moved, but the fact that I can come back and feel at home again is so encouraging and it makes me want to just keep making music and being in that community and being inspired by that community.
Nicholas: We just played with Tombstone at Trans-Pecos here in New York, and it was really fun. It’s really cool to blend these worlds, North Carolina and New York, of people and place and music and taste!
Watch the accompanying music video for “Flooded Island”
Since 2021, Tombstone Poetry has been forging a musical identity that paints a certain country warmth onto alternative rock and noise heavy walls. Following the 2024 release of their LP How Could I Be So in Debt, Tombstone shares singles “Ignition” and “Bender” today. “Ignition” presents as the most upbeat track on this release, attesting to Tombstone Poetry’s knack for molding shame-drenched confessions into buoyant hooks and twangy warmth. “Bender” adopts a darker soundscape, though both tracks cut deep into reflections on substance abuse and the impact of addiction on relationships.
Through feelings of heartbreak and sabotage, was there a specific theme that towed the line between these two songs? What did you find yourself embracing when bringing out these songs?
I think as I continue to write about things like heartbreak, I find more solace in being brutally honest. The general theme of broken relationships (both platonic and romantic) has been a defining characteristic of Tombstone songs for a long time. I think with Bender and Ignition, the songs are not only honest but defeatist in the hopelessness of the lyrical themes. In picking them as the songs for the split I decided to embrace that feeling and have these two sister songs stand together.
As “Bender” becomes this haunting infiltration into the lives of two individuals, how did you play with the concept of a bender and heartbreak taking on similar roles in your lyrics?
Bender is a pretty straightforward song about drug addiction. It’s somewhat dramatized but the feeling of being at the mercy of your vices but wanting stability in a relationship was my point of view in writing it.
“Ignition” and “Bender” take on two different sonic build ups, yet hold on to that alt-country style that your music has set its roots into? Was there anything you wanted to do to challenge the way you work as a large instrumental unit on these tracks? Did you try anything new?
We recorded both of these tracks completely differently than anything we’ve done before. Usually we go into things as a unit at a studio, but with these two me and Lawson Alderson pieced them together in our home studio, bringing in different members of tombstone and guest musicians. It was a very fun and different experience to collage the songs together.
What did it mean to you to hop on the track “Body Keeps Score” with Trust Blinks. for this split? How did that collab come to be and what did you gravitate towards on that song?
It was a blast! I love Ethan and have been playing music with him since he moved to Asheville. We just got together one day and bounced some ideas off each other for vocal parts and it all came together.
You can listen to the split EP of trust blinks., Hiding Places and Tombstone Poetry on the bandcamp page of I’m Into Life Records, as well as order a cassette tape!
Written by Manon Bushong | Interview by Shea Roney
Salt Chunk Mary is the moniker of Asheville-based artist Leslie Buddy, who has recently shared with us their debut EP under the project called Do You Feel Warm? As part of several other local bands such as Star Anise and Tanner York Band, Buddy’s sonic curation on this EP builds off of that roughly edged sound that has put the Asheville scene on the map the past few years, yet finds its own path defined by the curiosity and explorative nature of the young artist.
On the surface, Do You Feel Warm? is a textured environment, as Buddy makes sure not to corner any ideas that may slip out through its brief, yet inquiring existence. Giving space to the creepy crawlies that fester in this type of engaging and freaky-folk laments, Salt Chunk Mary lays the groundwork for more to come in the near future.
We recently asked Salt Chunk mary a few questions about their debut EP Do You Feel Warm?
You are pretty involved within the Asheville scene, playing in other local projects like Star Anise. What sort of things did you take or were inspired by from your surroundings that you brought into writing and recording these songs, whether consciously or subconsciously after the fact?
The writing and recording occurred during two very different times in my life, which I think had a really interesting impact on the final sound of the project. Most of the songs were originally written when I was a teenager, prior to my current level of engagement with the scene, so they don’t have much direct influence from any other local acts. I was listening to a lot of Black Country, New Road at the time, and Isaac Wood’s lyrics on their second album in particular informed a lot of my early songwriting. It wasn’t really until I became involved with the DIY scene that I was inspired by my peers to record the songs to be released. The recording happened much more recently, and I found myself drawing inspiration from more local acts, most notably Sayurblaires from Charlotte (now Motocrossed) with her noisy, digital soundscapes. Aside from direct musical influences, the geography and nature of WNC is always a persistent beacon of inspiration for me.
This EP takes on different soundscapes, environments and sonic fixations in such a brief amount of time. What was the initial vision with these recordings and did you develop or find your sound within the process?
The final sound is definitely a combination of an initial vision and a process of experimentation. At the time of recording and producing (and still to this day), my biggest musical obsession was The Microphones, so in the spirit of Phil Eleverum, I wanted to find the sound through an explorative process with whatever supplies I had access to. The original arrangements/demos were recorded on my Korg D8, with a PO-33 for drums and I was really satisfied with the sound of those demos. Some of the takes from those demos actually made it onto the final product, most notably the drum machine part in ‘The Stitch’. I would also attribute the sound of the project to my wonderful friends Max and Oliver (The Weights), the duo who produced, mixed and mastered the project. We spent a lot of time in Oliver’s basement just micing random things and running them through effects to find interesting sounds. Many of the electronics across the EP are also sampled from an hour-long improvised session running a broken Omnichord through a bunch of guitar pedals. The sound was found in the process because it was my intention to do so.
There are a lot of references in your lyrics towards how fragile whatever it is that is holding relationships together can be. Was there a thematic throughline that connects these songs? What sort of stories or feelings did you want to get across?
I prefer to let the lyrics speak for themselves, but I will at least say I sort of see the project as a series of snapshots of the dynamics of relationships/friendships from varying perspectives, and ending with the question “do you feel warm?” ties all of those components up. I think it is something really important to ask yourself out of self respect. To reflect upon your connection with someone, identify what it is made of, what keeps it intact, and what the implications of that are for both of you. Most of the time I am writing a song, there is really no telling what the subject matter will be. It just becomes whatever it becomes, so I’m pleasantly surprised with how concise the project ended up being.
I am curious about your fascination with insects and their very nature on this earth. Does this carry over into any creative aspects of your life?
Growing up, my older brother was an aspiring entomologist, so I have been learning a lot about insects for about as long as I can remember. I suppose he passed the fascination on to me. I have always been amazed with the various ways in which different organisms interface with their environment, and when songwriting, I often find myself drawing parallels between those interactions and how humans interact/connect with each other. Beyond lyrics, I often return to insects to inspire visual art and even instrumental arrangement. To me, they are so strange, angular, diverse, almost robotic or alien, yet simultaneously very organic in a familiar and comforting way. These are all things I seek to achieve in my sound.
When you released this EP you said you were already looking to move onto the next project. What can we see coming from Salt Chunk Mary in the future?
These songs were written a long time ago, and I’ve creatively evolved a lot in that time. I have a lot of ideas in development which will most likely come together on a full length album within the next couple of years. As for what to expect, my sound is starting to split off into two directions. Some of my songwriting is gravitating away from my usual ‘dark’ or ‘sad’ tone and toward lighter themes and pop sensibilities. For example, one of my favorite newer songs is about one of my sister’s stuffed animals and another is just about how awesome it feels to go outside. These songs are very simple and traditional in structure. On the other hand, I’m also continuing to explore darker tones, especially through long, multi-phased compositions inspired a lot by post-hardcore bands like Sprain. My goal for the album is to effectively fuse these two very different creative directions.
You can listen to Do You Feel Warm? out everywhere now.
President TV of the United States, the project of Terese Corbin, shared with us her latest single “Greatest” late last week. Having artistic roots that cover both Tallahassee, Florida and Asheville, North Carolina, the single comes as a one-off following the release of “I Love You” featuring Jordan Tomasello, as Corbin begins to find comfort in blending new forms of sonic production with her tender lyrical prose.
With steady drums and warm piano runs, “Greatest” sets its own pace within the still environment from which it was made from. The subtleness becomes its strength, as a swell of synths sweep us up into the song’s passion-fueled movement and the melodic grip of the whispered vocals that flow with persistence yet lay low as if to bare caution as to who may be listening in the peripherals. But it’s in these hushed displays that hold the melody, making Corbin’s presence the tension point in the track as we lean in for every word that hangs on with poetic intuition and personal reverence, always playing with the idea of potential release.
We recently got to ask Corbin a few questions about her project President TV of the United States and the story behind “Greatest” in our latest track deep dive.
the ugly hug: What sort of things were you inspired by when writing “Greatest”?
Terese Corbin: Sonically, “Greatest” kind of came out of thin air while messing around with the ambient and piano instruments on a free sound pack I was recommended. In that way I can’t say that I directly set out to make a song like this, but I recognize I was unconsciously inspired by the arrangements and strange moods of bands like Chanel Beads, PJ Harvey, Model/Actriz, even a little bit of Geordie Greep. I’m also totally obsessed with the album Morning Light by Locust, particularly the song No One In the World. If you know that song (and if you don’t, do yourself a favor and listen!) you might feel like there’s some 1:1 references in the instrumentation between that song and “Greatest”. But like I said, not at all an intention of mine, but just a product of that being the music language I’ve surrounded myself with.
My writing and my art in general draws from a couple of usual places, but honestly, most of the time I become obsessive about moments I’ve experienced and phrases I hear that ring around my head for a long, long time before I understand why. This is definitely the case for “Greatest” —the lyrics and the whole drive of the song come from a moment I shared with someone who I loved very much and who I knew loved me too. In an intimate moment, this person told me, “I’ll be Jesus, and you’re Mary Magdalene…And I’ll be at your deathbed.” Like, you can be the judge, but I think that’s an insane thing to hear lol. Especially in the context of that relationship, but also in general–it held so much weight and poetry but was said so simply, so truly. The phrase had stuck with me for reasons I couldn’t articulate at the time, but recently had been repeating in my brain over and over. I went to write it down and what came out was the first lines of the song: “Who was it that said that I was Mary Magdalene, you were Jesus, and you’d be there to see me at my deathbed? I don’t know….” The bookend of being uncertain and questioning the source of this phrase came out of me while writing it down, and was not the phrase as I’d been thinking for so long, nor part of the original memory. But that told me that both poetically and personally I wasn’t sure how many times I had heard something like this, or been subject to this exact situation in different relationships–or, even deeper, if I was just as guilty for assigning myself that role in the relationship as Mr. Jesus was. Which is just my favorite thing ever, probably my biggest inspiration, that being the moments where the music or the lyrics show itself to you, and it then becomes your job to be curious about it and find a structure and meaning for it. It’s like therapy, or like tricking yourself into figuring out what you’re so obsessed about. I definitely don’t try to intellectualize it at the beginning and just let phrases come to me, and once I’ve gotten a good chunk of those phrases I sift the meaning out and piece them together with bridging ideas.
UH: What weight did these religious allegories in the story hold for you? Especially in the context of a complex, and rather, challenging relationship.
TC: The allegory of Jesus comes from that moment I mentioned, and the realization of how true that sentiment was, not only in the relationship I shared with that person but honestly in so many of my intense (and particularly romantic) relationships. The song is about what happens when you fall in love with someone that is the Jesus of their environment or their art—someone (often a man) who is revered, someone who exudes endless love and friendship and encouragement in a true way to their community and in their work. When they funnel this into romance, it seems full and true, they see you for who you are and often this has to do with a shared art. But because they’re Jesus, it’s tumultuous, complicated. You rely on their love, but their greatness might stand in the way of being able to pursue that, or their righteousness or their inability to actually believe that you, the Mary Magdalene in the relationship, can be as great as them — “when I try my hand you hold it, say you understand my depth, but it scares you when you hear all of the wanting on my breath.” But that wanting—for the same greatness they’re pursuing, your desire for them and their love—was fed to you earlier in the song when they laid you down and gave you their blood, desire, and encouragement, and saw you for who you were—“I don’t know, but please lay me down and bring wine to my top lip, I seem to drink your wanting and the sound that it came with.” Mary is the thing that gets left behind when Jesus has to go be pure and Jesus, and it leaves a whole mess of complication. Mary always comes back though, and Jesus always lets her back, because their connection is addicting. I think there isn’t really a bad guy in the situation, I mean Jesus had to be Jesus after all. It’s just the way life and love goes… but it doesn’t mean I’m not going to write a song about it!
UH: The landscape that you create with the instrumentals and whispered vocals bring out these moments of tension and release. Where did you push yourself when engaging with this fuller sound? Was there anything outside of your comfort zone you were drawn to?
TC: I love that you describe the instrumentals as “tension and release,” because I think that relates to so many aspects of this song—the relationship it describes, the feeling it’s based on, and my experience making the song itself. I wanted to lean into the idea that there is a part of the song that is sort of danceable, or at least fun to drive really fast to. I just wanted to see how many textures I could fit into it—the distorted strings add this drama and greatness, but there’s also this strange little synth rhythm in there at the end for humor. I didn’t feel out of my comfort zone exactly, but I was definitely trying to embrace having fun with the music, especially because the lyrics are so confessional and dramatic. My therapist always suggests that in times where you can’t see your way out of thinking patterns that you should laugh at yourself, be like, “Girl, you’re being ridiculous,” and literally laugh at yourself out loud. I definitely have been trying to do this with my art, and it’s very easy to do it in music since it’s such a hobby and therapy for me and I have no bigger expectations for it.
UH: Has your relationship with the way you record music changed as you begin to focus on more dense instrumentals and sounds?
TC: This is such a good question, one I hadn’t really considered directly. “Greatest” was the first track I’ve ever made completely within Logic with software instruments, sans the vocals of course, and I have to say, it was a lot of fun. The freedom you get with a fully produced track is insane. The amount of control you’re afforded and the quality of the sound is really delightful and not necessarily simpler but in my experience easier than recording acoustic instruments. There is a fullness to the sounds I can create on my computer that I can’t do at my novice level with real-life instruments. I’m still at the point where I’m either recording from my phone and manually syncing it to the tracks or borrowing an interface (from one of my best friends and fellow artist Jordan Tomasello ;3… in the few hours of the day they’re not using it lol). So when I am drawn toward these deeper and fuller sounds I am most likely reaching for something electronic, even if I am pairing it with an acoustic instrument. I really like that this choice built from necessity—to combine acoustic and electronic—becomes a language of my work and a seemingly creative choice. Like I sort of touched on earlier, I love the process of music that comes to me or has to arrive to fix a problem that ends up shaping the meaning and larger structure of what it is I’m making and trying to say, and I think this has come out in the way I record my music as well.
Last week, Lindsey Verrill (Little Mazarn) and Genevieve Poist (Virginia Creeper) banded together to share ATX x AVL with Love, a 26-song compilation album of local Texas artists benefitting Hurricane Helene victims in western North Carolina. The funds raised by this comp between 10/11-10/31 will all be donated to ROAR Western North Carolina. You can purchase the comp here at the Little Mazarn bandcamp page.
The comp, made up entirely of local Texas artists, includes contributions from A.L. West, Proun, Will Johnson, Other Vessels, Joey Reyes, Crushrose, Creekbed Carter, Virginia Creeper, Middle Sattre, Gilded Lows, Felt Out, Little Mazarn, Bill Baird and Large Brush Collective.
It’s collaborators, Verrill and Poist, shared in a statement, “watching helplessly as the news of Hurricane Helene tearing its way through the heart of Western North Carolina reached us here in Austin, Texas, we banded together with some of our favorite local musicians to create a collection of songs to help raise funds for mutual aid efforts in WNC. It is difficult to know how to tangibly help in moments like these, especially when need and attention is called for in so many directions, but we hope this compilation will help contribute to North Carolina’s rebuilding efforts in even the smallest of ways, further Central Texas’ solidarity with those affected by the hurricane, and share some of our favorite music with you as you go about your days.”
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 London-based artist, BEX.
Floating between the scenes of Asheville, North Carolina and London, England, Bex Vines has had a busy past few years of traveling and writing, bridging the gaps between these two communities. With an exciting blend of folky southern whims, alternative stunners and the dream-like antiquity of the London underground, BEX has created a source of grounding through her songwriting, expanding it to us listeners who are in search of that feeling as well.
This week, BEX has curated a list of songs that feel to only enhance our presence on a lazy and sunny afternoon. Ranging from folky slow burners, alt-pop hooks and ambient complexions, these songs bridge the gaps within our own surroundings as they become more clear in this springtime bliss.
Aunt Ant is three-piece Asheville, NC post-rock brainchild of members Lauren Hewer, Sean German, and Jonah Ileana. Today they’ve released a new song called “8theist,” with an accompanying music video, which you can watch below.
I had the opportunity to conduct a Q&A with Lauren about the dynamic song and its meaning; one of many full, vulnerable tracks on the Aunt Ant live setlist (which you can watch here), “8theist” features everything from soft moments with sparse notes to explosions of noise and incredible overdriven tone.
Audrey Keelin: Lauren I am just so pumped to be writing about you for an on-the-record account of your freaking artistry! I have so many questions for you and I’m honored I can ask about it.
Lauren Hewer: Hi, Audrey ヽ( ´ ｖ｀ )ノ thanks for asking to do this! You’re awesome.
AK:Can you tell me about the birth of this song from the beginning until now?
LH: I forgot that I sent a demo of this song in for a compilation you made in 2021 until you reminded me, but I just listened to it and it’s wildly different from what I remembered! The song sounds a lot different now. The structure had already changed a lot by the time we started playing it with Jonah [our drummer] in 2022 and I think overall it has become heavier over time.
AK:What kind of song-making process do you enjoy the most/ what works best for you?
LH: I personally find the most exciting songwriting to be in moments where we have no expectation or parameters to create something. I think this is where the most honest and beautiful music comes from, but it can be a lengthy process to reel in that kind of energy to create a cohesive song structure.
AK:Why did you write “8theist”?
LH: 8theist was a poem I wrote a very long time ago. I don’t really remember writing it, but I think I was just reflecting on being a kid. It’s mostly about growing up in the South in an area with a large Baptist presence with English (and very atheist) parents.
Photo by Ezra Earnhardt
AK:How did taking a break from releasing music and playing a bunch of local shows in Asheville prepare you to release music again?
LH: This feels like our first real release because it’s the first song we have recorded since the three of us started playing together a couple years ago. We have some old demos on different sites but they’ve mostly been iPhone recordings of ideas we’ve had before we really started playing live music as a band. We took a little break from playing shows mostly so I could finish school, but I was also feeling very overwhelmed by the state of the world and didn’t know how to show up in a live performance setting. It always feels good to play our songs for the first time after a break because they feel a lot more fresh and exciting to us that way.
AK: Live performance is complex. How have you been relating to it recently? What have you learned about live performance within the past few shows you’ve played?
LH: Right now I think I have the most fun performing live when we are playing new material. It’s always nice being able to play in a space where we can be really loud and not worry about neighbors and it’s also really cool to be exposed to new music through playing shows!
AK: Why did you write the first song you ever wrote? What moved you to start writing songs and making music?
The first song I wrote was called “Beach Party” and I wrote it with my friend Melina because we wanted a really good and relatable kids song about beach parties and having fun at the beach. But now music helps me say things I don’t know how to say otherwise.
Photo by Ezra Earnhardt
AK:Tell me about the influences you drew from for this single. Why and how did you draw this influence from them?
LH: I think I was listening to a lot of Cursive at the time and they have this really harsh dissonant guitar tone that I love. Sean showed us this band called The Festival of Dead Deer around that time also that we all got really into. I’ve also always loved the band Tall Friend and how they write about childhood, so I’m sure that subconsciously had an influence on this song.
AK: Any local bands that have been inspiring you recently?
Run Over By a Horse + Studda Bubba have been inspiring me recently! Last summer we toured with Dish and have always been extremely inspired by them. We also love Tombstone Poetry and would highly recommend Pagan Rage, Nostalgianoid, Trust Blinks, Mary Metal, Convalescent, Basilica, Terrordome, Landon George, and ORRE when Audrey is in town. 🙂 There are so many!
the ugly hug 