You can observe a discernible tightening within Trembler’s music over the years. Their 2019 debut was a biting display of heaviness and scorching lyricism, one that bends from post-hardcore and contemporary shoegaze to early 2000’s screamo and ambitious prog rock-esque compositions. It is potent and abrasive and beautiful and reckless and heartbreaking, and it might be my favorite record of the last decade. And yet, as they move further from the loud discordance of Trembler, the intensity they managed to cultivate in that record has only heightened. Before I wrote this, I spent about a week attempting to pin point what it is about Trembler that I find myself so incredibly drawn to. A way to articulate the feelings elicited by everything they have done; whether it be coarse contributions on a split EP with Austin-based screamo band Palefade, or the somber, wispy new single they released today. I realized what generally draws me to abrasive music is not some masochistic urge to cauterize my ear drums, but a craving for the vulnerability found in less polished art. What makes Trembler so moving is less about volume or distortion or any one sonic technicality than it is the inimitable fragility that binds their music. It is equally present in their corrosive tracks as it is in their softer work, layering a complexity to Trembler that continues to expand with each new release. Today, they shared “Wilt”; the single further proving Trembler’s ability to yield raw and poignant music regardless of what route they take.
“Wilt” is a first taste of Trembler’s forthcoming EP, Total Sorry, set to come out January 29th via Rite Field Records. The line “we wilt away” hypnotically surfaces fourteen times throughout the track, layered between a lyrical unfolding of loss, remorse and doubt. “Wilt” is subdued and unresolved; yet like most of what Trembler carves out, it is rich in its dimension, guided by authenticity rather than logic or precision. Cushioned by pale guitars that lie somewhere neutral on the spectrum of bleak to cheerful, the track’s moments of lyrical devastation are sweetened with threads of optimism and pivotal acceptance. In spite of its name, “Wilt” grows stronger with each listen, rendering a familiar story of closure you have to forge for yourself, and the consolation that comes when you do.
About the song, Luke Gonzales shares, “‘Wilt’ deals with what it sounds like–watching something beautiful in my life die. Losing my closest friends, having my view of something that consumed so much of my life splinter and leave, and wondering whether it was hollow all along. Generally, a good representation of the central feeling I was trying to capture on this EP. It’s sad, but in my opinion, sober in its acceptance that how things were over now, in an attempt to move on.”
I habitually watch shows from the back of the venue. Partially, because I am six foot three and a bit self-conscious about my predisposition for view obstruction, and partially, because I believe it’s the best place to absorb the crowd. There is an interesting dichotomy between the nature of music consumption as a solo act and as a live experience; throughout the day, I watch people with headphones wedge themselves between strangers on a train car, each tuned into their own self-serving listening campaign. Of course, there is a beauty to listening alone, and to the way it can help us make sense of our own minds – but I think music is at its most invigorating when you can experience the vulnerability of someone else’s art alongside a stranger. I love standing in the back as if the crowd in front of me is half of the event, and I love witnessing the collective catharsis that live music can generate. However, sometimes a set moves me enough that I subconsciously detach from the corner, absorbing the energy of the crowd from within it instead of observing with my back velcroed to the sound booth. I assume this would have been the case at the release show for MX Lonely’s “Beauty Lasts for Never”, although I will never truly know. I got stuck crammed next to the stage on my way back from outside, standing an arms distance from the stage (and unfettered by any unease that the proximity would otherwise trigger within me) at what was undoubtedly my favorite set of 2024.
I wrote that last year. It was shortly after I saw MX Lonely at Trans-Pecos on November 23rd, and I stashed it in a Google Drive folder of music thoughts that have never seen the light of day. November 23rd of this year, I spoke to MX Lonely on a cocktail of video chat platforms – using up my thirty free Zoom minutes before continuing our conversation about their forthcoming record via Google Meet. I wanted to reference my own stockpiled captivation; not merely out of the coincidental November 23rd novelty of it all (and certainly not because I was itching to leak an entry from my digital diary), but because throughout my conversation with the band, I was reminded of those feelings. Of how, for thirty or so minutes, I somehow forgot I was an uncomfortable person. Or at least, I forgot to let that self-assessment plague me. The most powerful thing music can do is alleviate us from ourselves – to siphon the weight of our own insecurities and anxieties, to help us feel less alone, or to even just help us feel anything at all; perhaps by thwarting into states of numbness and pulling us out of emotional auto-pilot. While any band can easily declare that they hold these ethos and intentions, from every experience I have had at their sets, I can attest that MX Lonely truly sees them through. “The band is named after my own little sleep paralysis demon. I would say that the monster that is most prevalent for me is loneliness and isolation and feeling disconnected, and I like to think that’s who we make music for, people who feel like that”, Rae Haas tells me. “To be able to have community and space for people who all relate to those themes is so incredibly rewarding. Selfishly, because that’s what I need, and unselfishly because it is bringing all these people together. You realize there is space in music for everybody.”
Brooklyn-based MX Lonely consists of Rae (synth/vocals), Jake Harms (guitar/vocals), Gabe Garman (bass), and a cycling of drummers over the years. They started the project about five years ago, and, in the fashion of most great bands, initially conceived it as a “for fun” endeavor. They began by learning a solo record Jake had released under the project HARMS, telling me the band did not come to fruition until a year or so later – around the time they collaboratively wrote “There’s Something About You That I Don’t Believe In” (which prompted a sort of “oh shit…” moment) and began playing small shows around New York.
Now, they self-identify as “Loud as Fuck”, which I would say is pretty accurate, though I find it necessary to emphasize that their noise never poses as inadvertent. There is something soft tucked neatly within MX Lonely’s propensity for swelled volume, as if the project is begging to subvert any predisposed notions you hold about music that is “Loud as Fuck”. They pull tunings from Elliot Smith, they take stage presence inspiration from drag artists, they harvest emotional delicacy from the subdued depths of their own minds. “I feel like we all [try to] take emotional music and make it pretty heavy and visceral and more of a shared experience. I think music this heavy and personal generally becomes something that is folky or more insular.” Rae explains.
MX Lonely’s emphasis on the potentials of live music and the shared experience it can offer is equally potent in their recorded music as it was in my gushy Trans-Pecos introductory anecdote. They are set to release All Monsters early next year, and while you cannot listen to it in full until February, every single track had been experienced by a crowd prior to recording. “I think it was nice we got to road test it, and also just focus on preserving what we consider to be an authentic, ‘band in a room’ sound,” Jake explains of the songs, of which all center the live experience of MX Lonely. “It’s essentially a magnified version of what the songs sound like when we play them all together.”
The result is not only a magnified version of what MX Lonely sounds like live, but a concentrated punch of the catharsis their live shows in packaged form. All Monsters is equal parts relentless and rewarding; it starts on a fervent note and maintains its intensity until the last second of hypnotic final track, “Whispers in the Fog”. Although the record is an undoubtedly charged front to back listen, it’s also far from monotonous, serving as a canvas for MX Lonely to explore various routes of heavier songwriting that all lead to the same destination (cascading emotional purge). Some tracks are cushioned by velvety, fuzzed out soundscapes, while others take on a drier form, owning their jagged edges and ever so slightly scalding you with them.
“I think it should feel cathartic in some way, but maybe not necessarily good while it’s happening, sort of like shadow work.” Rae notes. “A lot of people have described some of the songs on All Monsters as being racked with anxiety, sort of like this fist clenching thing that lets go.”
The record dismantles a lot of notions surrounding monsters, which serve as an all encompassing idea for the various antagonists that besiege our day-to-day. Some are external, but most come from within; they range from anxiety and addiction to loneliness and isolation, and they are far more daunting than any under-the-bed creature you may have conceptualized as a child. These are themes MX Lonely has explored before – found in the dysphoric haunting of “Too Many Pwr Cords” on their 2024 EP SPIT, and amidst the heartbreaking pleas of “Paper Cranes” on their 2022 record Cadonia, but on All Monsters, it feels as though they have achieved a resolution. Not in an overt way, you can’t expect MX Lonely to feed you secrets to fulfillment on a silver spoon of distortion lathered in magnetic bass lines and frothy synths. Rather, it feels as though the band have eradicated their monsters by merely acknowledging that they exist. Instead of running or attempting to suppress them, on All Monsters, MX Lonely confronts their own fears and vices head on; armed with some of their most cunning and dynamic songs yet and liberating years of shame in a thirty-seven minute, total adrenaline rush of a record.
We recently spoke to MX Lonely about their relationship to live music, building their own studio, and All Monsters, out February 20th via Julia’s War.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Manon: Jake – I read that you wrote “Blue Ridge Mtns” in high school, and put it away because it felt too vulnerable at the time. Over the last five years, how have you grown MX Lonely, not only as a project, but as a safe creative space and collaborative outlet where you are able to revisit old material or chapters that you may not have been comfortable doing on your own?
Jake: I feel like the band is definitely a pretty safe space for me to try ideas out, and there is a lot more reception for bringing in more vulnerable, emotional material than I have had in previous projects. Nobody has ever made fun of me for bringing an idea that was too “weenie”, I mean sometimes Gabe will be like “that’s pretty emo”…
Gabe: Yeah, but we know how to work it.
Rae: I feel like that was from the start. Everyone’s pretty open, everyone writes on the records, everybody brings in songs and ideas and as well as being critical and editing a lot, we try to be receptive to the vulnerability in the songwriting.
Manon: When you’re writing and recording, do you think about playing the songs live a lot? Is considering that experience very front of mind?
Jake: I would say so, I mean this album was cool because there were demos that existed since probably 2022, 2023, that were part of the crop of demos that became SPIT. But then we were touring really extensively for the first time, so we got the opportunity to play all of these songs, some of them many times prior to recording. Every song on the record was played live on those tours, and we got to see how people reacted to them. I don’t know how much it necessarily changed the structure, but it does change how you think about them.
Gabe: I definitely feel like when we were making the record, there was a lot more of the thought of “I don’t know how that will work live”, and that may have affected what we did. Whereas when you are just making music on the computer for a very long time, you might think about that less. Both SPIT and this record were very live focused. The next record might be like that, or it might not.
Manon: I also saw you recorded live versions of several of the songs, and you just put out one for “Big Hips”. Was that important too, to have maybe an alternate live version accessible at the same time as some of the songs and just having that out right away, or that was just maybe more for fun?
Rae: I think both. I think one day we would like to do an Audiotree or a KEXP, but until that opportunity happens for us, we figured we would just do it ourselves. I guess it was in lieu of, I don’t know, making TikTok videos or something stupid. We are all builders and do a lot of stuff in house so I guess that was our version of making a TikTok dance for “Big Hips”.
Manon: You guys also just built your own studio too, right? I would love to hear about that and your relationship to DIY as a band.
Rae: Gabe, you wanna lead on building the studio?
Gabe: I don’t know if this will make sense, but I feel like because of who we are as people, we are always a step behind where we should be, but it’s because we love having control of our situations and we love being able to do things ourselves. Like Rae said, we’re all builders. I’ll personally take on any project where I get to create something with my hands and I think there are always limitations with going to a studio that we didn’t want to have. We just wanted to have our own space where we can create things, even if it isn’t the most high end studio with a million dollars worth of equipment inside of it. We had the ability to do it ourselves, so we built it, and now we can make some records in it.
Rae: It’s nice not being at the whim of like other people too. Our band is not really a major music corporation’s dream, the stuff we make is weird and none of us are super rich or hot or cool, so opportunities are not going to come slamming down the door. But what’s so amazing about DIY and being able to build is you have the power and control, you’re not relying on somebody else’s studio or show or whatever it is. I think that’s really special.
Jake: We’d rather fail through the process slowly on our own, than have our hands overly held. A lot of bands in our position have management, all we have is a booking agent that helps us get some better deals and a platform to negotiate. But Rae does all our graphic design, Gabe does accounting and engineers the records, I do the sort of day-to-day emailing with people and keeping up with things, and I would say from that sense we are pretty DIY. And we also all grew up going to shows, for how built up Brooklyn is, I do feel like all of us have experience going to DIY shows when we were younger. I feel like that’s not as prevalent now, but there’s probably still stuff going on. Probably shit we don’t even know about.
Gabe: Yeah we’re not cool enough
Jake: We’re like “what about Trans-Pecos”
Manon: I love the way you approach the concept of monsters on this record. You inject a lot of nuance into something that, I think when you consider a more juvenile perspective of, can be a very black and white, good or bad, sort of thing. I’d love to hear more about, and why you chose All Monsters as the title for the record?
Rae: I like to think of monsters as the things that haunt us, the things that you personally need in your life to kill. A lot of this record feels like shadow work to me, but also I think you can have a lot of vengeance and just feel as though something is haunting you and sometimes that just needs to be released. So that’s the idea, releasing them to heaven, “all monsters go to heaven”. I think a lot of times, songs or a record all come through you, you feel sort of like more of a vessel or something and the shape, the image of what you’re trying to say becomes more clear. This definitely felt like one of those, where all these things kept coming up and as each song fell into place, I realized it was all about darknesses or things about yourself that you hate and want to kill.
Manon: As for shadow work – I know that is something that’s pretty prominent in your lyrics, but how do you feel that the style of music you make plays into shadow work as well, maybe as a catalyst for that process?
Rae: I like to think of the music as very releasing. You know when you’re really sad and you put in a record and cry? Maybe you’re going through something and you’re like, ‘I need to listen to Elliot Smith and weep for a second’, because he is really just harping on this emotion. I like to think of MX Lonely as music for someone who is neurodivergent and racked with anxiety or depression or whatever it may be, and then puts on MX Lonely and is able to feel those emotions with somebody else. It’s less lonely.
Gabe: MX Less Lonely
Manon: What are some of your biggest music inspirations?
Jake: People are scared to come across like a weenie saying Radiohead, but I think Radio Head, Pixies, Elliot Smith are my top three.
Rae: There are a lot of contemporary people I am interested in and inspired by. I think synth-wise, there’s an artist, Caroline Rose, they are a guitar player but they are also an incredible synth artist and an amazing album curator.
Gabe: I mean Radiohead, Pixies, but I also think there are a lot of newer artists that we are definitely inspired by, at least for this record. Curse the Knife, Downward, Trembler, Trauma Ray. But we also definitely like our nineties rock.
Jake: Yeah we can’t underline enough how important Pixies are to us as a band. Also Elliot Smith – we use the Elliot Smith tuning.
Rae: And the Kurt Cobain vocal tracking technique
Gabe: I thought you were going to say you use the Kurt Cobain tuning on your synth.
Jake: We do the blind double. It’s like when Butch Vig tricked Cobain into doubling, tripling, quadrupling all of his parts by saying ‘oh, you didn’t get it, can you do it one more time?’
Gabe: No he kept saying there were technical issues, he was like ‘ah, it just didn’t record.’
Jake: Yeah so that’s what we do with Rae, except they know it’s happening. But yeah, definitely the nineties, we also all like heavy music in general. Gabe and I love listening to really abrasive, terrifying, black metal and hardcore.
Gabe: Especially when you’re driving 80 miles an hour in the van and there’s a wind tunnel around you and you have been driving for ten hours. When you listen to really aggressive music you enter a different realm. The most important bonding point between me and Jake was when we first met, we were working together and we went on a twelve hour drive straight to Chicago to drop something off and we were just listening to music in a truck that had no ceiling. There was just wind gushing the whole time. I think that made MX Lonely what it is today.
Jake: It influenced the aesthetic of the sound.
Rae: For this record in particular, I was watching a lot of Dragula, which is a show by the Boulet Brothers. But I am inspired by a lot of drag artists, and the idea of monsters stemmed a lot from that. I also take a lot from drag artists performance-wise, like Hoso Terra Toma, A’Whora. My friends run a really cool collective, Sissy Fist Productions. There are tons of really incredible performers in Brooklyn right now, and that’s very exciting and cool.
Manon: I would love to hear a bit more about that, especially in the context of MX Lonely sets. You are so phenomenal live, and your shows have so much energy – what are some ways drag has inspired that, and also what do you hope to bring to a live set in general?
Rae: There are so many things that drag artists do, but when it comes to a lip-syncing, they really carry the songs more than anyone. I think I try to pull from that ethos when I step away from the synth. I almost think of it like a possession or exorcism – just really allowing for a space for a full body experience to happen and for it to be different than the record. I think there are a lot of performers that sound just like how they do on their records, and I have so much respect for that, but I also like to let the energy of the room and wherever we are and the emotionality of the music be a bit more paramount. I am thinking more about how it’s hitting people emotionally than getting everything pitch perfect, at least from a vocal perspective.
Jake: I’d say it’s like that in general and from a band perspective too. The best shows we have ever played are usually not the ones that are not-for-note perfect, they’re the ones where there is crazy energy in the crowd or the flow is really dialed in. You have also created the runway, I feel like that is a callback to drag.
Rae: Absolutely. I think a lot of times you can see music and get a bit dissociative, and I think the runway is a cool way to break people up. I also love when people aren’t necessarily watching you, maybe they are watching each other and moving with each other. That’s exciting to me.
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.”
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.
“They also have seasonal shake thingies, and they’re just… I mean it’s melted ice cream. It’s ‘mint milk’. I think they also have a creamsicle one. They make you feel so sick. Just 900 calories of milk based drink.”
Peter Lukach of mall goth is discussing the delicacies available at Stewart’s – a gas station dispersed throughout Upstate New York. It was the first I had ever heard of this institution, despite the fact that I also grew up in “New York but not New York”.
What constitutes “Upstate” is a tired debate. Some deem it anything between the final stop on the Wakefield-241st St. bound 2 train and the Canadian border. Others believe in more complex distinctions for non-metropolitan New York, arguing that it consists of Western and Central New York, Upstate, and my home territory of ‘Downstate’. Some give the debate – and the idea of New York beyond the five boroughs – little to no thought at all.
If you have read any features I have done in the past, you might notice a pattern of questions about a band’s respective home. It usually stems from a place of my own curiosity; sometimes I find myself more intrigued by the idea of a scene than the actual music the scene in itself nurtures. The ways an environment can be reflected in the contours of a band’s melodies, or how influences of other artists in the vicinity can pull an unexpected sound out of a project. I also ask from an idyllic place – hoping to hear the ways in which a band’s surroundings have marinated into their art, optimistically seeking some confirmation that the internet has yet to push this notion into extinction.
My conversation with mall goth was seasoned with Upstate trivia. I learned the apple cider donut was invented in Albany. They sometimes serve a raspberry sauce with their mozzarella sticks. Binghamton has an exciting music scene, though it often feels fleeting given the rapid member turnover that is inherent to a college town. Albany is more robust in that regard, home to projects that have cultivated beyond a four year term and a community with a good heart.
From my intel on local scenes, I have also become familiar with certain rites of passages that triumph variables like whether you took a subway or yellow bus to middle school. Falling in love with an album and building relationships from the seed of shared music interest is one of the most prominent. In the case of mall goth, this was initially Plumtree, though as their inner band relationships have grown and expanded, so have their auditory pallets. They told me about their intrinsic love for “loud-quiet” dynamics in guitar-forward bands, citing Weezer and the Pixies as mutual staples. They also enthused about short term phases, which helped to paint a picture of their curious natures as individuals, as well as the influence of their enthusiasms have on each other.
Their latest EP is the band’s fullest release yet – both sonically and in a more abstract sense. It ventures down an experimental and emotional path, clearing space for individual inspirations and perspectives while ultimately remaining grounded to the project’s sturdy spine. Out last week, Heather’s Exit is a vulnerable reflection on how even the simplest lived experiences shape us, as mall goth molds imagery of old Tupperware, rainbow sprinkles and white mildew into a cathartic listen, bleeding with honesty and nuance.
We recently sat down with mall goth to discuss the project’s roots, inspirations and Heather’s Exit.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Manon: I’m so excited to talk about this EP, it is so fun and such a confident and full version of this sound that you have been cultivating, but first I would love to hear about the background of mall goth. How did you all start playing music together?
Ella: Peter and I met in a music theory class in college. He posted a song by Plumtree on his Instagram Story.
Peter: I swiped up and was like “I love Plumtree!” And [Ella] was looking to make a new band. I was in a band but it wasn’t very serious and I was not super involved in the creative process, so I was looking for something different.
Ella: Yeah I stole him. I was also living next to a friend named Sam so the three of us started playing and then I met Kensho and stole him from a friend’s band too, as our drummer. The four of us started playing, and as the years have unfolded, we’ve just gone through a few lineup changes. Katie has been drumming with us for about a week and a half – she’s really fucking good. Justin has been playing with us since the fall.
Manon: How long have you been in Albany?
Ella: I have lived in Albany my whole life, but we officially relocated in June.
Manon: So is Heather’s Exit your first release since you moved?
Ella: Yeah. It’s funny because we mentioned our lineup has changed so much, so the EP process took a lot longer than we anticipated. But we’re excited for this chapter and to just put this music out there, we have been sitting on these songs for about a year. So we are excited, and having Katie join us has brought a different vibe to the songs – it made them feel fresh again in some ways.
Manon: Heather’s Exit has such a great coming of age feel – there is so much change, growth and nostalgia all wrapped up in a jangly, dream-pop sound. I know you mentioned you have been sitting on these songs for a while,
Ella: In terms of writing lyrics, it’s probably the most honest and raw I have ever been. It felt good to just talk about things that make you the way you are. I was really inspired by Wednesday’s Rat Saw God when I was writing. I just love how Karly Hartzman is so honest, and every song unfolds a story. That was the biggest inspiration for “Crawl Space”, also “Ribs” by Lorde. When we were working on Heather’s Exit, I really wanted to make sure the synths were building large soundscapes.
Manon: All of that certainly comes through on the EP. Your imagery is so intense and I also like the way it tends to parallel the soundscapes – I like the rainbow sprinkles and flowers against the melodically upbeat nature of “Your Garden”, versus the mentions of spoiled food on the darker and more experimental “Heather’s Exit”. I did want to ask about that one specifically, and why you chose to end the EP on that track?
Ella: That’s a great question. I feel like the EP descends from happy into, almost scary.
Peter: I think the lyrics helped propel it to that point too.
Ella: Yeah, we felt like although “Your Garden” has some gloomy undertones, it mostly feels like a sugarcoated, candy song. “Crawspace” is then a good bridge into “Marionette”, which is just loud, quiet, loud, quiet. I wanted that one to have imagery of a puppet getting ready in a dressing room – just this idea of being guided by what others think of you. As for “Heather’s Exit”, that one is kind of hard to put into words. There is a lot of nuance, and I ultimately want the music to speak for itself, and for people to have their own experience when they listen.
Manon: The EP has such gorgeous cover art too, who did it?
Ella: My friend, Eliza Waylon. I know her from high school, she is a fantastic painter and I thought that piece really fit our aesthetic perfectly. I’m so grateful she let us use it.
Manon: I know you mentioned some lineup switches. Would you consider your songwriting dynamic collaborative, and if so how have those changes affected it?
Ella: When we started the band I had some songs under my belt, so initially I was like “hey, do you guys want to play these songs I wrote?” Since then we have definitely built upon it, and in terms of what things ultimately sound like, everyone adds their parts. I am really excited to see what happens going forward, and we definitely want it to become more collaborative. We were really chasing a dreamy sound, and have since been returning to our roots which has been very inspiring.
Minneapolis-based she’s green combines achingly sweet vocals with lush, nature-inspired synth-scapes in a discography toeing the line between shoegaze and dreampop. In our interview with the band, the band’s members explained how they developed their own terminology–“moss music–to describe a shoegaze sound that captures the sensation of being immersed in nature. Cinematic guitars and achingly sweet vocals painted the band’s early efforts in 2022 with “Mandy” and “Smile Again,” culminating in the release of the band’s debut EP, “Wisteria” in 2023.
she’s green has announced their upcoming EP, Chrysalis — their first project in over two years — set for release on August 15, 2025. Ahead of the EP, she’s green shared single “Willow” today, accompanying the release with a music video. We had the opportunity to speak with she’s green about their evolving sound, sonic and natural inspirations, and plans for new music–keep reading to hear more!
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Chloe Gonzales (ugly hug): You guys are from the Midwest, love the representation. I was wondering how the Midwest scene compares to the other scenes that you’ve seen since touring.
Raines Lucas: We were just talking about this not that long ago, because it’s pretty different. I don’t know if we have a great idea of the scene, but we were comparing it to LA a lot because we were there for a week. And generally, I think the take home points were that there’s a lot more DIY stuff. But also the DIY community is like one whole community, it’s a big enough city to have a vibrant music scene but small enough that all the different genres and artists know each other and play together, it’s genuinely very tight knit. And talking to bands from other cities, I think that they haven’t had the same experience.
Teddy Nordvold: From what I’ve heard from other musicians from different scenes, is that the Minneapolis scene really seems to be so much more interconnected with each other and with a sense of everyone. Maybe a weird analogy, but everyone is kind of doing it for the love of the game, everyone really puts down for each other simply as a means onto itself, just because they love the fact that they’re making music in their own scene together, just lifting each other up. And I think that’s really beautiful. There’s a really huge breadth of different genres and people with talent and multiple disciplines of art forms. It’s super creative, super welcoming, and it’s beautiful to be a part of.
CG (ugly hug): Are there any other genres that you guys tap into in the community?
TN: I myself have been really loving the wave of hardcore and metal core that kids are doing now. There’s bands of high schoolers who are like 15, 16 that are absolutely blowing my mind. There’s this band of teenagers from Minneapolis called xSERAPHx and they’re all like 14, 15, 16 years old. The vocalist of this band, his dad was a metalcore artist in the 90s and 2000s. These kids just put out this EP and it kicks ass. I went to the release show for the EP and my jaw was on the floor, I could not believe what I was seeing.
CG (ugly hug): Was the crowd moshing and everything?
TN: Yes, and they were just as young as the kids in the band. I was like, “Holy shit, the kids are alright.” It was incredible.
Ava London (ugly hug): Super cool– I feel like right now we are seeing discourse about how young people just don’t have any concert etiquette because COVID took everyone out of live music for so long. That’s cool that kids that age can use that outlet.
How do you guys find yourself balancing these sort of nostalgic sounds? I definitely picked up some influences perhaps My Bloody Valentine, Lush, sort of that shoegaze-y 90s sound. And then how do you balance that with what you have coined moss music, this new take that you’ve developed as a band?
Liam Armstrong: We are definitely into more ambient music, at least myself, and I’ve always loved movie scores and things like that. So I think a lot of where my influences come from are from film or visual art.
Zofia Smith: It’s definitely more of a cinematic sound and there’s a lot going on in our music, which I love, but it can be hard to have that perfect balance. We want it to feel kind of like you’re dreaming or there’s this whole scene that you’re envisioning in your mind.
RL: I feel like the dreampop stuff is more of the sound style, but the moss music is like the sound feeling if that makes sense. It might sound like shoegaze, but a lot of shoegaze has different vibes, like it would sound good if you were in an empty warehouse or something. It’s [moss music] more like if you’re hanging out in a forest by a river. Teddy said moss music out of nowhere, but it kind of stuck, because moss just brings the same kind of vibe that I feel like we bring to songwriting sometimes.
LA: I think we want every song to feel like a microcosm, like you’re looking down at this piece of moss and it’s like a miniature forest.
CG (ugly hug): You guys mentioned in another interview that you have a sonic medium for nature and I was curious about what soundscapes you wanted to encapsulate now. It seems more forest and I wondered if seasons played into it, etc.
LA: I think it’s all very encompassing. We draw from this aesthetic of nature but at the end of the day we are all part of it and existing in it.
TN: I would say that, at least for me, some of the songs that we’re working on now for this next release, they’re giving more prairie than forest. For some of the other songs, they’re feeling a lot more like grasslands.
CG (ugly hug): Would you say “Figurines” is more [prairie]?
RL: That one’s honestly giving me nighttime.
LA: I think of like a musty basement with a bunch of dolls in it.
ZS: Yeah, it’s in a different place than I can mention but— wow I’m looking at a field of dandelions right now and this is making me think of a couple of new songs that we have coming out. [ZS is sitting in a park]
LA: To add one, we did a lot of these songs when it was still winter so I think a lot of them do reflect more scarce, more barren soundscapes.
ZS: I feel like they have nighttime music too, because a lot of times right in the winter, it’s very introspective because we’re inside a lot and we just have to look inward. Wintertime is also just very gorgeous but I think for some reason like nighttime is an introspective time for me.
TN: I’d agree with that. Some of these songs came from the cabin session, right? We rented a little cabin in Lake Superior in Wisconsin for a little bit. Some of the songs that we’re working on right now that are gearing up to release came from those sessions, which was in the wintertime. Another one of the songs that we’re still working on right now, I remember listening to a take on voice memo and was walking to get food from my old place in uptown. It had just snowed that night and so everything was all sparkly with the street lights in the moon and listening to that just in that reflective, shining environment, It was like real life synesthesia almost. It was so cool.
ZS: We have a lot of emotional nature moments whatever time of day and whatever season. It’s hard to pick a certain part of that but we’re tapped into Mother Nature.
AL (ugly hug): You guys teased a little bit about music potentially coming out soon and I wanted to follow up– you guys signed to Photo Finish [Records] earlier this year and I’m just curious about how much you can tell us about what’s coming next! Anything that’s coming and growing with you guys since that signing, which is super exciting.
LA: I think we’re all super excited to be touring as much as we are, we have like two tours lined up. And I feel like since we signed, it was kind of this milestone where we’re in this now and going to really take it seriously, this is what we want to do.
RL: We do have new stuff coming out soon, sooner than people think.
LA: I think we’ll always have visual elements to every release that we do because we’re just really into that.
TN: I got to give props to Liam’s visual eye as well. He’s a very accomplished visual artist. An amazing eye, capturing the essence of what the vibe is or what we’re going for.
CG (ugly hug): I’m glad that y’all mentioned visuals because I wanted to talk about them – looking at your Instagram it’s very cohesive and definitely goes back to nature, such as your photoshoots. You guys have an eye for what you want.
LA: That’s good to hear because I think sometimes we’re a little worried about how good [it looks].
CG (ugly hug): I also love the photographer you guys worked with!
RL: Our label connected us with Jaxon, he’s the best.
AL (ugly hug): I was gonna ask how it was working [with him]. Just being LA based, we see him everywhere shooting the scene that he shoots. I just thought that photoshoot was super beautiful.
RL: We were nervous, but it was by far the best photoshoot we’ve ever done. He’s the chillest guy.
CG (ugly hug): I thought of Twilight for some reason in that photoshoot. Is there a movie that you guys would love to score?
ZS: That’s funny, Jaxon had mentioned that people say his photoshoots look like they’re in Twilight.
I really love Portrait of a Lady on Fire, but I feel like that’s very slow. That would be fun to do a piano score.
LA: There’s a nature documentary that’s about smaller microbiotic things, that would be cool.
TN: Going off of that, I’m a huge fan of the Planet Earth series, specifically the Blue Earth, the ocean based underwater documentaries.
LA: I feel like we could also kill something in the vein of Donnie Darko or something.
ZS: I really love those 90s, like witchcraft movies, like The Craft.
AL (ugly hug): I was doing a bit of digging and saw you guys released “Graze” earlier this year. I saw somewhere that you guys had the opportunity to work with Slow Pulp’s Henry Stoehr. I was curious if having that sort of collaboration affected your sound, if at all. I feel like listening to “Graze” you get a lot of textures and layers. What was the influence and how did that go for you?
RL: I always steal this question, because I’m his biggest fan. He’s a great guy. We met in Madison and met his mom and got connected, then just started to become acquaintances over time. And he was always very supportive of she’s green. He would slide up on my stories and be like, “This song bangs! This is great.” So, he has always been a really nice guy. But we needed to record these songs and we were thinking about who to record them with. And the story goes, Zofia and I saw Slow Pulp in Madison, Wisconsin and were very inspired. One of my all time favorite bands, no doubt. But we were very inspired and on the way back we were listening to demos of songs we had never worked on. And there was one called “Graze” that was sent a long time ago, almost a year. We were like, “How have we never worked on this, this is cool.” And we went back and worked on it and we’re definitely inspired after the concert and then we got to record it with the dude who records and plays in Slow Pulp. So it was a very full circle moment. Very cute story I would say.
ZS: It was very comfortable and it was funny because he felt like like one of us when we were recording with him. Just felt like he was in the band with us, which was so great. Such a good guy.
AL (ugly hug): That’s super cool that you guys had that collaboration opportunity and that mentorship! By any chance will he be making a return to she’s green projects in the future.
In Kim Gordon’s memoir, there is an excerpt from a 1988 tour diary that ends with the sentiment: “I like being in a weak position and making it strong.” It serves as a sort of conclusion to an unraveling reflection on gender and performance, on her relationship to playing bass and her own femininity, on wondering how she’s perceived next to dozens of boys with guitars she deems “ordinary as possible.”
The statement itself is simple, but I think it encapsulates exactly what makes Gordon one of the greatest female musicians in the sphere of experimental noise rock. I don’t mean that in a good-for-a-girl kind of way; rather, she is good because she’s a girl, because of the sharpness within her dissonant sound, the hunger within her seemingly wandering melodies, the harrowing authenticity wound into her abrasion. A perfected scream vocal is nothing without nuance, and the most compelling noise artists wield a caustic sound for subversion, not mere shock value. Among the contemporary artists cultivating dimension within auditory hostility is Flooding, and the Kansas-based project’s latest EP is a testament to their propensity for making weak positions strong. Out last week, object 1 is a sonically full display of satire, blistering yet astute song structures, and cunning juxtaposition.
Rose Brown, Cole Billings, and Zach Cunningham started Flooding in 2020, releasing their self-titled record the following year. While it leaned into a melancholic, slow-core feel, their debut also hinted at a darker and more intense sound – one Flooding would fully sink their teeth into on their 2023 release, Silhouette Machine. The latter revealed how compelling Flooding can be if they refrain from diluting their art for the sake of likability. “The first one was before I really knew how to write music; it was one of the first things I’d ever written, so I approached it in a way of ‘how do I make this what I want to hear,’ but I also still felt kind of pressured to make it palatable for people listening,” Rose tells me of Flooding’s early years.
While it’s true that Flooding’s more recent releases have veered in a creative direction often deemed “challenging,” there’s a slight contradiction in her statement – one that prods at longstanding discourse on music and palatability. The success Flooding has found by embracing a harsher identity speaks to the fact that Rose is not alone in the sounds she craves. Acknowledging the disconnect between that and the music she felt pressured to make for the sake of a general listener begs the question: why do these notions still pervade the industry so aggressively?
What makes art palatable? Is it comfort, something that can appease a wide demographic of perspectives? But what about successful media that isn’t “comfortable”. What about the prominence of violence in the film industry. Is violence palatable? What about sex, is sex palatable? An intro to marketing class will tell you it sells. But can it sell authentically? What happens when it’s not strategically packaged? When it’s honest, when it’s explosive, when it doesn’t prioritize comfort?
My biggest issue with the “palatability” conversation is how little faith it places in the general listener. Perhaps that’s an idyllic stance, but as I listen to Flooding, I have a hard time imagining a reality in which you do not take something from the experience; the hair-raising percussion, the catharsis of Rose’s vocal volatility, the eerie beauty of the chord progressions. Is it challenging? Perhaps. But why is that a bad thing?
When I asked Rose about performing such brash songs live, she explained it had been challenging at first, “I was just so nervous and shy, I wasn’t screaming back then. I was just trying to sing and I could barely do that then. Preforming is my favorite part of music because I like how it can evolve the songs and evolve you as a person too.” Flooding’s appetite for discomfort has been as a catalyst for their own growth, and their latest release encourages you to do the same. You can listen to object 1 anywhere now.
We recently chatted with Rose to discuss music inspirations, shame, and Flooding’s new EP, object 1.
This album has been edited for length and clarity.
Manon: I wanted to ask about the length of object 1—at 17 minutes, it’s a lot shorter than Silhouette Machine. I think something that makes your music so powerful is your contrast between delicate and abrasive. On your last album, you had a lot of time to really manipulate and explore those extremes. Was this project always meant to be an EP, and how did you approach creating a more condensed body of work?
Rose: The process was a lot different from our first two albums. The first one was before I really knew how to write music; it was one of the first things I’d ever written, so I approached it in a way of “how do I make this what I want to hear,” but I also still felt kind of pressured to make it palatable for people listening. For the second album, I really wanted to challenge myself with different ways of approaching writing music. I’ve always been an album person, I really like listening to albums, and that’s what I want to produce. This EP is a lot different. It’s very ironic and sarcastic, and I’m approaching a lot of subjects from different people’s points of view, so it felt right to make it a more condensed work. It felt so different from what we’d been doing that I kind of wanted it to be an endcap or a starting-off point for future things.
Manon: I read that the name Flooding comes from an intense, “face your fears all at once” style of exposure therapy. What sorts of fears or general notions were you hoping to contend with on this EP?
Rose: I’m talking about shame a lot, and I’m talking about shame from other people’s perspectives, because I think it’s pretty hard to explore if you’re just talking about your own shame. I feel like for me, the themes kind of come together and make sense after I’ve recorded everything and it’s ready to go.
Manon: I’m curious about the notion of fragility in “your silence is my favorite song.” I feel like your use of repetition there creates such an interesting skewing of the word fragile, it feels as if “I’m fragile” is a warning, especially in the context of your volatile song structures. What does fragility mean to you, and why did you choose to emphasize it in that song?
Rose: I think it can mean a lot of different things. When people think of femininity, they think of “fragile” in the way a flower is delicate. But there’s also the fragility of a bomb that could explode. The EP has a lot of contradictory elements, and I think that’s a very interesting juxtaposition.
Manon: You mentioned that for the first album, you were still learning how to write songs and were trying to create something more palatable. Since then, you’ve moved toward making what you want to hear. What are some influences that have shaped your recent releases—and yourself as a songwriter in general?
Rose: Thinking about our first album, I hadn’t really delved super deep into slowcore yet. People started referring to us as “slowcore” and I was like, oh shit, yeah, we are. So then I started listening to that. I also got really into screamo and hardcore because Kansas City has a huge hardcore scene, that’s just what’s around us. That definitely influenced our second album a lot. Recently, I’ve been really into pop music and jazz, so I tried to find a way to combine those elements with something that’s still kind of aggressive and noisy.
Manon: Then “object 1,” the track, has no lyrics. Since your vocals are such a powerful instrument in Flooding, how was your experience writing a song without them?
Rose: That’s maybe the only song we have without my vocals on it, besides like one interlude track. It’s also the only song we’ve ever all written together, me, Cole, and Zach. It felt a lot different to me. I approached playing guitar in a different way, where it wasn’t the main structural element. It felt weird to try to put vocals on it, and I couldn’t figure out what to do, nothing felt natural.
Manon: I feel like when you have a more experimental and noise-heavy sound, it often gets clumped into this category of “cathartic music.” Would you consider playing Flooding live to be cathartic?
Rose: For sure. It’s definitely an emotional experience for me.
Manon: Is it always? Or are there times when something you’ve written doesn’t resonate anymore?
Rose: Honestly, we don’t even play the songs we don’t want to, we have enough of a catalog now to just play what we want. It’s definitely different playing the new EP because it’s not as extremely personal as a lot of our past music has been, but it’s still cathartic, just in a different way. You get to act out the perspective of being a pop star, or just some arrogant guy who doesn’t give a shit.
Written by Manon Bushong | Photo by Fabian Rosales
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 Burlington-based artist Lily Seabird.
Earlier this year, Lily Seabird released her third LP titled Trash Mountain via Lame-O records, which found the songwriter developing a more tender sonic display of acoustic laments, warming textures and melodic meanders. While building from the bare bones, these songs embrace the simple and worn in, like knowing how far you can lean back in the old porch chairs before it’s too late or noticing the outline of foot markings on a doormat that is familiar with its responsibilities. Seabird so instinctually illustrates the connections that we share with what’s around us, and whether or not it’s clear from the beginning, that search for understanding becomes the heart within her writing and the sincerity that drives her performance.
About the playlist, Seabird shared;
“This is a playlist I made before the tour. It’s a mix of songs I found on the numero group playlists and songs by friends.”
Listen to Lily Seabird’s playlist here!
You can listen to Trash Mountain out everywhere now!
Written by Shea Roney | Featured Photo by Eliza Callahan
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 Portland-based artist Saia Kuli of the project Guitar.
Guitar’s most recent release, 2024’s Casting Spells on Turtlehead, leans into a level of unpredictability, coming upon a post-punk antiquity and kicking it further down the road, Kuli creates a free flow of sound unhindered by its brutalist edge. Throughout the project’s catalog, Kuli has shown that there is a method to the madness, switching gears so casually it feels natural to the first-time listener and consequential to the longtime fans who are excited for what’s next. But through it all, while still grasping to melodic fixations, what fills a Guitar song is almost a pity towards silence – not that it needs to be filled for silence’s sake, but rather offers the possibility of something new that can’t be refused.
About the playlist, Saia said;
When it comes to playlists I’m very heavy on feeling it out. I just start throwing stuff on and then look for that that flow. This playlist has some songs that came out really recently and some songs that I’ve revisited year after year for many years. Some of the tracks on here come from very very deep in my YouTube likes. I tried to use making this playlist as a reason to go find old stuff I used to love and put it beside new stuff I love.
Listen to the playlist here!
Listen to Casting Spells on Turtlehead and other projects from Guitar out everywhere!
the ugly hug 