Today the Chicago-based songwriting duo of Samuel Aaron and Noah Roth share a music video for their most recent single “Squirrels in the Walls.” This track comes from their new collaborative EP titled Two of Us out this Friday. Each with their own respective songwriting projects, Aaron and Roth sat down to write and record this EP in one day, offering a refreshing project lost amongst the intimacy, intuition and grace of collaboration and friendship.
Like the lingering ring on the table from a warm cup of coffee lifted for a sip, “Squirrels in the Walls” is a sign of life. Rambling with reserved rhythmic joviality, the duo bring out the best in each other, playing to their strengths with endearing lyricism and the definitive characteristic of storytelling that brings a lasting charm to this track. “Once I read that lyric out loud, the rest of the song “Squirrels in the Walls” poured out like water from a faucet,” Aaron shares about the song, continuing, “we wrote the whole thing on Noah’s couch in that one sitting, giggling to ourselves about how delightful it was to sing so plainly about life, love, and rodents.”
Watch the music video directed by Devon Thomas below!
Two of Us is set to be released this Friday February 21st via Austin-based label Happen Twice. Aaron and Roth will be hosting a release show on Friday February 21st at The Hideout in Chicagoand then will depart on a brief Midwest tour. Check for dates and locations here.
Today, NYC-based tape label Toadstool Records shares a new bandcamp only compilation on Valentine’s Day called 777 Love Songs. Featuring artists such as the fruit trees, deerhoof, youth large, toy factory and one wheel fireworks show, all profits made will be donated to Mutual Aid LA and Women’s Prison Association.
About the compilation, Toadstool founder Carolina Gay shares,
“777 Love Songs is a compilation of tracks about love and heartbreak, with contributions from friends and community members – many of which are exclusive to this release. Local NYC artist Somer Stampley has contributed custom artwork.
In numerology, the number 777 is considered to be extremely lucky, awash with high vibrations. 777 is aligned with love, purpose and wisdom: it’s a sign that things will all work out in time.”
Mutual Aid Los Angelesis a connector and information hub for mutual aid efforts in Los Angeles, especially those impacted by the recent fires. They aspire to build toward abolition and believe in a world that can be freed through community solidarity.
Women’s Prison Association is the nation’s first organization for women impacted by incarceration. They work to empower women, LGBTQ+ people, and their families affected by New York’s carceral system.
“Toadstool Records has decided to raise funds for Mutual Aid LA and Women’s Prison Association because of our belief in art as a healing tool. Our hearts are broken over the immense loss and trauma in Los Angeles in the wake of the devastating fires this past January. We are also deeply disturbed by the Trump administration’s prejudiced attacks on women, people of color, and the trans community. We hope that this project will bring a little bit of relief and solace to those who need it the most.”
You can purchase 777 Love Songs on bandcamp now to listen to the full release!
Today, Massachusetts-based duo Taxidermists return with a new single, “Does The Wind Know”, the second track from their upcoming record 20247 out March 7th via Danger Collective Records. As childhood best friends who first met on Myspace in 2007, Cooper B. Handy (aka LUCY) and Salvadore McNamara have since expanded their relationship into building their own unique world of DIY creativity and label pushing sounds as they continue to look ahead into what is possible.
With the click of the drumsticks, Taxidermists barge in with brash tones and a running progression as the duo drives forward with simplistic coverage and a charming intensity – pushing their gear to the limit with a type of reciprocating dance brought out by the heart of the song. With short, choppy chants, a repetition of the very question, “does the wind know”, bouncing between verse and chorus with charged excitement, the duo takes on this post-punk antiquity with the grace of two friends who are in it for the love of the game.
Listen to “Does The Wind Know” below!
20247 is set to be released on March 7th via Danger Collective Records. You can pre-order the record now as well as a vinyl and CD copy.
Written by Shea Roney | Featured Photo by Harry Wohl
“I’m gonna go off topic for a second” Nara Avakian prefaces before pivoting into a story from their day at work at a school in Elmhurst, Queens. We had been discussing the impact of taking Nara’s Room outside of the physical parameters of ‘Nara’s Room’, and while they assure me the anecdote will circle back to that point, I am hardly worried. Avakian details an art class activity where they prompted students to complete a ten minute automatic drawing followed by a more intentional piece of art on the other side of the paper. “I saw the ways that their subconscious kind of came out. I mean, they’re all twelve, thirteen, so they’re not overtly thinking, but I could see the connections that were being made,” Avakian explains.
One student had drawn a Yin and Yang symbol during the brief ten minutes, explaining to Avakian it was an element of another lesson she had that day. For the second part of the assignment, she drew a chameleon, likely inspired by the cover of a textbook in the classroom. “Because she drew the chameleon in marker, when you flipped it over it bled through and it was perfectly symmetrical with the Yin and Yang symbol. I feel like that instance is how I perceive my own songwriting and performing, it’s my subconscious flowing out and it just ends up almost experimental. I bring it to the boys, and they process it in their own ways. They evolve the meaning and turn something that is very private to me and very singular into something that is so much more nuanced.”
Avakian is the front person of Nara’s Room, a Brooklyn Based band that boasts a grungy catalogue of tracks that fizz in your ears and yank at your chest. Their experimental sound glides over achey introspections like Vaseline, forming this healing liminal space where pain has to be felt, perhaps even danced to, before it can be truly let go. The deeply cathartic essence of Nara’s Room is one of the band’s biggest triumphs, though it was not necessarily intentional from conception. Avakian began Nara’s Room at a time they were still nurturing their own confidence as a musician, initially envisioning something along the lines of “Joni Mitchell, Tim Buckley singer- songwriter”. They found bandmates Ethan Nash and Brendan Jones after posting on Craigslist for ‘non men players’ who liked the Cranberries, Galaxie 500, and the Sundays. “Lo and behold, two of the most boyish of boys responded”, Avakian jokes before tenderly reflecting on the significance of Nash and Jones in their life, “They ended up becoming my chosen family.”
The band fosters an extremely pliable approach to creativity, allowing them to harvest depth from anything. As Avakian reflected on the subsconscious driven exercises of their middle school art class, I thought of a track off Glassy Star that is somewhat centered around a bottle of juice. Recalled amidst the anguish of a parasitic relationship, “Grape Juice” is a standout example of the band’s knack for achieving emotional complexity without a need for explicit articulation. When I asked if the song was based on reality, if perhaps a decayed bodega beverage was a means to reach something darker buried in Avakian’s mind, I tried to resist posing the question in an overtly personal way. In retrospect, I think the times I have dropped what I was doing to vehemently sing along to the agonizing delivery of “a moldy bottle of Welch’s juice, I left in my closet, I forgot to drink” has less to do with me than it does the band’s ability to inject pathos into, well, anything. This dexterity wields songs that beg to be weathered by the relationship of a listener; as the stories told by Nara’s Room are meant to be felt more than understood.
Avakian explains that while the moldy grape juice story was true, it was initially someone else’s, one told via Spongebob voice filter on Instagram Reels. “At the time, I was friends with someone who was the classic case of just taking advantage of a friendship. The moldy bottle of Welch’s juice line came up, and I hate that this is the reference, but I guess it goes to show that you can find that value in anything,” Avakian explains, “I was scrolling through Instagram Reels, I don’t know if you know this guy but he tells these stories through the autotune SpongeBob filter, he has a beard, whatever. He came up, and I don’t watch everything, but for some reason I was just in a mood where I was just kind of rotting, and he talked about this story where his mom wouldn’t let him drink grape juice, so he ended up grabbing a bottle from the fridge and hiding it in his closet. He forgot about it, and then it got moldy, and that kind of just stuck with me. It was not something where I saw the reel and was like, I need to make that into a song, but I took it into my subconscious and it just kind of flowed out and really defining the mood and feelings of the song”
That Reel was just one of the many fragments of life that shaped Glassy Star, mingling in the record alongside a line delivered by Laura Dern in Blue Velvet, a copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s Bluebeard, a vinyl of Fleetwood Mac’s Live Ivory and a light up horse display in a bar in Bed-Stuy. Avakian often refers to these collaged references as “fixations”, though in the context of Nara’s Room, their purpose is ultimately a catalyst for stubborn emotional excavations. The band often knits their individual focuses into one, this creative symbiosis bridging Nash’s fascination with the New York City Transit System’s most elusive train and a poem Avakian wrote on a receipt at a comic shop in LA seven years prior on “Waiting for the z”.
There is also value in the intent behind what they choose to integrate into their art. The approach is deeply unpretentious, focused on exploring the notions that resonate regardless of their cultural weight. “That’s how I process what a fixation meant to me”, Avakian explains on their trust in their own subconscious, and how they rely on music to unravel it. Amongst the slivers of life and media that braided into Nara’s Room, an emphasis on the 2000’s holds a prominent slot in the band’s identity. Glassy Star odes heavily to the cultural landscape of the band’s formative years, the album’s visuals rich with contrast between aesthetics associated with innocence and lyrics that navigate the darker realities of growing up.
“I have this relationship with my childhood, where growing up I genuinely believed that every element in the early 2000’s would be that way forever. Like the idyllic world of a Disney Channel original movie. In my music, or at least with Glassy Star, it’s one of the dimensions. There’s so many. One of them is reconciling with growing up and change”, Avakian reflects on their focus on 2000’s media, “It’s my way of kind of returning back to the room in many ways, returning back to these things that are so foundational to who I am that don’t necessarily have a place in this world anymore.”
Their manipulation of nostalgia becomes particularly powerful in the music video for “Holden”, a standout track that purges identity uncertainties over buoyant guitar and hypnotic reverb. Avakian used various cameras for the video, which features a stop motion animation inspired by Nickolodeon’s Action League Now, and a visual narrative that unfolds in and out of a vintage television set. It exists somewhere between familiarity and fabrication, envisioning an uncanny realm that possibly cautions against stretching naivete into adulthood, though like most aspects of Nara’s Room, it leans into the abstract, holding more emphasis on emotion than rationality.
This sense of ambiguity is a driving force at their live shows. Creating the songs offers the band a means to make sense of their own minds, but through sharing them the music transcends the personal nature of a notes app entry or media fascination. The meaning becomes something entirely new, as their songs knock on the door of someone else’s emotional ruminations. “When you watch something of David Lynch’s, it’s not meant to be overtly understood, but rather experienced and felt,” Avakian reflects on preforming, “I think when I bring something out of the room, I only hope that people can enter this other space with me, and we can all kind of experience and feel something ourselves.”
You can listen to Glassy Star out on all platforms now. You can also order a cassette tape via Mtn. Laurel Recording Co. Nara also creates videos under the name foggy cow. Check it out here!
Written by Manon Bushong | Featured Photo by Mamie Heldman
Today, Bedridden announced that their debut LP, Moths Strapped to Each Other’s Backs will be out on Aprill 11th via Julia’s War. Hatched by Jack Riley in his college years in New Orleans, Bedridden is now a Brooklyn based project, joined by drummer Nicholas Pedroza, bassist Sebastian Duzian and guitarist Wesley Wolffe. The individual members boast backgrounds ranging from jazz to metal, these influences subtly feeding the identity and rapport built over a shared proclivity for volume. Bedridden accompanied the album announcement with the release of “Etch”, a track both promising for those fond of their 2023 release Amateur Hearthrob and sure to dredge up new listeners. The rhythmically dense EP is sort of like if Friday Night Lights had a sludgy power pop soundtrack, wrapping notions of home runs and cheek kisses from cheerleaders in a sea of angsty guitar. It wields enough fuzz to form a foreboding cloud of grunge, but not enough to sand down any rough edges. Bedridden’s apt for animated riffs and sports novelties merely exist as a padding for the loneliness and anxieties that trickle out of their seemingly unguarded arenas of noise.
“Etch” is a wrathful track that explores the burdens of one’s own rage, armed with brooding guitar harmonies and scatterings of sports vernacular. It purges interpersonal animosities as Riley recalls a victorious fight dream, his vocals dodging harmony as he pummels through lines of “meet my knuckles” and “he can’t breathe, he can’t see without his eyewear”. Though the dream follows his rules, meandering in and out of NBA references and ending with the sweet satisfaction of the antagonist warming his own bench, there is an ambiguity to “Etch” that feels familiar whether or not you have access to any sports channels. The erratic and combative feel evoked by the song’s lack of a tonal center recalls an innately human kind of anger, an overwhelm that can sometimes only be soothed by aggressive figments of our own imagination.
In a statement about the track, Riley shares “‘Etch’ was a rhythmic accident that didn’t stem from any direct inspiration. The irregular triplet line came to me first and sounded somber, yet hostile. It lent itself well to phrases I had written not about heartbreak, but about the subsequent temper that it had induced. I was dreaming of fighting, I was dreaming of winning that fight and lastly dreaming of defaming my competitor. The song is frantic and doesn’t have a tonal center. With its weaving guitar harmonies laid underneath countering vocal melodies, it sounds to me like that regretful fistfight that I was longing for.”
Listen to “Etch” here.
Moths Strapped To Each Other’s Backs is set to be released April 11th via Julia’s War Recordings. You can now pre-order the album as well as a cassette tapes now.
Written by Manon Bushong | Featured Photo by Sam Plouff
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 Maine-based artist Genevieve Beaudoin of the project Dead Gowns.
Earlier this week, Dead Gowns shared “Maladie”, the final single before the release of their long-awaited debut album, It’s Summer, I Love You, and I’m Surrounded by Snow, out February 14 via Mtn Laurel Recording Co. As a writer, isolating rather complex and dynamic feelings with a vivid prose of both mindful delicacy and emotional intensity, GV works towards the terms of desire, an ever-shifting goalpost in a sometimes-unwinnable game. But it is in this delivery and stature that GV so easily articulates though her music that gives us an open space to find our own answers no matter how daunting these feelings may be.
“You could call ‘Maladie’ a bilingual song,” Beaudoin says of the single. “But for me, it’s more about how gaps in one language can be filled by another and the entire process gets me to the real feeling. Growing up around two languages, I don’t think I ever felt like I ‘got it’ either way and this song just leans into the idiosyncrasies of how French and English exist in my brain.”
About the playlist, in which she titled, “time is all together, without separation”, GV shares;
I have a record coming out on a ‘holiday’ around love but I wanted to look at love differently here. in its most enveloping shaping.
the playlist has a name, “time is all together, without separation” and it’s a [translated] line by Tim Bernardes.
sometimes when I feel unsteady, I try to call in love like two hands, one holding my heart from the front, the other from the back. so these are just a few songs for loving harder. no erasure.
Listen to the playlist here.
Listen to ‘Maladie’ below.
It’s Summer, I Love You, and I’m Surrounded by Snow will be out February 14th and you can preorder the vinyl now!
Written by Shea Roney | Featured Photo by POND Creative
Today, Spring Onion, the recording project of Philadelphia-based artist Catherine Dwyer, returns with a brand-new song “Anger Acceptance”, marking the first single from her upcoming album Seated Figure set to be released March 14th via Anything Bagel. Having been a player in several Philly favorites, such as 22° Halo, 2nd Grade and Remember Sports, it is now Dwyer’s turn for a full-length endeavor, as Seated Figure is a collection of personal expression six years in the making.
“Anger Acceptance” begins with a very certain two chord progression, one of familiarity that defined a generation of not just youthful angst, but an exhilaration into a rather open and definitive moment of emotional recognition for countless individuals. The track begins clean, but full, as Dwyer sings, “I could have killed the man that told me / And I wish I killed him still,” apt to the gritty undertones that are waiting to be let loose. “We learned a lot about each other / I guess love’s a useful skill / that only matters if I make it / and with all my words I will,” becomes a marker all on its own, as the song erupts into a controlled burn of chaos and clarity, as Dwyer recognizes the beauty that lingers behind no matter how imperfect it may feel. “Anger Acceptance” is not a ploy for nostalgia per se, but rather a moment of gratitude, a recalling of what it was like to be young and angry before life goes on without a say in which direction.
About the song, Dwyer says, “This was the first song I wrote after my dad passed away from lung cancer in October 2020. I was alone, recovering from covid, listening exclusively to Nirvana, and stewing in the anger they say accompanies a great loss.”
Listen to “Anger Acceptance” premiering here on the ugly hug.
Seated Figure is set to be released March 14th with both a vinyl and cassette pressing from Anything Bagel. The album features longtime collaborators Julian Fader (Ava Luna), Carmen Perry (Remember Sports) and Francis Lyons (Ylayali), among others.
Listen to Spring Onion’s last release i did my taxes for free online.
Written by Shea Roney | Featured Photo Carmen Perry
Following the anticipation of their last track “Stop Me If You’ve Heard This Before” released earlier this month, rugh return today with “For Steven”, the final single from the Gainesville, Florida trio before the release of their debut album Rug, out on February 21st. With just a handful of releases prior, Macy Lamers, Liza Goldstein and Sawyer Lamers have upped the ante of their gritty intensity and candid vulnerability as rugh showcase the strengths within their dynamic compositions.
Nestling within a groove of temptatious energy, “For Steven” plays out from the trio’s garnered intuition, unwavering in the pace of a dreamy display as each member exudes their own individual voicings with both precision and unique passion. Combing through frustrations like a thinning bristled broom, lines like, “And the drugs in your blood aren’t going to be there for good”, remain as Macy’s crooning vocals collect up some of the blemishes of impending doom, clearing out a sort of pathway for the weight of the instrumentation to carry this newfound release to the end. “[For Steven is] an existential power anthem about how I don’t know what I’m doing, so naturally I can’t know what you are either,” says Macy. “Each verse is a run-on sentence, and the melody gets all tangled up just to fall into a rudimentary chorus again. I want to draw a stupid parallel to life here, but I’ll leave it.” It isn’t long before the track implodes in a crunchy haze of distortion and blown out amps, but rugh’s ability to play with both conflicting sensations and sheer earnestness make them a band worth keeping an eye on.
“For Steven” is accompanied by a music video conceptualized, directed and edited by Macy. Watch below!
Rug is set to be released on February 21st and will be celebrated with a release show on February 22nd. You can listen to their previously released single “Stop Me If You’ve Heard This Before” below.
“This is not a logical world we are living in! So maybe we should stop expecting it to be and just accept the absurdity. Fall straight into the magic bro,” reads a subsection hidden within the fixings of the machinery complex, titled “gave birth to a harddrive”. Earlier last year, Lily Piette shared her debut LP, titled Her Computerized Machinery Complex. Following the album’s release was a specially designed website – a placeholder to any physicality within this music – as a way to visualize and interact with the machinery complex in our measly three-dimensional human form. But in this computerized world, one fixated on intrinsic quarrels, generated visuals and lessons on quantum computing, there is a sentiment that runs through the album, a meeting point of the implausible and the actual that join, not with any profound coincidence, but rather more out of habit. Where big questions are asked and simultaneously answered with another question; the possibilities are endless and that’s okay.
Her Computerized Machinery Complex is both immediate and unsuspecting. Garnishing deep influences of nostalgic patterns and sharp instrumentation from the beloved Touch and Go era, these songs cut deep with both sincerity and cynicism, a heavily involved flavor that coats the palate unburdened by intentionality and experimentation. Taking on the duties of writing, producing and mixing, skills that Lily has been developing with two EPs prior, her artistic intuition bridges the gaps between preconceived notions and primal connections, as Her Computerized Machinery Complex navigates what we deem to understand as natural in the world around us.
Now several months out from its release, we recently sat down with Lily Piette to discuss the Machinery Complex, as well as blending visual art and music and redefining the world through vulnerability.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
Courtesy of Lily Piette
Shea Roney: Now having some time to sit with it, how has it all been prior to releasing your debut LP?
Lily Piette: Yeah, it was great. It was the first full length thing I had mixed, produced and recorded everything myself, so I definitely think I had kind of gone a little crazy about it, and was really glad to have it out. But then, you know, I was just happy that people liked it, and because I think at that point, I had gone too deep, I was like, ‘I don’t even know what this sounds like anymore. Throw it out [laughs]’. But it was a relief.
SR: Of course, that makes sense. You take on these incredibly large world building-esque moments which I can imagine can be fairly easy to get lost in. What was your initial goal when you decided to make this record, and did it shift at all throughout the process?
LP: When I first started making these songs, I didn’t know it was going to be an album. At the same time, I started getting really into this kind of computer world. I was using Blender to make these videos about these machines, and I was really into quantum computing and all that. That was kind of separate in a way, but then it merged when I started to get to an album length and decided to just put everything together. I usually like to separate art and music, but it all just kind of happened naturally when I had the idea to make the website and just converge it all.
SR: Yes, you are also a visual artist. When you say that you try to keep them separate, are there any ways that you find this means of creation influencing the kind of music you make and your relationship with it?
LP: I’ve always felt blessed to have both because if I’m getting frustrated musically, I can just go paint and vice versa. I’ve always kind of separated them in my mind, though I think thematically I’m working kind of in the same worlds, like my paintings kind of speak to some of these same worlds I’m trying to create in music. But I felt like more so with the videos, and the things that I’m doing on the same computer that I’m making the music with, I feel like are more intertwined. That’s why I bridged more 3D modeling or video editing or whatever into this album because it’s on the same device, rather than going to paint in a studio.
SR: I want to talk about the website you made to accompany Her Computerized Machinery Complex, because you put so much effort and thought into building this visual place for the album to exist. What was the initial idea for this project?
LP: I just had all these videos I’d made from the last year that I needed to put somewhere, and this also aligned with the time I was working on the record. When I had titled it Her Computerized Machinery Complex, at some point I just wanted to create the complex – the machinery complex. It feels like a structure, probably more so like a building, but I can’t do that [laughs], so I made a website where you can go into these different rooms and spaces. I didn’t end up making the website till the album was getting mastered, which was a fun getaway from listening to the songs too much.
SR: There were a few parts that stood out as very interesting that I wanted to ask about. In a section in which you are describing the website you say “this website is an entity that has a soul and it yearns for you to understand. The website is sensitive and vulnerable and also kind of slow sometimes…” What does that mean?
LP: When I started to get into quantum computers and how they worked (the way they work is they can take every single possibility of any choice instead of 0 and 1. So it’s like 0, 1, and maybe. It’s basically the multiverse where you can think of any possibility) and it made me think, ‘isn’t that God level?’ I was looking at these pictures of quantum computers, and I’m like, ‘it looks like an angel. It’s so beautiful.’ In a lot of religious texts, it talks about the complexity of God. It’s so intense that you can’t even look at it because your brain is going to explode. I don’t know, I was just finding correlations between something divine and these machines. I’m not trying to make a statement about AI or anything like that, it’s more just that I think that they’re natural, too, just like houses are natural, and cars are natural, and we’re natural. These computers are natural, and they’re really stunning, too. I just wanted to bring back that idea that everything is nature, and everything is connected to the divine, including a quantum computer that we think is so sterile and inhuman.
SR: Another part that was really interesting was when you give birth to a hard drive, further explaining that “this is not a logical world,” building upon the absurdity in our lives. Can you tell me more about that concept?
LP: I wanted to explore these ideas of like, ‘maybe this computer feels embarrassed? Who knows?’ It feels like we’re living in a cartoon world where nothing makes sense and everything’s upside down and we all feel so upset about everything all the time, which is, you know, rightfully so, but there’s freedom in being like, ‘this is absurd. None of it makes sense.’ So why wouldn’t the computer feel embarrassed?
SR: You once brought up the similarities between the digital realm and the subconscious realm that we have as humans. In what ways do these metaphysical places connect?
LP: If we think about algorithms, or even AI self-learning algorithms, it’s taking in this unimaginable amount of information, and then it will come out in sometimes really strange and unexpected ways, which is the same way that our brains work. We live our whole lives, and we can’t access any of [the subconscious], and then it comes out in the choice of words we use, or dreams we have, or these repressed ideas about things. I mean, even when you use the AI image generator for an apple or something, it’s kind of distorted and strange. That’s due to all these complicated reasons and images and billions of pieces of information. So just like in the same way a Freudian slip would occur, it’s connected and linked to a billion different things, so it makes sense that it would replicate in that way. I just think it’s interesting that it’s hard to trace back where these things come from, in both realms, because it’s just unimaginable amounts of information.
SR: Did you make an effort to try and tap the subconscious at all when writing this record?
LP: Well, I would say the lyrics are the thing I struggle with the most, and it’s the thing I always put off till last. I struggle with being like, ‘okay, this is what I’m going to say, and I’m going to make it work phonetically as well. I always write a melody, and then I’ll sing gibberish or random words, and then I’ll try to make lyrics at the end, and oftentimes I’ll end up using whatever random thing I said because it sounded good. But I didn’t write it intentionally. Sometimes looking back at songs a while later, I’m like, ‘oh, I know exactly what I was talking about’, but I had no idea then.
Courtesy of Lily Piette
SR: There are a lot of thematic parts of this record that come from this feeling of grappling with connection in varying dimensions and relationships. Are there any ways in which referencing this digital landscape enhanced these themes?
LP: Even though I have this theme of the machines, most of the songs didn’t end up being anything about that, and are definitely about, you know, my own relationship struggles with people – betrayal, intimacy seeking connection. So, yeah, I feel like there’s this set out theme, but in reality, a lot of the songs are just about my regular life and regular emotional yearnings and everything.
SR: What we were talking about earlier, with this machinery complex being almost human-like with a soul, because technology is seen as so sterile, you’ve created this world that’s just so personable and warm, but through the lens of what we perceive as so distant and cold.
LP: Yeah, I feel like that’s what vulnerability is really. At the end of the day, that’s what I want to be as an artist. Being able to bring the idea that anything could be vulnerable, not even just to computers, but anything – a brick, a rock, or shoes, or whatever – and whether or not it’s true, it changes your relationship with the world and how you interact with everything. And I think it can only change it in a good way, approaching every single thing with compassion and love. I think that’s tied to that idea.
You can listen to Her Computerized Machinery Complex on all platforms now.
Written by Shea Roney | Featured Photo Courtesy of Lily Piette
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 singer-songwriter Caleb Cordes of the project Sinai Vessel.
With the release of Sinai Vessel’s fourth and final record, aptly titled I SING, Caleb culminated an album so masterful in storytelling – where instances of relational anxieties, economic plateaus and artistic values grapple with the prerequisites of both purity and cynicism – play so passionately with the grace of a tenured songwriter. Since then, while Caleb has begun to look ahead, defining new endeavors in life, his writing remains tried and true to what it means to be an individual, not lost, but wandering around this confusing, harsh, and beautiful world. Coming up upon 6 months of I SING, we asked Caleb to curate a playlist for the ugly hug, in which he shared,
Every so often — maybe only once or twice a year — I happen across a song that becomes a kind of home. “Home” sounds corny, but it’s apt — I wind up making a habit of departing from and returning to these songs, using them to bookend seasons or sessions of more experimental listening. I set down my bags, I kick off my shoes, I sigh. I expend almost no energy listening to them — they are wholly a source of comfort, a set of friends that make me feel like myself. Collected together, they form much of my motive for why I continue to listen, to search. And beyond listening, they plainly constitute a compelling reason to look forward to being alive.
A healthy portion of these tunes are songs that feel utterly private simply by extension of the fact that I’ve yet to meet another person that’s also heard them. It can feel special to be alone in that room, but I’d much rather share — especially if it means another person could find something in them to add to their own tender pantheon. Of course, these songs have also served as a constant point of reference for my own songwriting — and, seeing as I’m taking some time away from being a person who publishes or plays music, I’d like to offer them as context for my work while my last release is still reasonably close behind.
My ideal experience with all of these songs is that I could introduce them to you personally — to be on the same trip, so to speak. In my minivan, winding a mountain road. Or on a walk with two pairs of headphones, introducing one friend to another. In any case, here’s hoping you find one that gives you shelter.
Listen to Caleb’s playlist here!
You can listen to I SING on all platforms as well as purchase a vinyl copy.
Written by Shea Roney | Featured Photo by Trent Wayne
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