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 Tijuana-based musician Daniela Sandoval of the project Surcarilita.
As a duo, including collaborator Ana Cossio on drums and singing saw, Surcarilita invites you with open arms into their singular space, a hand-crafted diorama of the world around us built with sonic tinkerings, melodic reflections, glitter and a whole lot of magic. The tunes of Surcarilita play like a coloring book, where distorted guitars doodle outside the lines and Sandoval and Cossio’s colorful textures and loose melodies bring a new and exciting life to an already existing image. These are songs that feel like the unpredictability of a bowl of alphabet soup, a handmade home for creepy crawlies to catch some z’s, a nursery for growing pains and cat therapy, the pure joy of individual success and the love for creativity.
About the playlist Daniela shared;
ever since i realized i could be in a band, i’ve wanted to be in a band. these are some songs by bands that would have accelerated my urge to be in a band had i heard them when i was 15. they are sweet, short and you can sing them in the shower if you like
Tanner York doesn’t walk into a studio so much as he drags it with him, through Asheville apartments, the recording studio at UNC Asheville and his parents’ attic, leaving behind a trail of tape hiss, cheap snacks and a surprisingly serious collection of pop songs. York is your music obsessed friend anxiously waiting to leave a party to sing along to Beach Boys Instrumentals in his Subaru after sipping on his patented “Tanner Two,” a self-prescribed two lager limit. He spends his days obsessively scrolling through microphone reviews on one tab and a high-speed game of bootleg Tetris in another, thinking of all the different ways he can create the perfect drum sound. But when he plugs his guitar into the AC30 tucked away in his closet and presses record on his Tascam 488 MKII, all that scattered energy coalesces as he reveals himself in this sacred space as a budding hero of modern underground pop. On Welcome to the Shower, his joyfully weird and emotionally sincere debut album, released July 20 via Trash Tape Records, York transforms his obsessive ear and chaotic charm into something startlingly clear: lo-fi pop songs that sound like inside jokes until they suddenly hit like memories.
Before Tanner York started recording as Tanner York, he fronted a high-energy noise-pop duo called Diana Superstar. The early performances leaned into pure showmanship and black midi-esque chaos. “I thought my destiny was kind of like the noisy, blow-you-away live show,” York says. The songs were short-winded but bursting with excitement and creativity–jagged, stitched-together ideas that didn’t always complement one another, but hinted at a restless, ambitious musical mind. Over time though, he shifted his focus inward, discovering his real obsession wasn’t spectacle—it was the song. The melody. The chord changes. “I started realizing that what I value most is writing something that could pass the acoustic guitar test. Something sticky, something strong.” That pivot marks his growth, not just in style, but in intention as well, as he learned to craft nuanced, coherent pop songs that stick with you long after the tape stops rolling.
Photos by Hana Parpan
That newfound clarity within his songwriting is what makes Welcome to the Shower so charming and so special. While the album brims with unconventional tape tricks and lo-fi quirks, it’s never a gimmick. York’s melodies are deceptively complex, his harmonies airtight. Tracks like “Girlfriend” and “Museum Broadway” are loaded with witty lyrical side-eyes—born from York’s interest in comedy and his brief but passionate detour into stand-up in Los Angeles—but they’re never too cool to not care. In fact, they care deeply, and that tension between irony and sincerity is part of what makes this record so endearing.
In “Museum Broadway,” York paints a surrealist portrait of suburban malaise, full of strange observations and tongue in cheek imagery: “The movie theater with a fuck-ugly mural / Beside the frozen-over pond.” These are the kinds of lines he’s mastered that evoke laughter before shifting into emotional clarity over a key change when he drops the dry detachment to sing “everyday I think about just moving far away from here but I don’t have the time.”
“Girlfriend” is equally clever, but more biting in its longing. It flirts with the melodrama but always lands somewhere painfully honest. “I heard she gave you a tattoo / of your dog that recently died” and “I could be everything she is” feel like throwaway one-liners until York twists them into a chorus that aches with restraint: “But you have a girlfriend / she loves you just fine.” It’s that careful balance between pettiness, humor, and vulnerability that makes York’s writing shine. His lyrics often read like someone trying not to cry by telling a joke and then accidentally revealing everything.
While the lyrics may lean toward playful or indirect, York admits that’s partly a protective instinct: “One of the ways that I get myself to trust a lyric is to make it funny. It’s almost an insecurity thing, where it’s like, ‘oh, if I’m being funny then I’m above sincerity, which I’m trying to avoid, but I really do love songs with funny lyrics. Bands like Squeeze have incredibly funny lyrics, but they also write such amazing pop songs. I’ve always thought that novelties are in the same artistic bracket as something that’s attempting to be serious because it’s equally if not harder to pull off correctly.” That looseness, both as a defense mechanism and a genuine stylistic tool, often leads to wryly observational lines that sneak up on you and leave a mark.
Photo by Hana Parpan
Last summer York spent a few months in Los Angeles, California working for a twitch streamer, Luke Taylor, editing his streams. He found himself at stand up comedy shows almost every other night trying out new jokes and meeting fellow comedians. Through this and by playing video games online, York found lots of personal inspiration by befriending many of his comedic and musical heroes.
“I was playing Fortnite with my friend Dan, who lives in New York, and one day he asked if his friend could join the lobby. It ended up being Will from Hotline TNT and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I love his music.’” York had recently become obsessed with Cartwheel, Hotline TNT’s latest album at the time. “In a lot of ways it felt adjacent to the goals I had where it was like the kind of Teenage Fanclub writing, pretty simple pop songs, but in the context of having super loud guitars and things like that.” The two began exchanging music and ideas over Discord. “From then on Will has been a big help for me, both giving feedback and also helping me navigate releasing a record and things like that. He’s been very wonderful.”
The process behind Welcome to the Shower is as loose and spontaneous as the music sounds. “I never wrote or recorded songs with the intention of them having a place on an album, which may explain the abundance of energetic songs rather than calmer ones,” York says. “I got very into recording with a Tascam 8-track cassette recorder after seeing the Elephant 6 documentary, and the immediacy immediately inspired me. I loved how it didn’t let me spend hours tweaking with settings. It forced me to think about the music first.”
He leaned into the tape’s limitations, experimenting with pitch shifts and speed manipulation. “Sometimes I’d record my vocals at a slower speed so that when I pitched them back up they’d sound higher. Recording on tape was really helpful because sometimes when I hear a song so many times I start to get sick of it and I start doubting it. I found that if I have a song and I’m starting to get sick of it, if I pitch it up a lot, it’s almost like listening to a new song and you get to hear the chord changes differently, it feels like you’re hearing the song as an outside listener. A lot of the time it would make me realize like, ‘oh, this is still a good idea. I just need to get out of my head.’ Sometimes I would just keep the pitch shifted version that way because I ended up liking how it sounded more.”
Some tracks like the fluttery, hook-laden “All Over Again” were written, recorded, and fully mixed on tape in a single day. Others, like the textured “Cut Out,” went through multiple demos and incarnations before arriving at their final form. Whether immediate or hard-won, each song is bound by a deep, almost mythic pull toward pop itself. The shimmering ideal of a melodic, emotional, and endlessly replayable song. “I became really obsessed with pop song structure and key changes and what makes a good melody,” he says. “When I listen to great pop songs, I get so much joy from listening to them over and over, and singing along in my car. I just wanted to make songs that could fit in that space.”
Photo by Geddi Monroe
With influences that range from The Beach Boys, Beatles, and XTC to contemporary weird-pop heroes like Sharp Pins, Combat Naps, and Chris Cohen, York isn’t reinventing pop so much as lovingly disassembling it and re-taping it back together, making it entirely his own. Welcome to the Shower reflects that patchwork spirit, full of jangly guitar tones, crisp comedic timing, and unpredictable but sophisticated chord changes, all stitched together into lo-fi power pop songs crafted with enormous care and an even bigger heart.
One of the album’s most striking moments comes at the very end with “Blarry,” a devastating closer that peels back all the irony and reveals York exposed in a way that feels almost disarming. It’s a song about compromise, about trying to hold onto something already fading. “Do I, do I remind you / Of those days and long, long nights / When someone made an effort to believe you?” he asks, before answering himself with the heartbreaking clarity: “I’d walk a thousand miles / for someone just to lay beside / for that alone I’d trade anything.” Just when you think the jokes drop away as the melody stretches out in a remarkable moment of unguardedness, you get a punch to the heart as the song abruptly ends in the middle of a line and you kind of want to strangle him.
Photo by Hana Parpan
Underneath all of the amusing remarks and the bent melodies, Welcome to the Shower is an album about longing and coming-of-age confusion. Its roots lie in York’s community in Asheville, at shows at Static Age Records, a local venue and record store that fosters a thriving music scene where York has seen and played with many of his heroes and made many of his friends, in conversations with older mentors, and in jam sessions with fellow UNC Asheville music technology students (now his live band). “With this record, I stopped trying to sound like anyone else,” he says. “I just chased the melodies I couldn’t get out of my head.”
Welcome to the Shower isn’t trying to prove anything, and that’s part of its charm. It’s the sound of someone falling in love with music all over again. Not for the aesthetic, or applause, but for the simple thrill of a well-placed key change, a sticky hook, or a lyric that makes you snort before it breaks your heart. Tanner York may still be figuring it all out, but if this record is any sign, he’s already miles ahead of the curve. His songs might start as jokes but they end as the kind you can’t stop thinking about for days on end. Welcome to the Shower is the perfect soundtrack to a hot summer night and the sound of someone arriving casually, hilariously, and with total clarity.
You can listen to Welcome to the Shower out everywhere you find your music. Pre-orders for your very own Tanner York CD are now open via the legendary Trash Tape Records.
Written by Eilee Centeno | Feature Photo by Hana Parpan
Sometimes the most harrowing heart break tracks are not necessarily the most immediate. Rather, they draw from a wound that is neither fresh nor healed, loitering in a state of emotional limerence and nourished more by romanticized illusion than reality. Think Yo La Tengo’s “My Heart’s Not In It” or “Antenna” by Sonic Youth. What makes these narratives so brutal lies in their inward nature – when dust settles and time dulls at the ration behind a relationship’s dissolution, there is space from a “what if” shaped hole begging to be filled with one’s own yearning. Or, in the case of bloodsports, patched up with a surge of jagged percussion. Out today, “Rosary” nods to the wistful sensitivity that lies beneath an enamel of exasperated song structures and tough sounding band name, as bloodsports paves a robust buildup sure to knock out even the worst case of self-inflicted longing.
“Rosary” comes as the lead single for bloodsports’ debut record, Anything Can Be A Hammer, announced today as well. The track builds on feats found in bloodsports’ existing discography – the melodic tensions that grip their self titled EP, the pensive lyricism bottled in 2024 single “canary”, the potency of their live sets. It also veers into new textures, leaning into a sharper sound and hinting to the dynamism we can anticipate on their debut.
I noted the nature of their sets, but for those who have yet to experience bloodsports live, I will emphasize that the four piece is well versed on the impact of oscillation. They have a knack for suspense through contoured structures, assertive drumming, and compelling buildups. The latter serves as the foundation for “Rosary”, which leads with tender vocal harmonies over bare chord progressions and ends on a blazing riff. The track’s gentle onset is armed with unease, inciting tension as you wait for an impending sonic inflation.
About the single, Sam shares, “This song was written about a relationship that I ended, and reminiscing about the feelings months after the fact. Lyrically, it’s a very bittersweet song. It looks back positively on the time that was spent but there’s also a layer of regret about the things that never quite came to fruition. It’s strange to sing live now because the relationship that it’s referencing has since been rekindled but I can still connect to those feelings from back then.”
Anything Can Be A Hammer is set to come out October 17th via Good English Records. It marks the first release for Good English, a New York and Nashville based label dedicated to creative freedom and a DIY ethos.
You can pre-order Anything Can Be A Hammer on Bandcamp.
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 Chicago-based musician and recording engineer Seth Engel of the project Options.
When you put on an Options album, those songs are made for motion, fast and faithful, for sure. With a healthy blend of attuned fixations and a need to raise a ruckus, Seth’s most recent album Beast Mode is a tried-and-true pop joyride hurtling down the boulevard with the windows down and the booming wind forcing the hand of the volume knob. But as a collection, these songs live in moments, flashes of thoughts scribbled on the back of a cereal box to make a note before the feeling is running out the door. It’s a project that is littered with excitement, pipetted with passion and destined for glory.
Here are some songs that I love listening to in the car while driving, ideally with the windows down and on a long stretch of road. This is one of my favorite ways to focus on and connect with music. There’s a bit of an inherently predictable vibe with some of these choices, and perhaps some choices that might make you scratch your head… but all of these tunes are thoroughly driving-with-the-windows-down tested & approved by me. Enjoy!
Listen to Seth’s playlist, aptly titled ‘Driving (With the Windows Down’, HERE!
You can listen to Beast Mode and the full Options catalog out everywhere you find music!
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.
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 Philly based musician, producer and audio engineer Lucas Knapp.
As a substantial player in the vastness that is the indie music universe, Lucas has more than likely had a toe in the game on one of your favorite records from the past few years. Most recently, his work consisted of recording fool’s errand by Theadoore, recorded and mixed Caveman Wakes Up by Friendship and helped record and produce Eyes Like a Mirror by Carmen Perry (just to name a few from the past two months). Lucas has also worked with artists such as Hour, Lindsay Reamer, Izzy True, Nina Ryser, Spring Onion, Thank You Thank You, Florry, Joey Nebulous, Anne Malin and many more. You may have also seen Lucas on tour playing in bands Hour, Spring Onion and most recently with 2nd Grade.
About the playlist, Lucas shares;
I wanted to throw some light on songs from a lot of friends from different points in my life, and strangers too. I built the playlist on Bandcamp and bought everything if I didn’t own it already. The fidelities are all over the place song to song; feel is what matters. All these songs are important to me. I hope they become important for you too.
Last month, Asheville’s own Idle County, the project of Ben K. Lochen, shared Offerings, a hasty, yet hardy collection of songs that find the songwriter getting back to basics. Now almost a year since the release of his self-titled debut EP, Lochen has brought in new collaborators, Caelan Burris and Will Elliot, members of the formidable Asheville band, Tombstone Poetry. Tapping into a new recording setup, Offerings is fully indebted to the space in which it occupies. Recorded in one room with two guitars mic’d up, “playing free with feeling” as Lochen explains it, these songs are minimal, but their subtlety does not get lost in the weeds. Its lush, wooly instrumentation of robust acoustic guitars and jangled mandolin strings stick firmly to the hide that’s stretched out over the backs of these stories.
“Gods going to talk through our gee-tars”. He just might be.
Lochen’s words are intuitive, tugging at the strings of rich tradition in southern storytelling, where stories of heartbreak and connection are just as natural to this world as a roaring river or a knot in a tree. “I saw my face in the water, heard my name in the wind. I had nothing to offer, so I reached out my hand. And I felt it pull me in”, he drawls with sincerity as “The Offer” plays to life’s loose ends. And is it God that’s really in those guitars? It’s hard to say. But Lochen’s trust in these songs makes these big questions, like, ‘why is it like this?’ or ‘how did we get here?’ feel more convenient, more inherent to what their answers might be. And as these songs unravel and the hardship and loneliness stain the tabletop, the aged cedar blushed with little rings from glasses raised and lowered with habit over the years, Idle County looks for what we need in the basics of what’s around us.
We recently got to chat with Ben K. Lochen over email about Offerings, working with Caelan and Will, and writing a song that feels right.
With just two guitars mic’d up, what sort of things do you think you got out of these songs by the way you recorded them? Do you feel like it had a hand in the way the songs came to be?
There’s a conversational element that two acoustic guitars can have, especially when there’s someone like Caelan playing alongside you. I’d wanted to record that way with them ever since we started playing together because there’s just a freedom and joy that comes out and it’s super present and expressive. I just love the way they play guitar. Will Elliot, who played Mandolin and Pedal Steel, can play pretty much any instrument and brought some real depth to the tunes as well.
Recording our guitars at the same time in the same room was really important to me, and really the guiding idea behind the whole session. We didn’t end up doing many takes at all. What made it special was the rawness and the immediacy of the performance.
You brought in a new crew to help you out on these songs. How did this configuration come together and what did you find worked best for these songs?
I’m super fortunate to have met the people I have in the short time I’ve been making music, and these recordings came together in the most organic way. Lawson Alderson engineered, mixed and mastered these tunes (they’ll record the LP as well) and they have such an awareness of the moment and ability to execute a vision. I’m not great at communicating exactly how I see something coming together, but they took my weird, piecemeal ideas and patched them together in a way that was full and unique. They’re a true pro and a genuine human as well.
Offerings is made up of three songs recorded and released before you plan to head into the studio. Why did you choose to release them now, and where do they stand with you coming off of your debut EP and into what you have planned for the future? Did these songs find you somewhere in between?
Well, it’s been almost a year since the debut EP came out and I honestly just wanted to put more music out there. I get pretty caught up and anxious in trying to do everything the “right way” when it comes to releasing, but I’m getting more comfortable with just going with what I feel is true to me and the music because that’s the thing I love about it; writing it, making it, and putting it out in the world.
My songwriting could never be just one kind of thing because truthfully I haven’t figured it out yet in the least bit. It comes and goes and the way the songs sound sort of ebb and flow with that. I try to approach writing rock songs and country songs the same way, and I love doing both.
We’re really excited about recording in September. It will be Idle County’s debut LP and we’re hopefully doing it at Drop of Sun Studios here in Asheville.
How did your songwriting shift when taking on these songs compared to your last EP? Did you find yourself trying anything new or focusing on different aspects of storytelling?
I feel like an area I’ve grown in and tried to focus on in songwriting is not letting myself get caught up in what a song “has to be.” I’ve been trying to have fun with it and just let them go where they want. I thought that when I first started writing my songs had to be these intimate, dramatic folk ballads and sometimes they would end up sounding disingenuous. It works occasionally but only if the moment is right. The songs on “Offerings” came in a very spur-of-the-moment way and the music and the chords inferred what ultimately came out lyrically.
There feels to be a lyrical focus on the natural world and how that can be connected to your own life. What sort of stories were you drawn to tell in this intimate setting?
I think that’s where I find the most peace. I’ve never been too good at taking things directly from my own life and putting them into a song because it feels like I’m almost doing them a disservice. Certain moments or certain people. I have definitely written about my life or stories from my life, but I always end up inserting a character in my place. At least that’s how I see it in my head.
Growing up in the South exposes you to so many different facets of life and there’s a ton of inspiration to draw on. It’s where I’ll always feel more comfortable and it informs most of the writing. There’s so many small details that happen day to day and those details can really be the driving force behind a song.
You can listen to Offerings out everywhere now via I’m Into Life Records.
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
Last month, Brooklyn and Philly based tape-meca enthusiast label Solid Melts released what is to be the first volume of the Solid Melts compilation. Run by Drew M Gibson and Scott Palocsik, this collection compiled 29-tracks of friends old and new, reminiscing on a scene of both commotion and collaboration, and one that shook the foundations of the DIY structure that so many bands found a home in with Solid Melts.
Solid Melts vol. 1 includes artists such as The Spookfish, Reaches, Mezzanine Swimmers, RXM Reality, Accessory, gut nose, Katrina Stonehart, and many many more, traveling through looped fixations, electronic tinkerings and folk-based explorations that celebrate over a decade of music.
We got to ask Gibson a few questions about the compliation;
Coined as a compilation of music from friends old and new, what was the initial idea for Solid Melts volume one?
After a long break from the label we thought a comp would be a fun way to check in with friends!
How did you begin to piece it together? How did you reach out to folks and what sort of things were artists sending you?
It came together pretty naturally thru texts & phone calls. We actually bit off more than we could chew and couldn’t fit everyone on this first comp!
There are a variety of artistic styles and sonic avenues that are represented in this collection. What does the diversity of artists and sounds mean for Solid Melts?
We know a ton of freaks & want the sound to reflect that.
Where does curating and releasing this compilation find you in your life currently? What does it represent for you and the solid melts label as you look ahead?
Releasing the comp was mad fun! Moving forward we’re hoping to be more involved with the community by releasing tapes & organizing events! More to come ❤
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 Oakland-based band Heavy Lifter.
Heavy Lifter describe themselves, in a rather perfect string of words, as “queer post-bubblegum slut grunge”. And for the Oakland-based band who so tactfully rear and sear with layered guitars, rhythmic blows and melodic prowess, there is always unconditional love for the sweetness that often gets encrusted in the center. Releasing their debut EP park n forth back in 2024, a collection that is as reactive as it is intuitive of its surroundings, the noises become a prod, a voice, a lending hand; a presence to hold tight as these songs gather in the harsh dichotomy of what life really is. But as they blast through sonic textures that melt and stream down your hands like an ice cream cone predestined by the sun, these songs stick to each and every surface they come in contact with while the band embraces the sugary mess with both moxie and purpose.
About the playlist, Ren said;
We did an exquisite corpse of sorts – starting with one of us sharing a song to the next and then that person picking a song that came to mind while listening and then sending that song to the next person and so on. I made a diagram before we started that may make it more or less confusing to understand the process (attached – feel free to include or not!). A random person who was retired from naming things for a living told AL we should change our name to heavy lifting, we aren’t gonna, but we thought it was funny and the idea will live on as a playlist. The songs are partly things we are listening to now and partly things that got pulled from our memory banks after listening to the song that was shared. It’s been a challenging month for a few of us in different ways but sending these songs back and forth and then listening to them all together has been something sweet. Hope it’s sweet for u too.
the ugly hug 