The discography of People I Love boasts potential for an excellent horror movie score. Not so necessarily a grotesque blockbuster (though I would love to hear “Holyness” in Smile 2), perhaps more of an emotionally abstract, artsy thriller. The kind of film where the real “horror” is not derived from cheesy SFX or supernatural antagonists that cease to exist when the credits roll, and instead through the realistic, human characters it features. His latest single might present like the latter (though I suppose that hinges on whether you believe in witchcraft), though underneath halloween emblems and mildly sinister cover art is a track that fits perfectly into his raw and sensible discography. Out today, “The Witch” toes between warmth and melancholy as it begs the question of what is more terrifying; the fact that someone hurt you, or the fact that you let them.
Brooklyn based Dan Poppa has been releasing music under People I Love since 2019. He usually keeps his canvases minimal, eliciting tension through wilting chord progressions and airy layers of organic and eerie synthetic sound. There is a heaviness amidst his sparsest arrangements, armed with sneakily contagious melodies and introspections that scrape deeper upon each listen.
At first, “The Witch” appears less fragile than People I Love’s 2024 releases. There is a volatile feel to Poppa’s vocals, which often assume a more tender and withering shape. It also builds up fairly quickly, as the early reserved guitar and thin percussion bleed into a fuller sonic atmosphere just after the one minute mark. The motifs from the beginning of the song return, offering an unsettling intermission between charged pleas of “are you a friend or you just a witch” and chipping away at a facade paved by animated melodies and moments of upbeat tempo. Though the tone of “The Witch” is murky, bending between skepticism and clarity, the track’s catchy nature is irrefutable. You can listen below.
Today, the Chicago-based duo Hell Trash is sharing with the world their ecstatic new single “Violence”. Hell Trash members, Rowan and Noah Roth have been formative members of the Chicago DIY scene, occupying countless bills, participating in other projects, and continuously finding new ways to share their unique creative voices through different avenues. But with little music released thus far, “Violence” becomes a culmination of time, exposure and spirit as the duo marks a new beginning for Hell Trash at large.
From the get-go, “Violence” is attuned to its unfamiliarity – switching from the often guitar-forward landscapes that they have covered in the past, to amalgamations of electric pianos, horns and an infinitive grove, as the track explodes into horizontal momentum built out from uncharted territory. But as the project becomes more solidified in its ambitions and practices, there is an already well affirmed structure of trust in the directions that Hell Trash choose to follow. Soon the song pushes on; “I make you violent, cause it feels good in your mind”, is a searing line, sung in harmony as the duo almost eggs on the explosive instrumentation that takes the reigns. As “Violence” begins to prove itself, its buoyant complexion becomes entrenched within the distorted grit and darker undertones of the track, embracing a pluralistic approach to making the music that Hell Trash ultimately wants to make.
About the song, Rowan shares, “I wrote “Violence” at the end of 2021. It was included in the first batch of songs that I brought to Noah when I hired them to engineer and produce a record for me around the same time. Over the course of the next four years, we recorded “Violence” four different times. The first version was an acoustic demo, the second one was based around a Can sample and a vocoder, the third one was basically a straight-ahead alternative rock song, and the fourth version is what we’re putting out into the world. It didn’t end up working until we decided to eschew the guitar as the primary driving force of the song. Instead, we leaned into other sounds that excite us—electric piano, horns, drum machines, etc. Ultimately, making this recording revealed to us that perhaps the most important part of this project’s ethos is the search for a kind of music that sounds new to us.”
Late last month, Darryl Rahn released a pair of singles titled “Silent Acknowledgement” and “There Ain’t You”. As the first bit of new music from the NYC-based songwriter since his previous LP titled Dusk was released back in February of 2024. Those tracks found Rahn both conscious and explorative in the midst of engaging stories, gentle tunes and enduring melodies as he set out to define the sounds, feelings and beings that he takes inspiration from in his day-to-days.
From the very opening, the groove of “Silent Acknowledgement” blows in like a gust of wind, beginning with a gentle sense of commotion as the instrumentation pushes towards the lighthearted melodies that soon follow. With that, Rahn begins to build off of a sense of familiarity, or the lack thereof, as he works out the terms of a friendship now distant. With subtle guitars that sear the soundscape, Rahn’s deliverance remains upfront, blending wit with conviction and irony with what has been assumed so far. “There Ain’t You” slows the pace but doesn’t muddle the experience. Embracing the softer tones in his tool belt, the track becomes fixated on the textures that bring out the tender longing that Rahn can so masterfully create.
But as he continues to look at what’s next, these songs have become a necessity for Rahn, creating a sense of space for him to play with. It’s not the sonic spacing in these songs per say, but rather the space he allows himself to have in his creativity, breaking away from formulation and expectations, and embracing what matters most when it comes to releasing music as a creative motive.
Meeting up with Rahn while he was on tour playing guitar with the Samia band, we got to discuss setting boundaries in his creative practice, what he’s been working on as of late, and the two new singles that he holds so dear.
This interview has been edited for length and purposes
So you put out two singles recently, your first bit of new music since Dusk, which was a little over a year now. How has that album stood with you, and how does it feel to put out new music?
Luckily, I still love that album for what it is, but I think that a couple months after it came out, and this happens every time I make an album, I’m into a totally different sound or approach. I get really tired of whatever I just made. To quickly answer the question, it feels really good to put out something new. But the main reason I did that is because I just finished making a new album with a proper band in a studio, trying to do it all right. It’ll take a couple months to mix and master and get it ready to a place of releasing, but I was just feeling so pent up that I made these two songs at home for fun. I was just thinking, I got nothing else going on right now, I might as well learn how to use my stuff better. And it wasn’t until I finished mixing them that I wanted to put them out right now. It’s very rare that I make something and then immediately have space and time to just put it out and still be excited about it. It was the perfect scenario where I haven’t done anything in a while and I’m not going to do anything for at least a couple more months, so why not just put out these things that I’m having fun with?
With being restless, do you feel like you exhaust these avenues that you take in the recording sessions? Like you said, you get tired with the style and sound of something, but repurposing it as ‘this feels fun, this feels fresh’, was that a new practice for you at all?
At least new as of late. For the past couple times I’ve made an album, I get to a point where I’m not having fun anymore because I’m just so focused on making the best thing I can and trying to perfect it to a fault where I strip the joy out of it. So, after recording this last album, there were a few days in the studio where I felt truly bad and just so caught in thinking about it all wrong. I needed to have fun to keep making music because I can’t keep working this way. The fun was just a necessity – if I don’t start having a good time making music again, there’s no point. So luckily, “Silent Acknowledgement” came to me pretty quickly and it felt different for me in a way where I don’t have a song with this feel. It felt really good to just do it at home and not have to worry about anybody else. Just try to make it myself.
In your writing, you do a lot of balancing expectations in your lyrics; what it means to love and to be loved, where you want your life to be at and where you are now, but also expectations that have exhausted the recording process for you. Have you figured out a way to approach them or hold them differently as you continue to write and continue to put out very personal music?
I’ve always had really high expectations, and over time they’ve changed a lot. Now my only expectation I try to have is just writing the best song I can, and not having any expectations beyond that. Because it’s always going to be wrong, even if it’s good. Even if the outcome is good, it’s never going to be what you think. Nothing has ever been how I expected it to be, and that’s been really good and really hard at times. It’s a blessing and a curse.
And then these two singles, “Solid Acknowledgements” and “There Ain’t You” are a really nice pairing. At their core, there’s this absence, and each song feels like a different way of holding onto that absence. Why did you decide to pair them together?
“Silent Acknowledgement” to me is about a friendship, and “There Ain’t You” could be about a friendship or a romantic relationship. What’s funny is that “There Ain’t You” sounds like it could be a breakup or something, but it was actually written because my girlfriend was out of town for a weekend, and I was just thinking that it would have been fun if we were hanging out [laughs]. “Silent Acknowledgement” to me, if anybody’s going to hear one, I’d like it to be this one just because it’s the easiest to chew on. But I wanted to add “There Ain’t You” because it’s a little less immediate – it felt like a good after song mint. I wanted to write this little bouncy jam, but I also write a lot of acoustic music that’s a little more introspective too, but that’s not all I want to do. I actually have an album that’s in the can right now, and I tried to cover every sound I like. So, this was like a mini version of that, where I could do it at home with my own skills. I’m always focused on albums and full-length projects, and this, I wanted to challenge myself to just be okay with releasing something small and bite-sized and still care for it as if it’s an album, but just have it be much more condensed.
So with that challenge for yourself, taking the space of an album where you have so much room to work with, but just focusing on two songs, what do you get fixated on to show that you can be expansive while also being restrained?
I get fixated on everything, but I still try to be really economical with words. I still try to make that the forefront of everything. How can I get this feeling across in the least amount of words and in the best pairing? This time I tried to focus on immediacy – I tend to get lost in the weeds with a song, seeing it build up through the end. But sometimes my favorite songs start immediately and you get the vibe right away. So I got really fixated on figuring out how I can make this a fun experience to listen to immediately, as opposed to how do I build it differently?
So these two songs are solely you in your bedroom. And then the upcoming album is first time in the studio for Darryl Rahn band?
No, not the first time, the last couple albums have been really piecemeal, like recording some guitars at home, do the drums at the studio, try to put it all together, etc. By the end, I would just get so burnt out. I could hear all this patchwork and not in a good way. And so, this time I really wanted to feel like me and my friends had played these songs together and I wanted to capture that. It was the first proper recording experience in a while, where the songs have been written and rehearsed, then I brought the band and the engineer in and captured it all live. I wanted something to feel really cohesive, like a statement of, like, ‘I didn’t mess around this time [laughs]’.
And you’re just making tunes with your buddies.
Yeah, it was a great experience! You know, there were some days where I felt really bad and hated what I was doing. I guess it just came from a place of being tired of my process. And so, to have friends there who were also invested in having it be a good project, because it’s theirs too, felt really healthy. I think it was really a positive thing to have other voices, because they really helped me make sure I didn’t just get so tired of something and not give it its best chance, you know? Because you need to see it through if you want it to go anywhere. They just help you care for things beyond the writing phase, which is really important. I just get so burnt out on stuff as soon as it’s done being written, just thinking of what’s next? And that can be a damaging way to look at art.
How do you combat that?
I mean, honestly, these two singles, it was me needing to do something else again. Just as long as I’m still taking in information, writing and really feeling like I’m releasing something, not just music, but releasing creativity, I feel revved up enough to have confidence in whatever I’m working on. If I feel creatively stagnant, I feel totally stagnant.
I had a question sent from our friend Nisa [Lumaj]. She was curious, asking, [Darryl] is one of our more prolific songwriters, always releasing and recording. It’s really cool to me that he’s always looking forward. I’m interested in what a songwriting day session looks like for him. Is there a specific ritual or does he write as it comes to him?
Oh, that’s such a sweet question. For a long time, I tried to just treat it like my job, even when I made zero dollars from it. I would get up early and I would try to free write a page or two just to get my brain going. And then if something stood out to me in that session, I would try to latch on to it and just see the idea through. But now I’ve become more hands off, where I know when I’m in the mood to write. But frankly, like in the past year or two, I started smoking a little weed at night and I realized that my ears and my eyes are a little more open with that. It helps me hear a phrase, even if I’m watching or reading something, it really helps me see an idea and bring it to song form.
Even without weed, I’ll usually be playing guitar and I’ll land on something that interests me in some way and I’ll go deep and get tunnel vision. I can’t do anything until the song is done, basically. Like with “Silent Acknowledgement”, I got that riff just from playing around at home, and I knew this was something I had to dive into, because I get physically uncomfortable until the song’s finished. It’s probably obsessive compulsive disorder, but it’s truly a drug to me. Finishing a song feels so cool to me still because every time it’s done, I don’t know if there will ever be one again. So whenever it happens, I’m so eager to get it out just to prove to myself that I can. And, you know, if I enjoy it at the end of that, then the song might be OK. But I’m always editing. I used to edit until something was quote, unquote, perfect, and I realized later on that I was ruining songs that way. There should be elements of imperfection that get to the root of a feeling, to just be a little more human.
Is that where the hands off approach is coming from?
I need to trust that there’s a point where you need to let a song be done because the feeling has left. The feeling is there, and the meaning is there, but the more you pick away at it, the more you can take away. And I’ve got to give credit to listeners more than I do, because they are going to hear a song and no matter what, attach their own meaning. So, if you try to hammer in too much of your own meaning, you’re just depriving the listener from their own story.
You’re on tour with Samia Band now. It’s not your first big tour, but how has it been?
Oh, I love it! I guess every tour I’ve done has gotten a little bit better in some way. And this one is not even for my own music, but to have this as my day job, I’m pretty happy. Samia is definitely the best boss I’ve ever had. But the shows are really great and Samia’s fans are so sweet. I’m probably similar to a lot of them because I was a Samia fan. I saw her show a couple of years ago on the last tour before I was in the band and it was one of my favorite shows I’ve seen in a long time. So being part of it now and trying to contribute to a great show is a pretty fun project every day. And it feels like I’m getting so much fuel, so when I go home, I’m going to feel musically energized.
You can listen to “Silent Acknowledgement” and “There Ain’t You” out everywhere now!
Written by Shea Roney | Featured Photo Courtesy of Darryl Rahn
“For one thing, with all of our previous releases, we’ve always been at a point where we’re playing so many songs that aren’t even on the record that’s coming out. We often feel like we’ve moved so far beyond the thing that we’re releasing to the world,” Hannah Pruzinsky says, noting the frustration that occurs with the consistent forward motion of artistic practices and restrictions of time. “This record is the first time where that isn’t the case. It feels really exciting to just give something away and not be holding on to residual things.”
Sister. is the Brooklyn-based project of Hannah Pruzinsky, Ceci Sturman and James Chrisman, who are currently gearing up to release their sophomore record Two Birds out July 11th, marking their second release via NYC’s Mtn. Laurel Recording Co. Sharing their debut LP Abundance back in 2023, and a few straying singles here and there, Sister. has become a means of pushing the enduring process of their collaboration, all while further defining the project on their own terms. Playing with bits of maximalism, Two Birds is a record well-worn in, utilizing the exciting challenge of experimentation without hindering the deeply rooted intimacy of each track. Earlier this week, the group released “Honey”, the third taste test from the upcoming record and a display of just how well they can walk that line.
Caught within a loop, “Honey” begins with a steady build, embracing the group’s inherent talents and knack for sonic contusions that they often find themselves exploring. As a whole, the song feels rich and heavy, like thick ink blotches dripping on a clean sheet of paper. And once it gets started, it’s reluctant to stop the dribble of emotions that are no longer contained. And to their credit, “Honey” feels unpredictable in its direction, rearing both excitement and tension until the long-awaited release of the very last line, “oh honey, weren’t you moving towards eternity?”, becomes a stand-still thought caught up in all of the motion. As the group prepares to release Two Birds in a few weeks, “Honey” is a clear marking of a band that continues to push the boundaries of what they’re capable of, while still holding dear to what they know best.
We recently got to catch up with Sister., discussing new writing practices and the weight that lies within “Honey”.
SR: You guys have a new record coming out in July! How’s it feeling to finally get it going?
Hannah Pruzinsky: We’re really excited about it! These songs on the record are a lot of tunes that we’ve been working through in the live shows, so it’s been fun to be able to explore the arrangement so much.
SR: So they were given a lot of space before finalizing them?
HP: Yes, I think the oldest one is probably ‘Levity”, which I remember Ceci was playing on guitar as Felix [Walworth] and I were having a conversation like three years ago in our living room. Maybe about astrology or tarot cards or something?
Ceci Sturman: I think you had pulled [Felix’s] tarot cards and were reading them, and some of the words I found so moving and just started playing around with them. There’s a voicemail recording of the first time I ever played it, which I think is my favorite version of the song ever. It didn’t make it on the album, but the version that’s on the album is also extremely cool, and that is sort of just a James masterpiece.
James Chrisman: We recorded a good chunk of the album in live acoustic sessions. We did a lot of it in our studio, but there was some of it that was done in Hannah’s living room with all of us sitting in a circle. We tried “Levity” a few ways, but we couldn’t quite get there to be enough movement and momentum in it, because it’s quite a repetitive song. So I took that acoustic version and put it through this kind of delay where a part will get caught in the chamber and repeat, and then you can change the pitches of what’s caught – you’re kind of performing into the delay. But there’s actually very little material in the song itself, so it’s the performance of singing over guitars, and there’s the second performance of the production that’s really fun.
Photo Credit: Sarah Blesener.
SR: I do want to talk about the sound as a whole, because it does feel like you guys are coming into a more defined area for Sister., compared to that patchwork style of Abundance. As you went into recording these songs, what did you find yourself focusing on as you were piecing together what would be the sound of this record?
CS: I think that there’s a lot of maximalism which is a thing that we prefer – it’s sort of a sister. vibe. That definitely was true in Abundance, and I think in a lot of ways we wanted to replicate that and make it sound better. We’re all just a little bit better at the process.
JC: I mean, just a big difference is that we played everything as a band before recording it. There’s a way of making music that a lot of people do now, which is you play a song into a computer and then you try a bunch of stuff over it. I’ve done that. But we had figured out band arrangements for almost all the songs. Felix was much more in the mix this time from the beginning. That is a big difference between having stuff finished and then tracking drums over it versus building over a drumbeat.
CS: It’s definitely true with our last album, where we started playing it a lot after recording it, and we found out we liked some of the new versions a little bit more. I think we were just mindful of that going into this process and being able to play it so much and really figure it out. It has made a very cohesive sound, and we’re proud of that.
HP: Also, just a note on the writing of this album, too, it was much less those patchwork moments with songs coming from Ceci, coming from me or coming from all three of us. This time around a lot of the songs started off with Ceci and I meeting to work through things, as it was also a time when we had just moved away from each other. It was this connection to each other and our friendship through the songwriting. But there are also a lot more songs this time around where all three of us wrote the songs from start to finish.
Photo Credit: Sarah Blesener.
SR: What was that like having the three of you writing together start to finish?
HP: I’m always surprised by how easy it is. I don’t think I can do that with other people. I think there’s a lot of trust between the three of us, where we can propose an idea that maybe is a little silly, or feels harder to do with people that we don’t have this type of trust with natively.
CS: I was thinking about the process for “Blood in the Vines”, which is a song that we wrote together. James proposed an activity of writing a song in 30 min. So that truly was us just putting a timer on our phone and seeing what we come up with. It started with playing the guitar and throwing phrases around, and then at the end of 30 min we had the bare bones of the song, and we really liked the direction it was going.
SR: That’s an impressive practice. So you obviously have trust in each other, but as ideas started to come out of this moment, what sort of things were you trusting to either follow or quickly discard in such a short timeframe?
CS: I’m always trying to keep everything. And so, I’m like, ‘it sounds amazing. We got it’. They can attest to my falling in loveness with scratches.
HP: I remember the song at first felt kind of pop-punky in a way. That’s certainly not something we usually do, and I think we all knew we weren’t gonna go too deep down that rabbit hole. But it is fun for us to explore a different key that we don’t usually write in and see what kind of feelings and emotions or phrases come up with that. It really depends on the song we’re writing together what we start latching on to.
JC: I think in that case, the point of the exercise is to be guided by excitement and not intellectualize at all. I think a lot of creative practices people figure out that with editing, you have infinite time. But how do you get inspiration? And turns out there are ways to manufacture inspiration, and one of them is an artificial time constraint. If a Riff were stupid or something, that would be something to worry about after that timer is over. But in the meantime, you have something, and you can make it resemble something you like, because it’s something that now exists. That’s kind of the mentality behind something like that, because you’re just worried about things like, ‘is it me?’ and you sort of bypass that because you’re like, ‘Oh, no, I only have 10 min left. Who cares.’
Photo Credit: Sarah Blesener.
SR: I want to talk about “Honey”, the next single you are sharing. One thing that I’ve always admired about your guys’ lyrical writing is the way that you really put a lens on personal and interpersonal relationships. With that, I was really drawn into the opening setting of a kitchen, because it’s a very homey, intimate location. But as the song starts, we’re brought into this already antagonizing situation. What kind of portrait were you trying to create by using this location?
CS: “Honey” is a song that I wrote the lyrics for and I remember wanting to immediately place it in the kitchen because I read something where a songwriter talked about how having the setting in the first line can do a lot for the song, like placing someone somewhere. I’ve never done that, so I want to see how that could become a way of sorting through some conflict or interpersonal confusion that is really intimate, but very distant. I think of two people that maybe are trying to figure out if they really know each other or understand each other while they’re already in an intimate setting, and like how you can sort of navigate that familiar scene. I’ve experienced a lot in my life, where I’m just sort of getting to know someone, and the more you get to know them, the more questions you have about your compatibility, or about how you relate to each other, and how that makes you relate to yourself. Really playing with the sort of contrast between the intimacy in the home, and then the serious distance in the connection.
Photo Credit: Sarah Blesener.
SR: The avenues you guys follow with the sonic exploration really do a good job at creating that tension. A standout word that I grasped onto was ‘eternity’. In that phrase at the end, I feel like that’s when the lyrical and the instrumental stories really blend together to form this release. What weight does that word ‘eternity’ hold in this song? And how did you guys try to embrace that weight instrumentally?
CS: I wanted the last word to be something really drastic, and it is drastic [laughs]. But, I mean, it’s like asking the same sort of intimacy question where sometimes you start asking them and then you can’t stop asking them, and they just build and build and build and build. The weight of it is just very big.
JC: And a big element of that song’s arrangement was found when I was mixing it. I took Ceci’s vocals and put it through what’s called a space echo, which is another kind of delay – that’s when something catches itself and it creates an infinite generative signal. So there’s kind of a literal sound painting aspect of evoking infinity there. And that first sound you hear in it is actually Ceci’s voice going through that space echo. And a lot of that stuff climaxes more towards the end like a sound painting aspect of the lyrics.
CC: I love how the band worked on the song and created it to be so tension driven. The chorus has no words in it which is abnormal for our songs, especially for the songs that I’ve written. It’s cool to lean on the instruments and the feeling that’s driven to continue to build the song where the chorus usually does. I think that there’s a lot of questions in the song, and we just slowly keep building and building and building and building it up until the last lyric, which is ‘weren’t you moving towards eternity?’, which is a question to continue to ask yourself all the time. I’m always asking myself.
Two Birds is set to be released July 11th via Mtn. Laurel Recording Co. You can pre-order the album digitally as well as on vinyl now!
Written by Shea Roney | Featured Photo by Sarah Blesener
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
Early last year, Charlie Johnston released her debut album Wolves Abound. Although marking the first release under her own name, the Chicago-based creative has been writing as one half of Post Office Winter for some time now, as well as building upon the sounds of the ever-expansive group, Deerest Friends. Initially made as a school project, Wolves Abound came to be a snapshot of life – a picture book with a page dogeared for later. The songs that make up the album swirl together like a potion, a remedy, a blend of simple ingredients that perform such a poignant task in such a short time, as Johnston’s delivery of sonic textures and personal stories become painted by patient escalations that take these genuine tracks to the heights of folkloric dreams and potent whimsy.
We recently got to catch up with Johnston to discuss the album and its accompanying art pieces, the stories that inspired her and what comes next.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity purposes.
You have been writing music with the project Post Office Winter, as well as been a part of a few collabs, like Deerest Friends. But Wolves Abound is your first release under your own name. What made you want to do something separate from all those other projects?
I have always written and recorded music by myself, but I never had an outlet for it. I made this album specifically because I get a January term at school where you have to do a project, and I decided to just do music and art. I was home for the whole month of January, so I just did it in that month. So technically it’s a school project, but the only person who heard it is my advisor at college and then I advertised it as separate from that. I guess that was my motivation, but I’m glad I put it out because I am sitting on some more stuff similar to it that I’d like to put out maybe even this summer under the same name
What were the requirements of this school project?
It’s very, very open-ended. It’s just like, do a project. Some people go to Egypt and do community work, and some watch a movie every day. It’s really up to you to decide. It’s supposed to be about personal growth and whatnot, and this seemed like an easy option. This last January I wrote a children’s book, and that was my project.
When you decided to put it out, did this feel separate from your other projects? Did it feel more representative of you?
Definitely. There was no collaboration with anyone at all, and I found it to be really, really nice to just have it be just me. Sometimes the songs I write don’t warrant bringing them to someone else. Sometimes I have something, and it feels done. In Post Office Winter, too, we do our own art, we do our own recording – neither of us are great at drumming, but we have to be the drummers, because I just like having it in that bubble. I like collaborating outside for other projects, but I feel with my own stuff, I like keeping it close-knit and tight. And so doing it myself was a really enjoyable experience, and not just making demos, but like actually putting something out.
In the frame of that tight-knit bubble, what did that personal growth look like that you wanted to represent in the project?
I think a lot of what I wrote represents how I was feeling at the time, which was my first year of college. When I write songs and lyrics, I try to deliver exactly my subconscious. So what was coming out was reflective of that newness of college, and then coming back for a whole month in January and looking back at what had happened in the fall semester. It was just a great opportunity for me to just do art for a month, which is rare as you get older. These things don’t happen. And especially because each song has a supplemental art piece, I haven’t really focused on visual art since I was a younger kid. It was kind of like connecting back to being at home, being in the city, connecting back to my, I guess, childhood. Especially with the more whimsical and fantastical elements of the whole piece, getting more in touch with that side.
Dealing with the subconscious, and touching upon more heavy topics with such expressive imagery, what kind of stories were you inspired by going into this? What stories were you inspired to tell about yourself through this imagery?
I’m really inspired by folklore and fairy tales and kids’ books – whimsical stuff. I was really into Arctic imagery at the time, and that’s where all the wolf stuff comes from. Wolves and yetis have been a big theme in a bunch of stuff I do. I don’t know why, I didn’t grow up in the Arctic or anything, but I really like that magical realism of these things existing in a world with something else. Some songs are more veiled than others. “Someday in a House”, which is the last track, it’s very direct, thinking about my current relationships, and how these people will change when we get older and all that stuff. And then some of them are just silly, like “A Lullaby for Davis and Margie”, which is about when I met this vendor lady selling sock puppets. I got two of them, one I named Davis, and one I named Margie. They’re in love, and it’s about them. It’s just tongue-in-cheek making fun of the stupid sock puppets, but it’s still emotional, and it’s supposed to be a sweet track. I don’t want to take myself too seriously, but I do find it difficult to really wear my heart on my sleeve and say exactly what I’m thinking. So throughout all my songwriting, with every project I’ve done, it’s a lot of whimsical storytelling with a deeper significance inside of it.
I’m curious about the wolf-mind virus. It’s a lingering and almost interactive imagery throughout the writing of this record. Can you explain what that is?
The lyric ‘wolves abound’ is actually, and I didn’t realize this until recently, is part of a Bonnie Prince Billy song. He says something like, ‘there are wolves about’. I don’t really remember exactly where that phrase came from, but I was like, ‘oh, he said it. I guess it’s a reference then [laughs]’. Back in the fall, I was so into doodling wolves all the time. I don’t know where it came from. but I was like, ‘oh hell yeah, let me do more of this.’ Especially the titular track, “Wolves Abound”, in my head I was imagining giant wolves walking around, stepping on cars and knocking down trees. I don’t know why I thought of them in that way, but it’s carried through. I had a creative writing class this spring, and I freaking wrote about big wolves. My professor was like, ‘why are you writing about this?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know, because I want to, and I get an outlet too, and it’s fun for me.’
Each track has an accompanying piece of artwork that really brings out these stories. How are these pieces of art connected to the album?
The art that I made for the song “Wolves Abound” is representational of those big creatures. That was actually a screen printing design that I did. We still make shirts of it for Deerest Friends – everything’s connected, you know? [laughs]. And then I’ve always liked painting flames and houses because it’s fun to do it. You can see that in the “Someday in a House” art. “A Lullaby for Davis and Margie” is a wolf flying away on a plane, and the other wolf looking to say goodbye. That’s me flying away from home and saying goodbye to everyone and going back to school, or the opposite – that one was me putting myself into that art. I was just having fun figuring out ways to represent the music with one piece of visual.
Looking back on it now, how does it all feel? Does it feel like the start of something you want to keep working at?
Yeah, definitely. I think this was the project that has really led me into my own artistry – feeling like my art style and what I want to write and put out. And it might not carry through for the rest of my artistic life. But for now, I think it’s representational of this phase of my artistic existence.
You can listen to Wolves Abound on Charlie Johnston’s bandcamp. Find it below!
Written by Shea Roney | Photo and Artwork by Charlie Johnston
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!
Through a type of personal introspection, one which flows with such grace and intuition, Carolina Chauffe of hemlock and Alexandre Duccini of Floating Clouds have always brought words to motion, recentering what matters most in the world with such simple fixations, open hearts and really good tunes. Now partnering up, along with Nick Meigs and Jakob (Dr. Sweetheart) Parsons, today the two share Campfire Singles, a pair of songs written and recorded on tour in Washington in the fall of 2024. As the tale goes, Carolina flew to Seattle to tour with no car and no guitar, “pushing the envelope of human generosity”; and there was plenty of it. Recorded around a campfire on an iPhone, “No One in Portland Says Howdy Anymore” and “Red Breasted Nuthatch” find hemlock and Floating Clouds in their most sincere habitat, as these two songs are a restful gesture that “music is play”.
Photo by Alex Martinez
Upon contagious laughter blending into the crackle of a campfire, the uplifting spirit of a slide whistle brings in “No One in Portland Says Howdy Anymore”, as Alexandre’s rich voice establishes the tune amidst the open air. With a steady demeanor, the two songwriters share tails of drifting heartbreak and lamenting woes as “Howdy’ becomes a space where familiarity blends with presence and courtesy with understanding. The second track “Red Breasted Nuthatch” pushes curiosity into the smallest bits of beauty that surrounds our day-to-days, ushering in a call and response pattern, a dialogue of imagination, hoping to get some answers from a tiny-winged friend they made earlier that day.
These two tracks are less of a practical method and more of a practice in trust and intention. They are sweet and silly and a little rough around the edges, but that’s okay. What else could be more perfect when capturing genuine creativity? It’s a simple, yet powerful reminder of what makes creating such a special part of being human.
You can listen to the campfire singles out everywhere today, as well as check out Floating Clouds latest album With A Shared Memoryas well as 444 by hemlock.
“We were really heavy for a minute there. For Dizzy Spell and that era we were so hyper-focused on what we can get out of our amps and our pedals, just the sonic width we wanted live and the thickness we wanted”, Isaac Kauffman explains of Abel’s 2024 record, Dizzy Spell.
The Columbus based band released Dizzy Spell just shy of a year ago, a record armed with an arsenal anxious intensity carved with heavy guitar and hazy feedback. There is an immediacy to the listen, as Abel wastes no time reaching a heightened emotional state as they shred through ridiculously catchy pop structures and pedal suffocation. It is an intense album in an all consuming way, thought drowning sort of way. The lyrics are poignant and often heart wrenching, but they are approached in a manner that feels distant, as the album succumbs to a sea of shoegaze-fueled dissocoation. On Dizzy Spell, noise is a lifevest. On How to Get Away with Nothing, Abel leaves this cushion behind, exploring new ways to manipulate their soundscapes as they prod at what can be found, and more importantly, felt, when they slow down.
Released last week via Pleasure Tapes, Julia’s War and Candlepin, How to Get Away with Nothing marks Abels shift towards a slowcore leaning sound. The stylistic decision stemmed organically, pulling from a chapter the band was in whilst they made it. “My bandmates go through phases, and I think it makes the most sense to take those moments and run with them”, Isaac tells me. “It really lends itself to emotional music when you take things as just a section of your life”.
The authenticity that comes with this philosophy can be felt through Abel’s discography. While How to Get Away with Nothing leans away from the density and shoegaze feel of Dizzy Spell, it also attests to the strength of the project’s identity, and their ability to experiment with genre without alienating the feel of Abel. Their “phases” do not come at a cost to the band’s ability to extract beauty from a raw and gritty sound, a consistent pillar in their releases.
How to Get Away with Nothing boasts a sound that is expansive, challenging and profoundly textured. It leaves space for near silence. It toys with manipulations of pitch and speed. It flirts with the thickness of Dizzy Spell. It experiments with a hyperpop feel. All of this could be a recipe for auditory whiplash, but How to Get Away with Nothing is grounded by the deliberate and balanced nature of its structure. Abel maintains an equilibrium while exploring various means to express melancholy, as well as a range of vocal approaches. Volatile deliveries scrape away at minimal guitar arrangements on “Dusk”, while on “Parasympathetic” earnest and gentle vocals exist in the shadows of a track guided by imposing percussion.
The record commences with warm and earthy lo-fi track “Grass”, which features twangy contributions from fellow Ohio-based project Cornfed. As implied by the title, it’s a song about grass, though the abundant plant is viewed as a concept rather than a reality, as Abel admits to a laundry list of fear that comes with walking barefoot in the grass. Fear as a barrier is carefully weaved into both Dizzy Spell and How to Get Away with Nothing, though the notion finds itself more crushing on the latter release. As they adhere to a slowcore style, drawn out moments of instrumental minimalism carve space for ideas to be questioned, and for emotional paralysis to be expressed through achy chord progressions.
“I think taking that into slowcore and slower songs lended itself to offer more of a minor space for lyrics”, Isaac reflects. “Although the lyrics still take up emotional width, I think we wanted to focus on keeping those tones and atmospheres that we created in a slower sense, and that lended to the emotional guitar parts having to be pushed. I feel like we’ve always had this kind of disconnected vibe to our songs, and I think that leaves our own playing styles and emotions on the table while also keeping the atmosphere thick”
The most devastating tracks on the record are followed by songs that toy with elements of hyperpop, and although they still tackle heart-break and dwindling self assurance, the blow is softened by their twinkly, bedroom-dance-party shape. Isaac tells me though he usually does all of the production and engineering for Abel, for How to Get Away with Nothing, the band collaborated with Quinn Mulvihill from Glaring Orchid, offering him extra time and capacity to experiment.
“I think that with the extra mixing help, I felt like I had more space and time to put some weird mixing energy into a few songs, and I wanted to do that just to break up the album in a way that felt different than using interludes or something like that”, he explains. “I think my melodies always come out in a pop way, and I think putting that over slowcore stuff is really good a lot of the time, but there are certain melodies where you’re like, how will this work over an emotional, drawn out guitar riff? It was almost just the easy way out to make something more poppy and more straightforward.”
The humbly deemed “easy way out” elevates Abel’s already textured sound, as well as the How to Get Away With Nothing’s intricacy as a whole. The hyperpop motifs and eccentric sonic manipulations contort themselves into moments that feels mechanical or almost alien-like, offering a complex juxtaposition to the album’s organic bones and painfully human lyricism. “I think there’s always been this production heavy side of Abel simply because I’m still teaching myself how to do certain things and I need to try it before I feel comfortable. So I think those hyperpop songs are just a testament to handling my growth,” Isaac says.
While it stands as proof to their skills as songwriters and range as musicians, above all How to Get Away with Nothing attests to Abel’s exceptional ability to harvest a poignancy in all that they create. You can listen to it everywhere now.
Every Wednesday, the ugly hug shares a playlist personally curated by an artist/band that we have been enjoying. This week we have a collection of songs put together by Philly-based artist Carmen Perry.
As a member of the beloved band Remember Sports, Perry’s songwriting became a crucial part of many people’s lives, establishing rich, cheeky melodies with a type of emotional intensity and vulnerability that has stuck with so many. This week, Perry is releasing her upcoming solo album Eyes Like a Mirror via Mtn. Laurel Recording Co. It’s an album of intuition and curiosity, finding Perry embracing the simple things around her in order to help clear up life’s more complicated paths.
About the playlist, Perry said;
“I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of the mirror, and everything it is often used to represent lyrically: self-reflection, identity, discovery, and transformation. I like the idea of a symbol that gets used by all different kinds of writers to mean essentially the same thing, but in a multitude of different ways. These are some of my favorite songs that take on the mirror, and the act of reflection, by artists that have really inspired me throughout my life. I tried to structure the playlist so that it takes the listener through a journey, and brings them back to where they started, but changed in some small way.”
You can listen to Perry’s playlist here as well as on apple music!
Eyes Like a Mirror is set to be released this Friday via Mtn. Laurel Recording Co. You can pre-order it now as well as on vinyl.
Written by Shea Roney | Featured Photo by Catherine Dwyer
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