“Old Friend” is a love letter to people looking over the edge penned by a person looking over the edge, or who has at least spent a good deal of time looking over it before. The edge of “what,” exactly? There’s the proverbial cliff, or perhaps more applicable to modernity, the roof ledge. But, holistically to the modern world at large, the edge is less a razor-line than an amorphous amalgam of youth, love, doubt, hope, disappointment, fear, exhaustion, beauty, trust, and once again, deep, all-encompassing love. What it means to grow up or at least grow older and see some ideas you thought you had about the world and the people in it fall away, and what that means, and how destabilizing that can be. How to step out of that years-lingering mushroom cloud.
“Old Friend” is the debut album from Hazel City, the brainchild of Clay Frankel, guitarist and vocalist of Chicago-based Twin Peaks. (This album also features some tasty upright bass from fellow Chicagoan Liam Kazar of “Shoes Too Tight” acclaim). Time has only made this capsule sweeter. When the album first dropped in June 2023, I came to it very happily entrenched in this-changes-everything romantic love, and found plenty of tender lines herein to feed my affliction like “Are you looking for a husband or just someone to get drunk with? What you want is never wrong. I could do both or either one. I could see us holding court at night or you holding our son.” Now, I revisit “Old Friend” in the early days of an equally life-changing breakup, and there are plenty more morsels waiting in these lines for me this time around – stuff I missed on the first pass, or more accurately, wasn’t ready or able to hear. Frankel’s record is a lyrical kneecapper, brutal in its simplicity and unflinching in its sincerity.
“Rain” (the opener) is the star track for me, followed closely by “Dirt.” The piano composition on “Rain” is jaunty and impressive, tones that make this gloomy ballad wildly poignant instead of weighing too one-note sad – and this is a sad, sad song. It opens with radio static and rain sounds, immediately evocative of Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks,” and the singer is telling a similarly domestic story. He’s pacing from the living room to the kitchen to his young daughter’s bedroom waiting for his lover, late, to arrive back home. Our speaker is sadly, patiently, even a little worriedly waiting while, outside, it rains.
This album is unexpectedly orchestral in scrumptious pockets the listener doesn’t see coming – like “Snow,” an interlude that contemplatively heralds the next song (“Gorgeous”), not unlike “Behind the Wall of Sleep” into “N.I.B.” on “Black Sabbath” Black Sabbath. When it arrives, “Gorgeous” is cheerful but not naive. It doesn’t forsake a lively beat to lean self-indulgent or heavy-handed, but it’s still enough to break your heart. (“I knew that you were someone that I wanted to get to know, and now I know you, but I don’t know if you’ve done me any good.”)
No rest for the wicked! Next track “Really” rips in with another kneecapper, “What am I so dumb that I don’t know? Haven’t I been good and beautiful?” backed by dreamy effects keys from strawberry chimes to space bells. One song later, our singer lays the heater “No one remеmbers what we did. No one was еven looking. No one knows we almost made it. No one knows how close we were.” Holy shit! Ow! Not the Face!
“Rain 2” is clearly the answer to “Rain,” the cryptic counterpart of the earlier story-song sung by a piquant chorus of vocalists Emily Neale, Lillie West, Quinn Tsan, and Elizabeth Moen. But, in subtler ways, “Root” is the response to “Dirt.”
“Root” is a vote of encouragement to keep fighting the good fight – an intensely sincere, even desperate plea for loved ones to just try, try again. Its non-naive world weariness prevents this track from being gratingly optimistic. (If there’s one thing people on the edge historically respond well to, it’s a “Hang in there!” cat poster.) Instead, Frankel posits, “I know it’s hard they’ve saddled you up with a heavy heart, well ain’t that a weight we can share.” This is a track that recognizes that the world is fucked, and that at the end of the day the Everyman’s antidote to surviving it is just living the best you can from day to day, loving other people, and letting them know how deep and life-affirming that love really is. Frankel is speaking here about the type of love that is only earned after years of walking the rock beside a person – which might be where the album title “Old Friend” comes in. For the rest of us, “Old Friend” offers an answer to the sempiternal background question that takes on an especially tooth-shaking volume in eras such as ours: “What 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 Brooklyn-based artist, Iris James Garrison of Bloomsday.
Earlier this year, Bloomsday put out their critically acclaimed sophomore record, Heart of the Artichoke, an album that lives in its connections, creating an honest and clear silhouette of Garrison’s presence while also documenting a keepsake; the community that Garrison has surrounded themselves with to bring their music to its truest from yet.
On the other side of the property line, only marked by my neighbor’s natural shrubbery – unruly and free – is a decaying birdhouse dangling from a branch that I watch every morning from my kitchen window. Missing half of its roof from many of our repeated Midwest storms, its siding almost timid to be left on its own, the structure’s only sense of hope lies within a singular piece of twine wrapped around its perimeter put there a years ago in hopes to hold, sparingly, what is still together. But lo and behold, with every season comes a new generation of sparrows or chickadees, a race to get there first and fill it with found, soft textures of twigs and the shedding hair of our dog – home sweet home. But from where I stand, as this birdhouse persists through the changing seasons, rotting wood and weathered temptations to finally collapse – I have to wonder, do those birds live in fear, or is it just me?
Grounded in unique homemade foundations of gritty instrumentation and soured conventionals, ylayali is the project of Philly-based artist, Francis Lyons, becoming a safe haven for his artistic visions and rooted stories ever since he was in high school fifteen years ago. Whether as a producer or having played in bands such as free cake for every creature, 2nd Grade and most recently, 22° Halo, Lyons’ work over the years comfortably falls amongst indie cult favorites, rearing the notoriety from tender pop-lovers, lo-fi droolers and calculated gear heads alike. As his tender demeanor and experimental spirit spill out on his latest LP, Birdhouse in Conduit, Lyonsbrings that same appreciation and excitement of what ylayali has been for over a decade, and pulling it towards the possibility of what may come next – brilliant or unusual – both putting a beautiful and enduring edge to the recordings at hand.
Protruded by crude distortion and a grating, hypnotic march of sorts, the album begins with “Francis Funeral Home” locking into nine minutes of controlled chaos – a type of unmatched sanctity of when solitude is met with the fuckery of an electric guitar and a shit-ton of pedals. “Stay and dance until the place close / the Francis Funeral Home”, Lyons sings, guitars circulating as the idea of endings are weighed upon impact. This type of surrealism is nothing new to Lyons’ ability to tell, notably unconventional, stories of identity and self, as he himself becomes interchangeable amongst mundane objects, obtuse scenarios and lackey characters that phase in and out of his line of sight. Songs like “Shadow Play” and “Spacebar” become a pledge of irony when trying to understand his existence, or merely define its intentions. “never saw it comin’ / first lookin’ spider-wise / and the webs all disappear when the dew dries” he sings on the latter, as the delicate vocals of both Lyons and Katie Bennett (Katie Bejsiuk, Free Cake For Every Creature) force us to lean in, introducing a new level of fixation to the sounds he so easily controls.
These sonic textures and attention to detail are almost moldable in your hands, as they condense and build, meander and squirm amongst the conduction of pulpy fuzz and distortion. “Devil Dog”, at its core, is a staggering and sticky rocker, subdued to fit into Lyons’ natural speed and rough façade that feels heavier than the actual sweetness underneath. “Fuzz” plays amongst a culmination of creeks, creeps and patterned fixations, paired together with the light and whimsical string arrangements and the choked clinks of a glockenspiel that push forward; a choreographed movement amongst the differing characters that each sonic voicing represents. The brief instrumental “Security Man” is an acoustic tribulation, a harmony of configured strings that sing for repentance before being overwhelmed by the warm rage of the closing track “God’s Man”. “I saw an angel / An actual angel,” Lyons sings, a continuation of religious motifs brought up throughout the album. But in the end, you can’t help but to think of the due diligence these angels actually perform for him, as absurdity overrides the elegance of salvation – “harbinger, angel of what, solicitation’s tale” – the words holding to whatever they can as the feedback sears its final marks.
“There’s that shiny part / Worn smooth by vinyl twine / birdhouse polypropylene / one spool lasts one life” – amongst the tinkerings on the standout track, “Birdhouse”, comes one of the more tender and grounding expositions on the album as the song hums with a sound that crusts over like hardened sugar. But it is on this song where Lyons feels most grounded into his foundation, where all of those huge questions of fear, death, religion and belonging don’t matter anymore. It’s in these sonic trances that make Birdhouse in Conduit feel so enduring, where meaning fluctuates with a meandering rhythm, and yet, Lyons can still take a pause and look at what’s right in front of him. “But the birdhouse makes me smile with the loop knotted on the side,” he sings, cherishing something so simple; it means the world to both him and those little birds.
Birdhouse in Conduit is now available to stream on all platforms. You can purchase the album on vinyl here, which includes a 22 page booklet, various homemade inserts and found photos. Lyons will soon be playing a few shows with 22° Halo on the east coast. Find dates here.
“I was so nervous it was just going to sound like a collection of songs? In hindsight…what the hell does that even mean?” Victoria Winter reflects in between sips of chai tea.
We are having the age-old ‘what makes a record’ conversation. It’s a topic that leaves room for hours of discourse, but for New York based Shower Curtain’s debut album, the answer is relatively straightforward. Titled as an ode to the band’s journey, governed equal parts by fate and Winter’s deep sense of intuition, words from a wishing well marks the promising start for Shower Curtain’s synergetic future as a four-piece rock band. “I also don’t want a record with songs that all kind of sound the same. I had forgotten that, no matter what, it still has this unspoken identity that is ours”, Winter declares, putting the subject to rest.
The unspoken identity she speaks of is a strong one, one you trust and one that leaves you wanting more. A certain tenderness in Winter’s vocals paired with vulnerable slices of internal dialogue salute her bedroom pop roots, while a new presence of heavily layered instrumentals eulogize Shower Curtain’s days as a solo project. Now joined by Ethan Williams (guitar / vocals), Sean Terrell (drums), and Cody Hudgins (bass), words from a wishing well is a stunning journal of internal roadblocks, some easy to articulate and others leaning more into the abstract.
Wilting thoughts of “I can’t be on my own” and “I’m always falling apart” are intensified by fervent guitar riffs on “take me home”. On “benadryl man” the suffocations of nocturnal anxieties manifest as a figure on Winter’s ‘velvet purple couch’, blanketed in eerie, staticky distortions. The album wraps with “edgar”, where the stinging in Winter’s vocals compete with heavy chord progressions to deliver a story of grief you feel in the depths in your chest.
At times honoring the noise-driven, sludgy guitar tropes of 90s shoegaze, at times experimenting with electronic production styles, there is an essence of Shower Curtain’s newly formed collaborative personality seeping into every track.
I sat down with Winter and Williams last week to discuss Shower Curtain’s compelling visuals, their upcoming tour, and words from a wishing well, out everywhere today via Angel Tapes / Fire Talk Records.
This Interview has been edited for length and clarity
Manon Bushong: You’ve been making music since 2018, but words from a wishing well is Shower Curtain’s debut album. Did you always intend for these songs to exist as an album, and how did the process of creating them vary from Shower Curtain’s prior singles and EPs?
Winter: This is the first time that Shower Curtain is really doing things as a band, before it was more just me alone for fun. I would say this album definitely marks being in New York, being collaborative, and just having a more solid group of individuals and contributions. I always did want to make a record, but it’s kind of hard to navigate the music landscape. One hand, people tell you, “fuck albums, you need to be doing singles and EPs until you’re big enough”, but then, no label is gonna wanna work with you if you don’t have a record. So as a small indie band, you’re kind of like, ‘okay, what should I do?’ So we kind of went back and forth and then kind of just kept as we wrote, which I don’t feel like we’ll ever do again.
Williams: We’re not going to do that again. There were like, maybe four or five songs when we started recording it. So we were like, well, let’s start making an EP and see what happens. And then it just took so long that then there were like four or five more songs that we had and we were like, just re-recording them as we wrote. So it wasn’t necessarily the plan, but it wasn’t not the plan, you know?
Winter: I definitely felt in my heart, even though we went back and forth, that I always wanted to prove myself and make a record. I work as a designer in the music industry too, so I see a lot of vinyls and really wanted to have that for us as well. I’m like an album person in general.
Williams: I’m an album person too. It’s easier to create more of a cohesive artistic vision that way.
I really enjoy the album’s structure, and I noticed you included a more electronic track, “tell u (interlude)”, in between two heavier songs. When it came to producing, which I know you both do as well, did you feel like creating an album pushed you to think a bit more alternatively there?
Williams: I mean, we made it in my basement. So once we had recorded everything, or towards the end of having recorded everything, we thought about how to make it sound more like an album and not just a bunch of songs that we wrote over the course of two years. So we added some stuff in between and tried to create some motifs, it wasn’t planned from the get go, but it made it feel like more of a finished thing to us.
Winter: I had been really nervous, I used to say to Ethan “ugh, it’s just gonna sound like a collection of songs”, this is not gonna sound like a record. Now in hindsight, I’m like, what the hell does that even mean? Why was I so stressed about that? “tell u (interlude)” was the last thing we made, and by that point I had kind of gotten over myself because at the end of the day, I also don’t want a record with songs that all kind of sound the same. I had forgotten that, no matter what, it still has this unspoken identity that is ours.
All of the visuals for this project have been super sweet. I really like the cover art, the semi distorted pink photo of you all in the woods really matches the album’s sound. Could you discuss that a bit?
Winter: All the visuals are kind of my brainchild, whereas, the music has been way more collaborative. The actual album cover, I wanted to put a lot of thought into because that is something that matters a lot to me, I remember album covers more than their names. I was graduating from Parsons for Graphic Design, and I had the record be my final thesis, and so a lot of consideration went into it, and brainstorming if we were a color, what would it be? I wouldn’t say we are pink, but we definitely aren’t blue, or purple, or green. I went on this journey, I thought about certain descriptors for the songs, like ‘textured’ and ‘heavy’, but also ‘emotional’ and ‘sensitive’. Just really considering how close an album cover can get to what you’re about to listen to, I put a lot of thought into that and the name.
For the name you chose words from a wishing well, what was the meaning there?
Winter: So much of how I move through life and with the band is with these very intuitive and esoteric beliefs, so being in tune with ourselves is extremely important. That’s the main motif behind the title, this idea that when you really want something, the wishing well talks to you.
Sometimes it’s just not the right moment, and not everything that you wish is going to come true. But I do believe that if it doesn’t happen in a moment, later on you’ll think, ‘I’m so happy that it didn’t’. I feel like a lot of the lyrics are about how I am as a person. Whereas the title, I wanted it to be about the story of how the band came together.
When you mentioned that balance of cute and creepy, I immediately thought of the music video you put out for “benadryl man”, which features some very sweet bunnies, but also edited at a pace that feels a bit eerie. How did that project come to be, and what do you prioritize when creating music videos ?
Winter: Sean the drummer, made those bunnies with his girlfriend, Kati, for an exhibition. When I saw the bunny with the painted flames, I thought ‘oh my god, this would be such a sick album cover’. I knew I wanted to use that bunny for something, and Kati likes a lot of similar stuff, like small objects, tinted glass, and metals – she’s a visual artist. So I asked her to set up a stage for the bunnies and then I went to Mother of Junk and got a bunch of miniature random items. Then Cody showed me this guy, Matt, who makes animations, which was also a crazy coincidence because a bunch of people from my city in Brazil followed him. Turns out he is Brazilian and knows a lot of people that I know from my hometown. So, he actually edited all the spooky, crazy shit his own way, and added his own spin on it.Then, the music video for bedbugs is a horror film-noir. When I work with people for a video, I’m just like, ‘I really don’t want it to be too cute and twee’, but I want it so you can tell it’s a girl making it. Kind of a female gaze, not necessarily cute and with this aspect of moodiness to it.
Do either of you have a favorite song off the album to perform, or just in general?
Winter: Personally, I think “bedbugs” is my favorite and “you’re like me”. And then for performing live, Edgar is my favorite.
Williams: I think my favorite ones to play are “you’re like me” and “star power”.
Winter: Ooh, yeah. And from the record?
Williams: Maybe also those. Yeah, I don’t know, I like the parts that I play, which is kind of egotistical to say, but they’re just fun
Apart from the release of words from a wishing well, is there anything else exciting on Shower Curtain’s horizon that you would like to shout out?
Winter: We’re having our New York City record release show on November 13th. It’s going to be a ‘Stereogum Presents’ and it’ll be with Many Shiny Windows, My Transparent Eye, and a Special Guest we can’t announce yet. Then we’re going on tour in two weeks, which I’m really excited about. Then I want to come back from tour and record new stuff.
Williams: I’m excited to go to New Orleans and Chicago. Those are two of my favorite cities in general. I just love going on tour, it’s like a little rock and roll circus. You know, driving around Oklahoma and Kansas feeling like a cowboy. I’m just excited to do that.
words from a wishing well can now be streamed on all platforms. You can purchase a vinyl or cassette of the album via Angel Tapes / Fire Talk Records here. You can purchase tickets to Shower Curtain’s upcoming album release show at TV Eye in New York here.
The album title reads like a “Mellow Gold”-era Beck lyric. The cover art is a psychedelic children’s drawing depicting a mystic midnight menagerie (notably horse-less) which seems to be ruled by a floating, buck-toothed, suboxone-animated magenta gumdrop. It’s far out, but not dramatically unlike the space in which All The Pretty Horses played the first show on their record release tour in New York City last Friday night.
The room was tucked into the back of The Windjammer in Ridgewood, a sailing-themed towny bar among the final frontier of $6 beer-and-shot specials in the five boroughs. There’s miscellaneous nautical décor nailed to the walls, a single pool table in the middle of the room, and about three lightbulbs in the entire joint. Everyone was dressed with the pomp of ill-fitting jeans and amorphous sweaters like a bunch of locals who just happened to swing by their local watering hole on the walk home, or towards whatever’s next. Whether that was probably exactly the case at The Windjammer is ultimately irrelevant (or maybe the point?). The real point is that this is a Hartford band and the music speaks for itself. If the musicians – especially frontman/composer/lyricist Austin Traver – had wanted or tried to insert themselves into the spotlight in front of the music, it wouldn’t have worked. No one did that. The band was a vehicle for a solid album more than a band on a stage, and it ruled. This album doesn’t need any help standing on its own.
All The Pretty Horses live at The Windjammer NY | Photo by Autumn Swiers
“Frances,” the opening track, reads a little one-dimensional until the synth rips in during the final third of the song. Is it worth the wait? Depends on whether you’re in it for the long game. Unlike the bulk of albums dropped in 2024, The Year of Our Lords Big Oil and Unceasing Mental Masturbation, All the Pretty Horses’ latest release is made for listening from cover to cover. One song wafts effortlessly into the next without providing or feeling obligated to provide a distinct beginning or end, stop or start, not because the songs are repetitive or unmemorable, but because Horses has its own sound and knows what that sound is, and this album is (praise god) not a series of singles Frankensteined together by a cohesive theme and ultra-earnest Scotch tape to the point of being uncool (sorry). This is an album. It’s an art piece that shines best as a capsule. Step back to look at it all at once like a large canvas – and resist any creeping discomfort at the feeling of “I really liked that track, what was it called? Oh, we’re onto another track already? I didn’t even notice.” Lean in.
As such, I feel like a dick for cutting it up with rock-critic dissection shears, but the star track here is “Sophie,” a heavy, droning drug anthem bookended by radio dialogue, fuzzy barely-there vocals, and minimal bass. Stuff your hands in your pockets and take a walk with this one. It’s an old formula, but it doesn’t need upgrading because it works. Incidentally, the opener is also a person’s name, “Frances,” but if they ever met in real life, Frances would be trying to win the gal while the gal is already busy writing her number down for Sophie – who didn’t ask for her number and doesn’t even want it, actually. After “Sophie” ends, the record immediately rips into an orchestral kazoo chorale (yes, really) before it’s right back to all that scrumptious sludgy beauty with “Hard Hill Road South,” made all the tastier thanks to the unexpected Zappa-esque interlude. That initial one-dimensionality was on-ramping. The equal mixing of instrumental and vocal in the tracks that follow makes the lyrics blur, melding into a comfortingly dissonant ode to the ennui of modernity and its deathless white noise.
If you’re neither happy nor sad – indeed, if you’ve been feeling “a little off” for the past five years or better – “Witches Up No Mountain, Switches Down No Valley” might be the album for you. You don’t have to be in a particular mood for this one to hit. Or, perhaps more accurately, if you point to the “bored” face on the Emotional Vocabulary Chart hanging on the wall in your analyst’s office (that’ll be $60), drop those shoulders. This album has arrived right on time to rub its grungy little fingers into your brain, not for that long-awaited lobotomy but for a massage. Take a break, and maybe even take that aforementioned walk. Chances are that analyst is on your case to take more walks already (and to get your grungy fingers off of her Emotional Vocabulary Chart, thank you very much). The least you can do is circle the block just to prove it won’t help. And, at 27 minutes from start to finish, All the Pretty Horses’ extended anthem will only get you around the block once or twice anyway.
You can listen to Witches Up No Mountain Switches Down No Valleyhere.
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 Brooklyn-based group Nara’s Room.
Through the deliberation of sifting noise and strong lyrical intuitions, Nara’s Room has always circulated around the production of dreams and the reverie towards real life environments that front-person Nara Avakian so vividly samples from the day to day. Gearing up for their new EP, Glassy star, Nara’s Room has become a standout group here at the ugly hug, leaving your soul crunched and your ears tender, but in no way deterred by the experimental spirit and sincerity of the artists at hand.
About the playlist, Nara shared;
This is essentially what is playing in my room when people are over, or when I’m in the passenger seat of the car. The songs I added to the playlist are songs that have stuck with me for a long time. My bandmates Brendan and Ethan and our producer James added some songs too because they inspired the sound of the record as much as I did. I asked them to add songs that they found themselves referencing when we were writing and recording. Stuff they’d play in their rooms that made them want to pick up their instruments.
Glassy star is set to be released this Friday October 18 via Mtn. Laurel Recording Co. Nara’s Room will be playing an EP release show at Baby’s All Right on November 4th along with Mtn. Laurel label mates Sister. as well as Told Slant. Get tickets here.
Written by Shea Roney | Cyanotype by mamie heldman
Chicago’s own Kristyn Chapman, performing under her new project name Morpho, has shared her latest single “Half of Two” today, marking the second single released from her upcoming debut EP, Morpho Season, out November 15 via Hit the North Records. As an expansive guitar player, having played across Chicago’s beloved underground scene for some time now, Chapman melds ferocious grit with alluring delicacy as “Half of Two” expands on natural endings and the fear within the uncertainty that can follow.
Partnering up with Henry Stoehr of Slow Pulp to mix the EP, “Half of Two” sets out with a determined drive, waiting with astonishing patience to explode, as little glimpses of feedback manage to escape throughout Chapman’s steady melody. Written back in 2021, “this song’s about finally making peace with endings,” she explains. “Untangling from the past and old stories.” The song soon breaks from its enduring groove into a vivacious guitar solo, swarming amongst crushing distortion, toned feedback and melodic temptations, finding its own ending as Chapman sings, “It’s beyond mending / Can’t undo the unraveling / Beyond mending / Can’t undo the unravel,” settling within the layers of her gentle vocals.
Listen to “Half of Two” here along with an accompanying lyric video.
Morpho Season is set to be released November 15 via Hit the North Records. Morpho will also be embarking on an East Coast and Midwest tour with fellow Chicago group, Rat Tally. They will be celebrating the EP’s release with a show at Schubas in Chicago, IL on December 12 with support from Rat Tally and Sprite. You can buy tickets here.
Written by Shea Roney | Featured photo by Leah Wendzinski
Last week, Lindsey Verrill (Little Mazarn) and Genevieve Poist (Virginia Creeper) banded together to share ATX x AVL with Love, a 26-song compilation album of local Texas artists benefitting Hurricane Helene victims in western North Carolina. The funds raised by this comp between 10/11-10/31 will all be donated to ROAR Western North Carolina. You can purchase the comp here at the Little Mazarn bandcamp page.
The comp, made up entirely of local Texas artists, includes contributions from A.L. West, Proun, Will Johnson, Other Vessels, Joey Reyes, Crushrose, Creekbed Carter, Virginia Creeper, Middle Sattre, Gilded Lows, Felt Out, Little Mazarn, Bill Baird and Large Brush Collective.
It’s collaborators, Verrill and Poist, shared in a statement, “watching helplessly as the news of Hurricane Helene tearing its way through the heart of Western North Carolina reached us here in Austin, Texas, we banded together with some of our favorite local musicians to create a collection of songs to help raise funds for mutual aid efforts in WNC. It is difficult to know how to tangibly help in moments like these, especially when need and attention is called for in so many directions, but we hope this compilation will help contribute to North Carolina’s rebuilding efforts in even the smallest of ways, further Central Texas’ solidarity with those affected by the hurricane, and share some of our favorite music with you as you go about your days.”
Every Wednesday, the ugly hug shares a playlist personally curated by an artist/band that we have been enjoying. This week, we have a collection of songs put together by Philly-based artist Peter Gill of 2nd Grade.
Through the vast array of sounds and characters that have come out of the intimate Philly scene, 2nd grade has always been one to stand out with cult-like enjoyment. With several new singles of belt-busting hooks and chivalrous punk attitudes in their pockets, 2nd Grade is gearing up for their upcoming LP, Scheduled Explosions, as Gill and co. return as the indie pop super force they have proven to be time and time again.
Along with his playlist, Gill shared a blurb about its theme;
“My first concept for this playlist was “songs I would play in the getaway car during a bank robbery”, but the nervous energy of that playlist was a bit much. It started with Count Basie and quickly moved to Chavez and U.S. Maple. I decided to change tack and settled on “songs that constantly get stuck in my head”, which is dangerous in its own way. I start humming these songs, and suddenly I can’t remember the last five minutes and I’m taking wrong turns on the way to work. These are largely off-balance melodies full of interesting intervals and waterfalls of notes, and they all seem to express a fun fascination with the craft of pop melody. Weapons-grade stuff really, proceed with caution…”
Scheduled Explosions is set to be released October 25th via Double Double Whammy and you can preorder it here.
In a telling glimpse of both devastation and redefined beauty, Toronto-based artist ZINNIA, the pen name of Rachael Cardiello, shares “Always A Romantic”, the next single from her upcoming album, Dollar Store Disco, set to be released February 7, 2025. Described as a divorce rager, Cardiello searches for self-preservation and joy throughout the record, as “Always A Romantic” echoes within the hollow feelings of solitude and the comfort lead by newfound clarity.
Like the weight of heavy eyelids, “Always A Romantic” drifts into a soothing moment of stillness, blurring out the world as an absorbing piano fluctuates with intensity, animating only what we can feel around us. Although the instrument is isolated in this rather spacious track, the singular voice that it leads becomes the benchmark for retainment and release as Cardiello’s powerful vocal range explores the room. “I really thought I was a romantic / I really thought you were worth it,” she sings, reflecting on a once fulfilling relationship now broken and fading with a tender and soaring performance.
About the song, Cardiello shares, “‘Always A Romantic’ arrived years after the wreckage of my divorce from the quiet of a hard-fought-for stability. There is a stickiness in letting a new truth settle into your body when you believe another story to be true. There is an almost physical whiplash of coming to terms with, and integrating that change.”
“Always A Romantic” is accompanied by a music video, both filmed by and starring Oriah Wiersma. In a decaying house, flashing hints of a once connected appearance, what is left becomes a search for the stories now lost, only to live within the people that once called it home. “When Oriah and I talked through possible movement for this piece, I kept returning to the way Ginger Rogers used to bend back in Fred Astaire’s arms when they danced. How she was so terrifyingly open and malleable amidst the dips and twirls,” Cardiello shares about the video.
Watch the music video for “Always A Romantic” premiering here on the ugly hug.
Dollar Store Disco is set to be released February 7, 2025 via the Montana tape label Anything Bagel. Preorders of the record will be available this Friday, October 11.
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