“I can be sweet as candy” is the opening line on Joyer’s latest EP, I See Forward and Back. The delivery is timid but sincere, like most of the gentle vocals on the project, maintaining a warmth throughout the three track stringing of hazy, slowcore melodies and contorted soundscapes. I See Forward and Back is both an extension of Nick and Shane Sullivan’s fifth album, Night Songs, and an entity entirely its own. Though unified as a collection of songs conceived in late hours, where Night Songs toys with catchy pop hooks and vocal-centered tracks, I See Forward and Back strips down to the themes of Joyer’s earlier work, with gentle vocals drowning in and out of an abraded, DIY production.
Along with offering a more home cooked annex to Night Songs, I See Forward and Back highlighted Joyer’s range as multidisciplinary artists. The brother duo strung all three songs into one video, a collaging of black and white clips. Akin to the EP’s sound, the visuals are texture heavy, ranging from the soft print of a thumb to brutalist scenes of a scrapyard.
Recently, the ugly hug caught up with Joyer to discuss their tour, the power of shelving projects, and I See Forward and Back.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
Manon Bushong: Your EP, I See Forward and Back contains songs that were written in the early stages of your album Night Songs. Do you often revisit music once you’ve fleshed out a project, and how does that distance affect how you feel about your work, and what you want to do with it?
Nick Sullivan: I guess it’s kind of new for us. I feel like we let songs hang for a while, a lot of times we won’t really go back to them. A lot of these songs started with Shane, so I feel like he could speak to the distance.
Shane Sullivan: I started writing them a while ago and shelved them because I never really expected them to go anywhere, but I always really liked them. It was unique to revisit them, and it was cool to have Nick jump in and add new ideas, like a bunch of cool percussion that I hadn’t thought about when I was initially writing them. It definitely was a new process for us, but I’m glad we did it and might be something that we continue to try to do just because I tend to write something, but then my attention span is kind of short and I move on to the next thing. It was a cool exercise, forcing myself to revisit and put out older stuff.
MB: There’s also a visual element to this project, you put all of the songs all together for one video. What was the process for that and what made you want to pick those three songs specifically?
SS: Honestly, I started working on these as a part of a class project back when I was in college. I was always interested in doing a visual EP, or a visual component to a collection of songs. I was in a class where I had to make a video, and at that point I was realizing how much I liked making music, so I would come up with any excuse to write music and songs for other projects I had to. So it started as a class project, but I ended up really liking the songs and the video work and I felt it was really interesting having them inform each other. I hadn’t done anything like that before, so it was a really fun way of making something – sitting on it and releasing it all these years later gives me a new appreciation for them.
Further on the topic of visuals, the EP’s cover art has a bull/cow, similar to Night Songs, but the image is also a bit simpler and in black and white. What was the story behind the cover art for I See Forward and Back, and how it ties to Night Songs?
SS: I think we definitely wanted to highlight the link between this EP and Night Songs since it’s an extension of it. So similar imagery, it’s a still from the video – our grandma had a painting that I shot little fragments of. I remembered that being a frame that I really liked, and felt suited the songs, and also matched the album art of Night Songs. So we just wanted to highlight that link, since this was all birthed out of the Night Songs songwriting process.
MB: So these were all collectively part of the writing process for Night Songs, but while it is an extension, it also feels like its own body of work, and I think that a lot of that comes from different production styles. How did you go about production differently, and how do you think that it affected the overall feel?
SS: I feel like it’s a fun glimpse into how we approach the songwriting process because we usually demo a bunch at home, and the songs change a lot in the studio. Usually we’ll write a ton of songs and then pick a solid 15-ish to bring to the studio, and then from there cut it down to 10 to 12. These were ones we liked the way they sounded lo-fi, but in the past when we’ve tried to bring songs that we like lo fi into the studio, it doesn’t really capture what we were going for originally. It made me kind of nervous because it is a little bit more vulnerable, but I thought it would be something cool to highlight the home-recorded and stripped down nature of where our songs usually begin. Another thing about Night Songs is we recorded close to 20 songs, even though it ended up being 12, and there were a lot of different styles of songwriting within those 20. I think we ended up picking the track list that we have now because that was what fit, so it’s interesting to me because the whole album could have sounded more like this EP, and it’s cool to see what it could have been if we went forward with that.
MB: I know you explored some new sounds on Night Song, how has it been playing that album live? Do you think you’re going to incorporate some of these off the EP in your touring as well?
NS: Yeah, it’s been a lot of fun. I feel like Night Songs is way more fun to play live than some of our older stuff, so we’ve been really enjoying it. It’s louder and faster but also has some quieter moments. We will hopefully include the songs off the EP into our live set eventually – we never really thought about it, so a day or two ago, before we left for a tour, we were like ‘damn I guess we should have gotten those ready’. They’re a bit trickier because they’re so stripped down, and have a lot of ambient noises interlaced within them. It’s like a fun puzzle for us to figure out how to make live versions. We’re just excited to get on the road again, we’re touring with some of our favorite bands, so, I think it’ll be a blast.
You can now stream I See Forward and Back and Night Songs on all platforms as well as purchase a cassette of Night Songshere via Hit the North Records
Written by Manon Bushong | Featured Photo by Juliette Boulay
Today, New York’s Toadstool Records has shared Let’s Be Friends: A Tribute to the Beach Boys, a 28-song compilation album of beloved Beach Boys songs benefiting the Billion Oyster Project and Mutual Aid Disaster Relief.
In a statement, Toadstool’s founder, Caroline Gay, shared, “In the lead up to the United States presidential election, climate change has become a hard reality. The United States’ support of Israel’s military assault on Palestine is not only a humanitarian disaster, but has had an immense effect on the climate. Combined with Donald Trump’s outright denial of climate change and rollback of over 100 environmental regulations during his presidency, the United States’ hand in the global climate catastrophe cannot be ignored.”
The comp includes contributions from artists like Joe Fox, The Fruit Trees, ghost crab, ebb, orbiting, djdj, Billy Plastered, Gavin Serafini, Luca Vincent, Bill Hagan and Friends, Luke Lowrance, Cephalid Breakfast, Daniel Um and many more.
All profits will be split between Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, a grassroots mutual aid network whose mission is to provide crisis relief based on the principles of solidarity, mutual aid, and autonomous direct action, and Billion Oyster Project who works with local communities to restore oyster reefs in New York City. Oyster reefs provide habitat for many species, and can protect New York from storm damage — lessening the impact of large waves, while aiding with flood and erosion control.
About the comp’s album cover, Caroline also shares, “Beach Boys fans will appreciate the artwork for this compilation, a custom piece by Matthew Durkin. It contains references to Smiley Smile (the house, plant on the backside of the album) and Friends (using a very similar typeface as seen on the album cover) all combined to make an original piece for this compilation.”
You can purchase Let’s Be Friends: A Tribute to the Beach Boys exclusively on bandcamp.
As a small music journal, we rely heavily on the work of independent tape labels to discover and share the incredible artists that we have dedicated this site to. Whether through press lists, recommendations, artist connections, social media support or supplying physicals, these homemade labels are the often unsung heroes of the industry. Today, the ugly hug is highlighting the work of our friends over at Devil Town Tapes.
Devil Town Tapes is a deeply rooted indie tape label run by Jack Laurilla, based out of Leeds, UK. With a focus on the found community that comes with sharing music, Devil Town Tapes has not only established themselves as a spearhead in the UK, but continues to grow in pockets of the U.S. as well. With an expansive set, focused on the niche creative corners that the label handles, Devil Town has housed the work of artists such as lots of hands, Greg Mendez, Snowhore, Conor Lynch, Dilary Huff, boxset, Noah Roth and many more, all differing in styles and sounds but connected by a through line of the people that help make it so special.
We got to catch up with Jack to talk about how Devil Town Tapes came to be, what he sees in the growing community and what keeps him in the game to release physical music.
Jack Laurilla, Founder of Devil Town Tapes
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
Shea Roney: What made you want to start a label? Did you have a clear vision from the beginning, or goals you were hoping to accomplish?
Jack Laurilla: It officially started in 2019, I’d wanted to do the label for a long time before then, but I didn’t really know how. I mean, I still don’t really know how to do it [laughs]. I started seriously getting into music as a listener when I went to university in Kingston, which is just outside London. There was a really great record store there called Banquet Records, and that really shaped a lot of how I listen to music. That’s when I started collecting music physically as well on CD and vinyl. I started to see the same [label] stamps on every single record – a lot of stuff from Topshelf, Run For Cover and all those guys, and I kind of didn’t really realize how much these labels were shaping my tastes. I would go away and see what records that they had released, then I’d go to Banquet the next day and get them, and invariably I’d always like them. That idea of a record label being able to shape taste in that way was something I’d never really considered and that was kind of the start of thinking like, ‘oh, this is an interesting way of communicating to people.’
At the time, the only way I knew how to release music physically in that way would have been through vinyl, which, as a student, was just impossible for me to do. So I completely parked my idea while I was doing my degree. When I finished Uni, I moved back to Bournemouth, which is kind of a small, retirement town down South. Going from Kingston, where music was everywhere, crazy bands like The Hotelier and Foxing would be playing small pubs all around, all of this really formative music to me, to then going back to Bournemouth, where there were only a few people doing gigs, felt like more of a hostile environment for being involved in DIY music. I was really kind of craving that sense of music community which I had back when I was at Uni, and that’s when I started thinking about how I could start making that happen myself, rather than just complaining about it.
SR: When did the cassette tape become a feasible format for you?
JL: Around that same time as well I discovered Bandcamp. There were no record stores in Bournemouth so it really filled that void for me, particularly finding Z Tapes. The kind of music that was being released by them was really inspiring, and the idea of tape as a format was just not on my radar before. I mean, it was a format I loved when I was a kid, the first music that I owned was on cassette tape, but I didn’t realize that was still happening, particularly in the DIY space. It’s just so much more accessible and it felt like it was, as a medium, more democratic, so all of those things combined kind of gave me the push to be like, ‘this is something that I can do’.
omes and Cult Film at Vinilo Record Store, Southampton 2019
SR: When it came to the point where you could start releasing music, what kind of artists did you look for?
JL: At the time, because I was trying to seek that community more locally, a lot of it was local. There wasn’t an abundance of gigs going on in Bournemouth. A lot of it was just scouring through Bandcamp and Soundcloud, just trying to find stuff tagged to Bournemouth or neighboring cities. I was very lucky that I was able to stumble across some artists who happen to live nearby and were also making the exact kind of music that I was interested in. I mean at the time, although they were local to me, they only seemed to exist online, so it was kind of a happy accident how the first few artists I worked with came about.
SR: Who were some of those first artists you worked with?
JL: The very first one was Cult Film [Chapman Lee], who I just stumbled upon on Soundcloud. I just felt like I could immediately relate to it. I reached out to him over Facebook, and he was very, very gracious, and agreed to let me release his music. Looking back, retrospectively, I was just a complete stranger, reaching out to say, ‘I would like to put your music out on tape, please,’ with no track record of doing that before, so it was amazing that he took what I was offering in good faith. I think the success of that first release is still kind of the motivation to keep releasing stuff. Starting off with just a selection of tracks, and then taking it through to something that people can hold in their hands. We also did a launch gig as well, and seeing so many people share that space around music that you’ve had a small part in bringing to them was really, really special to me. I’m constantly chasing that feeling with each and every thing that comes out on the label.
Launch Gig Poster made by Jake Martin
SR: After you put out that first release and began looking for more artists, did you continue to search out music that you could relate to?
JL: Definitely, I feel like a lot of the music I release is always reflecting my taste at the time. I would never want there to be like a house style or sound to be expected, you know what I mean? I see the artist’s as kindred spirits in a way, and that’s how I like to approach deciding what to release on the label . Whether that’s through the emotion that they’re conveying through their music, or a shared DIY ethos. Stylistically the music can be really different from the last release, but it still shares that throughline, in a way.That’s what keeps it fun.
SR: With those first handful of releases being UK artists, you’ve since expanded to the U.S. putting out great music from artists like Edie McKenna, Greg Mendez, Conor Lynch and a few others. How did you discover this music and how did you connect with these artists?
JL: Yes, the first two were very local. Cult Film and omes [Omar De Col], who is also from Bournemouth. After those I kind of just naturally started finding artists from further afield. It was a healthy mix between people reaching out to me and me approaching them. I guess the label exists, not only in the physical space, but also online as well, so it only made sense that I was interested in music from outside my postcode. But there has always been this throughline of people feeling connected to others on the label, particularly with artists like Bedtime Khal, Conor Lynch and Edie McKenna. Bedtime Khal is good friends with Conor, Edie has sung on Conor’s records, and, Conor has also supported Greg Mendez in the past. So even though they’re far away from me geographically, I still feel like there’s that sense of community, and all the artists are still connected in a way that doesn’t feel scattered, you can still see the connective tissue between all of them, which is really important to me.
Cult Films, omes and Jack at DIY Southampton
SR: Can you share a few personal favorite releases or projects that you’ve worked on that left some sort of impact on you, whether that be the experience, something you learned or just from pure enjoyment.
JL: There are quite a few, and all for different reasons. The compilation that we put out, which was our 11th release, was a special project for me to work on, as it featured the first five artists that we’d worked with. They had original songs on side A and covers of each other’s tracks on side B. And just the idea of them having mutual admiration for each other’s music and covering each other’s tracks was really cool to me. It was also an opportunity for me to collaborate with my friend Bo, who did all the artwork for it. He’s always done the Devil Town Tapes logos and he did all of the artwork for this as well. It just felt like every single person who’d been involved in the label up to that point was involved in this thing and it just kind of commemorates that period of time that started everything.
Poster for Welcome To… Compilation Tape
There is also a record that we reissued from Snowhore, the solo name for Veronica Mendez, who is now playing as Mary Saint Mary. That was a great record to be involved in because I’ve never reissued anything before, and it got me excited about the idea of, how by releasing music, I can archive it. Being able to do that for a record that I loved, which hadn’t been released physically before but one that I think is a classic, brought on this realization of what the role of a label can be in preserving music as well. I’m always acutely aware that the online spaces that we inhabit aren’t going to be arond forever. But once something exists physically, you’ve got an archive of it, whether it’s the 30 or 40 copies like one of our releases, or whether it’s a thousand copies, they’re always going to be there. I’ve always liked the idea that the tapes will end up somewhere really weird, and someone will find them in a car boot sale or something like twenty years down the line and rediscover them all over again.
SR: Talking about the digital landscapes, as someone who cherishes the physicality of community that comes with sharing music, what keeps you in the game and excited to keep working with physical music?
JL: I feel like great music deserves to be remembered. So if I can help to preserve the legacy of a record, I want to do that. That’s what keeps me motivated to keep going for sure, and it will never not be exciting to hold a tape in my hands, especially with something I’m so involved in, like the physical products. I’m dubbing all the tapes at home, I’m printing out the sleeves and cutting and folding them. It’s a privilege to be involved in other people’s art in that way.
SR: How does collaboration shape the way the label functions?
JL: Although I’m kind of there to drive it, I do need that collaboration to keep it interesting. Each release is definitely a collaboration, it’s always a conversation between myself and the artist. If I have ideas for things that might work well with the physical release I will offer up my opinion, but it’s their music so I always want to be in service to the record and to their vision. Every relationship is built from a mutual respect for each other as well, so the whole process is always a conversation. Also my partner Tas does a million different things with the label as well, she’s an illustrator and graphic designer, and is always helping to advise me on the visual side of the label. It’s really important for me to have that second opinion, because I can definitely get lost in the weeds and obsessed over tiny details.
Tas at Merch Stand at Vinilo Record Store, Southampton 2019
SR: You brought up how the label is a conversation in practice. Do you ever feel like it becomes a conversation with yourself, in that you are trying to find that balance between your work and life and something you deeply care about.
JL: Yeah, a hundred percent. My release schedule can be either really intense or non-existent and that’s kind of just depending on my energy at the time, because I’m always like trying to just find windows when I’m busy at work, and when it’s quiet. But sometimes when I’m emailing all day at work, the idea of coming home and looking at a screen again for a few hours is the last thing I want to do. I’m always trying to keep a healthy and fun relationship with it all, allowing myself to feel like it’s okay to take a step away from it. The label is a constant and will always be there to return to when I’m ready, just existing [laughs].
SR: For those who are looking to start their own tape label, what do you wish you knew when you were starting out and do you have any advice for them?
JL: I didn’t necessarily know what I was doing when I started, which is okay. The main thing was being motivated to do it, and I feel like if you’re motivated to do it, then you’ll seek out those answers quite naturally and find people who can give you those answers. There’s nowhere to read a ‘how to’ on releasing a tape, but if you’re inspired to release a tape then that’s the most important thing. So much of DIY is operated in good faith as well, and being able to remain in dialogue with people and being honest is really important as well.
SR: Do you have anything on the horizon for Devil Town Tapes?
JL: Yes! We have the debut album from Bedtime Khal, which has been really, really cool to work on, because he was one of the first few artists that I worked with. I’ve released one of his EPs and reissued a couple of his releases and this debut album is really sick.
Along with this series, our friends at Devil Town Tapes are offering a five tape bundle giveaway in celebration of this collaboration! The bundle will include For Edie (2024) by Edie McKenna, Slow Country (2024) by Conor Lynch, Don’t Forget to Remember (2023) by Noah Roth, Hard to Find / Wake Up (2021) Bedtime Khal, batch_six (2020) by boxset and a Devil Town pin badge.
To enter the giveaway, follow these easy steps below!
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 artist Ryan Walchonski of the D.C. and Baltimore-based project, Aunt Katrina.
Deliberate, brief and ferocious, Aunt Katrina released their debut record Hot late last year as the first offering from the new solo project of Walchonski, hailing from feeble little horse fame. Favoring both the whimsy and eerie relations that cut deep to its core, Hot leans heavily into the oddities, where the glitchy electro-pop and lo-fi folk fixings link arms to combat the very mundane that we so badly want to resist.
About the playlist, Walchonski shares;
I recently made the relatively short move from Washington DC to Baltimore, which, while being a short distance, still represents a new chapter for me and this band. This playlist represents new beginnings and a fresh start in life, just like my move.
You can stream Hot on all platforms as well as order a cassette tape from Crafted Sounds
From the sincere and expansive community in Maine, Dead Gowns is the project of Portland artist, Genevieve Beaudoin, who has shared her new single, “How Can I”, today as the first release off of her upcoming debut LP, It’s Summer, I Love You, and I’m Surrounded By Snow, due February 14 via Mtn. Laurel Recording Co. Produced by Beaudoin and Luke Kalloch, “How Can I” is a stirring passage, brought out by the textured array of instrumentation and emotional dynamics, giving a glimpse to the power within the details that Dead Gowns has learned to hold dear over time.
Simple and steady, “How Can I” begins like a melodic conversation – a sparing guitar, full yet aware, animating the internalized dialogue that Beaudoin sings about with such carefulness. But it’s with Beaudoin’s understanding of deliverance, where the complexity of feelings can rummage through different sonic interpretations, that really hits home this expressive and enduring motive – something that has made Dead Gowns such an absorbing and poignant project to watch over the years. “But it’s just what I have to do / On these nights / When I’m in love with you cuz,” becomes a precursor to the heavy distortion and rolling drum progression that soon fills the space when she asks, “How can I?” – with time and repetition, becomes less of a question, and rather a statement of self agency in the often defeating presence of desire.
About the song, Beaudoin shares, “I think as a first single, “How Can I” sets this scene for the entire album – it’s dark, romantic, and disorienting. I wrote this song when I was in love with someone and couldn’t tell them. I swallowed so many of my feelings down –– and pushed this person and that desire away. I think that dishonesty led to a rot in our connection that was unrevivable.”
“How Can I” is accompanied by a music video filmed by Beaudoin and Hilary Eyestone on a Super8 camera. Listen to the song here.
Dead Gowns is set to release their debut album It’s Summer, I Love You, and I’m Surrounded By Snow on February 14th via Mtn. Laurel Recording Co. You can preorder the vinyl here.
Written by Shea Roney | Featured Photo by POND Creative
“There is a song on the album where I play saxophone,” McClellan says, falling into a brief pause before letting out a quick laugh, “I’m not a good saxophone player.” When it comes to songwriting, control isn’t always a given, a beneficiary to circumstances in most cases, but can be just as effective an artistic choice as what basic instruments you chose to record. “We could have easily asked someone else to do it,” she continues in regards to her saxophone skills, “but, to me, it’s not about the technique or the form here. It’s about being very committed to the vision.”
Anna McClellan is a singer-songwriter from Omaha, Nebraska whose aptitude for presence has always held an edge to her poetic and faithful ventures. With three previous albums under her name, McClellan’s range of sounds have become, and quite frankly always have been, reactionary to the environments in which her narrations are taken from. The short plights of pounding piano keys take the piano ballad to a more enticing, and oddly eloquent, arena fit for indie-rock slackers and tempted swooners alike. Her melodic phrases croon over deep feelings of devotion and defeat – humorous quips mixed with this unpredictability that resonates just as casual as it is damning to the restless confessionals at play.
Today, McClellan offers her latest work, a sincere and eclectic album called Electric Bouquet. The stories that she writes about, now sitting with accumulated interest as the years pass by, sing of a time when boredom will cost you – the hope for something to happen sits out like soggy cereal in the late-morning. Yet, the details of this foundational mundane begin to blend in amongst personal and societal changes, hitting with such deliberate delivery and personal conviction that is only fitting coming from her singular voice.
I recently caught up with McClellan as she prepared for the release of Electric Bouquet, where we discussed her time growing up in Omaha, becoming an electrician in the TV industry and sticking to the vision she had set out to complete for some time now.
Photo by Madeline Hug
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
SR: You wrote the songs for Electric Bouquet over a range of years. What was the timeline and where were you location wise in the process?
AM: All of it was really written in Omaha, where I grew up. I moved back to Omaha in the fall of 2018 and then recorded my last record in the summer of 2019, and then basically started writing songs for Electric Bouquet right after that.
SR: Growing up in Omaha, which is referenced a few times in your writing, what did the city come to symbolize in this narrative path that the album takes?
AM: Yeah, “Omaha”, the song, is a very love to hate relationship with the city, and then there’s also “Dawson’s Creek”, the last song, which is all about my childhood. It ties up thematically to a lot of the stuff around being a kid and having too much time on your own unsupervised and alone. I wasn’t doing anything bad [laughs], I was mostly just ruminating hardcore, like I was really bored. I just didn’t have enough stimulation. So, Omaha represents a lot of that for me because I have so many rooted memories, restless ones, of wanting something to happen, something exciting or surprising, and I’ve just been looking for stuff like that ever since.
SR: You obviously write from a very personal lens, telling your own story, but there is so much to be said about this larger scope that you utilize, especially on the song “Jam the Phones”, which catches you going through all of these big changes in your life as you also think more critically of how the world changes around you too. Did you find that the identity at which you write from change throughout the album’s process the more you focused on these larger themes?
AM: I’ve been thinking about social justice issues and trying to figure out how to write about them for a long time. Before shit started, like really popping off, at least for our generation, there’s a collective whole that I’ve noticed, where we’re all starting to tap into more and more of what’s going on. So it felt really organic with everyone wanting to talk about this stuff more, but the framework for talking about it is tricky because everyone has such different ideas. I feel like talking about it from the ‘I’ is always the best, because people can’t argue with your feelings. That song specifically [“Jam the Phones”] was written in 2020 around the George Floyd uprisings, when I feel like everyone was, for the first time asking, ‘what do we do?’
SR: There are many songs that reflect on different kinds of relationships throughout the record. Were there any relationships that you struggled with articulating and did you find a way to solidify their meaning on this album?
AM: Of course, most of the ones that I’m thinking of are romantic. When I wrote the first song back in 2019 called “I’m Lyin”, I was with a person, he plays music too, and we played music together. I played the song for him, and he was like, ‘do you not want to be with me anymore?’ I hadn’t thought about it like that, but then after he said that, I was like, ‘wait, maybe that is what this means, shit’ [laughs]. Then we broke up not long after that. Sometimes songs will explain things before my mind catches up to them. I think “Dawson’s Creek” is very much about familial relationships and it was a long time coming. I’ve been trying to figure out how to write about my struggle with my family and our dynamic, because so much of it is about not saying things, and like this sort of repression. So I feel like we’ve had lots of conversations over the past five plus years about this stuff, and through those conversations enabled me to voice these things more and have the courage to do it.
SR: I’ve never actually seen Dawson’s Creek, but I am familiar with the lore. Was there any significance of using that show as the title of the song?
AM: It’s not really about the show at all, but more about watching the show. I used to watch it in the summer, it was on TBS at 9am and 10am every morning. So I’d wake up and watch Dawson’s Creek with my cereal, and that’s sort of how I’d start the day in the summer. It embodies this sort of lost, wistful feeling of just waking up and immediately being swept up in someone else’s narrative, like a fake narrative instead of feeling like I had my own narrative.
SR: Television and film is pretty consistent throughout the record, like on the song “Co-Stars” which plays out like this very Hollywood-esque progression of love and expectations.
AM: Yeah, it’s funny, when I wrote that song I knew I’d wanted to get into TV at that point, but fully was not working in this world at all. It’s funny, a lot of things about this record have grown in their meaning since, not like a manifestation, but there’s been through lines that have carried past the songs. Even the cover is me with a bunch of lamps, and now that is what I do on the show, I get all the lamps to work for the sets. It’s just kind of crazy.
SR: Yeah, I wanted to ask, now working as an electrician on television sets, where did you get the concept of the ‘electric bouquet’ and what does it mean to you?
AM: I was going to electrician school at the time, so I think that the word was just really prevalent. I was also sitting and thinking about live shows and imagining me bringing lamps, like so many lamps to every show and setting them up and that being a part of the load in and out at night – it’s like an electric bouquet. You create the bouquet around you as part of your set design, and that’s what the poem at the end of the album is about. ‘I have lamps – 20 lamps at night, I bring inside, set them up all around me, like an electric bouquet.’ But I think realistically I could only do like three, maybe four lamps a night [laughs]. It’s a small operation.
SR: When I picture a bouquet, obviously it’s like a bouquet of flowers. But thinking further on this word, a bouquet is never naturally occurring. Someone has to put it together.
AM: Totally. Calling an album a bouquet is a cool idea. That’s another way of thinking of it.
SR: Bouquet is a great word for an album. It makes sense.
AM: Yeah, I was really happy when I came up with the title. It’s the first time I’ve ever had the album name before I recorded the album.
SR: That’s gotta feel so good, right? Did that guide the outcome of the writing or recording for you at all?
AM: I just felt very empowered, like I knew what I wanted it to sound like and how I wanted to feel through the whole thing. Through the experience of doing this before, obviously writing the songs, but not necessarily being as assertive production wise, I knew this time that I really wanted that control and to be more uncompromising in my decisions. I was really excited about that because there’s not a lot of places that you get to do that in life, but when it’s your songs and your name, you can just be like, ‘no’ [laughs]. In that case, maybe this thing isn’t going to sound the best or be the most convenient, but I like it when things are impractical. To be honest, I think that it makes for something more interesting.
Photo by Madeline Hug
You can stream Electric Bouquet on all platforms today, as well as order a vinyl or cassette copy of the album via Father/Daughter Records.
On a rainy Wednesday evening, Grumpy’s starvation for attention and a protein bar is satisfied by a chocolate croissant and a friend passing by with their dog. “Grumpy is famous now, spread the word” front person Heaven Schmitt explains of the open voice-memo app between us mid-interview, before leaning in to generously pet the small terrier. The interaction was the closest I got to meeting Grumpy that evening, a charming big-hearted character parading around in an armor of extreme ego. Schmitt describes Grumpy’s identity as “me, plus a very cocky bravado. There’s a huge layer of cockiness to it, but it’s also just very earnest about wanting attention.”
Following a transformative four year stretch since Loser came out, Grumpy released singles “Saltlick” and “Protein”, both glimpses of EP Wolfed, out via Bayonet on October 25th. These vibrant songs confirmed the band’s charming sense humor remains unscathed, while also teasing a new voice to Grumpy. It’s a nightmare for the genre labeling fanatics on the depths of the internet, but for the rest of us, Wolfed is unpredictable and addicting, a sonically innovative feast guided only by itself.
The third single off of Wolfed offered a glimpse at the soft core nestled deep beneath Grumpy’s cocky bravado. “Relationships are not always forever, but I think that love can be”, Schmitt says of the ideologies behind “Flower”, a tender twee ‘syrup song’ immortalizing a connection after the romance has expired. The EP’s wittiness proves to be an easy hook, but it’s ultimately this dispersing of vulnerability, weaving in and out of comedic one liners and self-deprecating jests, that uphold Wolfed as Grumpy’s most captivating project yet.
When I sat down with Schmitt last week, their signature mischievous Sweeney Todd-esque hat had been replaced by an adorable knit striped hood they finished making the day prior. Along with knitting, we discussed the other ways Schmitt has kept busy, such as planning an epic release show, pioneering the niche internet aesthetic of “dirtybag twee”, and taking a hands-on role in the creation of Grumpy’s new sound.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity:
Manon Bushong: Before we dive into music, I did want to ask about your outfits and awesome hat collection. How you would describe your style, and what do you look for when you’re picking the outfits you play in, or just wear in general.
HS: Well, I love a funky hat, obviously. I’m super inspired right now by Sweeney Todd / Beetlejuice vibes…crusty insane man in a suit. It’s largely inspired by my hair, it recently came out a more cool-toned gray than I thought, but then I just leaned into it. I have a Sunday night ritual of making a little picnic dinner on the beach and the only time I wet my hair is in the ocean. So it’s super gross and sandy and wavy, and that inspired the whole Beetlejuice, Sweeney Todd era for me.
Right now, I’m trying not to buy anything. When I’m picking stuff out, I’m just trying to entertain myself with what I have. I’ve just started posting outfit TikToks…lord help me…but someone on TikTok described it as “Victorian Truck Stop, and I love that. Challenging myself to post TikToks about it really pushes me to make an outfit that much more bizarre, or just to add one extra layer of intrigue. I just love clothes and expressing myself with my style.
I’ve landed on, what do they call it? Oh yeah, therian TikTok. It’s these young kids who are ‘therians’, from what I understand, it’s a furry thing. So I need to figure out what animal I am. I don’t know…I’m getting wolf a lot, but I don’t know if that’s true. I think I’m a little cuddlier. Maybe there’s puppy elements to it? I’m never gonna beat the furry allegations.
MB: Wolfed is also the title of your upcoming EP.
HS: Ohhhh, yeah. Okay, I’m Wolf. I am Wolf.
MB: What does that verb mean to you for this collection of songs?
HS: Wolfed came from Anya, my bandmate and deepest collaborator. She’s the bassist in the band. I kind of just call her the art director of the project because she and I make all of the PR photos and cover art together. She has a really crazy editing style that I love and she also really gets me. She sees the fantasy realm that exists in my head. She sees it in me and understands me and is so good at translating these things into words and images. Anyways, I’m always saying, ‘oh, like you ate’, ‘you tore’, like ‘you, you ate that’ and Anya just conjured a lot of Big Bad Wolf energy. The art direction for this EP has a lot of dark fantasy inspiration. So we were thinking a lot about Big Bad Wolf, and she came up with the phrase wolfed as another way of saying “you ate”, like, you just devoured something.
For me, this EP and what’s coming is a real response to our first album, Loser. This is kind of my winner. These few years when I haven’t released anything have been a huge transformative time. I mean I called the band Grumpy, and I called the first album Loser, and it was tongue in cheek, but there was some truth to that. That’s how I felt at the time. Now, I still love the band name, but I want to put out stuff that I produced and made, cause I think I was hands off on the first album in a way that it ended up not sounding like it could have if I really tried to learn. Anyways, I connect with the big bad wolf because it’s this person whose bravado and cockiness gets him into trouble ultimately is his demise. So I think this is before the big bad wolf knows about his downfall. We’ll see where I go from here, but for now I’m just feeling like I could huff and puff and blow the house down.
MB: When it comes to lyrics, Grumpy does a great job of meshing humor and some very clever lines with a lot of pretty solid introspection that can be very poignant at times as well. How do you feel like humor is something that you incorporate into your writing and is it something that you really feel is necessary?
HS: What I really value in music are comedy and melody. Those are the things that can get me really hooked, or just think, ‘Oh, I wish I wrote that’. I’m glad that that’s what you take away, the self reflection and the humor, because that’s what Grumpy stories are. It’s just a lot of me being like ‘how much can I embarrass myself with what I can admit in a song’, there’s a huge amount of vulnerability in it. I’m trying to be very raw and write how I speak and exactly what I was thinking. I bring in discomfort from honesty and then invite people to laugh at me, like isn’t it ridiculous that this is how I saw it?
Humor is such a way for me to access the uglier sides of who I am and to confront them. My history with music and pursuing music, was so ‘tortured artist student’. I really wanted to pursue music as a career so in college I was trying so hard to make songs that were relatable and not too weird. It just destroyed me, it was zero fun and the songs were terrible. I got to this point, right as I was graduating college where I was like, ‘you know what? Let’s just get real, I don’t have what it takes to do this’. So I went and worked at an ad agency for a year, it was just this dramatic exit and I didn’t make any music during that time. It relieved so much pressure that after maybe eight or nine months, I was like, ‘well I’ll pick up the guitar’, I can just do this for fun. Then there were no constraints, it wasn’t for anyone but me. From that total lack of pressure, all these goofy dorky songs that were so me came out. So that’s the whole genesis of what Grumpy is, how I figured out how to make music fun for me.
MB: What shape is the fun of Grumpy taking now, four years later?
HS: We’ve got a really exciting tour planned and a bunch of music sitting in the cannon. These past four years in between releasing anything have been so important and I’m glad I waited because I knew I wanted help. I talked to a bunch of labels, but nothing ever felt right until Bayonet. I totally cried in our lunch meeting, because I was just like “Oh my God, they get it. They get me”. They shared what they believed was possible for me and the spaces they saw us in, like the bills they saw us on, stuff that I only privately thought ‘does anybody else but me think that we belong in this space?’ I love them and I’m grateful and I think they’re crushing.
Everything that’s coming for Grumpy is the result of my roots in folk and indie music, those are just my biggest influences. I’m also hugely inspired by hyperpop and electronic music. Hyperpop artists have this brilliant sense of humor and sense of fun that doesn’t take itself too seriously, and I’m so inspired by what they can achieve. I think Frost Children is so much bigger than any one genre you could put them in, they’re just absolute savants. I think they’re the best performers I’ve ever known, they have so much fun on stage.
For me, Grumpy is this combo, a product of these two influences. During our first meeting, Bayonet was describing it as “hyperfolk”. Genre-izing things is hard for me, everybody wants to come up with the next Indie Sleaze category, but damn, they kind of nailed it with hyper-folk. Electronic vocals, indie sensibilities.
MB: Do you think that there could be more of a hyper pop future for Grumpy?
HS: I’m never concerned about cohesiveness. I think I’m the through line, so I can make whatever I want and it is Grumpy. I don’t see myself doing side projects, I just see Grumpy having a wide stroke. I have a lot of heavier rock stuff coming, some more electronic stuff, some classic indie, jangly pop stuff, and then it’s just some weird, weird folk that I’ve been sitting on for a long time. That’s another reason Frost Children are such a big inspiration to me, they could really crush such a huge variety of genres and it still sounds like them because they have a strong voice.
I love it so much, these people are my family, they understand me and have seen me so fully and still love me. It’s very healing to have them close, that we’ve remained valuable to each other in and outside of a romantic context.
MB: You play with a few of your exes. I saw you live last week, and there was something very special about the energy of your band, which I assume that contributes to. Do you have a favorite part about playing with people you share that intimate relationship with?
HS: I like to joke that dumping me results in a life sentence of commitment to the band Grumpy, but they have all honored that. It is funny to joke about but it really is this beautiful thing for me, and I think it adds to the rawness. There’s a level of realism that can only be achieved by songs being performed by the people they’re about, like I’ve written the songs, but the people in the band have had a hand in living the story. In a way, they’ve written the reality, I just put it into words and melody.
“Flower”, is a very twee, sweet love song about a romance that has ended and it’s a reflection on the love. Relationships are not always forever, but I think that love can be. The way that I approach dating is knowing that that love can and will change shape. I’m not building some commitment to you so much as I’m nurturing a bond that I hope to hold forever. So, having these exes near and dear is just living that. I’m so glad I dated each of them, they’re such a huge part of me and I still feel very loved by each of them. My bonds with them feel eternal. In and outside of a relationship, we nurture that with each other, and that’s what “Flower” is about. I think it speaks highly of all of us, and the community that we hold for each other. It’s a rare relationship that I’ve come to really appreciate.
To specifically highlight Anya, we ultimately realized that we were not lifelong romantic partners, but we do have this really incredible artistic connection. I always get this image in my head of two little rodents digging, like a skunk and raccoon with little archaeology brushes, uncovering and discovering things that we can make in the world. She’s just a music veteran, absolute powerhouse, freak of nature, not from this planet. Then Austin, my ex husband on drums, he’s the voice of reason in the band. We often don’t follow his apprehension, but it is good to have. He’s also just like our AV guy, he can really be so organized.
MB: What’s next for Grumpy
HS: Our EP release show is happening October 27th. I held off on playing a Grumpy headline show, this band has been around like four or five years and we just played our first one in July at Cassette. I like to be very specific with headline shows because I personally don’t love to go to shows. If the band is good, I’m like, ‘Damn, these guys are great. I want to get home and write a song.’ If they’re not, I’m like, ‘how come I’m not up there? I want to go home and write a song.’ Either way, it makes me want to leave and write a song, except for Blaketheman shows and Frost Children shows, then I’m locked in, that is pure entertainment. Blaketheman1000 has humor like no other, I actually think he’s a genius if you read his lyrics. He and I’ve been friends for 10 years, he was my first friend in college. I just think he’s an underrated genius and comedic hero. He really understands putting humor in music, he just nails that confidence.
Anyways, EP release show. It’s Halloween weekend and I basically want to throw a party where bands are playing. For our first headline show, we had free hot dogs and a hot dog eating contest with a bunch of my beautiful friends. So for this Halloween weekend show, we’re doing a huge costume contest and I want to gather a whole bunch of prizes and merch related stuff. I want an apple cider donut contest, probably some candy too. I like a snack element, there’s not enough food at shows. It’s going to be at Trans Pecos and the lineup is Estelle Allen and Thanks For Coming, and Grumpy. We’ll be dropping some merch and the EP will be on cassette. I’m gonna go hard, but Halloween is such an impossible question. I think for a Halloween costume to work for me, it has to have a wig, cause wigs are the thing I’m not wearing. Although, I really cannot deny that I am thinking about powdered wigs. Who’s pulling up to the function in a powdered wig?
Wolfed will be out October 25 via Bayonet Records. You can preorder the EP as well as a cassette tape here. Grumpy will be playing an EP release show at Trans Pecos in New York on October 27 along with Thanks for Coming and Estelle Allen. Buy ticketshere.
Portland, Oregon’s Tim Howe, the consistent voice behind the formidable sound of Vista House, has been tinkering amongst the alternative reserves for some time now, writing under the project name since the mid 2010’s. As an ode to story telling, lost amongst intuition and grace, Howe and co. return with a reverie of hindsight as the past finally catches up to us on their new single, “Change the Framerate (Gloria)”, premiering here on the ugly hug.
Singing the praises of the jangly power pop connoisseurs and southern rock romantics alike, “Change the Framerate (Gloria)” wastes no time falling into a driving heap of sound, the instrumentation holding on tight to each beat as Howe and co. take off into a roots rock ripper. With sharply observed wording and a type of infliction that pushes towards a more conversational delivery, lines like “One day I’m gonna think of my life as a plant or a joke or a cinema screen,” rattle with both humor and slight unease, as Howe picks apart the very mundane that revolves around the fear of what our existence may become. The track finds its closing with a rushing melody, a sense of pop genius, as Vista House rejoices the bookends – “You’ll be turned into dust like the dust where you’re from / The Big Bull City ain’t so bad anymore”.
About the single, Howe shared in a statement, “Change the Framerate” meanders through the life of Gloria, running through memories of her time in the Bull City (Durham, NC) via hold picture books and DVDs.”
You can listen to “Change the Framerate (Gloria)” premiering here on the ugly hug!
“Change the Framerate (Gloria)” marks the second track shared from Vista House’s upcoming record, They’ll See Light, out November 22, following the single “A Seat Behind the Wing” released earlier this month. You can preorder the album here as well as a screen printed cassette made by Anything Bagel Records.
“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.
the ugly hug 