Album Review: Oh Boland - Western Leisure

It flips my wig that a band like Oh Boland exists in Dublin, Ireland, of all places. Like... how? How in the world does a band that sounds like this exist outside of the American rust-belt!?! I swear they sound like a more perfect version of about half a dozen bands that I would see every summer during college when they would haul their gear and sweaty broken bodies up from St. Louis, Indianapolis, or DeKalb, to play a dive or bowling alley up in my neck of Wisconsin, celebrating with me and possible half a dozen other lushes, the decline of western civilization, one riff, and one PBR tall-boy at a time. I guess the catalogs of Neil Young and Alex Chilton really do translate into a kind of sonic esperanto, because those are the playbooks that bandleader Niall Murphy is working off of on this third LP Western Leisure, and it was more or less the script that the bands which Oh Boland reminds me of were working from as well (give or take a wink and nod to the Boss and/or Creatures of the Night). Intriguingly, an adherence to past-its-prime, country-pop, and rock Americana of the late-20s century doesn't bog the album down in the mire of nostalgia or find it tumbling into the trap of a sentimental torpor. Instead, there is a brisk and canny sense of irony about the music and its lumpenized, downwardly mobile subjects that keeps the entire affair feeling florid and rejuvenated, with a purpose of focus that conspicuously folds the past into an overpass under which one can glimpse the gleaming ray of one's fortune and future (or depending on your luck, the headlights of an onrushing semi-trailer [hey, it's still your future... but maybe just flatter than you expected]). Listening to Western Leisure produces for me the compelling stereoptical portrait of the band cruising in an open convertible down a backcountry dirt road somewhere in the American heartland, with Niall on the hood with his guitar, leaning into the wind and angling his body on the metallic buffalo's stealy bonnet like it was a surfboard cutting into curl of an approaching wave, the background reeling past them like it was rolling backdrop of a movie-set as they seek out the famed corn mazes of El Dorado, or practice auditioning for a yet to be announced sequel to David Byrne's True Stories. Oh Boland are people like us, only they picked up the phone when the American Dream called, and now they're on a debauched adventure and gratifying, suicide slide through bat country in the hopes of squeezing out all the zest that Western Leisure has to offer. 

Treat yourself with Meritorio Records. You deserve it! 

Album Review: Likane Leppäne - Psykosomaattistasaundia

Over 7.5 thousand kilometers separate Oulu, Finland from Memphis, Tennessee. Such great divides haven't impeded Likane Leppäne from making a home for himself in horrorcore's shallow and often-disturbed grave though. Psykosomaattistasaundia is Likane Leppäne's fourth LP, and doesn't see the artist fashioning a new coffin from which to shout his incredibly obscene-sounding, coarse and barking flow into the vermin-clotted earth. The space he's carved for himself in the unhospitable dirt of international underground rap seems capable of baring black-twisted fruit with a sweet, gory center- so why replant your plot when you can simply re-till and re-fertilize with fresh marrow? That's where I feel like I find Likane Leppäne on this release, living more luxuriously in his sunken, necrotic abode- his sonic sarcophagus- a fresh viscous paint on the walls, furniture refurbished with fresh skin, and a newly installed HVAC breathing a greasy miasma all over the dungeon-like interior of his wicked little keep. He's sick and slick, with a bone to pick... preferably one from your soon-to-be mangled carcass. Something that I appreciate about Likane Leppäne's tone and delivery, and the way it coasts over the burnt-out beats and phantasmic synths of his compositions, is that the macabre weight of his words as they settle into the ugly atmosphere of each song produces an inescapably ominous simulation of a world that is sinking away from the light of reason and into a bed of chaos. His work presents a vantage point from below, a bedrock of madness where he already resides and where the rest of reality appears in a rush to meet him. A logical future destination for our civilization that would make even the nightmares depicted in such survival horror classics as Cry of Fear or Silent Hill appear acceptably mundane. Likane Leppäne is the corrupted protagonist in this future landscape of woe, a man already conditioned to its harsh and surreal demands, willing to spare you a shred of his heathen wisdom so that you might stand a chance at surviving until daybreak. 

Reign in blood... Solium Records

Album Review: Blue Bendy - So Medieval

At any given time in a year, there are a handful of vain and tedious, yet critically lauded, post-punk acts making the rounds in (primarily) the British press. I do my best to avoid them as I would incoming seagull guano, but every once in a while, I do get nailed. As I'm scraping the skat off my jacket, I realize that the experience could have been worse and that whatever stain is left on my poor, discolored garment will likely be unnoticeable by the general public after a few cycles through the wash... no one will know how many times I listened to a particular Sprints single, and it will always remain my private shame... As much as it might seem like I'm implying London's Blue Bendy is one of these scatological assailants, they're not... at least not to me. After initially hearing their debut LP, So Medieval, I came away with the impression of a group that knows how to write a simple hook and deliver it with an ironic amount of emphasis that overemphasizes its import in amusing ways. More than that, the group felt grounded and approachable, fun and deftly warm. I wouldn't have put them in the same basket as say... Yard Act or Black Country, New Road... at least not until I started reading the press that surrounds them, that is...  I'm sure vocalist Arthur Nolan et alia have nothing but kind feelings towards these other groups, however, I think it's somewhat reductive to lump them all together, and I'm slightly glad that I simply listened to and grew to appreciate Arthur's wispy, drawling delivery, and the band's ability to balm and smooth out a sparse and weedy groove, without having encountered anyone else's opinion on what sort of impression these aesthetic turns should leave on me. There is something more honest and less witty (although Arthur does have acuity for amusing character profiles) about Blue Bendy on So Medieval that one could miss if they were subsumed in the hype around their work. For me, it's the bare, unobscured disposition of their organically unaligned poetic temperaments that give a playful push to their polished-down Baroque antics, nudging them into the realm of comedic misrule, without sacrificing attention to melody or the everpresent grain of lucid sincerity, that I've grown to appreciate the most with the time that I've spent with So Medieval. I may be forever undermining my own position as a writer when I say this, but don't let anyone else tell you how to feel about an act until you've heard them for yourself. It's always more fulfilling to experience what a piece of music can gift to you when you encounter it with no pretense than if you hop into its weft loaded down with another's baggage. 

The state51 Conspiracy was an inside job. 

Album Review: Bill Baird - Astral Suitcase

There is just something that tickles my brain about the phrase Astral Suitcase. Like is it the preferred luggage you take with you while exploring the cosmos on the Galaxy Express, or is it more like a mobile biodome that you deploy to keep you safe while researching a heretofore undiscovered planet with a potential hostel atmosphere? Or is the Astral Suitcase something inside of you, a space of unlimited imaginative potential inturned in your own psyche, which, once unlocked, expands the realm of epiphany in all directions, flooding over the horizon and into infinity? I think if you asked Bill Baird, he'd probably say that all of the above would be applicable, but that his favorite, and closest to his heart,  is his latest LP. Astral Suitcase (the record) doesn't have any clear boundaries to its sound or themes, but still manages to have a concrete sense of personality, a spacy folk record characterized by crisp, brushy guitar work and glacial-hued harmonics; it is both briskly subdued and monumental, open and reserved, gradual and quicksilver, like floating down the milky way on an iceberg made of squid ink colored ice cream. A heavenly breeze that shakes the stars like windchimes in the dead of night, their quiet echos felt in your bone before they reverberate in your ears. A river that flows over the edge of a Saturnine ring to fill the goblet of a visiting astronomic heir as he whizzes by on a golden asteroid. The final symphony of a lonely planet trapped in a drop of due gliding along the lip of a tulip petal towards an uncertain end. A ripple in an uncertain sky as it fluctuates from a clear blue patina to that of a milky periwinkle punch. A popped thought bubble that stains the air with an oily reflective resin and the smell of fear and moral clarity. Astral Suitcase is an unassuming record, that is much bigger on the inside than it appears from the vantage point of its exterior. 

Album Review: Teens in Trouble - What's Mine

Teens in Trouble's debut LP What's Mine may be the first album to ever feature an authentic punk rock love song. And by authentic, I mean believable because the second to last track "Playlist" is all about acquiring a customized compilation of songs from the object of your affection. The exchanging of "mix tapes" has been a time-honored tradition amongst twitterpated punks since the invention of the dual tape deck in an attempt to crack the code of their paramore's love language (or at least get a sense for what kind of stuff they listen to while high). I guess asking someone for a Spotify playlist is the 2024 version of this diminished but steadily observed custom. That's just the first example of vocalist and guitarist Lizzie Killian's approach to these songs. More so than most, the subject matter on What's Mine tends towards the baldly biographical, often leaving me with the impression that I'm literally seeing scenes from her life illuminated through song. Now, most people's lives are tedious, and it would be highly embarrassing for nearly anyone to expose their innermost thoughts to any degree of depth, but most people also don't have the guitar chops that Lizzie does either. This brings us to what is easily the most excellent aspect of this album: Lizzie's guitar work and ability to write some enthralling hooks. Even when the lyrics can be a little cringe, the hooks that accompany them absolutely absolve the whole affair of its perceived sins. The prickly warning of the opening track, "You Don't Want To Mess With Me," is wound around a razory crock-crew-shaped groove that collects emotional tension like a lint trap balling up flammable debris until it's ready to ignite in a blaze of vibrant glory- a blowup that is equally matched by the slinky desert riffs that erupt into full-blown static sandstorms on the off-kilter, heart-stroke  hallucination "In My Dreams." Then there are the more unexpected turns, such as the alternating country-surf riff spindrift of "Brave" and the gritty skate-punk strut of "Sick" with its bunchy, coiled chord combinations that snake around a brightly textured groove like venomous jewelry. It's Lizzie's world, and you're just lucky to share it with her and her guitar. 

Always the best from Asian Man Records. 

Album: Aluminum - Fully Beat

Aluminum is kind of a heavy metal, isn't it? And I don't mean in terms of its actual weight as compared to other materials, and I'm certainly not implying a connection to any variety of extreme alternative music. What I mean is that aluminum is an industrial product that is laden with meaning despite its ubiquity (or maybe because of it). It's a flexible material, with a fair amount of versatility in its application in industry and the arts alike, and while it bends easily, it's also very considered quite dependable... if disposable due to its cheapness and availability. Sounds sort of familiar? What does this also sound like? If you said your average shlub, working a job and trying to have a life on the side, then we're on the same wavelength. Like most other things fed into the machine of this society, in order to be worthy of such a fate, one has to be not only shiny, dependable, flexible, and also, ultimately, easy to discard. The long, glossy garbage chute of contemporary life is the backdrop of San Francisco band Aluminum's debut LP, Fully Beat- an endeavor that translates the symbolic potential of man as raw material for commodification and exploitation into a focused statement of rhythm-captured lament. It's not so surprising, then, that the group's sound on this record is heavily reminiscent of the sonic escapism of a famously industrial and de-personalized landscape, that of 1980s Manchester, England. Tracks like the dazed, slow-motion dash, new-wave, jangle-hop pounce, and Remain in Light inspired percussion of "Beat" overlay to evince a brightly anguished puckering rhythmic bliss, through which the soul may sink farther with every striving grasp for daybreak. The carbonated boil of "Always Here, Never There" rebounds on downy waves of bittersweet synth buckles, tethering resignedly melancholic vocal tresses to a tugging lure which pulls it through a quicksand bass groove in a befuddlingly blue depiction of one's experience of life as a telescoping series of empty frames. Both "Haha" and "Pulp" make some of the more direct callbacks to the sophisticated sadness of acts that characterized the British underground many decades past, with the former resembling a pensive clasping of Happy Monday grooves to Cocteau Twins's lost, daydreaming ambiance, while the latter is a wailing wall of kicking, shoegazing, hot-foot maneuvers, which fizzles like someone lit a Slowdive track like a fuse and let it burn into an angry, bubbling puree- a blood-tinted valentine to the reality that no matter where you attempt to hide, your failures will always hunt you down. Then there is the sharp and slinky, dark and sticky, candy-flavored-tar-pull of "Behind My Mouth," which is towed along by a tenacious, plaintively and coercive beat in the company of a tyrannically groovy rhythm, creating a constantly shifting stage upon which a lightly chewy melody chides, "Do you ever see behind my mouth?," an ominously innocuous phrase that feels like the utterance of one of the inhabitants of the Red Room in Twin Peaks, an eerie summons prompting you to find the true orator of who conveyed some key piece of information, an entity hidden behind the teeth of the one who presumably spoke. Fully Beat is a shiny, brightly bemusing ode to the trash that even the best of us are slowly fashioned into with time and pressure. 

Feel more with Felte Records.

Album Review: Killer Hill - Frozen Hill

It's a shame that Killer Hill's Frozen Head seemed to fly under so many radars when it dropped back in 2022. It has the kind of lineup you'd expect to generate a suitable quotient of hype as far as trios go, comprised of Dan Beeman and Dave Case of Helmet, as well as Pete Beeman of noise-knaves Guzzard. You'd think that would be the case, at least. But, it's not really like Frozen Head exists to break any new ground, turn heads, or impress the uninitiated- at least not in the same way that their other groups have, or rather, continue to do. It feels like this record exists because the guys involved just wanted to make a really kick-ass rock record, and I'll allow myself to be thrown from a moving car before I look down on someone with such a gracious ambition as that. As far as their sound, it's somewhat comparable to Red Fang, where they're kind of doing several genres of hard rock and heavy metal all at once, sort of a diagonal of gambit that draws together and stitches into embrace the eyes, ears, and other orifices of boiling, heat-stroke-inducing sludge, kick-draw thunder-thrash, back-yard-brawling soundtracking grunge, and a mirage-inducing wave of dessert rock. They bring all of these elements together into a massive, head-banging sound that will knock you flat out like you've been stomped by a disgruntled sasquatch in a tie-dye shirt who just lept from an Apache helicopter whirring overhead just to show you the business. It's militantly groovy while remaining dreamy and strangely exotic, focusing its sight through the channel of its ajna chakra as if its sound could acquire the intensity of a Lazor beam aimed through a glassy aperture to cut an "S" pattern into your forehead like you're a wooden desk in an unsupervised detention hall. Frozen Head is a crudely radiant and nonchalantly lysergic little spectacle that is hotter than it appears and cooler than even its pedigree would indicate. Kick off your summer with a cold one like this and you can't go wrong! 

Album Review: Full Body 2 - Infinity Signature

Are sequels ever as good as the original? We all have our favorite answers to this question,* but I think what most responses have in common is that sequels live up to (or even exceed) the hype when they add something unexpected or take the concept of the original in a radical new direction. This is certainly the case for Jack Chaffer and Dylan Vaisey's second go-round with a band called "Fully Body." Completing the lineup with bassist and vocalist Cassidy Rose Hammond, Fully Body 2 has, in many ways, streamlined the eclectic indie rock of their prior incarnation to its most rhythmically sparse and cogent core while synthesizing a strikingly supple, crystal-fused physique to animate the sturdy architecture of its bones. After two demos, I think their style has finally fully bloomed on their EP Infinity Signature, where new-agey incantations of distortion are cast against concrete, quartz-hardened chords in an assured display of geologically resplendent geometry, like the spire of a crystal-plated castle emerging above the horizon of a cloud. It's effortlessly weighty without sacrificing any swiftness in its dynamics and feels uncannily transportive in a manner similar to that hybridized sonic chimera, Fire-Toolz. In fact, the album often gives me the impression that the group had heard Rainbow Bridge or Eternal Home and thought, "Ok, this is pretty good, but what if we threw in a whole of MBV?" Whatever the inspiration, Infinity Signature demonstrates no hesitation in confidently extending itself into the universe in a vindication of pure, imaginary forms. 

* Most people's answer is either Terminator 2 or Aliens, but mine is Halloween 3: Season of the Witch... and, yes, I will go to the mat for that piece of garbage because I think it is such good, goofy fun.   

Interview: Superdestroyer, Topiary Creatures, Mt. Oriander, & Hey, ily! on the JEFF split

If you can believe it, there was a time when I thought emo had more or less run out of steam after the 4th Wave. Dumb, hopeless, out-of-touch, other pejoratives, that's me and more. I certainly know better now. And what helped me get my head back on straight was a split released on Open Door Records with Arcadia Grey, Oolong, Guitar Fight From Fooly Cooly, and dannythestreet. The energy on that release is absolutely infectious, and each of the bands are in top form in terms of their performance and songwriting. Fatal 4 Way is easily one of my favorite splits of the past decade, of any genre, style, subcultural milieu, etc... but if there is another split that could muscle in on the space I've made in my heart for it, that release might have to be JEFF, released this past May on Lonely Ghost Records. It's another super team-up, although decidedly less fatal and generally more advantageous- aligning the powers of Superdestroyer, Topiary Creatures, Mt. Oriander, and Hey, ily! in something like the Planeteers of Weird Emo. Together, through their shared determination and a display of acumen and dazzling eccentricities, the four groups have managed to call forth a lean extravaganza of electric audio and friendship that is both seamless and satisfying. Beginning with the gentle, weighty ploy of one of Mt. Oriander's strummy, star-gazing melodies, the scene then shifts to a dark theater to witness one of Topiary Creatures's electric-monster staring, deep-space soap-operas in its full, sugar-laced bloom. Coming out the other end of the wormhole we get to hang out with Superdestroyer as he unleashes one of his super-tasty, extra-feedback-fried, punk-power jams, which should amp you up just enough to keep pace with the speed-run of the first half of Hey, ily!'s track, an explosive fire-flower powered case of Game Boy Color skramz that (astonishingly!) resolves peacefully into a contemplative tail of delicately laid chords which will guide you away from the chaos of the track's foyer into the calming horizon that lays beyond. It's still a little hard for me to wrap my head around so many talented people working on a single record, so I got up the nerve to ask them a couple of questions about how it all came together. Thankfully (maybe foolishly) they agreed and you can discover the contours of their revealed wisdom, the gore details of their cutting floors, as well as various shades of history-emulsifying nostalgia and heartening, emotional dialogue below: 

The following interview was conducted via email between May 22 and June 1. The responses have been edited only slightly for the sake of punctuation and consistency.

Interviewees: John of Superdestroyer, Bryson of Topiary Creatures, Keith of Mt. Oriander, and Caleb of Hey, ily! 

1. Whose idea was the split? 

John: In a way, it was everyone's idea. At different times over the past couple of years we had mentioned being interested in doing a split together. So one day about a year and a half ago I threw the idea out to Caleb and Bryson and they said, "yes." It just so happens around that same time Keith mentioned to me that he'd be really interested in doing a split with Hey, ily. We all love Mt. Oriander so I asked if he wanted to jump onto the split we had started planning. It just kinda worked out. 

Bryson: The initial light bulb came from Lonely Ghost Records / Superdestroyer. They threw us in a group chat and was basically like, “I love all y’all tunes, wanna make something together?”

Keith: Like John said, this was kind of already a thing in process and I am a split junkie so I wanted in. I also have admired Lonely Ghost Records and I was a fan of all the bands involved, so it was a no-brainer for me. I currently have like 10 (splits) in various processes and no, that is not a joke, lol. I have a problem.

The discography of my previous band, Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate) was probably a third from splits. We did 12 of them. TWELVE!

Caleb: I think we have Mr. Superdestroyer to thank for this split! 

2. How did the split come together, and how long did it take to coordinate? 

John: This split took a year and a half to put out. There were a lot of different (but very valid) reasons for everything to get delayed. Life just beat our asses for a while in various ways. We kept checking in and moving stuff around though and eventually we got it all to fall into place.

Bryson: Longer than you’d think. I just went back and found the original message and it was in November of 2022. We all had our songs written and selected for it pretty early on as well, but lining up a split schedule in between four band’s release and recording schedules is always gonna be a bit of a juggling act. 

Keith: It took a long time for all of us. For me, my long time recording engineer and good friend Mat Halliday passed away suddenly less than a month before we were supposed to record a batch of songs that included this one. We had been working together for over a decade, so it was a hard blow. We were close. On top of that, when my headspace was in a good enough place to want to get back to it, I had to find someone new and that took the better part of a year to get going again.

I wasn’t worried though, we all have a Twitter group and we kept in good communication, so it was a matter of when more than anything else.

Caleb: I could be completely wrong because it was initiated so long ago, but I think John initially sent the idea over to me, and from there we brainstormed on who we wanted on the silly little split! I’m pretty sure the idea first formed in 2022? So it took a LONG ass time.

3. Did you all select/record songs that you thought would go well together, or was the process more independent? 

John: We all made songs for the split. Initially, Caleb and Bryson shared demos that were pretty far along that they thought they might use. I ended up recording a song I thought could fit well with those. Keith sent his song earlier this year and Caleb ended up recording a different song a couple months back. We definitely all had a similar idea of the sound we were going for on the split I think. 

Bryson: A bit of both. I had a couple fully-demoed songs that I loved but couldn’t find a place for on our album, so I showed them to the other bands and let them pick which one they thought best fit the vibe. 

Keith: This was originally going to be on vinyl and when I’m writing for a split, I know from experience the time limitations so I wanted to make sure it wasn’t too long. Besides that, I didn’t really write anything to try and blend with anything anyone else was doing. But it really did come together so perfectly. I think the secret sauce of how this ended up being so good is the track order of it all. Each song seems to be the perfect bridge to the next track and it just worked out perfectly. It starts soft and slowly turns heavier and more chaotic.

Caleb: I had a really hard time figuring out what I wanted to do on this split. Initially, the track was going to be completely different and would’ve had the full band involved. We actually even got the whole thing recorded! We decided we were unhappy with the final version and scrapped it, then we started writing a record which took a lot of our headspace, so I ended up just writing a goofy lil’ tune on my own! 

4. Was there any point where you thought this record wouldn't happen? If so, what/who do you credit with your success? 

John: I would say that right up until the Monday of the release I wasn't 100% sure it was gonna come out lol. We all were doing our best but I think it's always hard to coordinate a 4 band split, especially when 2 of the 4 are running labels. Keith and I both also had to work around our own release schedules for the labels also. But we pulled it off because we communicated frequently and were willing to be flexible and change the plan. 

Bryson: I never lost hope! But I was saying, “the split is happening in the next month or two” for nearly a whole year. Plenty of collaborations fizzle out when delays happen, but I think the fact that we did eventually find time for it is a testament to how much each of us genuinely enjoys the other band’s music. At least for us, it was way too cool of an opportunity to forget about.

Keith: For myself, I never worried about it not being released because everyone was invested. 4-way splits take a long time, it’s like herding cats. It felt like it came together when it needed to and then it was out in the world.

Caleb: I definitely thought at some point it wasn’t going to happen. I can kind of be a dork sometimes and put WAY too much on my plate, so there were several times when I had to forego process on my song for this split in favor of other (way less cool but necessary) things. I really have to give credit to John, though. He’s one of the most determined guys I’ve ever met and I’m lucky to have him in my corner, and to be in his!

5. Were there any technical challenges? Did you have any concerns about levels and mixing between tracks? How did you handle things on that end? 

John: I wasn't too concerned because I think everyone knows their sound. When we all discussed this initially, I thought we'd all be a good fit together. We also all agreed to have Kris master the split which helped to create consistency across the songs. He did a really good job. 

Bryson: Surprisingly, we didn’t sweat that side of it too much. Living in a playlist era, and especially on a split that’s themed after the eclecticism of growing up online, it would have felt weird to round all the corners and make everything uniform. I like that the split sounds like you’re clicking between your friend’s Myspace profiles and listening to their various profile songs. 

Keith: I didn’t foresee any technical challenges and since we moved to cassette, any concerns for time went out the window. We all just had our own studio people handle the recording/mixing and Kris mastered the whole thing so it felt like one cohesive release. John was the mastermind behind this whole thing, so I trusted everything to work out and just had to send my song over. That was nice and John did a good job.

Caleb: Other than starting from scratch a few different times on my end, I don’t think there were any technical difficulties! Kris (who mastered the split!) is a literal god-genius who could make anything we gave him sound good, so there were no problems there!

6. How did the cover art for this split come to be? Where did the concept come from? 

John: We had been brainstorming potential acronyms using the 4 band names which led us to the name Tom, which led to MySpace. Most of the graphic artists we spoke with don't really do that sort of art, so I ended up giving it a shot. I think it's a cool nod to the MySpace music days.

Bryson: That was all Superdestroyer as well. We had been casually tossing around names and concepts in the group chat for a while, but when they sent the initial mockup that looked like a MySpace page, we were all like “hell yeah, that’s it.” And of course, that prompted the fun assignment of filling out our respective mock bio’s and top 8’s for the single covers. 

Keith: Somewhere in our Twitter group chat, just through natural conversation (the group is called ‘The Split Pit’, by the way) MySpace came up and we all waxed poetic about its glory days. The ball just kind of kept rolling from there and then John took on the art duties too. AND KILLED THAT TOO! There are also individual profiles for each band and we got to choose all the information for it. It felt like a blast from the past, haha. 

Caleb: That was ALL John! 

7.Who is Jeff, and how did he get a split named after him? 

John: Jeff is just a dude. Just a guy, you know? 

Keith: It’s Jeff from EarthBound! Sure, I just made that up, but also it could be true!

Caleb: Jeff is not a man, Jeff is the EVERY man. Every single one of us has a little bit of Jeff in us, keeping us going every day. Even you, reading this, have Jeff to thank for all of your accomplishments. 

8. Were any of you big MySpace users back in the day? Did you deck out your page, or did you go the minimalist route? 

John: I was! MySpace peaked while I was in high school. I loved the music aspect. It made finding independent bands much easier. It also was the first time I remember thinking I could release music on my own and find an audience without needing to be on a label. My page was decked out. I even made custom images for my background. It was a real assault to the eyes.  

Bryson: Big Myspace guy over here. I was in middle school during its peak, so not all of my friends were allowed to have profiles (especially growing up in church as a homeschooler); I felt so cool. And you’d better believe I decked my page out. I loved making HTML sites and Flash games at the time, so the more ways I could alter the layout and embed obnoxious games onto my profile, the better. 

Keith: I’m a bit older than everyone else so I was already in college when I got MySpace and felt super cool because I was a pretty early adaptor. Back in the day before they added the ‘Top 8’ feature, it was chronological from join date, so I made the top lists for a lot of profiles.

My band in college had a page before they had band profiles, haha. I was super into editing everything, we had the custom header and background, the whole nine yards.

Empire! Empire! started in 2006, and that was our main platform for years. We were kind of big on MySpace, we have over 40,000 fans. We spent hours and hours messaging people and networking. We booked a lot of tours through it, made a lot of friends and connections. I maintain it is still the best site that existed for bands because it had everything you needed in one place- music, tour dates, blogs, messaging, comments, pictures and bulletins.

Caleb: You know, I kind of missed out on MySpace, I think by the time I started using social media (I definitely was already online but I just didn’t have any accounts), MySpace was gone, although it sounded like a really badass time! I wish we could go back to MySpace. 

9. Did any drama ever ignite over your top 8?

John: No, but I remember being excited when ppl would put me in their top 8. Ideally, it would be a reciprocal sort of thing, otherwise it would be kinda weird to put someone in your top 8 who didn't place you in their Top 8. It was an odd social hierarchy thing--at least where I lived at the time. When you had each other in there, it provided a level of validation that you had social cache. If people didn't reciprocate your Top 8 placements, it could be weirdly alienating. A lot of people would take it as a sort of rejection of their close friendship. Some people would change it every week with different people. It was a weird place. I think most of us recognized it was just goofy fun and didn't take it seriously. Even so, you could probably write a dissertation about the psychological damage of MySpace's Top 8.

Bryson: I do remember one of my friends being annoyed that I put A Skylit Drive above him on my Top 8.

Keith: YES! It wasn’t as bad as my LiveJournal drama days (I am old as hell, lol), but it was definitely a thing. I tried to be political about it, but I am sure I slighted some friends (some intentional, some not). What a weird feature, in retrospect.

10. Did you have any songs on your page? If so, what were some of them? What did you hope these songs informed people about your personality at the time? 

John: Oh yeah, a lot were probably from bands that have been canceled bc that era was rampant with abuse that has since come out, but some of the cringe-ier songs I remember are "Until the Day I Die" by Story of the Year (it's unfortunate to admit that) and "here in your arms" by hellogoodbye. I was obsessed with Holding A Wolf By The Ears by From Autumn To Ashes, so I'm sure "Pioneers" was on there. My choices were eclectic. I had a lot of punk and hardcore bands, some grind-- stuff like The number 12 looks like you, Dr. Acula, Bane, Cruel Hand, Stretch Arm Strong, etc. But, I'd put pop and rap on there too. I know I had a lot of pop punk like Motion City on there. I updated it a lot because MySpace felt like social media tailor made for me. It was music-centric and I very much expressed myself through my music taste. Your choices said a lot about you on Myspace.

Bryson: Oh, I scrutinized my profile songs more than I’ve ever scrutinized anything. Making sure everyone on my soccer team knew that I was an edgy skater kid was a full time job. To rattle off a few: Billy Talent, Saosin, Secret and Whisper, Paxtin, Edison Glass, Anberlin, Deas Vail, The Mars Volta, Circa Survive, Homestar Runner (the Irish pop-punk band, not the cartoon [which I also loved]).

Keith: Absolutely! Songs from Death Cab, Mineral, Jimmy Eat World, Penfold, American Football, the Get Up Kids. The list goes on.

11. Did you use MySpace for music discovery? Who were some of the artists/albums you learned about from that site? 

John: Idk that I can name specific bands but I found a lot of music on MySpace through profile songs. It kinda worked like seeing a friend tweet about a band 10 times now or something, but it would start playing when you visited the page. Also similar to now, a lot of the bands never really got traction. There was this band called The Trend that had this amazing song and I looked for it everywhere and never found it again. There's probably a lot of really cool stuff that never made it past self-uploading to a MySpace band profile. You could also find great bands through people's top 8 because people in the scene who were tapped in would usually put a few bands they liked in there. 

Bryson: Not as much as other people seemed to. I mostly discovered things from the iTunes’ “related artists” section and random music forums. 

Keith: I did, yeah. It’s how we met all the early bands for the label I run, Count Your Lucky Stars. If MySpace didn’t exist, there is no way CYLS would either. It was the connective tissue for the whole DIY scene. I’d say at least chunks of the first 20 or 30 releases stemmed from connections and communications over MySpace.

12. Do you still use social media as a music discovery method? If so, what does your strategy look like? 

John: DIY twitter is a huge source of my music discovery. I listen to a lot of the bands that follow the label or interact with us, I check out bands I see other ppl talking about, and I follow a lot of writers that I think have good taste. That's probably my number 1 source. 

Bryson: Unless you count Bandcamp and Spotify as social media, I honestly don’t. When I was younger, music was inseparable from my social life—finding and broadcasting the songs I connected with helped me contextualize who I was and wanted to be. Nowadays, it’s more internal. 

Keith: I do, yes. I think just the bands that are in our scene’s orbit end up finding each other, one way or another. The same names just sort of start showing up again and again and eventually I give them a listen.

Caleb: I sure do! Sometimes, people will posts songs that I checkout and get really into, sometimes I hear songs in videos, most of the time I just see bands promoting themselves and I discover them that way! 

13. How did you feel when the company decided to wipe the site and everyone's pages? 

John:  I had long since abandoned and been locked out of MySpace but I was kinda sad because that is so much lost media. Some of my first songs were shared to MySpace and I don't have the files even. Their music feature was so cool.

Bryson: Luckily, I had transitioned to FB and IG at the time, so I was pretty unaffected at first. It’s only recently that I’ve been frustrated by it. I think the fact that we can’t see our old profiles is part of what makes the MySpace nostalgia so magnetic. I’m always ranting about how you can only “cash in” on nostalgia so many times before the memory starts to blend with the present—it’s really impactful at first and then it starts to fade. None of us have “cashed in” on seeing our MySpace pages. If we were able to scratch that itch, even once, I think it would feel like much less of a big deal. 

Keith: IT WAS ONE OF THE SADDEST DAYS EVER! Empire! had every single show logged into it meticulously. We were stupid and never had a complete back up and one day, it was just all gone. I’ve been able to collect a lot of that data, but it isn’t complete and it never will be, What a loss.

Caleb: I dunno, I didn’t have a functioning brain yet. (That’s a lie, I kind of had a brain)

14. Why do you think there is so much nostalgia for the MySpace era, especially in emo/emo adjacent circles? 

John: It was a golden age for emo music and the alternative rock/punk adjacent scenes at the time. A lot of important and influential sounds came from that era. It's iconic and showcased a wave of innovation that paved the way for a lot of the popular alt bands people like now. At the very least, it brought emo into the mainstream more. 

Bryson: Emo music is inherently reflective, so a ton of it is inevitable. But there was a long stretch of time (and maybe this was just the nature of being around college hipsters) where it felt like there were certain kinds of music you weren’t supposed to like. It was cool to be calculated and emotionless about your taste. Thankfully, that’s not the case anymore. (Thank you Jeff Rosenstock? Maybe 100 Gecs?) The newest wave of (both real and fake) emo has a refreshingly playful, passionate and genre-irreverent sound, which feels like it harkens back to the MySpace era. Not all of us contributing to it necessarily had MySpaces, but it feels nostalgic to me. It’s like we’re finally allowed to admit that there was something cool going on there. 

Keith: I think it either was the first social media platform a lot of people used from that era used and so there is always going to be nostalgia for it. LiveJournal was that for me.

But the other part is how MySpace is the key ingredient that let the entire scene function. It wasn’t just the music on profiles or the fans, it was also the way we all met and talked. Like I mentioned, I booked so many tours through MySpace, signed so many bands, met so many friends. It was the glue for all of that.

In the end, it was honestly an inoperable mess and filled with way too many ads and spam, so I get why people were ready to move on. But for that moment in time, it was king and it changed so many lives.

Caleb: That’s a good question, one that I can’t really answer because I missed out, but if I had to guess, I think it could potentially have something to do with the way the current DIY scene acts/sounds being kind of reminiscent of those days just by nature? I dunno though I’m just a dumb guy. 

15. What is your favorite track on the split? Why?

John: That's hard to say tbh. I think it depends on my mood. I think they all turned out sounding great and I think they sound even better together.

Keith: I CAN’T CHOOSE A FAVORITE, WHAT AM I, A MONSTER?!

It all feels like one piece to me now, they belong together. 

Caleb: The secret fifth song, the Skibidi-Toilet remix of "Hotel California." No but seriously I love all of these songs so much, everyone on this split is so talented and incredible, I am very lucky to have been involved!

 Who needs a Top 8 when there is only one Lonely Ghost Records? 

Interview: Bert Scholten

For this episode of the THAS podcast I spoke with Dutch sound artist Bert Scholten about folk histories, religious traditions, experimental sound approaches, friendship, humiliation, and all the things that can't be spoken but need to be said. Surprisingly, all these heady concepts are intimately entwined with... wait for it... cookies. Yes, you heard correctly. Humankind's deepest feelings, fears, and the echoes frothing up from the fathomless depth of the mind all find expression through buttery treats whose traditions run back as far as the Middle Ages. Did that wet your palate? Hungry for more? Tune in to hear Bert unlock the secrets of the speculaas (Dutch cookies) and explain how the baking boards used to make them inform his work's strange, playful logic.*

Listen to my interview with Bert Scholten here: 

Listen to Dat Speelt Hier Niet here: 

*Editor's Note: Due to some confusion, scheduling issues, silliness, illness, and straight-up incompetence on my part, Bert and I ended up having to record this interview separately over a period of several months, with Bert recording his answers before I recorded my questions to him. I was able to smooth things out in editing for the most part, but I wanted to make a note to explain a little bit about how the interview came together in case anything feels a little "off." Editing is always a little bit of a sausage-making process, but this one was a little more "sausagey" than most.