Interview: The Eradicator

Listen up, pusshead! You ain't nobody unless you're somebody on the squash court! It is the ultimate game of manly endurance, speed, agility, and intelligence. A test of will and fortitude on a magnitude that rivals the myths of ancient gods. Two men enter the court; one man leaves... and shortly thereafter, the other man, having declared himself the victor, also hits the showers. Sure, it's the same showers that the loser is using, and yeah, he may have to ask to borrow a towel and some deodorant from the loser, and he might have forgotten his wallet so he can't pay for a cab or the train and will be hoofing it back to the office that morning, but that just makes the triumph all the sweeter. The stains on his collar and in the pits of his suit jacket when he arrives in the lobby of his employer's building are the laurel rings of a champion, and no one can erase their golden glory- as much as one might try with a Shout stick or other name-brand stain remover. No one knows the perspiration of perseverance and the stink of success better than The Eradicator, aka Andy Slania, the demon of the D Squash Ladder, banshee of the back courts, the phantom of the point-a-rally, the shaitan of sweat- in short, he's your worst nightmare... and the latest guest on this podcast!

Check out The Eradicator's latest LP You Can Hate The Eradicator: 

Interview: The Arrivals

If you could find something you love in your formative years and find a way to keep doing it for 30-plus years, wouldn't you? Not many people are so lucky, but Dave Marriman of Chicago punk pillars The Arrivals certainly is. He and his crew have been keeping steady and remaining reliably prescient all these years, and have recently (as of this spring) managed to release their 5th LP, Payload. You may wonder why it's been 16 years since their last album, Volatile Molotov, and the simple answer is that the timing just wasn't right, until it was... In Dave's own words, and summing up the ethos of the band, "If it's not fun, fuck it!" Truly an idiom to ideate on next time you find yourself running behind according to someone else's clock. They don't have any Chicago dates to celebrate the album release on the books yet, but when they do, you can bet I'll be there (and hope you will be too!). In the meantime, enjoy this conversation between Dave and me:

 

You can find Payload out on Recess Records here: 

Interview: Footballhead

Footballhead started out as something of a hail mary on founder and vocalist Ryan's part, but has since steamrolled into one of the more dynamic, unique, and fun acts of the present huddle of DIY doers and shakers to snap, sack, and blitz their way out of the Midwest. Earlier this year, they crossed the end zone for the third time, releasing Weight of Truth, possibly the best-realized pitch for reviving the post-grunge sound of the early and mid '00s that I think I've heard since I lost sight of Breaking Benjamin sometime in 2009 (still around, by the way, as you'll learn below). Fresh off a tour with erudite and effortlessly-poppy emo-nerds Ben Quad, and currently scrimmaging their way across Europe, Footballhead is a band to watch, and more so to listen to, and you can hear Ryan describe much of the journey of the band as well as answer my many inane inquiries in the interview below:

 

Listen to Weight of Truth, out on Tiny Engines: 

Interview: Swiss Army Wife

Photo courtesy of We're Trying Records

Get a wife. I'm a wife advocate, and my advocacy is aimed at everyone getting a wife. ✅ house wife, ✅ work wife, ✅ goth wife, ✅ crane wife, ✅ mid wife- fuck it, why not, sister wife... alright, pump the brakes. They're handy and nice, and you can count on them to spot you at the bar and bear and raise your children; they're better than a best friend, and hopefully just as loyal (one would hope... but maybe you're into that sort of thing). A wife is good, a wife is gracious, a wife is steadfast and wise, and depending on your proclivities and preferences, you can even pick up a special variety called a hubbo- a type of domestic companion who tends to have a high skill base for opening jars and reaching objects on high shelves, and can often even be counted on to do dishes and laundry- although these talents are far less likely to be attributed to them, and are often treated as occulted, like the mythic secret menu at Taco Bell. If you want to access the options on his chore tree, you have to ask first. There is also a very confidential variety of wife known as the waifu- this is a wife you never meet but whom you adore in private (sometimes a person, but more often just like, Reze, or something), but if you ever deign to reveal the full extent of your adoration for this sort of wife, or make her picture your avi on social media, you will immediately be excommunicated from the human race and cast into a lake of fire- it is a cruel world we inhabit, but a just one nonetheless. Of course, one of my favorite varieties of wife, and the one that has inspired my present flurry of determined activism, is the Swiss Army Wife- a rare, one-of-a-kind model out of Portland. This particular instantiation of wifehood is particularly musically inclined, writing and producing phenomenally authentic and captivating contemporary emo-core and pop-punk, while reflecting on the travails of being reared in a remote part of the country, blending nostalgia with a pyrrhic wish to see it all burn, and embracing the emancipation of forming one's own identity within the wilderness of hostile convention and countervailing headwinds, driving long into the night to greet an uncertain, yet seemingly brighter future. I was able to take inventory of Swiss Army Wife's long journey and hopeful horizons following the release of their second LP, I Love You, But I Hate It Here (out on We're Trying Records [the current reigning champ of everything emo and underground!]), a compelling sequel to their 2023 debut, Medium Gnarly. You can enjoy my exchange with Ellie and Kade below:

 

Who do you love, and why does it hurt to love them?

Ellie: Jesus, buy me a drink first. I think there is a degree to which love is inextricable from pain. There’s pain in the fear of losing loved ones, of not being who you want to be for them. Exposing that fear is a huge part of what the album is about.*

* Interesting and thoughtful answer. Thank you. But the correct answer is Pete Wentz b/c Pete Wentz. 

What are the standard features and applications for a Swiss Army Wife? Follow-up: how does a Swiss Army Wife differ from a Swiss Army Man (other than a general lack of Daniel Radcliffes)?

Kade: The only one that I am aware of is Swiss Army Wife (the band TM) from Portland, Oregon featuring: 

• 3 guitars

• Impassioned yelling

• Sadness

• Big riffs 

• Lyrics referencing dead philosophers

• Medium, sometimes small riffs

• Impressive average member height

I think the second one is a movie about a dead guy so that’s pretty different. 

What was your favorite part about making this record ie I Love You, But I Hate It Here?

Ellie: The moments when things came together easily and spontaneously in the room. "It Used To Snow" and "Emergency Contact" both were written this way. Obviously we tweaked parts and agonized over things, but there are few things as exciting as being in a room with that kind of collective energy.

Kade: Getting to spend so much time working on something I truly care about with people I care about even more. (and Ellie making me cry in the studio performing the bridge of "Elliot.") 

When did you know this record was done and ready for our eager ears?

Ellie: When Jack Shirley finished mastering it. As soon as I heard the masters, I knew that we’d made something special. Unfortunately, I can never fully let go of anything I make, so I’ll forever be thinking about all the little things we could have done differently. That feeling was pretty overwhelming up until Jack did his thing, but afterwards I felt as ready as I ever could be to let these songs out into the world

Kade: I could keep working on this record forever, but this has been the most satisfied I have been with a project at the point of stasis. 

What city is featured in the background of your cover? Also, please unpack the imagery of two horses traveling towards a spotlight in the far distance. How does this imagery overlap with the themes of the album?

Ellie: The city in the photo is Asbury Park, New Jersey. I was on tour last fall playing in Home Is Where for their Hunting Season tour. Before leaving, I decided to pick up a little point-and-shoot film camera and took a ton of photos all over the country. When I was putting together the artwork, this felt like the obvious photo to use. There isn’t any thematic significance to Asbury Park in particular, but the photo had a kind of loneliness that felt like it evoked the album’s themes really well. I’ll leave the question about the horses to our resident horse girl.

Kade: Resident horse girl here. I grew up in a little farm town with a pair of horses that have become emblematic of my time there as well as the best of what remains of it in my memory. I think they represent the longing I have for a version of a place that never really existed.

So 3D vampires sound pretty frightening. How do you defend yourself from such a creature? In all seriousness, though, "3D Vampire" sounds like a hell of a breakup song. Can you share the story behind it?

Ellie: Well, it isn’t a breakup song. You can’t really defend yourself from a 3D Vampire, because you are the 3D Vampire. The song is about feeling trapped and helpless, stuck in the patterns of everyday life while horrific things unfold around and within you.

Kade: If it was a breakup song it would maybe be about breaking up with the idea that you can continue to live a normal existence while the world is tearing itself apart and instead grappling with the desire to slowly shut yourself off from it and everyone around you. 

Who is your "Emergency Contact," and who are you singing to on the song with that title?

Ellie: My emergency contact is my mom :)

Kade: My partner Rachel 

You seem to be blazing a lonesome path on "Cowboy." Give us some insight into the thoughts and emotions running through that track.

Kade: Anger, fear, and resignation all feel pretty central. Inherited violence is something that never leaves your body even after the abuser is gone, and watching someone experience it from the outside creates a unique form of helplessness. 

How much time do you spend in Idaho? Do you have any good/harrowing stories from there?

Ellie: I am transgender. Every time I’ve had to pass through Idaho has been harrowing. Idaho is at the forefront of the states who are determined to erase people like me from the world. They will not succeed, but it’s impossible not to feel afraid there.

Kade: Spent my first 18 years there. It is mountainous and beautiful and took two of my closest friends from me and is slowly killing my mom who still lives there. It’s not a place that is hospitable to me anymore. Going back is hard but I make the trip once a year to see her. 

Who is "Elliot," and why did you name a song after them?

Kade: Elliot gets its namesake from Elliot Page the actor. Gender is a difficult messy thing to navigate as I think is portrayed by how messy and painful that song is for me to listen to even still. He was the first person whose experience had a profound impact on me when it came to self-discovery. 

"Heartland" doesn't necessarily paint the most welcoming picture of small-town life. How did experiences of life in a one-horse town inform your art and perspective on life?

Ellie: I grew up in a very isolated town in rural Alaska. Literally an island in the middle of the wilderness. You had to get there on a boat or a plane to leave. Less of a one-horse town and more of a no-horse town. Growing up in a place like that as a queer person trying to figure herself out was pretty isolating. I think because of that, I sought out art made by people experiencing their own kinds of isolation. I gained an appreciation for environment as an active subject rather than just scenery. I think on a musical level, that translates to a fixation on harmony. On a purely aural level, that’s the environment that melody, rhythm, lyrics, timbre, and whatever else exist within. That definitely came out in my contribution to these songs. I was always trying to fiddle with chord progressions figuring out what kind of substitutions we could use to create the environment of these songs.

As for my perspective on life, I think it made me appreciate communities that are accepting. The place I grew up rewarded conformity to a certain lifestyle that I knew from a very young age I could never be happy with. Long before I figured out that I’m transgender, my first experiences with that kind of euphoria were in meeting people who I could just be a weird fucking kid with and not feel judged for it. Often, those interactions were happening in musical spaces. It all just kind of fed back into itself.

"God's Favorite Country" sounds like the retelling of a road trip/tour that has really gone off the rails, or is careening towards utter failure. What is the inspiration behind this track, and what are some of your best/worst road trip/tour memories?

Ellie: Umm. Interesting interpretation, but no, not quite. That’s ok though, we do have a pretty good tour story. Our first ever tour was an amazing time right up until, while driving from Phoenix to Boise for the last show of the run, the van’s transmission very suddenly gave out just outside the Great Basin in Eastern Nevada at 4pm on a Friday. We ended up getting a tow about an hour north to the nearest town with any services, Ely. Mind you, it was February, which is not a fun time to be in Eastern Nevada. 

We found a room to stay in at a Ramada Inn hotel casino while we tried to figure out what our next step would be. After calling around, it became apparent that we would not be able to get the van into a mechanic until Monday, so we started trying to figure out other options. We quickly learned that there are no rental car agencies in Ely. Nor are there any bus routes that pass through. No trains. No airport. If you drive in, you better be able to drive out. We could not do so. 

The closest thing we could find was a UHaul location that had exactly 2 trucks, one of which was rented out for the next 2 weeks, the other of which was currently being rented but was expected back on Sunday. Until the reservation ended up being repeatedly extended. So we were still out of luck. We spent our time drinking expired beer (turns out, even the orange flavored beer is NOT supposed to have pulp in it), watching whatever was on small town Nevada TV, making trips to Safeway and the dollar store for food and swimsuits so we could kill time in the hotel pool. I also went undefeated at Pokemon singles against Kade. Important that the world knows that part. During this phase we overheard a woman at the Safeway checkout telling the cashier how her car’s transmission had died here in town a year ago and she ended up just never leaving. Later, one of the women working at the Safeway deli warned us that the town’s sewer was backing up into their water system. Bleak stuff.

In the end, we did get the van into a mechanic. After spending a couple of days working on it and updating us with increasingly astronomical quotes for fixing it, they offered us a cleared mechanic bill and $80 to scrap it. We had been in Ely for nearly a week at this point. Eventually, Tim’s roommate, Adam, ended up renting a van in Salem, and driving 15 hours overnight through a snowstorm to come rescue us. I was convinced until the moment we pulled into my driveway back in Portland that the spirit of Ely was trying to make us stay. To be honest, I’m still not convinced it wasn’t, and for this reason I will try my absolute best to never step foot in Ely, Nevada ever again.*

*Okay, definitely not a road trip/tour from hell type situation, but in a weird way, this extended curfuffle almost sounds fun. Phew! Glad they got away, though.

Photo courtesy of We're Trying Records

What do you get up to when you have time to horse around, ie what are your hobbies other than music?

Ellie: I have a completely normal degree of interest in Pokemon. I am extremely normal about Pokemon. If anyone says I’m not normal about Pokemon, don’t listen to them. I’m normal about Pokemon.

Kade: Building computers, magic the gathering, and losing to Ellie at Pokémon :/

Have you ever ridden a horse? Assuming the answer is yes, was it a terrifying experience, or did you find yourself bonding with your equine pal?

Kade: I had two horses growing up, Blue and Stormy. I rode them in 4-H and FFA and every week as a kid and miss them both dearly. Blue would always sprint across the pasture to come and greet me in the morning even when I didn’t have carrots for him and I think that was a rare and special kind of love. 

Ellie: On a spiritual level, I’ve accepted that horses and I are opposing forces.

What are your connections/coincidental overlaps with the band Joyce Manor?

Ellie: We started working with our longtime mixing engineer Alex Estrada because of his work on Joyce Manor’s self-titled album, which was a huge influence on our first record. If I remember correctly, Alex recommended Jack Shirley, who produced Joyce Manor’s Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired, for mastering. We’ve worked with Alex on pretty much everything we’ve released since then, and came back to Jack for mastering on the new album. Also, by pure coincidence, I just moved into an apartment that’s only a few blocks away from The Alibi, which is a karaoke tiki bar here in Portland that is the setting for (in my opinion) the best Joyce Manor song, "Last You Heard Of Me."

Did you ever finish Oregon Trail as a kid, or did your entire party end up dying of dysentery and snakebites?

Kade: Attempted many times without success. I usually starved because hunting the buffalo made me too sad. Also crashed trying to ford a river a few times. Perhaps dysentery will be the thing that takes me from this life. 

If you owned a farm, what kind would it be and where would you want it to be located? 

Kade: I do not think I am cut out for farm life but if I were to return to it probably some kind of twee organic berry farm in the Oregon wilderness. 

Somewhat surprised by the lack of Pretty Derby references on your social media, in the lyrics of your songs, visible tattoos, etc. Do you believe this will change in the future?

Kade: I was originally just a humble Haru Urara fan but since the Quarter Horse EP release have since been inundated with requests to watch it as I am told she makes an appearance. I will be mandating a band watching experience on our upcoming tour. 

Gold Ship Uma Musume GIFfrom Gold Ship GIFs

Alright, that's it! Check you on the flipity!

PS Be good to your wife!

Interview: Heavy Metal Chess Club

Courtesy of We're Trying Records

The other day I was listening to an interview with a Japanese musician, and she was describing her experience in her high school's band club. To give perspective on the topic to her interviewer, she brought up K-On! only to wipe the slate moments later with the clarification that her experience was "nothing like that." No snacks. Full practice room. You had to practice every day, and when you did play for the club, everyone judged you. This was her experience, and yeah, on balance, watching K-On! sounds a good deal more pleasurable than actually doing the extracurricular that inspired it... I'd wager the closest you could ever come to such an experience in this life is joining a DIY band in the United States. There is still some judgment, sure, and it's still a major time commitment, but there are also tons of snacks and opportunities to simply chill. You'll also probably produce some recordings and play some shows that you can be proud of for the rest of your life, as well as make some lifelong compatriots to boot. Keiongaku certainly has a future, just not where you'd expect...

So if you're going to have an extracurricular that consumes, disrupts, and alters your life, for better and for worse, but mostly for the better, then you might as well start a band with your buds... sort of like Henry from Heavy Metal Chess Club did. Now Henry and his pals don't throw horns and rip power chords in honor of the dark lord, and our main man in particular is no Bobby Fischer, but everything else about them seems faithful to the core conciets of DIY as their music is a perfect synecdoche of life's convoluted trails converging at intersecting epiphanies in the wild fields of youth, sodded in the soil of error and nurtured in murky flash floods of pensive perspicuity. They might not be true to their name, but they are certainly brimming with concrete existential observations, engaged in probing schematic interpretations of the world, managing to be loud in inquiry, and quiet in conclusion, and they have a new LP called I Think It'll Haunt Me Forever out on We're Trying Records, which is worth an awful lot in my humble opinion. Get to know Henry and his band below, and don't forget to grab some taiyaki and tea before heading to the basement to jam with your crew.

Introduce yourselves. Who is in the band, what do they play, how did they come to be in the band, and what are their rider stipulations?

My name's Henry, I normally say "I play guitar and yell." I started writing songs in high school and formed a band when I got to college. For the past year or so now the band's included Connor on drums. His band Melon Husk from Colorado played with us a couple of years ago, we reconnected at a new year's party, and got closer after he transferred to Drexel (where we all go to school) following UArts closing. Will's on bass, I kinda knew him through Connor and also just kinda being around, another UArts to Drexel guy. We saw each other at shows and got along really well and we really jive energetically when we play together. Gray's the last one on lead guitar, we did a little tour in August of last year and I needed a guitarist for it, I had seen his band Exit 109 before and really liked them and knew he was going to be in Philly over that summer so I asked him to join us for that run and he clicked really well with us. He played his first show with us on just a few days' notice, and wasn't even able to make a practice so our first time playing with him was on stage and it went perfectly. They're all a blast to play and hang out with. We've never had a rider, but it would probably include beer.

What were your goals headed into making I Think It’ll Haunt Me Forever, and were they achieved?

I never intended for this to be the only album we do, in fact I'm super energized to get working on another record as soon as possible, but I wanted to put something out where if it was the only full length album we released, I would be content with that. There were a lot of times I acted as if this was the only album we'd do. The perfectionist in me can point out a lot of things I wish were different about it, but if this band were to cease to exist tomorrow, I would be happy with what we did with this record. That being said I do hope to one-up it next time around.

The title for the album comes from a poem recited in the track "Christmas Lights." What is the meaning behind this passage, how does it fit into other themes on the album, and how was it that a line from this poem became the title of the album?

For most of the time this album was being written I was sold on this being a self titled album. I'm not quite sure how to describe this but I don't think a whole lot when I write lyrics. I like to say that they mean things on a macro scale, not a micro scale. I could tell you what a song is about more or less but not most individual lines. I see a lot of things in my life in relation to being "scared." I'm anxious and shy and I fuck up a lot, and I'm scared of fucking up more. Persistence in spite of this fear is a skill I've developed as I've become a young adult. I'm scared of fucking up? Well, I've already fucked up, I can learn from that. There's stuff that I think might haunt me forever. I'm young and dramatic, maybe it won't "haunt" me but it'll probably stick around somehow. So will the fear, and the anxiety and all that. You can't be brave if you're not afraid, you can't learn and grow unless you fail. I'm not too sure how to tie that all up but those are the general thoughts I have around the title, I think it ties the themes of what I write together.

You have a very compelling, quiet dynamic on this album. How do you feel the juxtaposition of reflection and fury draws out the themes and thought processes behind your work?

The loud/quiet dynamic is something the bands I listened to growing up were very good at, Pixies, and Smashing Pumpkins being the big two. I see the louder more explosive parts of our songs as incredible cathartic and that's what I like about them most, it's a bit of a balancing act, something to build up to I don't think the yelling and screaming should be the whole thing. I don't think that hits as hard. I think you need softer more introspective moments to complement and build up to the moments of explosive catharsis. 

Who are some of your favorite scream vocalists, and do they have any impact on the way more aggressive vocal styles are deployed on this album?

I was really inspired by Jack Senff's vocals from Merchant Ships and Midwest Pen Pals, also stuff like early Pdaddy, Old Gray, and I was listening to a ton of Foxing's self titled when I was writing some of these songs, I was definitely inspired by some of Conor Murphy/Eric Hudson's more aggressive vocal performances throughout Foxing's discography.

Were any of you members of the chess club in high school?

I don't think so? Connor's been reading Gotham Chess' chess book, I've played against Connor and Will before. I'm quite bad.

What is the wisest, most far-sighted plan you have ever carried out, ie When was the last time you were really playing 4D chess?

I bought a cheap mini-van of Facebook marketplace so we could start touring and playing more regional shows. For a while I was like "that was stupid" since it was a really big purchase for me. Since then it's actually been really convenient to have a paid for vehicle thats got a lot of space, even if it is sort of a piece of crap. Getting it cheap and not financing it was the wiser part of that choice.

Who is playing clarinet on "Squids" and what does SpongeBob’s long-suffering neighbor have to do with this track?

That's a Saxophone actually, my buddy Charlie's playing it and you can hear it at the end of Christmas Lights too. Squidward has nothing to do with "Squids" but maybe he should have. I really liked the additional horns/piano we added to the record it filled out a lot more space than I thought it would.

Who is "Michael," and what is it that he is doing that is "Gross"?

I play a game called Balatro, when I started I swore that we'd make the first emo song that had a Balatro reference as it's titled. The title is referencing a card in the game called "Gros Michel" which is in turn referencing the real life thing. The card has an image of a banana on it and using it unlocks a card called "Cavendish." At the end of the day it's a long winded banana reference.

What dirty deeds inspired "Sweaty Palms / Bloody Hands"?

Honestly nothing in particular, I came up with the riff first and knew I wanted the song to be a bit heavier. The imagery of cleaning blood out of a floor came to mind and I leaned into that when writing lyrics.

What are your favorite spectator sports, ie sports that you watch but don't play? Real and/or figurative.

I love baseball! I played when I was really little but I wasn't a very athletic kid. I think it's a well paced game and the dork in me enjoys the stats-heavy side of it. 

The cover art is pretty busy. Are those equations, or are you diagramming a detective show's plot? Please explain what is going on in this image.

This was my thermodynamics midterm that my friend cut up and collaged. I think I got a 70 something on it?

When was the last time you built a sandcastle, and what are you most afraid that the ocean/time will wash away before you are finished with it?

When I was a little kid I saw some older kids making a sand castle on the beach and I asked them to help work on it. I was some single digit age and have no idea how old these other kids might have been but it seemed like an awesome sand castle and I wanted in on it. They let me play with them and I think about it more than you'd think. I think there's a lot of beauty in things being temporary, as much as there is pain. Things can serve a purpose and when their purpose is done they don't need to be around anymore. Relationships, emotions, tv shows, sand castles, there's a lot of pain in endings but there's purpose and beauty in there too. I remember writing that song feeling like people would always get sick of me after a while and none of my relationships would last. Its a sucky feeling but that type of stuff comes and goes, people play a part in your life, and you in theirs, and sometimes when both of you have played your roles you drift apart. You're different because of each other, not just in romantic relationships but all types of relationships with other people, hopefully we make each other better.

Who are your favorite heavy metal bands?

I'm actually not super into heavy metal music, but I grew up on Rammstein and got to see them live the last time they were in the U.S. One of my earliest memories is my dad showing me the music video for "Mein Hertz" brennt and being mildly traumatized. Connor and Gray are really into Metalcore and play some heavy stuff in the van sometimes. "Heavy Metal Chess Club" as a name came from a shared google doc my friends and I had in highschool that was just a list of "things that would make cool band names." I saw "Death Metal Chess Club" in there one day and really liked it, but switched it to "Heavy Metal Chess Club" just because I thought the cadence was better, I liked it with the extra syllable there.

Who are your favorite poets? 

I'm really not well read poets wise. I really like Billy Corgan's lyrics from Smashing Pumpkins, they were probably my biggest influence when I started. Right now I've really enjoyed/connected with Sydney Sprague and Oso Oso's lyrics a lot.

Give me a math equation that you think will stump those reading this interview.

This isn't an equation but here's a problem I remember enjoying working on when I was taking Discrete Math. You have a number p, p is prime, p - 2 and p + 2 are both also prime, Prove that p = 5. If you want a hint, try start dividing prime numbers by 6 and see what happens.

Interview conducted via email on May 28, 2026. 

Keep doing your best. That's what counts. 頑張って!

Interview: Paida

When you're an intergalactic pop sensation, and you come across a planet on the verge of catastrophic ecological and psycho-social collapse, it puts you in a bit of a pickle. You can, of course, whisk yourself away to a solar system better known for its sanity and stability, or you can make landfall and understake an attempt at sensible astral diplomacy- so the story goes, polaris pop idol Paida has shouldered the onus of bringing enlightenment to the rest of us instead of kicking back and sipping sake in a satellite resort orbiting Zatan... regrettably, good samaritans rarely enjoy the fruits of their own labor, but she's making the most of it as any good idol would! Hailing from her crash pad in Space City, Texas, Paida does what she can to bring humanity closer to the stars through her blend of J-pop-inspired hits, infectious enthusiasm, and an eccentric brand of gallows humor. Harbingers of dystopian futures never sounded so delightful! Check out my interview with the ever-invigorating Paida below:

Check out Paida's most recent LP Second Sighting:

Interview: Michael Torres of Beers with Bands

It might shock some of you all to learn this, but I almost never listen to music-related podcasts, and I'm specifically averse to artist interviews. I know, right? Here I am about to plug a podcast where I interview someone, and right out the gate I'm saying, "yeah, I don't listen to this type of 'ish." There is literally only one exception to this, though, and that is Beers with Bands. The reason for this is that Michael Torres has great music tastes and manages to talk to bands I care about. The other reason is that he comes across as a down to earth guy, with no agenda but the love of talking with people who make great music. Points on the board. Man after my own heart. Whenever I look up a DIY band to figure out what their deal is, Michael's already right there, sharing a Hamm's with the dudes on his couch. A suds-soaked shepherd through the sounds of the underground. So, of course, I had to talk to him and see what he's all about! Turns out, Michael is as cool in person as he appears on tape and is twice as fun to share a brew with. We tossed a few back* with some time in February when we talked about his podcast, what albums he has in rotation in his car, and where the best Mexican food in the Twin Cities can be found (hint: it's in a gas station). Check out my interview with Michael of Beers with Bands below:

For more of Michael, check out his YouTube channel.

*I did end up getting drunk during this interview. Hopefully, it's not too distracting for you, my dear, dry and pious listener. 

Interview: Cheem

Photo by Abby Clare

Cheem may be the best band in the world. There really isn't even a contest. Hardworking, original, and friendly af, they're the complete package for any DIY devotees/appreciators/aficionados who recall the intoxicating blend of rock, rap, rap-rock, Swedish-penned mega-pop-hits, and hardcore electronic beats that suffused the flavorful yet perplexingly complex and layered braise of popular music in the late '90s and early '00s- all the stuff that ended up getting exiled to the back of the freezer known as MTV2 and later completely off the table and onto compost heap of MySpace after 2005. Their sound harkens back to a time when there was greater permeability between the underground and what we could deem the mainstream, and in modernizing this sonic mesh of synecdoches and loose ends into a coherent vision that is recognizable and embraced by contemporary fans of underground music, they fill a niche in today's scene that nobody else can. Hopefully, the love they inspire will lift the group to the heights of fame and success that the inspiration and ambition of their sound prophesies as practically inevitable. And if you weren't there when Incubus, Linkin Park, Savage Garden, and the like were churning out singles and iconic, high-concept, top-tier videos, then Cheem can serve as the elder sibling you never had, introducing you to the sounds and styles of decades past and priming you to embrace the next big thing as it comes around the bend- which, in this case, just so happens to be Cheem themselves, and their latest LP, Power Move. Power Move is a follow-up to their breakout LP Guilty Pleasure, a tour de force covered positively on this very blog (and other publications of lesser cultural impact as well), whose momentum is retained and magnified on this latest release. From the vibrant, scratch-textured, and concussive internal tug-of-war of opener "Pivot," to the bust-out and build-up-the-break-down, skate-groove slap of "Gorrilla Glue," to the vaporwave-infused, Caribbean-spiced splash of "Quench," there is nary a dull moment or an inspired idea that goes unrealized on Power Move. Even though the band is currently on tour, vocalist/guitarist/scratch master Skye Holden still found time to parse some interrogatories that I slid his way, and you can read his responses below.

 

Let's set the stage- what does the journey from Guilty Pleasure to Power Move look like? 

We were working on Power Move since before Guilty Pleasure even dropped, the first full band recordings of songs like "Quench" and "Octane" were done in 2021 and a few elements from those sessions did end up making it into the final album.  Aside from that, we tried to stay consistent while working on such a big project behind the scenes so we dropped two EPs, Fast Fashion and Faster Fashion.  We were not expecting them to get so much traction but thanks to that we ended up being in a really good spot to drop a record after a stint of social media success in early 2025.  We kinda expedited the record release for that reason and went in on finishing it.

Why was Power Move selected as the title for your latest release?

The original record was 18 tracks, and that's the version that is being released as Power Move: Victory Lap.  Dropping a statement like that is a power move, in our opinion.  Especially with the range we were trying to showcase across all the songs.

"Pivot" is such an amazing way to start out this album. What is the story behind it? 

"Pivot" was the last song written for the album, it almost didn't make it in time but it was so good I pushed for it to make the tracklist.  It's a song about a relationship becoming one-sided, where one party is trying hard to be communicative and make things work and the other seemingly can't be bothered and is either fine with the dysfunction or just looking for an exit.

Tell me about the features on this Power Move? Why did you choose these artists as creative partners? What is the story?

For the most part they were just artists we crossed paths with playing live who we ended up becoming friends with, it was all very organic.  The only one we haven't met in person is Brazil-based MC Taya, we came across each other via a Twitter account called "crazy ass moments in nu metal history."  We just had a mutual appreciation for each other's work and we knew after hearing her style that we wanted to get her on a heavy song.

Pitchfork gave Guilty Pleasure a rating of 6.9. What rating would you give Pitchfork?

4.20

Objectively, what rating would you give Power Move on a scale of 1-10 and why?

10, it's by far our best work and we're making exactly the kind of music we want to hear.  And if you're not gonna ride for yourself then nobody is.

What is Power Move: Victory Lap and what can people expect from this DLC pack? 

Power Move: Victory Lap is the actual album we wanted to drop.  It's the director's cut.  People can expect even more sides of Cheem that weren't showcased on the initial release and smoother transitions between songs because of the adherence to the original track order.

Not that you were lacking it on earlier albums, but you do sound more confident and comfortable in your skin on this record. Can you tell me how being in a band for as long as you all have contributed to your sense of self as performers and to the kind of music you can make?

The longer you do it the less you care about what other people think and more about how satisfied you feel with the end product that you're working on.  The music becomes less about what you think will do well and more about a sound you wish existed and want to bring into the world.  We also think more about what's gonna be more fun to play live since our live show is such a huge part of what we do.  I think this album has a good mix of experimental studio-oriented tracks and live bangers.  We think it's important to do both because we want to explore every corner of the Cheem sound.

 
I'm loving how deep and rich a lot of the tracks on Power Move are sounding, can you tell me a little about the production choices that went into this release?

There was definitely a conscious decision to make the quieter sections more atmospheric.  There's all kinds of samples and noises buried in the mix here and there that just add a little to the overall feel.  We also included a couple of interlude-esque outros on songs to help bridge the gap between tracks.  I would say the biggest influences in that regard would be trip hop and vaporwave.

Would you still consider yourself Nu-Pop? What are the parameters of this genre? Are there any other bands you would consider Nu-Pop, or Nu-Pop adjacent? 

Absolutely, we are a nu pop band.  It's the genre blending of nu metal but with a more melodic and pop-oriented approach, essentially just incorporating elements of hip-hop, electronic, R&B, Latin, and Caribbean music to the more traditional rock band format with loud guitars and live drums. 

If I had to name some nu pop adjacent bands I would say South Arcade, Cherie Amour, Medekine, Scro, Symposia, and Pink Pool.

At this point in your career, where do you see yourselves as fitting into the larger spectrum of DIY/Emo/Punk music? 

It's tough to say because even though we are pretty DIY (recording, production, mixing, graphic design, etc.) we're at a point where we can't really play house shows anymore.  For us to faithfully put on a show for all the people that want to see us we need a venue that can comfortably and safely accommodate a decent amount of people and a nice loud sound system.  That said, we try to keep the DIY ethos in mind and we do keep up with what's happening in that scene to some extent.  I think people have finally stopped classifying us as emo though.

Say some nice things about John and the rest of the Lonely Ghost crew. 

Lonely Ghost is a great label to be on for a DIY band because they do their best to let you just do your own thing and accommodate that into their release schedule.  They never said no to our ideas, and they really believe in the future of innovative and unique music.  Great people operating a pretty busy label purely for the love of the game.

Is ska due for a comeback?

If you mean in the mainstream then yeah, I'd like to see a modern pop take on ska.  If Olivia Rodrigo or Pinkpantheress dropped a ska-infused song I think that would be sick and probably wouldn't sound like any ska we've heard before.  I think reimagining the production choices while maintaining the core identity of the genre is the only chance it has to get a big break again.

What's the best thing someone has ever written about your band, and why did you like it so much? 

Angel Marcloid (aka Fire-Toolz aka Mindspring Memories) mastered our new record and she sent us an email telling us how much she liked the album and why and all the things she said really rang true with what we set out to do with this album.  We really enjoy and respect her work so it meant a lot to hear.

What is the ideal piece of coverage that a music publication (not saying Nu Metal Agenda, but not not saying them either) could do for your band that would help your career right now? Put another way, what is the value/role of music journalism from your perspective in this day and age?

Truth be told I don't know how many people are reading music publications nowadays.  I think it would have to be a pretty huge publication to move the needle in any meaningful way.  For us music interviews are just about getting a chance to express ourselves and our intentions in detail for the passionate fans that care enough to dig deep.

How is your current tour going? What dates/cities are you most excited about?

Our past couple tours have been incredible, more sold out shows than not which is a good sign.  Our last Brooklyn show and the festival Burn Bright (Editor's note: I was there!)were two particular highlights.

What are the best albums from the late '90s/early '00s ('97-'04), and what about them inspires you? 

You picked a great era so I'll keep it to 5 records.

Transistor by 311, it's 21 tracks of the band at their most experimental and the production was mind-blowing to me the first time I listened to it.

Celebrity by NSYNC, it has really strong pop hooks and incorporates UK garage, breakbeat, and hip-hop production.  There isn't even another song I can think of that sounds like "Do Your Thing" (the closing track) which is a pretty cool achievement for a boy band.

Sol-Fa by Asian Kung-Fu Generation, this is how pop punk should have evolved in the West but never did.  This is an example of what you can do when you're inspired by a genre but not tethered by nostalgia.  (Their 2008 album World World World is an even better example of this.)

Get Rich or Die Tryin' by 50 Cent, this was one of the first hip-hop records I fell in love with as a little kid.  Track for track it's so good.  I always love when a rapper has a great flow but also a sense of melody, like a lot of these songs don't have a featured singer on the chorus but they still have hooks you can sing along to.

Meteora by Linkin Park, I don't even need to get into this one.  A lot of people probably prefer Hybrid Theory but as someone who has probably listened to both records a thousand times this is the one that comes out on top, if only by a little.

What is an influence on your group that has never come up in an interview before, or that no one has been able to pinpoint in a review of your music?

The Hives, I've listened to their first four albums so many times.  I accidentally straight up stole a Hives lyric in "Nano." (Editor's note: Good artists borrow, great artists steal!) And our song "Motorola Razr" was originally a GarageBand file called "hives beat" because of the drums and percussion in the chorus.

When are you starting an official fan club, and what can people expect as far as exclusive merch and events from such an organization? 

We kinda tried to do that with a program called CheemQuest but we've been insanely busy and haven't been able to update it.  We'll probably go back to doing that but also maybe starting a more straightforward street team based out of our discord.

I've heard Cheem is a romantic sort of group and/or for lovers, describe to me your perfect date.

Picking up good food to eat at home and watching a really good show or playing a really good video game.  If you want a less introverted answer I would probably say a beach day but that's not really on the table for the vast majority of the year where we're from.

What recommendations do you have for fans who want to take a date to a Cheem show? 

DM us on Instagram and tell us to pretend to know you so you can impress your date.

What are your signature combos and/or finishing moves?

All of our combos involve complicated polyrhythms between buttons so no one has actually ever executed one before.  For our finishing move we combine into a Voltron/Megazord like entity and annihilate our foes with a beam sword called the Cheem sword.

What are your favorite game OSTs and how do they contribute to the Cheem repertoire? 

I think games like the first three Mario Bros, Wario Land 4, and Pokemon Colosseum subconsciously influenced my melodic and rhythmic sensibilities because I played them so much as a child.  A few highlights from soundtracks I got into later in life would be Katamari Damacy, Danganronpa, Earthbound, and the Ape Escape games.  Anytime I hear a cool production touch in a video game song I always think about how I can incorporate it into Cheem.  I think it also inspires me to utilize unconventional instruments outside of the actual makeup of the band, stuff like strings, woodwinds, extra percussion, etc.

What games are you playing now? 

The only game I'm really playing right now is Doubutsu no Mori e+ (Japanese exclusive Animal Crossing game) to help me work on learning Japanese.  I did just finish the Xenoblade Chronicles trilogy though.

If Cheem were an acronym, what would each letter stand for?

Cool Hard Extreme Exquisite Music

Photo by Abby Clare

Cheem you later space cowboy!

Interview: Cocojoey

Born on a whim and sailing through tragedy, Chicago's experimental sound cub and maximalist melodist Cocojoey hangs off the ledge of infinity's crest while netting the fractured crystals of the universe in outstretched palms on their Hausu Mountain debut, a digi-orchestral odyssey, concisely and informatively titled, simply Stars. They also make some hella wacky music- in a good way, in a fun way, in a sort of serious and enlightening way too. In another place, in another time, it would not be far-fetched to imagine Russell Mael or Dr. Demento leaping over each other to present Joey with pathfinding mentorship and formulative counsel- alas, in our forlorn era Joey may have only the distant spheres of atomic combustion to illuminate and gird their bearings (ok, so there is Doug and Max too, but let's be real, not all viable advice can be boiled down to Phish metaphors). Even in the swirling void of our present-day cultural miasma, these seemingly insignificant pinpricks of burning lights align in a constellation of ebullient steps for Joey, with the cosmos extending like the playfield of a pinball machine, attending to their quicksilver as they parlay impulses into a responsive material reality, simultaneously generating conductive flashes of joy and blissful energy in a tumbling accumulation of ephemeral fortune accelerated by a boundless sense of presence, that seeps into gaps of despair and terraforms them into dens of accentuated recognition. If any of this sounds intriguing to you, and I hope it does, then check out my interview with Cocojoey below, for a glimpse into their inner world:

Note that this interview was done in the fall of 2025, hence Joey's comments about what they planned to do over the winter (2026). I meant to release this interview in December (2025), but due to work, the holidays, travel, health stuff, and a lot of me just being me, its drop date got pushed back. Maybe Joey can write a distrack about my lack of time management. I would welcome the creative feedback. 

Check out Stars below and visit Hausu Mountain for more cool records. 

Interview: Post-Trash + 2025 Recap

You get through your first full week of 2026? Good! Glad the year hasn't killed you yet (not for a lack of trying, I'm sure). Before you finally kiss 2025 goodbye and drop it in the dustbin of history, take a look back with Dan and Pat of Post-Trash and myself as we chat about some of our favorite albums of the past year. 

If you don't already know, Post-Trash is an incredible resource for underground and alternative music coverage with a flexible coverage philosophy and a genuine openness to fresh critical voices. I used to contribute to Post-Trash back when I was just starting my illustrious music writing career (pause for applause/laughter/rain of rotten vegetables), and I'm forever thankful for Dan being willing to give a hopeless weirdo like me a chance to air out his errant opinions. 

Listen to the conversation here:

Albums covered in this episode (in order of appearance): 

Grace Rogers - Mad Dogs

Nyxy Nyx - Cult Classics Vol. I

Hiver & Jason Koth - Offers

Danny Brown - Stardust

Prewn - System

Wombo - Danger in Fives

Militarie Gun - God Save The Gun

Hedonist - Scapulimancy

Interview: Why Bother?

In this episode of the I Thought I Heard A Sound Podcast, Terry of Mason City's Why Bother? explains to me over the phone why he and his band don't play live and why he doesn't care what you think of their music. Also, he talks a little about the Return of the Living Dead soundtrack, which is a rad film, and I was happy to hear him give it some love. I'm not going to try to sell you too hard on this one. It's either you get Why Bother?, or you don't. This conversation was recorded via my cellphone, so the audio quality isn't as good as I'd prefer it to be, but you can still hear Terry pretty clearly, and I kind of like all the muffled, scratchy sounds that come through over the receiver. It is what it is. Interview is below: 

Why Bother?'s most recent album Case Studies is out on Feel It Records.

Interview & Track-By-Track: Scarlet Street

Image courtesy of We're Trying Records

                                      

It's not Halloween anymore, but I figured I'd still share a creepy episode from the annals of my life. A little while ago, I received a padded envelope in the mail postmarked as having been sent by an OmniDyneGlobal... no return address. Weird, right? But I guess if Amazon can find me at this address, really, anyone can. So I open the package, and out spills a CDR with "Scarlet Street - No Alternative: Promotional Use Only! WILL EXPLODE IF COPIED!" printed on it in a strange metallic ink that seems to change color every time I look at it, and a shock-collar, presumably meant for a large animal. I say presumably because when I looked inside the envelope to see if anything else was inside, I also found a grainy, xeroxed photo of the streamer Hasan Piker. At least, I think that's who it is. His features look so distorted, and the ink on the paper smears easily. And there are his eyes. There is something very uncanny about the expression in "Hasan's" eyes... like he can actually see me through the paper- or at least something behind me... On the back of the photo was a pasted-together message made of various cutouts from tabloid headlines reading: DO IT RIGHT OR WE'LL EXILE YOU TO THE DOG HOUSE. PERMANENTLY. Below this message was a URL, printed in the same color-shifting metallic ink as that on the CDR. Despite the ominous nature of the contents of this package, combined with the fact that I don't get a lot of mail anymore, I was understandably curious. I also had the weekend free (for once oh my god a weekend where I don't have to work basically unheard of), so I did what any sane person would do: I typed in the URL into a browser, and without a VPN or a rational care in the world, hit enter on my laptop keyboard. The URL took me to a private portal where I used a previously overlooked username and password that had been written on the CDR with a laser or something (I could only see it if I held it at the right angle). This took me to a chat server where I connected with someone who identified themselves as "Ben from Scarlet Street." As we chatted via short messages throughout the afternoon, I listened to the CDR I had been sent on a USB optic drive, as "Ben" revealed to me many disturbing and malignant facets of reality that lay hidden beneath the assumptions and illusions that undergird the economy, the political system of our country, and our way of life. The following is a semi-coherent transcript of what I was able to piece together from what was revealed to me during this conversation. I share it with you now in the hope that you can make more sense of it than I can and avoid the seemingly inexorable fate that most of the population will only become wise to when it is far too late to avert total calamity. May god have mercy on our souls.

The following interview was ACTUALLY conducted over email in September of 2025. It has only been lightly edited and reformatted from its original contents.

Is there an overall theme to your LP No Alternative? 

When we wrote this album, an election was starting, colleges across the country were protesting, rhetoric about dictatorship was ramping up, and we were seeing AI proliferate across social media and into every aspect of life. All of this had us asking ourselves how we got to this point and why things had to be this way, could there possibly be any hope of things getting better? To sort of make sense of all of it there were a few books we read, one of them being particularly relevant was Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? by Mark Fisher. It really reinforced our sort of pessimistic idea of; there is no alternative to modern life, that choice has been taken away from us all. This is all happening by design. None of this was by accident.

The cover for No Alternative is gorgeous! Where was that photo taken? What is in these murals? 

Detroit, Michigan. The Main Branch of the Detroit Public Library, 2nd floor. The mural is called Man’s Mobility and it was created in the early ‘60s, it depicts 3 eras in Detroit; 1855, 1905, and 1965, showing Detroit and America’s progress in technology. I think it really depicts a prevailing thought that was once true; Technology and Science will solve all of mankind’s problems. There’s an optimism here that never came true, it’s depicting a future that never happened.

I know you're big Blink-182 fans, and I can still hear some of their influences here, but it also feels like you're leaning more into the grungier aspects of your sound with this record. Why did that feel like the right move for this material?

We’re influenced by so many bands and sounds. I do think it’s purely coincidence that some of these songs land on a grunge style, but I think that’s because there’s a lot of angst and anger behind the lyrics and it simply comes out in the music. There’s a lot for us to be angry about right now.

Image courtesy of We're Trying Records

Do you think there are any inherent overlaps between emo and grunge music? Where are the gelling points for these two styles in your mind?

They’re both styles of music that are very emotion-forward, I think Sunny Day Real Estate is the best example of that crossover. There’s a lot of frustration in both genres, just different time periods. In the 90s there was a lot of frustration around boredom, meaninglessness and leading a bland life. I think in the 2020s the frustration is watching a society with no one at the wheel, doomed to watch a dystopian nightmare day after day while the populous numbs itself. I also think bands like Nirvana sort of poked fun at the same aspects of modern society we poke fun at; the white picket fences and suburban lifestyles that seem cognitively dissonant to reality, where a world running out of resources wants to sell you bigger homes and bigger trucks.

What is the deal with the Bear v Shark callout on the opening track? Are you trying to start some beef with them, or do you genuinely think bears and sharks can cohabitate?

It’s actually a reference to a Space Ghost Coast to Coast episode, and thought it was a fun nod to a lot of the song titles we had on the last album. But also Bears and Sharks being scummy finance people.

It's excellent to hear how you are expanding your sound with tracks like "Victory Speech" and "Palo Alto." It sounds like you've been listening to a lot of Failure or even Deftones while writing this record, with how bleak and claustrophobically spacey they are. Can you give some insights into how/why you attempted to cultivate a consistent sense of crushing atmosphere on this album?

We’ve always listened to bands and albums that have a very desolate, crushing feeling to it, but until this album we’ve never really had the confidence to take that on. We really approached this album with the thought of “What if this was the last thing we ever got to record?” and decided to shoot for the moon. We just really wanted to make a complete artistic statement.

How do you feel as though your sound has evolved between your debut and No Alternative, and what direction do you hope to take it in the future?

We wanted to make a darker record that spoke to people who felt like everything around us is going wrong and wanted something that sonically was a bit of a deeper listen. I only see us going further on the next one. This is a dense record, we packed a lot into this 32 minutes, I think we try to make the next more cinematic, more ambitious, more experimental. We’re probably going to take this sounds and go further with it, this one feels more like a “Scarlet Street” record than anything else we’ve ever done and we want to chase that feeling.

What do you hope is the big takeaway from this album for listeners (besides, "Wow, that ruled!")?

I want people to see this as a reflection of the social and political climate we’re in now. I want to make the people who feel like everything is falling apart feel seen. There’s a lot of people out there who don’t feel like there’s music that speaks to the moment that’s happening right now, and we wanted this music to do just that. We simply made an album we want to listen to, if people are on our wavelength, all the better.

For your further vindication and pleasure, please enjoy this track-by-track breakdown of the band's new album No Alternative. 

"BEARS & SHARKS: NATURE’S BEST FRIENDS"
We wanted to show immediately to everyone that we weren’t fucking around with this album.
From the get go this was going to be the album opener because it set the tone with all the angst
and frustration we are feeling with the systems of the world. We feel trapped, and sometimes it
feels like the only way out is to simply die by the 2 things the powers that be love the most;
Guns or Drugs.

"VICTORY SPEECH"
This is the other side of the situation; it’s the ticker tape parade of those in power gloating about
how well the deck is stacked. Once again, we just came right out with showing off the heavier
sound we’d been working on. The chorus comes from this part in the book The Chaos Machine
by Max Fisher, where the overwhelming majority of start ups in Silicon Valley are pumped full of
money by venture capitalists in the hopes that one of them will be the next Facebook or Oracle
or Palantir. If they don’t pan out it doesn’t matter, what’s a couple billion dollars? This is one of our
favorite songs to play live simply because of how much ground it covers between the spacey
verses, screaming choruses and the final breakdown.

"WARNING SOUNDS"
Every day the world feels like it’s going to collapse, and every day you’re still suppose to clock in
and go to work. I’ve always had a tough time staying focused when particularly gloomy world
events are happening, and yet it seems like co-workers have no problem just shrugging off
impending fascism. For me, I’ll simply never be able to turn those sirens in the back of my head
off, I guess I’m glad others can. That’s what this song is about. We really took a liking to Prawn
and Signals Midwest on this. Just wanted to show off gloominess without heft for once.

"DRINKS ON THE HOUSE / PALO ALTO"
We really just wanted to write something brainlessly heavy and when we threw on the fuzz pedal
and played this, it just sounded right. It’s a song about being completely brain dead while
scrolling all day long. I’m very cautious about social media use, I think it’s a really good tool to
numb the populous into just being content instead of getting up off their ass and doing
something, hopefully that doesn’t sound too self-righteous, but I think we all need to take a
minute and ask ourselves if this shit is actually improving our lives in a meaningful way or if it’s
just something we’re all collectively addicted to. Anyway, the post-chorus “You’re sick inside your
brain/And we can take away the pain” is my little version of a quote from Capitalist Realism;
“You’re sick because of you’re brain chemistry. We can fix you with our SSRI’s” - Essentially
casting off the fact that everyone is constantly mentally ill as being a fault of the individual
instead of the root cause being; this world is literally mentally torture. Fun fact; I wrote this song
while trying to learn "Snag" by Cheem.*

*Editor's note: That is a fun fact! 

"HAIL"
I went down a lot of rabbit holes and read a lot of non-fiction while writing this album, and one of
the most influential was probably The Storm Is Here: An American Crucible by Luke Mogelson, it
recounts the lead up to January 6th and protests during the pandemic. I feel like we’ve all
collectively moved on from January 6th without learning a single lesson. But anyway, I think
there was something so dark and twisted about the people who just mindlessly decided to join
this death cult on the far-right, like they felt compelled to take matters into their own hands at the
cost of everything. That scares me. That keeps me up at night, and I really think it should keep
everyone else up, too. That’s what this song is about; those who are willing to kill their fellow
humans over things made up by bots in memes and videos on the internet. All Hail The Line, All
Hail The Hook. This song was originally split off from the 1st incantation of “CORPORATE
MEMPHIS” actually, but our producer thought it was a little weird, so the verse from that became
the bulk of this song, and the chorus from "CORPORATE MEMPHIS" became the verses.

"MIDCENTURY MODERN WHOLESALE FURNITURE"
This whole track spawned from a real-life occurrence of hellish, Black Mirror-esque serendipity
that I’m sure people think I made up, but I use to have this Samsung phone that had Bixby

(Samsung’s equivalent to Siri) and one day I set an alarm in the middle of the day for something,
and when the alarm went off, instead of a chime or bell, it played the Bixby assistant reciting the
headlines of the day. This was mid-2020 and of course every headline was the worst news you
had ever heard. It stuck with me for years, and I wanted to make something that reminded me of
that. We set out to make a sort of funeral march of headlines, and we wanted it to build up and
sound like what it feels to just take in every bit of horror that the human condition has to endure.
This song had somewhere north of 50 tracks, easily the most dense recording we’ve ever made.
We tried to make it as symbolic as possible, as well. Almost every headline is real, except for 3
or 4 because we wanted to symbolize the fact that with as much misinformation as there is you
can literally never tell what’s real and what’s fake. Even the ending “No rain in the forecast”
symbolizes that there’s no relief coming. We titled the song after one of our favorite Instagram
profiles, (now goes by doomscroll_forever) - it felt apt.

"THE STORM IS HERE"
I was inspired by the poem “First They Came...” - I really despise the state of activism in
America right now, where it seems like posting on social media is the beginning and end of the
lengths in which people are willing to go to stop literal fascism and genocide from occurring, it’s
all so performative. This song is a critique on people who do that. While people post that they
stand against something and do nothing else, others are being rounded up in the country and
other countries and killed. The music on this track is one of the oldest on the whole album, it
actually predates our first album, and we almost used it on the first one, but it felt too heavy and
slow to make sense. I really think it found its place perfectly there.

"CORPORATE MEMPHIS"
This came out of complete frustration with the music industry. It really feels like there are a
million hurdles in the way of doing anything successfully in music, and there are a million-and-
one people who are willing to take your money from you. It feels overwhelming and like a
completely uphill struggle. There are so many times between the last album and this album
we’ve felt like hanging it up and calling it a quits simply because there’s always someone who
wants to leech off you, and yet there’s always someone who’s success is completely
undeserved. This was the first song we finished in the studio, and I think it’s really when it
became clear we weren’t the same band we were from the Self-titled album; we really went with
the big guitars and screamed vocals, and it was so much goddamn fun to do it, and it probably
shows.

"EASY DECISIONS"
I think just about anyone reading this has laid awake at night, worried about paying rent or bills.
That’s exactly what I wrote this about; deciding if I should spend the last few dollars I have on
groceries or my electric bill, do I pawn an amp or plead with a friend to borrow a few bucks for
gas? Those are tough decisions. The guitar part is actually the first thing I ever recorded, it’s
nearly 10 years old, but I never found a use for it until this album and I’m so happy it found a
home here, we ran it through a Roland Jazz Chorus and it felt ethereal when we heard it back,
and Gary just kept adding layer after layer on the 2nd half of this song until it became this
blissful wall of sound.

"IT DOESN’T GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS"
In a way this song sums up the previous 10; It has a bit of the sound all the previous ones had,
the lyrics are about how we’re just set up for extinction by technology and unfettered capitalism,
and it ends in a grand finale. We got to use all sorts of beautiful delays and reverbs on this, and
it just rocks hard. We liked it so much we named the album after the lyrics: “No Alternative in
sight, so they’ll exercise their right. There’s no way they got this wrong” - The whole album is
about systems, systems that aren’t failures, but actually working exactly as designed. We’re
overstimulated on purpose, we’re depressed on purpose, we’re numb on purpose.

"THERE WAS A HOLE HERE // IT’S GONE NOW"
This song was almost entirely written by Luke on guitar and bass. It’s so mesmerizing and haunting and we just had to have it on the album, but when it came time to write lyrics for it was so hard to get them right, we kept trying vocal deliveries that were super spacious and minimal, but it didn’t sound right, so Gary suggested we go with something unhinged and crazy, and that’s just what we ended up with. The lyrics are actually some of the most personal on the album, it’s my 2nd hand experience with a mental health emergency I once had with a friend and having to deal with them eventually using police force to take care of the situation. Unfortunately in this country we don’t have a way of helping those in need without sending police in which often makes the situation much worse and I think about having to do that every day. The end of this song is one of my favorite moments on the album. Luke, Gary and I all took turns recording our own version of the solo in the outro, Gary mixed it to taste so what you’re actually hearing is all 3 of us playing the solo at different moments.

They did it again, folks. We're Trying Records has put out another banger. It's like the label's name is deliberate misdirection. They can't all be this good, can they? Bra, I'm glad I'm not just dreamin' these records up. They're real and available at participating retailers, and by that I mean Bandcamp.