The Alternative

The Alternative Weekly Roundup is a column where our staff plugs a variety of new releases in a concise, streamlined format. Albums, singles, videos, and live sets. Check back each Monday to see what we were jamming the week prior.

Beach Bunny – “Oxygen”

Beach Bunny’s Blame Game EP from this January displayed a newfound confidence from front woman Lili Trifilio, and the project’s newest single continues that. “Oxygen” is breezy and self-assured, a fuller-throated version of the saccharine power pop of last year’s Honeymoon.

Oxygen by Beach Bunny

Zac Djamoos | @yrdeeprest

Arlen Gun Club – “Clueless”

After releasing two rocking EPs of catchy, fun indie punk last year, it looks like Arlen Gun Club might be gearing up for a full-length with the release of “Clueless,” an absolute ripper of a pop-punk tune. It’s packed with crunchy palm-muted chords, sick guitar solos, and slacker lyrics like the refrain of “I never really know what’s going on.” Anyone who loves the new Jail Socks record should hit play on “Clueless” immediately.

Aaron Eisenreich | @slobboyreject

Chastity – “Somersault”

“You smashed a pumpkin,” goes the first line of Chastity’s newest single “Somersault.” The lyric is seasonally appropriate, but the rest of the song is a bit brighter than typically fall music. It follows nicely from last year’s standalone “Drain the Bloodbath,” a more orchestrated take on the bright indie rock of the project’s last full-length, the underrated Home Made Satan.

Zac Djamoos | @yrdeeprest

Anxious – “In April”

Where early Anxious material mirrored the full throated post-hardcore of Title Fight’s breakout collection The Last Thing You Forget, their newest single “In April” strives for the glistening emo pop that would dominate the scene for much of 2000s. Singer Grady Allen in particular shows more of a range, mostly abandoning his patented scream and instead uses his more tuneful singing voice. That change combined with tighter pop songwriting results in one of the band’s best and catchiest songs to date.

Little Green House by ANXIOUS

Hugo Reyes  | @hvreyes5

Scratchy Blanket – “Bloom”

Scratchy Blanket’s new track “Bloom” finds the group with a fuzzier and darker vibe than last year’s Something for Everyone and it’s a sound that fits them perfectly. As expected, there’s some killer guitar work here, at times seeming deceptively simple before you realize there are three of four different intricate lines working together to create the sound. The song takes a turn at around three minutes with vocalist Shannon Keating repeating, “The memory / the feeling / of loving someone” over increasingly tense instrumentation. Check out the eerie video directed by Reese Hayes below.

Aaron Eisenreich | @slobboyreject

Parannoul / Asian Glow / sonhos tomam conta – Downfall of the Neon Youth

Downfall of the Neon Youth is a split that just makes sense. Parannoul, Asian Glow, and sonhos tomam conta deal in very similar brands of bedroom shoegaze, with each having a particular strength, and these styles gel together extremely well. It makes Downfall of the Neon Youth feel like a real cohesive album, a full statement piece meant to be experienced as one. The flashes of indietronica serve to highlight better the crushing blackgaze that follows, which works well to set up the noise pop and so on. It’s daring, it’s ambitious, and it’s a glimpse into the future of indie rock.

Zac Djamoos | @yrdeeprest

Suntitle – “Royal Blue”

“Royal Blue,” the third single out off Suntitle’s upcoming grungy rocker In a Dream, reflects the rest of the album well as it blends and mixes genres to come out with a unique and rewarding sound. Elements of punk, hardcore, and ‘90s-inspired rock all show up here alongside a catchy, straightforward chorus that becomes more complex and layered each time around. Check it out and get lost in the wave of guitars.

Aaron Eisenreich | @slobboyreject

Slow Crush – Hush

Slow Crush is one of the best bands in the wildly oversaturated shoegaze game, and that’s mostly because their music barely sounds like it was made by humans. Loveless really set the bar for the genre in terms of music that sounds way, way past anything humanity would be capable of creating, and while Slow Crush’s new LP Hush doesn’t sound like MBV’s masterpiece, it’s got a similar spirit. It’s got a near mechanical precision to it, a richness that feels both crushing and comforting. Above all, it’s got guitar tones so wild as to sound nearly alien – in the best way.

Zac Djamoos | @yrdeeprest

The Alternative’s ‘New Music Friday’ playlist

Each week our editor Lindsy Carrasquillo compiles a playlist of songs our staff has been jamming. We’ll post it on Fridays on Twitter and then include it in each edition of the ‘Weekly Roundup’ to make sure you don’t miss all of the great music we’re recommending.

The Alternative is ad-free and 100% supported by our readers. If you’d like to help us produce more content and promote more great new music, please consider donating to our Patreon page, which also allows you to receive sweet perks like free albums and The Alternative merch.

Mannequin Pussy have had quite the tour this year. With almost all of their gear stolen at their Ohio date, the band had to make do with donated gear and clothes. However, they didn’t let this get them down. Their music still held that punk spirit and energy that was even more fueled by that event. With lead singer, Marisa, even doing a spoken-word-esque interlude in the middle of their set. With support from Angel Du$t and Pinkshift, the show certainly was the antithesis of lackluster. Sarah was there at Bowery Ballroom taking photos, check them out.

Pinkshift

Angel Du$t

Mannequin Pussy

Photos by Sarah Knoll

The Alternative is ad-free and 100% supported by our readers. If you’d like to help us produce more content and promote more great new music, please consider donating to our Patreon page, which also allows you to receive sweet perks like free albums and The Alternative merch.

  Today, Toronto’s Charlotte Cornfield releases her new album Highs in the Minuses on Polyvinyl Records and Double Double Whammy. Highs in the Minuses is a move toward full band arrangements, and lets Cornfield’s confessional, stream of consciousness writing style play out like thrown-off thoughts that just had to come out. It runs the gambit from sweet, emotionally affecting tales like “Partner in Crime” to upbeat, indie rock jams like “Headlines.” It’s a record that feels one of a kind and reflects the intent and artistry of the musician that created it in every note. If you’re reading this interview, be sure to give it a listen. 

You have a new album coming out in October, called Highs in the Minuses. Can you tell me a little about how this record came together?

In March of 2020 I was at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, working on a batch of songs that I hoped would morph into the next record. My residency there was cut short because of the pandemic, so I ended up back home in Toronto with a lot of time on my hands. I got into this deep writing model mode, reflecting on my life and relationships, my teenagehood and childhood, my early music days in Montreal. I dove fully into working on the songs, and then as they took shape I went over to my friend Sam Gleason’s studio to demo them. Once I felt really good about the songs and arrangements I booked some studio time with Howard Bilerman at hotel2tango in Montreal. I called up my friends Ali Levy (Ada Lea) and Liam O’Neill (Suuns) to play bass and drums on the album. I’ve known them both for a long time and I really felt like together we would be able to capture the emotion and the immediacy of the songs. We recorded the album over a 5 day stretch in Aug-Sept. 2020, and everyone knocked it out of the park. Sam came from Toronto to add some pizazz at the overdub stage, and Amy Millan from Stars sang a beautiful backing vocal on the song “21.” Howard Bilerman and his assistant Shae Brossard were so great to work with. I felt like we were all on the same wavelength. When everything was tracked I brought the tunes to Steve Chahley to mix, and he did a really amazing job of maintaining the rawness and immediacy of the takes while also making it sound great. 

What does the record’s title mean to you?

At its core it’s a Canadian weather joke, ‘cause when the highs are in the minuses it means it’s really cold out. But I like that it can also be a metaphor for finding moments of magic and respite and relief in difficult times. I feel like at its core that’s what this record is for me.

Your last album, The Shape of Your Name, was not necessarily stripped down — the arrangements are just as intricate as they are on this new one — but it was a more solo effort. For this record, you have collaborators like the wonderful Ada Lea and Liam O’Neill. What made you decide to go that route this time?

The Shape of Your Name was recorded in fits and starts over a 3 year period. There was so much thought put into every little sonic detail on that record, and I’m really proud of how it turned out. But I was in a deeply melancholic and semi-depressed state while making that album, and you can hear it in the songs. I knew I wanted to do the opposite on this record, just put a band in a room and not overthink it. Especially after spending months alone working on the songs, I was really craving the chemistry and spontaneity of playing them live with other people. I wanted that emotional immediacy and rawness to come through. 

The single “Headlines” alludes to a feeling of anxiety. It’s not stated explicitly, but I can’t help but hear some of these lines as reactions to the early COVID lockdown period. Is this what you’re pointing to, or is it more general? 

I was in a bit of an anxious state before COVID, feeling like I was spinning my wheels a bit, and when the pandemic hit that feeling was just heightened and it all of a sudden felt like a universal sentiment. It’s a song about being geographically and emotionally stuck, unable to move forward, and that was just the mood of early lockdown. Maybe that’s a bit of a roundabout way of answering the question but I guess when I sat down to write that song I just wrote what was on my mind, and that included the verse about lockdown specifically. But I do feel like the song exists outside of that as well.

  Highs in the Minuses by Charlotte Cornfield

  A lot of your songs have this almost stream-of-consciousness quality to the lyrics, where you’re telling a story in a way that doesn’t feel strictly planned, but more like how people actually tell stories. Who are some of your inspirations, and do you think they play a role in your writing style?

On this record in particular the writing feels very conversational and off the cuff to me, and I think that came from listening to a lot of writers who are loose and generous with their words and phrasing, like Arthur Russell, David Berman, Elliott Smith, Elyse Weinberg, Yo La Tengo, Stephin Merritt, even Joni Mitchell. I’ve always been a little wordy but on these tunes I tried not to self edit as much. It felt like things were more potent that way. And I think because I wasn’t seeing people other than my partner very much while working on this music, I spent a lot of time with certain records getting to a level of familiarity where they felt like old friends. I find what I listen to always affects what I write, even if it’s indirectly.

Your new single “Partner in Crime” is incredibly sweet and has a music video inspired by Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket. Are you an especially big fan of Anderson, and if so, what is your favorite movie of his? 

I’m not a huge film buff in general, so I wouldn’t call myself a megafan, but I’ve watched all of Wes Anderson’s movies, except for Fantastic Mr. Fox I think. There are so many aspects of his work that I find delightful: the colours, the characters, the humour. The Royal Tenenbaums is my all-time favourite. It really resonated with me when I saw it the first time, and I’ve watched it so many times since. It’s a classic.

What do you most hope listeners take away from this record?

I just hope this record can be a companion for people, and that the songs resonate and ring true for folks. That’s all you can hope for I guess.

What are you listening to these days? Are there any records you’re really excited about?

 Ada Lea who played bass on this record just put out a stunning new album called “one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden.” I’ve been listening to that a lot. And the new Dorothea Paas album “Anything Can’t Happen” is so great as well. Cedric Noel, who is another amazing Montreal artist, is also putting out an incredible record soon. I’ve been listening to his music a bunch. And I’ve been revisiting “69 Love Songs” by the Magnetic Fields. The writing and performances on that record just blow me away.

–

Eric Bennett | @violet_by_hole

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It’s October once again, and you know what that means, it’s horror movie time. Nothing beats a Fall night on the couch scared silly by a great film, but let’s be honest, all horror movies are not created equal, and nothing is worse than wasting your time on a movie sucks. That’s why every year in October, we recommend our favorite scary movies and horror tv series, so you can watch and enjoy!

We have some silly fun Halloween movies for those of you who are a little too soft for slashers, some underrated gems for horror diehards, and also some pure nightmare fuel for when you really need a scare. This year we have also added a Scare Meter, that lets you know what level of terror you’re really getting into. Check the guide below.

Go Directly To : 1 SKULL – 2 SKULLS – 3 SKULLS – 4 SKULLS – 5 SKULLS – ALL FILMS

Check back throughout the month because we will be updating it with a ton more great films for your October.

MORE COMING SOON…

The Alternative is ad-free and 100% supported by our readers. If you’d like to help us produce more content and promote more great new music, please consider donating to our Patreon page, which also allows you to receive sweet perks like free albums and The Alternative merch.

It isn’t hard to see why Kitner has captured The Alt’s heart. With the rock’n’roll bombast of Titus Andronicus, the pristine melodicism of The Get Up Kids, and the tremulous sincerity of Bright Eyes, the band’s debut Shake the Spins has a winning combination. It’s a melting pot of influences, for sure, but the end result is a record that feels wholly its own.

We’re excited to premiere today the campy horror movie of a music video for the band’s track “Suddenly,” one of the best cuts off Shake the Spins. It’s a great introduction to the band’s indie-punk-Americana style, and it’s seasonally appropriate to boot. Check that out below, and scroll a little more to find the band’s upcoming tour dates.

On tour with Bad Bad Hats

10/29 – Concord, NH

10/30 – Keene, NH

10/31 – Boston, MA

Shake the Spins is out now via Relief Map Records.

—

Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison

The Alternative is ad-free and 100% supported by our readers. If you’d like to help us produce more content and promote more great new music, please consider donating to our Patreon page, which also allows you to receive sweet perks like free albums and The Alternative merch.

Small Albums is our friendly neighborhood “Ant on Helium writing Music Reviews.” Look all we know is, they have great taste and write fun insightful reviews in a single line. So of course we brought them in to do a column on our site called The Smallternative where they can do what they do best, recommend music.

Below are 10 new reviews of some incredible recent releases in Small Album’s minimalist style. Enjoy.

1. Brett Naucke – Mirror Ensemble (American Dreams Records)

Mirror Ensemble by Brett Naucke

A microwave oven made from sticks and leaves and a few fossils in a grove of trees that grow like vines.

2. Nilufur Yanya – Inside Out (ATO RECORDS)

Inside Out by Nilufer Yanya

The spaces in between the steam rising over the city.

3. Deleted Flowers – Heidi

heidi by deleted flowers

A koi fish made from aluminum foil swimming around in a circle of ice, frozen to the bottom of a tin trash can.

4. Matt Robidoux – At Dust (Already Dead Tapes)

at dust by Matt Robidoux

The blank broth begins boiling and rolling until purple geometric shapes begin to surface and slowly stretch into tiny land shapes.

5. Roseville – Something About a Fig Tree

something about a fig tree by Roseville

The color drains from the fire and the white flames flicker like loose leaf paper trying to reach the clouds.

6. Kitner – Shake The Spins (Relief Map Records)

Shake The Spins by Kitner

A tarnished silver tray of black and blue marbles balancing next to a preheating stove.

7. Shannon Lay – Geist (Sub Pop)

Geist by Shannon Lay

Along the walls of the ancient castle, magazine pictures of open fields with no focal points, hang perfectly.

8. Efterklang – Windflowers (City Slang)

Windflowers by Efterklang

Two lavender moons rolling across the dryness of an endless desert until they meet and barely collide for a moment.

9. W.H. Lung – Vanities

Vanities by W. H. Lung

Armoires with legs like leopards moving in squares around an ever expanding room.

10. Son Step – New Ears

new ears by Son Step

Standing on your driveway watching everyone down the street leaning coral panels against the walls of their homes and you’re the only one that doesn’t know why.

_

All reviews and recommendations by:

SMALL ALBUMS / @SMALLALBUMS on Twitter

The Alternative is ad-free and 100% supported by our readers. If you’d like to help us produce more content and promote more great new music, please consider donating to our Patreon page, which also allows you to receive sweet perks like free albums and The Alternative merch.

Photo by Maya Stoner

Mo Troper’s fourth album Dilettante is a sprawling, 28 song patchwork in the spirit of GBV but with the ethos of The Replacements’ Hootenanny and the fuzzy effervescence of The Exploding Hearts (a sound some are deeming “Mo-fi.”) Opening with the audio equivalent of a Big Dog t-shirt (an instrumental nu-metal tribute riff entitled “Total Euphoria”) and careening through a veritable diamond mine of power pop gems ranging from 30 seconds to 3 minute perfection.

I was stoked to chat with Mo about writing and recording Dilettante, adjusting to post-COVID life as an artist, expanding the rigid conservative confines of power pop as a genre, and how The Black Parade is the last self-serious rock opera in the culture.

Dilettante by Mo Troper

The Alternative: Sonically, Dilettante is very of a piece with your earlier, more fuzzy, lo-fi records, but there’s an elevation in the songwriting and you’re trying new things – treading new territory in terms of your approach. You’ve spoken about how Natural Beauty was essentially trying to make a Jellyfish record on a budget. That was definitely your most ornate and arranged record to date. Was Dilettante’s approach a response to that? Or was it just situational – purely how things came about as you were putting together a new record?

Mo Troper: I guess it was both, kind of. I think the entire experience of making Natural Beauty, spending two and a half years on it or whatever, and then finally releasing it like three weeks before COVID. That whole experience…I didn’t really appreciate how deflating that experience was when it was happening. In hindsight, it sucked to put that much time and energy and money into a record and then for the world to basically end. There was a part of me that was like “Well I’m not going to do that again, because God knows what’s going to happen in the future.” It was a response to it in that way. But, like you said, it was also situational. I don’t really wanna spend a lot of time in a studio right now. It was the easiest type of record to make on my own, or mostly on my own.

I was talking to Sonia from Alien Boy about this. We feel like over the course of the pandemic, our friends have either reverted to straight rock, or gotten like super super into modular synthesizer territory. I feel like I went the other way. After not playing music with people for like 14 months, I was like “Fuck!” I wanna be really loud and just rock again. I was thinking about how it would sound live – records like that.

You wanted to take it “Back to the Shack.”

*laughs* Exactly! It wasn’t a conscious return to anything. There are different kinds of records that I like to make, and it’s been a while since I had made a record like this, so I wanted to do that again.

The fact that it’s 28 tracks is obviously a big talking point for the album. It’s front and center in everything that’s been out there about the record. Self-effacingly calling it a “data dump” aside, I think there’s a lot of really great tracks spread throughout the album. I really like how it has this “playlist as album” vibe by design. How many of those songs are songs you had lying around and recorded for this album as a clearinghouse? How much of it was written under quarantine? Was it meant to be this sprawling, GBV-esque journey?

It’s 60% songs I had written over quarantine, and then sort of like 40% stuff I had lying around. What happened is – I had a lot of stuff that I wrote over quarantine. It’s funny because I originally wanted to record an album that was like 15 minutes and it ended up being this thing where it was one or the other. I had a bunch of songs, but there was no soul or a way that connected the songs in a way that I could present them as an album. So I started thinking about doing this approach instead. It was really freeing, because it made me feel like I could unearth a bunch of songs – some of these songs I wrote when I was 18, and finally finished. Or they were recorded really poorly a long time ago, with different lyrics for my first band Your Rival. I had a friend in Portland text me, “‘The Blood Donor in Me’ – finally!” That was a song my high school band played live. There’s a video from 2012 of us playing it at Sound Off! – the Seattle battle of the bands thing. There’s a lot of song sketches that I’ve wanted to do something with for a long time, and I was pretty self conscious about them or didn’t know how to finish them and I finally had an outlet for that. I could just put it out as it is and that would be fine, because that’s how everything on this record is.

That’s really cool! Were the instrumental songs written before or after you came up with the approach for Dilettante?

No, those were old! Those were old riffs that I had lying around that I thought were funny. “Cum on My Khakis” is like a fake screamo song kind of. As soon as I committed to doing this kind of pacing for the album, I was like, “Welp, I can do all this other shit now!” There were some songs that I came up with as I was recording. “Wet T-Shirt Contest” was just a joke I had and I thought I might as well flesh it out and include this on a record.

I love those moments of levity! I mean, right off the bat, you start off the record with a KoRn pastiche. That rocks! I think that’s fucking awesome. You’ve got the horse whinnying sound effect to start “The Expendables Ride Again” – it immediately sets the record on a fun, funny note. If it had been 15 minutes long, it would have been your Tony Molina record – although in some ways this record did end up being your Tony Molina record anyway.

If you do a record that’s like 15 minutes, or sub 20 minutes – every song has to be phenomenal.

I think the batting average on this record is really good – and a lot of the songs are pretty short! They’re just fun little ditties. Stuff like “Sugar & Cream” – it’s such a sweet melody. They’re all cool songs – even though it’s 28 songs, the record still comes out to around 50 minutes long, and it just flies by. You had already recorded and released “The Perfect Song” last year – what made you want to revisit it for this album?

When it was originally written, I had always intended to be record it this way – in a very electric, rock band style. I thought it was a good song and even when I was considering doing a 15 minute record I still wanted to do a re-recording of “The Perfect Song.” I think the experience of practicing – we started to have our first band practices again around the same time I started making this record. “The Perfect Song” was on our set, and we thought it sounded good and good enough to re-record. I wrote “The Perfect Song” with the intention of not singing it. At the beginning of quarantine, I wanted to start a band with some other people. I think I was feeling pretty depressed and wanted something new to focus on instead of having to cancel a tour. Originally Brendan – who plays guitar with me – we were going to start a new band and write the songs but not sing. This Portland musician named Tuesday Faust was going to sing. That was going to be a rock band, but it never materialized. I just wanted to do “The Perfect Song” *the right way.*

Dilettante by Mo Troper

I love both versions of the song! It’s a good taster for the next Mo Troper tour. Speaking of, you’ve alluded to not really wanting to tour anymore – are you ruling that out? I know you’re touring with Floating Room next month.

It really depends on the circumstances. The Floating Room tour is opening for Citizen and these bands that are just massive. It’s different from a DIY tour where you’re essentially losing money for no reason – unless you love driving through the badlands. It’s just like…the 25 day tours I was on where I would never get East of Denver – what the fuck was a I doing?! “2 shows in Flagstaff!” For a while, I haven’t wanted to do that. COVID and being pushed to go on a tour as soon as everyone got the green light and thinking “is this really worth it?” Assessing it – I kind of have a bad taste in my mouth. It’d have to be an incredible opportunity for me to want to do that. With this whole rollout, I didn’t send the singles to DSPs because I wasn’t expecting any pre-release *anything.* I just wanted to be really casual about it, and it’s ended up exceeding my expectations. I just spent all of my 20s listening to other people, and desperately searching for a label, and desperately searching for a manger, and having people tell me “Well, you should really play South By!” and I think that I have always had the most success and felt the most gratification when I’ve just done whatever I want. That doesn’t really include touring. I’ve been on a lot of tours, and it’s never really paid off.

From a lyrical perspective, you have some classic Troper tropes in play. Withering critiques of the scene seem to be a recurring theme in a lot of your songs. In “All My Friends Are Venmo” you kind of do the Cheekface or Kiwi jr sprechgesang that’s very social media driven and conscious. I have no idea what the fuck “Velvet Scholars Line” is about – that’s just pure Pollardesque phrases being spun together. That’s one thing I was particularly interested in – what the fuck is that song about?

It’s a bunch of Instagram pages for kangals and, like, large central Asian dogs – it’s captions on those pages translated. My instinct was that those translations looked a lot like Guided By Voices lyrics, so I wondered what they would sound like with a Guided By Voices style song. Originally the record was called The Famous Rat Mitali Straight Daughter of the Velvet Scholars Line – that was the original title. The cover art that Maya drew is inspired by one of those Instagram posts.

I love that! It’s reverse-engineering a GBV song. I guess I had clocked that! It’s very deliberately a GBV style song. Going back to “Venmo” – that’s a really fun and interesting new style of song for you.

It’s funny that people like that song. To me, that song is so clearly me doing an impression. My friend Nathan from Cool Original was saying it sounded like “if Jeffrey Lewis was an idiot and really into no wave.” He got it. Some people have been like, *affects voice* “Woah, that one just really knocked me out, man!” That’s cool.

I feel like I try and stay away from topical lyric territory. I wanted to do something that was very extreme and extremely unnatural for me – making every word was somehow topical. There isn’t really anything profound to me about that song.

That’s one thing I wanted to follow up on that was also percolating in my head while listening to the record. You’ve mentioned doing an impression as a song. You’ve got “Velvet Scholars Line” as this GBV impression, you’ve got “Wet T-Shirt Contest” as this Elvis Costello impression, you’ve got the math rock/screamo impression, you’ve got the KoRn/nu-metal impression. Are there other tracks where you’re just doing straight up pastiche?

“Sugar & Cream” is very obviously a fake musical theater song.

Dilettante by Mo Troper

The word “musical” keeps getting thrown around with regard to this album – I’m assuming self-effacingly. How much during the process were you thinking “This is my American Idiot?”

*laughs* I don’t even know anymore! It’s funny how musical theater is eternally campy – it was campy then, and it was campy now. I never really understood the theater kid thing – there wasn’t really a theater department in my high school. What high school are these people going to – are they going to private schools??

Musically, there is a strain of musical theater albums that cross over into a rock or dare we say power pop territory. Little Shop of Horrors, Rocky Horror, pretty much any 70s musical that features a murder.

For sure. I think that’s a really passé idea. Very few people think doing a rock opera is cool right now, unless you’re My Chemical Romance.

In a way, Black Parade is the last major rock opera. Fucked Up did David Comes to Life but that’s more of a deconstruction or satire of the concept. Any modern “rock opera” has been a self-aware deconstruction – more like a post-rock opera really. I’ve never really considered that before! That’s kind of fascinating.

I haven’t really thought about that either! I think it’d be a lot more fun to turn an album into a musical than to go on tour *laughs* but I don’t have serious aspirations about that. It’s just a fun way of thinking about the album.

It’s totally funny! It’s 100% in line with the spirit of the album – it’s a musical! Why not?

We were talking about pastiche and song impressions. Some of it is just my friends’ bands in Portland. I think for a lot of it I was inspired by something specific. It makes it a lot easier to finish songs that way, when you have a clear template.

This is your first record since you made your [since deleted] exhaustive, ranked list of the 100 best power pop artists last year. Not without some controversy from the old guard of power pop! Was there any kind of influence from you compiling that that went into the songwriting on this album?

That’s a really interesting question. That was my first real post-COVID project, where I finally had some time where I wasn’t working. After writing that and seeing the response, I was kind of turned off by power pop, and turned off by myself and my own sensibilities. I do think that kind of pushed me into doing something that was more modern or raw, or just getting further away and distancing myself from whatever *that* is. I don’t want to become that – the Jon Wurster, Power Pop Pop-Pop. I don’t want to become a facsimile of this thing that already exists and was done a lot better 20 or 30 years ago. Some people are really embedded in that world and they really do orbit the Des Moines Popathon.

The power pop burnouts.

*laughs* Yeah. It just made me feel like I had more in common with people who were into like punk and indie rock. It’s not the first time I’ve experienced that. One of the things that inspired that list was that there are a lot of people who arrive at power pop from Motion City Soundtrack, or whatever, and then they discover Fountains of Wayne, and Fountains of Wayne namedrops The Raspberries, and so on. I’m on new medication now and I’m not as easily chafed, but I was really annoyed for a while when there would be, like, some true blue pop-punk band and some publication would call them power pop. That’s a really dorky thing to be annoyed about, but I wanted to set the record straight.

Dilettante by Mo Troper

New Found Glory: Not power pop!

*laughs* Exactly! I guess somehow I wasn’t stringent enough, for some people. That’s the one really cool thing about those playlists that Brad [Shoup] made – how nondiscriminating they are. That’s how I feel too.

I totally agree! Earlier this year I did an interview with Matt from Hurry and we talked about how conservative a genre power pop is. It may be conservative in terms of the confines of how you specifically go about creating a power pop song, but pretty much anyone can do that regardless of what type of artist they are. A band who’s nominally not power pop can write and release a power pop song. “Little Black Dress” by One Direction is 100% a power pop song in any era. It has every touchpoint of the genre and sounds like The Raspberries! It’s a generational thing, I think. A lot of us as millennials and Gen Z don’t have the same thinking with regard to genre. Millennials through the tumblr era were obsessed with genre to the point that they were creating microgenres – an excuse to compartmentalize genre to the nth degree and pave the way for our genreless future. Approaching power pop in that capacity – it’s the poptimist approach to power pop.

Yeah, totally!

Speaking of the Power Pop Gods, this is also your first album since recording and releasing your Revolver cover album. Did unlocking the keys of The Beatles’ arrangements give you any juice for this record, or was it incidental? Just limbering you up to make Dilettante?

It limbered me up, and that’s another example of something I did because I just wanted to do it. I wanted to do it really quickly, but it was something I did entirely on my own terms, and the response to it was pretty cool. I think in that way it was inspiring. It was like “Wow! I just decided to do this thing, and I put it out, and people seemed to like it – why don’t I just do that with my real music?” In that way it was freeing. I just think that I’ve spent so long not doing fun music stuff like that – every album needed an annoying rollout and then I’d have to go on tour and it doesn’t result in anything. After I thought, “I should do this kind of thing more!”

So what’s next? Are we going to see a modular synth Mo Troper record? You mentioned different kinds of albums you could make – is there another album you think you could put together that you still have in the chamber?

*laughs* The only “type of album” that I’ve wanted to make that I haven’t had the chance to is like an album that is totally acoustic – like a Dear Nora or Nick Drake type of record. I love that stuff but I’ve never made it. I think that’s a really challenging kind of record to make. That’s something I’m interested in making at one point. But also – it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to put out a piece of music and just chill, and I feel like I can do that this time around because of these circumstances. I don’t have a new album written and I’m not really thinking about it. It feels good.

Dilettante is out now

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Luke Phillips | @EldoonLDP

The Alternative is ad-free and 100% supported by our readers. If you’d like to help us produce more content and promote more great new music, please consider donating to our Patreon page, which also allows you to receive sweet perks like free albums and The Alternative merch.

Blackout Dates is a new podcast from Uproxx’s Zac Gelfand and The Onion’s Spencer Roth-Rose. On Blackout Dates, the two act as investigators seeking to discover the truth about what happened to MoviePass. The podcast’s cast features a range of stars, including Willow Hawks of The Sonder Bombs. Zac sat down with Zac and Spencer to discuss how the podcast came to be and where it may be going.

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How did you get the idea to investigate MoviePass?

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ZAC: I have a picture on my wall of the marquee of the State Theater in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I went to college. Recently, I was looking at it and realized that I saw every single one of the movies listed on that marquee with MoviePass. We talk in the show about how that little red card opened so many doors for us not only to be entertained, but also to learn and not feel encumbered by the rising cost of just going to see a movie. We knew it couldn’t last, so we wanted to take full advantage of it. Spencer and I were co-workers in the summer of 2018 when MoviePass suddenly went dark. I ended up quitting that job approximately two weeks later because I was so distraught over the app’s demise (also wasn’t a good fit for the job, but just ignore that). Over the last several years, Spencer and I kept in contact pretty much exclusively to talk about updates with MoviePass, until finally we decided we should just make a project about it. What started out as a longform article turned into an investigative podcast, which then continued to evolve into the epic saga you have before you today. 

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How did you put together your all star cast?

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SPENCER: Guile! And by guile I mean personal favors. A dark secret of mine is that I used to be a theater kid, so a lot of my friends from high school and college have blossomed into really talented actors. Zac brought in a few stellar folks as well, including Willow Hawkes from The Sonder Bombs (who plays Agnes, the real MVP of the investigation). We feel particularly lucky that Ben Marshall and Caleb Hearon took time out of their busy shooting schedules to lend their voices to this project (Ben made his debut on Saturday Night Live this month and Caleb is in production on TBS’s Space). Once we got those two on board we were like, “Whoa, this is becoming a legit thing.” 

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ZAC: Spencer’s contacts and acting experience were a great compliment to my lack of both.

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Do you think there’s any comparable phenomenon or app to MoviePass? I get some Fyre Fest vibes – except not laughably dumb.

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ZAC: There’s this app that I use all the time called Seated, which gives you cash rewards for going to restaurants in New York City. Basically, you make a reservation through the app and then you upload your receipt and you can get up to 50% cash back rewards. I have no idea how it works or how they make money, but I’ve gotten enough rewards to buy myself a new headboard for my bed, so I’m not complaining.  

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SPENCER: Startup culture is rife with unicorns that never quite turn the corner into profitability. Hell, Uber has lost $22 billion since its founding. At least MoviePass wasn’t abusing its contractors or accelerating climate change!

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I can’t really think of any particularly comparable radio shows to this one; how did this whole half history half fictionalized interview structure come to be?

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SPENCER: Zac had the idea to do an investigative podcast exposing the inside story of the rise and fall of MoviePass. I thought, great idea, but are we really the people to tell that story? Who’s gonna go on record talking to two random guys with practically zero investigative experience? Plus, it seemed like a lot of work, and I’m very lazy. But I do love serialized storytelling, and I’d been wanting to try my hand at writing a full season of something. Zac was surprisingly amenable when I pitched him on doing just a single episode of actual reporting before diving into an entirely fabricated narrative. It definitely turned out to still be a lot of work, but it was less cajoling hostile sources and more writing bits that made us giggle. 

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ZAC: We also dug about one inch beneath the surface of the service’s demise and determined that the story was really pretty simple: MoviePass just had a bad business model, at its most base level. Maybe Mark Wahlberg’s upcoming documentary series will be able to wring juicy drama out of that, but for our part, we decided to pivot to writing “historical” fiction… like Hamilton.

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Why did you decide to go with a podcast format to tell this story?

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ZAC: I made a podcast with friends during my senior year of college that was incredibly fun, and also budget-friendly. My friend Ryan Cox, who was a producer and engineer on that first show, moved to New York late last year and we hung out for about 20 minutes before I asked him if he wanted to be a part of a new project I was working on. I also asked another friend, Andrew Perelman, who had been working on podcasts on a freelance basis, if he wanted to be involved. So all of a sudden, we had two very smart and creative producer/engineers on board to help us execute our vision. 

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The podcasting space also has a very low barrier to entry, in that you can use a free service like Anchor to distribute your show far and wide, and don’t have to rely on external forces to put the show in the right places. Plus, without the backing of a podcast network, we were forced to think on our feet and learn about everything from production to distribution to marketing. Remaining independent wound up being both creatively and financially beneficial.

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How did you create the narrative that makes up Blackout Dates? 

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SPENCER: Back in fall 2020, In the first few days of our brainstorming, we drafted a stream-of-consciousness outline for how we wanted the general plot to go: a sort of slow descent into occult conspiracy complete with mysterious disappearances, ancient cults, and elder gods. And we knew we wanted a dastardly reimagining of real-life former MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe to be our villain (Mitch, if you’re reading this, we did it out of love). After we had the outline I spent the winter drafting the full scripts, with Zac providing punch up along the way. Pretty soon we had eight full episodes that boasted fleshed-out characters, running gags, and a narrative that surprised even us with how affecting it turned out to be. Also, hot beer. Lots of hot beer. 

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What’s next for the intrepid investigators of Blackout Dates?

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ZAC: Well, I think our characters are going to take a vacation to sip some hot beers on a beach somewhere because they “worked so hard.” The real-life versions of Spencer and I have already started brainstorming ideas for a second season. I’d really love to keep working with this team, if they’ll have me. I haven’t felt so creatively fulfilled in almost ten years and know I’ll be chasing this high for the next ten.

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SPENCER: I’m actually planning to boot Zac from Season 2 and replace him with Dave Bautista. Sorry, bud.

—

Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison

The Alternative is ad-free and 100% supported by our readers. If you’d like to help us produce more content and promote more great new music, please consider donating to our Patreon page, which also allows you to receive sweet perks like free albums and The Alternative merch.

The Front Bottoms released their album In Sickness & In Flames in August of 2020, making them unable to tour in support of it until now. Supporting the New Jersey group were Sydney Sprague and Oso Oso, two incredible acts that complemented the headliner’s energy. On this tour, the setlists have varied every night, giving fans of the old stuff a chance to hear some deep cuts from their ever-growing discography. The Front Bottoms consistently put on an incredible, high-energy performance, a welcome respite from the past year of quarantining. We had our photographer Alec take pictures of one of the tour stops and you can check their pictures out while you stream the new album below!

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Alec Moore // @AKindOfLimbo

It’s funny to think back on The World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die’s debut LP from a 2021 vantage point. In 2013 the band was still primarily a New Haven band, not a Philly band, and they were called emo before indie rock or post-rock or whatever else people are calling the five-piece these days. (They also had, like, double that many members.) Whenever, If Ever, with its unpredictable stylistic shifts and literary songwriting and three to four vocalists per song, was more or less the album to critically legitimize the emo revival, which had before that point been confined mostly to bars, bedrooms, and basements. There was magic in the band’s early work — it was there even before they’d put out a full-length — in the way songs contorted themselves and shot off in totally unexpected directions, in the way a synthy hook could lead into a screamed verse into a gorgeous flowing instrumental coda; the whole thing felt loose, spontaneous, and unrehearsed.

The World Is is no longer that band, of course.

Their history since needn’t be retread, since the various splits and lineup changes and the way their 2015 follow-up, the expansive Harmlessness, seemed to eclipse even Whenever, If Ever. In retrospect, that record seemed to herald the end of that wave of emo music; seminal revivalist groups like The Hotelier, Modern Baseball, and Empire! Empire! dissolved in the years between Harmlessness and the next World Is LP, 2017’s Always Foreign, a record that was divisive for its apparent jettisoning of the post-rock elements that had marked previous releases in favor of a streamlined, more accessible sound. With four years passing between LPs, and with the release of a rarities compilation in 2019, and with an unprecedented pandemic throwing ravaging the planet, the band’s future seemed uncertain. But now, a couple weeks after the release of Illusory Walls, it should be clear that The World Is has lost no steam – on the contrary, they’ve just put out their most meticulous, most carefully crafted, most cohesive, most ambitious, and most viscerally affecting LP yet.

Illusory Walls by The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die

Over its seventy-minute runtime (the length of two Whenever, If Evers!) Illusory Walls dips into toes into every style the band has ever attempted, stitching midwest emo to post-rock to pop-punk to ambient to post-hardcore, and adds to the mix a helping of aggressive progressive rock a la Circa Survive or Coheed; because this is still The World Is, there’s also a smattering of sky-high hooks for anyone who thinks the whole thing sounds like way too much. It’s forgivable to think, after the record’s first six minutes, that the record will be a sensible follow-up to Always Foreign; the intimate and delicate opener “Afraid to Die” recalls a beefier take on that record’s first cut “I’ll Make Everything,” building to a similar sweeping and grandiose climax, and the way it leads into the synthy, hooky “Queen Sophie for President” recalls the way the crescendo in “I’ll Make Everything” flows into the synth-led pop-punk barnburner “The Future,” down to the vocal tradeoffs on each song – while David Bello sings on both “Afraid to Die” and “I’ll Make Everything,” he hands the reins off on the second track of each album; on “Queen Sophie for Pesident,” it’s to keyboardist Katie Dvorak; though she’s been in the band since 2012, Illusory Walls is the first record of The World Is’ to really utilize her powerful voice the way it deserves to be used.

After “Queen Sophie,” though, the record takes a hard left turn and it becomes clear that Illusory Walls will not be following the path laid down by more accessible Always Foreign cuts like “The Future” or “Dillon and Her Son” – nor, for that matter, will it return to the more atmospheric style of Whenever, If Ever, or the heavily ’90s-inspired Harmlessness sound. Instead, Illusory Walls goes places previous World Is albums hardly even gestured; the opening riff of “Invading the World of the Guilty as a Spirit of Vengeance” is immediately the darkest and heaviest of their catalog, and it only gets more so from there. The song’s booming chorus features some of Chris Teti’s showiest, most impressive guitar work to date and, in true World Is fashion, just as the song reaches its grittiest, most aggressive point, the band dials things back and swaps out the thick riffs for haunting drones before allowing the song to build itself back up. Remove Bello and Dvorak’s vocal interplay and the song would be pegged as post-metal a la Pelican or Shy, Low without a doubt.

Illusory Walls by The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die

The middle section, sandwiched between the two “Blank” interludes, is where the band most fully commits to their newfound heaviness. The shambling, dreamlike “We Saw Birds Through the Hole in the Ceiling” at first recalls the airiness of Harmlessness‘ middle run before a discordant riff tears the song apart and it ends as the most chaotic, most pummeling, heaviest piece of music in their entire discography. The seven-minute behemoth “Died in the Prison of the Holy Office” follows suit, oscillating between flowing verses and a pulverizing chorus, while “Your Brain Is a Rubbermaid” is a post-hardcore song masquerading as emo, an infectious vocal performance from Dvorak the only thing keeping the song from feeling outright metallic.

But it’s the record’s final third that ups the ante for the band; they’ve never been strangers to ambition or to very long songs – each of their full-lengths has at least one song seven-plus minutes in length, and all have others that stretch well past five minutes long. The last two songs on Illusory Walls, however, eclipse all the others, totaling 35 minutes between them.

The first, titled “Infinite Josh,” is a neat (if not particularly succinct) summary of the LP, a twinkling post-rock ballad that twists and contorts itself into a pulverizing post-hardcore track and then checks both boxes at once for its final minutes; for the first half of the song, the thread is held together by the repeated line “everyone says you can’t go home again”; before shifting gears midway through (read: getting much heavier), the song trades off two hooks, that line and a verse that will recur in the song’s final minute to signal the transition to “Fewer Afraid”: “the objects we’re locked in, immobile and violent / just fewer like that, fewer afraid.” It’s a tremendous song, and that it’s able to hold together as well as it does is a testament to the band’s craft. It is, however, unfortunately immediately overshadowed by an even more hulking behemoth.

Illusory Walls by The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die

If “Infinite Josh” felt like a summation of the album musically – and really a summation of the band’s career, beginning as sweeping post-rock, traveling through post-hardcore, and ending somewhere between both – then “Fewer Afraid” is a summation of the album, and the whole journey of The World Is to this point, thematically. The first three minutes of the song find the return of Chris Zizzimia, the spoken word poet whose collaboration with the band on 2014’s Between Bodies remains the band’s most contentious release, reciting his poetry over swaying drones; that the band embraces that controversy on this song speaks to their ethos, their embrace of all the bands they used to be.

When Bello begins singing, he is greeted with strings that fill the track out, and what follows is essentially five straight minutes of buildup (featuring some of Bello’s best melodies yet) to a reprisal of the climax of Harmlessness closer “Mount Hum”: “come on and fall so that I can pick you up / our homes are not the kinds of places you’d own,” Bello croons over some of the LP’s most technical riffing; the band swells triumphantly before segueing into another reprise, this time into that verse that closed “Infinite Josh.” The song at this point effectively restarts, and Sarah Cowell, formerly of likeminded but eternally underappreciated weirdo indie rockers For Everest, delivers some of the record’s frankest lyrics: “you believe in a god watching over / I think the world’s fucked up and brutal / senseless violence with no god in mind / I can’t live like this but I’m not ready to die.” Their vocal contribution leads, appropriately enough, into that verse that’s become the band’s de facto mantra – the verse that ends “Getting Sodas,” the seven-minute closer of Whenever, If Ever:

The world is a beautiful place

But we have to make it that way

Wherever you find home

We’ll make it more than just a shelter

If everyone belongs there

It’ll hold us all together

If you’re afraid to die

Then so am I.

As much as it calls back to the band’s old material, it serves too to show how much they’ve changed. The verses that led to that one on “Getting Sodas” were far from the doomsaying that marks Cowell’s verse on “Fewer Afraid.” Quite contrarily, they speak of finding solace in the darkest parts of human experience: “When our bodies fail / we’ll find joy in the peace that it brings / when our voices fail / we’ll find new ways to sing.” Indeed, Illusory Walls is the record that best embodies The World Is’ debt to Godspeed You! Black Emperor both musically and lyrically; the band has grown increasingly political in their lyrics since Bello joined the band, with Always Foreign‘s anti-Trump “Faker” and “Marine Tigers” being the most overt, but on Illusory Walls, Cowell’s seemingly nihilistic outlook is the rule, not the exception. On “Queen Sophie for President,” Dvorak sings, with an ironic joy, “never get better and never do anything“; the record’s two “Blank” tracks, appropriately subtitled “Drone” and “Worker,” address the plight of an ever-growing working class under the boot of increasingly omnipotent corporatized society – the latter even includes a prayer to DuPont. Thematically, Illusory Walls is bleak and barren; where Always Foreign supplanted its politics with polemics against racism or cries for solidarity, its followup mostly shrugs its shoulders, resigned to the wreck. On the very first line of “Invading the World of the Guilty,” Bello snarks, “I crave more luxury disposables.” There is, evidently, no stopping what’s coming – might as well enjoy it. Illusory Walls‘ apocalyptic soundscapes are matched with a vision of a world already staring down the barrel of terminal decline.

But it’s telling that “Afraid to Die” opens the record. Bello and Dvorak, in the song’s cacophonous last seconds, harmonize: “We’ve got pictures in our heads / nostalgia without regret.” There’s a hope for something better somewhere, however deep down it may be buried. That “Getting Sodas” callback seems to confirm it. Whatever dire straights the world may appear to be in, there still exists the capacity for beauty, for love. But it won’t be delivered from on high; a German philosopher wrote somewhere of a world to be won, and the world that The World Is is building is a world that can still be made. They just can’t make it on their own.

Disappointing / Average/ Good / Great / Phenomenal

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Zac Djamoos | |@gr8whitebison

The Alternative is ad-free and 100% supported by our readers. If you’d like to help us produce more content and promote more great new music, please consider donating to our Patreon page, which also allows you to receive sweet perks like free albums and The Alternative merch.

Los Angeles singer-songwriter Daisy Abrams’ newest single “Out of Sight, Out of uMind” is a sparse, wandering piece of indie folk, and finds Abrams putting her rich vocals at the forefront. A song with little need for structure, Abrams’ voice is central to why the song works so well. Like Lucy Dacus, there’s a fullness to it that grounds the listener in whatever story she’s telling. Abrams also shows off her guitar skills, giving a performance rich witch slide finger scratches that bolsters the songs intimate, hushed nature. Abrams is releasing her debut album  Everywhere I’m Not on November 19th, and you can hear this lovely new single below. Speaking of the song, Abrams says:

“I wrote this song when I was studying abroad in Galway, Ireland in 2018. I had written a song a week as a sort of diary of my time there. Of course I totally got my heart broken by an Irish guy haha, but I just love playing this song as a way to transport myself back into a place that holds my most treasured memories.”

  Daisy Abrams · Out of Sight out of Mind (single)

  Eric Bennett | @violet_by_hole

The Alternative is ad-free and 100% supported by our readers. If you’d like to help us produce more content and promote more great new music, please consider donating to our Patreon page, which also allows you to receive sweet perks like free albums and The Alternative merch.

On our Sunday, October 17th episode of Streaming Sundays, Alien Boy, Nectar, Molly O’Malley and Totally Slow each brought their own killer sets to this stacked lineup.

Our Streaming Sundays series is booked by Brett Shumaker & DLTSGDOM! Collective, with poster & video artwork, organization, and tech by Madison Van Houten with assistance from Molly Mary O’Brien.

The Alternative Weekly Roundup is a column where our staff plugs a variety of new releases in a concise, streamlined format. Albums, singles, videos, and live sets. Check back each Monday to see what we were jamming the week prior.

Palomino Blond – “ontheinside”

“ontheinside,” the second single from Palomino Blond’s upcoming EP, is a gripping slow-burner that builds off of a greasy, driving guitar backed by a staccato palm-muted  pattern and a dreamy 80s synth. The momentum builds for nearly four minutes before vocalist Carli Acosta sings “Here it comes / The chance you thought you’d never get / Take it now or just live in regret” backed by a bombastic drum fill that kicks the band into a chaotic eruption. It’s cinematic and huge and it gets better each time you listen to it.

ontheinside (Single) by Palomino Blond

Aaron Eisenreich | @slobboyreject

Owel – “Play”

Owel’s always been a cinematic, showy band, but “Play” takes it to a whole new level. Jay Sakong’s voice is backed by choral harmonies that lend it an off-off-Broadway feel, not to mention buzzing electronics that give the song a newfound pop color.

Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison

Rookie Card – “The North”

Rookie Card is one of several bands pushing emo forward, creating what feels like an inversion of the emo revival. Instead of trying to create the pretty soundscapes of midwest emo, they reach for something decidedly rawer, using synths, lo-fi production, and screamo vocals to illustrate its point. “The North,” the newest track from the band, showcases all the band’s strengths in a bite-sized 68 seconds, teasing out the anticipated debut record for Rookie Card.

The North by Rookie Card

Hugo Reyes | @hvreyes5

Alex Stanilla – “Lizard”

Alex Stanilla’s latest track “Lizard” starts as a breezy pop tune that blows up into a candy-coated and cacophonous chorus. The sunny and psychedelic vibes contrast beautifully with the darker lyrics examining time stuck in a mental rut, as Stanilla sings “I’ve been trying hard to work my mind / I’ve been having a hell of a time / Figuring out what I want.” With insanely catchy music and lyrics that have something interesting to say, it’s everything you could want out of pop music.

Aaron Eisenreich | @slobboyreject

Nonfiction – “No Shade”

“No Shade” takes the dark, moody alt-rock that marked Nonfiction’s debut Same Pain and twists and bends it into new shapes. After the song’s first hook, a splash of feedback interrupts the song before it kicks back into gear. It’s a foreshadowing of things to come on the band’s sophomore LP, and it reaffirms their place as one of the most exciting bands in a genre gone stagnant.

No Shade by Nonfiction

Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison

The Alternative’s ‘New Music Friday’ playlist

Each week our editor Lindsy Carrasquillo compiles a playlist of songs our staff has been jamming. We’ll post it on Fridays on Twitter and then include it in each edition of the ‘Weekly Roundup’ to make sure you don’t miss all of the great music we’re recommending.

The Alternative is ad-free and 100% supported by our readers. If you’d like to help us produce more content and promote more great new music, please consider donating to our Patreon page, which also allows you to receive sweet perks like free albums and The Alternative merch.

Pure Noise Records are a record company with an impressive roster. Founded in 2009, the label has hosted heavy hitters and has welcomed new talent to uplift their sound. On their latest tour showcase, Pure Noise invited State Champs, Four Year Strong, Real Friends, Just Friends and Bearings. Sarah was at their last tour date at Irving Plaza in NYC. What this line-up showcased is that the love for pop-punk has never died. Although its taken on new forms and new aesthetics, what pop-punk is and can be is celebrated by all. Check out Sarah’s photos below:

Bearings

Just Friends

Real Friends

Four Year Strong

State Champs

You can view all of Pure Noise’s artists on their website.

Photos by Sarah Knoll

The Alternative is ad-free and 100% supported by our readers. If you’d like to help us produce more content and promote more great new music, please consider donating to our Patreon page, which also allows you to receive sweet perks like free albums and The Alternative merch.

Angels and Airwaves have returned better than ever with their latest album, Lifeforms. After frontman Tom DeLonge’s seven year break to pursue and succeed at exposing the existence of aliens, he has returned with a reignited love for touring and recording. Lifeforms delivers from front to back, pulling elements from their previous albums as well as DeLonge and Dave Kennedy’s punk roots. 

On the Lifeforms tour, Angels and Airwaves cover their entire discography with trademark DeLonge banter in between tracks. With support from LA indie rockers Bad Suns, the combined sets made for nothing but a night of pure happiness among the crowd. While the Lifeforms tour is drawing to a close, you’ll be able to relive it with our pictures that Kyle took at their stop in Boston while you stream the new album below!

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Kyle Musser//@godvfwine

At the height of the pandemic-necessitated quarantine, Can’t Swim vocalist Chris LoPorto sat in the closet of his parents’ place in Florida, recording songs for the band’s surprise acoustic EP, When the Dust Settles, which dropped in May 2020. Not long after came yet another EP of original songs, Someone Who Isn’t Me. Both EPs, which LoPorto considers “Covid projects,” featured new sounds for Can’t Swim, now a five-piece featuring LoPorto, vocals; Danny Rico, guitar; Greg McDevitt, bass; Mike Sanchez, guitar; and Blake Gamel, drums. The acoustic EP gave fans a chance to hear a stripped-down reimagining of the band’s hit “Stranger,” and Someone Who Isn’t Me featured plenty of synths and dance beats, which surprised some fans to the point of annoyance. Can’t Swim has never been shy about their desire to constantly fine-tune and progress their sound, but some fans wondered, But this much?

Yet with their first LP since 2018’s This Too Won’t Pass out today on Pure Noise Records, Change of Plans, Can’t Swim have landed somewhere most fans who have been along for the entire ride will be able to appreciate. Following the natural curves in the path their music has taken them, Change of Plans doesn’t venture as far from the road as 2020’s two EPs, but for anyone hoping the band will continue rewriting their first two studio albums over and over, well, no luck here. No hard feelings; but as the band forge ahead, their only response to that feedback would be, Sorry, keep enjoying the old stuff and catch us on the next record. 

It’s that confidence with themselves and with their songwriting that have seen the fivesome produce what, to them, feels like the most quintessential Can’t Swim record of all in Change of Plans (and no, they’re not just saying that to sell more copies). “We take our live performance as a big catalyst of how we want our albums to sound,” LoPorto told me the week before Change of Plans’ release. “If I wanted to make a jazz album, it would fall flat on the other musicians in our band. Change of Plans was really a call back to home of things that not only do we think we do the best, but we also seem to enjoy.”

If you listen to the album all the way though, you’ll notice there aren’t many softer or quieter songs. Not that the band doesn’t enjoy writing those kinds of songs, LoPorto says. But “we use this as a reason to yell and get sweaty and get aggression out,” he adds. “If we could play a show and it was all 11 of these songs, we would be excited to do so. I think that was the goal, and I think that’s gonna be the goal from here on out. We’ve already done so many things, so many curveballs, experimented so much, we want to keep doing those things and work them into the newer songs, what drives us is still being a band, playing loud, working off each other’s energy.”

And, whew, do these five have a lot of energy to work out when they get on the road with Silverstein and The Plot in You starting November 4 in Cleveland, Ohio. Can’t Swim’s last live show was in London in late February 2020—20 months ago. The LP has been recorded and waiting to be released into the world for more than a year, but the band wanted to drop it around the time of returning to playing live shows; they didn’t want this to be another Covid project.

Thematically, Change of Plans echoes the ideas that Can’t Swim have explored in previous albums—alienation, heartbreak, evil, and religious imagery in general, the latter of which factors into this album more than any previously. The Oni head that made its first appearance on This Too Won’t Pass reappears in a reimagined form on Change of Plans, this time with a full body. He was drawn in pencil entirely by LoPorto’s friend, illustrator Brian Wrenson, and he is one element that helps tether the old music and the new.

“I seem to have a habit of putting the lyric ‘evil’ into a lot of my writing,” LoPorto said. “This little Oni head guy that we put out on This Too Won’t Pass seemed to be well received. We loved the imagery of the Oni and we wanted to keep it going. We asked Brian if he wanted to take a stab of making the Oni 2021 version and make him a little body. He still has six eyes, but he looks a little different; he seems to be more upset or angry. Brian hit the nail on the head on the first draft of his drawing.”

LoPorto attended Catholic school his entire life. Past releases have touched on the ways in which religious language can also look like the language of romantic relationships—in “Stranger,” the chorus “Oh god, I always felt like you were such a stranger” could be about a romantic relationship, but it could also describe a feeling of being alienated from or rejected by god. In the first single off Change of Plans, “Deliver Us More Evil,” the lyric “Cause everything you want doesn’t have a price / Even Adam didn’t listen as he took the bite” is an overt reference to religion, but mostly LoPorto likes to toe the line with that imagery so that it can be received many different ways. 

“I’ve touched on it super super briefly in previous Can’t Swim things and I’ve always tried to create the comparison of the holds and struggles people feel with religion and romantic relationships,” LoPorto said. “If I didn’t throw the biblical phrases, if I took those out of ‘Deliver Us More Evil, it could be a song about a failing relationship. I’ve always gravitated towards that comparison. Even now, at 32 years old, it’s pretty thought-provoking how people live their life with the concept of religion being the thing that’s steering their ship. Maybe about four or five songs on the newest album use that trick. ‘Is he talking about a relationship or is he talking about god?’ I’m still trying to use that same trick and maybe masking it a different way with this new album.”

The backdrop to such lyrics is that familiar aggressive, hard Can’t Swim sound but with a bit more…bounce, for lack of a better word. “Deliver Us More Evil” is a high-energy singalong special, but it’s still at home in the greater Can’t Swim universe. “If people were taken aback by ‘Deliver Us More Evil,’ they’re gonna be really pissed off,” LoPorto said with a laugh. “There are a lot of songs that are really different and not like our previous albums. ‘Deliver Us More Evil’ sounded similar to our previous stuff, but we were also the most excited about it; we thought it was the strongest song and the most conveying of emotion, and that’s why we put it out. It’s also nice that it’s reminiscent of our old stuff.”

Change of Plans was produced, mixed, and mastered by Will Putney (A Day to Remember, Every Time I Die, Body Count, Knocked Loose) of Graphic Nature Audio, who also pushed the band into new territory sonically. Almost every song on the album is in a different key; to get that chunky low note, the band will tune the guitars very low using a drop pedal. Sometimes they’ll go as low as A Standard, a tuning Slipknot fans know well.

The band picked 16 demos and LoPorto worked on them remotely with Putney before getting together in Putney’s new home studio in New Jersey. The first day consisted of playing the 16 through, and then they picked 11 and recorded them. It was “the easiest recording process in Can’t Swim history,” LoPorto says. “Other than Will being incredibly savvy and fast and making it way easier, we were just very prepared. Because of Covid I had time to really refine, and then Will refined even more, and then Danny got his hands on the demos and they got refined even more. The songs were already tortured enough by the time they started to be recorded on digital tape. Will certainly had a huge role in how the songs wound up sounding at the very end.” 

Oh, and for anyone who fell in love with Rico’s angelic voice on “Floor 71” off Someone Who Isn’t Me, the guitarist had plenty of opportunities to show off his pipes on the new record, from harmonies throughout and the bridge of “Opposite of God.” “Danny has a beautiful voice,” LoPorto said. “He’s Shawn Mendes.”

Change Of Plans by Can’t Swim

Now that Can’t Swim gravitate toward playing what they enjoy playing and what comes naturally, not necessarily what they think they should be writing, the songwriting process often goes quickly. In a recent interview, LoPorto mentioned that one of his favorite songwriters once said that a great song should only take a half hour to write. I wanted to take a stab at guessing who it was, and from previous conversations, I knew that LoPorto loves Ben Gibbard and Robert Smith. Neither was who LoPorto was referencing (though Gibbard has talked about writing “Such Great Heights” very quickly.) With a couple gracious hints from LoPorto (“Chicago, late ’90s, and sometimes he wears eyeliner like Robert Smith”), I triumphantly arrived at the correct answer of Matt Skiba. 

LoPorto is a down-to-earth and downright delightful person to converse with, and because so much of Can’t Swim is LoPorto, and so much of LoPorto is Can’t Swim, there exists an interesting dichotomy between the band’s anger and aggression and LoPorto’s own hopefulness. “On paper, I don’t think Can’t Swim’s lyrics are very hopeful, depending on how you read them,” LoPorto chuckles. “But Can’t Swim as a whole are what I decipher as hopeful. I’ve taken these negative experiences in my life and turned them into an incredibly positive type of lifestyle that’s given me experiences and relationships. Lyrically I’m always coming from that type of mindset. People who are listening to it can find solace in that ‘I’m not the only one going through this, this guy Chris seems to have gone through a similar experience.’ That’s what I would like to continue doing. That’s the goal of Can’t Swim.”

In Change of Plans, Can’t Swim sees that goal more fully realized than on any previous album. “It’s not my style to say stuff like this at all, but I think it’s our best work yet,” LoPorto said. “I’m the most excited for this; I’m the most proud of this one for a lot of different reasons.”

—

Michelle Bruton | @MichelleBruton

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Reviewers might term it an “experimental EP,” but for lead vocalist Chris LoPorto, Can’t Swim’s upcoming five-track release Someone Who Isn’t Me is just the latest—and not the last—evolution in the band’s sound. 

Fans who heard lead single “Who’s Happy?” upon its release around Halloween wouldn’t necessarily know something is afoot. A demo LoPorto had been holding on to for a long time, “Who’s Happy” is a sonical sibling, or at least cousin, to the songs that comprise Can’t Swim’s two full-length albums, Fail You Again and This Too Won’t Pass. Its mellow, ethereal quality, with LoPorto singing in his head voice, recalls “Quitting” off the first LP. 

And that may have factored into why it was the first release from an EP on which it serves as a bridge between the Can’t Swim of then and the Can’t Swim of now. 

“I think it was a cool idea to put out ‘Who’s Happy?’ first and let people get their bearings and maybe not completely trip them up on the first single,” LoPorto says by phone. When the single dropped, he says, people commented on the lyrics or the catchiness of the chorus, but “no one seemed to be particularly interested in how different it sounds.”

That may change upon the release of the second single, “Casey.” It is tethered to earlier Can’t Swim by its minor, slightly foreboding tonality and LoPorto’s vocals, both constants in Can’t Swim’s catalog. At first, the beats that anchor it don’t feel particularly surprising. Synths are a free-for-all, a genre-crossing dominant element of new music in 2020. As the song comes to a conclusion, however, listeners will realize how different this is than anything that came before. And that’s LoPorto’s hope. 

“I can’t imagine myself ever being like, ‘I can’t wait for my favorite band to put out their next album in hopes it sounds like their last one,’” LoPorto says. “Why wouldn’t you just listen to the last one again? Where is the excitement of the new material?”

When LoPorto was a teenager, it was New Wave bands The Cure and The Smiths, as well as The Postal Service, that were on constant rotation. “It wasn’t Nirvana drums and guitars,” LoPorto says, “but music that had a lot of electronic elements.” In many ways, Someone Who Isn’t Me started taking shape way back then. “It was just another wish list item: ‘It would be so cool to do Can’t Swim music like that,’” LoPorto says. 

Just when fans have gotten their bearings after hearing “Casey,” the rest of the EP will continue to challenge them. “Floor 71” is even more of a dance track, with guitarist Danny Rico handling most of the vocals. Can’t Swim fans were able to enjoy Rico’s vocals on Can’t Swim’s stripped-down EP, When the Dust Settles, released earlier this year; Rico reimagined the bridge of “Death Deserves a Name.” (Speaking of synths, perhaps give “Death Deserves a Name – Revisited” another listen as a palette cleanser before diving into Someone Who Isn’t Me.) 

“Listening to Danny’s performance on ‘Floor 71’ just blows me away every time,” LoPorto says. “Something I’ve always known is that he’s a fantastic singer, and it’s so cool to bring it to the forefront. I get to be a fan of Can’t Swim for that three minutes.” The band got “nothing but positive feedback” from Rico’s vocal part on When the Dust Settles, and they want to “elaborate on that in the future,” LoPorto says. Utilizing Rico’s vocal talent on Someone Who Isn’t Me only helps Can’t Swim pull off their ambitious goal of continually reinventing themselves.  

On the new record, acoustic track and closer “Tiny Hands” shares a kinship with the sonal quality of When the Dust Settles, even though Someone Who Isn’t Me was actually recorded first. (In fact, LoPorto was in LA recording Someone Who Isn’t Me in March and had to fly home as Covid-19 worsened.) 

But after hearing the two singles, the best way to digest the EP is to start from the beginning, where “Someone Who Isn’t You” continues to recall previous Can’t Swim releases while staking out totally uncharted territory. The growly synths at the jump and LoPorto’s sing-song vocals are familiar; when the beat drops to the bottom of the ocean at the 1:04 mark to herald the arrival of straight-up dirty trap beats, fans will know they’re not in Kansas anymore. 

LoPorto recorded Someone Who Isn’t Me in LA with a friend from high school who doesn’t have much rock production under his belt but has extensive hip-hop and EDM experience. “It was almost like a writing workshop, if you will,” LoPorto explains. “It started to resonate with the team. Pure Noise liked it, management liked it, the rest of the band liked it.” The burning question, of course, as this EP was written and recorded pre-Covid, is how these songs would fit into a live performance alongside hits like “Your Clothes” and “Stranger.” 

“We don’t really necessarily know when live music is gonna come back, so now seems more fitting a time than ever to put out songs that are catered more toward streaming platforms than mosh pitting at a rock show,” LoPorto says. “I don’t know if this EP would have come out if we were heavily in a touring cycle.” 

Each time LoPorto has tried on a different veil, from the “’80s Beastie Boys punk rock” ethos of Foreign Language to the acoustic minimalism of When the Dust Settles to Someone Who Isn’t Me, he has fully expected the band or the label to gently suggest he try a solo project. 

“To my surprise, each time Jake [Round of Pure Noise] has been like, ‘Dude, I love it; it shows a different side of you guys,’” LoPorto says. “And that’s slowly becoming the blueprint of the band. Why do a solo project or collaborate under a different artist when Can’t Swim can be this full embodiment of a workforce of making freaky music?” While he acknowledges fans who want 10 more “Strangers” may be disappointed, the fulfillment found in branching out outweighs that fear. 

If you listen to synthpop on the reg, Can’t Swim’s new offering will be a welcome addition to your collection. However, if you don’t usually venture too far from guitar bands, you may find Someone Who Isn’t Me shakes up your routine just enough to be more rewarding than challenging. It’s the kind of EP that will take multiple listens to digest. On first listen, you’ll be busy trying to acclimate yourself to the change in sound. On second listen, you’ll pick up on elements you missed the first time, like LoPorto’s (always) introspective lyrics and the sheer layers of instrumentation. By third listen, you’ll realize just how much you kind of love it.  

“I would love for people to pick up the record and listen to a song like ‘Casey’ or ‘Someone Who Isn’t You’ and think, Wow, this is so different, because that’s how I look at it as well,” LoPorto says. 

“I hope people take that as we’re trying new things and working hard,” LoPorto adds. “I’m not just looking at ‘Stranger’ and saying, ‘I could change that from a 1-4-5 to a minor.’ In five years of doing this band, we’re still like the kids in the candy store, excited for the new treat we get to play with. On this EP, the candy store was filled with electronic keyboards and synthesizers and freaky vocal effects. I hope they can tell this is going to be what we always continue to do.”

  Michelle Bruton // @michellebruton