since i left you

Photo by Joshua Powers

BY JORDAN MAINZER

When I called singer-songwriter Jacob Augustine in early May, some hours before a show in Madison, Wisconsin, he was still in Chicago, having played The Burlington the night prior. "I stayed with a few pals last night and we've been chewing the fat this morning," he said. By the end of our 75-minute conversation, it would become apparent that Augustine's the type of guy to spend long portions of time sitting and talking, whether about old country music or the darkest parts of his soul. His latest album I Love You Forever, his first for Team Love and first in 10 years overall, was written over a decade ago after Augustine lost his grandmother, who was suffering from Alzheimer's, and his mother, whose picture adorns the album cover, to cancer. That it didn't see the light of day until now is a story of experiencing, and ultimately overcoming, severe anguish, that Augustine would tell me over the course of our talk. I Love You Forever isn't just about grief; it's a wholesale channeling of a life's worth of trauma into a raw, intense, stunning collection of songs.

Augustine's relocated a lot in his life, but the years that shaped who he is today--spent both as a child and as an adult--were in Maine. He grew up Catholic in Lincoln, a conservative, largely white paper mill town, in the 80's and 90's, forming a community of outcasts and playing in a death metal band with his brother, cousin, and two best friends. His father taught him and his brother to box. His religious mother accepted them, allowing them to practice in the basement; the majority of the town, on the other hand, did not. Other kids would harass and haze Augustine's crew by calling them racial slurs. Augustine and his brother would often get in fights, mostly with kids their age, sometimes at school. Even the teachers cheered for the other students. "I had a scheduled fight in the parking lot by a beach once, and the football assistant coach was there to watch, which is just insane, a grown adult there to watch students from his school fight each other," Augustine said. One time, he and his brother, 16 and 18, fought two grown men in their 30's in the middle of the street, one of them a military policeman who was on leave. Regaling me with these stories, Augustine chuckled, but he made sure to clarify that his laughter was a front for how he felt deep down. "I might sound like I'm proud of this stuff, but it's unfortunate and sad," he said. "It was very traumatic growing up that way. You're living in this sleepy little Stephen King town, and you're constantly looking over your shoulder when you're walking down the hallways in school."

I Love You Forever album art

Eventually, Augustine left Lincoln for California to play metal, and his band Donnybrook (later Red Cloud Revival after threats from an L.A. hardcore band called Donnybrook!) landed a demo deal but never broke through. When he returned to Maine to be his grandmother's live-in caretaker, his appreciation for Delta blues, classic country, and Americana deepened, as she played him Hank Williams and Patsy Cline. As his grandmother's condition worsened, his mother was diagnosed with cancer, the day after retiring. It was then when the seeds of I Love You Forever were born, the album written as Augustine's mother was undergoing treatment and dying. Its climax, the sparse, wailed, 8-minute "Philadelphia Lights", is the most biographical song on the album, named after the city in which she received cancer treatment, and naming Augustine's mom by name: "Jane, if I could say one last thing, it would be, 'Damn it all, they made you tough," he cries out. "She did everything right," Augustine said. "She did what everyone told her to do, she had the job, she raised three kids on her own, and then it was all taken away from her." Cancer took her life, and in a uniquely American cruel joke, medical bills left her penniless. Augustine connected growing up in Lincoln with not just the mental toll it took on his life, but the physical toll it took on everyone. "You could scrape the sulfur off of cars in the morning. Our cars would be yellow with dust," he said. "You can't help but draw these comparisons to why your mother may be sick and the capitalist system that stressed her out so much while she was sick, with the insurance companies switching plans, kicking her off the plans, finding ways to complicate things and make her more stressed out."

Augustine doesn't recall much of the time writing and recording I Love You Forever, blocking out that time of his life when he faced so much loss. After the core band, including Hamilton Belk (pedal steel), Peter McLaughlin (drums), and Asher Platts (bass), laid down the tracks, they toured the songs for two weeks. Augustine followed with a two-week tour of his own. Then, his mom passed away, and he retreated. He claims to have "absolutely zero recollection" of playing a remembrance show for Portland musician Johnny Fountain, who died of cancer shortly after his mom did. He built a house in the woods of Greenbush, Maine, a town with one store, and disappeared, working on music that wasn't his own and for cannabis guerrilla growers. He abused substances himself. "As people in the family seemed to be healing and moving forward in a positive way, I was stuck in this cycle of hell and self-loathing," Augustine said. "I was extremely depressed. I was very close to Mom when she was fighting [cancer]. It leaves a lot of images in your head and moments that are impossible to forget. There are sometimes images and scenarios you do want to forget, and you think you have, and then you lay down at night and they're flashed in your head again and you just want to rip your head off your shoulders."

Augustine attributed his reclusive reaction to his mom's passing to something he only found out about four years ago: that he suffers from bipolar disorder. It meant that the songs on I Love You Forever sat unmixed and unmastered, and that Augustine couldn't even play music without "breaking down and crying and choking up." Instead, he opted to play old country music in nursing homes and Delta blues in bars. A few years before the pandemic, Augustine left Greenbush and moved to Winterport, where he lived during it. After COVID, he moved to Waterville to manage a permaculture for a farm-to-table restaurant at which a friend was the head chef. "I hadn't yet been diagnosed with bipolar [disorder] yet, so I was losing my mind on that job, thinking to myself, 'You should be singing to people,'" Augustine said. His friends in the Philadelphia band Friendship had signed to Merge. "I was really happy for them, but I thought, 'You're blowing it. You're not doing what you should be doing. Good things are happening to great musicians putting in the work, and you need to get back out there."

After being diagnosed, Augustine moved to Philadelphia, spending 70 hours a week driving for Lyft. The experience was grueling, but he knew his lowest points were because of his mood disorder. "You gotta go through it to get through it, as they say," Augustine said. "I wanted to simplify my life and play music all the time again. I started [making] my life [choices scientifically]: 'Does music have an impact on people? Yes.'" So he made moves to pick back up on I Love You Forever, to get it mixed and mastered. In the meantime, last year, he moved to Brussels to busk in the street, and then the UK, and then Ireland. Suddenly, Augustine received fruitful offers to play shows in the U.S., including an opening slot for Portland legend Lady Lamb, a longtime friend of his. Someone who worked at the Portland Public Library had attended the Lady Lamb show and asked Augustine to do a set at the Library. Nate Krenkel of Team Love happened to be at that Library show, and signed Augustine within two days to release the finally finished version of I Love You Forever.

The record release, however, is nowhere near the end of the story; its songs are a window into both Augustine's mind, his past, his empathy, his penance. A tune like the slow-burning "Animal Orchard", originally recorded for his 2011 Goldyhymns EP, now rife with gentle layers of guitar and pedal steel and rich, fluttering strings courtesy of Peter Broderick, juxtaposes Augustine's history in his childhood, looking over his shoulder, to the story of someone he loved. "They had suffered some pretty serious trauma in their life," Augustine said. "I remember watching them move in a club through a crowded room, and seeing her eyes and how she was looking, almost like she was checking her blind spots all the time. She had an inability to relax because of all this trauma she had undergone." On the tune, he sings, "We drink like a violent hibernation infancy syndrome;" he reworded his thoughts to me more succinctly: "Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do bad things happen at all?" Call it lapsed Catholicism combined with healthy skepticism. Augustine likened his concept of god to Nick Cave's, who gives credence to a higher power simply because it's consistent with someone else's reality. "I don't believe in an interventionist god / But I know, darling, that you do," Cave famously sang on "Into My Arms". "That kind of ominous ever-present vibe who can intervene is something that was burned into my brain," Augustine said. Yet, the god who exists on I Love You Forever is imperfect and can't change much; Augustine compares them to Willem DaFoe's Jesus in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ. They oversee, rather than futilely attempt to stop, atrocities on "The General's Son". On "Animal Orchard", Augustine sings from this god's point of view: "Eternity, it breaks my heart so far / I hardly get a break."

One of the most striking aspects of I Love You Forever is the way Augustine writes about his grief in the broader context of societal ills. "What I was seeing going on in the world...it seemed like I had been seeing that since I was a child," Augustine said. "Why we become diseased, because of our system of food, lack of regulation on environmental protections." Another key disease Augustine tackles head-on, on I Love You Forever, is racism. Having lived in Los Angeles and returning back to rural Maine was not necessarily a culture shock for a person who grew up there, but a forced reintroduction to cultural rot. "I was used to living in more metropolitan areas, around artistic communities, and [then] I was pretty much living in a very red, what we would [now call] MAGA area," Augustine said. "I grew up in this area, too, [but] it was like I was living in the last place I ever wanted to live." His confrontational streak bubbled up. "I'm kind of a rural American redneck's worst nightmare at a bar," he laughed. "I'll get a little too tipsy and get in their faces and start asking questions. I'm a bonafide problem when I'm in areas like that, and I kind of spiral out of control. That stress put a lot of those other ideas into the music."

Multiple songs on I Love You Forever reference slavery, specifically. On opener "Medulla Burning Down", over country western guitars and pedal steel, Augustine booms, "And when she pulled out the needle / John Wayne's voice came through the speakers / He asked, 'Ma'am, will you marry me? / And what color would you like your slaves to be?'" On rollicking waltz "Peril", Augustine details "Yellow roses and white people dancing in old black tuxedos from the plantation auction." When I asked Augustine why he included this part of U.S. history on I Love You Forever, he wasn't sure. "Besides being an American, I don't think I have a direct relationship to that history," Augustine said. "But it's very hard not to see and very hard not to have that in your mind the whole time if you're being conscientious and living in this place." He knows singing about it can make people uncomfortable; hopefully, he makes the right people uncomfortable. "It makes me nervous to sing it sometimes, because I know how heavy it is, and I know how deeply it touches communities who were most affected by it. What I find mostly is that those communities appreciated it." He told me about a time playing in Carrboro, North Carolina when he opened the show with "Medulla Burning Down" and cleared out the entire room [of white people] upon singing, "What color would you like your slaves to be?" "They just didn't want to hear it, face it, and accept the truth of it. Maybe that's why it's in the music. You hear that all the time with these people. 'Why don't you just forget about it? Can't we just move on?' Shit like that. Maybe that's why it appears in my art a lot, because of people like that. I want to put it in their faces so they can try to face it and find some kind of reckoning and healing from that history." Oh, and Augustine didn't really clear out the entire room that night. "On the brighter side of things, the guys working at the bar that night loved it and gave me free drinks all night," he guffawed.

Eventually in our conversation, Augustine chose to share something that he thinks explains why systemic racism and slavery pop up in his songwriting as often as they do: that his great grandfather was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. "I used to see pictures of them growing up, of them marching down the street in my hometown," Augustine said. "I want to even the scale. Some of my ancestors--and I'm sure if we wind it back, a lot of our ancestors have done some pretty heinous shit--[have] been on the wrong side of history in drastic ways." The first song Augustine ever wrote, in 7th grade, was a tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. "I just always wanted to offset that energy," he said. "To know that my kind contributed to this horrible, evil, racist energy on this planet made me feel like I needed to do the opposite of that. You can't make it right, but to find some way to not even balance it but overbalance it, to weigh the scale even more so on the side of good and love." The album's first mention of slavery alluded to in conjunction with John Wayne is no accident. Watch many old Westerns, and the characters Wayne and other leading men of the time played, considered heroes, spew awful white supremacist talking points. On "Philadelphia Lights", Augustine sings, "Do we hate the sin but love the sinner?" From contemporary audiences brushing off racism because it comes from the mouth of the likes of Wayne, to as of a few days ago, Democratic Senators purifying the record of their recently deceased war hawk colleague and friend Lindsey Graham, it's the type of observation you continue to notice all around you after you hear the line.

Even though Augustine doesn't remember the day-in, day-out of making I Love You Forever, its subject matter is such that performing the songs puts him in the moods and head spaces he was in when he wrote the songs. It's emotionally taxing. "I normally crawl into a hole after I play my sets," he said. "It's kind of a lot to put yourself through night after night, but it's worth it. It connects to people really strongly." At the time of our interview, he hadn't played "Philadelphia Lights" since he recorded it, but he was inspired to do so after hearing his former label-mate James Smith--who records under the moniker Good Good Blood--play the title track of his 2025 album Little Sparrow at Augustine's request when the two played a show together in the UK. "I didn't really know what the song was about," Augustine said. "When I got to the club, I learned it was about a serious loss that he had encountered. He was going to play it, and he did, and he played it in front of me. I could see how much it was tearing him up. At that moment, I was like, okay, that's what bravery looks like. I need to start playing 'Philadelphia Lights' at some point. If James can do that for me, on request, then I should certainly be able to do that for everybody else." Augustine's music has had a similar affect on his own audiences. "I've had people come up to me after shows, and they can't stop crying," he said. "It's put them in such a particular headspace that they can't shake it off and have to leave the room. Or they're leaving the venue with tears in their eyes. It's definitely palpable, the connection. It's an honor, honestly, to be able to share that with everyone."

Augustine already has a new record mostly finished, focusing on the time period in his life after that which inspired I Love You Forever. "It's definitely a lot more of a reflection album," he said. "There are a lot of mourning songs on there, and a lot of songs reflecting on my childhood when my parents were together...It's a pretty personal record. I'd say it's more personal than I Love You Forever because it's specifically about my own life." Its aesthetic, purportedly, leans further into classic country, its tone optimistic. "Maybe there's more hope in it...Not a moving on, but a growing into a healthier tree type of vibe, or something. Healing and becoming more like an oak, smiling in the face of despair rather than wallowing in it." If one thing's for sure, audiences will still be able to connect with it, even if they share nothing in common with Augustine's biography. Months later after our conversation, it's this pearl of wisdom that's stuck in my head and continued to reverberate: "We all suffer the same things. They may happen at different times in our lives, but we all get wrung through the same wringer eventually."

(ALTER)

BY JORDAN MAINZER

According to Belfast duo Chalk, the project of vocalist and producer Ross Cullen and multi-instrumentalist Benedict Goddard, the club is where you can go to feel, work through, and ultimately conquer your anguish. Their debut album Crystalpunk collects sounds that suggest an emotional spectrum--pained vocal turns, wincing drops of noise, giddy synth arpeggios--and lays them over pummeling beats, as if to emphasize the dance floor as the center stage for living. Throughout the record, Cullen embodies different personas, from the self-destructive and -aggrandizing to the lovelorn and devoted; eventually, he looks outward.

Though each song on Crystalpunk stands tall on its own and is catchy enough to be a single, the album is effective as a front-to-back arc, as Cullen's navel gazing slowly dissipates and his reach widens. "Do I Go back to Hell / Or should I go fuck myself?" he sings nihilistically on opener "Tongue", his vocals building to screams along with Fiontan McAleavy's battering drums. On "Pain", he purports to a loved one, "I feel your pain / It hurts cause I'm not around," as the percussion pans and the synth line loops, an all-encompassing contrast to his claims of absence. "Can't Feel It", however, represents a turning point. The song's about a secret first kiss Cullen had with a friend when he was younger, more broadly illustrative of the simultaneous excitement and loneliness of love. "When I was young / I had a friend that I loved / Made me promise / You better keep your mouth shut," he sings. The song's heartbreaking but also an instant anthem for anyone who's had a similar experience. From there, Chalk continue to reflect. On "One-Nine-Eight-Zero", which sees McAleavy and co-producer Chris W Ryan guest on drums, Cullen recalls some childhood trauma ("I sat on top the stairs and watched my daddy leave") before pleading, "Can we go back to the year one-nine-eight-zero?" His admitted yearning matches the song's retrofuturist aesthetic, vocoded vocals and a four-on-the-floor beat.

For many bands, a mid-album, minute-long interlude is a throwaway track, but Chalk are sneaky. The droning "Eclipse", on which Cullen sings, muted, "I see the light / It hurts," is the result of the therapy session, his wounds still raw. Accepting his own torment allows him to unleash a track like "Béal Feirste", Crystalpunk's euphoric climax. It's somewhere between the skittering electronica of Fuck Buttons and timeless techno of Underworld's "Born Slippy (Nuxx)", perhaps a spiritual sibling to the latter the way Cullen repeatedly deadpan chants "shoulder to shoulder." In the song's third verse, he declares, "Well, Jesus Christ ain't a savior of mine / I put all my faith into the ones I got;" considering that Cullen grew up with a Protestant mother and Catholic father in Northern Ireland, the statement carries extra weight. In a world that attempts to separate us all, Crystalpunk unifies.

Photo by Joanna Grace Babb

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Each one of Shannon Lay's past few albums have coincided with a significant chapter in her career. August was the Los Angeles singer-songwriter's first record released after she decided to pursue music full-time. Its follow-up, 2021's Geist, represented a pandemic-induced, intrinsically motivated reinvention. Covers Vol. 1 showed her finally going "full voice." Next month, she'll share Past the Veil, not only the debut for her own imprint All The Best but her most expansive collection in terms of sound and intended impact.

"Mirrors", a standalone single Lay released in 2024, previewed the direction she would take on Past the Veil. It was written in studio with producer and engineer Rob Shelton at Altamira Sound. Lay had never worked with a producer and full band so collaboratively, and the rich result was such that she knew her next album needed to at least sound like "Mirrors". Continued sessions combined the uninhibited vocals Lay demonstrated on Covers with her newfound goal to platform the L.A. creative community she and Shelton gathered. Lay mostly just sang, playing acoustic guitar on only a couple tunes, instead letting the pedal steel, strings, and drum machines (!) take the instrumental spotlight. The songs were more dynamic, even jazzy than she had ever done.

But in the span of a few months, to Lay, the mission of Past the Veil reared its head. The devastating results of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, followed by the January 2025 Southern California wildfires, necessitated music that acted as balm and solace, not by way of blind optimism but empathetic realism. Listening in 2026, it's impossible to separate Past the Veil from this context. The title track and lead single welcomes the uneasy feeling that comes from one door closing yet several others opening, assuaged by fellowship; the song was, appropriately, co-written by Lay, Shelton, bassist/guitarist Caleb Buchanan, and drummer/percussionist Adam Starkopf. "Horizons", released last week, turns on their heads the negative emotions associated with "feeling small", positing that every tiny action has a ripple effect. "It's quiet as a year of listening," Lay sings, "It tends to emanate." Later on, she boosts the open-hearted: "We need to feel the ways we feel and feel and feel." The rest of the album, too, finds comfort in accepting what we cannot control. "The goal isn't certainty / That's the one thing you can't count on," Lay sings on opening track "Moving", groovy synths and strums and fluttering strings morphing into a noir-ish, lounge-like sway. Just as her band provide her with a steady presence amid Past the Veil, Lay returns the favor on closing track "I Need More Water", offering a statement of pure inclusivity: "This space needs more of us."

Earlier this month, Lay spoke to me over the phone from her home in L.A., touching on her voice, self-releasing, touring, and the role of music in difficult times. Past the Veil is out on July 28th and is currently available for pre-sale on Bandcamp. Catch Lay opening for Alela Diane throughout California in August. Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Past the Veil cover art

Since I Left You: Thinking back to when you finished "Mirrors", you said you instantly knew that type of sound needed to be the entirety of your next record. Did you ever think of including it on Past the Veil? Or was it more that it represented a chance to start fresh?

Shannon Lay: [Each] one of those options passed through my mind. It was on the record originally, and then I just figured a tight 10 songs was the way to go. Releasing it ahead of the record was more of an experiment to see if people were into the sound. In my mind, it was so different from anything I'd ever done, but looking back, it's really not. It's just elaborating on what I'd established. I guess it just felt like a nice experiment with self-releasing, to see what the vibe was...It was fun. That song definitely could have fit on the record, but I think it's a classic B-side kind of feel.

SILY: At what point did you realize you wanted to start your own label?

SL: I had always been curious about it, especially when I put out my second record with Woodsist and Mare, Kevin Morby's imprint on the label. I was so inspired by that kind of relationship, to combine efforts like that. When I found myself with the option to try it, it felt really right to come back to it and invest in it. I do feel like it's kind of an amazing time to experiment right now. It's a bit lawless, so it might as well work for good people, too. [laughs]

SILY: And you can help your friends who make music, too.

SL: Yeah! I would love to expand on it, for sure. It's nice to create a metaphorical home for your art. It feels like a nice endeavor.

SILY: The covers album you released was the first one you put to tape since you took voice lessons, so I was heartened to hear the different and fuller ways in which you're using your voice on Past the Veil, too. Was the way the covers record was received an encouraging sign to continue to use your voice that way on this record?

SL: Totally, and I also did that record with Rob, who I wrote Past the Veil with. It affirmed our working relationship in this cool way. It also encouraged me to keep going in the direction of embracing more facets of my voice. It was definitely a step in the right direction and a great experience, because I've always loved doing covers since I first started playing solo. I'm so happy people liked it. Still, to this day, I think I get more requests for covers than my own songs. [laughs]

SILY: You play guitar on only a couple songs on Past the Veil, and there are some songs where your voice is treated very differently than it has been in the past. It's sampled and looped on "Honest Man"; when you sing, "Part of me is an honest man," "part of me" is repeated. There are effects on a couple songs. Was that something you were playing around with in the studio before putting on the record?

SL: A lot of it was done in the moment, trying to feel what the song wanted and how the voice would sit in the song in the most cohesive way. Some of it was in post-production, thinking about how it could be more interesting. I love doing harmonies and vocal effects. It's so fun what's possible...I felt like on this record, especially, the voice was such an instrument in the songs. It had its own malleability.

SILY: It seems like the songs on which you do play guitar, your voice is more like it's been on past records. I'm not sure whether or not that's a coincidence, but the ones where you're just singing are those where your voice takes on a different role than it has historically.

SL: I think that's the big difference with this record. Every day we'd go in, I was really open to what the song wanted. When I sit down to write my own stuff, there's a range that I go to, an intensity that I go towards...The exception [is] "What Does It Mean?", which is one of the few where the foundation was a guitar part I'd already written, and whose vocals to me are much more intense than I typically have done in the past. It was fun to mold myself around the music and see what fit in with the vibe. I do have such a range and do a lot of vocal work for other people...It's a skill I've been honing. It was fun to use that for my own stuff, to get some range and flexibility.

SILY: What type of vocal work do you do for others?

SL: If I could have one steady job, it would be going in and doing harmonies for people. That's by far one of my favorite things to do. For instance, I'm singing on [a new release] from my good friend Heather Jewett, who was in the band Gravy Train!!!! and is doing a new project. On that record, I'm doing C + C Music Factory-style vocal runs and silly "ah-ah-ah-ah-ah"s. [laughs] I've done stuff for friends who have more of a country vibe. I love getting weirder. [Harmonies are] the one element of music that I'm really comfortable working on the fly with, so I love offering that service to people if they need it, just going in and seeing what the song wants. I feel like I'm just scratching the surface. I'm really excited to keep going down this path.

SILY: Also to see how that continues to leak into your own music, I imagine?

SL: Totally. Another element to this record that I love that I've never done before: Rob was a producer on these songs, and I had never really worked closely with a producer before. The engineer inevitably becomes the producer, but this time, I...put my trust in his hands. I want to do it again. When that compatibility is right, it's so fun when perspectives collide. It was the coolest thing.

SILY: Instrumentally, Past the Veil is your most wide-ranging, diverse album. The title track, which you also released as the first single, was co-written by all the musicians on it. Do you think it's the track on the album most emblematic of your wanting to showcase the creative community around you?

SL: It was one of the first tracks that we did. In the beginning, you hear this little rain sound. It was pouring that day. That song is such a time capsule of the day that we did it. The musicians in that room at the time, Caleb is one of the craziest musicians I've ever met. He is so talented and so good at working on the fly and immediately honing a vibe. Rob was laying down those really dreamy keys, and he just came in with this bass. Since that was so early on, it remained one of my favorite songs throughout the entirety of making the record. It being the first single and title track felt so appropriate, and it being, exactly like you said, me wanting to highlight a community and camaraderie and coming together, and this record being a symbol of the fact that there's a lot of bullshit going on but we have each other and can get through it. That's enough to make every day a little brighter. [The title track] feels like a good representation of what this record's all about.

SILY: Was both our current political situation and your experience in L.A. with the fires on your mind when writing and recording these songs?

SL: Absolutely. We did spend most of 2024 chipping away at the record. When Trump got reelected, the purpose became clearer. Every instance of my heart sinking was this moment of realization, of getting much clearer on the vision and why I was doing this and why I was making something more joyful. We're a little bit bogged down by so many things right now, and it's hard to come up for air sometimes. Moving your body is so important. Being together is so important. We need outlets right now, and if you can't make music, that's why you love music. Even just listening to music can be such an outlet for your emotions.

[When] the fires [were] rolling around, the first thing I put in my car was my guitars. It was interesting to see what was important to me become so clear. Music is at the top of the list. I live in Pasadena just below Altadena. So many buds...had moved up there and built studios. One person I ran into was learning how to make violins from this guy who had been making them for decades. He had this wood that was hundreds of years old that he lost. It's these things that you can't replace that are gone, but in the end, it's so cheesy, but the fact that people made it out is what's important. All the things, as irreplaceable as they may be, are just minutiae.

It's been an intense time to be a human in general. It's important to find the joy and cry where you can, and take everything one step at a time. It feels like every step is such a leap of faith. I don't know about you, but I question whether I should even plan for the future. What's it gonna be? [laughs] It's so wild. To have [Rob's] studio for that year, and to have that outlet, was really amazing, and to feel what wanted to be made was this joyful encouragement. I felt really stoked that was where I found myself.

SILY: The songs on this record are meant to uplift. I can see and hear in the lyrics that not only are they meant to uplift others, but yourself. "Room for Less" is like a mantra, the way you sing, "I will make room for less."

SL: Absolutely. That song is funny to me because sometimes I'll hear "Room for less," and sometimes I'll hear "Room for this." There's definitely an element to songs where they teach me things during and after I've made them. That's one of those ones I'm gonna come back to year after year and get something else from. It's so funny. They're like little time travelers, these songs. Your higher self is making art you might not understand in the moment, but it'll click down the line. [laughs] I love it.

SILY: This is also by no means an escapist record. You don't shy away from darkness. I wanted to ask you about "Whom Gods Destroy".

SL: Almost all the lyrics from that song are lifted from this Star Trek episode [of the same name.] On the episode, they go to this planet, and it's just this husband and wife living on the planet, and no one else. It turns out that the wife is a hologram, and there was this crazy war on the planet, and the wife is a casualty of the war. [The husband] gets so angry in the moment that he kills everyone on the entire planet. He basically snaps his fingers, and everyone dies. That speech that he gives, he's talking to them about why he did this thing: Was it love? It was an interesting take on admiration.

In "Past the Veil", there's this moment of realizing there's more to this experience you think there is, and that there are different avenues to deal with your discomfort that lead somewhere productive rather than destructive. "Whom Gods Destroy" comes up because in that realization, you have to destroy your coping mechanisms. You have to destroy the parts of yourself you thought you might hold onto forever. In that moment, you're looking at the broken bones of yourself and mourning, even if those things were completely not serving you in any way. It's parts of you. That grief is real. I wanted "Whom Gods Destroy" to be a moment honoring that challenge. When "Horizons" comes up, it's like, "Now that we've sat with this grief, we can look forward and embrace more of ourselves than we did before. We have the realization we need to turn towards. We see the challenge we face when we do that. And maybe we move forward differently, with different parts of ourself embraced."

I'm a huge fan of tarot, and the Major Arcana has this huge arc that I tried to echo in the track list. There are ultimately these peaks and valleys of self-discovery and curiosity and life in general. "Whom Gods Destroy" is one of those valleys where you're staring at your own demise, but it ultimately leads to your revival, so it's all good. [laughs]

SILY: Can you tell me about the cover art for the record?

SL: My good friend Jonie took that photo. She also has an amazing music project you would love, [Jonie Online]. She's making a record that's going to blow the socks off people. She took that photo [when] we were in Debs park. I got lucky. Sometimes, the art is so clear. I gave her a brief description of what I was imagining, and she so thoroughly delivered. All of that was done in-camera. She's holding up a crystal to one side to create the blurred effect. It led to the theme of the record, which is, "Where you thought there was an end, there's just a beginning," feeling this ability to shift dimensions within yourself and how that can ultimately change the trajectory of your outer world, too. The idea of entering this other dimension and coming out the other side with the new knowledge of it all, was the idea.

SILY: It reminds me of when you sing on "Past the Veil", "Can this wall be nothing but a hall?"

SL: Exactly! The way I picture that is you walk up to what seems like an absolute end of a situation, and you look to your right and left and there are so many options. You're just getting started.

SILY: Have you played any of these songs live?

SL: I did one show in Hollywood maybe a year ago now where I sang to the backing tracks, just to try it...It was a small show. It was very weird, so I think I won't do that again. I've developed a couple solo versions, of "Horizons", and of "Mirrors" even though that's not on the record. It's gonna be a journey of figuring out what it wants to be live. I wish I had absolutely infinite income to put together the most epic stage performance you've ever seen, but unfortunately I don't, so I'm gonna recruit a couple buds and have a release show planned for end of September where I bring everything to life in a real sense. I think it'll be about alternate versions with the live set.

SILY: If usually, you write something on a guitar and build it up from there, it's a bit easier, whether you're playing with a band or solo, to bring them back down. Because these songs were so fleshed out in the studio, I wasn't sure what you were going to do.

SL: It's a challenge for sure. I think it's gonna be cool. I have some good leads so far as to how to finagle. We'll see. [laughs]

SILY: Do you have any tour dates planned beyond August?

SL: I might do some touring in October. Touring has changed a lot in the last few years. I feel like I'm at a point of reassessing how to do it in a smart way. It requires so much energy and, at this point, is such a little return. It feels like you break even or it costs you money. Part of me is like, "I'll just stay home and save my energy." But I do love touring. It's been nice to get these support gigs. I absolutely love doing support gigs. As far as headlining goes, I just have to be a little smarter about where I decide to put in the effort.

SILY: These days, for artists who don't regularly tour, it seems like they might get invited to a festival and put a few dates around it, but the traditional album release followed by tour, most artists don't make any money on, and they get physically and emotionally drained. It's a rough economy and world for that.

SL: I feel like every level is feeling that. It's not just indie artists, it's the big guys, too. It's really interesting. It's just become so expensive to be. All of the basic stuff feels like a luxury...God forbid you want to be comfortable at all, that'll cost ya. [laughs]

SILY: Do you find yourself looking back to the DIY days with mixed emotions?

SL: I remember going on tour with a four-piece band, getting $250 per night at the most, and making it work. We never made any money, but there was always this ability to make it happen. [We were] going to weird small towns. I feel really far away from that reality. One thing I've learned playing solo shows is I love being in more intimate settings. I've been exploring the house show routes, and doing more DIY stuff feels like a callback to the old days. We've always been doing stuff like that, especially in L.A. We're so lucky to have the room for such great outsider events. Coming back to that feels good. I could tour the West Coast for the rest of my life and feel so content, it's perfect. [laughs] But I want to get back out there. I do miss the adventure of it all.

SILY: What else is in the short or long-term future for you?

SL: I have a really fun instrumental record I'm going to follow this up with, that I made during an amazing thunderstorm in Austin. That was, again, wanting to offer something meditative for people. I just want to help. I'm working on another covers record, volume 2.

SILY: Is there anything you've been listening to, watching, or reading that's inspired you?

SL: Some friends are putting out some really good stuff. I've been seeing Jonie live a lot. This band Tin Angel is really great, this trio of ladies just harmonizing the house down. Blake Burgess is a new face--he moved here from Nashville and is a crazy talented guitarist and songwriter. Alexander Biggs is another one. John Dwyer's been doing some really fun stuff. He recently released this really noisy, raw project that's great. I feel like there's a lot of good stuff cookin'.

SILY: John seems to be always releasing something.

SL: He's prolific. I think he's one of the most dedicated people I know. I feel like he has such a tried and true method for his madness at this point. It's just the coolest. I'm obsessed. [laughs]

California tour dates:

8/5: Crepe Place, Santa Cruz

8/6: The Chapel, San Francisco

8/7: Caspar Wine and Bread, Caspar

8/8: The Center For The Arts, Nevada City

8/11: Deer Lodge, Ojai

8/12: Soda Bar, San Diego

8/13: Pappy and Harriet's, Pioneertown

8/14: Lodge Room, Los Angeles

8/15: The Siren, Morro Bay

(Sacred Bones)

BY JORDAN MAINZER

You don't have to speak French to understand the urgency present within URGH, the sophomore album and Sacred Bones debut from Manchester noise rock band Mandy, Indiana. As with their acclaimed debut i've seen a way, Parisian vocalist Valentine Caulfield sings in her native language, a tactic originating from her experience performing opera. The contemporary listener can take in Mandy, Indiana the same way they might opera, following a story of emotional high stakes rather than one comprised of plot or narrative structure. Caulfield and company add physical desperation and bile to the mix. It's hard to listen to URGH without thinking about how she and drummer Alex Macdougall both faced serious health issues during the album's writing and recording; the band channels the exhaustion inherent in struggling with your own body, into URGH's industrial aesthetic. The record sometimes sounds like it's been made by a band not just playing but fighting their instruments that range from human-made objects to sentient machinations.

The feeling of outward antagonism that pervades URGH is no accident. First and foremost, Caulfield publicly directed lead single "Magazine" towards her rapist, an attempt to recover through reclamation of power by saying, "You hurt me, so I'm going to hurt you." Between percussion that clacks below Simon Catling's synth bass and Caulfield's increasingly intense vocals, the song uses bouts of silence to let the counterattack gain strength and fester. The targets of "ist halt so" and "Dodecaheadron" are broader in reach but no less specific, respectively, those perpetrating the genocide in Gaza and, perhaps more frustrating, those who do nothing in the face of global ills. Sirens permeate the former, a sound associated with a "take shelter" warning sign, often perversely employed by imperialist governments telling a population, "We're going to bomb you" before doing exactly that. Mandy, Indiana are unwilling to accept the status quo. On closer "I'll Ask Her", Caulfield embodies the point of view of the nice guy who doesn't want to ruffle any feathers with his bros, whether they're toxic or straight-up rapists. "You wouldn't let him date your sister, but it's different / It's your sister," she states, calling out the absurdity of turning the other way when the victims of violence--sexual or political--are nameless and faceless. Rapper billy woods guests on "Sicko!", shooting similarly acerbic jabs at big pharma, all with his trademark bleakness: "Harm reduction is hiding the body so they can keep hope alive."

What's essential about URGH, though, is that it's an album you can rage to, dance to, cry to, even laugh to, with a sound that's original but kindred in spirit to past experimental breakthroughs. The repeated drum line, garbled vocals, and atonal horn-like synths of "Dodecahedron" recall the warped mechanics of early Battles. The way guitarist/producer Scott Fair and co-producer Daniel Fox (of Gilla Band) weave dialogue through the elements on "try saying" is reminiscent of Jlin's use of Mommie Dearest samples on Dark Energy closer "Abnormal Restriction". Still, URGH is primarily protest music with a beating heart, found in the likes of the buzzing hip hop percussion of "Sevastopol" and the drum grooves of "Cursive", creating kinship with characters fictional (none other than the witches of Andrew Fleming's 1996 cult hit The Craft) and all-too-real, folks beholden to the patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism. Consider it a useful weapon in the ongoing fracas.

Nourished By Time

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Though Warm Love Cool Dreams Sunday was headlined by artists who made some of the most beloved indie records of the 2010s, my favorite sets were primarily earlier in the day, of acts hard to pin down but easy to love.

Revisit Saturday's coverage here.

Being Dead

Being Dead

They've been releasing records for only seven years, yet Being Dead, the Austin trio of guitarist/singer Cody Dosier, drummer/singer Falcon Bitch, and bassist Nicole Roman-Johnston, have a pulse on the past. Prior to giving the first inside set on Sunday, they were introduced by none other than Chicago poet Thax Douglas, a fixture at local shows in the Aughts, who read a poem he wrote about--what else--death, as the three walked on stage. Douglas is known for reading words directly inspired by the music of the bands that follow him, and Being Dead similarly contextualized their songs with cheeky banter. "Do bats ever come in here?" Roman-Johnston inquired about the Shed as the band launched into "Goodnight"; "I'm trying to get this fuzz pedal to really rock out for y'all, but I don't know if this amp can handle it," Dosier quipped before Being Dead ripped through "Last Living Buffalo". Of course, their sharp, minimal post-punk, sounding something like early 80's Athens, Georgia by way of 2010s garage rock, traversed eras of indie rock. Dosier and Falcon switched guitar and drums in the middle of "Rock 'n' Roll Hurts", and the band debuted a swinging new tune called "You Better Stop Breaking My Heart". Perhaps no moment better encapsulated the contagiousness of Being Dead's playfulness than when Falcon asked the crowd, "Who did you come to see today?" and everyone replied in unison, "You!" It turns out the people really enjoy a talented band that takes its music seriously, but not themselves.

Being Dead

Crowd

Thax Douglas

Being Dead

Moin

Moin

The trio of Joe Andrews, Tom Halstead, and Valentina Magaletti--accompanied live by Al Wootton--spent a fair bit of time trying to get their sound exactly right, or even viable. It was worth the wait, the group displaying total control over their delicate balance of grooves, beats, sampled spoken word, tension, and release on songs like "Knuckle". Glassy synths shone over syncopated techno, and clanging guitar shredded atop Magaletti's massive fills. With every album, Moin continues to refine their sonic universe, and their midday Fairgrounds set likely won them several new admirers.

Moin

Moin

Moin

Nourished By Time

Nourished By Time

Marcus Brown's set at Pitchfork 2023 was his first time at a music festival. Three years of touring and a couple XL releases later, Nourished By Time, now featuring bassist Carrington Edmondson and multi-instrumentalist David Lopez-Figuereo, played like seasoned veterans. They offered a perfect mix of organic and synthetic music, gifting us the dance party of Warm Love Cool Dreams with performances of Erotic Probiotic 2 classic "Daddy" and euphoric, vocal sample-based The Passionate Ones highlights "Max Potential" and "Crazy People". As a songwriter, Brown has a keen eye for Love in the Time of Capitalism, so it was fascinating to hear his wider thoughts about America after a tour with Gary rapper Freddie Gibbs. "We live in a fucked up country," Brown said, "But when you travel, you understand it in a weird way." Maybe he'll tackle the whole nation on LP3.

Nourished By Time

Crowd

Nourished By Time

Whitney

Whitney

The local heroes were still touring their fourth record Small Talk (AWAL), and par for the course, guitarist Max Kakacek and singer/drummer Julian Ehrlich leveled up the studio versions. Ehrlich propelled "Used to Be Lonely", while the entire six-piece accentuated the funky strut of "In the Saddle". But you go to a Whitney show to be reminded of the pre-Trump era, when the Cubs were a team of destiny, and you first blasted "The Falls" while driving on a winding road. At the final inside set of Warm Love Cool Dreams, the packed crowd went nuts as soon as Ehrlich sang, "I left drinking on the city train" on "No Woman"; they stood back in awe at the call and response of Kakacek's guitar and JJ Kirkpatrick's trumpet riffs. We'll always have the golden days of Light Upon the Lake.

Whitney

Whitney

Courtney Barnett

Courtney Barnett

Courtney Barnett

The Jesus and Mary Chain

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Before the more popular, longstanding indie rock stalwarts of the 2010s took over, the Saturday of the second Warm Love Cool Dreams festival at the Salt Shed and its fairgrounds was dominated by bands who, simply, sound like nobody else but themselves. Here were my favorite sets.

KUMO 99

KUMO 99

For six years now, the LA-based duo of Ami Komai and Nate Donmoyer have been releasing cyberpunk earworms as KUMO 99. Their most recent album, PULL! (Pressure Signal), is their most diverse album yet, anxiety-ridden but assertive, catchy while still retaining the glitchy idiosyncrasies that pervaded past records like HeadPlate and Body N. Will. Leading off Warm Love Cool Dreams at 3 P.M. on the indoor Salt Shed stage, doors ajar and the sun beaming in, is probably not the way anybody envisioned hearing Kumo 99 live--a sweaty, pitch-black club with strobe lights is more fitting--but they nonetheless set the tone for the rest of the festival with their energy. They led off with PULL! opener "Ten till too", with Komai singing, "Everything feels like it's falling," in her trademark coo, some of the only words sung in English the entire set. When everything feels like it's falling, Kumo 99 posited, you have no choice but to rage and rave. Komai, purportedly sick, nevertheless managed to scream and whistle her way through banger after banger, over Donmoyer's skittering, propulsive drums, and synth arpeggios and thumping bass on "Say It Again" (the song's live debut). My favorite was penultimate PULL! track "Down", which started off with a hip hop melody honestly akin to the 311 song of the same name, but then descended into a hyperpop/nu metal hybrid. If lineup-wise the first day of Warm Love Cool Dreams was "the goth day"--a catch-all term for dark music--Kumo 99 was the perfect opener. Perhaps they'll play a little later in the day the next time around.

KUMO 99

KUMO 99

YHWH Nailgun

YHWH Nailgun

As the Brooklyn quartet entered the stage on the first set at the outdoor fairgrounds, Zack Borzone was still doing his vocal exercises, flexing his jaw and trilling his lips. The words he sang throughout the band's allotted time were no more decipherable, but packed a punch due to the juxtaposition of his between-song persona--boyish smile, kisses into the microphone--and during-song pained facial expressions, guttural growls, and dancing that toed the line between flamboyance and seizing. They played almost all of their remarkable debut album 45 Pounds (AD93), but not before revealing their upcoming 4AD debut Magazine. Like those on 45 Pounds, the songs on Magazine featured Saguiv Rosenstock's glassy guitar tones, Jack Tobias' blown-out synths, and Sam Pickard's dexterous drums. The most common shirt I saw in YHWH Nailgun's crowd was Nine Inch Nails, and it seemed appropriate: If Trent Reznor singing "I would find a way" on "Hurt" is hidden behind piercing distortion, the entirety of YHWH Nailgun's performance was filled with moments of grooves ruined by similar yelps and clangs, each band member essential in ensuring you didn't get too comfortable.

YHWH Nailgun

YHWH Nailgun

YHWH Nailgun

YHWH Nailgun

Smerz

Smerz

Last month, the Norwegian electronic music duo followed up their breakout album Big city life with the Easy EP (Escho), an abstract spin-off named after the standout Big city life track. That is, unlike the vignettes that comprised their sophomore LP, the songs on Easy are defined by playful synth slabs, languid hip hop drums, and Catharina Stoltenberg and Henriette Motzfeldt's unassuming murmurs. At Warm Love Cool Dreams, Smerz applied the same approach to their back catalog. "Am I slowly fading into something real? This is how I worry, this is how I feel," Motzfeldt sang on Easy highlight "It's here", preferring to live in the uncanny. Indeed, despite the presence of an extended backing band, the core of Smerz balanced their music with performance art. For one, they had a videographer visibly filming the whole set, part of the band as much as anyone on stage, the footage projected on the screen behind them. Motzfeldt entered holding a purse, ditching it only after several songs. Stoltenberg often stood in front of a fan on stage while singing, her hair blowing, on the larger screen looking like a Hollywood star obscured by low-budget grain. This, in essence, is Smerz's MO lately, the ability to cull urban glamour out of the ordinary: minimal drums and gurgling synth ("Win"), chintzy bass and violin ("Feisty"), chimes shining like the dollar-store tinsel encompassing them on stage ("A Thousand Lines"). Their brand of off-kilter lounge music is cinematic, unique, and wholly welcome in a sometimes staid pop landscape.

Smerz

Smerz

Smerz

Tortoise

Tortoise

"People love fucking weird music--it rules," said multi-instrumentalist John Herndon during the middle of Tortoise's set. It's the type of feedback that has kept the post-rock band going all these years, therefore a mission statement for the quintet of Herndon, Doug McCombs, John McEntire, Dan Bitney, and Jeff Parker. At the festival, they performed from all over their discography--James Elkington subbing in on guitar for Parker--mixing funk, Latin grooves, mallet-based jazz, trip-hop and reggae melodies, and syncopated synth lines, in only the way they can.

Tortoise

Tortoise

Tortoise

Crowd

The Jesus and Mary Chain

The Jesus and Mary Chain

The last time I saw the Scottish legends, they were blistering, emphasizing fuzz above all else. That was all well and good, but The Jesus and Mary Chain have some of the best hooks of 80's alt-rock. Thankfully, they leaned into their pop smarts during their Saturday night headlining set of the festival, playing pretty much everything a casual or diehard fan would want to hear: "In A Hole", "Some Candy Talking", "Head On", and "I Hate Rock 'n' Roll". Late career bop "All Things Pass"--from 2017's Damage And Joy, a record that's gotten better with age--and "Just Like Honey", during which the band was joined by none other than MVPs Smerz for backing vocals--stood out. And the songs from the band's latest album Glasgow Eyes (Fuzz Club), like the slow-burning and bluesy "Chemical Animal", provided a nice change of pace from the driving classics.

The Jesus and Mary Chain

The Jesus and Mary Chain

Anjimile

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Talk about artists making the most out of not just minimal setups, but the spaciousness of their voices. Last Wednesday at the Hideout, North Carolina's Anjimile and local singer-songwriter Oyeme enraptured the room with mostly guitar, pedals, and vocals. The former, touring his excellent new album You're Free to Go (4AD), presented intimate meditations on family, relationships, and queerness, rife with fingerpicked acoustic lines and deep harmonies with multi-instrumentalist Sinclair Palmer. Given the rich tapestry of sounds that engulfs You're Free to Go, going into the show, I wondered whether I'd miss the drums, strings, and piano. I didn't and instead discovered other elements that shone live, the jaunty riffs of "Afarin", the layered vocals of "Like You Really Mean It". As Anjimile left the stage, yours truly inquired, "One more?" at which point he nonchalantly delivered a stunning cover of Frank Ocean classic "Self Control", whose own outro's echoes proved tailor-made for Anjimile's expansive style.

Oyeme

Oyeme, meanwhile, only has a handful of published recordings to her name, the most recent of which, the resonant "philtrum (kissing ghost)", was a highlight of her set. The majority of what she played were sparse, yet mighty solo versions of songs from an upcoming full-band album, purportedly titled Partscaster, still in the demos stage. Judging by the performances, like that of the reverb-heavy title track, the album should give more oomph to Oyeme's already nicely established bedroom shoegaze sound. She repeatedly remarked throughout her set that she wished we were hearing the full-band versions; while I'm excited to hear them, the solo set effectively reflected the vulnerability prevalent within the songs, which is why her music is overall so captivating and relatable.

(Domino)

BY JORDAN MAINZER

The Newcastle upon Tyne quartet really means it with the title of their fourth album. When you listen to Hen Ogledd's DISCOMBOBULATED, it seems like your schemas have been disrupted and your composure's been disturbed, for multiple reasons. The first voice you hear on the record is of not the unmistakable adults who make up the band, neither Dawn Bothwell's brogue nor Richard Dawson's folksy narration, but a child's innocent coo. On "Scales will fall", Bothwell and Sally Pilkington's keyboards sound like guitars. The layered vocals of "Amser a ddengys", isolated in the mix, nonetheless appear to be coming at you from every direction. Hen Ogledd sing about issues of our time that also transcend history, worker's rights and women's protest movements, through a fantastical lens; the suffusive aesthetic of DISCOMBOBULATED represents the purest encapsulation yet of the band's ethos.

Perhaps, on par with the band's collectivism, it took widening the tent to arrive there. Will Guthrie, who provides percussion throughout DISCOMBOBULATED, convinced the core four to record together in a room instead of working remotely, and from there, Hen Ogledd expanded. The record's songs feature band members' children, sampled field recordings of bugs and horses, and spoken word from compelling experimentalists such as Matana Roberts, C. Spencer Yeh, and Dawson collaborator Janne Westerlund of Finnish kraut metal giants Circle. Faye MacCalman's saxophone and clarinet and Nate Wooley's trumpet further enrich Hen Ogledd's tones, providing some concrete elements to their abstract textures. The sum gives tunes like "Scales will fall" an epic feel. "Scales will fall, and the fire in your soul is only fool's gold," Bothwell sings theatrically, dramatically embodying the antagonist. "Dead in a post-truth world", meanwhile, switching back and forth between Rhodri Davies' jaunty Welsh chorus and Dawson's crunchy, driving English verses, is a direct plea to the masses to try to look beyond the filter of our modern media landscape. "You've got it wrong / Your brain's been poisoned for so long," sings Dawson. That he does so with empathy rather than antipathy doesn't dull his desperation.

As DISCOMBOBULATED goes on, it becomes simultaneously more urgent and more hopeful. "End of the rhythm"--another one of Bothwell's described "Bard rap" songs--flips the tragedy of the Greek chorus on its head, instead declaring "workers can win" atop Dawson's bendy bass line, Guthrie's propulsive drums, and MacCalman's wailing sax. The song receives its title from a play on the preeminent silver lining aphorism: "There is a light at the end of the rhythm." And of course, DISCOMBOBULATED gets a large portion of its runtime from the 20-minute "Clear pools", a concoction of free jazz drums, scraggly guitars, woodwinds, and piano, and keening vocals. It's hypnotic in its repetition, deceivingly complex, and ultimately beautiful, a synecdoche of Hen Ogledd's ability to cull inspiration from the troubles of the past and present.

Anjimile

BY JORDAN MAINZER

For the better part of his musical career so far, Anjimile Chithambo--who performs under the mononym of his first name--has made records that overcome tumult. His debut album Giver Taker was written while getting sober in a rehab facility and inspired by the experience of him coming out as a nonbinary trans person to his parents. 2023 breakout and 4AD debut The King was a remarkable account of Anjimile's feelings following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, pent up anger due to the bigotry he's faced living as a Black trans person in the United States, finally boiling over. Both of these albums, and all of their associated emotions, inform his third LP, entitled You're Free to Go, released in March, but from a more reflective perspective. After all, this time around, Anjimile's got a lot to celebrate: undergoing hormonal therapy, falling in love with his partner, and discovering that non-monogamy works for them. The last one on the list sparked the verbiage of the album title and title track--like one partner saying to the other to go do their thing--yet the concept of freedom carries a much heavier weight in context of Anjimile's identity increasingly becoming a source of pride.

To find the perfect sound to represent his newfound levity, the Durham-based Anjimile turned to his neighbor, who just so happens to be Brad Cook, one of the most prolific and important indie rock producers of the past decade and a half. From there, Anjimile decided to take advantage of the city's fruitful music scene, recording with the likes of Bon Iver drummer Matt McCaughan and string genius Libby Rodenbough. Nathan Stocker, lead guitarist of Saint Paul rock band Hippo Campus and who makes his solo music as brotherkenzie, lends electric guitar, piano, acoustic guitar, and synthesizers throughout. However, Anjimile also harked back to the music of his teenage years, channeling Modest Mouse on "Turning Away" and "The Store", the latter's gentle guitar layers falling behind whirs and clacks. On "The Store", Anjimile sings, "I asked for a sign / You gave me the store," both toying with your expectations via clever wordplay and beautifully illustrating heartfelt dedication between people. And none other than early influence Sam Beam of Iron & Wine provides backing vocals and harmonies on the final two songs, "Destroying You" and "Enough", and emotional centerpiece "Ready or Not". "Ready or Not" looks transphobia straight on, Anjimile singing, over scraped guitar and delicate piano, "You made a choice / I'm not your kid" and later, "Ready or not, here I come," a phrase long immortalized in music by The Delfonics and the Fugees, that's moved up an echelon even further with Anjimile's declaration of presence. Beam's vocals--ever mighty precisely because of rather than in spite of their softness--sound strikingly similar to Anjimile's on "The Store", a symbolic passing of the torch moment from one powerful songwriter to another.

Anjimile spoke with me over the phone late last month from Durham, as he was getting ready to move to a suburban town an hour west to live with his partner. We talked about the making of You're Free to Go, its salient cover art, and teaching music. Anjimile plays the Hideout this Wednesday, accompanied by multi-instrumentalist Sinclair Palmer, and at the Evanston Folk Festival in September. Tickets are still available at the Hideout at time of publication (doors at 7:30 P.M., show at 8). Below, read our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

You're Free to Go cover art

SILY: You're Free to Go has been out for a couple months. How have you felt the reception has been, and how is your relationship to the record now that it's out in the public and people are listening to it?

Anjimile Chithambo: I'm grateful. I feel like I've received a lot of positive feedback. It seems like the people are digging it, and that's nice, because I dig it, too. It's also nice that it's out because I don't have to think about what people will think about it anymore. It belongs to the world now. I can let it go.

SILY: You're free to go!

AC: Exactly.

SILY: Normally, when you make a record, do you think about how fans or new listeners will receive it?

AC: Not necessarily. It's more a nascent anxiety that will creep up every now and again that I'll swat away like it's a fly when I am making music. That's a fool's errand, to try to make music for an imaginary person, what they might like. I have to push it away.

SILY: This record is more internal and about your immediate surroundings than about the world. It's not quite as wide-reaching as The King. Did that affect your feelings about the record as you were making it?

AC: I guess so. You're Free to Go definitely sounds different than The King, because it's about different stuff. The King was me processing a lot of societal trauma, and as a result, the record was very angular with the potential to cut the listener's ear. This album, I'm just a little less anxious, still processing societal trauma but also experiencing falling in love, processing my gender identity, and focusing on what's around me. It definitely affected the recording process. Brad Cook lives down the street, so he's certainly around me, so that made that part easy.

SILY: If The King is angular, this album is a lot more gentle and rounded, from the guitar tones to the layering. Did you go into it knowing you were going to approach it with a different sound?

AC: I knew that a different sound would be likely just based on the shift in producers. Shawn Everett, the producer of The King, has a very different style, and even within his style, we recorded the album in a very specific, methodical way. Brad Cook, he makes roots-related Americana, and there wasn't a lot of production stuff happening in terms of bells and whistles. I was like, "Here are the songs, let's put some bass and drums and see how that feels, add some keys," as opposed to working with Shawn Everett where I was like, "Okay, now we're going to import this Philip Glass track into the song and change the key and time signature and then record it for a week." This was a different process.

SILY: This one's got a more relaxed feel to it. Also, if I wasn't looking at the credits, I wouldn't always know what instruments were making what sounds. Do you like that ambiguity in music?

AC: I do like that, that sonic textural experimentation, a lot. The King was a lot wackier. We made every sound on that record using the acoustic guitar. We ran it through a lot of stuff and slapped it and did all this stuff to make it sound like drums and bass and keys. It was nice this time to, like, use a Moog synth and just find a cool sound. It's kind of the mark of a true artist like Brad, to find the right little extra sounds to add into the arrangement and have them be both familiar and unique, bringing out the best qualities.

SILY: Did it mean something to you to work with so many local folks on this record, from Brad to Libby Rodenbough?

AC: Yeah. Once it was established that we were recording at Brad's place, it was, "Let's just do it in Durham. I'm not leaving Durham. I don't feel like it." Libby's a local legend. That was easy. [laughs] Libby rules. That was exciting to have her come to the studio and do her thing.

SILY: The scene there seems really conducive to everybody playing on everybody else's records, independent of genre.

AC: Oh yeah. 100%. We like to collab around here. It's fun. I love singing on other people's stuff. It's so fun.

SILY: At what point did you decide the sequencing of the album? How did you go about it?

AC: The sequencing experience and process came towards the end. We had recorded everything, and it was initially challenging to figure out the order. At one point, we kicked one of the songs off, "Auld Lang Syne II", which ended up being a single before the album, a one-off. For whatever reason, removing that song made an arc clear. I really love sequencing and a record having an arc, a sonic narrative. I feel like You're Free to Go starts in this gentle way, we get some drums in there, high-energy, and halfway through the album, it gets super emotional again and stays in that mood. I dig that. [laughs]

SILY: How much have you played these songs live?

AC: Not a ton. Maybe a dozen [times] at this point. I think we finished this record a year and a half ago, so between then and now, I've been able to play them, mostly in Durham. I had a residency at a record store in Durham last month. That was super helpful. I've certainly been rehearsing a lot.

SILY: How are you reimagining the songs for smaller venues? What's the setup going to be like at the Hideout?

AC: It's less rearranging for the room and more working within the constraints we have for tour, which is a small budget. It's me and one other musician. We're making as much sound as possible with our respective toys and instruments.

SILY: You're also playing Evanston Folk Festival in the fall, likely solo. When playing live, does the process of paring back the songs to their original minimal arrangements put you in the same headspace you were in when you wrote them?

AC: Definitely performing puts me in the headspace I was in when I wrote the song. It's always a very immersive experience.

SILY: Do you have a favorite song to play live from this record?

AC: Maybe right now "You're Free to Go" because the fingerpicking is fun to play. They're all pretty fun to play, which is exciting. "Like You Really Mean It" is really fun to play as well.

SILY: I like on the latter how the plea you're singing is tangled within the guitar parts.

AC: Yeah!

SILY: At the Hideout, the other musician you're playing with, Sinclair Palmer, is going to be doing backing vocals. That's cool to hear, because guest vocals and vocal layering are such an integral part to the sound of this record.

AC: I think that's the one thing I felt like I needed if I was gonna bring another musician.

SILY: Can you tell me about the cover art?

AC: Have you ever heard of video synth? If a keyboard synth [that] processes sounds and makes them sound different, and there are different settings. Sometimes it's a pad, sometimes it's a "whoop whoop" sound. You can do that for video footage as well. Brad has these two analog RCA units. He's got a setup in his garage where there's a projector. I filmed myself watching a video and we ran that through the video synth and were able to distort the image, add different colors, make it wavy, make it upside down, add kaleidoscopic stuff. The cover art is pulled from one of those video sessions where we were manipulating the bass image of me looking into the camera. We sent a bunch of stills to the designer, and he sent the album cover back. I was like, "Yes!" It's simple, it's clear. I love the green line at the top. I think it's as direct as the album itself.

SILY: For sure, but it also has an Easter Egg-type story behind it where it's literally connected to the music. Kind of like how the MIDI notation to "Laura Palmer's Theme" from Angelo Badalamenti's Twin Peaks score is shaped like twin peaks.

AC: What?!?

SILY: I know.

AC: Insane.

SILY: Are you the type of songwriter who is always writing, or do you need to set aside time to sit down and write music?

AC: I'm not the type of songwriter who is always writing. It's quite often. It's somewhere in between--I don't usually sit down and say, "Time to write a song now." I tend to have a lightning strike of inspiration. In order for that to take shape, I need to be playing guitar regularly. When I'm in the practice of playing guitar regularly, the songs flow out once a month. If I'm focused on my day job, I'm writing less.

SILY: Do you know it's time for a new record when the things you've been writing start to coalesce around a theme?

AC: I think it's finding the theme in the collection of music, and also doing that in the context of the label saying, "Hey! Time for another record!" On the one hand, it's less romantic because it's capitalism-informed, but it's a creative process to choose the collection and making the connection between songs, [deciding] what songs group together in what ways. I think the grouping of the songs on [this] album makes a lot of sense.

SILY: It's always a delicate balance. The album finished almost two years ago and came out when it did because of the record release cycle, but it's its own artistic statement and a snapshot of a time and place for you.

AC: Totally.

SILY: Do you have anything else on the horizon?

AC: I'm trying to get a job as a music teacher. I did [it] a bunch in Durham, but now I'm moving. I'm trying to get a gig for the 2026-27 academic school year.

SILY: How does that job, where you're intimately involved with others' creativity, affect your own creativity?

AC: It tends to be super inspiring. I like working with youth and music because there tends to be less fear because of the lack of self-awareness that kids have. It makes them less afraid to try new things and explore creatively musically, do something silly, and try stuff even if it doesn't work...I love teaching workshops for kids involving songwriting.

SILY: Is there anything you've been listening to, watching, or reading that's inspired you?

AC: I've been listening to a lot of Parliament. I already like Parliament, but I've gotten to the point where I decided to listen to another Parliament album. I feel like once you listen to two, you're in there. You're a fan. I've been bumping The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein by them. I'm particularly inspired by the groove and the gang vocals. They're so cool and kind of eerie. I'm interested in the eeriness of the gang vocals. I find it arresting.

I've been listening to this podcast called Otherworld where people talk about their supernatural experiences. It ends up landing on musings on these individuals' spiritual beliefs as a result of their experiences, and I always find that very interesting to listen to.

SILY: Was there something you took away from working on this record that you already know you're going to apply to making music in the future?

AC: I learned the power of being relaxed in the studio. From the technical aspect, I prefer the way my voice sounds when it's relaxed, and that will only happen if I'm actually relaxed. [laughs] Recording is not necessarily a relaxing environment. I've never had a bad recording experience, but it feels like work...I don't have to be and it benefits me if I am not wound up. It actually behooves me as a vocalist and instrumentalist to let go and release. That helps me dig into the music and the mood and the feeling and the point of what I'm doing even more.

Brad smokes so much weed, it's impossible not to be relaxed around him...I was just dog-sitting at his house. It was a delight.

Primitive Ring

BY JORDAN MAINZER

What do you do when you're prolific musicians, working with restless virtuosos like Ty Segall and leading bands such as Hoveriii, and you have a free moment? Start a new band, of course. That's what guitarist Charles Moothart and bassist Bert Hoover did in 2024, forming rock trio Primitive Ring with drummer Jon Modaff. As the songs started pouring out, the band released some of them in real time, four 7-inch singles on four different labels last year alone, and refined their sound performing in bars around town. At the same time, they were working on material for a full-length record. They cut their self-titled debut, out today via In The Red, in December 2025 with Mark Rains at the Station House in Echo Park. In this day and age, a five-month turnaround time is practically unheard of. Then again, Primitive Ring harks back to a simpler time, when that rock band you stumbled upon at a local venue could make it on the sheer strength of their hooks and riffs.

Primitive Ring would probably be the first to admit it: If you like the bands they like and the other bands they play in, you're going to like them. Opening track "Fire and Brimstone" starts with burbling guitar and drums before launching into a Segall-esque bluesy psychedelic jaunt with falsetto vocals. The two singles released prior to today, "Heads Will Roll" and "Lies From The Outside", lean into the heavier side of the band's sound, the beats speedier and meatier, in a race with the arpeggiated guitars. On "Call Me What You Please", Moothart's journey up and down the guitar neck sounds like his shoulder angel and devil having an argument, the latter winning with a mischievous declaration: "I'd rather roll in the dirt than button up my shirt."

Where Primitive Ring subverts your expectations is towards the end, where a lesser band would put their weakest tracks. The penultimate "Our Oblivion" juxtaposes acoustic guitar, pattering drums, and keys, building up into a chugger but never exploding. Instead, it segues into closer "Golden", a lush version of "Golden In Your Eyes" from the band's debut 7-inch, featuring strings from Laena Myers and piano from Ben Boye. And then there's today's focus track, which SILY is exclusively premiering: the 7-minute "The Callous Man", which begins not with a bang but with Hoover's rolling bass line and Modaff's jazzy fills. Even though Moothart eventually rips a Van Halen-worthy solo, the song takes its time to get there. "I'll be here all night, go tell your friends," Hoover sings fittingly; you can imagine the bar packed by the end of the night due to that word of mouth.

Primitive Ring, who just got back from touring with Segall, answered some questions over email about the record. Read their responses below, edited for length and clarity.

Primitive Ring album art

Since I Left You: What about your debut album makes it distinct from, or a more cohesive statement than, the four 7-inch singles released last year?

Primitive Ring: In reality, the album and the four 7”s from last year came from a similar train of thought. The flow of making four 7”s over the first year of us being a band allowed us to formulate our sound and get music to people more quickly. Fairly early on in the process, we decided we would make an album of music separate from what was on the 7”s. This allowed us to explore different sounds on the 7”s and see what directions were working and therefore implement those on the LP. The 7”s kind of feel like a deconstructed LP. Maybe it’s more accurate to say it feels like a cohesive body of music that was spaced out over different intervals instead of going out in to the world all together. The LP was always the focus as far as really setting out our mission statement as a band. But we are trying to reserve the right to go any direction that feels right within the world we are creating with our music.

SILY: Was it always your plan to release some songs from the get-go but flesh out live the songs that would be on your debut LP?

PR: The plan was always to keep the momentum moving forward. We started this band by writing a couple of songs and immediately recording them. We are just trying to let the communal creative process lead the charge. We want to be busy and active both from a touring and a writing perspective. So, yeah, the idea was always to start creating and playing and just let the organic momentum lead us forward. I think there was a level of respect to listeners when it came to LP vs 7”s that we knew we wanted to offer more music instead of recycling the music we released on the first 7”s. But this was also a fun challenge for us to write songs we were proud of and feel comfortable knowing they would exist on the 7” for now and that the LP would require more attention and focus.

SILY: How was your tour with Ty? Was there anything you learned from playing these songs to an audience who had not yet heard the studio versions?

PR: The shows we did with Ty were great. Ty and his band sound amazing right now. As a new band, it’s important to play with an established crew of musicians like that and to be able to reflect on your performance. Music is a conversation...maybe many conversations at once. It’s a conversation between you and yourself, you and your bandmates, you and your music, you and the crowd. So it’s important to listen to what those conversations are teaching you. The learning never ends, and that’s the fun part.

SILY: Does Primitive Ring feature any influences that don't show up as much in your other projects?

PR: At this point in my life, the concept of influences can range from extremely obvious to fluid and personal. I think we are all influenced by all kinds of music and art and modes of expression. But we also are aware that the type of music we are making is not exactly rocket science. So, in that way, we are focused on making songs we like and enjoy playing. I think that energy can draw on many different influences, including non-musical ones. But on an aesthetic level, it’s fairly straightforward at this moment. We just want to make good rock and roll that is engaging and fun for a listener at home or at a show.

SILY: "The Callous Man" is a bit of an outlier on the album, both in terms of overall length and the way it starts with more prominent bass than guitar or drums. What makes it a good focus track for the record release today?

PR: “The Callous Man” feels like another tentacle of the aesthetic direction. Like I said before, we are aware of the world from which we are coming from creatively. While we aren’t trying to overcomplicate what we are doing, we also want to retain the feeling of freedom to approach it however we see fit for different songs. Sometimes that might be with an acoustic guitar and minimal percussion, other times it might be bass-and-drums-heavy with more drawn-out freeform sections. So in that way, "The Callous Man" is a great focus track in juxtaposition to the two more straight forward singles that came before it. It offers a deeper look in to where the album goes if you sit with the whole thing.

SILY: How did you approach the sequencing of the album? Did you always know you wanted some songs to segue into others or call back to other songs' refrains?

PR: Once we had a handful of songs, we kind of knew what would loosely go where. “Call Me the Breeze” always felt like a good B-side track. “Grief Song” similarly felt so strong but so different that it would serve the B side of a record so well. As “Fire and Brimstone” came together, it felt so dramatic that...we should try to unlock its potential as an opener. As the pieces came [together,] they started to form a bigger picture. Then, knowing that we were only going to rerecord one song from our 7”s, it became clear it would be a great way to close the album. “Golden” has such a different energy than how it appears on the 7”, so it felt like a fun way to bring everything full circle but with the feeling that the road is still unfolding ahead of us.

What's the story behind the cover art?

PR: Callum Rooney did the artwork. We kind of let him do what he wanted with it. We just knew we wanted to try to tap in to the classic trio album covers like Vincebus Eruptum or Bad Reputation. But Callum did his thing and knocked it out of the park.

SILY: Is there anything you've been listening to, watching, or reading lately that's caught your attention?

PR: Personally, I’ve been reading a lot of different stuff. Time, Myth and Matter by LD Deutsch is a very wild and heady read. I recently watched Hour of the Wolf by Ingmar Bergman and thought that was a pretty incredible film. Same with Mirror by [Andrei] Tarkovsky.

Cut Worms

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Max Clarke sure didn't do anything to dispel the notion that his songs sound plucked from a summer day in the mid-60s. Saturday night at Lincoln Hall, he and his venerable backing band--pedal steel guitarist Jon "Catfish" DeLorme, electric guitarist Joe Schorgl, drummer Static Zach, and bassist Keven LaReau--walked out to none other than Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass' "Ladyfingers". As the brawny horns dissipated, the quintet launched into "Worlds Unknown", the opening track from Cut Worms' latest and best album Transmitter (Jagjaguwar). What followed was a set of tunes that were effortless in their timelessness, including the entirety of Transmitter and countrified back catalog gems.

Cut Worms

Indeed, thanks to the tying thread of DeLorme's pedal steel, Schorgl's lonesome riffs, and Zach's steady beats, older, more literary Cut Worms songs fit seamlessly among the broader nuggets of observational wisdom that pepper Transmitter. The band delivered a rollicking "It Won't Be Too Long", vigorous "Always on My Mind", jaunty "Castle In The Clouds", and galloping "Song of the Highest Tower". That said, when Clarke got time to shine alone, you really appreciated him as a lyricist. If his best song, "Veteran's Day", stands out because of the earworm chorus, a tune such as "Last Words to a Refugee"--performed solo on acoustic guitar--exemplifies Clarke's penchant for killer verses. "One fine day I'm gonna wake up when / What's lost came back again / And life will still be what it always was--A drunk dance to the next gold rush," he sang, imbuing his words with simultaneous desperation and defeat. The full band played "Refugee"'s counterpoint in mood, "Windows on the World", which has become my favorite track on Transmitter, a few songs later. The only aspects of "Windows" more wistful than its strummed guitar were Clarke's creative rhyming ("ephemera" with "camera," come ON!) and the content non-chorus declaration: "On a clear day, you can see almost forever."

Cut Worms

Mock Media

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Very few bands making music in 2026 sound like Mock Media. This is probably because very few have such strong irreverence for the type of propriety that would prevent them from folding elements of Afrobeat and reggae into their folk and punk like the British Columbia quartet does. Forget Vampire Weekend and the other buttoned-up groups whose Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel obsessed-baroque rock pervaded college campuses in the early Obama years. Mock Media's predecessors are instead The Police and the Ramones, vocalists Evan Aasen, Garnet Aronyk Muhammad and Austin Boylan unafraid to take their affected yelps and vocal chants to the extreme. Just when you think you have Mock Media figured out, though, you hear a song such as "Built for Speed" from their upcoming album Rat Bastard (Mac's Record Label), a lovingly composed, yet ass-ripping speed metal jam. True to their name, you wonder, is Mock Media trying to mock the media, or anybody who tries to pigeonhole them?

Mock Media

Mock Media

Mock Media

Mock Media

Mock Media

Mock Media

Mock Media

Mock Media

Opening for their label founder Mac DeMarco at The Salt Shed last Thursday, with only the chirpy, anthemic power pop title track from their July full-length so far released, Mock Media offered a preview of the disparate areas they'll be traversing in the future. After the jagged one-two-three punch of "Madness", "Louis Won't Break", and "Axe", they performed Rat Bastard standout "White Lion", rife with plucky electric guitar and clattering drums from Bennett Smith, and "City's on Fire", whose hazy guitars effectively contrasted its skittering dub beat. Following Mock Media II highlights "Modern Visions" and the dynamic "Touch the Ground", the band left the crowd wanting more with statement of purpose and Rat Bastard opener "Mock City Rock". "Come alive to the Mock City Rock", they beckoned on the angular tune; a couple minutes in, they delivered a crunchy breakdown with a "London Calling"-esque shiny guitar clang before returning to the propulsive verse tempo. (Fittingly, the other song that bookends Rat Bastard, "Straight Line", is anything but what the name suggests, funneling West African-style desert blues into a straight-up dance party.) Often, opening bands prime the audience for the grandeur of the main act, but at The Salt Shed, Mock Media's wonderful chaos made DeMarco's abstract textures a borderline necessary reprieve.

Mac DeMarco

Mac DeMarco

Crowd

Mac DeMarco

Mac DeMarco

Daryl Johns & Phil Melanson

(Dead Oceans)

BY JORDAN MAINZER

During her performance of Puberty 2's "I Bet On Losing Dogs" in Grant James' concert movie The Land, Mitski drops to all fours and pants. The song is not literally about canines--it refers to Mitski's self-described tendency to waste away in bad relationships--but her pantomiming at one of those filmed nights at Atlanta's Fox Theatre perhaps foreshadowed the animal symbolism that pervades Nothing's About to Happen to Me. Yes, Mitski's eighth album is her feline album, from the Marc Burckhardt-painted white cat that adorns the album cover, to the two songs with the word "cat" in the title, to the archetypical cat lady main character of the songs themselves. On a broader level, though, Mitski's perceptions of the critters within her walls and that roam her neighborhood cause her to reflect inward and analyze her own agency. Nothing's About to Happen to Me concerns nature versus nurture, or rather, how we can look to nature when we and others fail to nurture ourselves.

Mitski immediately sets the scene, why she's gotten in her head so much, with "In a Lake". Just before the pandemic, she moved to Nashville, a small city compared to the cities around the world in which she grew up and the NYC where she started her music career. In Music City, she's inundated with country songs on the radio that glorify little towns, while she laments that everybody knows everybody else's business where there are less people. Fats Kaplin's banjo and Ty Bailie's folky accordion are eventually swallowed by swelling orchestration and sampled traffic noises, Mitski content to hide behind the hustle. On "Where's My Phone?" she's desperate to dissociate and get lost in the even louder digital sphere; "If night is like you punched a hole into tomorrow," she sings, "I would **** the hole all night long," self-censoring as if to minimize the extent to which she's revealing anything. Her confession, then, comes in the form of "Cats", both a heartbroken letting go of a significant other and a paean to her furry friends. "Maybe tomorrow night / The cats will be nowhere in sight / But I'll be glad to know / They're out following their heart's delight," she sings. It's the first of many references on the record to free will. On "That White Cat", whose titular character purportedly urinated on Mitski's house, she contrasts the human inclination to seek societal structure with the instinct and formed habits of animals. "The only thing you can trust is what you lived through," Mitski sings. Sure, what we sometimes lack in fight-or-flight response can be made up for by critical thinking, but she still wishes we all followed the same rules.

More importantly, Mitski's ability to make choices doesn't trump the weight of her devastation. "If I Leave" sports the loud-quiet-loud dynamic of "Your Best American Girl", rife with Patrick Hyland's crunchy guitars, Jeni Magaña's slinky bass, and Bruno Esrubilsky's meaty drums, as Mitski admits that the other person is the essential one in the relationship: "If I leave, somebody else will love you / But nobody else could forgive me quite as often as you." "I'll Change for You" facetiously romanticizes dependency over a cinematic, jazzy bed of bossa nova. Most brutal is "Dead Women", a diatribe against men who want trad wives: "Would you have liked me better if I'd died / So you could tell my story the way it ought to be?" Mitski sings, strummed acoustic guitar and Kaplin's light pedal steel stalked by eerie strings. Even if the song isn't Mitski's personal reality, it's definitely the reality of countless women across the globe. On Nothing's About to Happen to Me, Mitski boils down her and our world to a collection of perspectives and voices. Understanding them can heal us better than can time itself.

SUNN O)))

BY JORDAN MAINZER

There's a moment on "XXANN", the opening song of SUNN O)))'s new self-titled album and Sub Pop debut--after minutes of layered, buzzing, piercing, and ascending guitars--when you hear water trickle. You know, logically, that it's a mere taste of earthbound respite amidst a massacre of otherworldly sludge, like finding refuge in a bat-infested cave during an impossibly muddy hike. Indeed, when Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson hold their notes, guitars up in the air, them throttling the neck for another go-around is akin to a record scratch or a jump scare; them slowly sliding down to a rumble places you mentally in that same hike in the middle of an agonizing cascade downhill. The droning guitars whirr as much as they hypnotize you. It's unsettling and creates times when you think, "Should I be hearing what I'm hearing?" as if you're getting too close to machinery without protective equipment.

SUNN O)))

Of course, witnessing the band live raises similar conundrums: "Should I be exposing my ears to this many speakers turned to 11? Should I be ingesting this much from the smoke machine?" Just like those bats in the cave, though, maybe everyone is exactly where they should be. The adage that a SUNN O))) set is therapeutic, that the harmonic vibrations don't just jostle your organs but change you permanently, remains true. This time around, however, the duo has added more context. At the Salt Shed last month, they let the "Venom Banter 1986" tape play in its entirety before entering the stage, an infamous cut of only between-song introductions from the legendary British metal band announcing "Nightmare", "7 Gates of Hell", "The Chanting of the Priests", and more. SUNN O))) have long been ones to call out to artists that have influenced them in their work, as wide-ranging as Metallica and Alice Coltrane. The second track of sunn O))), titled "Does Anyone Hear Like Venom", I don't think is a cute misspelling, but wordplay about perception. Does anyone hear like Venom does, taking in their local elements and using them to generate something new? Records like Black Metal turbo-charged then-regular metal tempos into speed races. Even though SUNN O))) operate at the opposite end of the velocity spectrum, they, too, manifest instances of associational nostalgia. One second of tinnitus-inducing feedback can recall histories of loud, righteous live shows.

SUNN O)))

SUNN O)))

Crowd

SUNN O)))

In a sense, it doesn't really matter that sunn O))) is the duo's first album that consists of just the two of them, because it features so much more than people. Tracked at Bear Creek Studio in Woodinville, Washington, the record incorporates unfamiliar instruments and sources, from piano ("Glory Back") to field recordings ("Mindrolling"). At the Salt Shed, were you to step back into the balcony, you could barely see the audience, let alone the band, the whole room shrouded in smoke, the most human-looking things the tops of lights peeking above the amps. The crowd whooped between riffs, as O'Malley and Anderson played with tone and brightness beyond their quintessential guttural purring. In SUNN O)))'s world, deep listening exercises are as worthy of thrown horns as are growling vocals and herculean drum thwacks. Open your ears, and you can hear into the past and future.

SUNN O)))

Photo by Charlie Weinmann

BY JORDAN MAINZER

For two decades, White Denim has carried a tension between past and future, juxtaposing retro style with progressive and experimental song structures. Just before the pandemic, several albums deep, the band's sound was leaning backwards, with 2018's Performance and 2019's Side Effects emphasizing James Petralli and company's feel-good shambles. COVID-19 saw White Denim embrace the present and collaborate remotely, 2020's self-released World As A Waiting Room written and recorded in 30 days. The past few years, however, which started with Petralli moving from his longtime home of Austin to Los Angeles and treating White Denim as more of a solo project with a rotating cast, have seen an unprecedented hot streak: a 2023 psych-jazz record with Once and Future Band guitarist Raze Regal, the poppier 12, and now, their magnum opus 13 albums in.

Though the songs on 13 (Bella Union) seem inscrutable, they're arguably Petralli's most personal batch to date, calling back to White Denim's and his history despite being firmly rooted in this day and age. Petralli, for the most part, recorded and arranged the album, yet it does feature original band member Josh Block (drums) alongside stars like current live drummer Matt Young and beloved indie pop composer Owen Pallet. Its title refers to not just the 13th full-length in White Denim's discography, but Petralli's birthday (August 13th).

Tying in Petralli's life, in and of itself, is a relatively new strategy, a continuation of 12, which was named after both its numerical entry in the catalog and the number James' father Geno wore throughout his Major League Baseball career. Over the phone, Petralli explained to me that he got back into the sport during the pandemic and is now doing Little League with his son. "I kind of kept him away from the game," Petralli said. "I love baseball, but it's a complicated relationship I have with it in my community and family...It's been such an amazing few months getting ready for the season with him. We go out every day. It's been a great connection point for us and kind of a healing thing for me, too." The pandemic represented a time for Petralli to reexamine his relationship with White Denim and his family, too, that years of touring had made him miss out on milestones. His full-on independence--another thing that the number 13 can symbolize--wasn't what it chalked up to be.

If 12 scratched the surface of Petralli's therapeutic attempts to address his life, 13 tackles them head-on. A wonderfully scattered song such as "Time Time", sporting horns from Mike St Clair atop a shuffle, posits that creative freedom and family are not mutually exclusive and perhaps symbiotic. "Crossfyre", a fried duet with Adryon De León, depicts a couple trying to make it work. Not all of the tunes illustrate issues; some remind Petralli why he dove into music in the first place. Take opener "(God Created) Lock and Key", a slice of tongue-in-cheek mythology that playfully bounces from free jazz to a Jack White-esque blues rock stomp of absurdist lyrics. ("Paranoia Schadenfreude Saturn Goya Pig Destroyer something for you;" "My daddy is fucking Norman Bates.") "That's Rap", on which Petralli actually raps over a funky beat, replete with Jesse Chandler's syncopated flutes, pays tribute to Petralli's crate-digging hip-hop fandom in the 90's, an era when CDs triumphed and emcees gleefully bloated track lists with skits. It has no right to work as well as it does.

What ultimately makes 13 great and all-encompassing are its shifts in tone, exemplified by "Hired Hand #2" and "Earth To". Petralli delivers the first, a country tune laden with banjo and slide whistle, about the songwriting economy, with a toothy grin and a sardonic pen: "Did you make yourself a moment then sorta sadly let it pass? / Start sharpening crosses in a house that's made of glass? / Know someone won't soon forget wiping your tiny baby ass / Kissing you bye before your classes in the past." The second is a self-reflective takedown of the American dream that's on the opposite end of the aesthetic spectrum, lilting acoustic guitar and a dub beat, closing with a saxophone solo from Adam Schatz. "Meet the songs of profanity / On their private aisles / With their bachelors degrees / You oughta line them up and give them all a big squeeze / Singing Jesus Christ is the hammer supreme / And I'll do my best not to blaspheme," Petralli sings facetiously. In essence, as he's nestled further into his home and family, he's learned to pick his battles.

The importance of said home and family offers additional key context to 13: that it was completed after the fires that rocked Southern California in January 2025. Petralli's house was saved, but many of his friends lost their homes, and his son lost his school. "The survivor's guilt thing is real," Petralli said. "I'm not really able to recognize my own situation quite as much because I was surrounded by destruction and tragedy." Around 6:30 P.M. on the night of the Eaton Fire, Petralli began to empty out his studio because he was underinsured, and only once he put his studio back together was he able to finish the record. Even if the fires didn't have a direct affect on the content of 13, you can hear the spirit of not taking anything for granted in the liveliness of the music. So at this point in time, Petralli's exactly where he wants to be. Likewise, White Denim's never sounded better--it simply took a winding and bumpy road to get there.

Read my conversation with Petralli below, edited for length and clarity.

Photo by Charlie Weinmann

Since I Left You: You've titled the last two records after their number in the catalog. Did you know even before you made 13 the significance of the number to you, from your birthday to the numerological symbolism of the number?

James Petralli: I did think about it, but the title is a reaction. I made a 20-song album and delivered it three years ago. Eight of the songs from 13 were part of that collection, which had a different title. The record company I'm partnered with didn't want to do a double album. They kind of picked 12 songs, and that number had significance for me as well, because my dad wore the number 12 throughout his career as a baseball player...That's when the idea for 13 [came.] I had to create a new context for these eight tunes that I put so much into, [to] write five more and repurpose [them] and create a new story. Really, 12 and 13 were one album at one time. [13] was kind of an afterthought, but an afterthought I spent 2 years developing.

SILY: The album starts with the single, "(God Created) Lock and Key", which is aesthetically all over the place and introduces an album that, itself, is aesthetically all over the place. Was that synchronicity a conscious decision?

JP: I wish that I could say I'm driving a lot of these decisions. I was pleasantly surprised when the label wanted to lead with that song. Part of me staying in music and being lucky enough to get a budget for my 13th rock and roll record as a middle-aged man, [is my ability to say,] "What do you think?" [laughs] Another reason why I'm really into collaboration with a business partner is that it's kind of just me, now. Steve [Terebecki], the last partner from the original lineup, is a realtor now. We still work on stuff together, but I don't really have anybody checking me inside the organization anymore. I kind of yield to the label. If Steve would have been in the band, and they had shelved the double record, I think I would have thrown a total temper tantrum. [laughs] Steve would have had to be the person to give me the bright side and talk me off that. Five years on my own, now, I kind of yield to the creativity of others even more than I did when I had close partners.

"Lock and Key"...[is] on the record because it had been so long since I made a riff record. I tend to leave the guitar in the corner these days. I'm much more inspired by synthesizers and drum machines and old outboard gear and the studio as an instrument. "Lock and Key" for me was [me] really needing to do a guitar-centric thing and [seeing] if I could bring some old heads back into the fold. But also, [introducing] bass clarinet playing atonally and [having] some textures that might be a little bit more challenging than standard blues rock. I can't believe that it's a single. It's a very linear kind of thing. Sections don't really repeat in a conventional way. I can't imagine [it] being on the radio, but people are playing it on the radio, so I'm really encouraged by that.

SILY: It sounds like the opening to a concept album. The first line is, "On the 13th day, God created White Denim." The drums, bass clarinet, and sax play freely. Your vocals are distorted. You play toy piano and eventually go into blues-rock. It almost makes you think it's going to take itself seriously and then doesn't.

JP: [laughs] Cool. I'm not that kind of artist, as hard as I try. I think I really wanted to be a comedian [or] a voice actor. Some part of me wanted that more than what I'm doing now, but I'm certainly happy to still be creative, and I never take it too seriously.

SILY: You take on a few different voices on the record, from the speaking parts where you pretend you're on the phone, to your various singing styles. Sometimes, you're in a falsetto, other times, it's that bluesy croon. You even rap. Was that something you were trying to embody, these different sort of singing personas?

JP: It goes back to my childhood. I have a couple really specific memories getting positive feedback using my voice. One, I was in the back of the car singing along to "[I Like the Way (The] Kissing Game)". It was an R&B smash hit in the early 90s [by] Hi-Five. My aunt was in the front seat, and she turned around really shocked, and was like, "You have a nice voice." I remember thinking, "Oh, ok, and it feels good to sing, and maybe I can do this." There's no precedent for that in my family, so I looked for opportunities to use my voice. The other [memory] was in middle school, doing a Kermit the Frog impression, the most class clown kind of thing, and being able to get positive reaction from my peers and even teachers, who said, "That's actually kind of funny that he's doing Kermit in biology class."

I was really into all the things my peers were into, like The Black Crowes and Dave Matthews Band, and all that kind of stuff, and I would impersonate those guys. I joined a band for a while as just a singer, my senior year of high school, because I wasn't playing guitar yet. I was always just trying to throw my voice and impersonate whoever's material we were doing...Being another voice is definitely a common thread throughout the catalog. I'm sure I'm in there, but there is a certain amount of performance that goes into doing this.

It's funny you mention the skit [on "That's Rap"]. All of the records growing up, the CDs, they had much more time, because they weren't thinking about fitting everything onto two sides of vinyl. The records started to get so long, and all the hip-hop records I loved had little skits in between songs, so that's kind of a callback to the sampling and CD era that I love so much.

SILY: As much as there is a performance on a lot of the record's songs, there are times when you're more serious, talking about the world, or like "Time Time", where you're talking to your kids.

JP: My kids are 13 and 10. For the first part of their lives, I was really still pushing hard as a bandleader, like, "I'm gonna make this thing work for us," trying to get what I can out of it, and trying to balance that with my artistic impulses. I really missed a lot. In the pandemic, when touring went away, it was a huge wake-up call with my family. We had to address my absence and the dynamics that created in my marriage and life as a dad. Coming out of the pandemic and getting back into doing the band, I really want to have moved on from this approach of saying yes to every opportunity to appear. Having a quieter [life], still creatively ambitious, but less so in terms of a career or getting an audience to clap. Less motivated by approval and more motivated by the positive things I see from my kids. My studio is now 10 feet from our house. I work during the day. My kids pop in. I've achieved this really sweet balance with my work and family now that's the most important thing. In doing that, I've been able to heal relationships with my old band partner and Steve. Those relationships have gotten better. That's all a result of sitting in the reality of the pandemic and the fires. Being there for my family in a more solid way than before has taught me a lot of things.

SILY: One of the other ways you've talked about this record is not imaging the person on the other side, and whether they're going to like or pay for it. Do you think the lack of that type of motivation helped the sound of this record expand as much as it did?

JP: I think so. More than that, it's going to really help me in the future to stay inspired and keep doing this thing no matter what the circumstances are. In terms of personnel, commercial success, or viability, you start by saying, "Will they buy this?" and that's a firm no. [laughs] It's such a gracious act for someone to buy something from an artist now. I know the answer to that one. 98% of the people who come in contact with it directly will not pay for it in a way that benefits my family or business. I don't do the kind of numbers that make sense in the digital realm.

SILY: At the same time, the question of, "Will they buy it?" is not as relevant as, say, "Will they spend the money to see me when I play live?" or "Will they support me?" in whatever way it is people financially support artists these days, which is not by streaming.

JP: I think I would be misleading if I said there wasn't any desire to communicate with the audience that we've had over the years. I think that desire's very strong. I just want it to be more personal, more grounded, and more real. If they can know me more through the music, and know the musicians that are playing more intimately, I think that's something I like. I really think that the people playing on these records should be known. As a producer and the curator of this thing, I still definitely want to make people happy. I hope that's clear.

SILY: I saw White Denim years ago at the House of Blues, and even then, when the music you had just released was not as sonically diverse as the last few records you've done, the fanbase still seemed like they were open and had adventurous taste.

JP: We can give 'em that. I do have a mildly adversarial relationship with my audience I think will always be there. [laughs] They do like all kinds of music, and I'm proud of that for sure.

SILY: Why do you have an adversarial relationship with your fans?

JP: I think I have an adversarial relationship with myself, and that's just something I'm always working on. I'm definitely frustrated by modern media. The way that people consume is super frustrating to me. I think it's totally fake, but it got me [when I saw] Taylor Swift's fans were trying to unionize and get a piece of Taylor Swift's business and a say in her creative decision making, which I think is really hilarious. I think it's bullshit, some internet troll thing, but it's something I think about a lot. I see people comment, "We made the right person famous." This echo chamber kind of thing where the audience asserts some ownership or entitlement over the artist's popularity or work creates so much discomfort for me. Is that really how it is? Is that really how I should be looking at this? I'm making records in a shed in my backyard. I don't really feel like a famous guy. How much of this pressure should I internalize?

SILY: The original Taylor Swift union post was a joke, but there are thinkpieces that recognize the joke but address it seriously. As absurd as it is, there's something to the relationship between fans and artists these days where fans feel like they did something to contribute to the artist's success. All of the Grammy nominees for Best New Artist this year were at one point popular on TikTok. With the way an artist's popularity and financial viability can be a bit out of their control, it speaks to a disturbing trend in the music industry. Swift brilliantly plays into music as a puzzle to be solved, where she throws in Easter eggs. The number 13 plays a big role in her lore, too! Because of that, you have these online factions with theories and it turns into a snowball effect that only serves to increase the views, streams, and popularity. Of course artists are popular because of their fans. But just because you spend your life being a fan doesn't make it your job. It's such a slippery slope.

JP: Totally. It's interesting food for thought.

13 cover art

SILY: Changing gears, can you tell me about this record's cover art?

JP: I went to LACMA with my family. My daughter is a painter. We try to go and take a sketchbook and hang around at least once a month. We saw a few works by Ed Ruscha, [including] "Actual Size"...we enjoyed it and hung around, and I bought the Ruscha book in the lobby and was paging through it at home and looked at "Actual Size" again and noticed how the "P" [in "SPAM"] would make a cool "D".

I bought an old drum head 15 years ago from Chicago Music Exchange, and it had a hand-painted bass drum head done by this artist Dee Whitten, in Joliet in the 60's, for Eddie Goins...[Whitten] was a folk artist. [The drum head had a rocket on it, which I got framed,] and I thought, "I should take this rocket I've had framed in our house forever and put it where the Spam can is." There's obviously some sociopolitical commentary with the patriotic rocket, taking my approach to production and songwriting and putting it into the visual realm.

I posted an upside-down picture of the Ruscha piece in one of my Instagram stories, and this guy [Paul Robinson] in the UK wrote, "You know that this is upside-down, right? I love Ed Ruscha." We just started chatting, and I said, "Why don't you make this piece? I have this idea." He said, "I'd love to." We became penpals. He took commission, researched the exact colors and dimensions, and really took it and ran with it. He works in the railroad business and is a hobbyist painter. He's a really talented guy, but not a professional artist, so it was a thing he was excited about doing. We became friends. I hope he's painting a lot now.

SILY: Folk art strips away the idea of professionalism in the traditional way we think about it.

JP: Totally. I approach my work like I'm really really fortunate to have some influence and am interesting enough for world-class musicians to come into my little shed or wherever I'm taking them to record. I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm sampling records and repurposing ideas and collaging all the time. I'm a folk artist. I'm collecting this horde of old instruments and things nobody wanted when I got them, and I keep them and use them. That's my process. It's very collagey. There are quotes on the record--on every White Denim record--repurposing things I've heard and love.

SILY: You play with the idea of pastiche a lot. A song like "Hired Hand #2" is a country song about you.

JP: I read ["A] Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift like everybody else in the 7th and 8th grade. The tone of that really stuck with me. Rather than a condemning, finger-pointing kind of thing, [the song is] more like a mirror. That's absolutely it. There's a Robin Hood lope to it. I'm trying to play banjo and kazoo and slide whistle, all these children's instruments, and give it this aesthetic where it could be a Bad Brains record. It has that kind of edge, but has almost a nostalgic Disney comfort to it, the dark humor of Roger Miller and Jonathan Swift.

It's definitely pastiche. I really love the Beastie Boys, Beck, and Ween back in the 90's who were kind of funny, but the music was really layered and crazy, and the production value was really high. It was serious in so many ways but it had this lightness to it. Getting into that as a kid and growing with it keeps giving. I can still really learn a lot from all that stuff. I'm just trying to be part of that.

SILY: Have you played any of these songs live?

JP: I've played "Ruby" [and] "Keep Calling Me Baby". I gotta get the band together, and we're gonna have to work for a week. I'm looking at a guy that doubles on steel and guitar now, maybe having another vocalist as well. I'm in the early stages of building the band to play these. It's gonna be mostly the same group I had on the road for the last one. I've gotta figure out how to do this.

I can probably play half the record well with just a quartet. You kind of lose some of the bells and whistles, but that's okay for me as long as the music comes across. I'll probably be doing half the record on the first tour, unless these meetings go really great and I have a killer five- or six-piece band. We'll see what happens. We could be writing new arrangements for them.

We'll have to strip some of this down. There's no way I'm going to have a bass clarinetist and a banjo on stage. We're still in [an] Econoline. I'm doing all the driving. We'll have to make some adjustments. The energy can still dip into this "Minutemen with more jazz chops" vibe. If you're playing with that kind of intensity, that comes across. I feel confident approaching this material like that. The core group of musicians I have is very strong. I'm not worried about all the bells and whistles on stage. I have been developing this trap kit with [plays bells and whistles] and some flutes and things I've been collecting and stealing from hotels and toy shops...I have been playing some flute and doing more percussion so I can set the guitar down. But it might just be bringing out more instruments and kind of figuring out how to represent certain things with samplers. I think the band would suffer from being on ears and playing with tracks and things like that. Whenever I see a band doing that, it kind of bums me out. I don't think we'll do that. I would much rather hire someone than make that move. Even samplers and a click track would be disruptive for the way we've operated. I'm devising a little bit of a plan here.

SILY: Is there anything you've been listening to, watching, or reading that's caught your attention or inspired you?

JP: I do like the Geese record. I'm excited by that and the public's response to that. I'm working on an actual conceptual record right now that's two 15-minute sides of a record of continuous play. It's a lot more like an electronic record, so I've been listening to Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Mouse on Mars--who I saw in the late 90's, and it's still my favorite concert I've ever seen--[and] Matmos. Lots of The Books, aleatoric music, electronic using a lot of found sound and acoustic instrumentation.

I read Parable of the Sower because we live where Octavia Butler lived, and it's about a fire. [laughs] It's a little heavy. I'm such a bad reader. I have this collection of artist manifestos that's a Penguin Classic. I dip into that. I read a lot of poetry. I have a poor attention span with books. When I go to a used bookstore, I look at the spine, and if it's published by New Directions, I'll buy it. I have this stack of New Directions books, and if I'm ever short on an idea, I'll dip into a book of poetry. I'm not very disciplined as a reader anymore. I still have stacks of books everywhere, but I'm not giving hours of the day to anything at the present time.

If I'm honest, I listen to a lot of horrible, AI-generated music that my son loves: Italian Brainrot. I'm having that experience. My parents would not let me listen to Red Hot Chili Peppers when "Under the Bridge" came out. They were like, "No way, dude." Nirvana was the same. I was his age when that stuff was really hitting. I felt, like, "Fuck you mom and dad, I want to listen to this!" [laughs] I'm trying not to police this music, but I have such an ethical dilemma allowing it. We were listening to songs about Tung Tung Tung Sahur, all that shit.

It's a bummer. It's something I think about all the time. How could you not [be?] At this point in time, I'm not policing...AI music in my household. I limit it. I know all the Brainrot characters, and I know all the songs. There's a new one every 20 minutes. [laughs] They're fucking terrible. [My] concept work, I'm not using AI to create any of the music, but it is informed by the way music is consumed. It's limited in how it's released and how it's presented, but it is supposed to feel like scrolling, so it's definitely informed by the culture around that stuff.

Photo by Laura Carbone

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Often, it takes a musician handing over the controls to a second set of ears to sonically manifest their aims. The opposite was the case for Selwyn Birchwood and his latest album Electric Swamp Funkin' Blues. Though he's been involved in the production of most of his albums on Chicago blues label Alligator Records, Birchwood had never fully self-produced a collection of songs until now. Fittingly, the result is titled after the phrase Birchwood has long used to describe his genre-bending sound, and the record that best encapsulates what he's always gone for.

As with many Birchwood records, the songs on Electric Funk Swampin' Blues range in both aesthetic and subject matter, from cosmic artist statements and soulful confessions of vulnerability, to clattering, wide-eyed gazes at the world. He arranged it and recorded it in Florida, playing not just guitar and vocals but lap steel, along with his band. They immediately announce their presence with the album's dynamic pseudo title track, "The Church Of Electric Swamp Funkin’ Blues". Birchwood's licks and John Hetherington's screaming organ give way to a handclap-laden gospel jive, Regi Oliver's saxophones responding to Birchwood's call of "We ain't chasin' profits or prophets / Just the creation of joyful jubilation." Its follow-up "Damaged Goods", on the other hand, features a more reflective Birchwood reclaiming his self-worth in the face of trauma; likewise, the band's ascent is gradual, Henley Connor III's drums and Donald "Huff" Wright's mournful bass providing a foundation upon which Birchwood's guitar wails. In general, whether Birchwood's singing about financial troubles ("Should've Never Gotten Out Of Bed") or the challenges of family life ("Labor Of Love"), his band's there to hold a mirror to his emotions. The latter sports strings courtesy of Eli Bishop, a longtime dream of Birchwood's. "I feel like [strings give] the full sound of what I hear in my head and what the song is supposed to be," he told me over the phone back in February.

Birchwood, who just finished a tour, is gearing up for more dates throughout the year in which he should play the majority of the new record. Below, read our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Electric Swamp Funkin' Blues cover art

Since I Left You: How long had you known you wanted to self-produce your next record?

Selwyn Birchwood: I produce the majority of all of the records. [In the past,] I did all of the tracking and all of the instrumentation in studio and would send the sessions up to Tom Hambridge. He'd give some input on them...some production ideas once I had everything written, arranged, and tracked. I was definitely at the wheel for the majority of these albums already. This is the first time I've had the complete reigns on everything from top to bottom, so I'm really excited about it. I think the sound of this album really showcases that.

SILY: You've called your music "electric swamp funkin' blues" in the past. Do you think this album is the best distillation of that sound?

SB: Yeah, I've been trying to find what I'd call my own sound the entire time. I feel like this is really an arrival of sorts with this album, really showcasing and putting out the exact sound I've been trying to find. I think we've found it now. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a band that sounds exactly like my band, and that's by design.

SILY: The song that's the sort-of title track, and the first single you released, "The Church of Electric Swamp Funkin' Blues", goes in a lot of different places. It starts off kind of funky, and it goes into gospel, then back to its original form. Did you want to release it first because it exemplifies that journey, everything that's on the record and throughout your career?

SB: Yeah, that's the idea. The song itself was sort of a mission statement, and almost affirming in itself what we want to do with our music, where we're going with it, and what it's for. The music definitely accompanies...that same sort of journey. My favorite music is music you don't know what direction it's gonna go in...and it surprises you. I feel like we've done that with the title track song and this record in general.

SILY: You always have a mix of songs inspired by your personal life and songs inspired by the state of the world. How do you continue to balance those inner and external themes on your records?

SB: I don't know, just keep on livin', I guess. I always say I don't tell anyone else's story except my own. That's what makes the music so personal. That's what draws me to music and hopefully draws other people to this music. It's personal testimonies, colors, and representations of what I hear, what I like, and what I want to put out there.

SILY: Do the songs take on a new life live?

SB: Yeah, it always turns out that way. The songs are [even] different by the time they get to the album [compared to] the time they were first written. That's part of the fun: seasoning and changing the recipe of the stew as you go until you have hopefully something you enjoy.

SILY: Do you have a favorite song on the record or a favorite to play live?

SB: No, that's like trying to choose a favorite child, I guess. Every song I've got on the album--every song that I've written--they're all very personal. It's one of those things that they serve different purposes and go different directions. It's different colors.

SILY: Is there anything else about this record you think is unique as compared to your past records?

SB: The quality of the record in general. I worked with a new person mixing and mastering the album, the same guy that does Keb' Mo's albums, Zach Allen. I was fortunate to partner up with him on this album. We really hear things very similarly. It was a very happy accident we were able to get together on this one. We're very much in alignment on the way we hear music and perceive stuff, so when we were able to get in and start getting through mixing this album and getting it mastered, we were on the same page. I think it really made for a much easier process and allowed me to get the sounds that I [heard] in my head on this album to the finish line much quicker and much easier. What I've got on this album is pretty much what I hear in my head, and that's a hard thing to do sometimes when you have so many moving parts.

SILY: On "All Hail the Algorithm" and "Should Never Have Gotten Out of Bed", you're decrying that our data is being mined for profit, and talking about your personal troubles, respectively. Yet, you still manage to make them sound upbeat, especially the way [backing vocalists] Briana Lutzi and Taylor Opie chant the title on the former. Is that important to you, to take a song that's on the surface downtrodden but overcome that feeling by making it upbeat?

SB: Yeah, that's part of the art to it, taking the subject matter that I want to put out there and still trying to make it where people want to listen to it. Nobody wants to just be down. The art of the blues is that you get your blues out there into the atmosphere but it makes you feel better by doing so. At least that's the way it's worked for me. It's sort of musical therapy. That type of thing, it allows me to get that subject matter out there and still have it be an uplifting, therapeutic thing rather than just dwelling in the negative aspects of it.

SILY: Do you still find yourself listening to the classic blues you listened to when you were younger?

SB: Yeah, constantly. I still listen to that stuff. If I'm going to listen to blues music, that's what I'll be listening to, some of the older guys I really enjoy--Muddy Waters, Otis Rush, B.B. King--that really turned me on to the sound. Constantly trying to go back and learn, relearn, and hone the sounds of those classic records I enjoy so much, but trying to take that skillset and those tools to tell my own story and paint my own picture. I feel like that's what's missing today in [blues] music. People want to do a copy and paste of sounds from the 60's, and I don't think that's it. The first step is emulating those sounds, and then you're supposed to get to a point where you create your own sound and story. That's what we've done with this record. It's not an emulation of sounds, it's a creation of a new kind of a dialogue and storyline. I couldn't be happier with the result.

SILY: Are there contemporary blues artists you feel like are doing their own thing, not just recreating 60's blues?

SB: A lot of the younger guys that are coming out now are really killing it on what they're doing. Stephen Hull, who is up in Wisconsin, is really getting after it. [Christone] "Kingfish" [Ingram] is murderin' his thing that he's doing. On the more traditional side, you've got guys like Jontavious Willis, taking the history of this music and carrying it forward so well. Cedric Burnside. All these guys are out there doing justice to this stuff so well. On the contemporary side, you've got guys like Buffalo Nichols, who is really, really versed in the history of the music but takes it somewhere else. I just really dig that, people taking their own story and influences and [putting] their own sauce on it and still [having] it be blues rather than just taking a piece or two from something and turning it into rock music.

SILY: Are you the type of songwriter who's always writing, or do you have to sit down and make time for it?

SB: No, I'm constantly writing. If I have 10 songs on an album, that means I wrote 25 and either set them aside, didn't finish them, or scrapped them. I'm constantly writing, and that's the fun part to me, getting that brain buzz of an idea and molding it. Trying to create it, it's an anomaly to me that's skipped over in this day and time. It just feels like cheating to me to take a bunch of classic songs and cover songs, or to make your own song that's a carbon copy of classic blues. It starts to feel fraudulent at some point. I don't think it takes a lot to get someone to like a song they already love. The harder route is to write your own music and own song that touches and grabs people and keeps their interest in the same way while doing it through your own means.

Tour dates:

4/23: Paradise Bar and Grill, Pensacola Beach, FL 4/24: Paradise Bar and Grill, Pensacola Beach, FL 4/25: Bob Sykes BBQ & Blues Festival, Bessemer, AL 5/1: Blue Jay Listening Room, Jacksonville Beach, FL 5/2: The Alley, Sanford, FL 5/3: Earl's Hideaway Lounge, Sebastian, FL 5/20: Elkton Music Hall, Elkton, MD 5/21: Jamey's House of Music, Lansdowne, PA 5/23: Delaney Chevrolet Westsylvania Jazz and Blues Festival, Indiana, PA 6/16: Caledonia Concert Series, Caledonia, MI 6/19: Creekside Blues & Jazz Festival, Gahanna, OH 7/10: Heidi’s Jazz Club & Restaurant, Cocoa Beach, FL 7/11: Arts Bonita, Bonita Springs, FL 7/17: Fogartyville, Saratoga, FL 7/18: Fogartyville, Sarasota, FL 7/25: Cafe Eleven, St. Augustine Beach, FL 8/1: Bluesmore Festival, Cedar Rapids, IA 10/10: Forgotten Music Festival, Port St. Joe, FL

Photo by Otis Gibbs

BY JORDAN MAINZER

So far this decade, singer-songwriter Thomm Jutz has found gratification in making music with others, the likes of Tim Stafford, Eric Brace, Tammy Rogers, and Martin Simpson. Earlier this month, he self-released his first solo album in 6 years, the captivating 18-song suite Ring-A-Bellin', though it's only solo by name. Many of its songs are co-writes, and thematically, Jutz explores the very concept of creativity itself, contextualizing his musings in thinkers of the past, the world of Carl Jung's Psychology and Alchemy. Jutz adopts the alchemists' correspondence of the internal and the external--"as above, so below"--in considering the way in which playing music has positively impacted him and allowed him to cope with life's trials and tribulations. Sonically, he started with the bare minimum, adding other instruments and guest players as necessary, indirectly emphasizing their essential nature.

What catalyzed the reflective Ring-A-Bellin', without clouding it, was the death at the age of 52 of Jutz's best friend and collaborator Peter Cooper, who suffered a head injury from a fall. The album's opening track, "Too Many Walls", examines houses as spaces that can carry their own tragedies, peppered with details like "a bedroom for one with a two-car garage" and realizations such as "Life is so simple till it all falls apart." On "Mourning Moon", over a gentle blanket of layered guitars and piano, Jutz sings, "Just takes one bad dream / To make you cold with sweat / One memory / To make you hate your bed." What provides Jutz comfort, however, is songwriting, and Ring-A-Bellin pays tribute to the human tendency to keep on. "Sharpen Your Knife" and "Knocking 'Round Knoxville" sport a soft spot for how the Music Row sausage is made. "Ramblin' Gamblin' Blues" compares Jutz's life road tripping from gig to gig since 19, with that of a riverboat gambler in the late 19th century. Elsewhere, Jutz finds commonalities with the man plowing the fields with a mule, the survivors of Hurricane Helene, and of course, the alchemists themselves. "All they can see is the Sulphur and smoke / Your magnum opus is their dirty joke," Jutz sings, fully knowing that time is the ultimate barometer of brilliance.

The song that centers Ring-A-Bellin' and gives the album its title is "Rag and Bone", where Jutz sings from the point of view of a scrap metal collector. Jeff Taylor's solemn accordion gives way to gorgeous fingerpicked guitar; "Rag and bone / Hear me yellin' / Past the homes / Ring-a-bellin'," Jutz sings. The titular inversion of phrase harks back to when Jutz, Peter's brother Chris, and Jutz's manager Lindsay Hayes were in the hospital after Peter fell, and invented words to pass the time. Far from an absurdist exercise, it was another spark of creativity. Jutz and his wife regularly play word games, something he also encourages his songwriting students at Belmont University to do. "Be playful with language," he told me over the phone last month. "Come up with words. Make your own stuff. Write goofy haikus or tankas...It worked so well for people like John Hartford and Tom T. Hall, and it certainly didn't take away anything from the depth of their writing." Mining approaches and strategies from the past can, ironically, help you produce something new.

Below, read my conversation with Jutz, edited for length and clarity.

Ring-A-Bellin' cover art

Since I Left You: You hadn't made a solo record in a while. In order for making a solo album to be worth it, did you want to make something that was all-encompassing in terms of your life and process as a songwriter? Ring-A-Bellin' seems like the album you've been leading up to for your entire career.

Thomm Jutz: It feels like that to me, too, to be honest. I made my last solo album in 2020, and since then, I've made a [few] collaborative projects, with my friends Tim Stafford, Tammy Rogers, and Martin Simpson. A lot happened since then. My best friend, collaborator, and co-writer Peter Cooper passed away in 2022, and that set a lot of things in motions, in a sense. Some songs are about that, but all of these 18 songs are kind of about the development of my artistic life--hopefully not in a claustrophobic, autobiographical way, but in an archetypal way of overarching themes that relate to the life of a creative person. [It's] not even limited to a songwriter. Of course, [there are] biographical elements in this, but it's not necessarily intended to be a record about my history, although it's in there. It's about how to live a creative life and the challenges that come with that.

SILY: You contextualize the album in terms of Carl Jung's alchemical stages, itself inspired by ideas that date back millennia. If the alchemists were to see what life was like now, they'd be dumbfounded. Yet, does connecting your thoughts on creativity back to those eras help you universalize what you're writing about?

TJ: I think so. I think the alchemists would be dumfounded by what's possible today, but I think they would be astonished by how similar the processes are. Not much of that has changed in the way that they approached their work and the way we approach our work, if you take it seriously. I think you'd have to be not very good as a songwriter, or very cynical, to not observe a certain parallel development of you as an artist and as a person. That's what happened with the alchemists. They were working on pre-scientific experiments, and in the context of doing so, they realized that their personal development was mirroring what they were doing in their fairly primitive laboratories, hence the [phrase] they used, "As above, so below." They sensed that what was going on externally was also going on internally. I think we can see...not just as artists today...that the confusion of the world is mirrored by the confusion of so many people materially. Of course, that goes the other way around, too.

[Alchemical] theories are very valid and helpful to me. A lot of people seem to think that as soon as you talk about alchemy, there's some kind of black magic involved. That's completely not the case. It's more of a psychological attitude. To [Jung,] it was great validation of some of his early thoughts when he discovered certain alchemical texts. [He thought,] "Oh my god, 600 years ago, these guys were thinking around the same lines I'm thinking." It was a great relief to him that he wasn't going insane, but that he was actually onto something.

SILY: A song like "Bitter Change" has a very existential, "Why do I do this?"-type alignment of the internal and external, that seems to be very consistent with the alchemists.

TJ: For sure! "Bitter Change" is not a song about not getting enough out of what you do. What I get out of what I do creatively is directly related to how much I put in. I am continuously surprised by how incredibly great the rewards of a creative life are, but how much you have to put in to get that. I'm not at all talking about financial rewards right now. That's a completely different story. That's pleasant if that happens, and to some degree, that has happened for me, but I'm much more talking about living a creative life, living a satisfied life, living a life of meaning. It's astonishing how much you have to put in, and it's astonishing how much you get out of it. You can look at that as, "It's astonishing how much you put in for how little you get out," but I tend to view that differently. It's a direct correlation, and it's very satisfactory to me. It's the only life I want to live. Being creative and making music is a way of explaining the world to me and is a way of understanding my place in the world. Whenever I'm creating, when I'm writing, recording, or playing live with other people, that's when I'm happiest. That's why I'm ...very active. I create a lot because it's what I'm supposed to do.

SILY: On "Ramblin' Gamblin' Blues", you're exploring your own ethos, but as you mentioned, through an archetypal fictional story. How do you find that creative process, exploring archetypes or fiction for some deeper truth about yourself?

TJ: I don't think I start a song thinking about whether a song deals with an archetypal setting or image. It's more that you come across these things if you think along these lines, and then you accept them as such and don't tie them so much to your autobiography, but to the bigger image, the energy that connects the two things. I don't think think it makes any difference that this song is about a riverboat gambler in 1898 versus me going on the road at the age of 19 in 1998. The archetypal image is the same. I don't plan to write songs like that, necessarily. They just happen because of the things that I'm interested in.

My life's ambition started by seeing Bobby Bare playing on TV on a German country TV show when I was 11 years old. I knew that's what I wanted to do, and I started playing the guitar that very day. Today, in retrospect, I understand I was seeing something my psyche could latch onto and go, "This is it. This image resonates with me. This is what I'm made to do." With "Ramblin' Gamblin' Blues", Tammy Rogers and I wrote that based on the guitar lick, the instrumental theme. There was no plan to write about something that connects to psychology or an archetype. That just fell out. You connect the dots later. I guess that's what could be considered a synchronistic event. Those things go together in the moment or later, and you realize, "That's what that was." It's another thing that keeps it so interesting.

SILY: The idea of synchrony is consistent with the song that gives the record its title, "Rag and Bone". You're singing about scrap collectors, and you invert a phrase to create a rhyme, which reminds you of when you were in the hospital after Peter fell, and you, Chris, and Lindsay would make up words to pass the time.

TJ: That song has some synergies with the record, because I really do think I'm a scrap collector, or a collector of scrap ideas. I operate in the corners of the music business. I'm not in the mainstream. I'm not trying to rag on the mainstream--I've got nothing for it or against it, it's just not something I'm interested in. The image works for me: the more interesting stuff, the stuff where things grow more along the banks of the river and not in the middle of the river where it's deep and cold.

Photo by Otis Gibbs

SILY: The way you connect the way you make songs to this period of grief, even if it's not something the average listener might pick up on if they're not looking at the liner notes, it makes me think of the album in a way that's not linear. You have this centerpiece, "Rag and Bone". You bookend the album with songs that have to do with death, and the final song "Settle Me Down" shows light at the end of the tunnel, the type that would make you want to press play and start the record again. Do you view the album as a sequence of songs, or something that's more self-reflexive?

TJ: I think this album makes most sense if one listens to it beginning to end and reads the liner notes with it, but I hope the individual songs can stand by themselves. I think they do. I have a very big catalog of songs, because I write a lot. When I sequenced the record and was looking for material from it, these songs jumped out at me because they fit together.

The grief over Peter is a part of this record, but it's not the main theme of this record. It's the theme of a couple of songs or the sub-theme of a set of songs. The opening song and the closing song are, more than anything, about space and place. The first song is about different houses that I've lived in, that friends of mine have lived in, and the last song is about finding place where you're happy, a place within yourself, a place in the physical world. To me, that last song is very hopeful. It's not a song about death. It's a song about being in a place with everything that's happened before where you're content to be there. It makes sense for it to be the last song on the album because you've just listened to all of this and come to the conclusion that it's good where you're at. You're settling down in your body: "Settle me down in my body / Pick us out a little old song / Something sweet that'll roll like a river / Carry my worries till they're long, long gone." To me, that's what music does. When I look back on my life, whenever I was sad or not in a good space--and still, to this day--the best cure for me is to go for a run and play guitar. Every time I sit down with my guitar, I feel good. I feel better. That's what that last song is about.

Place is a concept I think about a lot. I only really write about two main themes, and those are home and time. They're connected to each other, and everything else seems to be sub-categories of that. Place is directly connected to home...and place is a different form of space. All of those themes are really interesting to me. Why do we feel a desire to enclose so much open space? What is home? Is that a spiritual place, a physical place, or both? Place is a geography, but it's also dialog between geography and people. All of these things I find very interesting.

SILY: On opener "Too Many Walls", you're questioning whether a home can carry something with it, whether it can be defined by tragedy. On "Settle Me Down", home is offering you a safer haven to feel your feelings about death. That's where I made the connection of the first and the last song being about death, in addition to being about place.

TJ: I can totally dig that. That's cool. That's great.

SILY: Musically, you started very bare on the record and added on elements as you deemed them necessary. I find the songs to have a lot of space. There are a lot of times when there's no singing for a while. Did starting bare allow you to really hone in on not just instrumental space, but lyrical space, like where you might extend a vowel here or there, when you start and stop singing?

TJ: Absolutely. It created a feeling of musical freedom, and adventure. Adventure and freedom go together for me. I [started] with the smallest musical unit that made sense for every song. Sometimes, it was just me and a bass player, or just me singing and playing. There are hardly any overdubs on this record. 99% of what you hear is everybody in the room. The vocals are live, and we're all playing together.

There's a place for layering in music. If you want to make a record like Roxy Music or the Beach Boys, or a modern pop or country record, you have to layer and overdub stuff. I can do that, and I do that when it's necessary, but for this record, I really had the desire to be in the room and play with people and not give any direction. Let's just play music together and everybody interpret the chart that indicates the chord structure of the song. They're all people I trust 100% musically. A lot of phrasing [was] changed on the go. All the solos are improvised. There's no premeditation of "I'm gonna play this hot lick" or "I'm gonna play this not-so-hot lick." It's how it happens in the moment. Of course, that makes for a warts-and-all approach, but as it often happens for me, things that I didn't plan that at first felt like a little mistake [became my] favorite parts. I have many places on this record where I don't even know how I did it or why I did it, but I really like it.

SILY: I sometimes think of albums like this, with no overdubs and the way you let verses come when they come, in terms of a different type of psychology: gestalt.

TJ: I love that. I don't know enough about it, but I know just enough about it to see the connection. That's awesome.

Photo by Otis Gibbs

SILY: Can you tell me about the visual aspects of the album?

TJ: I've been...writing [not just] songs, but essays. Over the pandemic years, I got a graduate degree in Appalachian Studies, because as a University teacher, you should have a graduate degree, and I didn't have one, and my University really wanted me to have one. I wrote a lot more. I did a lot more research and read a lot more. I wrote essays on songwriting. I just felt like this record could do with a little more explanation and then had the idea to make a companion book to go with it. It would give me an outlet for some of these essays, a place where I can explain the songs, people can read the lyrics. It would be something, in the day and age of physical products like CDs not being that relevant anymore, that's out of the ordinary. I talked to a friend of mine, Gina Meredith, a wonderful graphic designer, and I said, "Look, I have these essays, I have them all together, can you help me put them in sequence so they can be printed?" She said, "Why don't you let me run with this a little bit? I'll put some more thought in." Before I knew it, she asked me about photos and contributed original art, and others contributed original art, and it turned into a really beautiful 40-page hardcover book with really nice original art that really amplifies the message of the lyrics.

I've never done something like that before. I'm really happy that I did it. It was a lot of work. I didn't know how much work it was going to be. I couldn't have done it without Gina's input and the artwork my wife contributed, that Gina contributed...I just sent them the music and said, "Can you do something for these 3-4 songs?" and just left it at that. I didn't nitpick or say, "I'm not sure if I like this." So there's a sort of stream of consciousness approach to the whole album that's reflected in the artwork. I really like that. I'm a big believer that if I collaborate with people creatively, the first rule needs to be that I let them be creative and not strangle their creativity by telling them what I think. It always has to be a back-and-forth. That's also how I approach working with players in the studio. I never say, "Play this," or, "Don't play that." Play what you want, and if it works for both of us, great, and if it doesn't, we'll adjust. No rules makes the music better.

SILY: How do you find adapting the performance of these songs to a live band? Is it just as artistically fulfilling as writing and recording them in the first place?

TJ: I think so, but again, I don't conceptualize that at all. I just hand them a chart that has the chords, and we'll rehearse a couple times. But I don't say, "Try to play this," or, "Play how it is on the record." It's, "Do what you want, and then we'll see." It makes it exciting again. After you record, it provides you with the possibility to reinvent the songs again. I'm really excited about doing that.

SILY: What's next for you in the short or long term?

TJ: I have a duo record with my friend Dean Fields in the can. A couple of songs on the record, Dean and I wrote together. I'm working on a trio record with my friends Adam Wright and Lacy Green, my favorite co-writers here in town. I'm going to work on recordings of some bluesy material I have. There's a lot of gigging going on this spring and summer. I'll go to Europe with my friend Eric Brace, to Holland and Germany. Eric and I just put a record out in January called Circle and Square. I like it like that. Some people think, "That's too much," and it probably is. Then again, putting out music has never been easier than it is now. The people that want to listen to my music are gonna want to listen to everything I put out, which makes me think it's a good idea to keep releasing things. Sometimes, on a larger scale, like with this record, it'll be an online release and people can stream stuff, and that's good, too. I feel like it's my place in the world to write and record because it makes me happy, and hopefully, it makes people happy to listen to it.

SILY: Do you get time to listen to music, watch movies, or read books?

'TJ: I don't listen to nearly as much music as I used to. I'm very selective with what I listen to. Most of the stuff I listen to is from the 20's and 30's. I listen to newer stuff when I listen more analytically and want to hear what it sounds like or certain artists I'm interested in. I don't listen to mainstream radio at all. I read as much as I can--probably quite a lot, but I often wish I had more time. I kind of take it as it comes. I don't watch a lot of TV, but I have to admit, [days when] I've been working on music and teaching the whole day, sometimes at 9:00 PM at night, it's nice to watch Ted Lasso or Shrinking or something like that. I'm amazed by how good TV has gotten. I enjoy some of that quite a bit.

I try to read several books parallel at the same time, because it seems to work for me. I like to read something psychology-related, something that's a story, and something connected to music history. Sprinkle in poetry: I keep a couple collections out because it's a good thing to read first thing in the morning. At the moment, I'm trying to find my way through James Joyce's Ulysses, which is very enjoyable but difficult. I'm very grateful for a companion book that Patrick Hastings wrote because without it, I'd miss so much. It's a challenging read, but good challenging.