Jaime Brooks is a Vancouver-based musician and writer most known for her work as Elite Gymnastics and Default Genders. However, for this interview, I’ve decided to interview Jaime Brooks, the writer. Her excellent column in the New Inquiry, Streaming Services, has been spiritually continued on her current substack, , in which she’s been doing valuable journalism and cultural criticism in a mode few other contemporary music writers have been so consistent in tackling. I chatted with her on April 2 about the state of music writing, payola, “the algorithm”, music as prestige, black music in relation to AI and what comes next.

Eli Schoop: It’s funny, cause I think a few of my friends, or people that I’m in orbit with, have interviewed you so far. But I feel like now you’re kind of known like, or more leading towards being a writer, or like a cultural critic, whereas, when my colleague H.D. Angel interviewed you for Finals, that was as Default Genders.

Jaime Brooks: Yeah, that was like right after kinda the last album I put out, which was like in late 2022, and since then I haven’t released any music, I’ve been more focused on other things, not just writing, but writing is like the most public facing thing that I’m doing at the moment. After that, things are changing so much with music and the internet and media, and so I had to kind of interrogate what I was getting out of it and what I really wanted to be doing. And, I think, in order to get better as a cultural commentator or critic I couldn’t have the incentive structure of being a recording artist anymore, because I think that I was blocking myself off from seeing certain things, by like, wanting the recording artist career to work out.

I just sort of like let go of that. Once I like, really looked at it–I need to put this aside, I need to you know, just acclimate to the possibility that I’m just not gonna be spending my time doing this very much anymore. Then I started to understand things, that wouldn’t have been possible to understand before that because of the incentives that I had. So it’s—it’s not just that I’m maybe better known as a writer now, I think it’s also that I have a different perspective because I’m not prioritizing wanting to do recording artist stuff as a career right now.

Right, cause I was checking Substack just before this and I saw you reposted , who is also great. And I know she listed herself as a trend forecaster, which is a very funny turn of phrase. But I feel like that applies well to you too, in terms of music. And you know, obviously critics, writers do whatever. But I feel like we don’t really have much of that in the music media realm at all.

Well, I think that probably part of the reason for that is that the future of the music media realm is kind of dark and I think people probably want to avoid seeing it. I did, I mean that’s what I’m talking about with the incentives of the recording artist career. I kept wanting to see a happy ending, and so I wasn’t doing a very good job of trend forecasting, because I wanted to fulfill my own desire to see an outcome that I as a recording artist would find appealing. But also, like all the other people in the space: writers, other artists, you know, these are the people that early on would have been sharing and getting something out of what I was saying. And I think that there’s been kind of a shift since then, where, maybe some of the people that are involved as artists, or involved on the industry side, or involved as freelance writers, sometimes they are less into what I’m saying these days, because I think the future of this space is dark.

I think the future of recorded music as a medium, is decline. Like, at least in the terms of the way that we’ve always been thinking about it. For me, personally, once I let go of some of that stuff, like, I see the positives. I feel like every black pill is also a white pill if you’re doing it right. And so, I see a lot to be happy about and a lot to feel good about but it’s like, I had to let go my attachment to those institutions, and structures, and career paths in order to get there. And I think that a lot of other people are at various different points on that journey, some people are farther along, some people are not as far along.

And yeah, Ayesha’s the GOAT at this stuff, like, I’m just the humble, student padawan compared to her. She’s the alpha-brain on all of this stuff. I read everything that she feels comfortable sharing with the rest of the world very closely because she’s an incredibly smart, incredibly insightful person, and I’m very lucky to have been able to work with her at the New Inquiry in the past.

I realized two seconds after I asked you that question that, duh, she’s editor and chief of New Inquiry, so it’s like, oh of course, both strains of this kind of discursive thinking about music, where it’s usually kind of processed through the same cultural writing filter that we’ve had for a long time, the like Pitchforkian, Fantano kind of views on music, and there really isn’t as much of the same cultural criticism, even in things like–

It-

Oh, what were you going to say?

Cause it’s a bummer!

[laughs]

Cause the Pitchfork and Fantano stuff is consumer facing, and so ultimately at the end of the day, it’s there to make you feel good about the consumption and so if you want to go outside of that—who’s going to pay for it, and who’s gonna read it and share it enthusiastically if it doesn’t make them feel good? Every once in a while someone comes up with a compelling answer to that question and an idea or a piece will percolate out there and get people thinking. And when I’m at my best, I can maybe get people to do that a little bit. But, as a field, the Pitchfork/Fantano universe of stuff, I don’t even know if it’s really criticism, and I don’t say that as an insult because I like to read a lot of it and I love a lot of the writers that operate in that space, and I’m part of this constellation of artists, and labels, and writers, that make up the kind of, Pitchfork expanded universe, and I like most of the people in that universe.

But the record labels are the ones that initially funded these type of record reviews, this way of looking at things, to fuel their own interest. And when they stopped, that whole type of journalism as a paid career path kind of disintegrated. It’s about consuming records as products, and that’s what rating them is all about, that’s what making lists of them is all about. And you know, it feels good to consume records as products, just like it feels good to smoke a joint or take a shot. It’s not like it’s 100% good or bad. But it’s consumer-facing stuff and that’s who was paying for it and that’s who’s interested in having their preferences validated. And this other stuff that you’re talking about that the New Inquiry does, or that I try to do, it’s just that the audience is not guaranteed. Like you really got to have a sick fastball going right over home plate if you want to get anybody to catch it.

For sure, I think there is like a lack of rigor in, you know, I can’t talk myself because I love a hot take or love just being a shit-stirrer, but at the end of the day, a lot of us don’t really interrogate the system that we’ve been brought up under over the past decade, and stuff like that, and one of the reasons I reached out, is that you’ve actively carved out something that in our heads we’ve just resisted, and like you said it’s a bummer to think about.

[Laughs] Yeah!

It’s like, ehhhh, at a certain point we have to get real. And even with stuff like Los Thuthanaka or Cindy Lee, where it operates out of that sphere, it will still be swept up into the co-optation of that.

Yeah, I mean, Cindy Lee is such an interesting case study, because they seemed, that year at the exact time that critics were all getting into that record, they seemed absolutely miserable. They cancelled the tour for that album like a third of the way through it, or something. And now it seems like after all the accolades they might be a little bit more comfortable in coming back out there and trying to make it work again. But like, that was a farewell tour, I’m pretty sure that the tour for that album was billed as the farewell tour for the Cindy Lee project. And so at this moment where everyone’s celebrating this, and being like “This is the future. You don’t have to be on streaming services, you can just be on Bandcamp, or be physical only and you can still make this kind of impact!” And it’s just like, the person that you’re using as an example of this is done with it, like it’s somebody that’s been in the game for like ten years and they hate it and they want out [laughs] and that’s like, literally this album is someone clearing off their hard drive because they are just trying to get the demons out of their life all at once so they can finally be free. It’s not the beginning of anything. It’s like a Hail Mary at the buzzer from a veteran.

Right, right. Yeah it is interesting, people I talked about are on the older millennial/early gen z side of like, being in the game since early 2010’s and just now kind of like cresting and–

Yeah, I mean, probably like the biggest showing numbers wise that I’ve ever had, like numerically, on critics lists or whatever, is me and Caroline Polachek like last year or the year before that or whatever year it was. And you know, by that point I’m like completely checked out so I’m just like “Mmmm yeah well I’m on the Pitchfork singles list, well that’s—that’s fine.” And it’s just like, I’ve been in the game since like 2010, and Caroline was like a fucking veteran, she was in the game before I was in the game, you know [laughs]? Like I was looking up to her when I was brand new! And it continues to be kind of shocking to me when I look around at how many people that are poppin’ now in some capacity are people that I know, or that I am like one or two steps removed from, you know, from my time in it. It’s still the same people, it’s still the same scenes and stuff.

You know, the other day I was talking with a friend of mine who, I met him because he was playing with this artist called Nicole Dollanganger who was this tumblr era artist, that made really beautiful, kind of gothic, singer/songwriter music. And that scene is the same scene that Ethel Cain came out of, and so this guy that I met cause he was playing with Nicole Dollanganger, now he’s playing with Ethel Cain. It’s like, the same kind of stuff, the things that I was digging into and getting onto like ten years ago, it’s still happening, it’s still percolating outwards. I’m gonna meet people next year that are gonna be like “Are you up on this Ethel Cain shit, I just found out about it.” It’s kind of strange.

Oh for sure, when you said Nicole Dollanganger, that’s so tumblr, the old latex hood album cover, just like extremely 2012/2013 era–

Yeah I mean, I put out that album I was the label for it technically.

Yeah, and she was basically like, in terms of tumblr fandoms, 1-to-1 here with Lana Del Ray, and now Lana’s like a huge mega star and it’s just weird that all that came from that era.

And Lana and Ethel are like dissing each other [laughs].

Right [laughs].

It’s like, there’s like Instagram tabloid drama coming out of that scene, it’s hilarious.

I mean, yeah, I was gonna touch on a similar inside baseball industry thing, which was the revelation that Geese was being astroturfed by the PR agency if you heard about that.

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Let’s be clear: I didn’t want to do this. I wanted to be a fan. I wanted to appraise this record, glazing and riding like the most dedicated Cristiano Ronaldo stan. MIKE is one of the greatest rappers ever, a master of probing the interior and actualizing thoughts you didn’t know you felt, and Earl is one of those dudes that’s lived a thousand lifetimes, a former enfant terrible who grew up and became the father of a generation of great underground rappers, ranging from Duwap Kaine and 454 to Mavi and Sideshow. And what does their long awaited collaboration show for it…a dud.

I’ll couch it by saying it’s not bad per se. Well-crafted, at times irresistible raps from the duo. “It’s the horror part of the film / and I wanna get outta the field” shrugs Earl on the highlight “AOK”, a rare hook on the bloated album. But that’s just it, rare. So much of this runtime feels labored, as if a label was pressuring them to make more tracks to pad streaming royalties; and yet they’re independent, so what is the point?

My predilection here is to blame Surf Gang for such stolid beats. It’s the same 808s, the same ambient backing tracks—for such a critical darling where is the invention? MIKE and Earl surely could’ve produced better on their own, they have before. It makes their raps so much less potent, in a way I’ve never felt from them. On all their previous projects I’ve feel inspired, devoted, seen. Here, it’s almost if they’re going through the motions a la major label rappers who just put out a record to count their change. Where is the vision?

I especially feel bad for the features. Anysia Kim gives a solemn, wistful coo to “NOT 4TW”, Niontay brings trademark pomp to “F.E.A.R.”, and Surf Gang associate Lerado Khalil locks into a mesmerizing flow on “Locusts”. Yet MIKE and Earl can’t sustain their own weight. Complaining about mumbling in rapping is so passe but it’s pertinent here, as both deliver rhymes in a labored, almost browned out way. Compare and contrast this with the triumphance of “TOURMALINE” or “Artist of the Century”, and you’ll feel gutted at the sense of inadequacy.

POMPEII // UTILITY, as an uber-MIKE stan, seems destined to linger as a kind of hangnail vestibule of his discography, a “hey that collaboration certainly happened and was not very good” curiosity of a Mount Rushmore-level rapper. But in a way, it’s a bittersweet. We’ve not had such a hyped album by two seminal sweethearts of the music industry be such a letdown in some time now. Am I reaching for a silver lining? Yeah probably.

Sometime in the middle of reading Alphonse Pierre’s 2Slimey roundtable with friends of the blog Mano Sundaresan, Kieran Press-Reynolds and Olivier Lafontant, I realized there are two distinct veins of the subgenre. There’s the more mainstream, label-backed, addicted to youthfulness side—the kind that figures like Ken Carson, OsamaSon and Nettspend typify and is much more likely to feature on Times Square billboards. And there’s the blerd side; think Lucy Bedroque, Prettifun and co. They are absolutely the type of people I would’ve been chopping it up with at lunch in high school over Sonic Advance 2 and FLCL. slayr’s newest Half Blood catapults him into the pantheon of the digicore-descended rage artists.

Of course this dichotomy is an oversimplication, guys like Che and Bear1Boss slide in between these classifications, whereas the rage elders like Glokk40Spaz and Thouxanbanfauni elude the newer faces’ styles entirely. Yet you can pretty easily sort these rappers and their audiences into the virality online and otaku online divide, or more succinctly, the Bandlab vs Fruity Loops divide.

Bloodluxe, the Half Blood sequel that came out a week ago, is a further fleshing of slayr’s musical universe. As much as I liked Half Blood, his experiments into Drake-esque dancehall and Skillet-fetishizing butt-rock were a bit goofy. Bloodluxe doubles down on the digicore element, with fellow DAW legend Lucy Bedroque lending a helping hand on “Daytona”, and the record is better for it. Slayr goes full “Yeat mix with transitions” with thrilling results, the cleanliness of each song leading into one another providing a kaleidoscopic affect. A ton of credit has to go to his production collaborators Waera, m8i, Doxxmade, Chris Marek, Kay Boba, jackwya, 808toofly, and fellow technicolor warrior prettifun for the seamless integration.

Is it a bit goofy that he’s talking about sliming dudes and popping pills when he’s doing Cooking Mama videos? Yes, but it’s also fun to rap about those things. Fun is in short supply when dudes are criticizing Slayr for not having enough “aura”, for being slightly chubby, for not fitting neatly into a square peg. “Underground” rap as a category has now become a way for kids to act as A&Rs, ruthlessly critiquing anyone who does not doesn’t fit their preferred aesthetic form, a more deep-fried stan culture. Ironically, while underground rap used to be the domain of nerds, it’s now a litmus test for how much teenagers can vicariously live through you.

In this context, the top comment on the video for “Sloppy Joe”—”He look like the guy who brought his Nintendo Switch to lunch” is a rorschach test. Do you find that archetype of guy in rap tedious and wack? Or is it refreshing for a kid who isn’t the most image-conscious in his class to find an audience in an increasingly fashion-driven underground, where aura is considered more important than craft? Especially given if 2Hollis or Nettspend made these songs, they’d be hailed as radical visionary wave for rap by Jon Caramonica? I for one, am rooting for the blerd underdog.

”I tell you this because, as an artist, I think you'll understand”

There’s a prevailing narrative around Jawbreaker, and you’ve probably heard it. They sold out. Dear You was the first and only major-label release of theirs, and tanked their reputation. They became the Bay Area pariahs; a symbol of post-Nirvana and Green Day corporate greed and what happens when you cross an implicit punk credo. Geffen executive Mark Kates recalls how, when they headlined the Roxy in Hollywood, “there were kids sitting on the floor, with their backs to the stage, when they were playing songs from Dear You. I’m not making that up.” Very few records in history have inspired this kind of vitriol.

You’d think, then, that Dear You is terrible. That it’s the punk Big Day or Chinese Democracy, a bloated waste of CD space that makes the listener question why they even liked the band in the first place. But this is the Our Band Could Be Your Life era. Pre-stans, pre-parasocial attachment, these bands represented a safe space away from mainstream culture and abject consumption that those in DIY held dear. The rawness of Jawbreaker was emblematic, unfiltered and wholly unbought. And while they were punk through and through, fans and critics likened Blake Schwarzenbach’s lyrics to Bukowski and Rimbaud, his sensitive everyman quality distinguishing the band from hyper-aggro Gilman Street contemporaries like Operation Ivy and DayGlo Abortions. Poetic enough for the college rock kids, passionate enough for the mosh pit.

Dear You, despite the reaction, isn’t a stark contrast to the rest of their discography. Sure it’s smoother, owing to Schwarzenbach’s polyp removal from years of diaphragmic violence. But for those closely listening—how different is “Ashtray Monument” and “Do You Still Hate Me?” to “Oyster” and “Sluttering (May 4th)”? It suggests a kneejerk backlash to the improved sonics and mixing their Geffen contract afforded them. Where instead of falling back on their tried-and-true Bay Area punk, they blazed a path unlike anything seen in punk at that point.

Speaking of commercial appeal, see: “Fireman”, aka the lone attempt to catapult Jawbreaker into the mainstream. It’s a wonder at all that they were ever on MTV, with such relatable lines as “Dreamed I was a fireman / I just smoked and watched you burn”. Laconic pop-punk was still about a half decade away from beingly broadly marketable. But as a single, it’s unimpeachable. It’s surely a heated pub debate, but to me, Schwarzenbach’s lyrics peaked here. I have always been of the lyrical disinterest camp—without good music or proper arrangements, they mean nothing. And punk, for all its merits, is simple, requiring only the barest lyrical sentiment or even ambition to match a great riff or beat. But every line of “Fireman” is devastating. Blake toes the fine line between devotion and creepiness, desperately trying to swallow his lover whole with no hesitation. It’s both true romance and cause for a restraining order.

Every song on Dear You hits with this same emotional collision. “I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both” has the propulsive force of a headbanger while a relationship not only dissipates into smoke, but is insinuated to be actively killing its inhabitants. “Hold me / Set me free / It's all I want from you /It's sad and it's so true”. Schwarzenbach’s hold on the inner workings of human romantic folly and tribulation is simply masterful. Him, Chris Bauermeister, and Adam Pfahler thread the needle with tight, Smiths-like melodies, while Blake delivers devastating anecdotes in love gone awry. No Morrissey-esque irony or humor here, simply grief.

Not that everything here is doom and gloom though. The allegations of Jawbreaker being way too emo on Dear You were a prime criticism (more on that later), but there are moments of levity and optimism strewn about that contradict this narrative. Opener “Save Your Generation” is an anti Generation-X anthem, or, at the very least, a plea to his cohorts to get their shit together. No more slacking, no more excuses, “We're killing each other by sleeping in”. In an era of cynicism, irony, and malaise, it’s an eyebrow-raising missive from Schwarzenbach, the last person you’d think would get on his high horse. But he has a bigger sense of humor than people’d think.

“Bad Scene, Everyone’s Fault” was the spiritual successor to “Boxcar” off 24 Hour Revenge Therapy. While the latter is a send-up of the purity politics and peacocking of the punk scene (a called shot?), “Bad Scene” is merely a snapshot of a tragicomic party. This is Blake just shooting the shit, mildly amused and annoyed at in-scene gossip and couple dynamics. "‘Why, why, oh why, oh why / Why is it always like this?’ / Either you're too mean or you're too nice.’ He said, ‘I even cooked her breakfast.’” It’s imagery worthy of a Whit Stillman film, despondent exes and break-ups hitting like freight trains to poor saps. A worthy rebuttal to anyone who says Jawbreaker didn’t have jokes.

And yet, Dear You cannot escape its emo legacy contributions. It is a stunningly morose album when it wants to be. Case in point: “Accident Prone”’s gut punch of an opening lyric: “What's the furthest place from here? / It hasn't been my day for a couple years / What's a couple more?”. Line after line of pure melancholy, lifting 14 year old despondency straight out of their heads. “What's the closest you can come to an almost total wreck / And still walk away, all limbs intact?” stands up their with the suicidal singer-songwriter maestros, except we thankfully still have Blake with us. It’s a wonder how this album was derided for being “too manic depressive”, as if some jamoker had never felt or never even imagined you could have psychological rot on this level.

Even a less depressed track like “Oyster” still carries weight on its shoulders. Schwarzenbach is apt to lyrically give himself over to common, and some might even say trite metaphors, yet he always squeezes the last juice out of them. “The world is an oyster / Locked in a shell / You like the taste of it /Can't take the smell” is an addicting refrain, direct in its accusations. It’s simultaneously a sly insult and an honest plea, conveying both disappointment in someone’s actions but a belief they can and will face the music. That by the end you are screaming the verse with reckless abandon doesn’t hurt either.

By now, those unattuned to the band may be wondering why I’ve barely mentioned Jawbreaker’s bassist and drummer Chris Bauermeister and Adam Pfahler, respectively. The truth is they were always the rhythm section to Schwarzenbach’s one-man band; this got so heated that Bauermeister and Schwarzenbach instigated the breakup in 1996 because of Bauermeister’s perception of Blake’s arrogance and usage of the band as his own vehicle, as documented in Don’t Break Down: A Film About Jawbreaker. I think Bauermeister was right, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t contribute substantially—”Fireman” is his finest hour, the deep, brooding bassline powering the song a la Andy Rourke. While his talents were far more apparent on past records, Pfahler is solid throughout and particularly shines on “Lurker II: Dark Son of Night”, 32nd note drum fills and the little double bass kicks adding a notable swing.

The truth is though, the most notable non-Blake member of Dear You has to be Rob Cavallo. While Geffen certainly selected him for his work on Dookie, a lesser-known album of his that may be more influential to the recording is the Muffs’ Blonder and Blonder, whose power-pop sound mirrors Jawbreaker’s here closer than Green Day’s snotty, raucous breakthrough. Especially on songs like “Chemistry” and “Lurker II”, the band sound unrecognizable, caked in reverb and modulation. And this manifests doubly with Blake’s harmonized vocals, anthemic in way that hadn’t been seen on Bivouac or 24 Hour Revenge Therapy, despite the legendary status of “Condition Oakland”.

Everything prior leads up to “Jet Black”. Prefaced by the Christopher Walken quote from Annie Hall, it is, if not Jawbreaker’s, than Blake Schwarzenbach’s most naked musical statement. So much of the coming years of emo, in both form and function, stems from this cut. The description of physicality in pain, the black humor, the melodrama, the unflinching baring the soul. When Blake says “White noise in black room dust / These hands long for one last touch”, it either triggers a guffaw or a neurological recognition of every relationship you have ever fucked up. Schwarzenbach’s hospital metaphors consecrate a major defining theme: what is love if you’re not willing to die for it. The haters can score one here, if they want—it’s melodrama incarnate, the product of 50,000 bad emo songs. But if you fuck with Gerard Way, Chris Carabba, Jim Adkins or Chris Conley, this is the incubation of their artistry.

I hinted at it beforehand but this is also the product of a longstanding grudge versus Christopher Sebela, the writer of Pitchfork’s review of the 2004 reissue of Dear You (which features an excellent cover of the Psychedelic Furs’ “Into You Like A Train”). It reads as parody: the line “"Sluttering" and "Fireman" are love-as-revenge songs in the key of Sylvia Plath.” is supposed to be a put-down instead of a massive compliment, and it ends with the assertion “the disintegration of Jawbreaker was not worth mourning, especially with so many bands gladly assuming their former position in the underground.”, which is so clearly untrue I can scarcely believe it to have been written with 9 years of hindsight. Given the Pitchfork of 2004’s complete distaste for emo I’m not surprised at the tone, but 13 year old Eli needed 29 year old Eli to make a point; this review STINKS.

If you’d pardon my pettiness, time has done Dear You its justice. There’s little a band over emo’s short history it hasn’t touched; from golden era icons like Texas Is The Reason and the Get Up Kids, to mallcore behemoths Fall Out Boy and Paramore, to emo revival’s Title Fight and Joyce Manor. Hell, Jawbreaker Reunion picked their name because it was so improbable and yearnful they’d ever come back to us. I was lucky enough to see that reunion at Riot Fest in Chicago, and god, what a dream. It’s hard to point to a band whose legacy is so canonical, so revered as Jawbreaker, who, despite their cult status, could command widespread bliss at reuniting.

Sitting here in 2026, it’s weird to write this love letter about an album that now has been solidified as gold-plated. We already know Dear You is a classic, Eli, who cares? But for a long time, that wasn’t the case, even disregarding that Pitchfork review. Blake moved on to his Jets to Brazil project, and the excellent Orange Rhyming Dictionary, yet Dear You sat as the black sheep of the family next to 24 Hour Revenge Therapy’s honor student, a reminder these guys sold out. As every new generation finds out how cathartic it is to get their heart stabbed out by these lyrics, the deserved acclaim will crowd out the bitter resentment this album accumulated. Until the tide is completely turned, I will sing Dear You’s praises to high heaven, cause if you’ve heard it hundred times it still won’t be enough.

It’s not easy to differentiate yourself when you get compared to Elliott Smith and Burt Bacharach, but Asher White makes everything look easy. The young iconoclast boasted she had a record of Jessica Pratt covers on a lark, and by god did she deliver. Her version of the self-titled came out February 4 on Joyful Noise, and while it is excellent, it is not at all what we went over, lol. (Recorded on January 30, 2026)

Asher White: I love your DJ Screw shirt!

Constantly Hating: Thank you!!

I like, love the bootleg black market grind, it’s the last vestige of a true bygone internet I feel.

I just got a bootleg Bart the other day, and it’s saying Fuck the Packers.

Where are you right now?

I’m in Brooklyn, but I lived in Chicago.

Where in Chicago?

I was in Andersonville, and Rogers Park.

That’s where I was conceived! Well it sucks, cause I’m from around the Main St Purple Line stop, do you know where this is? 3 blocks north of Howard? So it is effectively Rogers Park, but technically Evanston. And people are like, oh, you’re like Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles,

Very John Hughes.

Yeah, I’m trying to explain, I’m being forever lambasted for claiming Rogers Park when I’m from Evanston. It’s not driveways around there, it’s a real place to be.

Nah Evanston is still Chicago and like, love the North Side but it’s not very cool, y’know. If you’re from Evanston or Skokie it’s like, well…

Skokie has a swag of it’s own because it’s so upsetting to be in Skokie because it’s basically O-Block for white people.

That’s kind of an insane, uh, put on that on the record?

Put that on the record.

The most famous modern KKK rally.

Facts, my grandparents were there probably. Not at the KKK rally, they were Jewish. I’d like to make that totally clear, I come from peasant Skokie stock, working-class Jews, thinking that it was very cool to leave the city and move to Skokie and that it was very luxurious, but it’s a pretty humble place.

It’s become very exurban.

In high school I was the one who hung out in Logan Square and Pilsen, and I feel like I was the one who gentrified it. I just remember the first $16 chai tea milkshake in Logan Square…

Oh my god you’re like “this is the beginning of the end…”

Well I just remember thinking “Oh this is awesome” cause I was 12 and from Evanston, wait how old are you?

I’m 29. Are you also in Brooklyn?

Yeah, and I’m 25. Right now I’m in a really nightmarish recreation room of a luxury condo in the West Village where I’ve been a personal assistant to this woman for the past month.

What kind of work is that?

Emotional psychic drainage. I’m just like calming her down, but it’s like first non-service industry job I’ve had.

I ask about Brooklyn cause I saw the press photos were taken by Jessica Rovinelli, who is also a friend, so I was wondering if you knew any of those people.

I’m not in the extended harem of the Ridgewood transsexual community, I feel like I’m not far enough on estrogen to qualify on that front.

~Zoom call breaks up~

I’m so sorry, I feel like a diva.

Nah it’s not very divaish to have phone issues—actually it is a little.

I feel like isn’t it you get the big phone interview and you get them and they’re a little bit distracted and despondent and looking at their own image in the Zoom monitor the whole time.

I wouldn’t say you were distracted I just thought it was funny that you had audio issues and it was like oh bad bitches have awful quality phones.

(laughs) Are you like a tech savvy individual?

Not really, I just have an iPhone 14.

How’s your relationship to your phone?

Like I’m on that bitch too much? Probably.

I feel like people are a bit fascistic or fearmongering about having high screen time like I think it’s probably more acceptable cope than people allow themselves to believe, but do you ever flatten it?

I’ve never felt, me personally, that’s it’s ruining my life, but maybe it’s my fault.

It’s like being drinking age or having an Adderall prescription. You go through phrases where your relationship is sort of helpless and destructive and try and keep it in check, but I don’t really believe in abstinence or like sobriety.

That is a very mid-20s take.

Oh cause you’re 29?

Hey I’m trying to stop myself but shit’s tough, you feel invincible…

In honesty, yeah, I have some indulgence issues, but I think me not believing in abstinence is more about that I believe in moderation.

Yeah that’s a better way than the “American” way of being sober in being extremely militant and virtuous and less of an evil.

I’m so glad you identified it as American I’m trying to signal that virtue a little more.

It’s very um, uh what’s the religious domination…oh man not Baptist, Lutheran…(he’s thinking about Puritanism) but it infests our culture more than cultures that have become more secular over time.

Oh, I don’t know, wait you have DC area code?

Oh no, this is Cleveland.

Oh word, so you have like real Midwestern integrity.

(laughs) In a sense, Midwest pride at the end of the day.

Both city slicker and rural claim, or mostly metro area?

Yeah I’ve never lived in a rural area, most rural I’ve been was in college.

Where was that?

Appalachia, I went to Ohio University. But I was born in DC, then moved to Chicago, then Cleveland, and now New York, so never really lived anywhere but cities.

How long have you been in New York?

Since 2023, coming up on 3 years, it’s mad fun.

Literally, it’s fun. I feel like I came to have fun.

Yeah, definitely proximity is the most important thing it can boast.

For me it’s like an interesting existential/material/fiscal question that was answered, like I was living really really cheaply and very functionally in Providence for a few years, because I’m so young because I’m incredibly young that was a major part of my life. And would I pay $500 more a month to not be lonely? The answer is yes! My rent was $600 in Providence, I could work 4 days a week and still have time to make music and stuff, but I was literally just so sad and bored cause Providence is a small city and I’m approaching my mid-20s and I can’t be continuing to match with Brown University seniors once I’m older than 23. I’m like: “I guess I’ll just sacrifice a few hundred dollars a month to stop that” and I did.

It’s completely worth it, and especially, I don’t think people realize, I think you probably had the same thing that I did in Cleveland—these cities are small. Once you meet a lot of people, it contracts the city.

Not even just meeting a lot of people, once you have a lot of geographic experiences in those neighborhoods, you begin to retrace the memories of your college experiences, like it becomes very bleak when you’re in your college town for too long. If you’re not building a life very intentionally, it becomes very easy to myopically rewrite and retrace and circumscribe your life inwards until it’s completely eroded into a fine dust.

It helps here cause you have a different experience every day.

Your situationship margin is much higher.

(laughs)

The psychic turnover rate here is like, in Providence I would see one thing per day, and it was someone like overdosing, or an MFA student playing chess in the park, and that would color the week because there’s nothing else. In New York you go outside and it’s someone’s quinceañera and they’re whisked away and someone’s throwing up and they’re whisked away and it’s people kissing—you’re just shuffling through so much life all the time it’s so generative and beautiful.

Does that come up a lot in your music or is it more interior for you?

I dunno, in some ways every song I’ve ever written is about infrastructure policy and like urban development. This is kind of a joke but I also totally mean it and it is true.

I’m an open book for what you mean about your music.

A lot of it is like allegory or like textual references to city planning, so in some ways it’s inspired by the city but it hasn’t really changed much between the cities that I’ve lived in. I think it’s maybe affected by the lifestyle that I’m living at the time, which obviously the city has an effect on. But I wouldn’t say that any of my records are a Providence record or a New York record in the way that a record is like very clearly, immediately emblematic of a city. I fantasize about it though, when I have the means I’d like to make an LA record or something.

What kind of LA record?

Like The Chronic.

You think you can pull The Chronic off?

I think I could probably do The Chronic or Doggystyle, yeah.

Okay, I’d like to see it.

(laughs) What is the modern LA record? Like Weyes Blood? Weyes Blood or Haim?

Kendrick or Tyler are the biggest ones.

I was thinking like white female singer-songwriters.

Julia Holter is very LA.

Yes! The other thing is the Chicago-to-LA thing, like Jeff Parker, International Anthem, Andre 3000, Carlos Nino thing, the LA jazz world is probably one of the more important American scenes right now.

The guys I think of are Thundercat and Kamasi Washington.

Yeah, Terrence Martin, listen, the first time I ever had an opportunity to do an interview, I was like, this is my opportunity to die for Flying Lotus, who I think is the most brilliant visionary and important artist of the 21st century. I think Flying Lotus, Steven Ellison, who by the way is Alice Coltrane’s fucking nephew, is responsible for Knxwledge, for a ton of the LA beat people, arguably responsible for Kendrick abnadoning good kid era for jazz rap, he totally set the whole thing up.

Yeah I think, because he’s sort of out of the zeitgeist, we’ve lost sight of how brilliant Flying Lotus is.

It’s crazy, you go back and listen to those records he made in 2010 and it still sounds insane, still sounds so fresh and predicts everything that would happen in popular music over the next 10 years. Even in rap and in indie rock, it’s everything.

I’m glad you brought up FlyLo kind of impromptu cause fuck it he deserves his flowers, that’s something I feel like people don’t give him as much anymore.

He’s so underrated—he’s my biggest influence, truly the reason why I make music, cause when I was 13 discovered Flying Lotus. He also has a major thing about his interviews, he’s like really reverent about musical lineage and that’s how I found about Dilla, and this insane vein of collage music. If there’s any governing methodology behind the way that I produce, the way that I envision songs, it’s entirely off of Until the Quiet Comes by Flying Lotus and the records that were inspired by it. Knxwledge too, and Kaytranada, though I think Kaytranada’s not LA.

Yeah but he was in that milieu, like kicks it with Anderson. Paak and stuff.

Malibu came out my freshman year of high school, or maybe my sophomore year. 2016? I just remember being like “Oh this is the most important era of music ever”. This is honestly a nostalgic norm that I don’t believe in, though.

It came out in college for me, so I’m the boomer here, comparatively.

It’s so good, anyway, what were we talking about? Oh, LA. I’ve never been.

(laughs) Someone’s gotta set up the tour then.

I’m touring the West Coast in May, actually!

Hopefully you’ll be able to link and build and make your Chronic or Until the Quiet Comes.

That’s my goal. I can’t think of any other LA records, but I do love Julia Holter. That’s funny that you mention Julia Holter because that’s another person who I think is criminally underrated and who I want to be the most.

I can see that in your music for sure.

I think she doesn’t get enough credit for how her music is incredibly difficult and demanding and like incredibly pretentious and high-concept, and I think if left unchecked, if I were smarter and went to grad school or something, I could dive myself in a way where I could write these ambient rock operas about Greek mythology or whatever. Like highly referential, literate stuff. So it’s inspiring to me because it’s like the flagship of that, that’s the beacon. But I also think she’s a true, raw nerd but has one foot on the other side, like tapped into this level of total emotional devastation that she’s able to dive into and retrieve portals from in contemporary classical, really ornate jazz rock records—I don’t know how you describe that music, but I really love Julia Holter.

It’s funny you say super smart, avant, grad school but when I interviewed her for her last album, it was funny cause, no offense to Julia, she’s not super forthright about her music or super explanatory. It’s not like she does it off vibes but she’s so talented it’s like—

Like it’s a mystery to her?

Not like it’s a mystery but something she’s able to evoke so cleanly within music theory and composition and it’s probably harder to put it into language.

The big thing for me is that it’s really audacious, like it’s the most ambitious stuff ever, in vibe, because—except for Have You In My Wilderness, which is a great pop album and I think, a huge flex, because she’s like “oh yeah, all this time I can make very beautiful songs”—Loud City Song can basically only soundtrack itself. It’s the most specific vibe it cultivates. And when you think about music that does well, even music with a lot of integrity, a lot of domain and agency, that’s complex and good on its own right, you can still imagine a Radiohead song playing in an episode of Euphoria. You can imagine Geese, y’know, music that we can agree is very specific and artful and interesting, still has a vibe that’s like, fathomable.

But what is so amazing about the Julia Holter stuff is that no one’s ever felt that way. And no one probably will. She’s articulating a thing that’s really, really myopic and so insanely specific but brutal. If I was a record label I’d never ever put out any of those records. I’d be like “Who would listen to this?” The answer’s me.

It’s head music for sure. For those who know.

I bet she has a really bad time at the merch table of her shows. I bet it’s the worst guys in the world talking to her. I’m sure she has the most insufferable guys being like “hey when you modulate to the major 7th on when the harpsichord comes in, really sick!”

Especially when she does not seem interested in the minute small talk.

That’s so cool you interviewed her.

Yeah it was really sick to do it for Bandcamp, I went to the Domino listening party that was at Public Records. It felt booming, if you ever have the chance and your label hooks you up, having a listening party there is very clutch.

Was it in the cafe room?

It’s in the upstairs. There’s this big soundsystem and it’s cacophonous. There’s parts where I thought about Playboi Carti, which I told her and she was kind of bemused. (laughs)

I mean Public Records is one of the best venues in the city. I think I’ve only been there a few times but I think I saw YHWH Nailgun there, which I expected to sound not good, cause it needs to be in a fucked-up space, acoustically—but it sounded like the record, unbelievable. It was totally awe-inspiring. We played there opening for someone last year or 2 years ago and I was like “this is crazy” like I’m not even playing but listening to myself, it was amazing. Shoutout to Public Records.

Jessica Pratt feels very singular in the same way as Julia Holter—in that it doesn’t soundtrack anything but itself, especially the album you’re covering, and I listened to your version and couldn’t even fathom ever transitioning those songs into what you theorized. It was really impressive.

Thanks! I’m very flattered you called it “theorized”, it’s so the opposite of theoretical. When I was trying to get people to listen to that album, the original, people were like “yeah it just sounds like indie-folk” which I find very grim. And I find this in myself too, where I dismiss a lot of voice and guitar stuff, because a lot of it is so bad and because it’s so hard to find records that occupy that wavelength but are incredibly substantive and generous. I’m so excited by that Jessica Pratt record because it is one of those records, it’s very modestly presented but those songs are really, really unbelievable.

And I thought it would be a fun exercise; more challenging myself, and sort of an indulgence. I always have more production ideas than I do good songs that I’ve written, I don’t really write that many good songs. I like making beats. And I thought “oh this’ll be fun since I just get to make the beats cause the song’s already written”. So I’ve cracked the case, I get to make an album that counts as an album I made, but I only do the fun part, which is no emotional labor. I’m only recording and playing; I don’t have to dig into my soul and say something that means something to me and hopefully someone else, which is so exhausting and terrifying. This is a really fun break, all these words I don’t have to take accountability for, I’m just putting loud guitars on it.

It’s a good gig if you can get it. It’s cool, cause people don’t do “standards” much anymore, and covers were such a big part of the early part of pop music and pop music in general, so it’s cool to hear a left turn from you on this album.

I wrote about this in the little blurb about the album, which is that, we don’t really have that many American standards now, that have been written in the past 50 years. “Say Yes” by Elliott Smith, embarrassingly, is actually one of them. And maybe, like, “Wonderwall”.

Well that’s British, so.

Fuck! You’re so right.

(laughs)

What’s an American standard?

Uhhh like “Sir Duke”? Maybe at this point “Smells Like Teen Spirit”? There’s also the whole Irving Berlin, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday standards.

I mean in the past 30 years though. Over the first 50 years of the 20th century, we had it in the bag. Between Motown and Brill Building, we were just churning out banger after banger that could just be endlessly iterated and covered by anyone, like Motown and bossa nova have a total of like, 10 songs. There’s so few original compositions, but every Temptations record has the same track listing as every Gladys Knight & the Pips record, and they’re all worth listening to because they’re all good, and everyone was doing these standards. Then, I don’t know, the Beatles ruined it? After the 60s no one did standards, and definitely no one was writing them.

Right, music became very wide, as opposed to consolidating a couple songs.

Totally, and people were like “the point of music is for me to express my ideas as a songwriter” as opposed to tapping into a tradition of a song. For a while, the way a singer/songwriter would establish themselves is by singing standards. The first Phil Ochs records or Tim Hardin records, obviously Bob Dylan—those are all covers. You would make three records of covers and now I’m going to write originals. That’s very much not en vogue anymore.

This is a way of bringing back the reverence.

Totally, tapping into and wrestling the torch out of her hand even though she’s very much still running with it.

There’s very much a focus on futurism and the now nowadays.

Yeah, futurism and in that nature, individual accomplishment and, I don’t know, I don’t know if any of this is printable actually. Just delete everything so far. Basically I’m interested in other people covering these Jessica Pratt songs. I want “Half Twain the Jesse” to go viral on TikTok.

I’m interested to hear how you think that would happen.

I just want people to do ukulele covers, I think a lot of these songs would be good ukulele covers—I don’t have a ukulele so I didn’t do that—but I think it’s worth doing that. I think if you like an album and you think it’s underrated what you should do is reinterpret it. It’s an amazing exercise for yourself, and I was gonna say you “purchase shares in it” but that’s so apocalyptic of a metaphor. You break off a piece of the wall and put it in your pocket—wait that’s Zionist though…I’m struggling to find the right metaphor.

People will understand, you do give it a piece of yourself. Once you make that kind of music it becomes shared, communal.

Yeah, it’s a form of prayer, not to be pretentious about it, but I really did feel when I was recording some of these songs I was like “oh she did this” in the same way when you recite The Lord’s Prayer, you’re reciting words that everyone in your religion has, everyone who’s died and everyone who will be born will recite, tapping into this infinite choreography that extends in either direction. I’m reprising, I’m retracing her steps, how sacred.

I did not expect Jessica Pratt to have this kind of reverence but that’s really the highest compliment you can get as a songwriter.

Are you historically not a fan?

No Jessica Pratt is sick! As much as I love music, getting to a spiritual level with it is the highest form of praise.

Eli, I’m very very scared of death, I’m really really scared of dying, I don’t wanna die. It’s like the whole thing, like every moment I’m shuddering with terror or rather, with dread, with the knowledge that I have to die. It’s absolutely paralyzing to me, I really hate this, I think about it all the time. And I think I was born in the wrong body so it’s like “Oh god, I’m gonna die and it was short and the whole thing was messed up”.

Anyway, the only times I felt a glimmer of invincibility and immortality and oneness, transcendental meditation sublimation into the void and universe and transformation into the eternal continuum where it’s all going to be okay is when I’m in my freezing cold fucked up Providence studio, headphones on, tapped into the mainframe of a song. It feels arrogant when it’s my own and beautiful and generative when it’s someone else’s, but those are the times where I have my finger on and part of my foot in the pool of the infinite.

Hell yeah.

It’s easier to get there when the songs already exist because these experiences, there’s a blueprint, y’know? The footsteps are here, there’s literally choreography for me to follow, but I definitely got it with my own music too, where, oh wow, this is a finite, sensory experience but the implications of it are immense and endless. For a moment we were infinite. (laughs)

You’re really tapping in.

(laughs) I’m locked in!

I’m going to guess you’re a fan of Brian Wilson and Hideki Anno then.

And who? I don’t know Hideki Anno.

The guy who did Neon Genesis Evangelion.

OH, yes, I’ve actually only seen the movie, I haven’t watched the show.

(laughs) What happens in the show is very important to what happens in the movie!

I saw the movie and it really ruined my month. It shook me to my core and it was that type of thing where you watch something and everything you look at reminds you of it.

(laughs) When I was listening to you describe the catalyst between life and death, I’m like “this is some End of Eva shit right now!”

I love that movie. (laughs) This is gonna sound so dumb stoner, and I don’t even smoke weed—I knew in theory that there was other media that was related to it and was perhaps predicated on, but it didn’t occur to me that I was missing anything. In that movie it’s like, oh I’m being barraged with a lot of information that I have to connect myself.

It’s both extremely esoteric and inscrutable, and also the most straightforward evocation of life and death ever.

It’s also an immediate sensory pleasure, like heady, deep and cerebral and stuff but truly pleasurable throughout the whole movie. It’s gripping and riveting, which I feel things like that can often be not that way.

So do you feel when you’re in that zone of connection in the recording, do you feel like you’re in The Third Impact?

(laughs) Yeah I feel like it cuts to a wide shot, and it’s unclear; there’s an impossibly dense void behind me, I’m glowing and adrift, and you can’t zoom out far enough. You can zoom out and zoom out and zoom out and it’ll never be far enough. It’s like something infinitely large crushing something infinitely small.

Shit, there you go.

Can you tell I haven’t done this in a while? I’m not media-trained, I don’t really know how to do this.

That was actually so fucking sick, don’t worry. You know, I don’t need to ask anymore questions, cause that’s really what’s it all about, to be honest.

Okay, cool. Can I just tag on things that are important to say?

Yeah, any addendums?

In keeping with the, life is short et cetera, [it’s] a collection of incredibly transient, brief, fleeting sensory experiences that, in the way that absolute value means that negative and positive are equal, you are experiencing things in general: immense pain, immense pleasure, it’s such a blessing from God that we get it at all. And also, because of this, we’re indebted, and what we must do because of that is resist against ICE and free Palestine and post bail and find the actual concrete results your human experience can do because it’s all incredibly urgent. I guess that’s it; it’s all urgent.

Absolutely. It’s an expression of love in the most powerful order, at all times.

Everyone wants to be interviewed about their Jessica Pratt cover album, everyone wants to have the opportunity to make a Jessica Pratt cover album by themselves and get interviewed about it and everyone deserves to have that experience and it’s a completely unimaginable and insane thing that some people are. But I feel, given the opportunity, every single person alive would do that—not with Jessica Pratt, but like—

Nah, everyone deserves their own Jessica Pratt cover album, it’s true.

Everyone deserves to make the cover album, to teach themselves the cover album of their dreams, and it’s insane and cruel that it can’t be done. It’s very hard to reckon with.

Period.

Thanks for reading my wonderful interview with Asher White. If there is any interest, I have a little bonus 10 minute extra where I commiserate with Asher over Ridgewood trans girls, Tiny Mix Tapes and how much that website influenced her. Let me know if that would be worth paying for. Love y’all.

Support me

Joyce Manor is a classic case of right place, right time. Positioned perfectly to crest the wave of Tumblr malaise, emo and pop-punk revival, and burgeoning intense parasociality toward bands, they, along with Turnover, Tigers Jaw, Title Fight, and others, catapulted ratty DIY tunes into what would eventually be a genre defining movement. With “Leather Jacket” and “Constant Headache”, you could argue Barry Johnson typifies the beer-soaked mosh mindset emblematic of what so many felt and lived at the time. The problem, therein, lies in the fact in that’s the only good kind of song that he can write.

There is only one Joyce Manor album that clocks in at over 20 minutes. For those that like their music economical and without bloat, this may seem ideal. Pop-punk tends to wear out its welcome quickly, and Barry and co. understand this. Even still, every Joyce Manor tends to follow the same formula. 1 or 2 tracks that are undeniably solid pop-punk hits, 1 to 2 that could’ve been spruced up or left to the cutting room floor, and about 3 to 4 tracks that are mediocre to bad either in a generic way, or in a Barry tries to experiment and it goes poorly way.

I was a sophomore in high when Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired came out, and it already felt like a complete dud then. To try and capitalize off a buzzed release with such a flaccid effort marked them for death, but they somehow survived, nay, thrived. Never Hungover Again, is their heralded magnum opus and yet proves the pattern. From tracks like “Falling In Love Again” and “Catalina Fight Song”, it’s persisted through the nostalgia it inspired despite being an otherwise forgettable record. For one reason or another, people’s memories are imprinted onto Joyce Manor, carrying them throughout their lives, and that’s no small feat.

3 albums later, and we arrive at I Used To Go To This Bar. There’s barely any need to recap what’s got the band to this most recent album; Joyce Manor has become symbolic pop-punk benchmark, a band that regurgitates itself to be as relevant as possible. It was probably not the best idea to release 4 singles for a 19-minute album, but it did reveal how uninspiring the overall package would be. “All My Friends Are So Depressed” is remarkably bad, reminiscent of their worst peers Modern Baseball and the Front Bottoms. And “Well, Whatever It Was” suggests they took a page from their tourmates Weezer in making really bad Raditude-era power pop.

You don’t need to listen to this album. If you want fun, newer pop-punk/power pop adjacency, Ratboys and Sharp Pins are right there. If you still linger on the PBR basement days of 2014, go back to Chalk Talk, Summer Vacation and Cherry Cola Champions, much more deserving bands of recognition that never really got their shine. Joyce Manor are, and were, a dead end of a band. A band for people that were never really into punk, that tailormade themselves for Tumblr captions, forgettable, unremarkable, tired.

I actually typed January 2025 before realizing what year it was. Jesus christ, 2026, really? I’m supposed to give way to temporality like this? In any case, music is and always will be good. Here are some tunes to get you through whatever Elsa, Sub-Zero, Mr. Freeze and Iceman throw at you.

Sven Väth - The sound of the First season (2000)

Fire club mix from an Ibiza session. I will never be off K like shit in Ibiza, but this comes pretty close to replicating the feeling.

RIYL: Armin van Buuren, The Field, Richie Hawtin, Basic Channel

crossed out - s/t 7” (1991)

Not underlooked in punk circles by any means, but extolling the virtues of powerviolence is a rare thing to witness so I’d like to give this heater to the masses. Just nasty, sludgy aggression that blows most modern hardcore out the water. The kids need to hear this one.

RIYL: Man Is The Bastard, Infest, Anal Cunt, Spazz

Slapp Happy – O For The Ocean (1983)

So this is a bizarre curio because this is not technically Slapp Happy the Rock in Opposition-adjacent band, it’s Anthony Moore’s solo track off the album The Only Choice, or at least the only studio recorded version. However, that recorded version is a glossy 80s pop song, whereas this performance is essentially proto- Guided By Voices. It’s the musical version of that 60s time travel photo, indie before even college rock.

RIYL: Henry Cow, Guided By Voices, Pavement, Neutral Milk Hotel

Eric Akaeze And His Royal Ericos - Wetin Dey Watch Goat, Goat Dey Watcham (1974)

It’s Afrobeat. Of course it rocks. Tap in.

RIYL: Fela Kuti, Hugh Masekela, Orlando Julius, Manu Dibango

Various Artists - SSX Tricky Soundtrack (2001)

John Morgan is the principal architect of this soundtrack but there’s so many cool moving parts here; Mix Master Mike of the Beasties contributing with a crazy hitter in “Board Burner”, Run-DMC with one of Jam Master Jay’s final appearances before his killing remixing “It’s Tricky” and even Pizzicato Five on the Japanese version with “Baby Portable Rock”. A deeply swagged out time capsule of Y2K aesthetics and interests.

RIYL: Future Sound of London, 1080 Snowboarding, Y2k Aesthetic Institute, Underworld

Saves The Day - In Reverie (2003)

A big departure from the bratty Saves the Day people came to know, In Reverie is their twee, Beach Boys-esque record. Chris Conley can write the shit outta a melody, and “Wednesday the Third” is essentially a dream pop song.

RIYL: The Get Up Kids, The Beach Boys, Weezer, Grandaddy

Picky Picnic - Picnic Land (1982)

For the weirdos and those that know. Minimal synth turned into outsider art, crayon drawings on the edge of the human mind.

RIYL: Daniel Johnston, Nuno Cannavaro, Devo, Plastics

The Ergs! - Dorkrockcorkrod (2004)

Another pop-punk record from the early aughts with a completely different vibe. Think going to Six Flags with your childhood crew, sleepovers, egging someone’s house and getting into sitcom antics. Not too niche by any means but an album that deserves a second life 20 years later.

RIYL: The Mr. T Experience, Blink-182, Good Charlotte, The Aquabats

Sword II - The Electric Hour (2025)

The best indie album of last year and it isn’t particularly close. World class songwriting. Water From Your Eyes should be forced to give them reparations.

RIYL: Elliott Smith, Smashing Pumpkins, Alvvays, Phil Elverum

Starski $ Clutch – Don’t Stop ‘Til You Jit Enough (2005)

Ghettotech is proof that Detroit figured out the most futuristic way to fuck possible.

RIYL: DJ Assault, Bitch Ass Darius, Hi-Tech, licking balls and eating cheeks

Thank you for reading, and I hope you check some of these out. Not doing too well monetarily so if you have some spare cash, check my ko-fi! OK, love you all.

ko-fi

Let’s play a game: what do you think Vogue’s expenditures are? Given their status as Conde Nast’s flagship publication, iconic branding, event coordination at fashion weeks New York, London, Paris, and now Dubai, and importance toward the entire iconography of the world of fashion, we can safely guess in the hundreds of millions. Now, what do you think Pitchfork’s are? Does it reach double digit millions? I can’t imagine, given freelancers are paid around $200 for reviews and they had to cut the number of daily reviews from 5 to 4. So why exactly did Conde Nast give the mandate to paywall?

It screams a venture capital pursuit, the kind that the ratfuck Jim Spanfeller would think up in order to showcase a massive 2% growth in site traffic before the house of cards collapses after the audience wizens up. To be clear, this is not a criticism of the great Pitchfork staff, of whom I respect and have seen a wonderful evolution from under No Bells’ own Mano Sundaresan. But seriously though, what a lame duck maneuver. Forcing a website to capitulate to portfolio gains destroys audience trust and retention, cheapening the value of the criticism that has so reliably come from the outlet. When sites like the Wire, Stereogum, and Hearing Things introduce paywalls and subscriber-only benefits, their independent status makes it understandable and fair for the writers. When a publication owned by a billion-dollar conglomerate does it, it’s just a slap in the fucking face.

And the user scores introduction is even worse. Why does Pitchfork have to be RateYourMusic or Albumoftheyear? You already see enough of the stan opinions in every quote tweet of wafflingly positive to middling reviews of their fave’s albums, this just makes it that much worse. What is the point of the score then! People are now even less inclined to read the reviews given the dichotomy between the writer’s score and the reader’s score, it’s all so trashy. Undermining the authority of the critic makes the piece feel useless, just another take in a sea of noise instead of something that the outlet stands by.

As I was writing this, Jaime Brooks also published a piece on this exact topic.

The Seat of Loss

Should Condé Nast Subsidize Pitchfork?

Recently, I wrote a little bit about Pitchfork’s announcement that they were testing a new feature that would give readers the ability to leave comments on reviews and contribute to a crowd-sourced “reader’s score” that would be displayed next to the official score at the top of the page. I said I thought this was a good idea, and a best-case scenario f…

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3 months ago · 1 like · 1 comment · jaime brooks

It’s well worth your time, and she’s a brilliant writer (and musician who’s been covered by Pitchfork herself!) but I have some contradicting thoughts. I think it’s noteworthy and agreeable that she disabuses herself of the fantasy of getting paid to write about music, and how that has been the defining struggle of the Internet-age music critic; the notorious shithead Chris Ott famously said 10 years ago that you’d be able to get a job at Starbucks and be more financially solvent and less compromised by corporate advertising than simply working at Pitchfork. But, I do disagree that Conde Nast shouldn’t have to keep subsidizing Pitchfork—what is the point of owning it then? It’s not as if they were Rolling Stone and acquired it to monopolize competition, they were just scared of being left in the past vis-a-vis Internet cultural capital.

Does this frame me as someone who believes in noblesse oblige? Perhaps, but there are still publications out there with the taste and good sense to play to their audience and not destroy any goodwill they have left. It makes sense when the New York Times and GQ pivot towards a paywall, their older consumers have the money and investment to actually pay for it. Do you think weirdo 14 year olds like I once was who check Pitchfork every day can? Even economically, the gamble makes no fucking sense.

Once again, I don’t blame Mano or the staff for this debacle. And I especially feel bad for the freelancers who have been writing for the site near on decades and will now have to find alternate ways to link their articles from 2008. But it just speaks to a larger problem within music writing and writing in general. Unless you command parasocial attachment, your writing is not being paid for. And that’s a tough pill to swallow for a lot of us. The noble cause of a Tiny Mix Tapes cannot be sustained, and if you don’t have a built-in audience for your Substack, good fucking luck (subscribe btw!). In the end, music taste and curation has been forced into nooks and crannies, where the best stuff continually gets unearthed like bugs skittering out of rocks. Good luck to Pitchfork, and check back here in 2027 where we undoubtedly see another controversy befall the website, courtesy of Conde Nast management.

What comes to mind when you think of the greatest video game soundtracks? Is it Ocarina of Time’s soothing melodies? Akira Yamaoka’s brooding, unnerving Silent Hill? Or are you preferential to the simplicity that is the Tetris theme? Most cases for these canonizations come from broadly lauded games, games that have already taken their place in the pantheon of history. I posit something different. NFL Street, a childhood favorite, has wormed itself into my brain because of the X-ecutioners’ unbelievable score accompanying its gameplay. Not only that, but it is unique in its brilliance, showcasing how lively and fun both 00’s sports games were, and how composers in this era were allowed to take risks for big budget games. For my money, this is the greatest video game soundtrack ever.

For context: The X-ecutioners are a turntablist group from NYC, comprised of Rob Swift, Total Eclipse, and Roc Raida (RIP) at the time of the creation of NFL Street. They were prevalent enough in the early 2000s to have featured in Need for Speed: Underground, Amplitude, SSX3, and Gran Turismo. These guys were no fucking joke.

In that vein, EA Sports Big knew that the football version of the Street series could use that heat in their new entry. I don’t know what was in the air in the 00s, but studios LOVED instrumental hip-hop. EA’s conglomerate of sports releases, SEGA, Rockstar, these companies were entranced by swaggy beats and record scratches. Blessings be that EA Tiburon were X-ecutioners fans, because their taste begot an unforgettable soundtrack.

Before you got into a game, the licensed menu music featured 2 X-ecutioners remix songs. These songs are kind of corny, but utterly charming if you were there. The first is a ska pop-punk song featuring Good Charlotte? (idk they were doing anything back in this era) and the second is supposed to be a tough rock song with B-Real from Cypress Hill that comes off as an 8 Mile outtake. It’s unfortunate that our heroes have some of the worst tracks of the bunch in comparison to hitters like Jakk Frost’s This Man (budget Biggie) and Lil Flip’s What’s My Name.

Nevertheless, the X-ecutioners show up when it matters. When the intro cutscenes play showing the field and the banter before the game, it’s fucking business time. Sports games are first and foremost about making you hype, immersing you into the action, and they fucking nail that feeling from the jump. This soundtrack is one fucking head-nodder after another, enticing you to keep delivering those big hits, keep breaking tackles, keep sending that shit.

I mean, come on. Are you fucking kidding me with that bassline? With that vocal sampling and scratching? This is primo stuff. Brick wall ran through even. But the most impressive part of the soundtrack is the switch-ups. Listening on YouTube doesn’t give it justice. All the different cuts are set to when you get big plays; turnovers, touchdowns, GameBreakers, etc. To so effortlessly do this as turntablists is extremely charming; it’s like pivoting mid-conversation without a hitch. There is just so much to love here.

“YES Y’ALL” has occupied a nook of my brain for the better part of 20 years. “#9” is to me, the star of the show, a driving, pulsating force that says win or Die. The OW! and YEAH! scratching is so elite, climaxal pinpoints energizing the player with aplomb. And man, those guitar riffs. I wouldn’t confess to being a turntablism expert, but the X-ecutioners must’ve been at the height of the medium, flexing and peacocking like they were kings.

Of course this all hinges on if you’re into sports. If you’re not, shit, it’s hard to compel anyone to play an arcade sports game with bombastic flair and mechanics. But even so, give it a chance. This game has heart, it has swag, it has conviction. And the X-ecutioners give it a sophistication and cool that has almost never been matched across any game. Most sports games have straight licensed soundtracks, and the ones that don’t are usually boilerplate compositions from composers that could care less. These guys absolutely sent it—staying true to themselves while suiting the game to a tee.

It’s a contentious topic—I doubt I’ll convince anyone whose favorite game is Minecraft, Donkey Kong Country, Earthbound, or Halo to be swayed to my side of the fence on the argument. But for sheer coherence to the sport, for perfectly soundtracking every possible tide and sway that a chaotic football game can have, NFL Street deserves to be put up there with the greats, an utterly irresistible set of tracks that turn a good game into a great game. Now if only EA would give the new generation a taste.

Sam Bodrojan already did an excellent piece for the LA Review of Books on why this is some generational shit. Go read that, it is much more thorough and nuanced, and well worth your time. My piece on the movie, though, is about Kanye West.

This movie is about Kanye West.

Not literally, of course, but metaphorically, spiritually, positionally, it is about the greatest musician to ever live. About greatness itself. About what it means to be so singleminded in success that you block out every possible impulse to hold back, think of failure, or have the tiniest bit of self-doubt. Because why not. Why not take control of the one life you live, not on some corny Tony Robbins shit but on everything because you’re talented and sexy enough to make it? What do you have to lose except your sanity and dignity and everyone you’ve ever loved and your sense of self and basic needs and maybe even your own life?

I think about being online and being accused of ragebaiting or being a contrarian or having too many takes and shit, yeah maybe you’re right. Maybe the way we interact online flattens all nuance and forces us to be glib motherfuckers with no tact and makes ultimately worse with no room for discourse or discussion or critical thinking. And? We’re pigs in shit bro. I’m no better than you, and vice versa. Live a little! Marty has the right idea!

Every day motherfuckers love to complain and kvetch and act like niggas is OUTRAGEOUS for getting a correct take off or being assured of my own correctness. And look at the parallels—Kanye is a black man in a racist country, I’m a black man in a racist country and shit, Niggathee Chalomet whole chosen family in that movie black. Doesn’t make him black but he sure as shit gets constantly otherized by those who don’t respect where he’s from and what he acts like. How many better scenes exist than the paddling one that so perfectly describes how capitalism forces you to prostrate yourself for a check? It’s as if Kanye himself wrote it.

And furthermore, Kanye was an athlete (was being the operative word cause he sure ain’t working now). Music is sports, sports are theatre, you’re already in the shit, so why not be the best at it. The mask is the performance until the performance is the mask until there are no mirrors. In Kanye, and in Marty, simulacra exists as a way to survive, to perform kayfabe until the kayfabe is actualized. You make your game your life, no matter the cost, until niggas understand: THIS SHIT IS REAL. And it’s not a fucking game.

My hating isn’t a persona, it’s love. It’s loving greatness so fucking much that you get angry when mediocrity and sterility is rewarded. It is actively dissuading the prevailing context that makes people settle, makes art soulless, makes the game gone. I don’t suffer fools, I hate the pretense, if there’s no authenticity I’m going home. If you got me fucked up I will make it your problem. You can talk shit about Icarus but he did get up there, even for that one brief moment.

So go ahead, be reddit, talk like Sephiroth, be the lolcow. You’re too afraid to be genuine? With these ugly fascists running the show? Get real. Embrace your inner Kanye, your inner Marty, your inner Eli, your inner Icarus. Swing for the fucking fences, be brash, fuck, stay fly. Smugness and glibness are dying baby, we’re gonna rule the world.

I have this misconception that I play Super Smash Bros Melee better after 3 beers, no more, no less. Or maybe it’s not a misconception. Maybe my motor skills are attuned, free from nerves and apprehension. Maybe my mental framework improves, helping me tap into the game my opponent is playing with ease, like a shaman casting spells. Released from inhabitations, I can finally play this children’s party game with skill that would make pros blush, Zain jealous, Mango in jail. Oh nevermind I just lost to a Gold Pikachu.

The thing they don’t tell you about manic episodes is that they feel so good. You’re a genius, you’re the moment, an icon, a star. Of course, you crash. But isn’t that fleeting sensation worth it? For one brief span of time, you did it. You actualized yourself. Happy birthday, Merry Christmas. How could anything so endorphin raising be bad for you?

This kind of thinking did land me in the hospital once, but indulge me. How is feeling WRONG? I hark back to senior year of high school/freshman year of college, obsessed with making my mark, of being this autodidact effete savant, in the vein of Basquiat or even Cameron Crowe; precociously gifted, destined to change the culture. Is being young a kind of mania then? Even past the stages of great imagination and adolescent woes, young adulthood stages itself a grandeur that’s both exhilarating and defeatist. Oh, to be 18!

Mania also makes you fixate on yourself in a way that is kind of embarrassing. Getting in your own head, every sensation being amplified, it’s all very solipsistic. I tend to find obsession with your being and own neuroses deeply boring so it’s a kind of secondhand embarrassment to go through every emotion with self-proclaimed vigor, like oh brother this guy stinks! Please, re-orient me with my surroundings, slap me in the face, I’m nothing special.

Maybe that’s why I appreciate enemy turned friend Nadine Smith as a public-facing figure. To go through the worst period of your life and have it be broadcasted in front of thousands of nameless faces and somehow emerge from it a full, functional person is inspiring, to say nothing of the fact that being trans amplified that anguish as a oppressive signifier by which people could bludgeon her with. But now we chop it up cause we real.

Apologies for the glorified autofiction. You all get it from other substacks, I understand. I’m supposed to be constantly hating! But consider this a state of the blog maybe? Excavation of the twisted mind of Eli? Impulsive nonsense? I’m not really sure. Just some thoughts that can be put in more thorough writing than mere ephemeral tweets. Anyways, I love all you subscribers, even if you don’t give me money. We’re all on a ride of unreality together, let’s make the most of it.

A little bit gratuitous, but for those who want it, I complied a list of songs and full albums (for those that don’t work as a singular track) on Youtube for your listening pleasure. It’s under a paywall, but if you prefer convenience, I got you. Plus, paying for my blog will automatically give you the mandate of heaven.

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At the end of the year every publication arrogantly thinks their lists should open minds to what music has offered over the past 365 days, and I cannot throw stones because I am no different. I’d like to assume that you will find kinship in my picks for the best music this year or find something new, however. If you are subscribed to Constantly Hating, thank you and I hope you have a great holiday season and 2026.

50. Erika De Casier - Lifetime

I mean this in the most complimentary sense: Erika De Casier is like a pop T.J. Mcconnell. Unfussy, productive, and gives you a nice 13 points 7 assists or in this case, a collection of very good pop tunes.

49. The Weeknd - Hurry Up Tomorrow

It’s interesting that the Weeknd has lost any sort of critical cache. It could be his forays into other media have turned people off, or the fact that’s he’s truly dominated the 2010s in male pop, but I don’t think Hurry Up Tomorrow deserves to be forgotten. Nothing will ever surpass the hyper sleazebag Weeknd ever, but Abel is still a solid songwriter and has never made a truly bad album.

48. Agriculture - The Spiritual Sound

LEAH LEVINSON FUCKING MENTIONED!!!!!!

47. SlimeGetEm - GetEm

A rare free car album and one that glimpses at its aesthetic cohesive potential. SlimeGetEm gets into some really cool modes here.

46. PulciPerla - Tatekieto

Tropicanibalismo is a Colombian avant subgenre that I’d not heard of before this, and it is some coolass shit. Wild fun jazz cumbia for the unhinged among us.

45. Nuvolascura - How This All Ends

Very difficult to follow As We Suffer From Memory And Imagination, but they manage to do it. One of the best records about the apocalypse in Gaza this year, Israel will never suffer enough.

44. Che - REST IN BASS

Liked the OsamaSon albums well enough but for me this is the definitive newgen rage rap record that came out. Los Thuthanaka has the 100 car alarms at once genre cornered but Che was a solid runner-up.

43. weed420 - amor de encava

Like I’d hate anything with these tags. Smoking that real shit.

42. Stereolab - Instant Holograms on Metal Film

My goats not washed :) Forgive the oldheads the AI music videos they know not what they do.

41. niontay - Fada<3of$

Been dope to see how niontay has evolved after falling into the extended 10kglobal universe. I like how the MIKE/Earl crowd has consciously refused to be pigeonholed into the “conscious”, drumless niche, instead choosing to associate with dudes that be on some real nigga shit as well. Multitudes: contained.

40. caroline - caroline 2

I love that caroline decided to be on some Datpiff mixtape naming style with caroline 2. No fuss, no frills, just more of that good post-rock in the original “Lost Generation” vein that I fuck with.

39. Playboi Carti - MUSIC

Haven’t returned to it as much as when it came out, but is still an absolute ripper. Carti has become much more of a curator now, picking his spots and employing careful taste in others. Him and Kendrick going back and forth on “MOJO JOJO” is one of my favorite rap moments of the year.

38. Cóclea / Canut de Bon - No esperan por nadie

They coming like this in Chile? God damn. 2 Santiago hardcore bands pack metalcore, noise rock, sasscore and realass riffs into a hyperspeed split.

37. Jane Remover - Revengeseekerz

Jane’s albums under her name have mostly been fine, but I prefer the psychotic energy emanating from her dariacore’s and leroy NTS mixes. Here she just absolutely goes for it and it pays off, bringing all of the best elements of her side projects into an enthralling mess.

36. Panda Bear - Sinister Grift

Another total victory for uncs baby. This guy really can’t make a bad album huh?

35. Feardorian - Leaving Home

Has to be one of the most adventurous rappers working today. I am consistently impressed by how much I fuck with Feardorian’s projects despite not necessarily being in his sphere as much as some of my other No Bells cohorts. Leaving Home is a young prodigy just strengthening his resume.

34. zayALLCAPS - artPop*popArt

“MTV’s Pimp My Ride” gets all the love, but it’s the rest of artPop*popArt for me. zay is a young Tyler doing a young Pharrell doing something that’s uniquely all his own universe. It’s better than 99% of pop and R&B going right now, and in a just world, he’s a star.

33. aya - hexed!

Some Incredibly Boring Information About Eli: I was a massive Tiny Mix Tapes head in high school and college which amazingly somehow parlayed me into writing for them. I humblebrag like that to say that aya’s hexed! is a summation of the TMT industrial complex; the product of love toward Eartheater, SOPHIE, Chino Amobi, and Jam City, while somehow making it all her own and fresh. Not sure about the #1s from both the Quietus and the Wire though.

32. Zach Phillips - True Music

That shit I talked about Jens Lekman’s new album is essentially inverted here; Zach Phillips’ piano based easy listening is both soothing yet melodically inventive and dexterous, a product of Phillips’ limits on his process and tools. It’s an album that only a singular mind like his could make.

31. miffle - goodbye world!

Hushed electroaustic vignettes perfect for the coming wintertime.

30. The Ghoulies - Shafted By The Algorithm

Yeah eggpunk!!! I love eggpunk!!!! Another banging addition to one of the best microgenres of the past 10 years.

29. WNC WhopBezzy and 70th Street Carlos - Out the Blue

If not for the terrible AI cover, this may have been higher. However, it’s still an excellent Louisiana street record, cocky and swaggy in all the right ways.

28. Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band - New Threats from the Soul

My hatred for contemporary alt-country is well documented at this point, but Ryan Davis’ new record bypasses it cause of just how fucking good it is. Maybe it’s because Davis is a bit older but the craft and care here is top-rate, really shows how much the dude has worked on his gifts.

27. Skee Mask - E

5th in the line of his demo releases. Working on that god level of RDJ, Autechre, Theo Parrish and co where even stuff he doesn’t deem as worthy is still awesome. One of one at the moment.

26. Earl Sweatshirt - Live Laugh Love

Man am I glad to see Earl living his best life. I really love that guy. What a story of growth and self-actualization. Music’s great, of course.

25. good flying birds - talulah’s tape

Oh yeah baby, modern twee. Such a warm and fun record. Sidenote: the minor Twitter racism accusation where people got mad at “hard ass beat” cause it was the Amen Break with monkey noises thrown in was funny as hell. Yeah for sure these DIY white kids playing jangle pop are actually closet neo-nazis doing a dogwhistle, lmao.

24. DJ Elmoe - Battle Zone

Already feels like a footwork classic. Stripped down, vibey and hard as fucking shit.

23. Anna Hogberg Attack - Ensamseglaren

Anna Hogberg doing sludge metal jazz was absolutely not on my 2025 music bingo card. Another example of a singular figure in her respective genre, Hogberg consistently redefines what jazz can be in the modern era.

22. 23wa - AZ

You know how Returnal by OPN started with “Nil Admirari” and moreso drifted away from that to the synthscapes he was known for back then? This is a whole album of “Nil Admirari”’s and it fucking slaps.

21. Khadija Al Hanafi - !OK!

Tunisian hypnagogic ghettotech and footwork. Insane combination of words that somehow leads into a sentence that describes a real existing album that is excellent. 2025 is cool.

20. Vanessa Amara - cafe LIFE

In a year of overhyped Copenhagen releases, this was the one. Sweeping sound collage reminiscent of Klein and Carl Stone, hurried modern living beamed directly to your brain.

19. ZelooperZ - Dali Aint Dead

Just getting better and better man. Another in the category of “if music was just he’d be a star”. Except it’s even worse cause of all the exhausting handwringing about the death of mainstream rap. You niggas just old bruh. Also when I hear Zack Fox rap I always think about Alphonse Pierre saying how ass he is, but I always fw with his verses, so maybe I have shit taste.

18. Juana Molina - DOGA

Late contender from the top rope! Once again, she does it with combination swag and grace. The Argentinian Bjork, or should I say Bjork is Icelandic Juana Molina? In any case, VAMOOOOO ARGENTINA VAMOOOOO BOCAAAAA

17. Crossed - Realismo ausente

What’s that? You’re saying Zegama Beach put out another belter of a skramz record? You’re kidding…

16. key vs. locket - i felt like a sketch

There’s been a really nice stretch of outside-of-the-box midwest emo in the past few years from underrecognized sources, and this is just another entry. Saves the Day-style pop-punk, mathy riffs, emo pathos, lovely Portuguese singing and a tasteful usage of ska are some of the many reasons to tap into key vs. locket.

15. MIKE - Showbiz!

Still the best living. Still underrated. How’s that work?

14. Traxman - Da Mind Of Traxman Vol.3

One of footwork’s elder statesmen with another imperious collection of unfuckwithable tracks.

13. heavensouls - New York Fall, 1977

Tiding us over while waiting for new Standing on the Corner. This some real black artifact shit, dweller forever Hortense Spillers Miles on the block black body as a white right all cops are going to hell type shit. Make peace with America’s mortal sins or fucking perish.

12. Nourished by Time - The Passionate Ones

This one’s funny cause the first half is just alright and the second half is so good it might’ve been the best release of the year if you’d of isolated “9 2 5” onward. “BABY BABY” is a serious contender for song of the decade.

11. Jim Legxacy - Black British Music

Did I say someone needs to be a star? My god, seeing him live in New York was so thrilling, a true original in a sea of fakes and lames. I don’t even hate ppl like 2Hollis or Nettspend but I would force them to retire and become multi level marketers for Jim to get his true acclaim. The most charismatic and talented pop star of his generation.

10. Klein - Thirteen Sense

It is an Eli Schoop list, Klein will be in the top 10 if/when she releases music. Best avant artist working and it’s not particularly close.

9. life - demo seven

Maybe I’m just a skramz kid at the end of the day. Damian Anton Ojeda is a fucking one-man army, unfathomably talented. He’s on here again since it’s my list and his other release is so different from this.

8. d. silvestre - Oque as Mulheres Querem

My working theory about why this was too underappreciated compared to his last was that Mr. Billdifferen didn’t post about it much. It’s your fault Tyler. You did this. On the real, d. silvestre is a true maestro and I reiterate, should supplant Arca fraud ass as the most lauded Latin electronic artist on the scene.

7. Chuquimamani-Condori - Edits

Ended vaporwave. The logical endgame of the incorporeality that has typified hypnagogia, sound collage, and plunderphonics. Just in absolute awe of what they’re capable of. Los Thuthanaka may rightfully have the big plaudits and fanfare, but for my listening journey and framework as a critic, this is the one.

6. Los & Nutty - Los x Nutty, Vol. 2

Understated Detroit brothers have made the definitive record of the city. For oldheads that complain about the state of the genre, this is 20 tracks of pure quality—doubly impressive given its length. These guys deserve their flowers and then some.

5. Enjoy - The Sound of Deceit

Probably the surprise of the year for me, a The Garden brother with a solo indie record that’s just a constant earworm. Dude is on Smiths timing with the riffs, coupled with the trademark sleaze from his characteristic style and savvy production turns. Perfect for a despondent night walk.

4. Trhä - lact’eben

Damian Anton Ojeda’s other entry. Euphoric black metal that blows new Deafheaven out of the water. I’ll say it again, people really need to watch this guy as the one for heavy music.

3. Naked Flames - Wall I Was

Almost SEVEN FUCKING HOURS of incredible house and techno. How dog. Monumental achievement from the Brit; quality and quantity in spades. Can we get Guinness to give this guy something?

2. Emma Goldman - all you are is we

Jeez, just realized that a lot of this list is HEAVY shit this year, but I wasn’t really going through it like that. If I’d wager, the disgusting state of society has produced some legitimately sublime artistic responses, and Emma Goldman’s all you are is we is one of them. Above all else, heavy music induces clarity, and there’s nothing clearer than the death drive of capitalism and fascism accelerating our species to an early grave.

1. Cruelster - Make Them Wonder Why

I know these guys IRL. I say this to make it clear, this is absolutely not a nepo pick for my favorite album of the year. I would hope you guys think of me as someone more honest than that. I had no clue these guys, who I partied with down with the street and went to college with and were notorious Cleveland DIY hooligans, could make something this fucking good.

Make Them Wonder Why is classic punk updated, refreshed, given a new sheen, and then slimed and fucking pissed on anyway. It is the product of endless war, Cleveland dive bars, making cool shit with your friends, and being a general menace to the public. Crack a beer, get rowdy, and punch a fucking cop; Cruelster is a Smiling Friends punk band come to life, zigging instead of zagging, always having fun whether you like it or not.

It’s over! Thank you for clicking and hopefully not glazing over my yapping. I hope you have a good holiday and 2026, and I would love comments asking me about what you thought about X or Y album. If you have money please donate to my Ko-fi. Have a good one :)

Another year, another dilemma where I liked way too much music. How I am supposed to be a hater if there’s so much peak coming out? Thank you, then, to these albums for reminding me of my ethos, my je ne sais quoi. Here are the worst albums of 2025. But first, some honorable mentions:

Alex G - Headlights

Nah my goat washed 😭 Just like Beach Music, which is still his worst album to date, Alex takes all his worst impulses and crams them in here, going away from his greatest strengths in melodic guitar music. “Afterlife” is easily one of the worst songs of the year, never thought I’d see it.

Malibu - Vanities

When I was a kid, Target sold these weird “world music” album packs that you could listen to which were mostly ambient music for like yoga or tai chi or whatever. It was in essence, nothing music, and that is what this album is.

Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist - Alfredo 2

Alfredo 1 is so good, up there with the best Gibbs project, and this one just comes across as bland and unremarkable, very AI Freddie Gibbs. I hope he doesn’t start coasting after finally being acknowledged a great rapper.

Taylor Swift - The Life Of A Showgirl

De facto #1, but I have embargoed any future Taylor releases from being expounded upon in further detail. She finally got her reckoning for putting out such dogshit thankfully.

EDIT: Turnstile - Never Enough

Wow this was so bad I forgot to include it. Ah well, it would’ve been around #3-4. You can read my review of this warmed-over garbage here.

10. Djrum - Under Tangled Silence

So a lot of critics hate on Jacob Collier for being technically brilliant and soulless, where’s the energy for this?

9: Jens Lekman - Songs for Other People’s Weddings

Man Jens Lekman is so good I didn’t want to do him like this. IDK how he got it in his head that this prescription commercial music for a book about weddings was the move, but this is a painful listen.

8. Yasmine Handan - I Remember I Forget

Same kind of weird oriental fixation with this record as with last year’s Dunya by Mustafa, where the relative unfamiliarity Westerners have with Arabic imbue it with an unearned depth. Grief, loss, and tragedy are all incredibly powerful thematic sentiments, but when they’re tempered by dismal coffee shop trip-hop any measure of gravity is completely removed.

7. Clipse - Let God Sort Em Out

If people were fuming at Alphonse Pierre for a 6.5 they’re gonna love this one. First new Clipse in almost 20 years. VA’s finest, absolute legends, shittalkers extraordinaire, and they release this vanilla shit? Where’s the swag of Lord Willin’ and Hell Hath No Fury? It’s all so granite countertop soulless. Let’s collectively blame Pharrell for this for stiffing Chad Hugo.

6. bar italia - Some Like It Hot

A band under the Dean Blunt umbrella is catnip to me, and I quite liked tracey denim. To go from that to landfill rock revival is a nauseating choice, and one I suspect was to get out of the crypto-Blunt posture the band had been pegged under. All around, a record I was not expecting to sound like this and to be as bad as it is.

5. Audrey Hobert - Who’s the Clown?

OK so you know how gauche Taylor Swift is right? Yeah, but what if we did the same thing as her but we’re actually more in the know about how quirky and messy we are so it’s like slightly more relatable then when Taylor does it since she’s a billionaire? The music is still the same dogshit? Perfect, ship it.

4. Smerz - big city life

This is an article I should actually get around to writing, but one of the things that is so insufferable about “alt-pop/art pop” is craft can be disregarded wholly in favor of aesthetic. In my pan of one 2023’s worst albums Desire I Want To Turn Into You by Caroline Polachek I described it as “technically brilliant and thoroughly sexless.” big city life has the inverse problem where it is technically unremarkable and thoroughly affectated, begging you to be seduced by its cool girl aesthetic. Therefore, if you find this Inga Copeland meets indie sleaze pastiche exhausting and not charming, there is simply nothing here.

3. Hayley Williams - Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party

I feel as though it is my duty to eradicate the Hayley Williams nostalgia project dead in its tracks. The 80s pop retread was bad enough but hearing her do Swiftian turn is going to give me hemorrhoids. If that woman just became a banker like her mother the positive rhizomatic effects of her influence disappearing would be utopian in nature. We’d probably have nuclear fusion by now.

2. Wednesday - Bleeds

This was actually going to be lower on the list until I relistened out of posterity and I’m truly stunned at how bad this album is. Every topline and melody dissipates and fizzles in a miasma—in a way where I’ve gone front to back 3 times on bleeds and could not tell you a single memorable moment. Karly Hartzmann’s warble is unfathomably grating; vocal complaints in rock come off as trite, yes, but that particular affect hits like a bad talent show voice and it happens so often. I think what sealed this spot for me is when she picked Blonder Tongue Audio Baton as her Pitchfork perfect 10, even showing her tattoo. Please don’t shout Swirlies out when your music is this ass I swear to god.

1. DJ Koze - Music Can Hear Us

I went longer on this earlier in the year, but here’s the short version: in a year where everyone wore out the phrase “spiritually Israeli,” this was the most spiritually Israeli thing to come out all year.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back next month with my best of the year, of which there was plenty. If you like my work and have means to support me, my ko-fi is below.

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Welcome to Halftime! It is currently the middle of October and I am dreading it getting colder. That shit sucks. But here is good music that I hope you will like. Have a good one folks :)

Tera Melos - S/T (2005)

Was commenting the other day on how underappreciated math rock is in the current musical landscape, and this record is a prime example. A really joyous blend of noise, comfy emo riffs, and chaotic jamming that makes the genre fun as hell. Fun fact: guitarist Nick Reinhart is the featured guitarist on Death Grips’ “ON GP”.

RIYL: Don Caballero, Cap’n Jazz, toe, Girlfriends

Redbait - The Big Red One (1995)

They just ape Nirvana. It’s pretty good!

RIYL: what do u think

good flying birds - Talulah’s Tape (2025)

Twee is back lads!!! Swear that Indiana is one of the best incubators for guitar bands in the past few years, having invented eggpunk, and now they’re giving us jangle-pop excellence with good flying birds. Making up for the KKK by any means necessary!

RIYL: The La’s, the Go-Betweens, Go Sailor, Tiger Trap

Samuel L Session - A Samuel L Session in Monoid (2000)

One of the pinnacles of hardgroove techno. Absolutely killer mix from start to finish, real club shit, no filler.

RIYL: Jeff Mills, Blake Baxter, Ken Ishii, John Morgan

Primus - Primate Demo (1984)

Why does Primus’ first EP sound like fucking New York no-wave? What the fuck am I listening to man? In any case, a really cool memento and another dimension to a band people pigeonhole as a sort of one-trick pony. Also shows how much Larry Alexander adds with his drumming.

RIYL: Talking Heads, Oingo Boingo, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Urinals

Gilgamesh - Gilgamesh (1975)

For the sickos that enjoy both jazz fusion and the Canterbury scene. This is like 8 of my Twitter mutuals that probably already know this record and have opinions about it (love you guys).

RIYL: Jaco Pastorius, Robert Wyatt, Caravan, Mahavishnu Orchestra

Nasenbluten - 100% No Soul Guaranteed (1995)

Pure uncut teeth-grinding bone-crunching gabber. Play when spiritually or literally in the gutter.

RIYL: Tha Shiznit, Atari Teenage Riot, ARSEDESTROYER, FFF

JAGATARA - The Naked King (1987)

Feel the funk baby!!! The second Talking Heads-esque recommendation in this piece, but in a wildly different way. Also just look at that album cover, that’s what I’m fucking talking about.

RIYL: William Onyeabor, Fela Kuti, Talking Heads, Graceland-era Paul Simon

The Tuss - Rushup Edge (2007)

Bro Aphex Twin totally ripped off this style for Syro smh…

RIYL: still mourning WATMM.com going offline

thanks god - PaY 2 W!N (2022)

Being subsumed into the global consciousness. Almost inverse dariacore where instead of drawing you in through memes and jokes, it actively clouds your mind and disassociates you. Great stuff.

RIYL: Teams, Hype Williams, Infinite Body, Eartheater

Thanks for reading fam :) If you have any spare cash I am currently hella in the hole on the checking account so I would much appreciate it! Love you all.

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Pitter-patter.

I’m getting really worked up about onomatopoeias. How they rarely sound like their intended phonetics. How other languages have their own that read as incomprehensible to my primitive English-speaking ears. How arbitrary it all is. I am doing this to ignore the imagined scenario where my eyeballs are getting stabbed out.

Culebra Peak sits at the northwestern ridge of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of the Rockies. It’s the highest privately owned peak on Earth. Former Enron executive Lou Pai once owned the property, now owned by William Harrison, a man whose real estate and energy dealings rival his infamous compatriot. I often think about Pai, a figure who unlike Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay, got away with insider trading by selling all his Enron stock early. He was both a shrewd if quiet businessman and a legendary hound, with reports from Houston strip club proprietors that he spent millions on dancers. He later got married to one.

When I die I request that my ashes are spread at Culebra, even if my familial descendants must pay the Cielo Vista Ranch $150 each to do so. I have to pay my respects to Lou Pai. The scammer who got away. Not maligned like Madoff, or reviled like Epstein, or forever tarnished like the Sacklers. Pure, clean base impulse for the love of the game. Because every good deed I do is predicated on its reciprocation. And when I die, I will cash out all my chips and take what is owed.

Every sensation you’ve ever felt is the first time you’ve felt it before. Your brain betrays you, it is not your friend. Ground yourself unto the material world lest you become a prisoner of rapaciousness, desire and longing odiously controlling you. Solipsism does you nothing. You keep worrying about identity. Farce. Sham. Get real. There’s a pit there and there’s keep going to be a pit, so mind your fucking business. And each and every time I keep sweating and shaking and feel every nerve in my body lose its sensation I am willing myself to be as gregarious and self-effacing as possible because that is the only way I ever knew I was alive. But anyway ha ha enough about me how was Paris?

There is a moment in Tristan Funkhouser’s “Deep Fried” part for Baker that I cannot get out of my head. This gnarly-looking bank that he hits with no hesitation. It’s not novel for him—indeed, it’s his brand, an unwavering commitment to bombing, dropping, and twisting his way into the most unhinged spots possible. Rather, his effortlessness is stark. He hits that shit in one swift, glorious measure, a sort of ineffable poetry. The recklessness in which he puts his body on the line defies belief; one could say there’s a heroism in it. Funkhouser stands as aspirational because it is precisely by which I am so scared of doing anything so dangerous to myself that I have become a victim of my own making. In opposition to the physical, this too, is self-harm.

I see a girl running down a hill, face filled with tears and runny mascara, and I keep wondering whether it’s because of her drug-induced psychosis, but I keep it pushing. I have a mind to tell her that it’s fine, you know you still look good there’s a dignity in being so discomposed, it’s unbecoming to be put together all the time. When the devil leaves my body, I wisen up and sit on a bench to take it all in. You’re going to miss it when you’re gone, you know.

The new skate. game has been a fun romp insofar as you accept what it is; a bonafide nostalgia capture that’s a vehicle for microtransactions and insidious audience retention through online-only gameplay and lack of a coherent story mode. Gone are the real-life skaters who gave a sense of lived-in worldbuilding, a fully-fledged campaign and any semblance of authenticity toward the culture—we’ve now received Fortnite-esque character models to thinly customize, an early access model using players as testers to drip feed them content, and the removal of modes long thought to be standard, an unfortunate feature of the new gaming landscape that treats its consumers as pitiful lemmings lapping up anything they put out with no resistance.

But I’m not here to do a full review of all the failings of skate. That’s been done by the countless outraged voices under the Steam review page, the Youtube talking heads, the exasperation at how Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 was similarly botched. No, my biggest problem with this game is that the soundtrack is abysmal horseshit.

Skating games have long had their soundtracks held as big reasons why they’re so beloved. THPS is the king of this phenomenon—see Goldfinger’s Superman, Primus’ Jerry Was A Racecar Driver, Anthrax and Public Enemy’s Bring the Noise all being paragons of 90s gaming nostalgia and gateways into subgenres of rock and rap. As the tides of gaming shifted away from the skate game wave, that specific brand of macho nu-metal, backpacker hip-hop, and hardcore punk that saturated those games’ soundtracks still were prevalent in the skate. franchise, with many of the same bands and their contemporaries. It’s not entirely heretical to go away from this strand of soundtrack, however, the 2025 entry in the series has so completely and thoroughly botched what could’ve been a cool stylistic reinvention by adding some of the worst music I’ve ever heard.

Back when I reviewed the new Turnstile, I panned them by saying it’s music for Urban Outfitters, and what do you know, they make an appearance here! 1 of only 2 hardcore songs, the other conspicuously being their Taco Bell commercial comrades, Scowl. Focus-tested punk is the name of the game, with tepid tracks like ALEXSUCKS’ Whatever I Want and Upchuck’s Facecard providing an in-game atmosphere that is less skate video and more PR agency promotional reel. There is embarrassingly little bite to many of these “punk” songs, that they might as well be AI-generated. I’m not sure whether that’s better or worse.

And the lack of bite continues with the amount of indie darlings on display. I love Panda Bear and like mk.gee and Horsegirl, but what the hell are they doing in a skating game? Their artistic merits are ill-suited to slamming from giant heights and doing Looney Tunes shit, sticking out like a sore thumb. The same goes for Car Seat Headrest, Soccer Mommy, Magdalena Bay, and King Krule. These are bizarre choices, making it seem like the music supervisor thumbed through Pitchfork and Stereogum and called it a day. But even they have more musical diversity than this.

It just gets worse and worse when you look at the selections of rap. Quinn XCII’s Hold My Hand, Worry Less, REDD’s JEANS SO BAGGY, and BWise’s THREE65 are easily some of the most putrid songs I’ve ever had the displeasure to encounter, artists that sound like they were created in a lab at Zumiez. It gets to the point where extremely washed Denzel Curry and Ski Mask the Slump God is a breath of fresh air. One of the better rap tracks is Joey Valance & Brae’s No Hands, which is saying something considering it’s just a warmed-over Beastie Boys retread, but it doesn’t at least actively insult anyone who likes the genre. To think, this series once featured Rick Ross, Young Jeezy, dead prez and Gang Starr.

The most egregious failing of this soundtrack, though, has to be the amount of stock music used. Prevalent in the open world are collectible songs you can add that aren’t immediately available in your playlists, which would be a cool feature, except most of it is literally production music that EA paid for to use. It’s honestly a stunning cost-cutting measure, one that Liz Pelly would laugh at for being too on the nose for these companies. Corporate executives not only try to sell you unfinished games, but faceless algorithmic slop, and expect you to eat it up.

I thought the Tony Hawk remake soundtracks were bad, but skate.’s audacity and shamelessness truly takes the cake. Not only content with having the music be overwhelmingly bland, but their conceit that extra anonymous tracks adds consumer value is wildly insulting. I’m sure that’s how they justified the game being free to play—people will eat it up regardless. Just, for your sake, mute the radio and put on some Dead Kennedys.

BONUS:
5 songs that can stay:

• ESG - My Love for You

• Giorgio Moroder - Chase

• HiTech ft. Juan Michael OG - GASOLINE

• Sunny Day Real Estate - In Circles

• The Meters - Cissy Strut

And 20 songs that should be added:

• Cruelster - Nuclear Word

• che - ON FLEEK

• Thirteendegrees° - Chinchilla

• White Lung - Snake Jaw

• Playboi Carti - EVILJ0RDAN (they fumbled so bad not asking him)

• ZelooperZ - Battery

• Jane Remover - JRJRJR

• Enjoy - Drink Myself To Sleep

• Emma Goldman - at rock bottom i was a piss girl

• Gulch - Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress

• JPEGMafia - SIN MIEDO

• Zulu - Where I’m From

• Glokk40Spaz - Thug’s In My House

• Melt-Banana - CASE D

• At The Gates - Blinded By Fear

• Mastodon - Island (RIP Brett Hinds)

• 454 & Pig The Gemini - Love Me Hate Me

• Osamason - popstar

• Deafheaven - Honeycomb

• Lightning Bolt - Assassins

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Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this piece, follow me on Twitter or drop me some funds at my Ko-fi. Love y’all.

VAMO BRASIL CAMPEAO DO MUNDO!!! Is what I would say if I wasn’t very skeptical of Brazil’s 2026 World Cup chances. Nevertheless, they have some of the best music on Earth and I have been listening to a lot of it. That’s the nice thing about non-English language music, there’s always more stuff that’s inaccessible without deeper and deeper digging, something I’m always wont to do. Here’s some tunes, and sorry about that Vini Ballon D’or.

Paulinho Nogueira - Isto É Sambalanço (1969)

A lot of these will be either bossa or samba, and I’d apologize for the lack of variety if I couldn’t listen to it all day. MPB might be pound for pound the best genre of music ever created (might be unfair since it can encompass so much.

Neco - Samba E Violão Vol. 2 (1968)

Osvaldinho Do Cavaco - Eterna Melodia (2013)

I couldn’t find anything about this guy in English but Osvaldinho is an incredible name. He sounds like he should’ve played for Santos or Atletico Mineiro.

Dalmo Castello - Com Que Prazer(1978)

A bunch of these were uploaded to the channel of a guy named Helio Palmesan, who by the looks of things is a sea captain from Sao Paulo and runs his own radio show. Thank you Helio, you have excellent taste.

Toco Preto - Chora Cavaquinho Vol. 4 (1987)

If there’s one genre that encapsulates Brazil’s multiracial coalition, it’s choro. It’s a combination of jazz, polka, waltz and carioca genres like lundu and batuque. Almost assuredly one of the first true “world” genres if you will.

Novos Baianos - Novos Baianos F.C. (1973)

Not as obscure but I had to include it because it just rips too crazy. Also fun fact, the album came about because during the military dictatorship, the band lived on a farm outside Rio de Janiero and often played football, eventually coining themselves a club rather than a band.

Sepultura - Schizophrenia (1987)

Might be better than Chaos A.D., Arise or Roots, which is saying something for how hard those records are. Shoutout Sepultura for always having crispy basslines too, Metallica could never.

MC Carol Bandida (2010-2013)

Age-restricted by Youtube that’s how you know you’re dealing with the good shit. Precursor to the insane funk carioca that’s gone viral over the past few years. We say they’re in 2050 in Brazil, but given this compilation, we might have undershot give or take 50 years.

Luiz Bonfa - Jacaranda (1973)

For my money, the best Brazilian album ever made. Absolute virtuosity from the master Bonfa himself, expert compositions by the legend Eumir Deodato, an all-star cast of players, this shit is the real fucking deal.

d. silvestre - Oque as Mulheres Querem (2025)

The chosen one. Can we retroactively give all of Arca’s accumulated avant-garde cred and cultural capital to d. silvestre?

Thanks for reading Halftime patrocinado por Brasil. Obrigado!

Welcome to Halftime, June 2025 edition! Bro the Sun can’t be deadass with this heat. I hope you’re all staying cool and hydrated. Let these picks accompany your crusade against this blistering heat.

Sandy B - Amajovi Jovi (1994)

Post-apartheid South African club/house that was inspired by Snoop Dogg and G-funk. The kwaito synthlines are so juicy it makes you want one of those chilled 40s from “Gin and Juice”.

RIYL: Mr. Fingers, Dee-Lite, DJ Quik, Penny Penny

A Brief History of Variation and Development in Ethiopian Music (1961-1980)

Made for Norwegian Radio Nova, this is a miraculous collection of mid-century Ethiopian music in its various forms. Gospel tunes, house bands, celebratory jaunts, orchestras, it’s life-affirming music, the kind of stuff that makes you want to travel back in time to 70s Addis Ababa.

RIYL: Alemayehu Eshete, Eritrean Orthodox, gamelan, Ethio-jazz

Ekaterina Yakovleva - Pozovi Menya v Noch (1991)

Great cheesy Soviet pop. Not going to pretend like I know any Cyrillic, but it’s dope to hear how the language translates the bombastic American singing style. Very sharp intonations, with that trademark Russian scratchiness in her voice. It’s some fun stuff.

RIYL: Cyndi Lauper, Pet Shop Boys, Paula Abdul, Laura Branigan

3dl – From Still To The Birth (1987)

Pardon me for being “Thing, Japan” again, but what else can you say about avant 80s Japan other than Holy Shit. Eiji Yoshizawa does wonders with an NEC sound chip, flitting between art-pop, wacked-out Muzak, and weird remedial hip-hop…? It’s a true hidden gem.

RIYL: Yapoos, Ramellezee, Haroumi Hosono, Russ Freeman

BURQA BOYZ - أسلحة ضخ جاف حدب (ARMS PUMPING / DRY HUMPING) (2017)

Look past the annoying irony name and get into this bumping Baltimore club/ghettotech hybrid. Regardless if this is actually Libyan-based or native internet brainrot, it’s a hella good time.

RIYL: DJ Assault, DJ Technics, Bitch Ass Darius, Limp Pumpo

CECIL - 夏時計 (Summer Clock) (2002)

Flowery summer Shibuya-kei meant for daydreaming about crushes or laying about in the sun.

RIYL: Kahimi Karie, Lamp, Perfume, Citrus

River Master – The Angler's Dream (2023)

An original batch of tunes made from fishing games themselves, it’s both curationally astute and slides neatly into the type of vaporwave evoking hyper-specific niches like SimCity or Microsoft Flight Simulator.

RIYL: Prismcorp Virtual Enterprises, Tetris CD-i, Aquazone, the creek

Datavis - Ethics (2012)

One of the most underrated projects from the internet’s most underrated producer, Robin Burnett, Ethics is deep, wistful drone that pokes and probes amidst crackling soundscapes. Both easy to zone out to and to lock in with.

RIYL: Infinite Body, Tim Hecker, Andy Stott, Laurel Halo

Pablo Gad - Hard Times (1980)

Classic dub reggae from an underrated Roots legend. I know I got weed smokers who follow me, spark up to this hoe.

RIYL: Bunny & the Wailers, Peter Tosh, Freddie MacGregor, Fred Locks

Thanks for reading! If you ever want to throw me some funds, Ko-fi is below. Love you all.

Ko-fi

Sleep Token was a good punchline for a few days. You remember that, right? Haha, the band that’s bringing metal back sounds like Ed Sheeran and Hozier, how embarrassing. Just a new iteration of Ghost, guys dressing up and putting on airs to appeal to Tumblr fandomites with intricate lore and excavating lyrics for meaning. How could any serious music listener take them seriously, am I right?

Now Turnstile, oh yeah baby they’re bringing rock back. They’re transcending hardcore. No more bro-y beatdown Madball/Terror shit anymore. They’re on a big label! Their accompanying film premiered at Tribeca! The critic-approved hardcore has arrived, serious and buttoned-up, stretching its wings into different genres, a little ska there, a little yacht rock here, it’s all very sophisticated and mature. You definitely need to take them seriously.

I do commend Turnstile for essentially turning in the exact same record as GLOW ON to Roadrunner and calling it a day. What was already a pretty bad buttrock album dressed up in shoegaze and hardcore tones has undergone further plastic surgery to morph into other genres and little experimentations. Like really? Faye Webster, A.G. Cook and Hayley Williams features? Are you guys ran by a focus group? NEVER ENOUGH is so tailor-made for Urban Outfitters shelves and brand collaborations, you could imagine Living Mas™ with Turnstile as you chow down on Quesaritos and Cheesy Gordita Crunches with your inoffensive-looking racially diverse millennial cohort.

What really amazes me is how sonically flaccid all these riffs are. The pristine, sanded-off tones might as well be Kidz Bop cover material, there’s zero punch or depth to any of it. It’s Jack Antonoff-esque engineering, friction becoming null and turning the guitars into musical pool noodles. I don’t understand how you come up in one of the most prestigious hardcore towns in America and lose the cutting edge that bands like Trapped Under Ice, End It, and Jivebomb are known for. Special blame goes to Will Yip, one of the most egregious producers in all of popular music. His Wikipedia discography looks like a graveyard of bad emo, post-hardcore and mallcore.

It pisses me off even more to consider Turnstile has become the lodestone when hardcore is in a golden age at the moment. Doubt! SPEED! Gel! Soul Glo! Zulu! There are so many bands ripping shit right now that this middling crossover dreck becoming the biggest breakthrough is lame as fuck. I’m not even a hardcore purist or some gatekeeper either; I don’t profess to be an authority on the genre, but I can tell when shit’s the real deal, if it passes the authenticity test. The swag is just nonexistent.

Turnstile reminds me of the buzzy punk bands that I really disliked at the beginning of 2010s: Turnover, Balance & Composure, Citizen, Basement, etc. Glossy indie/shoegaze-adjacent bands who lacked riffs or any type of compelling hooks to bolster their punk bona fides. It’s what Coldplay is to Radiohead, what Mumford & Sons are to Grizzly Bear, Greta Von Fleet to Led Zeppelin, you get the picture. But hey, I’m sure the kids that can afford to go see them at Coachella will have a great time.