Twenty-one-year-old Haley Graves, who self-defines as a Black Queer Pop Punk Artist, has found herself—but it’s been a tumultuous journey.
Adopted from birth, Graves, who is mixed race, grew up as one of the only non-white kids in a small, sheltered town in Maine—an upbringing that made it hard to claim and understand her identity fully.
After moving to Seattle to study music at Cornish College of The Arts in August 2019, Graves began working avidly as a session musician, and in 2021, dropped her debut EP, She Thinks My Pop Punk Is Cringey. On the heels of these big moves, the artist has become more secure in herself and her identity as an artist, and she’s excited to share that confidence on her sophomore EP Over, which drops today.
Growing up in South Bristol, Maine, which is 97% white, Graves says she didn’t really realize that she was Black until she was about 13. “Everybody would touch my hair without my consent. It was a thing. It’s still a thing when I go home and like, when I push people off me, they’re like, ‘Um, why can’t I just touch your hair? What’s your problem?'” says Graves. “What if I just came up to you and started petting you?”
At that point, the gears started turning, and Graves became more aware of what made her different—her Blackness, as well as her bisexuality. Around this same time, Graves was also really into Justin Bieber. She credits the pop star with getting her into guitar.
“I was just in love with him! It’s so embarrassing to admit because I’m so pop-punk now. It’s embarrassing to be like, this teeny-bopper pop star got me into guitar,” says Graves. “He played a little bit. The occasional pop star amount, the occasional G-A-C-E-B chords, the cowboy chords. But you know, he was cute, so everyone was like oh my god, he’s so hot. You know what I’m saying?”
She laughs at how far her childhood adoration of Bieber and Disney Channel stars like Selena Gomez took her—to identifying with the Latina and Black members of the pop girl group 5th Harmony and finding the yin to her bad girl yang in a 5 Seconds of Summer cover of the Green Day hit, “American Idiot.”
“That’s when it all shifted, when I found Green Day,” said Graves. “At 13, I felt kind of misunderstood [and] I wanted to project this bad girl image.”
Though Graves is much more gritty punk these days, she still brings the innocence and exuberance of those early pop influences to her music, particularly on her debut. Songs are short and consonant, as all ear-worm pop should be. This is particularly charming (or cringey) depending on your relationship with Y2K-era Top 40 rock bands like Green Day, Good Charlotte, and Avril Lavigne—but Graves knows and owns that.
“I wrote ‘She Thinks All Pop-Punk is Cringey’ right before I turned 20 about my Republican [ex-]girlfriend. She made fun of my taste in music quite a bit,” says Graves. “I had a conversation with a few friends and I was like, yeah, my girlfriend thinks pop-punk is cringey, and I immediately looked at them and was like, hey guys, I got to go, I’ll be right back, and I just started writing. I remember looking at the closet like flannel, she doesn’t like my flannel, she doesn’t like my Neck Deep tee, and I was like, okay that’s going in the song. I was so excited about it. I remember playing it for like everybody at Cornish, like, guys, I just wrote a song, I’m so proud of it.”
She’s also proud to lead with the fact that she is a Black, queer artist in a typically white-dominated genre, recognizing the opportunity in her unique perspective. “It’s not really heard of in the pop-punk scene. Pop-punk is very white. Male driven. So being Black and queer is two different things people don’t know much of,” she points out.
Palpable confidence leads to experimentation on her new release, Over, which features stretches of spoken word and more vulnerable autobiographical confessions and was co-written and produced by Grammy-nominated producer-composer Phill Peterson.
If Graves’ debut was about chasing the girls, Over, she says, is more about being chased—which nicely encapsulates where she is in her personal development and career.
“Last year, I kind of made a very big entrance in the Seattle music scene [with my debut EP]. I woke up one day and everybody in Seattle knew who I was and that was intense,” says Graves. “It’s empowering… I think I’ve started to figure myself out as an artist.”
Joan of Arc? Joan As Police Woman? Joan Jett? Any of these Joans, and all of them, have the unrepentant, independent spirit that sustains the indie-punk vibe of Teenage Joans. Adelaide duo Tahlia Borg, 18, and Cahli Blakers, 20, have been making ‘90s-style garage punk-pop under the moniker since 2018. Their sound recalls the pioneering musical style of The Pixies, with enough sass and bravura to conjure Kathleen Hanna and Bikini Kill. When this is suggested to them, they’re thrilled but honest.
“We’re influenced by Bikini Kill and The Pixies but they’re not core influences,” says Blakers. “One of our biggest shared influences is 5 Seconds of Summer [Australian pop band now named 5SOS]. We used to be a bit embarrassed, but now we own it. We grew up listening to them, and bringing guitars back to pop music is something we enjoy doing. Another one we share is [Melbourne band] Camp Cope – [they’re] girl bosses, we agree with everything they stand for, [and] we really look up to them. For me, I really love Yungblud’s individuality and style, The 1975, and Catfish and the Bottlemen.”
Since winning Triple J’s “Unearthed High” competition (a nation-wide hunt for the best high school act, which in previous years has championed Gretta Ray and Japanese Wallpaper) in 2020 with their track “Three Leaf Clover,” they’ve released singles “Ice Cream,” “Something About Being Sixteen,” and their latest, “Wine.” They’ve also performed at festivals (Yours and Owls, Summer Sounds and Mountain Goat Valley Crawl), as well as co-headlining shows with fellow Adelaide duo TOWNS and supporting The Chats.
Their debut 5-track EP Taste Of Me, released May 28, bristles with oodles of unbridled teen energy; it’s a riot. Along with their previously released singles, killer songs like “Therapist” and “Apple Pie” round out the tracklist, all sufficiently drizzled with fuzzy, grizzled guitar and sardonic humour. Like a sailor-mouthed Dr. Seuss, the duo are hilarious on top of being impressive musicians.
“Apple Pie” opens with the line “Give it up, you’ve got a bucket list that makes you scream fuck;” to paraphrase the lyrics, they can be sweet, but they’re not just dessert – and anyway, they “don’t wanna be the apple of your eye.” Blakers admits they don’t play that song much live. “It’s our weirdest song. It’s about someone wanting to be in a relationship with you, or be around you, romanticising the idea of you because they don’t see the less fun, less energetic side of you,” she explains. “It’s about navigating human connection when two people aren’t actually the right people for each other.”
Navigating human connection, especially in the midst of a global pandemic, are topics close to the bone for both Blakers and Borg. While Blakers finished school in 2018 and chose to work in a café while pursuing music (“the band took off a little bit”), Borg’s initial plans to focus on music and touring took a pummeling at the onset of the pandemic, so she opted to begin university studies last year.
“I said to myself that I was going to take a year off, just to see what happens with the band, but then when COVID began, I started Behavioural Science at university and I work in a music store,” she says. “It’s a lot of work, but I pace myself and I can do the course over a few years. When we’re on tour, I bring my laptop with me and do work on the plane. I’m balancing everything; it’s working so far.”
Taste Of Me was recorded with audio engineer Jarred Nettle at House Of Sap recording studio in South Australia over two weeks. “We love Jared!” they both enthuse at once.
“We call him J-Nett,” says Blakers. “He’s the best. He took every idea we had on board – nothing was too stupid, too out of the box. At least if something didn’t work, we tried. He took our stories and took good care of them.”
Perhaps he recognised, as their many new fans do, that the duo were born to make music. Blakers’ initial foray into violin from the age of 5 lasted until 10, when her passion for rock music and her pleas with her father for a guitar were answered.
Borg’s story is similar. “I actually started ballet when I was 6 and thought it was so boring, so I quit ballet and started drums when I was 7,” she recalls. “I used to go and watch my cousin play with his band; he’s a drummer too. I wanted to be like my cousin, who’s really cool, and while I did give it up for a few years like kids tend to do, I picked it up again and I love it. It’s a fun instrument.”
Her major influence embraces – as does Borg – controlled chaos when it comes to drumming with a band. “My biggest influence, drum wise, is emo band Mom Jeans because they do stuff that’s out of the box. They use wacky time signatures, they don’t always follow the guitar riffs. They do, but they kind of don’t.”
For Australians who want to see Teenage Joans bring raw guitar pop punk to the stage, their national headline tour is intended to begin at the start of June. With Melbourne under a lockdown at the time of interview, there is speculation about whether all states will be open for performances. “If COVID stays chill, then the tour will be going ahead which is very exciting,” Blakers says.
She’s just turned 20, but still feels like she’s not “100% an adult just yet,” and hasn’t abandoned the spirit behind the tracks she and Borg wrote as teenagers. “I feel like there’s a lot of youth in just being a human,” she says. “There’s a lot of things that excite us as if we were children, so I feel I can still relate to [the songs].”
Blake English channels monsters of his past directly into his visuals. It also helps that he has a deep love for horror films. As far as the new clip for “Sad Girls Dance Party” goes, he incorporates his tenuous, very complicated relationship with his father as the emotional base while exploring his personal transformation through gnarly body-horror and other frightening imagery. “I’m just a freak in this fucked up scene,” he wails.
Sticky musical webs spew from his fingertips, but it is his brutal honesty that’s most magnetic. “You know, my dad was basically a kid when he had me at 24. He also experienced a lot of trauma in his childhood that he hadn’t dealt with, which no doubt is why it was projected on me,” English shares with Audiofemme. “Mental health wasn’t exactly a part of the conversation in his household growing up, so he was left to figure it out on his own. But after having me, as him and I struggled to find common ground, he began to grow just as I was growing.”
“Sad Girls” opens on English, soaking in a clawfoot bathtub filled with ice cubes. A single overhead bulb emits a cool blue light that falls down around him to give the scene a certain ominous feel. Things immediately escalate as a four-legged creature crawls out of his stomach and through his mouth, its tentacles writhing in a sticky purple goo and nearly suffocating him to death. The singer collapses from the trauma. It’s an important moment that sets in motion the visual’s powerful narrative, chronologically moving from an innocent young boy trying on lipstick to an independent and fierce 20-something badass.
“The video really plays with the idea of finding beauty in the horror ─ finding comfort in something that otherwise would be unsettling,” he explain, noting that the scene was inspired by his all-time favorite movie, Aliens. “I wanted this video to play as an homage to all my favorite horror films with me getting to play in the middle of them,” he explains.
Always hypnotized by horror storytelling and filmmaking, creature-features were his gateway drug at a very young age. “My parents used to take me to Kmart every Friday night and pick out a creature-like action figure that I’d then play with amongst my sister’s barbies,” he remembers, citing such essentials as Gremlins and Critters. English draws upon a vast collection of favorite horror films, including A Nightmare on Elm Street, Dracula, The Thing, and The Strangers, as well as recent TV shows like Stranger Things and American Horror Story. “I wanted to leave it open for horror lovers to see if they can find all the references within this music video,” he adds.
The horror genre has a particular raw honesty to its stories: exposing the darkest fears of mankind through an extreme, heightened, and violent reality. “I think horror storytelling is extremely interesting because it’s relatively the same with every story with little variances here and there, and it remains intriguing,” he says. “It’s a formula that works over and over and over again. It continues to scare. It continues to excite. I’m a huge lover of haunted mazes that pop up around Halloween time, and the jump scares get me every time. I can be scared the same way over and over again and never be desensitized to it, which makes it all the more thrilling for me.”
It stands to reason, then, he’d have his own concepts tucked up his sleeve. “I actually am in the middle of writing a few horror movie scripts that hopefully you’ll see as features in the future if we can ever escape this pandemic mess,” he teases. “One deals with a cult; one deals with a haunted toy; and one deals in the science fiction dystopian world.”
“Sad Girls Dance Party” is the tip of the iceberg of English’s truly outstanding debut EP, Spiders Make Great Poets. You can always trust he’ll ground his songs in deep, meaningful lyrics ripped right out of his life. The most impressive is “The Neighbors,” a five-minute and 30-second epic in the vein of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade. “What will the neighbors say/When they hear the son is gay/Daughter’s a meth addict/Mom’s drunk and sick of it,” he chants. “Daddy got paid today/But beat mommy anyway…”
Much like “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the song sheds layers, redresses, and shifts with alarming ease. A co-write with Gabe Lopez, English actually had the entire song written and “swimming around in my head before taking it to him to bring it to life,” he recalls. “It helps that Gabe is one of my best friends, so he knows very well what my influences are and how to integrate them throughout the production. He’s also a genius musician which was required for this song, in particular, with all the tempo and key changes.”
With the longest runtime of any song on the EP, its length was an intentional choice to not only totally immerse the listener but give him a grand theatrical moment onstage (in a pre-pandemic world). “It’s something that takes you through a true beginning, middle, and end,” he says, noting the lead vocal was done in one take.
“We tried recording it the typical way where the lead is recorded in sections, and then the best parts are spliced together to get that ‘perfect’ vocal,” he continues, “but it just wasn’t sounding the way it needed to. By suggestion of Gabe, we decided to record three full takes and chose the best of them.”
Later, with “A Ghost I Knew from Yesterday,” English vents his frustrations over those in his life who voted for Trump. “And what’s worst of all if I give you up/Is knowing you will never change,” he sings. His heart is heavy, mimicked with the slow, methodical guitar work, and the lyrics are as knotted as the issue itself. “I see who you were fade away/A ghost I knew from yesterday,” he weeps.
“I go back and forth on this as new situations arise that frustrate me with his presidency. I don’t, however, think it’s as black and white as it’s made out to be in the current social climate. I view him less as a villain and more as an incompetent fool that has conned a certain portion of Americans,” explains English. “Unfortunately, some of those people are my relatives, and when you talk to them, they truly believe that they voted for him with the best intentions. So, it’s a difficult spot that is a test of patience for everyone right now. I think that as painful as it can be, having conversations with those you differ from is the only way to create a change of heart within them.” Equipping oneself with the facts and “a pretty keen sense of self control,” he says, is as vital to the conversation. “Susan Rice said it best. To paraphrase: ‘It’s harder to hate someone when you know them personally.’ And I think that by distancing yourself from those that have been, for lack of a better term, misinformed, we are only further dividing ourselves and thus not creating any change.”
Change not only happens when we have those tough conversations but reflect inward and really listen. “These past four years have been a huge reflection for everyone, I think. Trump has been a big ugly mirror to the United States, as a whole, which prevents us from living in self-centered complacency,” he says. “If you’re not reflecting on issues of systemic racism, sex, gender, domestic and international politics, workplace ethics, misogyny, distribution of wealth, economics, equality as a whole – and the list goes on and on – your head is truly in the sand and unfortunately you will be left behind in a world that was, while the rest of us progress towards a better future.”
English’s “United States of Depression” bookends the project with his grittiest, most explosive moment. “I take the little blue pills/Just to cope with all the damage/And still I see no end in sight/Yet they say I can manage/Just up the dose/Let’s have a toast,” he sings. The song confronts his struggle with mental health and wide-sweeping changes he’s already seen. “I am so grateful to everyone who has shifted the world’s view of mental health as a valid concern in moving forward as a human race,” he says. “I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety my entire life. My battle with it has involved therapy, medication, mediation, spirituality and all things in between. It’s not a very exact science as everyone is different and needs different things to improve.”
His mental war came to a head when he once left a movie theatre and had to go straight to a hospital. “I thought I was dying, and really, I was having a panic attack and just didn’t know what to call it,” he remembers. “I will say, I’m better than I’ve ever been at this moment, but it is a constant struggle.”
The importance of writing and recording Spiders Make Great Poets can never be understated. It’s done more than just satiate his creative thirst; it has soothed his anxiety-addled mind from further damage. Horror movies, an unconditionally loving support system, reading, and the ocean have all also assisted in keeping him grounded, healthy, and sane.
“Something I discovered through [this EP] process is that if I put it in a song, it allows the emotional charge to live there and free up space within me for newer and more nuanced perspectives not so affected by my past,” he concludes. “So, with all these songs, the pain gets to live in them separate from me where now I can be an objective viewer instead of being the one experiencing it.”
Weeks ago, I teared up while hearing Columbus poet Hanif Abdurraqib read an essay about a Columbus pop-punk band. That band was not The Sidekicks, but as I listen to The Sidekicks’ latest single, “Twin’s Twist,” I can’t help but recall the essay. I am stirred, settled memories of trauma, pain, joy, ecstaticism (the whole of life) lifting like silt in water. This is just to say that engaging with art – like engaging with life! – is messy and difficult. Despite pop punk’s genre-wide problems and violence, I am drawn to it; nothing unravels me quite like pop punk does, nothing forces me into emotion quite like pop punk does, and nothing, truly, makes me want to punch my fist in the air like pop punk does.
Columbus’ music scene is rich with this music and legacy, and The Sidekicks have the unusual position of being both tied to the building of that legacy, and continuing to benefit from and challenge it with contemporary releases. They’re a prolific band: initiated in 2005, the band relocated from Cleveland to Columbus in 2012, creating and sharing three full-length albums in the meantime. Now they’ve announced the release of Happiness Hours, and if their first single is any indication, the rest of the album will hold both the sour and the sweet – both the pull towards joy, and the frustration that comes after it. “The lemon rind can reek in the summer heat / but then seem so sweet later on,” sings Steve Ciolek, halfway through “Twin’s Twist.” At the end of the song, that image of a sweet and rotten rind is further complicated: “Good morning boring town,” Ciolek sings, “we’re putting on your crown / and singing you Happy Birthday / and force feeding you meringue.”
One lyric points towards the possibility of extricating sweetness from decay; the other implies violence inflicted by sugar, by happiness, by the possibilities of “crowns.” The sound, though it sticks to bouncy guitar riffs, seems to facilitate the challenges and emotionality in the lyrics. Before their third release, much was made of The Sidekicks’ drift towards pop, rather than punk. But why shy away from pop? The music’s buoyancy, its suggestion of dancing and movement, carves out a relationship with the listener one couldn’t get with punk’s abrasion.
Happiness Hours, produced by John Agnello, will be released on Epitaph records on May 18th. One day later, on May 19th, The Sidekicks will play a release show at Ace of Cups, supported by fellow locals Kizzy Hall. That night, I hope to open myself up to both bands, lifted by the growth in their music, as well as whatever it stirs within me. I’m looking forward to the rest of Happiness Hours; to continued engagement with music; and to the possibilities of pop punk in Columbus.
Brooklyn power-pop outfit Charly Bliss deals in the stylings of nineties’ girl-fronted power pop bands: sugary sweet vocals layered over Warped Tour-worthy pop punk riffs. They haven’t escaped comparisons to bands like Veruca Salt or Letters To Cleo, and they won’t here either. But this niche of music – “angry girl music of the indie rock persuasion,” as described aptly in 10 Things I Hate About You – has received far less respect than it should have all these years.
Any type of entertainment deemed “girly” or otherwise dominated by young women gets treated with a shocking paucity of respect as art. Okay, maybe it’s not that shocking, given the genre’s post-Nineties trend toward pre-packaged Disney-fication. What makes Charly Bliss so enticing is that they’ve revived this style, adding their own dark humor and smarts to package it up for grown-ups. The macabre turns the lyrics can take balances out the sweetness of frontwoman Eva Hendricks’ vocals. Paired together, they’re brimming with irony and sarcasm – a Glossier-pink commentary on the reality of millennial womanhood.
There are moments where they deal directly with specific issues modern women face, most notably on “Scare U” when Hendricks sings “I wanna talk about it / But I don’t know what I mean / I don’t wanna scare you / I don’t wanna share you.” This is such a familiar scenario – girl meets boy, girl and boy start hooking up, girl really likes boy but doesn’t want to speak up about her emotional needs as to avoid appearing anything but “chill,” whatever that even means.
But most of the sardonic wit, and underlying meaning, exists in more unexpected places, when Charly Bliss plays on the cutesy images and tropes of nineties power pop bands. “Ruby” isn’t about an ex-girlfriend or the most popular girl in school – it’s about Hendricks’ therapist, an ode thanking her for helping Hendricks overcome a fear of fainting in public. The track “DQ” isn’t about ice cream – they kill off a dog in the first lines, and as a plot point in the song the restaurant doesn’t become anything fun, but rather a dreaded dead-end on the path to adulthood.
All in all, this album is a darkly comical twist on what you would expect an album with these sonic earmarks to broach. It showcases the real problems millennial women face; it’s not all fuckbois and unanswered texts, but also serious neuroses and existential ennui. Like a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down, Charly Bliss makes us face the serious stuff with a facade of glossy pop punk.
Charly Bliss play an album release show for Guppy at Baby’s All Right on May 18th. [/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
Hartford emo band Sorority Noise released their third full length record, You’re Not As _____ As You Think, this week. It’s so self-aware it’s like the Scream of emo records. It’s formulaic as far as pop punk records go, but the band almost points it out ironically, trying to hedge out a comfortable space in the period between pimply adolescence and grown adulthood. They intersperse these moments of realization in the lyrics, layered over pretty standard (albeit well-done) pop punk, so that it captures these growing pains.
A lot of lyrical elements from Sorority Noise’s previous records carry over onto this one – drug abuse, the pain of loss, depression and mental illness – but with a new perspective. You oftentimes catch the word “still” – on the opening track (and no doubt the best on the record) “No Halo,” vocalist Cameron Boucher sings “the same things that plague you still plaguing me.” The following track, “A Portrait Of,” Boucher continues, “I still have demons, they won’t be leaving anytime soon.” It’s like a friend talking to you about an ex-girlfriend to the point of self-realization where it’s like, I really need to get over this.
They are maturing in that they’re noticing the patterns in their destructive behaviors, and know they need to change them, even if they haven’t gotten there yet. In “A Better Sun” Boucher sings “I did cocaine to impress my mouth-breathing friends” with an air of self-disgust so blatant it’s clear they’ve grown from their mistakes.
This record is basically a peek into the inner-psyche of your standard “brooding male” boyfriend character. He’s emotional and “complicated.” He’s experienced loss and gained depth. But you’ve been there enough times to know the last thing you need is another self-deprecating sad boy who sporadically stops answering texts for weeks at a time. Logic screams no but you go for it anyway because it’s really charming in a demented way, the predictability of it all. This record is like that – you’ve been there before, you know what’s going to happen next, but you listen to it over and over because pop punk is meant to be impossibly catchy.
All in all, Sorority Noise is more self-aware than you think. While they don’t rewrite the rules on this record, they know their tropes and they play them well.
Stream You’re Not As _____ As You Think via bandcamp below.
I met with Thundera on January 19 at Smash Studios in Midtown, where they practice weekly. I got there a few minutes late and could hear through the door that they were in the middle of a song. I awkwardly stood outside, debating whether I should wait for the song to be over. Even muffled through the door, they sounded great- hard, steady rock that gives a nod to punk without relying on the simplicity that is sometimes a cliche of the genre. Finally, I walked in.
Thundera formed in 2011, their first practice sessions starting that Spring. After a string of bad luck with bassists, they decided to stop looking for one about a year ago, and remain a trio: Rissa on vocals, Marianna on guitar, and Bruni on drums. Rissa and Marianna met at City College of New York, where Marianna is finishing her last semester, and Rissa just graduated. After some hesitation (“I get nervous about these things”), Marianna answered a flyer that Rissa put up. Marianna’s sister then found Bruni on craigslist. “She was looking for a used car, though,” Bruni jokes.
We could faintly hear the sounds of a cover band start practicing in the room next to us – it sounded like they were playing a bad version of “Roxanne.”
Bruni said that she had been looking for a band for awhile before meeting the rest of Thundera, but hadn’t had much luck. “Some Craigslist ads are really weird…there was always some weird angle to it. Some people get really specific. Like – we really love Meg White or whatever. So you have to kind of look like her. And you have to play this way, the way she did in this concert. It’s not a costume party!”
Rissa’s flyer mentioned the bands she was hoping to find a common interest with potential bandmates: Joan Jett, The Clash, (Well, I like The Clash,” she clarified) Iggy Pop, and Bikini Kill. Though those groups are the band’s foundation, Marianna admits a love for grunge acts such as Soundgarden and Nirvana, and Bruni has eclectic tastes – except for thrash metal. After a brief discussion about whether early Metallica falls under that genre, she clarifies, “They’re still audible in their early stuff. I mean when people are singing like, rarghgargharhga.”
The way they chose their name fits the trio’s playful, laid-back vibe: they drew names out of a hat. Potential titles include The Swirls and The Electronics, but Thundera, which was Bruni’s suggestion, was chosen. Was it rigged? “Maybe,” Bruni laughs. “It was her hat,” Rissa adds.
The cover band next door began an attempt at Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories.
Rissa says they try to play two shows a month; they’ve played venues like the Paper Box, Bowery Electric, The Fifth Estate, and The Grand Victory. When I ask them what their favorite venue is, Bruni jokes, “Madison Square Garden. I like the way they treat me there,” before agreeing that it depended on the venue’s sound. “We’re really lucky, because we know a lot of female bands,” Bruni said. “We play a lot with the same bands, because we’re kind of all grouped together in the Riot Grrl/punk scene. Other shows that we book independently, we’re kind of the only girls.”
“It’s a nice little community to be a part of,” Rissa adds. But, being in a working band takes, well, work, Bruni says:“People want to say that they’re dedicated to music, but because it’s something artistic they also wanna say they’re not tied down to it. But you have to be really serious about it if you want to get anything out of it. It’s like having another job.”
I asked Thundera about their recordings on Reverb Nation, and they collectively groan and describe the recording process as “a weird set-up.” At the end of 2015 they recorded 11 songs for their next album, were starting the mixing process the weekend after the interview. Hopefully, they said, it would be done by the summer.
For a good idea of the band’s sound, check out their performance of “Thundera:”
Any show at Terminal 5 is always a big one, so when I came to see the four-artist, co-headlined Wilderness Politics tour, I knew I was in for one hell of a party.
First up was LOLO, a young Brooklyn native with a lot of soul. Getting on her knees with passion, it was clear she was having the time of her life, commanding the stage with her ability to belt and hold some strong high notes.
The Griswolds have the look of your favorite early 2000’s pop-punk groups with a nice danceable flavor. They put out happy vibes with their upbeat songs. The energy during the quick set was irresistible — “If You Wanna Stay” was especially fun for dancing along.
Here’s what’s curious about The Griswolds — in spite of their incredibly fun tempos, giving the crowd all kinds of excuses to scream and dance, in songs like “16 Years,” lyrics like “I’m half the man I used to be/Tequila, lust and gambling/Oh, mama, I need rescuing” aren’t exactly the happiest upon closer listen.
In any case, there’s no need for anything flashy to enjoy a Griswolds show — they’re simply a group of charming Aussie guys wowing the crowd by having the time of their lives.
Journeys, the show’s sponsor, is holding a contest to win a pair of shoes hand-decorated by the band themselves. Enter here!
I was almost caught off guard when David Boyd burst out waving a bright red New Politics flag, displaying their tally mark logo.
Boyd (vocals) and Søren Hansen (guitar) originally hail from Copenhagen, but Boyd called Terminal 5 a hometown show, trying to get the New Yorkers to be the loudest crowd yet. They’ve been living in Williamsburg since ’09, and met current drummer “Long Island Louis” Vecchio here in the city.
Boyd, a breakdancer, made the most of the beats center stage to showcase his skills, even if it doesn’t quite match up with the pop punk sound.
For the crowd favorite “Fall Into these Arms,” Boyd came out to the audience’s hands to dance and surf the crowd right back to the stage, leading into the multitalented Hansen performing a powerful solo on the piano. “Girl Crush” brought the energy back up with Andrew McMahon joining the band on stage.
The former lead singer for Something Corporate and Jack’s Mannequin, Andrew McMahon now performs solo under the moniker of Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness. The set design, consisting of grass platforms for the keyboard and drums, and some turf to top the piano, was a rare display of greenery in the city, though it felt a little more like a suburban backyard, minus the picket fence.
McMahon performed a diverse set of songs from his previous bands and solo work. Fans responded well to songs like Something Corporate’s “I Woke Up In A Car” and “Punk Rock Princess,” evident as everyone seemed to know all the words. It felt as if you could hear the echo of the audience for the duration of the set.
When I first walked into the venue, I was approached to have my cheek swabbed by volunteers of the Love Hope Strength foundation to register for bone marrow donation. McMahon took time out of the show to talk about his own experience with cancer, having been diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in 2005. He announced that this marks ten years of being cancer-free, before performing the Jack’s Mannequin song “Swim” for “anybody who’s going through something.”
There certainly were crazier moments during the show, like McMahon crowd surfing his way down to the bar to get a shot of Jäger. The highlight, however, was the childlike joy that fell across the room during the performance of “Cecilia and the Satellite,” penned for his daughter. He brought everyone back to elementary school with a giant parachute, making for the perfect encore.
All photos shot by Ysabella Monton for AudioFemme.
A genre can sometimes be a useless, misleading way of explaining what an artist sounds like and allowing listeners to decide ahead of time whether they like them. It’s definitely not the best description to call Beach Slang’s The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us, a straight ahead punk album, though it could be placed under the broad umbrella of the genre. It’s got the energy and general vibe; singer James Alex has a sandpaper-rough voice and a way of singing that makes you think he’s straining as hard as he can against his vocal cords. Though he hardly even gets to the level of a shout, his lyrics convey a generous amount of sincerity. It’s punk rock that never rocks too hard, pop-punk that’s comfortable and familiar without drowning you in nostalgia. It’s dreamy punk, just as good of a soundtrack for contemplating and cloud watching as it is for thrashing around your living room.
It’s also meta-punk, as Alex focuses his the songs he writes and music he plays on the process itself. On “Noisy Heaven,” he finds salvation in being “Way out of tune, turned up to 11” as he admits “ The songs that I make, I barely rehearse them/ They’re hardly mistakes, they’re meant to be honest.” On “Ride The Wild Haze,” he wants to “Make the loudest sounds until we feel something.” “I break guitars and waste my voice,” he emotes on “I Break Guitars,” but he still finds safety and comfort in rock & roll, blurring his pain into sounds on “Dirty Lights.”
And although Alex states an obvious fact by including the track “Too Late To Die Young,” there’s a youthfulness to the album, hammered in by the fact that he also refers to himself as a kid, or sings about being young just as often as he shares his adoration of music. Being a punk implies its own youthfulness – teenage and twenty-something angst, being misunderstood, being an outsider. Did Beach Slang grow up? Yeah. But fortunately, they never grew away from those feelings.
As I sat still staring at my blank computer screen I mused on the best way to describe the three men who make up the San Pedro based band 20 Eyes. The harder I thought the more obvious it became that I would not be able to fully capture their unabashed charisma and incredible energy. With an engaging live show and versatile mixture of songs, 20 Eyes doesn’t fit into any one genre, and they certainly are not trying to conform to anything. Their music has elements of pop punk, early 1980s rock and even hints of electronic. Try to picture music that is the best parts of Good Charlotte with nods to The Beastie Boys and the Psychedelic Furs. Take that and throw in some San Pedro flair and you get 20 Eyes. Wolf Bradley (lead vocals and guitar), Andrew Macatrao (drums) and Chris Gomez (vocals and bass) are part of a new generation of rock music.
The unexpected layering of sounds in their songs makes sense due to the trio’s varying musical backgrounds. Wolf was raised in the world of ballet, and didn’t get into music until sixth grade when he branched out from some of his dad’s favorites. Andrew started learning how to play the drums when he was twelve, and around the same time he rocked out at his first concert. Then, to throw another genre into the mix, Chris was raised almost purely on hip-hop. It wasn’t until Andrew began to make him mixed tapes in middle school that he discovered the vast nature of the musical world we live in. Now they are fans of all forms of music (especially rap) and it can be heard in the unique mixture of sounds contained in their material.
The three of them are more like brothers than friends now, and have been playing together for years. Andrew and Chris met in middle school and have stayed close friends since then. The two met Wolf at his parents’ ballet studio in San Pedro, but they didn’t click immediately. In fact Wolf and Andrew almost hated each other at first. Luckily for us their rivalry didn’t last long. Once they discovered their mutual passion for music they threw their preconceived notions of each other to the side and started a band. As Wolf said they went “from loathing to loving.” Chris didn’t join them for a few years because he was helping raise his little brother. Even when he wasn’t playing in the band he was always around; finally Andrew and Wolf asked him to be a permanent member and the trio was complete. It’s been four years since then (almost seven for Andrew and Wolf.) These years of experience and friendship comes through strongly in their performance. They are incredibly in tune with each others’ moods and energy on stage and it translates well to the audience. The first time I saw them there wasn’t a still body in the room, everyone (including 20 Eyes) was dancing as hard as they could.
They are easily likable with loud laughs, insane hair and enveloping energy. They believe that “if you don’t care about what you’re doing then no one else is,” and they truly love making music. The three of them have different ways that they show their devotion for the craft. As the songwriter, Wolf tries to make sure that his songs are personal to his life but easily relatable, and gets excited when a song turns out better than expected. It’s a group effort and they’re all still learning about their sound, which is one of Andrews’ favorite parts of being in the band. On stage all three of them are in constant motion. They are dancers, rockers and goof balls. Their music is melodious, meaningful and dynamic. You can’t stop moving at their shows, which are brilliantly entertaining. They are 20 Eyes.
20 Eyes has just released a new single, “Friends Like You,” which reflects their newer sound. They will be playing at Jerry’s Pizza in Bakersfield on the 25th (one of Chris’s favorite venues) and at Club Moscow in Hollywood on September 17th. So make sure to give them a listen and catch a show.
Florida punk rockers Flashlights have just released their new track, “Failure,” in anticipation of their upcoming album Bummer Summer, due out in late spring via Hard Rock Records. Singer/guitarist Terry Caudill’s emotional vocals bring Taking Back Sunday’s Adam Lazzara to mind as he rasps, “Don’t you want to stay? Was it something I did?” The track is reminiscent of early emo but Flashlights infuses it with a soft guitar reverb that makes this track a perfect summertime anthem.
Bummer Summer was produced by Scott Hutchison and Andy Monaghan of Frightened Rabbit and will be Flashlights’ second full-length release, following their 2011 debut I’m Not Alone. The foursome will be at SXSW, playing with fitting peers like The So So Glos and Diarrhea Planet, and later going on a US tour with Miniature Tigers. Listen to “Failure” below!
Here’s a band that can make The Strokes seem, once and for all, obsolete—which is saying something considering The Strokes were lauded as “vital” and “indispensable” back in their day. Consider Skaters the new “vital” rock band; in fact, there’s a lot of comparisons to be made between the two bands: The Strokes rode a wave of hype into the music scene; Skaters are now doing the same. The Strokes debuted with a critically hailed album featuring 11 solid tracks; Skaters are now doing the same. You get the point.
And the similarities don’t stop there. All the elements that made Is This It such a strong rock album are prevalent on Skaters’ debut full-length, Manhattan, due out Feb. 25th on Warner Bros. Records. Manhattan opens up with the dark-sounding “One Of Us,” a super straightforward rock song that builds around the repeating line “Fun and games.” But there’s no fuss or messing around on this album: you come to find that each minute of each of the Skaters’ 11 tracks is worthwhile. They are not wasting any time here. The album’s third track and lead single “Deadbolt” is a prowling, thumping number that breaks open during the chorus, when lead singer Michael Ian Cummings howls “Won’t you give me one more try?” in as close to a Julian Casablancas impression as anyone could get.
Much of the midsection of the record features much more optimistic sounding, effortlessly catchy tunes like ‘To Be Young” and “Symptomatic,” which feature fast-paced, driving rhythms by guitarist Josh Hubbard and drummer Noah Rubin that make you want to get up and dance. “Schemers” is particularly pop-tinged and one of the album’s major stand-outs, with the same kind of anthemic magic that The Strokes managed on Is This It’s “Last Nite.”
But here’s where the two bands differ, and what keeps things truly interesting on Manhattan: Skaters confidently and deftly incorporate a variety of influences to bring some unexpected songs to the table, beginning with “Band Breaker.” Anchored by bassist Dan Burke, the song is colored with a reggae sound that brings The Specials to mind—a sort of unpolished, gritty aesthetic that simultaneously has a modern sheen to it. “Fear of the Knife,” one of the album’s most dynamic songs, continues in a similar, reggae-influenced tone and features a listless Cummings singing morbid lyrics about an operation and doctors who “get paid when you’re six feet underground.” “Nice Hat,” on the other hand, punches up the punk, drawing from the hard-and-fast style of hardcore bands like Black Flag and Fear. And with snippets of the city’s sounds—overheard drivel, drunken conversations with taxi drivers, announcements in the subway—sprinkled in between songs, the record plays like a genuine homage to quotidian New York City.
The album closes with as much primal energy as its opening—the fuzzed out electric guitar still shredding, the drums still thrashing, and the bass still throbbing. Skaters are, through and through, a rock band, but with a lot more to offer than power chords and great melodies. Manhattan is familiar yet novel, packed with material that’s strong enough to carry Skaters from the basement to the Bowery Ballroom and beyond. Catch ‘em while you can.
It’s a rare but exciting thing when you can tell you’re going to like an album within the first few seconds of listening to it; like getting a small gift when you’re least expecting it. Hearing the punchy electric guitar riff and Lauren Denitzio’s raw vocals laid atop a bedrock of noisy pop-punk in Cruel Optimist’s opening track felt, to me, very much like unwrapping a present. I was giddy and captivated pretty much immediately.
The short album—a mere eight tracks, none of which exceed the three minute mark—is the first full-length release by Brooklyn’s own Worriers, a pop-punk outfit that began as a side gig for Denitzio (also known as Lauren Measure, previously of The Measure [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][SA]). The band involves a rotating cast of characters, with Denitzio firmly at the center of the project as songwriter, guitarist, and vocalist. For Cruel Optimist, she recruited drummer Mikey Erg, bassist Tim Burke, and guitarist Rachel Rubino.
Though the album has a boisterous beginning, it quickly tones things down with its second track, “Precarity Rules.” Denitzio’s voice is particularly spotlighted in the subdued song as she delicately croons “Some things you didn’t see and some things I didn’t know / Except the joy and relief every time you came home,” deftly paired with a gauzy, high-pitched guitar riff. The chorus ditches the guitar riff, though, and trades it for gritty distortion as Denitzio gruffly declares “You’ll get to know me over my grave.” It’s these kinds of twists and turns in the narrative as well as the sound that permeate the entire album and keep things interesting throughout.
“Passion,” the third track, makes another 180, punching up the tempo and adopting power chords and a jumpy, ska-influenced guitar that brings the Dance Hall Crashers or early No Doubt to mind. But the true highlight of the album is its fifth track, “Never Were.” It’s passionate and powerful and fun—the kind of pop punk song that elicits air drumming and mild head banging—but the chorus is sweetly earnest, with Denitzio singing “I keep reminding myself I make mistakes all the time…Here’s to promises we try to keep.” The promises she’s talking about are the ones she made to her “radical politics” from an early age, and how they’ve evolved as she grew up from simply “being bored and angry with nothing to lose.” She touches on personal privilege growing up (“Parents won’t let me work so I could get good grades”) and acknowledges how it facilitated her participation in “social protest” and “anarcho-feminism,” all in a way that’s remarkably grounded.
The album’s careening energy lasts right up until the last second, swerving from undeniably catchy and melodic hooks to noisy distortion and back again. Combined with Denitzio’s vaguely Dolores O’Riordan-esque manner of singing and the record’s melange of thoughtfully written lyrics, both personal and political, the overall package is a solid winner. This is the kind of album that begs for multiple successive replays, not only to unravel its many meanings and stories but also just to rock out to. You’d be a fool to deny it.
