PREMIERE: Hit Like A Girl - Cold To Be Alone

Will Shenton

The raw sincerity of Hit Like A Girl's "Cold To Be Alone" is refreshing. Lyrically blunt and heartbreakingly familiar, it's a song that captures the seemingly incurable pain of loneliness and lost love without trying to smother it in ironic detachment. Nicolle Maroulis' vocals soar with bitter anguish against the glimmering instrumentals, recalling the delivery of the best emo and pop-punk of decades past.

But "Cold To Be Alone" isn't just a lamentation—it's also an expression of furious resentment. Maroulis pulls no punches, singing "You don't get to discuss whatever happened to us / 'Cause you did this to me / You're the one who chose to leave." The band's forthcoming LP, What Makes Love Last, is itself an exploration of romance and the myriad ways it can leave us feeling broken, but it's in these moments of catharsis that it feels empowering when it could have simply wallowed.

Of the many things that set Hit Like A Girl apart, perhaps most impressive is their charity, No More Dysphoria, which raises money to help transgender individuals pay for major aspects of their transition. The band forgoes their own merch sales to instead support the organization at shows, and they dedicate a portion of the profits from their music to the cause as well.

So if you're looking for a reason to hit that pre-order button, look no further. What Makes Love Last will be released August 28, 2018.

REVIEW: Lingua Nada - Snuff

Raquel Dalarossa

Lingua Nada are a hard band to pin down. They’ve been described as everything and anything, from progressive pop to math rock, and their own Bandcamp page’s tags run the gamut from shoegaze to emo. It has to be impossible for a band to truly embody all these genres, right?

That’s one assumption that quickly goes out the window after a listen to the band’s full-length debut, Snuff. Indeed, despite the inclusion of just ten tracks, the material here covers a hell of a lot of ground. It’s an astonishingly well-integrated mishmash of sound, practically bursting at the seams with a live wire energy that drives the band’s ecstatic experimentation.

Though it’s formally considered their debut, it’s easy to tell that Snuff is no amateur release. For the four-piece—led by Adam Lenox Jr. on vocals and guitar (as well as on recording and production duties), with Michael Geyer on second guitar, Arvid Sobek on bass, and Valentin Tornow on percussion and trumpet—this has been a long time coming. Based in Leipzig, Germany, Lingua Nada has gained some traction in the European indie world, having spent the past two years touring rather relentlessly to support a couple of EP releases. Even as far back as 2014 the band were already recording together under the name “Goodbye Ally Airships,” though their only LP with that moniker exhibits more straight up emo and post-hardcore tendencies. It’s clear they’ve done a fair amount of maturing their sound since then.

Snuff deftly incorporates the band’s obvious love for hard-driving punk and noise-rock with lighter moments of shoegaze and pop-rock. Opening track “Svrf Party” pretty much gives you a taste of all of these pieces upfront, nearly causing auditory whiplash right out of the gate. With a penchant for near-operatic drama and frenzied, guitar-driven tempos recalling thrash metal, it can take a lot of energy just to listen to this stuff, but it’s always rewarding.

“A Netflix Original,” for example, starts off with a barrage on all your senses, but quickly evolves into math rock-leaning arpeggios, with string instruments and synths adorning a buildup to a joyous post-punk jam. Other highlights include “Cyanide Soda,” an almost danceable track with some of the catchiest riffs on the album, as well as “Shapeshifted,” at once moody, brooding, and soaring.

Lingua Nada's Snuff is a wild ride without a doubt, but it's one you won't regret taking. Just be sure to buckle up. 

PREMIERE: Backwards Dancer - October

Will Shenton

On their latest single, "October," Backwards Dancer channel a sound I haven't had the pleasure of indulging in for years. Combining elements of noise rock, post-hardcore, and grunge, the resulting track is a wall of distortion and punchy vocals that hover around the boiling point throughout.

"October" comes alongside Backwards Dancer's announcement of vinyl pre-orders for 2017's self-titled LP. It's an explosively raw addition to the record, introducing a somewhat more off-kilter sound that feels wild and unrestrained but also mature in its songwriting. We're looking forward to hearing more from these Worcester, Massachusetts-based rockers as they experiment.

REVIEW: peaer - peaer

Laura Kerry

I expect that every time I type “Peaer” throughout this piece, I will first write “Pear” and then backtrack to add in the extra “e.” I am programmed to assume that when writing a word that sounds like “pair,” an “r” will immediately follow the “pea.”

This is the expectations game that Peaer (just went back to add the “e”) sets up even before their album begins. Peter Katz, the man behind the Brooklyn-based band offers a set of assumptions in the approach to his music, then quickly dashes them. In his new self-titled LP, he waits all of 35 seconds before the first big surprise.

“Pink Spit,” Peaer's opener, begins in acoustic piano, playing softly through the song’s main chords and melodies. All of sudden, after the listener has relaxed into complacency, Katz and his new co-conspirators, Max Kupperberg (drums) and Michael Steck (bass), enter with the forceful, fuzzy notes of a power-pop ditty worthy of early Weezer comparisons. But that’s not the last shift; “Pink Spit” continues to slide through different sounds, introducing moments of quiet, patterns of interweaving voices, and surprising rhythms next to a hook of a melody.

Paear continues to subvert expectations throughout the seven-track album, ducking in and out of what’s familiar and comfortable. At its fuzziest and most apathetically sung, the band enters the territory of 2000s slacker pop-punk. In “Pink Spit,” Katz sings, “Just let me smoke my spliff”; in “I.H.S.Y.A.,” he reveals that the greater part of the title acronym stands for the heart-sick phrase, “I hate seeing you”; and in “Sick,” a song full of pop-punk self-pity, he sings, “I’m sick of being tired of myself.” Full of distorted guitars and big drums, this strain marks a more energetic, rock-oriented turn for Peaer, whose first album, The Eyes Sink Into the Skull (2014) was quieter and more straightforwardly math-rock.

Peaer has plenty of its own math, though. As he does with the shifts in “Pink Spit,” Katz continues to play with rhythms and time signatures to combine emo with intelligent calculation in the manner of newly-reformed ‘90s band American Football. It can’t be a coincidence that the song called “Drunk” employs a destabilizing count—an extra beat to throw off the balance of the listener.

In “I.H.S.Y.A.,” the slipping and sliding of expectations goes too far, slipping just beyond reach. In the absence of graspable parts, though, the song highlights another force at work in the album, Peaer’s clever use of dynamics—the relationships between sounds, particularly the contrast between loud and soft, density and space. Still, when “Sick,” the album’s clearest and poppiest track arrives next, it is welcomed.

I’m happy to report that the when I wrote “Peaer” in that last paragraph, I got it on my first try. And despite the odd spellings and jarring surprises, Katz and his new album have won me over.

REVIEW: Soft Fangs - The Light

Laura Kerry

I have a habit that I picked up in my temperamental early high school days that I haven’t been able to shake: instead of listening to bright music to lift me up when I’m feeling down, I match my soundtrack to my mood. Artists like Elliott Smith are reserved for special occasions—when the February rain still falls in mid-April, for example.

John Lutkevich, AKA Soft Fangs, makes music for such times. Like the music of Smith and Sparklehorse, his full-length debut, The Light, presents quiet tunes that pull the listener in close to their beautiful sadness. He recorded the album in his childhood home in Massachusetts, a location that creeps into songs about regret, haunting, and the desire to stay in bed and not get a job. A return home can be both a comforting and sinister experience, centering you while reminding you how far you’ve traveled from the ease of youth and the impossibility of returning to it.

On The Light, Lutkevich acknowledges the latter in songs laced with reflections about death. In the opener, “Dragon Soap,” with its soft, muffled verse and loud, fuzzy chorus, he sings, “You are finding out / What it’s all about / To live, to lose, to die / In the same skin you were born in.” On “Birthday,” with its beat loop and dizzy guitar effect, he repeats, “I’m old enough to die / I’m young enough to be alive,” and in a more assured voice on “The Wilderness,” he warns, “But life won’t seem so long / When you’re dead and gone.” Death hovers threateningly throughout the album; like the jewelry-box twinkle at the beginning of “Too Many Stars (not enough sky),” which gets dissonant and creepy, it transforms the stuff of youth into something ominous.

But Soft Fangs also has a strain of optimism. Rather than give into the threat of death, the album ultimately urges its opposite. In an answer to the first song, which poses, “You could end it all or try to move forward,” the last song embraces the second option. This track and the album are called “The Light,” after all, and they point out that it is possible to find some at the end of the deep, dark tunnel. “And death may seem ideal,” he sings, “Cause you won't feel nothing / Like you do right now / But when the light comes / Turn around and stare.”

Amid big, distorted choruses that swallow Lutkevich’s close, almost whispered voice and sedate, guitar-strummed verses that leave it bare and vulnerable, it’s possible to detect some lightness in his production and compositions, too. Though often quiet, the songs are dense with voices—instrumental and human—that sometimes emerge clear, bright, and upbeat. In the melodic vocal leap on “Birthday,” in the muted bell sounds on “Get a Job,” and in the synth voice that stands out against the noise of the final chorus on “The Light,” Soft Fangs adds a touch of levity to his lo-fi dirges.

Sometimes it’s necessary to return to a specific place for comfort—going back to a childhood home or losing yourself in sad music. As the weather warms up (fingers crossed) and the days get longer, let’s hope there’s less cause to do so. Even so, it’s a comfort to know that The Light is here waiting.