🏃
Genre: Bedroom pop
From: Philadelphia
LP: God Save the Animals (2022)
Just learned that the line is “Load it up, know your trigger like the back of my hand,” and not “Load it up, pull your trigger at the back of my head.” Not gonna lie… I like mine a little better. 👀
May 23, 2024
Related Recs
yeah yeah yeah call me a normie or whatever. i was listening to rocket when most of you were but twinkles in the eyes of your fathers. he's the voice of a generation. such a unique songwriter, his style is often emulated but never wholesale surpassed. he's incredible. nothing & i mean nothing will ever measure up to listening to gnaw for the first time.
LYRICS
--
You never met me
I don't think anyone has
But we can still be laid up together
the sugarhouse picked up the tab
I won't be forgotten
They'll have to bury me in the sand
When our children go digging for answers
I hope they can put me together again
--
Had a dream about a promised land
Walk around with a big gun in my hand
& when I look you in the eye
You're gonna tell me that you love me & hold me tight
'Cause you know that I have no fear
Ain't gonna walk into the river & disappear
--
I paint pictures of my heart
the colors blue & purple start to bleed into an endless dark
it's only you, it's only you
--
I think about him a lot. He's my favorite artist doing it right now. I'm so happy he's so successful now. My only sorrow is how expensive it is to see him live, and how qickly tickets sell out!
May 21, 2024
⭐
The first single from Winter Boyfriend from the upcoming album set a, frankly, very different note. 'anx/bodies' is an outlier for us, musically and lyrically, but when putting the final touches to the album it was one of the songs that people seemed instinctively to engage with if they weren't broadly invested in our main thing, essentially indie/indie-punk made by a would-be emo band. At the very least it provoked a reaction.
It's a song inspired by a very specific series of events but is not specifically autobiographical. Outside of the world of this song i am much less forward about sex. I enjoy being 'too much' with friends but i really don't want it going anywhere my family might hear it. Repression is fun! I often wonder if that's similar to what actors feel when doing nudity or whatever. It's a case of, "I don't want to know you've seen me experience that?" Anyway, honesty can help in art, but also maybe so too does a little internal repression.
It was written about a memory of going to a university disco, arriving at the club where everyone was looking hot and cool, and i suddenly becoming very aware of my inability to be calm. It is essentially about over-stimulation and amorousness and the confusion of that smashing like a wrecking ball through any semblance of chill i might have had.
The verse bass riff is really old, easily over 10 years old. I wrote it for a different project, a Death From Above 1979 rip-off thing, and my pal Martin played bass, while i sang and drummed. The song was unremarkable but the riff was cool. There was no way i wasn't keeping it. Also, it explains why it's the only song that uses a fuzz bass tone. Yet.
I have no idea when i came up with the guitar riff but it's one of my favourite parts i've written. It's rythmic and a little bit dissonant, but i think the G# implies an E Major chord, making it A minor natural (sorry music theory experts, probably butchering this).
I was also unsure if i could allow myself to write the chorus which used power chords. It always feels too basic. But it worked in the context of the song. I finished it years ago aside from a few lyrical tweaks and the introduction sound (chord played, tremolo arm depressed as it fades out, recorded and reversed). Also when mixing the song my references were very different and included a lot of 00s and 10s music, including bands that have been grandfathered into the whole 'indie-sleaze' thing, and it made me realise the second verse needed, nay demanded!, a cowbell and some percussion (the other percussion is drumming on glass bottles fyi).
I feel like 'anx/bodies', and the song that follows it, 'on our way home', are two sides of the same coin. One uptight, repressed yet explosive, and the other unrelenting, desperate and flailing. You could almost imagine the latter being later in the same night, getting existential when worse-for-wear. More on that one later.
Jun 19, 2024
Longtime listener, first-time caller.
S/O to Seattle's Michael Hadreas, who I first heard on KEXP years and years ago. His whole catalog is worth exploring (I particularly love 2020's "Set My Heart on Fire Immediately") and this one is from "Glory," due out later this spring.
This dude has long touched on issues of importance to the LGBTQ community -- this track certainly includes some of these -- but we all do him/his music a disservice to categorize it as anything other than "fucking great" which best describes this song's ascending and descending guitar chords, heartbroken vocals and his transformation from diva/dandy to fully-blown (ironic/send-up of a) Hell's Angel, which is very much in tune with the weirdly toxic masculinity that seems to be so omnipresent right now.
"It's a chorus reaching for us/
Swarming locusts wherever you go"
Hells yes I can't wait for the full LP to drop.
Jan 28, 2025
Top Recs from @oliviamutantjohn
I produce and host a radio show called Electrique Boutique, which plays minimal synth, cold wave, dark wave, post punk, diy/private press electronic music, and anything else that fits the vibe. If you’re into Kraftwerk, Closer by Joy Divison, Cold Cave, Molchat Doma, Black Marble… your stripped down, lo-fi electronic music, then maybe give it a listen! It airs every other Friday 6-8 PM PST on 104.9 KHUH Hollow Earth Radio in Seattle, but all of my episodes are archived on my website (in the link).
May 17, 2024
At its best, it rivals the golden years of The Simpsons in my book, and that’s about the highest praise I can give a show. So so funny and creative, relentlessly bleak, and a relatable love of 80s alternative culture.
Jun 3, 2024
My right arm currently has ten bird tats on it. It’s a toss up between these two:
- The indigo bunting, which is dedicated to a friend of mine who helped me through a really bad time in my life. We bonded over birdwatching when we first met, and the indigo bunting is her favorite bird.
- The ivory-billed woodpecker, simply because it’s my favorite bird. Unfortunately extinct, though every few years a possible sighting is reported in the southern US. Its nickname is The Lord God Bird, because that’s what a birdwatcher would shout if they ever saw one.
Jun 1, 2024