I am lonely. I am angry. But I’m optimistic too.

So goes the chorus of Gladie‘s “twenty twenty,” from the band’s 2020 full-length debut, Safe Sins. It’s a line that carried real weight at the onset of a global pandemic, delivered by a seasoned voice, capable of conveying both acute personal anguish and the burden of general world-weariness. Augusta Koch’s bonafides on those fronts were well-established thanks to her work in the 2010’s powerhouse punk trio Cayetana.

In those earlier days, Koch’s songwriting punched forward, while still being entrenched in unshakeable heaviness. The chorus of “Bus Ticket,” in particular, flirted with lines embodying patterns of suicidal ideation:

This is my last call. This is my rock bottom. This is my curtain call.

But the final words of that chorus are key, and underline the poignancy of Koch’s tendencies as a songwriter.

This is my bus ticket.

A simple line evidencing not just the ongoing, indefatigable resilience of Koch herself, but how allowing for less-fraught alternatives can act as a narrative grounding point. The means were typically modest, but there always seemed to be a way out. Even then, the weight of those lines benefitted from familiarity.

“Scott Get the Van, I’m Moving“—released three years prior to “Bus Ticket”—was my introduction to Koch’s work, and it’s a song that has remained in my personal playlist rotations since its 2014 release. In Heartbreaking Bravery‘s first year as a publication, it became one of the songs that was synonymous with the aims of what—and who—I wanted the site to focus on: exceptional punk songwriters who came from a DIY background and rarely got the scale of appreciation they deserved.

Cayetana’s two albums—Nervous Like Me and New Kind of Normal, along with a smattering of smaller releases—soundtracked a respectable portion of the time I spent skating, or just generally kicking around. The former helped me adjust to life in NYC in 2015, and the latter helped me make sense of settling back into Wisconsin. Each album contained a number of songs I developed real affection for, and that affection continues to this day.

But while I held those records in high esteem and genuinely loved a small pool of Cayetana’s songs, the band never jumped out as an immediately evident go-to favorite. With Gladie, something clicked in a way that I wasn’t wholly prepared for, and it has retroactively, significantly deepened my appreciation for Cayetana’s whole discography. 

In 2020, I was several years into working as a photographer for a local studio that specialized in live sports, graduations, and events. I had to step away from that job out of necessity. The COVID-19 pandemic caused a mass cancellation of event and portrait shoots, and my own experience with COVID would have left me sidelined regardless. In a development that coincided with my decision to leave, I contracted COVID and went through a debilitating stretch of illness. Over a six-month period, I lost my sense of taste, my sense of smell, and—as a result of that combination—no longer had the ability to articulate hunger. I started manually tracking my meals, because my brain was not receiving the necessary signals to let my body know it had eaten.

My stomach problems got worse over that time, breathing grew difficult, and I became physically (and mentally) weakened. A depletion of energy likely contributed to slight muscle atrophy, and precious little retained the sheen of desirability. One thing that did help me get through that time period was music, and my appreciation for the records that kept me inspired grew exponentially during the recovery phases. One of the bands I found the most solace in—and through—was Gladie.

At first, Gladie didn’t quite line up for me. Safe Sins perhaps wasn’t what I was expecting from a Cayetana successor. The band’s earliest music felt appropriately muted for the mental and physical state I was in at the time, bedridden and staving off bouts of deliriousness. It just didn’t light a fire under me. Not at first. But then the records kept coming. from the basement to the garage (band) in March 2020. orange peels in July 2020. thank you card. in September 2020. And, crucially, raw nerve in December 2020.

(It is perhaps not a coincidence that thank you card. ends with a cover of a classic Weakerthans song central to the only other time an essay of this nature has appeared on Heartbreaking Bravery.)

Gladie’s restless string of 2020 EPs wound up correlating with my arc back to vitality, with each successive release coming across as brighter and more urgent than the last. Every new dispatch felt like a defiant reaction to deterioration, shot through with a newfound appreciation for the small triumphs of experiencing what life has to offer. Startlingly clear-eyed and steadfast, Gladie’s various insistences proved contagious, with raw nerve lead-off single “got nothing for ya” constituting a heels-dug, clenched-fist endpoint to the tumult of a stagnancy characterized by resignation.

You’re staring at a fresh scratch-off ticket in your truck, in the grocery store parking lot.

Praying maybe this time I’ll win, maybe this time I’ll win. Maybe this time.
Hoping maybe this time I’ll win, maybe this time I’ll win. Maybe this time.
Thinking maybe this time I’ll win, maybe this time I’ll win. Maybe this time.
Saying maybe this time I’ll win, maybe this time I’ll win. Maybe this time.

It’s a chorus that still rings out in my head six years later. And “got nothing for ya” itself stands out as a no-brainer pick for one of the decade’s best—and most defining—punk songs. No matter how many lumps we have to take, we have to keep pushing forward. And no matter how much evidence accrues that points to things not working out, abandoning trying does nothing but guarantee a contribution to loss or some other undesirable outcome. Scratch-off tickets aren’t going to be the way out, and they’re likely to prove more of a sunk cost than anything else. But a roll of chance that can provide a more comfortable reality is always going to be a more entertaining prospect than complacency. 

In its proudly-worn damage, but stubborn refusal to give up, “got nothing for ya” became a rallying cry. And there were few people more well-suited to deliver that message than Koch, who continues to build a career out of narratively zeroing in on perseverance. In Cayetana’s world, Koch was often looking for exit doors when contemplating hard situations. Endurance was at the forefront, and survival was top-of-mind. With Gladie, Koch’s efforts at escape come through the effort of fighting bad odds, no matter how unfairly the deck’s stacked.

“There’s a certain risk we tolerate: that nothing’s up to you,” sings Koch in her subtle, signature rasp during the bridge of “got nothing for ya.” “We surrender to accommodate, like all sane people do,” goes the next line, underlining situational starkness, while still implicitly appealing to underdog sentiment. And then the chorus roars back in for one more round of grounded galvanization.    

For Koch, getting to this point didn’t come easily. She’s been open about her struggles with mental health, and how a rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis factored into her path to sobriety. “For me, it’s always about trying to remain an optimistic person who is also a depressed person,” Koch revealed in a recent interview with Dan Ozzi for Zero Cred. A trait that’s explicitly backed by her lyrical output, with Gladie’s early records repeatedly hammering the sentiment home.

That same sentiment can also be drawn out of Gladie’s covers selection, with the conflict of drawing good out of bleak realities playing a pivotal part in each. While Rilo Kiley’s “The Good That Won’t Come” is likely the most evident example, it’s a faint echo in the peripheral views of Elliott Smith’s “Needle in the Hay.” It factors into Guided By Voices’ “Game of Pricks,” it contextualizes Beastie Boys’ “Song for the Man,” and it serves as a faint, heartbreaking whisper in The Weakerthans’ “Plea From A Cat Named Virtute.” But it’s there, in all of them, providing an engine to keep a small sampling of varied protagonists eyeing—or distantly hoping for—less harrowing realities.

Zooming out and examining that concept from a macro-standpoint unlocks a renewed focus for Koch’s writing: community.

When Gladie was just starting out, it was Koch and her creative and romantic partner, audio engineer and multi-talented musician Matt Schimelfenig. Over time, the band grew into a full-fledged entity, with drummer Miles Ziskind becoming a permanent member, and a small succession of talented bassists (namely, Dennis Mishko and present member, Evan Demianczyk) joining Gladie’s ranks. Once the band solidified their expansion, the buzz around them started getting louder. And it grew louder still as they hit the road and notched more shows, attracting a number of other like-minded collaborators—a group highlighted by Jeff Rosenstock.

Koch and Rosenstock’s collaborative relationship has grown over time, with Koch stepping in to sell merch on Rosenstock’s tour runs, and Rosenstock, in turn, contributing guest turns and production work on Gladie’s releases. It’s a natural fit and one that speaks directly to the power of communal exchange. (Rosenstock’s another musician who was—and remains—a force in the DIY punk world, and someone who has been unabashedly vocal about navigating mental health challenges.) And the overlap between the two goes back to Koch’s Cayetana days.

Rosenstock took Gladie out on tour as an opener shortly after the late 2022 release of Don’t Know What You’re In Until You’re Out, and their connection has remained strong.

Don’t Know What You’re In Until You’re Out represented a major evolution and served as a breakthrough for Gladie, with the full-fledged band version of the project taking hold. It arrived at a perfect time, with the world suddenly teeming with new life, and a populace who were craving substantive, in-person interaction. Even the album’s title seemed like a play on the world’s experience, drawing a parallel between micro and macro challenges by slyly invoking the pandemic, while eyeing a new future filled with promise. Whether the title was a self-contained meta-commentary or a macro-reflective one, the work cemented Koch as a punk songwriter of note, and the album’s approachable sense of honesty proved appealing to a growing number of listeners.

On Don’t Know What You’re In Until You’re Out, Koch sounds energized by the additional support of extra members, exuding a fiery swagger that imbues the songs with a more unrestrained liveliness. A beautiful, acoustic-and-strings, sub-minute prelude titled “Purple Year” tees up the album, with its end-track feedback bleeding into hard-charging highlight “Born Yesterday.”

“It was like a little letter to myself of being like, ‘You can get through this,’” Koch confessed to Stereogum about “Born Yesterday,” a song exemplifying energetic determination. At the time, Koch was newly, intentionally sober and (presumably) experiencing the accompanying weightlessness. But despite representing a new chapter, the quote ties into a recurring theme of her writing, with roots tracing back to Cayetana’s 2012 demo track, “ella.” “I will lead you trails so you can follow me home,” sang Koch nearly 15 years ago, hinting at a blossoming realization about the importance of charting a path of progression.

“I’m freezing to death in this real chilly place,” is how “ella” opens, but Don’t Know What You’re In Until You’re Out updates it with a more hopeful rejoinder. “Stuck in mud til I hit another birthday. Pull me out, I’m not dying, I’m just thirsty,” sings Koch at the start of “Mud,” a sticky, mid-tempo indie-punk standout. Once again, there’s an extension of hope buoying the spirit of the song, and this time, rather than seeking a lifeline, Koch’s recognizing the need for one in others, and looking to extend her support outward.

Read your face and I know you’re trying; your moods are skydiving, moods are skydiving.
Late bloomer in the shade, where you headed? Rise early to catch the morning dew.
I noticed, on clear inspection: my hands are the same shape as you.

While there was always a contemplative bent to Koch’s work in Cayetana, Gladie has turned into a songwriting vessel where that introspection, and the accompanying observations, are more considered. Patience replaces immediacy, without sacrificing any amount of force or urgency, and that thoughtfulness proves a benefit. “Push around my thoughts, on my breakfast plate. Pause to savor taste, and evaluate,” Koch sings on “Soda,” putting a bow on that exact characteristic. Towards the album’s end, Koch twists the mix of generosity, thoughtfulness, patience, self-reflection, and empathy into a beautiful knot with “For A Friend.” “It’s okay, ’cause we walk the same way. Slightly out of bound, slightly overwhelmed by our own pace.” Up to that point, it may have been the most truly realized summation of Koch’s writing philosophy.

Earlier this year, that philosophy took another step forward with the Rosenstock-produced No Need To Be Lonely.

Gladie’s most recent album—my personal front-runner for Album of the Year—is a triumph of artistry and spirit. On the musical front, it’s got a cavalcade of killer hooks that rival Dogs On Acid’s classic 2015 self-titled, sharp tones and structural precision reminiscent of early Swearin’, and skyscraper choruses in league with emerging contemporary Graham Hunt. Jack Shirley endows the record with additional polish as an engineering producer, and Gladie pays it off with great instrumental performances across the board. And Koch’s songwriting has never been sharper, or more pointed.

“Poison,” the album’s most frantic track, features a spin on the “For A Friend” dynamic. “Oh, it’s killing me, the way we weigh ourselves down. Oh, is it killing you? Can you just be here now?” intones Koch over raucous guitars and an incessantly bouncy bassline shot through with just the right amount of gain. Again, Koch invokes community and an expanded level of awareness, but this time there’s a sense of knowing desperation that hints at a hard-won desire to fix things.

Just a track earlier, that desire is revealed in plain text on “Fix Her,” a heartbreakingly introspective mid-tempo track that detonates in its second half, giving No Need To Be Lonely its most powerful moments. “I wanted you to know that the beauty had a purpose,” sings Koch during the track’s quiet first half, leading into a devastating-but-hopeful refrain.

I can’t fix her, but I can fix me if I try.
I can’t fix her, but I can fix me if I try.
I can’t fix her, but I can fix me if I try.

The past is non-negotiable. No matter how hard we try, it will remain static and unmoving. A fixed thing. It is not changeable. While it can be re-contextualized, it can not be fundamentally changed. Accepting it can be an act of reclamation, and the desire to fix its most brutal occurrences can often be addressed in the present, with its author focusing on the one thing they have the immediate power to alter: themselves. Koch’s presentation of this immutable fact of life is as heartbreaking as it is rejuvenating, presenting a gorgeous balance of despair, acceptance, and resolute, optimistic focus.

Go past all of the keen insights and something exponentially larger begins to form: a growing meditation on nature vs. nurture. No Need To Be Lonely posits, in an avalanche of small samplings, that growth doesn’t come freely and has to be earned repeatedly to be sustained. 

“Blurry,” the album’s only true ballad, is a macro-commentary on this point. Koch’s described the song as, effectively, being a statement on the importance of finding and appreciating inspiring things in a world that is seemingly hell-bent on achieving unforgivable, unlivable outcomes. It’s not always clear what those are, and beauty is often in the eye of the beholder, but the awareness to scan for those moments is increasingly critical.

Even as it closes—while dredging the depths of a sadness that accompanies the realization of how many things have been poisoned or killed by individual greed (whether environmental catastrophe, class war ramifications, or genocide)—”Blurry” creates the potential for a better form of life to bloom over the desecrated fields humanity’s leaving in its wake.

And what if we left the world untouched?
What if we paused, said we did too much?
What if we left this world untouched?
What if we paused?

Miracle is blurry

“Blurry” also operates as a large-scale analog to the inner turmoil Koch’s fought through over the course of nearly half a dozen full-lengths. Most of Cayetana’s narrative work grappled with the personal, but the details were still rife with a bleakness that felt dystopian. From the sonic heaviness of “Bus Ticket” to the anticipatory dread of “freedom1313,” Koch and her bandmates were able to effectively communicate broader despair. Raggedness was an essential quality in that communication, with sparse atmospherics digging the shovel of inescapability deeper into listeners’ hearts. Even then, though, there were hints of potential counterpoints that eased those narratives’ crushing weight.

That weight is still clearly present in “Blurry,” but it’s balanced in a stability that feels infinitely more measured, and real. With Cayetana that balance seemed distantly aspirational, but for No Need To Be Lonely‘s duration, it comes across as an achievable task for Koch to conquer. Narrative instances that used to be defined by a near-spiteful, self-targeting criticality are replaced by instances of unblinking poise.

While there are lingering instances of intermittent self-flagellation—Koch’s still billing herself in interviews as “a very optimistic depressed person”—there are also moments of otherwise invisible victory. Right from the top of No Need To Be Lonely, there are phrases that seem small at first blush, but represent something far more extraordinary when taken in whole. In the opening words of “Push Me Down,” Koch encompasses the breadth of this dynamic, and allows it to act as something of a thesis statement for the album.

Naively mistaking all aspects of this situation.
Lean in to tension; I see it all, I pay attention.

On first blush, this would not strike most listeners as inherently positive. But it’s in the delivery of “I pay attention,” where there’s a noticeable difference. Koch has spent so much of her songwriting career mired in a blurriness where the capacity for attention has been stretched or compromised. “I pay attention,” in this context, biting and triumphant, is both reclamation and clarion call. It’s reflective of the shifting tenor of the way Koch positions herself as a protagonist. And it’s a line that’s delivered with a quiet, knowing pride that makes it hard not to revel in the moment, knowing the decade-plus story those three words represent.

It is a privilege to be able to experience a gifted songwriter’s growth in real time, and No Need To Be Lonely is especially heartening because it conveys a period of greater joy and triumph for Koch, who has meticulously detailed the experience of finding both of those things to be elusive. Even in the chronic, micro-moments of pithy self-awareness, (the sardonically relatable tragicomic mundanity of the “Car Alarm” chorus is quintessential Koch), there is a prevailing sense of celebration. Even when life’s at its most annoying, it’s an absolute gift to be a part of that annoyance, and to find power in unlikely communal solidarity. Whether that’s a traffic stop, poor air quality, abrupt existential realizations, or any other everyday hindrance imaginable, real or metaphorical. 

In a newsletter-style note Koch authored to accompany No Need To Be Lonely‘s release, there’s a passage that circles back to the importance of community. “This record feels particularly meaningful to me for many reasons. A lot of the things I was thinking about while writing the lyrics for these songs were relationships. The ones we have with people in our lives, ourselves, and the world we live in. All of those different types of relationships, while beautiful, can also be hard as hell sometimes,” Koch writes. Before the piece wraps, Koch pointedly notes the incalculable meaningfulness of collaboration and how it can lend to puncturing the voids of anyone who struggles with self-worth, herself included.

In Koch’s world, nothing comes easy, but No Need To Be Lonely suggests that her found family might be easing the weight of hard expectation. And if a good person carving that out for themselves isn’t worth celebrating, I’m not sure what is.

So, in late April, I packed up a camera bag and drove to Milwaukee to see Gladie play a good chunk of the new album live and join in on a small moment of intentional, celebratory togetherness. (It also somehow marked my first time seeing Koch play, something I’ve been hoping to do since hearing “Scott Get the Van, I’m Moving” over a decade ago.) Storied band poet Thax Douglas—who I profiled for Tone Madison—was on hand for the occasion, reading short introductory poems for each of the evening’s three acts: Buena Cara, Noun, and, of course, Gladie. 

Buena Cara’s math-leaning emo-punk hybrid approach was expertly executed, and immediately contextualized guitarist/vocalist Ricky Bravo’s Algernon Cadwallader shirt. They’re absolutely worth seeing, and I’d be happy to see their name on any number of future bills. Noun—the ever-morphing project of Screaming Females bandleader Marissa Paternoster—continues to evolve in thrillingly unpredictable fashion. (“Holy Hell” and “Old Friends” remain personal favorites, but feel like a distant cry from the increasingly dark, atmospheric, and classically heavy work the band’s presently favoring.) Noun’s set included some subversive drum setups and featured all of the non-Koch members of Universal Girlfriend. They were uniformly excellent, and delivered at least two moments that resulted in unexpected chills.

Gladie, who Koch pointed out mid-set, “aren’t a band that usually gets to play last.” But judging from the full, mid-week room, they’re inching closer to being headliners with a greater degree of frequency. Apart from a false start involving some gear miscommunication, the band was in fine form, and played off any discomfort in endearing fashion. From a banter misstep that precisely no one clocked until it was explicitly explained, to small tech issues, any time anyone in the band turned apologetic, there was no need. Gladie’s work had already won them a supportive crowd, and their onstage presence backed their music’s appeal with verve.

All of the small details acted harmoniously to mark the show out as a distinct experience. From Koch’s habit of strumming over her neck pickup, to Ziksind’s intermittent smiling when the band was at their tightest, to Schimelfenig’s in-the-moment body movements, to Demianczyk’s contagious bouncing, the band was nothing but warm and winsome. 

Going into the show, I only really had a bead on Koch. By night’s end, Gladie’s remaining trio had won me over, through conversation, demeanor, performance, and the way they interacted with staff and audience pre- and post-show. Making great music is one thing, but coming across as kind and genuine while doing so is entirely another, and Gladie seems to be on the right side of both. And their performance ultimately netted another point for my long-standing theory: punk bands that emphasize technical proficiency over raw feeling are doing their audience and themselves a disservice. Gladie was, in turns, professionally tight, and excitingly loose, striking a near-perfect balance.

The next time they come through Wisconsin as a headliner, I’d be shocked if the venue capacity wasn’t significantly higher. And they’ll have earned it the hard way. Koch, especially.

In a 2021 poetic essay titled “Born Yesterday” that was published on a short-lived wordpress (which would effectively expand into a Substack), Koch expanded on adjusting to sobriety, following years of heavier drinking. “Recovery is a reclamation,” writes Koch in the piece’s final line, effectively pinpointing the monumental impact of making decisions that serve your best interest; having an unbending grip of autonomy can be unbelievably freeing, and feel like a new existence for anyone who may have grown acclimated to a lack of control. Drinking doesn’t help in that compartment, and health can pose its own risks. 

In 2022, Koch was contending with each of those components. “It was the first year of the pandemic. I had gotten sick, I got diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder. I’ve never really had health issues, and I ended up leaving my job that I had been at for 10 years and moving to stay in the Poconos because we were worried about my health and being immunocompromised during the pandemic,” Koch told Our Culture in 2022, while discussing the making of Don’t Know What You’re In Until You’re Out. “That was definitely a huge change, and then I stopped drinking, which was also a huge change, and started really working on my mental health. Which, I have for a long time, but being in this mindset was a real commitment.”

A year later, Koch expanded on the physical health side of the equation in an interview with New Noise Magazine, saying “There was a point when I couldn’t play guitar, and I was so angry, and anger is not the most prevalent emotion I usually get—like just straight-up anger. I was like, It’s so hard to play music, and now I have to deal with this other issue of my body, especially learning guitar late and starting so much later. And feeling like I was behind, and now my hands don’t work?” All of which combines to form a fraught reality that is likely to continue to pose real challenges. But it’s also helped shape Koch into a stronger, more resilient person.

Now, going back to “twenty twenty” more plainly marks out the astonishing impact of Koch’s writerly worldview.

I am lonely. I am angry. I am optimistic too.

Koch has every reason to be angry, given the state of things, both at home and abroad. And a growing pool of collaborators may help, in some small fashion, with any bouts of loneliness. Sometimes company can make that worse, but if the company’s good enough, they’ll help you weather those stretches regardless. It appears thus far that her present company has been more than up to that task.

It’s in Koch’s commitment to searching for the better where her writing has always shone.

No matter how insurmountably difficult things may have seemed, a glimmer of optimism has cut through the noise. On No Need To Be Lonely that glimmer has become a floodlight, with a few towering stretches of the record feeling forceful enough as to be world-beating. “Future Spring,” especially, evokes those qualities. It’s evident in both an enormous chorus that questions the scale of arbitrary power, as well as in a quiet, loving moment, where a warm and simple invitation is extended as an act of solidarity-minded rebellion. (“Hey, you’re invited, and we’re glad you’re here.”)

When those bass chords hit in the last measures of the song’s chorus, it’s bone-rattlingly rousing. An emphatic punctuation mark that frequently sends my mind back to a small moment from over a decade ago.

Around 19 minutes into Cayetana’s NPR Front Row performance, before launching into a poignant version of “Favorite Things,” Koch declares “This is a love song, it’s the only one I’ll ever write.” But that wasn’t exactly true then, and it’s certainly not true now. What Koch failed to realize at the time, is that her paeans to the possibilities of a better tomorrow as told through personal story were implicit love letters, both to herself and the world around her, regardless of any inherent conflicts depicted therein.

To see and hear that outpouring of purpose and love come full circle all across No Need To Be Lonely is beautiful, and transcendently heartening. Koch delivering those messages with conviction paints all of Cayetana’s work in slightly new colors, and allows Gladie’s extending brushstrokes to chart an expanding, enthralling portrait of growth.

Not every demon’s going to be defeated, but hearing someone put themselves on the line and be willing to go down swinging is exceptionally motivating. And when the circumstances are factored in—whether by way of stronger support structures, wiser choices, or attaining greater degrees of self-belief—failure no longer seems like a death sentence. Giving ourselves the possibility of forgiveness is one of the key, underlying missives peppering No Need To Be Lonely‘s sharpest moments.

It’s a great service to all of us that an unassuming bus ticket from eons ago ultimately led to such a worthwhile destination.

It shouldn’t be shocking. Koch knew the future could be bright all along. It’s a quiet truth that’s further embodied in the statement that closes her 2026 Zero Cred interview about the record. “Why are we always looking to the past with everything, with how we view ourselves and the people in our lives? I really hate that. I want to look forward.” That instinct is a natural extension of a long process, one that started on a more personal scale.

In her 2022 Stereogum interview, Koch effectively summarized the realization of her own mental progress, saying “I feel a healthier sense of self, that isn’t tied to music; I’m more secure in [myself], and feeling a better sense of personhood.” No Need To Be Lonely encapsulates the feeling with a warmly comforting assuredness, instilling a contagious sense of self-belief within listeners. And it means even more when taken in as a whole piece—a living document of personal growth, acceptance, love, hope, and self-realization. An honest culmination of the journey Koch has revealed in vignetted piecemeal across nearly 15 years of writing history.

I care, and care deeply, about Koch’s work. It’s intrinsically tied to my own experience in ways that feel incredibly tangible. It serves as both a near-direct reflection of not just my own worldview and how it’s been shaped, but of my musical preferences. (There was a reason why Koch’s face was the header image for one of the only posts during Heartbreaking Bravery‘s five-year quasi-hiatus, and it quietly killed me to not have the available capacity to give those early Gladie works their own personal showcase.)

Several months ago, I fired up Bluesky and said that I would “continue to go to bat for [Koch] as one of the best songwriters & voices in punk over the last 25 years,” and I meant it. Few current songwriters have consistently met the moment as profoundly as Koch, and I sincerely believe she’s owed an endless amount of appreciation and gratitude for doing so.

Even though it’s taken a few years longer than I’d like, I got to hoping, thinking, and saying that maybe this time I would express the depth of that appreciative gratitude as best as I know how. I hope this piece counts for something, and I’ll be eagerly awaiting the next chapters of Koch’s career. (A compliment delivered; time well-spent.)

And to Gus, personally: thank you for constantly pushing forward, and for creating something beautiful. It means more than you realize. 

Click through an expanded gallery of Gladie’s Cactus Club show via Flickr.