After purring out one of last year’s finest records, Bully have been hitting both the road and the festival circuit with staggering force. Feels Like, the record that spawned an extremely promising career, conjured up enough momentum that the band’s carried it to what’s essentially a victory lap. Fortunately for everyone, they’re playing their shows as if they still need to be the first to cross some unseen finish line.
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2. Fruit + Flowers – Drug Tax (BreakThruRadio)
For well over a year, Fruit + Flowers have been drawing near to the cusp of becoming a breakout band and in that time, they’ve sharpened their live show to a fine point. That dedication shows in this steely-eyed performance of “Drug Tax” the band delivered for BreakThruRadio, tapping into the kind of fiery determination that a bigger scale — a scale that they deserve — necessitates. Expect to be hearing their name more at some point in the near future.
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3. The She’s (PressureDrop.tv)
For as much as it gets featured on this site, the fact remains: good, carefree basement pop — the kind that comes equipped with a band’s singular identity — is surprisingly hard to create. Since they formed, The She’s have been working resiliently to perfect both their approach and that very niche genre. This inspired full session for PressureDrop.tv shows that they’re as close to achieving that goal as anyone.
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4. SAVAK – Reaction (BreakThruRadio)
Session musicians are frequently overlooked despite being the backbone of the recording industry. SAVAK is a supergroup of relatively unheralded background players whose cumulative credits include roles in Obits, Holy Fuck, Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, The Cops, Nation of Ulysses, and more. Apart from their former projects and united under one flag, they’ve clicked and transformed into a wrecking crew. This run through “Reaction” is proof.
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5. The Thermals (KEXP)
Very few bands boast a discography as absurdly strong as The Thermals, one that’s highlighted by The Body, The Blood, The Machine (which itself is one of the finest records of the past 16 years), yet they’ve managed to retain a nearly unparalleled drive that’s constantly reflected in their work. The band’s live show is when that aspect evolves from an endearing trait to an unavoidable reality. KEXP recently hosted the band (with the very welcome addition of Summer Cannibals‘ Jessica Boudreaux) in their studios and filmed them ripping through some highlights of their most recent effort, We Disappear. A loving document of one of the great DIY-leaning punk acts, it more than earned its spot on this list. Enjoy.
Emily Yacina has built a career out of reveling in a comforting softness, conjuring up tantalizing beds of sound and enveloping the listener with the blankets. There’s an inherent warmth in her work that becomes effortlessly inviting while simultaneously creating a pull that stems from a deceptive emotional intricacy. The Sophie Savides-directed video for “A Curse” — which is gorgeously lensed by Kelly Jeffrey — capitalizes on all of those elements with an enticing precision.
Opening on a shot of a forlorn Yacina in a bathtub set against a clinically white backdrop, the camera draws closer, slowly pulling us into her world. Two vases of flowers adorn that backdrop, offering signs of life that soon blossom as the perspective switches to Yacina’s POV which reveals that she’s submerged in a milk-like liquid that single flowers populate. Another perspective shift and the flowers are suddenly everywhere, as a wellspring of noises calmly enter into the track.
Yacina captivates throughout, delivering a startlingly poignant performance that speaks to her abilities as both a composer and a performer. As the clip progresses, the sincerity in Yacina’s songwriting grows clearer as she bravely conveys every emotion that carries “A Curse” with a poise that seems effortless. Eventually, the camera pulls back out in a cyclical reveal that underscores the pained loneliness that informs the narrative of “A Curse” in a moment of reserved devastation.
Overall, “A Curse” is a deeply felt, elegant entry into Emily Yacina’s already impressive body of work. Open, honest, and incisive, it’s perfectly demonstrative of what can be achieved with an idea, a strong team, and a wealth of conviction. In that sense alone, it’s inspiring. What makes it worthwhile extends beyond its underpinnings to its execution. “A Curse” is exceptional at every turn and winds up being a definitive portrait of a formidable artist. After a dip into “A Curse”, it’s proving to be nearly impossible to work up the resolve to leave.
Watch “A Curse” below and pick up Soft Stuff here.
While all of those titles are more than worthy endeavors worth ever single moment of investment that they’ll be given (and likely even more), Bueno’s latest track grabs this post’s headline. Over the past several years, Bueno has gain an extremely dedicated following that have granted them an almost cult-like status among their converts. “I Get Your Back” justifies that adoration with a calmness that nears the serene. Incorporating an off-kilter powerpop sensibility into their typical ’90s-indebted slacker punk approach pays massive dividends here, as the erratic propulsion of “I Got Your Back” leads it into the kind of near-transcendental territory that’s hard to forget.
Listen to “I Got Your Back” below and pre-order Illuminate Your Room here.
After a whirlwind catch-up session saw around 80 new posts go up in the past month, this site’s falling back into old habits. Namely, the preservation of implementing some sort of mixtape for every at every 50-post interval. With summer officially kicking off next week, it felt appropriate to create a mix in anticipation of the increasingly warm weather. Somehow, Heartbreaking Bravery’s now also 900 posts into its existence and some sort of commentary felt fitting as well. To that end, the 25 songs selected below are mostly tracks that have been featured — in some way or another — on this site throughout the course of those 900 posts (including Audacity’s “Hole in the Sky”, which was the the focal point of Heartbreaking Bravery’s first post).
A lot of the songs in Staring Down the Sun are songs that have carried me through previous summers, propelling me forward or comforting me with warmth and familiarity. It’s those two traits, warmth and familiarity, that are underlined most emphatically on this mix as they’re two of the season’s most consistently definitive draws. As such, Staring Down the Sun is a mix that’s heavily populated by friends, old and new, to sustain the kind of camaraderie that’s so often reinvigorated by sense of contentment and desire for exploration that frequently accompanies the season.
Open the windows, call up some friends, start a band, stoke the embers of the fire in the backyard, enjoy the scenery, travel to a new city, go swimming, or do whatever it takes to enjoy the shifting weather. Whatever the option, there’s now a soundtrack to accompany those moments available for the taking. Grab it and go.
Staring Down the Sun‘s tracklist can be found below the embed. Underneath the tracklist are hyperlinks to the preceding 100 posts. Enjoy.
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1. Used Kids – Midwest Midsummer 2. PUP – DVP 3. Audacity – Hole in the Sky 4. Patsy’s Rats – Rock N’ Roll Friend 5. Goodnight Loving – Dead Fish On the Banks 6. PURPLE 7 – Wise Up 7. The Marked Men – Fix My Brain 8. Screaming Females – Wishing Well 9. Good Grief – Cold Compress 10. Jay Som – I Think You’re Alright 11. Icarus Himself – Digging Holes 12. Bent Shapes – New Starts In Old Dominion 13. Jawbreaker Reunion – Friends Theme Song 14. Midnight Reruns – King of Pop 15. Dogs On Acid – Make It Easy 16. Sleeping in the Aviary – Love Song 17. Swearin’ – Hundreds and Thousands 18. Sweet John Bloom – Aging In Place 19. Meat Wave – Cosmic Zoo 20. Mo Troper – Princess 21. Mike Krol – Left Out (Attn: SoCal Garage Rockers) 22. Royal Headache – High 23. Weaves – One More 24. Tenement – Near You 25. Swim Team – Teenage Brain
Ever since Seratones‘ run at last year’s CMJ, the band’s been slowly escalating nearly every facet of their already-formidable presentation. Boasting one of the most awe-inspiring vocalists currently on the circuit, the band delivers a commanding performance here for Audiotree. Grabbing onto something won’t save you from being flattened.
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2. Car Seat Headrest – Fill In The Blank + Vincent (WXPN)
Teens of Denial still confidently stands as one of 2016’s finest records, a fact that will inevitably be reflected by several sources come December, and thanks to the band’s live show it’s still gaining traction. The band tore through “Fill In The Blank” and “Vincent”, the record’s opening two tracks, for WXPN. It’s a masterful run that shows Car Seat Headrest have plenty of tricks up their sleeves.
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3. Courtney Barnett (Strombo Sessions)
Courtney Barnett may very well hold the record for the most Watch This series appearances at this point. An endlessly gifted — and obscenely likable — performer, Barnett’s hyper-intelligent songwriting is allowed to thrive in the live setting. All of those qualities can become even more pronounced in her endearing solo performances, which is squarely the case with this beautiful set that comes courtesy of Strombo Sessions.
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4. Midnight Reruns – Richie the Hammer (Set List)
Last year, Midnight Reruns‘ brilliant Force of Nurture made a very strong showing in this site’s year-end rankings and a large reason for that placement was guitarist/vocalist (and principal songwriter) Graham Hunt’s growth as a lyricist. The record’s most surprising moment may very well have been the emotional devastation contained in “Richie the Hammer”, which the band recently performed for WPR’s excellent Set List series.
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5. Weaves (NPR)
After several years of stellar performances and continuous evolution, Weaves have managed to create quite a few converts. “Shithole“, a fiery moment of reinvention, kicked off a run of songs that currently comprise the most formidable stretch of the band’s still-blossoming career. The band takes on a trio of those selections for one of the most galvanizing Tiny Desk sessions in recent memory. It’s downright electric.
[Editor’s Note: In light of the tragic circumstances in Orlando, there was some debate over featuring a song with a title that could be construed negatively in the face of that event. However, now more than ever, it seems deeply necessary to endorse and promote acts of kindness, understanding, and empathy. It’s because of this song’s message and the good that can come from its purchase that it’s in today’s headlining spot.]
All of the above items amounted to an extraordinary run — especially for the full streams — for such an abbreviated time frame. One of the most heartening things to emerge during that stretch came courtesy of site favorites Lithuania, a band fronted by Dr. Dog drummer and A Year’s Worth of Memoriescontributor Eric Slick. “Kill The Thing You Love” was originally intended for the band’s latest record, 2015’s astounding Hardcore Friends, but was ultimately nixed for being too out of sync on a thematic level. Fortunately, the song wasn’t just relegated to an unheard archives litter and was recently released as a standalone single to benefit Women Against Abuse, a Philadelphia organization that aids women who are escaping or have survived domestic abuse.
“Kill The Thing You Love” itself is one of the band’s more gnarled, rough-hewn offerings. Relentlessly aggressive in its dynamic approach, the song actually gains a wealth of power from its decidedly direct aesthetics, elevating an oddly moving narrative. Slick delivers the most impassioned vocal delivery of his career and the song uses its lo-fi nature to amplify its own propulsion. In a little over three and a half minutes, the band embraces a chaotic sludge that underlines the confusion that frequently manifests and overpowers the decision-making in relationships that make room for — and frequently try to excuse instances of — domestic abuse. It’s a bold song that calls attention to a dark reality that goes ignored far too often.
Here’s the statement that Slick issued to Post-Trashfor the great premiere piece that accompanied the song:
The song “Kill The Thing You Love” was written in 2014. Its intended purpose was for the Hardcore Friends album, but we decided to leave it off because it didn’t fit the narrative. It’s also a complicated listen. However, the song is of great importance to me. It was written from the perspective of a young woman who runs away from her abysmal home life and starts fresh in a safe environment. It’s based on a story that a close friend told me about her incredibly difficult and abusive childhood. “Kill The Thing You Love” is indeed a jarring title, but its intent is more of a mantra of empowerment. Sometimes we have to let go of things (kill in the figurative sense) we love, especially when they’re hurting us. Abuse is still everywhere. A direct example is the inexcusable behavior of Seagreen Records. Seagreen was initially supposed to release this song until they came under fire for very serious sexual abuse charges. I was horrified. Luckily, Lame-O Records agreed to release this song. I’m relieved that we can benefit a great cause in the process.
Listen to “Kill The Thing You Love” below and get the track (and donate to a good cause) here.
Every so often a new, unknown band emerges and challenges the entire infrastructure of the music industry. For all of its deeply unnecessary — and potentially damaging — support beams, overt interest in revenue over quality, and grossly tilted geographic priorities, the one thing it can’t hold down forever is raw talent. This is where bands like the Bloomington, IN-based Jacky Boy come into play. Operating out of America’s heartland, several steps removed from the hyper-connected trappings of LA and NYC, the band will likely have the unique opportunity to pace their own artistic growth, though “Bad” suggests that they’re already well on their way to realizing their full potential.
Very few songs have the immediate impact that “Bad” carries, even less when the band doesn’t even have an official release under its belt. From the onset “Bad” surges ahead like Courtney Barnett at her most furious before abruptly tapering off into a territory that’s decidedly more indebted to ’90s powerpop and slacker punk. Dynamic shifts, soaring backing vocals, and sharp, effective guitar work coalesce and elevate “Bad” from a promising entry into a legitimately great one.
Only a few songs into their career, the trio’s embraced a remarkably well-crafted identity that pays homage to both its forebears and their unlikely contemporaries (many of which are affiliated with Exploding In Sound). There’s a decisiveness to the decision making on “Boy” that reveals itself gradually. From the isolated Dinosaur Jr-esque guitar breaks to the hushed bridge to the deeply relatable world-weary sensibilities contained in the lyrics, “Boy” manages to perfectly bridge the divide between the past and the present by identifying the unifying traits of both the eras and the genres that have formed their approach.
Everything Jack Boy tries out on “Bad” works to an uncanny perfection, all the while piecing itself into something much larger than its opening segment might indicate. There’s a somewhat shocking level of nuance to “Bad” — especially considering the band’s only a few songs into their career — that ably expands the song’s pull on both an intellectual level and something that’s far more immediate. “Bad” doesn’t just reward investment, it openly invites, encourages, and all but guarantees that the listener will actively want to explore it further.
A triumphant opening statement and an exhilarating listen, “Bad” confidently marks the beginning of a new stage for Jacky Boy. With any luck, they’ll find that their audience never stops growing.
Listen to “Bad” below and pre-order the Jacky Boy EP from Turd Wurld here.
Nearly all of Future Biff contributed to the 2015 edition of A Year’s Worth of Memories, a fact that has literally no bearing on the assessment of their unexpected, extraordinary I Crashed Your Car EP. The band’s fronted by Geronimo! keys man Ben Grigg, whose also been putting out incredibly compelling solo work as benjamin783 and who handles bass duties as well as vocals for this release, which immediately ensures that Future Biff won’t be a retread of the band that left a crater-sized hole in this site’s heart after hanging up their cables last year.
Opening with the rousing “Built To Last”, Future Biff teases that they’ll be a much different kind of beast than Geronimo!, providing emphasis on both a strong melodic sensibility, grounded basement pop compositions, and swirling, feedback-laden chaos. Only “Redline”, I Crashed Your Car‘s jittery final track, passes the two and a half minute mark, allowing the EP to be a blazing force of pure destruction. All five of the songs seem surprisingly purposeful, undoubtedly aided by the benefit of having a joint drumming attack anchored by two of the finest percussionists on the circuit.
Even with all of the singular talent involved in Future Biff, the project feels like it belongs to Grigg, whose long had a penchant for writing sharply intuitive, scrappy punk-tinged basement pop. It’s a trait that shines through I Crashed Your Car with an emphatic abundance. Fiery, propulsive, and unavoidable, Grigg steers the band through the carnage of one of 2016’s finest EP’s with a demented smile. Give in or get out of the way.
Listen to I Crashed Your Car below and pick it up from the band here.
Last Friday night, Minneapolis’ famed 7th St. Entry played host to a powerful bill that included three bands who have earned coverage on this site: Charly Bliss, Rozwell Kid, and PUP. The three and a half hour drive out to catch the show had been a foregone conclusion since its announcement and a large part of that decision had been the involvement of Charly Bliss, who opened the show. Ever since the band topped this site’s list for EP’s in 2014 with their best-of-decade contender, Soft Serve, they’ve been covered and endorsed relentlessly in these pages. One of the most unavoidable factors in ensuring that heavy focus was their overpowering strength as a live act.
Over the past several years, the band’s been meticulously tweaking their stage show and seeing their dedication paying a steadily increasing number of dividends. They’re an extremely dynamic act making exceptionally well-crafted basement pop that comes with a serious bite, despite the immediate sugary high that it so frequently induces. Guitarist/vocalist Eva Hendricks is (understandably) the focal point of their live show, operating as a bundle of joyous squeals that can’t be contained for longer than a few seconds at a time.
All of the band feeds off of her example and put their heart into the kind of showmanship that clearly underlines that they have a legitimate love for playing music. No one’s overshadowed and everyone seems like they’re continuously out to prove something that they couldn’t accomplish with just a music-related degree (something that’s been acquired by all four members). A handful of recognizable favorites were brought out into the set — including recent single “Ruby” — but the real power was derived from a trio of brand-new tunes.
The band’s been sitting on a collection of songs for well over a year that’s more than enough to constitute a great album (an album that they hope to have out sometime in the relatively near future) so to see them confidently surging ahead with even more material is a great sign that the various delays in release haven’t left them deterred. On the contrary, those delays seem to have set something off in the band that makes them even more eager to obliterate the slowly-forming expectations surrounding their eventual debut. After yet another set that was constantly on the crest of perfection, the question no longer rests with whether or not the band will have their breakout moment, the question is when that moment will come.
Playing in the wake of such an explosive act can be a daunting task but Rozwell Kid seemed more than up to the challenge (and have had a long history playing intimidating bills) and they stuck to their formula: conjure up some propulsion by blending recognizable recent influences with over-the-top stage theatrics that go back a little further, all the while maintaining ear-shattering volume. While the constant mugging, windmills, rock poses, and general mugging from the band’s bassist and lead guitarist could be slightly off-putting at times, the other half of the band kept things relatively grounded to create a weirdly compelling contrast effect.
Every bit of the band’s theatrical gimmickry was balanced out, at one point or the other, by something that felt more genuine than showy from one of the band’s less complacent members. At times, the physicality of the theatrics largely overshadowed the band’s music, which veered from Guitar Hero-aping classic rock stompers to numbers that felt more indebted to a surprisingly unexplored space between late-era Replacements and early-era Weezer. Even with all of the additional Rock God 101 bells and whistles, Rozwell Kid never inspired active boredom and wound up being a very strong connecting bridge between the spiked-punch rush of Charly Bliss and the no-holds-barred chaos that PUP was about to set off.
The fourth article that ever ran on Heartbreaking Bravery — and the very first album review — centered on PUP’s self-titled record, immediately after it was released in Canada. The band had just recently changed their name from Topanga, put out a music video that would begin a shocking dominance in that format, and weren’t anywhere close to breaking through stateside (that would come well over a year later). In the time that followed those events, I tried and failed to see the band on multiple occasions. A perfect combination of circumstances positioned me at the lip of the Entry’s stage, anxiously anticipating what would become one of the most formidable displays of angst-powered aggression I’ve ever witnessed.
PUP, the band’s official debut full-length, impressed a whole lot of people and led to an ever-expanding cast of die-hard fans. This year’s outstanding The Dream Is Over didn’t just aid that trend, it increased its velocity tenfold. One of the best punk records in years, the record played a large role in selling out the Entry and packing it to the brim with a cast of characters (that ranged an impressive spectrum), who seemed hell-bent on throwing down. All it took was the intro of “If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You, I Will” to get things started.
Literally less than thirty seconds into PUP’s set, the entire main floor of 7th St. Entry became a thriving pit of chaos, unchecked aggression, and intense camaraderie. Guitarist/vocalist (and principal songwriter) Stefan Babcock would later reveal to me that in those moments, the crowd established his ideal for an audience: rowdy to the point of violence but never crossing the threshold into a territory that made its participants afraid. That mode never ceased for what was over an hour of blistering anthems about self-doubt, self-loathing, anger, regret, fear, and loss.
In the first five minutes alone, Babcock asked if the audience was alright on three separate occasions, unable to suppress a grin as the audience grew increasingly out of control. After “If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You, I Will” bled into “DVP”, just as it does on the record (easily 2016’s best moment of sequencing on record), I was forced up onto the stage, clinging to a PA for dear life while attempting to maintain enough balance to shoot/film the show. Not long after, the show was stopped so that an audience member could look for their glasses. A “very busted” pair made their way up to the stage but turned out to belong to an entirely separate owner. Later, a single show made its way up to the stage and the show was stopped once more. Glasses: repeat.
A handful of songs into their set, Babcock could sense that the crowd’s insane levels of aggression weren’t going to wane and instructed everyone on the rules of a “Canadian mosh pit”, which mostly just amounts to apologizing to anyone you touch. It was the first of two Canadian-themed jokes of the night, with an endearing crack later on about how “no one wants to hear four white Canadians cover Prince”, following a very sincere expression of gratitude over being able to play in a space that was The Purple One’s de facto home.
Immediately after that announcement, PUP hit the highlight of the night in a searing, volatile run through “Old Wounds” that saw Babcock leaping into a stage dive while still screaming his brains out. Unsurprisingly, “Old Wounds” wound up amplifying the audience’s energy, allowing both band and audience to feed off each other in a state of total symbiosis. Each propelled the other forward to the point of near-exhaustion, loving every single moment of collision that the relationship generated on either side.
Every shout-a-long became a scream-a-long and every riff, snare hit, and Cheshire Cat grin took on additional meaning as the band ripped through what’s already an astonishing arsenal of songs only two full-lengths into their career: “If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You, I Will”, “DVP”, “Dark Days”, “Lionheart”, “Familiar Patterns”, “Old Wounds”, “Factories”, “Yukon”, “Mabu”, “Guilt Trip”, and “Reservoir” all earned particularly strong reactions, while the audience used brief moments of the songs that came between to re-position, reset, and resume their wild-eyed thrashing.
“Reservoir”, the band’s final song, left everyone scrambling for extra breaths as they screamed, writhed on the stage, flung themselves off the rafters of the Entry’s ceiling into crowd-surfing the mosh pit, or — in the case of one fan — laid flat on the stage, screaming into a microphone that Babcock brought down to his level so that they could share in one of the evening’s final defining moments. As they screamed into the mic together, the communal aesthetic of the night solidified even further and the barrier separating band from artist was temporarily lifted so that everyone could truly be in it together.
Through the whole ordeal, like Charly Bliss at the start of the night, PUP wore their feelings with pride; no moment in the show looked like anything less than a moment that meant something to the band on a very real, personal level. After the smoke from the scintillating run through “Reservoir” cleared, the band would lean over the lip of the stage to embrace the battered front lines, shake their hands, give them high-fives, and mouth “thanks” repeatedly. Babcock would express this throughout the night in repeated asides of affectionate expletives and stunned exclamations, gazing out over the crowd like the band had found a new home that they never wanted to leave.
Watch live videos from each of the bands sets below (including some very shaky PUP captures) and underneath the embed, view an extensive photo gallery of the show. Enjoy.
Few bands, if any, have had more words written about them in these spaces and I haven’t pushed any band more than Tenement. I’ve written about the trio at literally every opportunity over the past eight years and the band keeps providing reasons to sing their praises. Somehow, despite their lengthy history, “Feral Cat Tribe” stands as the band’s first official video. Featuring guitarist/vocalist Amos Pitsch’s Dusk roommates (Colin Wilde, Matt Stranger, and Julia Blair), “Feral Cat Tribe” also heavily promotes Tenement’s own ethos (stay true to what works on a DIY platform and elevate the talented people that surround you in the process).
The video itself is a dizzying, disorienting run through a relatively nondescript building as the band (and their friends) mime their way through “Feral Cat Tribe”, a highlight from one of last year’s best albums. “Feral Cat Tribe” is a shot in a way that evokes the 360-angle video trend without ever succumbing into gimmickry or egregious pageantry, opting to make a slight statement on the nature of art: no matter how it’s dressed, if the material’s core maintains its convictions, it’ll more than likely be worthwhile.
Swooping camera angles, quick edits, and constantly, continuously moving pieces are also reflective of the commendable principles the band’s endorsed since their beginning. This is music and filmmaking that’s tethered to the earth and openly embraces all of its cracks, flaws, and bruises. For Tenement’s entire career, the band’s been finding ways to find beauty in damage and the clip for “Feral Cat Tribe” continues that trend on the visual spectrum. There’s a certain level of courageousness that’s required to even attempt what Tenement’s been doing lately and they’re continuing to make it look effortless.
Whether the band’s evoking classic Americana art forms or simply building their own identity, they’re doing it with uncanny precision and a wealth of feeling. “Feral Cat Tribe” — what’s said to be the first of many music videos for Predatory Headlights— suggests the band’s grasp extends even further than what they’ve previously shown. A fascinating clip from one of the best bands currently going, “Feral Cat Tribe” further cements their status as one of today’s most trustworthy acts; everything the band delivers is battered gold.
Watch “Feral Cat Tribe” below and pick up Predatory Headlights from Don Giovanni here.
Heartbreaking Bravery 