and when I think about your face, there's always something hard to place/the way the light would hit your features when we were hanging by the bleachers

Album of the week

Joyce Manor - I Used to Go to This Bar

For a long time, I didn't think I liked this band. And then when I started to second guess that, I went back to listen to their really early stuff and I remembered right--I, in fact, did not like them much at all (sorry to anyone who likes that lo-fi shit the best).

But after "All My Friends Are So Depressed" floored me last year, I went a little less far backwards and turns out that I would've loved them if I'd given them a second chance starting from Million Dollars to Kill Me onwards.

I Used to Go to This Bar sees them tinkering around the edges with their sound, sometimes to great success (the aforementioned Smiths tribute "All My Friends...") and sometimes less so ("After All You Put Me Through"), but the low points are buoyed by the high points of classic California pop-punk.

The title track opens with a brief Sum 41 homage of all things, before it shifts into "Blink 182 sings a Craig Finn song" territory (complimentary). And absolute ripper, "I Know Where Mark Chen Lives," simultaneously alludes to Television Personalities and the now enigmatic So-Cal pop punker via the title.

Joyce Manor play the Commodore on May 11th with Militarie Gun, Teen Mortgage, and Combat

Song of the week

Slowlight - Cruel Morning

I feel like the target market for this late-90s/early-00s kinda shoe gazey indie pop stuff, but when it hits, it really hits.

Classic of the week

Danzig - Twist of Cain

A PSA to let you know the first (and easily best) Danzig solo album is back in print on LP.

More heat

Sluice - Beadie

Probably kinda rude to say "I like this because it sounds like Bill Callahan" without posting any of the new Bill Callahan songs, but here we are.

Dutch Interiors - Ground Scores

"It's so silly [listening] to loves songs, while we teeter at that edge."

now playing: Bully - Milkman