New Music

Favorites of 2025: Elephants and Stars – Under The Earth and Above Heaven

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Indie rock has always thrived on the fringes: small venues, tiny labels, and the slow-building careers that reward patience more than hype. Few contemporary bands embody this spirit better than Elephants and Stars, the Canadian band whose latest album, Under the Earth and Above Heaven, feels like the result of years dedicated to refining melody, guitar as truth, rock and roll meaning, and a hard-won optimism tempered with a slight sarcasm that comes from not taking oneself too seriously. A real understanding that life has ups and downs.

The album’s title suggests a band thinking about place, about being suspended between hardship and hope, about grounding themselves even as they reach. And in many ways, this duality captures the spirit of Elephants and Stars themselves: musicians who write like they’ve lived a little, but still believe that a good chorus can solve something in the soul. A great song can change the world.

Under the Earth and Above Heaven is, simply put, their most confident and emotionally resonant work to date. But the record is also a reminder of why rock, guitars, harmonies, and honest storytelling still matter.

The band behind the sound
To understand the record, it helps to understand the people who made it. Elephants and Stars operate in a tradition familiar to fans of early 2000s alternative rock: tight rhythm sections, guitars that shimmer and crunch, and lyrics that manage sincerity without slipping into sentimentality.

The lineup, anchored by frontman Manfred Sittmann, whose signature vocals blend warmth with a slight rasp, has solidified into a group whose interplay feels lived-in. Sittmann writes and sings with the clarity of someone who knows the exact weight of each line, but the band behind him keeps things agile rather than precious. Sittmann’s melodic instincts shape much of the band’s identity. He’s joined by Adam Seed, whose lead guitar work brings a sharp, expressive edge to their sound, and longtime collaborator Michael MacMillan, whose bass lines provide both structure, rhythm, and warmth. The rhythm section finds its heartbeat in drummer Stewart McKinney, while Simon Head expands the band’s sonic palette with textured, atmospheric keyboard layers. Together, they create a modern rock sound grounded in pop-punk roots. Music that’s unmistakably hook-driven yet designed with a clear mission: to help bring rock back to the forefront.

The band’s story stretches back years, especially for Sittmann and MacMillan, who previously played together in the excellent group Soap Opera. Their long creative history gives the songs on their latest release a natural chemistry and ease, the feeling of musicians who know exactly how to respond to one another. That chemistry reaches a new peak on Under the Earth and Above Heaven, released in February of this year and produced by Ian Blurton, a collaboration that sharpens their sound while preserving the emotional immediacy that defines their work.

The guitars, often handled in layered pairs, move between bright open-chord passages and more aggressive leads. The bass lines are melodic without overpowering the mix, and the drumming is purposeful and punchy where it should be, restrained where the lyrics need breathing room. The result is a sound built on chemistry rather than simply studio polish.

The band feels like a cohort of people who know how to play to each other’s strengths. This matters because Under the Earth and Above Heaven is an album that depends on emotional pacing: crescendos that feel earned, shifts in tone that feel organic, and choruses that arrive with the momentum of a live show.

A sound defined by uplift without naïveté
From the opening track, Elephants and Stars make it clear that they are uninterested in the cynicism that often dominates modern rock. Their guitars ring with a kind of unguarded cascade of sonic joy, even when the lyrics are wrestling with frustration or loss. One of the most striking qualities of this album is how hope and melancholy coexist—not in competition, but in conversation.

The production leans into this duality. Vocals sit slightly forward in the mix, giving Sittmann’s storytelling a sense of directness and intimacy. The guitars, meanwhile, expand outward: wide, textured, layered. It’s the kind of sound associated with late-afternoon festival sets—sunlight still visible, the air cooling, the crowd settling into a collective feeling. And the sound? Loud, propulsive, aggressive, like a sonic caress.

What keeps the record from drifting into nostalgia is the band’s sense of precision. Each song feels built, not merely written. The hooks land with purpose. The bridges feel like necessary expansions, not detours. And the choruses—Elephants and Stars’ greatest strength—arrive like emotional confirmations.
This is a band that believes in melody the way some bands believe in distortion pedals: as the emotional engine of the music.

The lyrical world of the album
If the sound carries the emotional lift, the lyrics provide the grounding. Under the Earth and Above Heaven reads like a record about transition—moving from one stage of life to another, reconciling who you were with who you’re trying to become. The “earth” and “heaven” of the title function less as metaphysical spaces and more as metaphors for the pressures we carry and the aspirations we hold. Across the record, recurring themes emerge.

Across Under the Earth and Above Heaven, Elephants and Stars weave a thematic through-line that feels both deeply personal and universally readable. The record begins by making peace with the past, returning again and again to the bittersweet truth that old mistakes never quite vanish. Yet the band refuses to sink into regret. Instead, they treat memory like an old photograph—something to regard with a mix of tenderness and hard-earned gratitude for having made it through. That reflective stance sets the stage for one of the album’s central concerns: the search for steadiness in a world that rarely offers it. Life, as their lyrics suggest, often feels precarious, a suspended moment in which you’re “almost there” but never fully settled. But rather than express anxiety, the band leans toward determination, riding out the instability with resolve.

That determination is buoyed by another recurring insight: the importance of connection. Throughout the album, relationships of all kinds—romantic partners, close friends, the communities we build around ourselves—appear as the forces that keep us grounded. These songs push against the temptation to withdraw, insisting instead that meaning comes from being in the world with others. And within that engagement, the band finds flashes of transcendence in the most ordinary places: singing in the car, watching the sunrise after a sleepless night, catching the sound of someone’s laughter at just the right moment. These quiet, luminous details echo the “above heaven” imagery of the album’s title, suggesting that the extraordinary often reveals itself in the spaces where we least expect it.

The record carries an autobiographical weight without tipping into confession. Rather than offering a straightforward personal narrative, it gestures toward shared emotional terrain—less “here is my story” and more “here is a feeling you have probably known.” And while a full song-by-song analysis would exceed the scope of this discussion, several tracks stand out for the way they shape the album’s emotional arc, guiding listeners through reflection, uncertainty, connection, and ultimately the little but meaningful possibilities of joy.

The opener: urgency with clarity
The opening track, The Ceiling, wastes no time establishing the album’s stakes. A driving beat, guitars that arrive fully formed, and lyrics that describe the moment when indecision becomes action. It feels like a thesis statement: the band is not here to wallow; they are here to move. A bit more than midway through the record comes a standout track that shifts the tempo and deepens the tone, ‘Unlucky.’ This is where the band’s lyrical strengths shine: reflections on resilience, the cost of growth, and the quiet strength found in simply continuing. The arrangement builds around a groove—guitar, sway in the keyboards, more subtle percussion, then a full electric swell—mirroring the emotional climb.

The late-album surge: an anthem of uplift
As the album nears its conclusion, the band leans into one of their most triumphant choruses to date on ‘Paint Me Alive’. It’s the kind of moment designed to be shouted back at the stage, hands in the air, the kind of collective catharsis that only rock music can produce. The lyrics, which center on choosing light even when darkness is familiar, feel earned precisely because the album has carried listeners through doubt and tension.

The final track, The Ghosts, does something rare: it provides closure without collapsing into tidy resolution. It acknowledges the uncertainties that remain but offers a melodic reassurance that moving forward—however imperfectly—is worth celebrating.

Three elements make Under the Earth and Above Heaven one of Elephants and Stars’ most compelling releases: 1) Musical consistency without monotony. 2) The band has refined their sound without becoming predictable. And 3) Each song feels connected to the whole, but no two entries collapse into each other.

Emotional honesty that creates community
In an era where irony often dominates indie music discourse, Elephants and Stars commit wholeheartedly to sincerity. Their stories are earnest but never naive. The band creates A sense of community embedded in the music. Listening to the album feels like being welcomed into a shared emotional space. It’s personal, but it’s not private.

Elephants and Stars occupy an interesting place in today’s musical world. They are neither trend-chasers nor purists. Instead, they carry forward the tradition of emotionally articulate guitar rock: bands like The Weakerthans, early Jimmy Eat World, or mid-period The Hold Steady—artists who treat songwriting as craft rather than marketing. Their music reminds listeners that rock still has a role to play in articulating everyday emotional life. Not the grand dramas, but the subtle struggles: trying to be better, trying to stay hopeful, trying to find footing. In a digital era marked by fragmentation and fatigue, Under the Earth and Above Heaven feels refreshingly grounded.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of the album is its replayability. The first listen offers immediacy—hooks that land, choruses that stick. But subsequent listens reveal the details: the way a harmony hangs in the background, the way a guitar line subtly echoes a lyrical theme, the way the rhythm section builds tension without overstating it. This is music built not just to impress, but to accompany. It is the kind of record listeners grow with and discover far more over repeated listens.

An album for the moment we’re in
Under the Earth and Above Heaven succeeds because it feels like an album made by people committed to the power of song—not spectacle, not persona, but the craft of building moments of connection. In a fractured cultural moment, that feels almost radical.

Elephants and Stars may never be the kind of band that dominates streaming algorithms or headlines massive festivals. But this record demonstrates why they matter: they make music that sees listeners clearly. They make music that names the feelings many of us carry. They make music that reaches upward, outward, toward one another.

And sometimes, that’s exactly what good rock music is supposed to do.

Favorites of 2025: The Kyle Sowashes – Start Making Sense

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We could have easily titled this column ‘Making Sense of It All: The Kyle Sowashes and the Enduring Power of Indie Rock Honesty,’ because the band’s new record not only showcases their musical growth but also highlights how their plainspoken sincerity continues to resonate in a genre often crowded with irony and affectation.

Independent rock has long thrived on the margins—small rooms, frayed gear, and bands that carve out meaning from the ordinary. Few groups embody this spirit as honestly and as energetically as The Kyle Sowashes, the long-running Columbus, Ohio outfit centered around singer, guitarist, and songwriter Kyle Sowash. Their terrific new record, Start Making Sense, feels both like a culmination of years of steady work and a refreshed sense of purpose. It is an album that sounds lived-in yet ambitious, familiar yet surprisingly expansive.

Like so many of their releases, it is driven by a collaborative band spirit, anchored by Sowash’s unmistakable songwriting voice. But on Start Making Sense, the musicians around him play an especially notable role. This is not merely a collection of songs written by a single songwriter—it is a group effort in the best sense, marked by thoughtful arrangements, spirited performances, and a chemistry that can only develop after years of making music together. The result is a record that feels warm, wry, cathartic, and deeply human.

A Band Made of People, Not Parts

The Kyle Sowashes have always been a band that foregrounds musicianship over mythology. No one is placed on a pedestal; every member shapes the sound. On Start Making Sense, the interplay among the musicians is central to what makes the record feel so alive.

At the center, of course, is Kyle Sowash, the principal songwriter, guitarist, and narrator of the band’s emotional landscape. His style has always blended self-deprecation with sincerity, humor with frustration, resignation with hope. He writes songs the way people talk when they’ve stopped trying to impress anyone. That honesty, paired with a gift for sticky melodies and driving chord progressions, continues to anchor the band.

But the supporting cast expands and elevates the material. The rhythm section, always a strength for the group, is especially tight on this release. The basslines give songs bounce and propulsion, while the drumming adds both momentum and nuance—capable of big-room punch but also subtle shifts in tone that mirror Sowash’s lyrical turns. Together they give the album its shape: urgent when needed, contemplative when the songs pull inward.

The guitar arrangements, too, show a band deeply comfortable playing with space. There are moments of noisy celebration, fuzzed-out riffs, and guitar lines that nod to 90s indie rock and power pop without ever feeling derivative. But there is also restraint when the songs call for it—arpeggiated lines, single-note phrases, and open-chord patterns that accent Sowash’s vocal pacing. The band understands when to push and when to stay out of the way, and that mutual sensitivity is one of the record’s quiet triumphs.

All of this makes Start Making Sense feel less like a front-person project and more like a snapshot of a genuine musical community. The band members are collaborators—not session players—and the record reflects that shared vision.

Sound: An Indie Rock Dial Tuned Just Right

The defining pleasure of listening to The Kyle Sowashes is the feeling that the band knows exactly who they are and that they approach their sound not as a limitation but as an expressive engine. Start Making Sense follows this tradition, delivering songs that are rooted in classic indie rock but refreshed through craft, energy, and emotional clarity.

The album’s guitar-forward sound recalls the big-hearted crunch of bands like Superchunk, The Weakerthans, early Guided by Voices, and 90s midwestern basement rock. But The Kyle Sowashes are not imitators. Their tone is warmer, their pacing more deliberate, their hooks more conversational. They capture what it feels like to be a functional adult who still carries adolescent anxieties; what it feels like to want to grow but not always know how.

The production strikes a careful balance. It is clean enough to reveal the band’s tight musicianship but raw enough to preserve the lived-in charm that defines their identity. The vocals are present but never over-polished; the guitars are textured but not overly layered; the drums have a live-room feel that makes even the more introspective songs sound communal.

This approach is particularly effective because Sowash’s songwriting thrives on immediacy. These songs feel like they were meant to be played in small rooms full of people who understand what it’s like to try, fail, and try again. The sonic palette—guitars that jangle and buzz, drums that sprint and shuffle, bass that grounds and guides—mirrors the emotional palette of the songs themselves.

What the Lyrics Reveal: Vulnerability Without Pretension

What has always separated Kyle Sowash from many of his indie rock peers is his ability to write lyrics that feel like real conversations. He avoids metaphors that spin out into abstraction and instead leans on the everyday: the tension between optimism and exhaustion, the mundane rhythms of adulthood, the stubborn persistence of doubt.

On Start Making Sense, the lyrics feel particularly pointed. There is a thematic thread running through the record about wanting to take stock of one’s life, wanting to be better (or at least different), but also feeling the tug of old habits or long-held insecurities. This tension animates the album emotionally.

Sowash wrestles with questions familiar to anyone who has lived long enough to feel the weight of their own decisions:

  • Am I becoming the person I hoped to be?
  • Am I letting people down without realizing it?
  • Is it too late to make meaningful changes?
  • Why does clarity arrive when I am least prepared for it?

And yet, the writing never lapses into self-pity. Sowash has a rare talent for pairing difficult emotions with flashes of humor or casual understatement. His delivery—half earnest, half exasperated—adds to this effect. Even in the most introspective moments, he trusts his audience. He doesn’t sermonize or hide behind dense metaphor. He simply tells the truth as he sees it.

The Album as a Whole: Why Start Making Sense Works

The strength of the record lies not just in its individual songs but in its overall narrative arc. Start Making Sense feels like a journey, not in a conceptual or theatrical sense, but in the emotional progression from beginning to end.

The early tracks tend to have a forward-thrusting, energetic urgency—songs filled with questions, doubts, and attempts to find clarity. As the album unfolds, the pacing shifts: there are moments of introspection, acceptance, humor, resignation, and renewed commitment.

By the final songs, the album arrives somewhere quieter and more grounded. The narrator has not solved everything—far from it—but there is a sense of movement, of incremental progress. And that sense is arguably more meaningful than any dramatic revelation would be.

This emotional pacing mirrors the band’s musical pacing. The guitars pull back when the lyrics sink deeper; the rhythm section tightens when the narrator feels unsettled; the arrangements widen when Sowash leans into hopeful refrains. The band listens to the songs, and the songs reward that attention.

Why They Matter Now

There is something profoundly refreshing about hearing a band like The Kyle Sowashes release a record like Start Making Sense in 2025. In a music culture where so many albums are shaped by algorithms, trends, or online personas, this record feels defiantly human. It is made by musicians who value craft, community, and honesty over spectacle.

Moreover, the themes of Start Making Sense—struggle, ambivalence, small victories, persistent hope—resonate in a cultural moment marked by fatigue and uncertainty. Many listeners will hear echoes of their own lives in the record: the feeling of trying to recalibrate when everything seems slightly off; the desire to “start making sense” of things that once felt straightforward.

The album does not promise transformation or transcendence. Instead, it offers companionship—a reminder that confusion and self-questioning are universal, and that music can help make sense of things even when life does not.

A Career Highlight and a Quiet Triumph

Start Making Sense stands as one of The Kyle Sowashes’ most affecting and best-crafted albums. It blends the energy of earlier records with a deeper emotional palette; it shows a band confident in its identity yet open to growth. The musicianship is sharp, the lyrics are resonant, and the sound manages to be both comfortingly familiar and subtly evolved.

It is not merely a strong indie rock record—it is a document of adulthood, of persistence, of reassessment, of trying again. In its modesty, it finds profundity; in its humor, it finds catharsis; in its unvarnished honesty, it finds connection. For longtime fans, Start Making Sense will feel like a natural and satisfying next chapter. For new listeners, it offers a compelling introduction to a band that has quietly built one of the most sincere bodies of work in Midwestern indie rock. And for everyone, it offers something increasingly rare: a rock album that makes you feel less alone.

Video of The Day: The Beths – Mother, Pray For Me

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“Mother, Pray for Me” finds The Beths doing what they do best: wrapping emotional unease in bright, tensile power-pop. It’s a song that feels instantly familiar if you know their catalog—those interlocking guitar lines, the melodic immediacy, Liz Stokes’ unmistakable vocal clarity—but it also pushes toward something rawer and more pleading than their usual wry self-interrogations.

From its opening measures, the song pulses with a kind of restless confession. Stokes delivers the title phrase not as a dramatic flourish but as a weary admission, a reaching-out from someone who’s been holding it together for too long. The Beths specialize in songs about the gap between who we want to be and who we are on our worst days; here, that gap takes on a spiritual edge. There’s a sense of hitting bottom—not catastrophically, but in the quieter, more believable ways people actually unravel.

The arrangement mirrors that emotional arc. The guitars shimmer and dart; the rhythm section plays with an almost anxious tightness, as if trying to keep the song from slipping out of its own grip. Harmonies, one of The Beths’ signature strengths, arrive like little reinforcements—friends showing up, steadying a shoulder. When the chorus lands, it’s both a release and a recognition: the pop sheen doesn’t lighten the weight of the plea so much as hold it with tenderness.

Lyrically, the song walks that Beths tightrope between self-reproach and self-awareness. The narrator isn’t blaming the world or asking for absolution; they’re simply acknowledging the moments when coping feels like an act of faith. The invocation of a mother’s prayer is less religious than relational—an admission that sometimes we need someone else’s hope to borrow.

“Mother, Pray for Me” ultimately stands out because it expands the band’s emotional vocabulary without abandoning their sonic DNA. It’s catchy, it’s cutting, and it lingers, an anthem for anyone who’s ever felt a little lost and dared to ask for help, even quietly.

Favorites of 2025: Sadbox – Everything’s A Shame

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Sadbox and Everything’s A Shame

In a musical landscape flooded with glossy production and instant-stream forgettability, Everything’s A Shame stands out — not because it tries to conform, but because it embraces messy humanity: raw ideas, family schedules, basement rehearsals, and songs born from everyday chaos. The EP from Dayton-based rock band Sadbox (released October 3, 2025) feels intimately local while resonating with universal truths.

For a band balancing real-life demands — kids, careers, responsibilities — Sadbox delivers a sound that is energetic, quirky, honest, and sometimes unsettling. The result is a three-song burst of “technical weirdo rock,” as some have called it — music that doesn’t aim for radio-friendly formulas or uniform polish but seeks genuine expression, emotional depth, and a touch of controlled chaos.

In what follows, I examine who these musicians are, how the EP was created, what their sound and lyrics reveal, and why Everything’s A Shame feels like a small but significant critique of the sanitized norms of mainstream rock.

Who’s making the noise — the people behind Sadbox

Sadbox isn’t a typical rock band that churns out songs just for fame. It’s a group of musicians grounded in everyday life, each with responsibilities beyond music. Sadbox is led by guitarist and lead singer Paul Levy, whose dual role as a surgeon brings a unique mix of precision and spontaneity to the band’s sound. He’s joined by Eli Alban on guitar, who also plays in The 1984 Draft and adds extra tonal nuance and energy to the group. Ryan Goudy provides the band’s steady, melodic bass foundation, while Ray Owens propels the songs with his dynamic, intuitive drumming. Completing the lineup for this release is Rachele Alban, whose vocals and keyboard work expand Sadbox’s sonic palette and deepen the emotional texture of the record.

The record — recorded, mixed, and mastered by local engineer/producer Fred Vahldiek known as Fredzo at Fredzoz Studio (one of our favorite records from The 1984 Draft, Best Friends Forever was recorded there) — is simple, direct, and straightforward. As drummer Ray Owens mentioned in an interview, balancing family life (with a collective total of 13 kids in the band) means music sometimes has to be as spontaneous and immediate as a family dinner: “the practice forum is similar to a live show.” That constraint — rather than hurting the music — seems to sharpen it, giving the band’s sound a rough clarity and urgency that polished over-production often hides.

Sound and style: “technical weirdo rock” with heart and edge

Sadbox’s music has been described as “alternapop / college-rock-style,” but Everything’s A Shame doesn’t fit neatly into any single category. Instead, it combines elements of grunge, rock, and weird-pop, with occasional narrative or character-driven lyrics that evoke theatrical rock or even prog-lite experiments.

The opening track — “Dust” — leans into ’90s grunge style. Over-amped vocals, gritty guitar sounds, and a tight rhythm section evoke the emotional chaos and existential worry of that time. The feeling of movement — a car speeding down a lonely road, a restless mind at midnight — stands out. That tension fits especially well with the lead singer’s dual identity: the precision of his professional life contrasted with the rough edges of his artistic side.

The second track, “All Rhymes for Scoop,” initially seems like a playful word game, but that expectation is overturned. Instead of listing rhymes for “scoop,” the song acts as a critique — perhaps — of shallow social media echo chambers. Lyrics and rhythms clash unpredictably, reflecting discomfort, discontent, and disillusionment. The syncopated beat combined with semi-nonsensical lyrical stutters mirrors the noise and overload of the digital age. The song reminds us of a previous outting, Mish Mash, from their 2021 record Future Copy.

The final song, “New Low,” slows things down. Clean arpeggiated guitar, minimal percussion, and dual vocals (Paul and Rachele) frame a sad, spare story: one of abandonment, loss, and longing. The song — reportedly inspired by the band finding a stray cat after a tenant move-out — becomes a narrative of innocence left behind, waiting in vain. Its emotional weight comes not from grand gestures but from quiet detail: the missing water dish, the empty stoop, the echo of loss.

Taken together, the three songs create a mini-arc: from restless escape, to social critique, to quiet grief and regret. The textures shift, the pacing varies, but the emotional flow — vulnerability, discomfort, longing — stays consistent.

Lyrics and themes: shame, impermanence, and the small cruelties of modern life

The title Everything’s A Shame seems both faintly sarcastic and deeply earnest. The songs reflect that duality — loss feels tragic, but also mundane; social collapse feels absurd, but also real; emotional weight is often disguised under everyday details.

As Paul Levy put it in an interview: “I am the consequence of the road I travel.” That line — repeated in “Dust” — connects personal history, existential weight, and the unpredictability of life. It frames identity not as a fixed point, but as something shaped by context, time, memory, and chance.

In “All Rhymes for Scoop,” the band critiques the vacuity of online life — the “argument platform,” the endless scroll, the performance of discourse without depth. Using lyrical non sequiturs and abrupt rhythmic shifts, Sadbox turns the song into a kind of musical protest against emptiness disguised as connection.

Then “New Low” returns to personal — and small — narratives: the lonely cat, the abandoned stoop, the emptiness left behind. It’s a portrait not of a sweeping life crisis, but of countless smaller traumas: displacement, abandonment, neglect. The catastrophic becomes quiet, ordinary, and all the more haunting for that.

These are not songs about grand despair or romantic heartbreak. They’re about surviving — surviving social collapse, familial pressure, shifting identity, emotional stasis. There’s shame in defeat, longing in loss, but also a stubborn, human need to speak, to express, to hold on.

The making of the EP: collaboration, constraints, and creative honesty

Given their busy lives — kids, jobs, daily responsibilities — the fact that Sadbox managed to write, rehearse, record, and release Everything’s A Shame is a testament to their dedication. In a  radio interview, drummer Ray Owens explained how the band’s workflow had evolved: what used to be chaotic, slow jams now flow with precision; what once needed prompts and cues now occurs with a glance or shared rhythm. That improved chemistry is evident on the record.

Recording, mixing, and mastering were done by Fredzo at Fredzoz Studio — and the production shows an honesty-over-polish vibe. The guitars bite, the vocals crack, and the drums thud. Space is intentional: silence between notes, breaths between lyrics. Nothing feels overdone; everything feels essential.

That rawness—balanced with musical discipline—gives the EP its power. It’s not perfect, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s lived-in, human, sometimes ragged, and in its raggedness lies its truth.

What Everything’s A Shame achieves — and what it leaves unresolved

One of the EP’s main strengths is its coherence. Despite the sonic and lyrical variety (grunge-inspired rock, indie quirks, quiet ballads), the three tracks feel connected — through mood, theme, and emotional honesty. That sense of unity makes the EP seem like more than a random collection: it feels like a snapshot, a statement, a short film in three acts.

It also demonstrates what a band rooted in real life can achieve when they are committed: even with family obligations and limited time, Sadbox shows that artistic ambition and emotional honesty don’t require big budgets or months in the studio. Sometimes all it takes is clarity, teamwork, and the desire to record what you feel.

However, the EP also leaves space for growth. With just three tracks, listeners might want more — more depth, more storytelling, more time to pause. The ideas hinted at in “Dust,” “All Rhymes for Scoop,” and “New Low” seem like the start of something bigger. There’s a feeling of beginning, not ending.

Furthermore, the looseness that gives Sadbox its charm can also come across as unpolished, even rough around the edges. Listeners expecting tight arrangements or radio-ready vocals might find some of the vocal delivery off-kilter, the rhythms unsettled, and the mood dark. However, for others—those looking for realism, emotional depth, and spontaneous honesty—that roughness is part of the album’s appeal.

Why this EP matters — for the band, for Dayton, for listeners who crave honesty

For Sadbox, Everything’s A Shame reaffirms their commitment: they are serious about music despite life’s demands. Their willingness to embrace their circumstances — family, time constraints, the need for immediacy — doesn’t weaken their art; it enhances it. Their music is more about authenticity than perfection.

For their hometown of Dayton and the broader Ohio music scene, the EP is a tribute to the energy of independent music: small bands, DIY studios, local stages, real lives. It’s a reminder that creativity doesn’t wait for perfect conditions — sometimes it comes from necessity, urgency, and the quiet desperation of juggling everything we care about.

For listeners outside that scene, Everything’s A Shame offers a rare kind of intimacy. It doesn’t pretend to solve problems. It doesn’t promise catharsis or closure. It offers fragments: a line about regret, a wobbly chord, a story about a lost cat, a sigh in the vocal mic. And sometimes fragments are enough — enough to make you pause, reflect, and feel a little less alone.

Everything’s A Shame — a small record with big heart

In 2025, when music often feels disposable — a background for playlists, streams, and fleeting attention — Sadbox’s Everything’s A Shame acts as a quiet form of resistance: a plea to listen, to feel, to inhabit sound rather than glide past it. It’s unpolished. It doesn’t seek easy consumption. It requests patience, presence, and empathy.

Paul Levy, Eli Alban, Ryan Goudy, Ray Owens, Rachele Alban — they’re not rock stars living for tours or hits. They’re humans with lives, demands, imperfections. And yet they created something lovingly imperfect, collaborative, and genuine. That spirit — of DIY honesty, embracing constraints, and channeling everyday life into art — is as rare as it is essential.

Everything’s A Shame might be small — only three songs. But within those songs lie questions, longing, critique, grief, and hope. It doesn’t aim to cover the entire world. It seeks to share a piece of it. And sometimes, a piece is all we need.

Favorites of 2025: Third of Never – Damage The Pearl

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Third of Never and Damage the Pearl matters

In a year filled with shiny indie-rock releases, Damage the Pearl — the latest from Third of Never — stands out not just as a strong album but as a daring creative leap. It presents itself as an “Original Soundtrack,” blending rock, psychedelia, cinematic touches, and lyrical reflection into a unified whole. Instead of chasing hits, Third of Never offers a record that feels like a story, a mood, and an emotional piece all in one.

What follows in this favorite of 2025 consideration is an exploration of the key musicians behind the record, their roles, contributions, and chemistry, followed by a detailed analysis of the album’s sound, themes, and emotional impact. I argue that Damage the Pearl is not only one of the most compelling independent albums of 2025 but also a statement about what rock music can still be: inventive, collaborative, and emotionally powerful.

The musicians behind the music

At the heart of Third of Never is founder and guitarist/songwriter Jon Dawson, but Damage the Pearl also benefits from contributions by longtime collaborators and special guests.

Doug MacMillan — best known for his work with The Connells — handles lead vocals on the album. His voice offers a familiar yet fresh focus: a tone that blends vulnerability, grit, and a touch of wistful depth, perfect for the record’s haunting atmosphere. Jode Haskins plays bass (credited as “lead bass” on tracks like “Grab the Ground”), anchoring the record with a strong low-end that supports both the rockier and more psychedelic passages. Charles Cleaver contributes keyboard and possibly synth textures, giving some songs a layered, atmospheric dimension that broadens the sonic palette beyond straightforward rock. Brandon Ruth — on drums — drives the record’s rhythmic backbone, moving skillfully between finesse and force as the song’s mood calls for.

Beyond the core lineup, Damage the Pearl benefits from notable guest contributions: legendary keyboardist John “Rabbit” Bundrick (of The Who fame) and Steve Kilbey (of The Church), among others. Their input adds depth, history, and sonic color — reminding listeners that this is not a lo-fi one-man bedroom project but a fully realized band effort.

Together, they craft something alive — a vibrant collaboration of musicians, textures, and sensibilities.

A cinematic, psychedelic journey

Listening to Damage the Pearl feels less like playing an album and more like exploring a film’s soundtrack you haven’t seen yet. From the first moments, you’re pulled into a world of shifting moods: garage sparks, dreamy psychedelia, cinematic sweeps, and rock-driven hooks.

The lead single and our favorite track, “Grab the Ground,” sets the tone. Its shimmering guitars and steady groove evoke movement—literally and metaphorically—like a car speeding down a deserted highway under neon lights. This sense of motion aligns with the album’s larger goal: it is both a static work and a journey.

Other tracks lean toward subtle psychedelia or atmospheric rock: through keyboards, ambient touches, echoed vocals — layering mood over melody, feeling over immediacy. The guest contributions from Bundrick and Kilbey are especially effective here, broadening the band’s sonic identity beyond traditional rock tropes.

Even when the songs are more conventional rock-based (“groove + guitar + bass + drums + vocals”), the production gives them weight and space. The album rarely feels over-produced; Instead, it balances rawness and polish — capturing a tension between vulnerability and strength. As one review puts it: it “adds the right level of balance between instrumentation and vocals, so the full emotional effect of each song hits.”

What emerges is an album that’s both immediate and expansive — perfect for late-night introspection or full-volume road-trip listening.

Vulnerability and Resilience: Lyrics and emotional weight

One of the most powerful and compelling aspects of Damage the Pearl is how its lyrical themes, often focused on vulnerability, survival, identity, and inner conflict, intersect with the music’s cinematic and psychedelic character. The title track, Damage the Pearl, provides a sort of thematic statement for the record: the repeated line “What strikes the oyster doesn’t damage the pearl” suggests a reflection on resilience—inner fragility protected by layers of shell, with inner worth enduring outside shocks.

Lyrics like “remain cheerful despite your painful brain” suggest mental struggles, emotional effort, and the difficulty of staying light amid weight.

But there’s more here than just grief or melancholy. There is defiance, survival, and even hope. In relation to the sound—shifting from gritty to dreamy, rock to ambient—the album feels like an honest struggle with inner turmoil and external pressures. It doesn’t offer easy answers or neat closure. Instead, it welcomes listeners into a space of acknowledgment: “Yes, I feel what you feel,” it seems to say.

In interviews, the band confirms that Damage the Pearl was designed not just as an album but as a soundtrack to a film — a visual story that enhances its thematic goals. According to founder Jon Dawson, the cinematic concepts emerged late in the recording process, after the lines and moods had come together into something narratively suggestive.

This framing as “Original Soundtrack” shifts how you listen — every song becomes a scene, each mood a frame, and every lyric a line of dialogue in a larger story. And that story? It feels less like a tidy arc and more like a winding road trip through memory, loss, hope, and survival.

What Damage the Pearl does well, and where it leaves space

One of the album’s biggest strengths is its cohesion. Despite featuring multiple collaborators and a variety of sonic textures — from rock to psychedelia to ambient keys — the record feels unified. This is partly thanks to careful production and mixing, where every instrument, including vocals, occupies its own space, but also due to a consistent emotional and narrative tone. The listener isn’t jarred by sudden tonal shifts; instead, there’s a smooth flow and a clear internal logic — like a movie soundtrack that understands its scenes.

Moreover, the choice to present the album as a soundtrack is more than just stylistic; it enhances the listening experience. It sparks the imagination. It requires attention. It allows the listener to feel, reflect, and maybe even project their own stories onto the music.

At the same time, Damage the Pearl isn’t perfect — and that’s part of its honesty. It doesn’t always resolve its tensions. Some songs end softly, others fade into ambiguity. The “story” the album suggests is fragmented, impressionistic; you might find yourself with more questions than answers by the end. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe some emotional truths resist tidy closure.

There are moments when the cinematic ambition borders on grandiosity, where the mood threatens to overpower the song’s structure. But often, the balance — of texture, mood, simplicity, and complexity — pulls things back just in time.

Why Damage the Pearl matters — for Third of Never, for independent music, for listeners

For Third of Never, this album feels like a redefinition. No longer just a rock band producing standard records — they’ve expanded into a multimedia vision: soundtrack + album + film + narrative. It’s risky, ambitious, and yet grounded. It shows that the band is not moving backward into nostalgia or convention, but pushing forward into new possibilities.

For independent music in 2025 — when much of it feels packaged, algorithm-driven, and commercially safe — Damage the Pearl serves as a reminder that records can still be daring, mysterious, and emotionally intense. It demands something from the listener: patience, openness, and imagination. In return, it offers a lot: suspense, beauty, catharsis, resonance.

For listeners—especially those drawn to emotional honesty, moody textures, and music that feels alive rather than polished—this album is a gift. It doesn’t flinch from pain or uncertainty. It doesn’t offer easy answers. It provides space for reflection, for memory, for human complexity.

A soundtrack for the unsettled, a refuge for the introspective

In a musical landscape filled with albums that often feel like products — short, polished, predictable — Damage the Pearl feels like true art. It is chaotic, cinematic, full of emotion, and deeply human. It demonstrates what can happen when a band refuses to stick to a formula, when musicians collaborate across generations and genres (rock, psychedelia, cinematic ambition), and when they allow vulnerability and imagination to lead the work.

Third of Never and their individual collaborators — Jon Dawson, Doug MacMillan, Jode Haskins, Charles Cleaver, Brandon Ruth, John “Rabbit” Bundrick, Steve Kilbey — have created something that feels timeless, genre-blending, and fiercely genuine. This is not background music. It demands attention. It rewards patience.

If you haven’t heard Damage the Pearl yet — or if you’ve only listened once on shuffle, consider this a gentle nudge: put on headphones, turn down the lights, maybe grab a drink or nothing at all, and let the record wash over you. Maybe you’ll discover something in it you didn’t know you needed: a soundtrack for uncertainty, a companion for sleepless nights, or a mirror for unspoken feelings.

In a noisy world, Damage the Pearl is a subtle rebellion — an invitation to feel. And it’s one of the most worthwhile albums of 2025 so far.

Favorites of 2025: Snocaps – Snocaps

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In 2025, twin sisters Katie and Allison Crutchfield re-emerged in a manner few anticipated: not as members of a reformed punk band, but as collaborators on a new project called Snocaps. That reunion — their first musical partnership since their former band P.S. Eliot broke up in 2011 — signifies more than just nostalgia. It feels like a reconciliation of two distinct yet complementary musical sensibilities: Katie’s reflective Americana-influenced songwriting (familiar from Waxahatchee) and Allison’s sharper, hook-filled indie-rock instincts (from Swearin’). The result — the self-titled debut album Snocaps — is timely, heartfelt, and full of promise.

What makes this record especially compelling is that it doesn’t just rehash old chemistry. Instead, it showcases seasoned musicians playing with honesty, restraint, and an unexpected sense of freedom: the freedom to create music on their own terms, unburdened by expectations or commercial pressures. This essay examines the unique strengths of Katie and Allison — both individually and together — the role of their collaborators (notably MJ Lenderman and Brad Cook), and how Snocaps stands as a testament to their growth, creative synergy, and lasting relevance.

Katie Crutchfield: Americana roots, emotional clarity, evolving maturity

Katie Crutchfield has spent the past decade establishing herself as a compelling voice in indie rock, especially through Waxahatchee. Her songwriting typically centers on emotional honesty, rooted in real-life experiences, memory, love, regret, and self-discovery. On Snocaps, those qualities are very much present — but there’s also a heightened sense of reflection and acceptance, as if she’s writing not just from memory but from hindsight.

Tracks like “Wasteland” and “Doom” showcase this evolution. On “Wasteland,” Katie delivers alt-country grit and a sparse sense of solitude: the song explores themes of self-awareness, guilt, and longing. Meanwhile, “Doom” becomes a slow-burning reflection on fractured relationships and emotional burden — a gothic, folk-influenced breakup song where her voice conveys both resignation and defiance.

What’s remarkable is how she uses simplicity to maximize impact. Rather than relying on overly ornate arrangements, Katie often leaves space — a sparse guitar, a steady rhythm, a quiet harmonic — so her lyrics and voice can hold the listener’s attention. That restraint makes the emotional beats hit harder; you hear every inflection, hesitation, and sigh of regret or longing.

On Snocaps, there’s also a sense of emotional clarity and self-acceptance. These songs don’t fix everything — but they acknowledge pain, longing, and change without flinching. In that sense, Katie’s contribution feels mature, grounded, and painfully human.

Allison Crutchfield: hooks, energy, and a return with sharpened instincts

Allison Crutchfield has long been celebrated for her talent for catchy, guitar-driven hooks, a sharp indie-rock sensibility, and straightforward lyrics. With Swearin’, she built a reputation for raw, energetic songs. On Snocaps, she comes back with some of her most powerful and urgent material yet.

Her tracks on Snocaps — including “Heathcliff,” “Over Our Heads,” “You In Rehab,” and “Avalanche” — showcase her talent for melody and momentum. The album sometimes gains speed, urgency, and even a hint of recklessness: a fresh contrast to Katie’s more reflective moments. As one review mentions, songs like “Over Our Heads” move quickly, blending sharply crafted hooks with a laid-back, slacker-rock feel that keeps the music both well-structured and effortlessly loose.

Take “Heathcliff”: jangly guitars, picked bass, and a hook that seems to grow stronger with every listen — it evokes echoes of earlier indie-rock favorites while carving out new territory. And “You In Rehab,” alternately gritty and tender, carries a raw emotional weight: lyrics about recovery, regret, and ambiguous hope, delivered with heartfelt sincerity.

What’s impressive is how strong Allison sounds here: not as a nostalgia act returning to her former glories, but as an artist who has evolved, refined, and matured. Her vocals cut through clearly, the guitar hooks feel immediate, and the arrangements—whether fast or slow—all seem purposeful. Snocaps proves she’s lost none of her edge—and perhaps has gained a bit more clarity in her aim.

Together: complementary strengths, revived sister synergy, and a joint vision

If Katie brings introspection and emotional weight, and Allison brings energy and melodic drive — together, they create a balance that feels surprisingly natural, even after 14 years apart. As some critics note, the record feels like “a throwback and a vision of two brilliant songwriters in the here and now.”

Their vocal interplay — along with alternating songwriting credits — adds diversity and emotional depth to the album. Katie’s softer, more atmospheric songs sit beside Allison’s edgier rockers; together, they weave a tapestry of moods: from regret, longing, and reflection to restlessness, defiance, and passion. This variety keeps the album lively: it features no single tone or message but a chorus of lived experiences, emotions, and memories.

The fact that Snocaps was recorded in a burst — the sessions reportedly completed in a matter of days — adds to its rawness and honesty. The sisters described the project as a way to reconnect with the earliest, purest versions of their music-making selves — and you can hear that in the looseness, spontaneity, and emotional immediacy of many songs.

In some ways, the album operates like a conversation between two people with shared history but divergent paths — two versions of self, reunited. The result is both familiar and new: siblings making music again, but with years of growth, distance, and experience behind them.

The role of collaborators: building texture, grounding raw ideas, enriching musical depth

While Katie and Allison are the heart of Snocaps, the contributions of their collaborators — particularly MJ Lenderman and Brad Cook — are essential to what makes the record work so well.

The project features veteran musician-producer Brad Cook, who produced and engineered the record and also played instruments. His involvement ensures the album stays cohesive despite the varied voices and styles; he helps craft a sound that feels unified, intentional, and warm rather than scattered or inconsistent.

Then there’s MJ Lenderman: a multi-instrumentalist, guitarist, and drummer who plays on many tracks. His guitar work—electric, 12-string, atmospheric or gritty—adds depth, texture, and sometimes a rough edge that balances the emotional weight of the Crutchfields’ voices. In songs known for their melancholic or intense emotional content, his instrumentation often frames the song to amplify its impact rather than overshadow it.

This minimal guitar-bass-drums setup gives Snocaps a raw, intimate feel. There’s no unnecessary decoration; everything — from instrumentation to vocal delivery to production — feels intentional, genuine, and rooted. The result resembles a living room recording transformed through careful yet subtle craftsmanship: authentic, imperfect, and deeply personal.

In a musical moment often driven by maximal production and glossy polish, that restraint feels refreshing. It’s a reminder that sometimes the most resonant art comes from simplicity, collaboration, and genuine connection.

Lyrical themes and emotional resonance: nostalgia, growth, regret, resilience

One of the most compelling aspects of Snocaps lies in its lyrical honesty. The album treads familiar emotional territory — relationships, regret, addiction or recovery, longing, identity, roots — but does so with nuance and maturity. The years between P.S. Eliot and now show: these are not songs written in youth’s raw vulnerability, but with the awareness and reflection age brings.

For example:

  • On “You In Rehab,” Allison confronts the messiness of recovery and personal breakdown: regret, gratitude, and cautious hope co-exist in the lyrics.
  • In “Over Our Heads,” there is a sense of displacement and longing — a reflection on leaving hometowns or previous selves behind: “no hometown, no home state anymore.” That ache feels real, lived, universal.
  • Katie’s “Doom” brings out themes of disillusionment and heartbreak, exploring the weight of memory and the difficulty of moving forward without erasing the past.
  • In lighter moments — albeit tinged with bittersweetness — the songs deal with nostalgia, dreams, and the tension between youthful ambition and adult reality. The tracklist’s sequencing balances heavier songs with ones that have a glimmer of hope or wistful acceptance.

Throughout it all, the lyrical voice is understated but very emotional, exploring longing, regret, desire, and a stubborn kind of resilience. The recurring image of movement — roads, cars, leaving, returning — acts as a metaphor for inner journeys: navigating memory, home, identity, and growth.

In that sense, Snocaps doesn’t offer closure or easy answers. Instead, it offers accompaniment: a companion through uncertainty, regret, and hope. It’s less about fixing things than acknowledging them — and surviving.

Why Snocaps matters — for fans, for the sisters, for indie rock

Snocaps arrives at a moment when much music can feel calculated: long lead-ups, social-media-heavy rollouts, marketing, and image crafting. The fact that this album was released as a surprise — with no big campaign and no elaborate preamble — feels like a statement in itself. It’s an album made out of love, for sisterhood, for music.

For longtime fans of Katie and Allison — and their early band P.S. Eliot — this reunion is a welcome sight. But beyond nostalgia, Snocaps shows growth. It’s a reminder that time changes artists but doesn’t necessarily dull their voices. In fact, it can make them sharper.

For the broader indie-rock scene, Snocaps stands out as a subtle yet powerful example of what happens when experienced artists collaborate without pressure, allowing music to flow naturally, embracing imperfection, and prioritizing emotion over production polish. The album combines indie-rock hooks, Americana introspection, and raw honesty in a way that feels meaningful to listeners seeking authenticity and emotional depth.

Finally — for Katie and Allison themselves — Snocaps might be a one-off, but it feels like a reopening of a conversation: with each other, with their past, with their musical selves. It’s a moment of reckoning, reconciliation, and renewal — and it’s done with grace, restraint, and love.

Conclusion: The Crutchfields, reunited — and the power of making music on your own terms

In the whirlwind of 2025’s music scene — with flashy releases, social media buzz, and polished production — Snocaps arrives quiet, unassuming, and yet quietly insistence: this is music made for feeling, not for trending. It’s a record that trusts listener patience, emotional depth, and the power of simple instrumentals to carry weight. It’s flawed, honest, alive.

Katie Crutchfield brings her soul — subtle, wounded, hopeful. Allison Crutchfield brings her edge — sharp hooks, restless energy, unfiltered emotion. Together, their voices, histories, and instincts blend into something that feels both like a reunion and a reinvention. Adding collaborators like MJ Lenderman and Brad Cook — who contribute with taste, restraint, and shared history — results in an album that seems born out of necessity: a need to reconnect, to create, to speak.

Snocaps is more than just a project or a band. It’s a moment: a brief window into what happens when two talented siblings reclaim their story, their music, and their shared past — and turn it into something new. If you listen with your heart, you’ll hear history, honesty, and hope woven into jangly guitars, melancholic melodies, and voices that understand loss, healing, and resilience.

So if you’ve been waiting for something real, something personal, something without pretense? Snocaps is more than worth your time.

Favorites of 2025: Tamar Berk – ‘ocd’

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Why Tamar Berk deserves your attention

Tamar Berk is one of those rare musical talents who not only pour raw emotion into her songs but also writes, records, and produces them herself — forging a sound world that’s intensely personal, lo-fi‑grounded, and vivid. On her new 2025 album ocd, she delivers what many consider her most ambitious and emotionally immersive work yet: a reverb-soaked journey into looping thoughts, obsessions, and the restless inner life.

Raised on classical piano and early Disney soundtracks, Berk eventually gravitated toward influences like The Beatles, David Bowie, Liz Phair, and Elliott Smith — a mix that shaped her instinct for melody, emotional catharsis, and lyrical truth. What she makes now, though, is something singular: indie rock and dream‑pop fused with DIY grit, emotional honesty, and the courage to bare her inner world.

In what follows, I want to explore Tamar Berk’s strengths as a musician — her multi-instrumentalism, her knack for mood and texture — and how on ocd she channels overthinking, vulnerability, and occasional panic into songs that feel like listening to someone thinking aloud.

Multi‑layered musician: instruments, production & power of solo control

One of the most striking aspects of Tamar Berk’s work is how much of it she controls herself. On ocd, she handles not only vocals and songwriting but also guitars, piano, synths, Wurlitzer, organ, bass, strings, programming, percussion — often layering sounds to produce something both intimate and richly textured.

That DIY ethos gives her music a special honesty. Because she’s involved in nearly every aspect, nothing feels over-polished or disingenuous — the distortions, reverb, and ambient murkiness all serve the truth of her emotional landscape. The result: a sound that lingers, unsettles, and stays with you.

In musical terms, that means ocd isn’t strictly an indie‑pop or alt‑rock album. It’s more like a fever dream — alternately noisy and delicate, sometimes urgent, sometimes hazy. The instrumentation shifts fluidly: thick, fuzzy guitars and sparse, somber piano; ghostly synths and grounded bass; literal sonic loops echoing the mental loops the lyrics describe.

At times, Berk leans into distortion and echo to evoke disorientation; at others, she strips things down to nothing but light keys, soft vocals, and a sense of fragile introspection. That dynamic — the back‑and‑forth between chaos and calm — is exactly what gives ocd its power.

Lyrical honesty: overthinking, mental spirals, and the beauty inside the mess

If the music gives you the frame, the lyrics are the beating heart of ocd. This is an album that wears its anxieties on its sleeve — about obsession, memory, identity, self-doubt, longing, and the loops of anxiety and overthinking. As Berk puts it, she called the album ocd because she “lives in loops. I overthink everything. But this record helped me make a little bit of beautiful sense out of that.”

The lead single ‘Stay Close By’ sets the tone for the album: dreamy guitars and soft vocals weave around lyrics of indecision, longing, and inertia — “I don’t know why I can’t reply on time, or can’t make up my mind,” she sings. The result feels like a confession whispered in a quiet room: vulnerable, real, and ache-filled.

But not all of ocd wallows plaintively. The title track ocd itself confronts mental spirals head‑on, repeating lines like “I got OCD … over and over and over,” rendering the relentlessness of intrusive thoughts in musical form: looping, dizzying, claustrophobic.

Elsewhere, Berk’s songwriting explores memory, regret, longing, and desire for escape — or at least some kind of emotional catharsis. The songs move between bleak introspection and moments of fragile hope, capturing that tension many of us live with: the part that fears and ruminates, and the part that still wants connection, meaning, or release. As one summary puts it, ocd “invites listeners into her inner thoughts” — messy, complicated, yet somehow familiar and human.

A sonic and emotional arc: ocd as a map of inner turbulence

What makes ocd compelling — and perhaps unique in the indie scene this year — is how well its musical and lyrical elements align to create an overall arc: it feels less like a collection of songs and more like a single, immersive experience. Berk seems to want to draw listeners into her mind, step by step, track by track.

The album shifts between dream‑pop haze and rock‑tinged fervor, between introspective hush and emotional outburst. That dynamic — of contrast and layering — mirrors the experience of anxiety, overthinking, and identity searching. On one track you might be floating in soft guitars and wistful melodies; on the next you’re confronting distortion, repetition, and confessional urgency.

That tonal range reflects the alternation many of us know well: memory and regret, hope and despair, the attempt to control thoughts and the surrender when it becomes too much. In that sense, ocd isn’t just music — it’s a kind of emotional landscape, felt in sound as much as in words.

Importantly, Berk doesn’t pretend to provide tidy resolutions. Her voice doesn’t promise that overthinking will end, or that clarity will come. Instead, she offers catharsis, empathy, and solidarity — a map for all the tangled thoughts, the dark nights, the loops. It’s messy. It’s real. But it’s shared.

Why ocd matters as growth

For longtime followers of Tamar Berk, ocd may feel familiar in some ways: there are still fuzzy guitars, melodic hooks, and a DIY spirit. But this album marks a new level of ambition and vulnerability. As one review noted, this is her “most personal and intense work yet.”

Her growth is obvious — not just as a songwriter, but as a producer and composer. The fact that she plays multiple instruments, layers them herself, and co-produces the record gives ocd a cohesiveness and authenticity that few albums achieve. The emotional weight doesn’t come across as polished or packaged — it feels lived, raw, and human.

Moreover, at a time when mental health, overthinking, and the pressures of modern life feel increasingly pervasive, ocd offers something rare: a mirror that’s honest but compassionate. It doesn’t romanticize anxiety; it doesn’t idealize healing. It simply says: this is what it feels like. And maybe that’s enough — maybe that kind of honesty is exactly what art should do.

In that sense, Tamar Berk isn’t just writing songs — she’s doing what few musicians do: giving voice to inner chaos, shaping it into melody and texture, and inviting you to sit with it all. ocd isn’t easy listening. It’s hard, sometimes disquieting. But it’s real. And in its messy honesty lies its power.

Final thoughts: Tamar Berk as a voice for the over‑thinkers, the dreamers, the stranded

There’s a long tradition in music of turning pain into beauty, chaos into catharsis — but few artists do it with as much rawness, intimacy, and creative control as Tamar Berk. On ocd, she doesn’t just invite you in: she opens the door, hands you something fragile, and says, “this is what it feels like.”

That willingness to expose uncertainty, loops of thought, doubt — is an act of bravery. And as a listener, you’re not just a spectator: you become a companion in the spirals. Maybe you don’t walk out with answers. But you walk out with somewhere to begin.

If you’ve ever felt your thoughts spin too fast, if you’ve ever felt stuck in loops of regret or longing — ocd is for you. And even if you haven’t, this record might just show you what you never knew you could feel so deeply: the strange beauty of overthinking — and the power of turning it into art.

Give it a listen. Turn the lights down. And let Tamar Berk lead you through the loops.

Video of The Day: Third of Never – Damage The Pearl

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“Damage the Pearl,” the standout title track from Third of Never’s latest record, is one of those songs that feels instantly lived-in—emotionally weathered, musically tight, and lyrically honest in ways that reward repeat listens. What Third of Never does so well across their catalog, melding melodic rock with angular edges, reflective lyricism, and a sense of drama that never tips into excess, comes into sharper focus here. The song is as much about mood as it is about narrative, and it invites the listener into a world where beauty and fracture sit side-by-side.

From the opening seconds, the track establishes a sonic landscape marked by contrast. Guitars shimmer and bite, building a foundation that feels both urgent and dreamlike. That duality mirrors the song’s thematic tension: “damage” and “pearl” aren’t just opposing concepts; they’re the twin poles around which the emotional arc revolves. The metaphor is simple but resonant—the “pearl” as something precious, hard-won, and vulnerable to harm; the “damage” as both external force and self-inflicted consequence.

Doug McMillen’s vocal performance lends the song much of its emotional depth. His delivery is unhurried but charged, as though he’s carefully excavating each phrase. There’s a rasp at the edges that suggests long nights, regrets, and resilience. He doesn’t dramatize the lyrics so much as inhabit them, giving the impression that the story being told has been carried quietly for a long time before finally being voiced.

Musically, the band strikes an impressive balance between tight arrangement and spacious atmosphere. Steve Potak’s keyboard textures ripple through the mix, adding color without overwhelming the guitars. His playing brings a sense of uplift to the darker corners of the track, hinting that even in the midst of damage, there’s clarity or even transcendence to be found. The rhythm section keeps the song grounded, propulsive without being forceful, allowing the emotional tension to breathe.

Lyrically, “Damage the Pearl” explores the fragile points in relationships—the places where trust is tested, where mistakes leave marks, where people confront the limits of what can be repaired. But the song resists cynicism. Instead, it seems to inhabit that complicated emotional terrain where hope and regret coexist. When the chorus opens up, the sense of release is less cathartic triumph and more a weary, honest exhalation. The band understands that complexity is sometimes more powerful than resolution.

The production enhances this emotional palette. Clean, spacious, and unafraid of subtle imperfections, it allows each instrument to carry its own weight. There’s no sense of overpolishing; the track feels human, textured, and lived-in. That sense of authenticity shapes the listening experience: the song sounds like a confession whispered and then amplified into the open air.

“Damage the Pearl” ultimately succeeds because it serves as both a strong standalone track and a thematic touchstone for the album bearing its name. It captures Third of Never’s ability to marry craft and feeling—to write rock music that is polished but soulful, introspective but accessible. It lingers after it ends, like a bruise you only notice when you press on it, and like a pearl that gleams all the more for having survived pressure.

Favorite of 2025: The Beths – Straight Line Was A Lie

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Introduction: Why The Beths Matter

The New Zealand indie‑pop quartet The Beths have long stood out for their sharp songwriting, earworm melodies, and the emotional honesty that pulses through their lyrics. With their 2025 album Straight Line Was a Lie, they arrive at a new peak — refined in sound yet deeply raw in sentiment. It’s a record that doesn’t just reaffirm what makes them special; it feels like a rebirth: more considered, more textured, and more vulnerable than ever. As the band enters this next chapter, it’s become increasingly clear that The Beths aren’t just good at what they do — they’re extraordinary.

I want to take a moment and explore how each member’s musical contributions blend to form the band’s signature sound, and how the lyrics on Straight Line Was a Lie carve out an intimate, unsettling, yet hopeful portrait of life, growth, and mental health.

First, a quick refresher on the lineup. The Beths consist of:

  • Elizabeth Stokes – lead vocals, rhythm guitar, main songwriter
  • Jonathan Pearce – lead guitar, backing vocals, producer/engineer (on this record)
  • Benjamin Sinclair – bass guitar, backing vocals
  • Tristan Deck – drums, cymbals and percussion, backing vocals

In past releases, The Beths were already celebrated for their “jangly” guitar pop, shimmering harmonies, and driving rhythm section.  On Straight Line Was a Lie, each member seems to lean more deeply into their strengths, and — crucially — into experimentation.

Elizabeth Stokes remains the heart of the band. Her voice — often conversational, sometimes aching — carries the emotional weight; her lyrical voice is sharper, more introspective, grappling frankly with themes of mental health, existential anxiety, familial ties, self-doubt, and the paradoxes of healing. The songs come from a place of personal upheaval, shaped by her experiences with health struggles, medication, and self‑reflection.

Jonathan Pearce wears dual hats on this record: lead guitarist and producer / engineer / mixer (on most tracks). That shift seems to have given the album a more cohesive, textured sonic palette: guitars (both his lead and Stokes’s rhythm) shimmer, sizzle, crash — sometimes jangly, sometimes atmospheric, sometimes dissonant. On songs like “Take,” the guitar solos ring with a fresh urgency; on “Ark of the Covenant,” guitar lines meld with subtle ambient touches to build something cinematic and haunting.

Benjamin Sinclair’s bass underpins the album with steady, often driving low‑end that grounds even the most introspective or experimental moments. While bass can be underappreciated in guitar‑heavy pop, here it anchors songs like “Take” with a muscular backbone that gives weight to the emotional landscape, and in upbeat numbers it drives the momentum forward, pushing choruses into sing‑along territory. The result is a rhythm section that feels both steady and alive.

Tristan Deck’s drumming and percussion complete the engine. On Straight Line Was a Lie, the drums don’t just keep time — they accentuate mood, shake loose tension, and steer transitions between jubilation and melancholy. Whether it’s propulsive beats on faster tracks or minimal, contemplative rhythms on the quieter ones, Deck’s playing adapts to the emotional terrain without overshadowing it. Backing vocals from Deck and Sinclair add subtle harmonic depth, reinforcing what has always been The Beths’ hallmark: layered vocal harmonies that linger.

Together, these four don’t just play instruments — they channel mood, memory, and meaning. On this record, the result feels less like a “band playing songs” and more like four people collaboratively mapping emotional terrain.

The sound of Straight Line Was a Lie: More than “jangly” pop

One of the defining qualities of The Beths’ earlier albums was that “jangly guitar + power‑pop hooks + emotional honesty” formula — and it worked beautifully. On Straight Line Was a Lie, they keep the hooks, but deepen the textures. The production (led by Pearce) emphasizes space, layering, contrast; songs can shift from bright, chiming pop to darker, atmospheric, even gritty territory. Critics note this album as “bigger, better and more complicated than they’ve ever been.”

The opening track and title song begins with a false start — a spoken “sorry I was thinking about something else” — a move that feels deliberate: it sets the tone for an album preoccupied with interruption, derailment, and return. The lyric “I thought I was getting better / But I’m back to where I started / And the straight line was a circle / Yeah the straight line was a lie” resounds as a central thesis. Life, the record suggests, is not a linear progression but a messy, looping, often contradictory journey.

Meanwhile, tracks like “No Joy” jolt with nervy urgency — the upbeat melody and driving beat bely lyrics that speak to anhedonia and existential stasis: “All my pleasures, guilty / Clean slate looking filthy / This year’s gonna kill me … Spirit should be crushing / But I don’t feel sad, I feel nothing.”

On “Metal,” they give form to something beautiful and strange: a metaphor about being alive as a “collaboration of bacteria, carbon and light,” needing “the metal in your blood to keep you alive.” It’s biological, cosmic, grounded, and dreamlike all at once — marrying emotion, science, and wonder in a simple but powerful package.

There’s also room for quiet minimalism. “Mother, Pray for Me” strips things back: gentle picking, soft vocals, aching longing. It’s a song about complicated family, grief, and generational wounds — and it lands not through bombast but through tender reserve.

Even the album’s final moments — on “Best Laid Plans” — feel bittersweet: jangly guitars and a buoyant rhythm, but implicit in the instrumentation and tone is a sense of unresolved longing, of “unfinished business.” It’s the sound of hope, but also of memory’s weight.

In sum: Straight Line Was a Lie isn’t simply “jangly indie pop with hooks” — it’s more ambitious: emotionally deeper, texturally richer, and willing to lean into shadows as much as light.

Lyrical worlds: Mental health, Memory, and the Myth of Progress

If the musical side is about textures, the lyrical work is about truth. On this record, The Beths — primarily through Stokes’s pen — interrogate themes of mental health, healing, identity, memory, and the uneasy breaks in between. The album’s title succinctly captures its philosophical impulse: that “linear progression is an illusion.” Life doesn’t follow a neat arc; healing does not happen on a straight line.

Much of that perspective comes from Stokes’s own life. In recent years she’s navigated serious health challenges (including a diagnosis with Graves’ disease), anxiety, and the disorienting effects of starting antidepressants for the first time. That upheaval forced a radical shift in how she writes: among other changes, she turned to stream‑of‑consciousness writing on a typewriter, exploring memories and feelings she’d avoided, and forcing herself to reckon with difficult emotions.

That kind of emotional honesty shows up throughout. On “Mosquitoes,” she wanders a creek near her home — a haven when “my house felt like a locked room” — only to find devastation: the same creek turned into a “raging sea” after floods. The song becomes quietly terrifying: an elegy to disappearance, impermanence, and the fragility of refuge.

In “Til My Heart Stops,” there’s a longing for simple embodied pleasures — riding a bike in the rain, flying a kite, dancing — even as the world feels heavy and weightless at once. According to one review, the song, with its unsettling distortion and ghostly atmosphere, “charts the fragility of life itself,” its abrupt ending like a heart’s final beat.

Elsewhere, “Ark of the Covenant” and “Best Laid Plans” explore inner excavation: digging through memory, confronting “fossilised nightmares,” searching for meaning — or closure — in the negative space of the self.

But it’s not purely despair or existential weight. There’s still wry humour, sharp imagery, and defiant tenderness. The need for “metal in your blood” in “Metal” — a call for grounding, resilience, a kind of elemental insistence on life — turns the personal and biological into something poetic and universal.

Taken together, the lyrics on Straight Line Was a Lie don’t just reflect mental health struggles or personal trauma — they interrogate the myth of constant improvement. They suggest healing is messy; growth is circular; humanity is fragile, often contradictory — but still worthy of wonder.

What this album means: Growth, Maturation, and a New Chapter for The Beths

For longtime fans, Straight Line Was a Lie may at first sound familiar: The Beths still write songs that stick in your brain. But this time, there’s a sense of expansion, of maturity, of ambition being reframed with nuance. Production is richer, the emotional stakes higher, and nothing feels simply disposable or background music. This is an album that rewards — demands — close listening.

Critically, the record has been widely praised. On aggregators it earns a strong Metascore, reflecting generally favorable to enthusiastic reviews. Reviewers note the band is “bigger, better and more complicated than they’ve ever been.” Others call it perhaps their “most incisive” album yet, one where existential anxieties and lyrical ambition meet pop hooks and evocative soundscapes.

Moreover, Straight Line Was a Lie feels like a milestone — not just in their discography, but in their artistic evolution. The move to have guitarist Jonathan Pearce handle production and engineering gives the album a more unified sonic identity. The decision by Stokes to overhaul her songwriting method — to face trauma, memory, and illness head‑on — brings a weight and vulnerability previously only hinted at. The whole band seems aligned: playing not just with precision and popcraft, but with emotional honesty.

For listeners, this album offers more than catchy choruses: it offers fellowship. It whispers that you are not alone if you’ve felt lost, stuck, or numb. It suggests that healing is not always about triumphs or tallies of progress, but about maintenance — about showing up, living, feeling, enduring. And it does all that while giving you songs you can dance to, or cry to, or sing loud at a concert.

Conclusion: The Beths as Emotional Architects

In a world that often feels driven by optimization, forward momentum, and constant productivity, Straight Line Was a Lie comes as a quiet, necessary reckoning. It refuses the idea that healing, growth, or life itself must follow a neat, linear trajectory. Instead, The Beths propose a different metaphor: life as cyclical, messy, and ongoing — something to be maintained, revisited, reflected upon, not “completed.”

As a band, The Beths have always been more than the sum of their catchy hooks or jangly guitars. On this album, they feel less like a pop act and more like emotional architects — sculptors of feeling, memory, and existential wonder. Each band member’s contribution is essential — from Stokes’s wrenching lyrics to Pearce’s layered production, from Sinclair’s grounding bass to Deck’s subtle but powerful rhythms.

Straight Line Was a Lie may end up being a soundtrack for an era — an album for when the world feels too fast, too forward, too relentlessly optimistic. It offers instead a different rhythm: patience, honesty, acceptance, and defiance.

If you haven’t listened to it yet — or haven’t listened closely — this is the moment: sit back, headphones on, and let The Beths guide you down the crooked, beautiful trail.

The Madness of Resurrection: Why Let It Be (2025 Remaster) Feels Like a Miracle

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It’s one of those things that should never have happened. A scruffy, half-broken underdog band from Minneapolis — ragged, defiant, often self-sabotaging — getting the deluxe archival treatment usually reserved for polished legends, for “classic rock” cathedrals. Yet here we are: 2025, and Rhino Records (a part of Warner Music Group) has dusted off Let It Be, remixed, remastered, reboxed, expanded — and in doing so given the world a second chance to see the bruised poetry of the original 1984 record in high fidelity.

The fact that The Replacements are getting this kind of attention now — decades after their original flame flickered out — is almost absurd. And yet that absurdity is perfect. Because Let It Be was never meant to be smooth. It was meant to hurt, to stumble, to scream. The Deluxe Edition doesn’t try to smooth those edges — it highlights them, reminding us why this band never fit neatly into the mainstream, and why that’s exactly why they mattered.

The Skeletons & the Heart — An Album Understood

Originally released in 1984 via the indie label Twin/Tone Records, Let It Be was a moment of clarity for The Replacements: a record of transition, of longing, of half-formed innocence battered against a rock & roll dream.

The 2025 Deluxe Edition gives us disc one: the remastered original album — eleven songs that remain as vivid, ragged, and vital as ever. Then comes the rarities — alternate versions, outtakes, home demos — and a full 28-song live set from March 1984 at the Cubby Bear in Chicago.

This isn’t a rehydrated corpse. It’s a beating heart, reconnected. It’s the band as they were — flawed, sprawling, incomplete — presented again not as “heritage,” but as rock & roll living in the cracks between hope and chaos.

Track by Track: The Skin & Bones of Youth

Think about “I Will Dare” — opener of the album and a dare in itself. That fuzz-ed cardinal riff, the off-kilter swagger, Paul Westerberg’s voice like it’s scraping against the point of a razor. The 2025 remaster gives the guitars more room to breathe; you hear the strings buzz, the drum skins snap, and every syllable of “dare” tastes like adrenaline. It lands like a punch in the gut — and that’s exactly the point.

Then there’s “Favorite Thing,” where the punk cheek turns into something almost tender. A strange, shimmering melody over brittle chords, a voice struggling between affection and alienation: “I just don’t know what to do.” On the original vinyl you heard the ghosts of cheap amps and cigarette smoke; on this remaster you hear the humanity underneath.

“We’re Comin’ Out,” “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out,” “Black Diamond” — all of them jittery, half-formed attempts at grandeur, teenage longing, and adolescent confusion. But the album’s heart lives in songs like “Androgynous” and “Unsatisfied.”

“Androgynous”: one of the few rock songs in history that wears its empathy on its sleeve without collapsing into sanctimony. A melody that aches, lyrics that don’t posture — and in 2025, the alternate version restores a full piano intro, a different vocal take: a softer, more haunted Replacements, vulnerable but unpretentious. 

“Unsatisfied”: bitter, ragged, full of longing. Westerberg’s voice cracks, the rhythm stutters, the world trembles. On this remaster, the grit is there, but so is the clarity — the bass-line you never heard before, the snare drum’s tiny echo, the breath between words. It’s like seeing an old scar under better light — you cringe, but you also understand how it shaped the person.

Songs like “Answering Machine” — small, shy, off-kilter — make you feel the quiet desperation of isolation, of trying to connect and hearing nothing but static. On this remaster, those staticky edges sharpen; the loneliness doesn’t sound like a studio effect anymore, it sounds like the room you’re in after the lights go out.

Listening to Let It Be, side to side, track after track, is like rummaging through someone’s teenage bedroom: posters peeling off drywall, cigarettes half-smoked in an ashtray, dreams scribbled over notebook margins. It doesn’t sound like “great production.” It sounds like truth.

Why Let It Be Was Always Too Big for Its Boots — and Yet Never Big Enough

The Replacements were never built for the spotlight. They were too ragged around the edges, too self-aware, too… real. And by “real” I mean “full of contradictions.” They wanted fame, but they didn’t want the shackles that come with it. They chased rebellion, but they also had voices cracked open by longing. They wrote love songs when they barely knew how to keep their own lives together.

By the time they were capable of being “bigger,” self-destruction and disillusionment had already set in. The guitarist whose shards of noise cut through Let It Be — Bob Stinson — drifted away soon after. Addiction, inner demons, burnout: the usual rock mythology that turns alive bands into ghost stories. 

It’s improbable that a band like The Replacements would ever get a deluxe archival box. It’s even more improbable we’d get one in 2025 — a time when nostalgia usually means safe, stable comfort records. But part of what makes this remaster so thrilling is that it refuses comfort. It resurrects the mess. It preserves the fractures. It honors the band not as legends, but as poets of sloppiness, heartbreak, and restless hope.

That’s why this reissue is more than just for longtime fans. It’s for anyone who ever felt like an outsider, anyone who ever saw beauty in chaos, anyone who ever listened to music and found pieces of themselves in the distortion.

What the 2025 Deluxe Edition Actually Adds — the Blood Under the Skin

Thanks to Rhino’s box, we now have a wealth of previously inaccessible material: alternate takes of “Gary’s Got a Boner,” “Favorite Thing,” a restored alternate of “Androgynous,” unreleased outtakes like “Who’s Gonna Take Us Alive” and “Street Girl,” home demos, and more. 

But perhaps the jewel in the set is the 28-song live set from March 1984 at the Cubby Bear, Chicago. A crowd-sourced tape, long buried in obscurity, now remastered and set free. On this live set you hear the band thrashing through not just Let It Be material, but older punk-raw cuts, covers of The Beach Boys, Bad Company, and the kind of sweaty, ragged, near-chaotic energy that only a band on the edge can deliver.

Rhino.com will also offer an exclusive bonus 10-inch vinyl release, Live at City Garden. Bundled with the vinyl edition and a T-shirt, this six-song soundboard recording was captured at the legendary Trenton, New Jersey, punk club on February 11, 1984. Highlights of the live EP include a rare performance of the ballad “You’re Getting Married,” played at the request of the band’s original manager and Twin/Tone co-founder Peter Jesperson, who also co-produced both the original Let It Be and the new deluxe edition. That track is a small, strange flower growing out of the concrete of punk rock — gentle, awkward, and deeply human.

These extras don’t feel like padding. They feel like excavation. They don’t try to mythologize the band — they just show: this was real. This was messy. This was alive.

For Fans & The Uninitiated — Two Doors to the Same Room

If you’ve loved The Replacements for decades, this Deluxe Edition is catharsis. It’s memory, resurrection, vindication. It’s turning the lights back on in a room you once lived in — seeing every cigarette burn mark on the table, the scratched vinyls leaning against the wall, the ghost of teenage hope in the corner.

If you’re new to The Replacements — maybe you grew up after the vinyl era, maybe your Spotify algorithm just nudged you — Let It Be (2025 Deluxe Edition) is a perfect entry point. The remaster cleans — but doesn’t polish — the sound. It clarifies, but doesn’t sterilize. And the expanded material draws out the band’s contradictions: tender yet abrasive, sloppy yet sincere, desperate yet hopeful.

In a moment where rock & roll sometimes feels like it’s been shoved into a nostalgia museum — safe, curated, predictable — this reissue punches through: real ragged edges, real emotion, real imperfection. It reminds you that rock was once a refuge for freaks, for outsiders, for the restless.

What Could’ve Been — And Why It Still Means Something

It’s almost uncanny: listening to Let It Be now, you can hear the potential of a much bigger future. Songs like “I Will Dare” and “Androgynous” aren’t just artifacts of mid-80s indie; you half expect them to echo off arenas, to lay foundations for generations. The Replacements had the songwriting, the heart, the courage — and at times, it sounds like they had the will for greatness.

But rock & roll doesn’t reward sincerity if the band can’t survive themselves. Bob Stinson’s drift, the instability, the lack of polish — all of that doomed them from riding their own wave. And in retrospect, that’s part of the charm. Let It Be feels like the greatest nearly-album the 1980s never let bloom fully.

The 2025 Deluxe Edition doesn’t rewrite that history. It doesn’t pretend the band got what they deserved. What it does is more courageous: it says, “Here is who they were. Here is what they felt. Here is the wreckage — and the beauty.” For anyone willing to peer into the wreckage, there’s a kind of redemption there.

A Final Salvo: Why Let It Be (2025) Matters

There’s a moment in the history of rock & roll when everything cracked wide open, when the neat boxes called “punk,” “indie,” “pop” blurred into something messy and human. The Replacements were among the first to do it — not by design, but by desperation, by honesty, by the stubborn belief that rock didn’t need to be polished to matter. Let It Be wasn’t just an album: it was a middle finger to complacency, a howl in the concrete night, a slag-heap love letter to the lonely.

In 2025, to give that album a deluxe reissue — remastered, expanded, recontextualized — is to say that those guttural screams, those jangly chords, those messy homespun ballads still matter. It’s a statement: that rock need not be perfect to be perfect. That pain, longing, chaos, longing, and heartbreak deserve clarity, not gloss.

If you’ve never heard The Replacements — or if all you know are legends and hearsay — this version of Let It Be is a gift. Not because it’s pretty, but because it’s honest. Not because it’s comfortable, but because it’s real.

So press play. Let the guitars crack. Let the drums rattle. Let the voices ache. Because the room is dark — and once you open the door, you might never want to leave.

Video of the Day: The Replacements: Let It Be (Deluxe Edition) Unboxing and Interview with Peter Jesperson

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Unboxing Let It Be (Deluxe Edition) with Peter Jesperson feels a bit like opening a time capsule with the person who helped seal it shut decades ago. As he lifts the lid, there’s an unmistakable spark of recognition in his voice—each piece of packaging, every photo, every scuffed tape box seems to carry a memory only he can unlock. What might otherwise feel like a standard deluxe reissue suddenly becomes charged with lived history.

Jesperson doesn’t just describe the material; he animates it. He flips through the booklet and, in an offhand comment, drops you right back into the chaos and brilliance of The Replacements in 1984. The band’s humor, volatility, tenderness, and absolute unpredictability all surface as he recalls how certain songs came together or how a particular live moment found its way onto a bonus disc.

Moving through the set with him is like being guided by the band’s archivist-in-chief—someone who doesn’t merely know the story but lived inside it. His excitement is contagious, and as he handles each artifact, the deluxe edition becomes more than a product; it becomes a reunion with the band, filtered through someone who never stopped believing in them. In his hands, the ephemera transforms into something warm and personal, a reminder of how unlikely and extraordinary this music was—and still is.

YTAA 11-18-2025 on Mixcloud

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It’s been a while since I found the time to upload a full show to Mixcloud! I promise to be better about posting them. The latest episode of YTAA 11-18-2025 is now available on Mixcloud. Please do me a favor and give it a listen when you have a chance.

Finding the time to post full episodes of Your Tuesday Afternoon Alternative on Mixcloud has been more of a challenge than I ever expected. What seems, on the surface, like a simple matter of uploading a show ends up being far more complicated once you stack it next to the responsibilities of everyday life, the planning that goes into each week’s broadcast, and the desire to make sure everything I share is as polished, listenable, and enjoyable as possible. I want to take the time to explain why it has taken me longer than it should to get full shows posted and—more importantly—to apologize for the delay and talk honestly about my commitment to becoming more consistent on Mixcloud.

First, producing Your Tuesday Afternoon Alternative isn’t just a matter of showing up, pressing “record,” and walking away. Even after so many years of doing the show, each episode requires preparation: listening to new music, organizing playlists, writing notes, checking information about artists, aligning segments, and making sure the flow feels right. That’s the part listeners hear directly. What listeners don’t see is everything that comes after the live broadcast—cleaning up the audio file, leveling tracks, trimming silence, removing dead air, tagging the episode, writing show notes, creating artwork, uploading everything, then double-checking it all to make sure it’s correct and accessible. It’s a process I care about, because sharing independent, alternative, and emerging music has always been something that deserves care.

But caring takes time, and time has been harder to come by lately.

Over the last several months (and, if I’m honest, probably longer than that), life has piled on its normal assortment of responsibilities: work, family, health, grading, teaching, commitments that can’t be rescheduled, and the thousand small tasks that accumulate without asking for permission. None of these things are unusual; they’re simply the parts of life that everyone negotiates in their own way. Yet what has happened, unintentionally, is that by the time I sit down to work on getting a full show uploaded, the day has already stretched far beyond the hours I planned on using.

Mixcloud uploads aren’t something I want to do halfway. I don’t want to toss a show online with minimal detail or sloppy audio just to say it’s there. That has never been the spirit of Your Tuesday Afternoon Alternative. The whole point is to introduce people to music worth hearing—bands pouring their hearts into their work, musicians making something genuine, songs with meaning and craft. That deserves a certain level of attention. It deserves to be done right.

And yet, even with the best intentions, the backlog grew.

So I want to be completely direct: I’m sorry. Sorry for taking so long to get episodes uploaded. Sorry for not communicating more clearly when I fell behind. Sorry for making listeners wait when so many of you reached out asking when the next show would be posted. Those messages were kind, encouraging, and patient—and every time I read one, it reminded me how much the show means to people who want to listen on their own schedule.

When people care enough to ask, that means something. And I don’t take that lightly.

The good news is that when you fall behind long enough, eventually you recognize that doing nothing only makes the problem larger. It is time to fix it. It is time to get the shows uploaded more consistently. It is time to make the Mixcloud archive what it should have been all along: a reliable place where listeners can catch up, re-listen, discover new music, or hear an episode they missed live.

I am committing—publicly and sincerely—to posting more consistently. That means setting aside designated time each week to prepare, edit, and upload the shows, even if that means reshuffling other tasks or being more disciplined about how I manage my schedule. It means breaking the work into smaller chunks so that it doesn’t feel overwhelming. It also means giving myself permission not to overthink every detail. The show should sound good, absolutely—but perfectionism can be just as paralyzing as disorganization.

More importantly, posting consistently is a way of honoring the musicians and bands who trust me with their art. It’s also a way of honoring the listeners who tune in every Tuesday afternoon, who send notes and recommendations, who say kind words about the music I share, and who make this show a genuine joy rather than another responsibility. If the live broadcast is about community, energy, and immediacy, then the Mixcloud archive is about access—about giving people the freedom to listen when and how they want, no matter their schedule.

I realize that promises are only as meaningful as the follow-through. Saying I will be more consistent is easy; actually doing it requires effort, planning, and accountability. So here is the practical plan: older shows will be uploaded in batches, and new episodes will go up shortly after each Tuesday broadcast. It may take a little time to clear the backlog, but the process has already begun, and I intend to keep it moving in a steady, realistic rhythm.

If you have been waiting, thank you—for your patience, your encouragement, your interest, and your willingness to stick with the show. If you’re new to the Mixcloud archive, welcome. And if you’re one of the many people who loves discovering under-the-radar music, I promise there is a lot coming your way.

In the end, Your Tuesday Afternoon Alternative has always been about connection: connecting listeners with artists, connecting independent musicians with audiences who want something outside the algorithm, and connecting a community that values creativity, heart, and authenticity in music. Getting the shows onto Mixcloud more reliably is part of strengthening those connections. It is part of respecting your time and honoring the work that musicians put into their craft.

So yes—it took me far too long. And yes—I am genuinely sorry for that.

But I am also incredibly grateful for everyone who continues to listen, share, and support the show. I appreciate you more than you know. And going forward, you can expect more consistent uploads, more reliable access to every episode, and the same commitment to sharing the best independent and alternative music I can find.

Thank you, sincerely—and stay tuned. The next batch of shows is on its way.