Mixtapemotions

  • “Remind Me I’m Alive” by Ivoryline, Sunday, April 30, 2023

     

    Like Search the City, Ivoryline was one of Tooth & Nail Records potential “next Anberlin” projects. Ivoryline was one of the many “two-album wonders” of the late ‘00s and early ‘10s, releasing their debut There Came a Lion in 2008 and Vessels in 2010. Last year, the Labeled podcast featured an interview with Ivoryline’s lead singer Jeremy Gray, breaking down the band’s successes and untimely demise. Ivoryline was a casualty to the dying record-selling industry and never saw the success of some of their scene- and tour-mates, but their story is worth checking out.


    THIS SEATLE LIFE HAS CHANGED ME FROM THE INSIDE. In 2003, Dead End Driveway formed in Tyler, Texas, and changed their name to Ivoryline in 2005. The next year they were scouted by Tooth & Nail Records after playing on the Vans Warped Tour. After signing to the label in 2007, the band released There Came a Lion in February of 2008. The album sold well, charting at number 25 on Billboard’s Christian Albums and number 15 on Billboard’s Top Heatseekers chart. Three of the albums singles went to number 1 on Christian Rock radio, and it seemed that Ivoryline was the next big Christian Rock band. Although the band toured with both Christian and secular bands from Family Force 5 and Emery to Silverstein and Dance Gavin Dance, their lyrics pigeonholed the band as an explicitly Christian group. There Came a Lion opened with the track “Days End,” a song about awaiting the Second Coming. “All You Ever Hear” seems to echo the biblical story of Mary Magdalene, while with 2023 ears sounds patriarchal, condescending, and shaming of the fallen woman in the song. “Hearts and Minds” is a Christian chess game between knowledge and feelings. 

    HOW BEAUTIFUL YOU CAN BE. The lyrics to “Remind Me I’m Alive” feel a little awkward without the music as far as the word choice and the cadence if you were to read them aloud. The song is a worship song, talking vaguely about the speaker’s relationship with God and magnifying how much better God is than the speaker. The greatest strength of the song is its soaring melody. Like many of the tracks on  There Came a Lion, singer Jeremy Gray pushes his vocal range to falsetto, which was a very common practice in the ‘00s. But Ivoryline’s drums and bass keep the rhythm grooving. And the guitars help the melody to soar. There is something fundamentally ‘80s, perhaps like Journey, about Ivoryline’s first record that they were unable to capture on their sophomore record, Vessels. While Jeremy Gray didn’t become the next Steve Perry, there was potential in the the sincerity of Ivoryline’s lyrics, Gray’s delivery, and the overall musicality of Ivoryline. It’s good music like this that reminds us how good it is to be alive and listening to music. 




  • “Say the Words” (Now) by dc talk, Saturday, April 29, 2023

     

    It’s time finally to name one of my biggest musical influences from middle school. It’s not a cool ‘90s band by today’s standards, but they certainly influenced Christian music and evangelical thought until today and have given many former church kids enough trauma to unpack. We’re finally talking about DC Talk’s greatest hits album intermission, via the radio hit that comes from the remix of a song “Say the Words” from their breakthrough album Free At Last. While the band called their greatest hits record an intermission, the group have only reunited on rare occasions and have not recorded a record since 1998’s Supernatural. 

    I’VE GOT SOMETHING FOR YOU, MAN. When you’re 12 years old in the year 2000, nothing could be cooler than owning a copy of DC Talk’s intermission. The boys from Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University were known for changing styles. Coming from embarrassingly bad white-boy Hip-Hop on their eponymous debut record to less-embarrassingly bad Hip Hop thanks to The Doobie Brothers’ “Jesus Is Just Alright” being their biggest hit on Free At Last, the band changed their sound to Hard Rock on their iconic 1995 record Jesus Freak. Most critics of Christian music in the ‘90s and ‘00s points out that music takes a distant second to the message of the songs, and DC Talk has definitely faced this scrutiny. While Toby McKeehan, better known by his stage name Toby Mac may have really “Luv[ed] Rap Music,” it was grunge and modern rock that took the band to MTV with “Jesus Freak” and “Between You and Me.” But in 1995, at the age of 8, I wasn’t listening to “Jesus Freak,” and when that music eventually entered my house, I had to hide it from my mom because it “sounded evil.” My first exposure to DC Talk was around 1998 from a tape of light CCM songs called Songs 4 Life and their song “Between You and Me.” Later, I heard DC Talk’s “Consume Me” on the local Christian radio station.

    BACK IN THE ‘70S IT WAS ABUSED. But my first DC Talk album was intermissions. It was a way for me to get all the band’s greatest hits—not just the ones played on the light rock Christian radio station. It would be the last of DC Talk before the band members went solo to varying degrees of success. The radio single “Say the Words” (Now) went straight to number on Christian radio and everyone was craving more from Kevin Max, Michael Tait, and Toby Mac. “Say the Words” was a song about the need for Christians to show love to a fallen world. The remix offered a fresh, of-the-time electronic pallet, auto-tune fills, and a chill beat. The sound was fresh, sounding like the boy bands of the day with a dash of rock guitar, hip hop, and dance music. I misheard the line “Brothers and sisters,” an overdubbed line as either “better than Sisqo” or “Better than disco.” Sisqo was most famous for “Thong Song,” which was a major hit around the time of “Say the Words.”  Even though the lyric isn’t “Better than Sisqo,” the emphasis of the song is about “real love” and not “abusing” the words “I love you.” Love, in the context of today’s song, comes from God and is not sexual. The Jesus Freak revival of the ‘90s and ‘00s may have been using hippie-styled advertising, but it was very important that everyone knew that although they looked like “Jesus Freaks,” they basically believed the same thing as the televangelist on TV except they had better music. But a lot changes in twenty years. 





  • “Steal My Sunshine” by Len, Friday, April 28, 2023 (repost)

    In the summer of ’99, I was 12 years old. I spent the first half of the summer with my dad, a truck driver, as he crossed the U.S. delivering camper chassis and steel. A lot of kids would get bored looking at the Interstate for hours, but I always loved the journey. I loved maps and geography, and I was getting a firsthand experience of seeing what America looked like. Of course there were some boring parts. But what was best about the miles of cornfields was that the radio stations lasted quite a while– a lot longer than they lasted in the foothills of North Carolina. With my dad, I got to experience new (old) music that my mom didn’t approve of at the time. On the road I first listened to Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd‘s Dark Side of the Moon, Steve Miller Band, George Thorogood & the Destroyers, America, and so many others I could fill a whole blog post listing. We also listened to new music–Red Hot Chili Peppers, Goo Goo Dolls, and Sugar Ray. 

    IMPAIRED BY MY TRIBAL LUNAR SPEAK. One of the songs that was fun to hear on the radio stations across America was Len‘s summer hit “Steal My Sunshine.” Surfer-dude meets baby doll singing, with strange lyrics, and happy, vibey instrumentation that sound like it would make a dog happy, this song became quite an infection radio gem. Listening to this song again, it reminds me of a time when the radio was fun. You didn’t know what style of music you were going to hear next. The ’90s were a time when alternative rock had a place on the Top 40 along with Hip Hop and bubblegum pop. In the late ’90s rock started flirting more with Hip Hop and electronica, hence making unique tracks like this one. As the Canadian brother-sister fronted band failed to release a follow-up album to their 1999 hit You Can’t Stop the Bum Rush, the band and their style remains a kind of time capsule of the summer before Y2K. It would have been interesting to see where they could have taken pop-rock, though, into the new millennium. 
    I KNOW IT’S UP FOR ME.  Unfortunately, Len was unable to capture the hooks in their only hit twice. In fact, the band kind of rebelled against hooks in the rest of their music, much to their detriment. It’s also worth it to check out why this was the only song we’ve ever heard from Len in the 8-minute documentary from True Rock N’ Roll Stories (see below). If you just take the song on the first listen, along with the embarrassingly awesome music video, you might conclude that it’s just a feel good song with some strange lyrics. However, on a deeper listen/read, you can see that the lyrics are about dealing with depression. The song talks about how other people can “steal [our] sunshine.” It also talks about feeling down when others are enjoying themselves. This is another example of a music/lyric paradox used in songs like “Rose-Colored Boy” and to a lesser extent “Float On.” “Steal My Sunshine,” is a pretty good pre-curser to Emo pop. So what does this song mean for today? It’s been a really rainy summer in Korea and extreme weather is taking over the globe. There’s so much to bring us down. Life is looking different every summer. So that’s kind of why we need to remember the good: those simple summer days when we didn’t stress about heatwaves causing wildfires that might burn down your home. Please don’t steal my sunshine–but also, don’t turn it up to 11!


  • “Son of a Gun” by Search the City, Thursday, April 27, 2023

    Kicking off the criminally catchy debut record, A Fire So Big the Heavens Can See It, from Search the City, “Son of a Gun” sets the tone of the pop-punk band’s two-disc discography, which can be best summed up as tongue-in-cheek, cliché-ridden lyrics and tight upbeat, emotional, well-produced melodies. The band seemed to be both a product of Tooth & Nail Records‘ push in the late ’00s for duplicating the success of their early ’00s roster and a victim of when that strategy didn’t work due to the collapse of the music industry when record sales were plummeting. In 2009, the band quietly left the label.


    SO LET ME GET THIS STORY STRAIGHT. I attended Cornerstone Festival in Bushnell, Illinois for the second time in 2008. The group I traveled with aimed to be up there for at least one of the pre-festival days, but sometimes car troubles or something else unexpected would delay the arrival. In 2008, though, we made it up for half of the day before the festival which was Tooth & Nail Day. Tooth & Nail Records sponsored a few stages and many of their new signees would play earlier in the day and some of the bigger acts would headline during peak times. I happened to catch part of Search the City’s set, but there was either another band to see or we had to set up camp. I wasn’t impressed by their performance. While the instruments sound good, lead singer Josh Frost‘s vocals weren’t on pitch, a problem I’ve seen with a lot of new bands. Although gas was expensive and entrance to the festival wasn’t cheap, I had saved up enough money for merch and bought a lot of CDs, one of them was A Fire So Big the Heavens Can See It. Even though I didn’t care for their set, the Ryan Clark artwork and the catchy radio single on RadioU “Clocks and Time Pieces” and maybe a discount price for buying a bundle of Tooth & Nail’s new releases had me giving Search the City a second chance. 

    I CAN’T BE YOUR BULLET TO BITE DOWN ON. Similar to the first single by The All-American Rejects “Swing, Swing,” “Son of a Gun” opens with an organ. When The All-American Rejects released “Swing, Swing,” they were kind of an anti-cool, Weezer type band, highlighting their indie pop-punk sound. But in 2005 when the Rejects released their breakthrough record, Move Along, the band instantly became cool. The opening organ in “Son of a Gun” feels like a hipster nod to The All-American Rejects from one of the bands that Tooth & Nail was gambling on becoming the next Anberlin. The lyrics on Fire certainly don’t match the nuance of Anberlin, Mae, Emery, or any of the label’s success stories, and the writing style of Matt Thiessen and his band Relient K had moved away from punny cliches with Forget and Not Slow Down. But I thought of Fire as a guilty pleasure album. I knew that the lyrics were dumb. I knew it was more sugar and fat than protein and fiber. I knew that it sounded like the music posh boys who drove BMWs and wore Ralph Lauren and shopped at Abercrombie, but somehow in my car I could blast “The Rescue,” “Ambulance Chaser,” and “Son of a Gun” and feel like I was allowed to be caught up with the emotion of the song and not think too deeply about it. So today, that’s my best defense for the song of the day. I just like it. Do I ever need another reason? Yes, of course, if I’m going to be a writer. But sometimes, I need a little ear candy.

     

  • “Little Flowers” by Denison Witmer, Wednesday, April 26, 2023

    In 2005, Denison Witmer released Are You a Dreamer? The album was released on the now defunct Chad Pearson-owned record label The Militia Group, home to a plethora of Christian and secular acts in the late ’90s and early ’00s. The former A&R guy at Tooth & Nail Records founded The Militia Group on similar values as the legendary label: musical variety. From underground punk rock bands like Brandston and The Beautiful Mistake to indie rock gems like Copeland and Lovedrug to mainstream successes like The Summer Set and Cartel and to indie folk acts like The New Frontiers and Denison Witmer, the label fostered talent for nearly 10 years before the label folded.  


    HOW YOU FOUND ME, I STILL NEVER UNDERSTAND. “Little Flowers” opens Are You a Dreamer?  with simple acoustic guitar plucking. But in addition to guitar, Denison Witmer’s dear friend and occasional housemate Sufjan Stevens appears playing banjo on the track. Stevens’ 2005 release of Illinois was certainly a more dynamic album, but Wimter’s simple Are You a Dreamer? feels like the soul underneath Stevens’ at times avant-garde compositions–where he came from on releases like Michigan and Seven Swans. Are You a Dreamer? offers subtle dynamics, though, and lyrics come to the forefront. “Little Flowers” starts out pensive, maybe sad. And while the lyrics are forefront to the song, they are not straightforward. Listeners struggle to understand the speaker’s relationship with subject of the song. From the first verse of the song in which Witmer lists the symbols of the colors of the flags that the subject of the song is waving to the mystical second verse in which the subject is “floating in the forest” when he meets that person and places his “stigmata on [the subject’s] hands.” Stigmata is a term for the wounds of Christ in Catholic mysticism–the hands, wrists, and feet which were nailed to the cross. 

    YOU WERE OUTSIDE FLOATING IN THE FOREST. The chorus of “Little Flowers” brings in Sufjan Stevens and his banjo plucking and the song shifts into a major key, sounding hopeful. Yet the lyrics of the chorus are somewhat bereft of resolve. In the first chorus, the “clouds of hope fall [on the subject] now.” In the second chorus “love fall[s] on [the subject] now. Is the speaker of the song Jesus or God and the “little flowers” that the subject has “sown show people that I am love”? Perhaps “Little Flowers” is a metaphor for the Christian faith or the personal relationship with Jesus that the Sufjan school of folk doesn’t shy away from. And yet, in this simple song, I wonder if the message is that simple. I picture an old church lady who loves God so much as she spends time in her garden growing beautiful flowers, decorating her lawn with colored flags, all symbolizing a spiritual love. It reminds me of a time when I worked in landscaping for these church ladies who seemed to have a deep devotion to God. Working early in the morning before the sun got too hot, I too felt a deep love of God, humming hymns and saying silent prayers as I weeded the garden. I too pictured God smiling down on me. It’s a memory of a time when my world made sense with faith as long as I overlooked my sexuality, and now as I think back fondly on that return to a semi-rural Garden of Eden morning, I wonder if my soul was on to a truth that I get from cultivating little flowers before the heat of the day?

     

  • “Months and Years” by Abandon Kansas, Tuesday, April 25, 2023 (partial repost)














    Prior to signing with Gotee Records in 2009, Wichita-based band, Abandon Kansas garnered radio play on RadioU as an indie band. The band recorded with Gotee for five years before going independent, partnering with BadChristian Music to release their final project, Alligator, an album that lead singer Jeremy Spring talked about with the BadChristian Podcast as an album dealing with his personal struggles in the band/Christian band circuit, dealing with doubt, substance abuse, and depression. To some Christian music fans, Alligator was too profane compared to their previous works and other Christian Rock bands in the scene. To others, Alligator proved to be a refreshing take on authenticity which the confounds of most Christian record labels censored. After the album was released, the band planned to tour with the album, but ultimately personal issues forced Spring to cancel the tour. The band went on indefinite hiatus, but in 2019 they renamed the band to Glass Age, releasing a three-song EP titled Bloom and taking the band in a different direction. 

     MOMENTUM IS HARD TO GAIN IN THIS KIND OF RAIN.  “Months and Years” is Abandon Kansas’s first radio single, and talks about the passage of time when people are separated. It also chronicles the dreams and struggles of a band trying to define their purpose. It reminds listeners to look back on their dreams and look to the purpose that brought them to the point of pursuing those dreams. Today this song speaks to me as I’m reevaluating my role as a writer and if it’s something I want to pursue. When I started blogging every day, I thought that it would be easy: just research and write about the songs that I love. I could discover new music and introduce my readers to my tastes in music. But little by little, I realized that the songs were shedding light on dusty corners of my soul that I felt compelled to explore. One of the reasons why I started writing again was to learn how to talk about myself, to tell my story–why I think the way that I do, how I adapted and shed certain beliefs. Yet, the process is terrifying at times, leaving me vulnerable to what the Internet has to say. I’ve been reflecting on my recent posts–since I started fictionalizing since I stopped making every post about facts that I drummed up online–and I wonder what kind of writer I should be. Does this project continue into the next year? Do I continue to use it as my practice canvas? And ultimately, how can I ever find the time for rewriting when just writing a first draft takes up so much of my evening?

    A COUPLE OF MONTHS HAVE TURNED INTO SEVERAL YEARS. I’ve been busy the last two months and only now have been catching up on the existential dread that I’ve been deferring. I wonder how I can get stuck on autopilot, not processing my life. And when I get a little bit of free time, I’m paralyzed on the couch with my worries about where it’s all heading. I have a lot to be thankful for but I realize just how much further I have to go to pursue my goals. I feel stuck in arrested development when I get these moments, and I really don’t know what to do about it. There are certain markers of success that I hear about from other people, and that triggers me to feel unaccomplished and to belittle the accomplishments that I have made. And then I think about all the unfinished projects I’ve started around the house, the unfinished grad school application, the better jobs that I really should be applying to but I fear rejection. All of this seems like a very shaky foundation, and I’m talking myself into a very dark place. Things should be better tomorrow when the rain stops. 


  • “Leave Before You Love Me” by Marshmello & Jonas Brothers, Monday, April 24, 2023 (updated repost)

    With over a billion streams for his hits “Wolves” and “Silence” and 1.8 billion streams for his song with Bastille, “Happier,” Marshmello‘s collaboration with the Jonas Brothers is on the path to being a mega Spotify hit, with nearly 600 million streams as of writing this post. In 2015, Chris Comstock began publishing remixes of songs online, gaining fame under the pseudonym Marshmello. When he performed as a DJ, he wore a white bucket shaped like the confectionary treat. In 2017, Comstock’s identity was confirmed by Forbes,  however, Comstock continues all public appearances with a bucket covering his head.

     I’M THE TYPE TO GET NAKED. Nick and Joe Jonas each get a verse on “Leave Before You Love Me,” while the eldest brother, Kevin, plays guitar and sings back up. Some of the conflict resolved over the course of the documentary film Chasing Happiness deals with Kevin feeling slighted by his younger brothers stealing the spotlight. In 2019, the brothers released their first album in six years. Nick had a very successful solo career and Joe eventually found success fronting a new band, DNCE. But with Happiness Begins the Jonas Brothers, embarked on a new, grown up version of the former Disney Channel band. The brothers continued in this direction with the sexy single “What a Man Gotta Do,” featuring Nick Jonas imitating Tom Cruise‘s famous Risky Business scene. “Leave Before You Love” me was released last year and reached #19 on the Hot 100. The song interpolates Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You,” though many listeners have pointed out the similarity to Daft Punk’s “Instant Crush” and Wham!‘s “Last Christmas,” and you can find mashups of the Jonas Brother/Marshmello song with both of these songs. Personally, I found myself filling in “Leave” with parts of “Last Christmas” as I hummed the song all day. 

    IT’S MESSING WITH MY HEAD HOW I MESS WITH YOUR HEART. I can’t help but hear Rick Beato yelling at me for this song. How can you follow up Adele’s organic vocals the spare instrumental parts with a DJ? In fact, I’m trying to figure out what the hell a DJ does? Yes, I get why raves are a thing. I get that DJs play songs that people want to hear and keep the vibe coming, but why do they headline at major festivals. Last year I talked about David Guetta and Alan Walker, even watching a lengthy set of the latter’s to see what he does during a show. And moreover, how can Marshmallo perform his duties underneath a bucket? Is that the point? Please forgive my ignorance. I couldn’t put myself through watching an entire set of Marshmello’s mostly hip hop music during his set at 2021’s Lollapalooza, watching today’s song and “Happier” and parts of other songs. With some instructions to the audience muffled by the bucket, similar to how Alan Walker’s voice is muffled by the mask he always wears, to put up their phones, or to sing certain lines or to just up and down and flipping a few switches on the equipment that’s not really shown, that’s the only glimpse we get of what a DJ does. At least in the music video and the Billboard Awards live performance of today’s song Marshmello is playing a keyboard. I’m not writing this to spark controversy. I’m genuinely confused. 

    Lyric Video:

    Extended version:

    Billboard Music Awards performance

  • “I” by Taeyeon ft. Verbal Jint, Sunday, April 23, 2023 + Spring Vibes Playlist AppleMusic Edition

    “I” was the first single from the first solo EP, or in K-pop terms mini album, by Taeyeon. The mini album is also named I. The Girls’ Generation leader’s solo career has been the most successful of the group, and “I” was a massive hit. Released in 2015, the single features Korean Hip Hop artist Verbal Jint, a rapper who is credited with creating a rhyme structure to Korean hip hop after his debut in the early ‘00s. The combination of Taeyeon’s soaring vocals and Verbal Jint’s rhythm along with the electric guitar feels extremely uplifting to the listener. 


    FLY HIGH.  “I” is a celebration of self, as the song suggests. Taeyeon announces in the lyrics that she will no longer be tied down by confinement of being in the spotlight, but will try to be herself authentically. It’s the kind of song to put on when you feel that you can’t achieve your goals. The song will remind you of all that you have accomplished and help you to focus on the future. It’s the perfect song to listen to on a sunny day. And although it was released in October of 2015, there is springlike energy to this song, making it an ideal jumping off point for the AppleMusic edition of Spring Vibes. A link to this new playlist is posted below:



    Listen to the Playlist on AppleMusic.

    Read the Korean lyrics on Genius.

    Read the English translation on Genius.

     

  • “Carlo Rossi” (Love in the Face of Great Danger) by Tyson Motsenbocker, Saturday, April 22, 2023 (reformatted repost)

    Last year, my most streamed song on Spotify was Tyson Motsenbocker’s “Carlo Rossi” (Love in the Face of Great Danger). I wrote about the song in December, but the weather didn’t seem appropriate for Motsenbocker’s tropical sounds. While it’s only April and I’m kind of on a mini-vacation, I thought that this song would be a fun revisit, particularly after the heavy subject matter from the previous two days. That’s not saying that the subject of this song about falling in love when the world is on fire isn’t just as serious—it’s just the chill guitar riff adds that illusion. Enjoy the rest of the original post from December!

    TAKE ME ON A NEW VACATION. “Carlo Rossi” (Love in the Face of Great Danger) is my pick for song of the year for 2022. Tyson Motsenbocker condenses a novel’s worth of theme into a single song while offering vivid imagery that feels like a classic film, yet it is uncanny how contemporary that classic film seems. On the Labeled Podcast, Motsenbocker unpacked the themes of “Carlo Rossi” and helped listeners understand some of the esoteric language of the song. Motsenbocker sets the song in Central or South America during a riot. The speaker of song and his love climb into an abandoned hotel with a bottle of cheap wine, Carlo Rossi, and drink it from the bottle watching the riot unfold. As I listen to “Carlo Rossi,” I always picture a cinematic version of a Tennessee Williams play, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman or Gregory Peck, portraying an expatriate experience millennials read about in literature class when we read about the Roaring ’20s  or saw in old movies when the advent of the jetliner made tropical destinations all the rage. But we never really enjoyed this experience because of a slowing economy. 


    THEY BURNED A CAR IN THE PARKING LOT. Both on the Labeled Podcast and The Black Sheep Podcast, Motsenbocker talks about the themes of his latest record, Milk Teeth. The title of the record refers to growing up; baby teeth are the soft teeth that we lose in early childhood and sometimes referred to as milk teeth because they are the teeth that grow while a baby is still nursing. He describes the record as the one where he is putting the past to bed, dealing with becoming an adult. He also discusses how the moving goalposts for his generation has created a generation of nostalgia. He says, “As millennials, not only were we not sold that our future was going to be this Blade Runner dystopian hellscape that it’s turning out to be, but we were sold that it was going to be so much better than anything that had ever come before us, that you could be anything you wanted to be; you could be the president; you can be an astronaut . . . and everything you do is amazing.” Motsenbocker talks about living moment by moment in the present, which becomes a collection of moments that feel right that lead to another moment that feels right. On Labeled, Motsenbocker explains that the song deals with his success at a time when the world seems to be on fire. For Motsenbocker those moments that feel right led him into a relationship and into a marriage. It’s a song about coming of age at what seems like the end of the world, and living the best you can with those circumstances. I’ll drink to that!

     

  • “Panic Switch” by Silversun Pickups, Friday, April 21, 2023 (updated repost)

    Shoegaze is a sub-genre of rock music that employs heavy distorted guitars to create what is called a “wall of sound.” Shoegaze came out of psychedelic rock and often creates a hypnotic effect. Not every group that uses “the wall of sound” is necessarily a shoegazer act, but some bands that have famously used this effect are Oasis, The Verve, and the Smashing Pumpkins. The etymology of  “shoegazing” is said to be a description of the guitarists of these bands because they mostly stared at their shoes. The etymology of  “shoegazing” is said to be a description of the guitarists of these bands because they mostly stared at their shoes. While music critics don’t often place Silversun Pickups in the subgenre of Shoegaze, what else would you classify their 2009 hypnotic hit “Panic Switch“?

    IT’S NEVER WORTH MY TIME. Silversun Pickups topped the Alternative Rock chart with this song. Released in 2009, at a time when I was devouring different kinds of music, Silversun Pickups’ sophomore album Swoon challenged my 2001 Corolla’s stereo in all the right ways between home and school. The band drew controversy when they were nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist, despite the fact that their first album Carnavas had garnered a lot of attention. Swoon, however, was their breakout album. Swoon was released on the edge of a transition in the music industry. It was a time when the deeper register voices and post-grunge rock were on a decline and Alternative was implementing new ideas about style. Silversun Pickups’ following records dropped the “wall of sound” for poppier, electronic elements. But songs like “Panic Switch” and “The Royal We” are fun reminders of the kinds of aggressive rock that used to top the charts.

    WHEN YOU SEE YOURSELF IN A CROWDED ROOM. “Panic Switch” is a song about anxiety, panic, insomnia, and paranoia–all triggering the noradrenaline receptors in a panicked response. The four-piece band has impeccable chemistry, playing rhythmically and filling in the sound completely. Interestingly, although the band’s sound has evolved to less hard-rock-driven music, the original lineup has remained together until their latest album, Physical Thrills, released last fall. with the exception of a year-long hiatus by bassist Nikki Monniger.  The band’s biggest hit, “Panic Switch” is driven by bassist Nikki Monniger who also contributes subtle backing vocals. Lead singer Brian Aubert contributes most of the lead vocals for the band, but occasionally Monniger gives a female perspective to the mostly male-centered alternative rock scene of the early ’10s. The guitar in “Panic Switch” frenetically drones and creates feedback that helps to create the wall of sound. Also contributing to that wall are the keys, played by Joe Lester— a faint organ and something else to create an anxious/ominous mood. Finally, Chris Guanlao makes the song a panic attack at nearly 200 beats per minute, tearing up his drum set. Certainly not a chill song for 4/20, but paranoia, check!