2022! What a year. We laughed, we cried. We saw Top Gun: Maverick in theaters and munched popcorn before Ice Spice told us what a “munch” was. We hit the griddy to nü-gaze and canceled Lydia Tár. We found the tunnel under Ocean Boulevard and drove through it listening to Ethel Cain. Or something like that. Our shared experiences triumphed for another year. But this list is not about our shared experiences, it’s about my experiences. I’m kidding, this is a list of stuff that I enjoyed, in no real order. I hope it makes you reflect on some of the experiences that you had this year and that you’ll share some of those experiences in the comments or through email: listenupnerds@gmail.com
Turnstile at Knockdown Center - 5/22/22
I am not going to talk about the other two bands on this bill because I missed both of them while standing outside and chatting because I love shooting the shit way more than I could ever love a band like Beach Fossils. I have seen Turnstile seven or eight times and there hasn’t been a single time where the crowd wasn’t singing along through the set. Usually it’s someone grabbing the mic after Brendan Yates has flung himself into the crowd, or people near the front of the stage singing along to the usual hits. That night, when the verse on “Mystery” hit the part where it’s just the bass and vocals, it sounded like a soccer stadium. Everyone around me was singing and cheering for the lads on stage. It’s different now. It’s hard to express love for Turnstile from an aging coreman perspective. What I mean is it’s hard to express that love and not sound like a know-it-all. Turnstile has always been that band. They have always shown the most promise, inclusivity, and accessibility in the scene. They have always been the most dynamic and unafraid. How could they NOT succeed? How could anyone else in hardcore show up in a Taco Bell commercial? It’s been written in the stars since Nonstop Feeling dropped. In the past, fans have decried this as selling out, but in 2022, we encourage our favorite bands to “get that bag.” Does that mean hardcore is dead? Is the DIY spirit only a means to an end? Do you DIY until you get some big company with more resources to DIY for you? Later that night, I caught Ceremony at Trans Pecos and got punched in the jaw during “Doldrums.” Hardcore will never die.
“Why” - Chat Pile (God’s Country, The Flenser, 2022)
There is no pretty metaphor to wrap the horrors in when they occur in front of your face. When america flirted with fascism after electing Donald Trump, art suffered in such a powerful way. I’m not just talking about DIY spaces being shut down shortly after the Ghost Ship tragedy due to a coordinated harassment campaign by 4channers to act as “concerned citizens” and call the fire marshall on any show space that prided itself on being safe and inclusive. What I’m talking about is the loss of nuance brought by fascism. To the fascist, everything to the left of fascism is equally left. There is no irony, there is no space for distinction, nothing is subtle. Art becomes insufficient. Metaphor is too polite. The ugliness of reality is the only thing abject enough to convey just how dire the situation has become. “Why?” is less a song than it is a documentary. It sounds as desperate and disgusting as the horror of everyday life has proven to be. There is no hyperbole. The titular question shifts from rhetorical to a demand for accountability. There are more empty apartments in this country than there are people on the street and that’s more grotesque than any affliction caused by living without a home. “It’s a true story. True fucking American horror story.”
Cold Gawd (Ongoing Installation)
I am going to spare you the whole self-aware “Matt is my friend and I recognize I’m partial to this record” garbage and get into it: I will always have a special place in my heart for any record that prioritizes being absolutely too loud and fuzzed out for its own good. The band’s debut record, God Get Me The Fuck Out Of Here, is loud as hell but smooth vocal melodies and delicate guitar stylings that cut through that fuzz show vulnerability beyond the onslaught of noise. This is a special record not just because of its sonic appeal but because it captures the feeling so much shoegaze misses: It’s full of love. These are supposed to be love songs, albeit obscured by delay and fuzz in the same way the heart is obscured by logic and the punishment of the world. It’s a work of art full of love for people, for places, for bygone eras. Shoegaze has acquired a disaffected, almost too-cool tinge that it lifts from noise rock and “true artist” types but GGMTFOOH embraces love. Love for places like California and Chicago. Love for lovers, friends, soulmates, the sun. Love for nights spent in front of Tumblr feeds, reblogging Whirr tracks. There’s self love in the way that any rapper might present their art: “nobody’s doing it like me, fuck what you’re listening to, it’s cold gawd, etc.” but that’s also love for their influences. The aesthetic is as much Griselda as it is Graveface. In a genre defined by Loveless, it’s exciting to feel the love.
Nia Archives at Boiler Room (video), Two Shell at Boiler Room (video)
I don’t get to have fun anymore. I go to shows where shirtless guys play tough guy music and jump on top of each other and yell about getting stabbed in the back or something. I miss having fun. Both of these mixes are designed with fun at the forefront and reminding people to shut up and dance. On one end, Nia Archives is playing the most captivating set I’ve listened to in a long time. The set made me remember why I like dance music. It’s such a thrill to listen to an expert jungle set. Nia is pulling the crowd through the mix and they’re waiting on every single note. When she stops to hop on the mic or restart the Tempa T “Next Hype” edit, people in the crowd scream like they’ve had a bucket of water thrown on them. On the opposite end, you might think that Two Shell are using their Boiler Room set to have fun at the expense of the crowd. Whether or not it’s actually Two Shell playing this mix has been the subject of debate on countless websites. What isn’t up for debate is that they’re playing a pre-recorded mix and pantomiming the act of DJing for the entire hour-long performance. The interesting thing I’ve noticed about it though is that for the most part, people don’t care. Nobody in the room cares to check if they’re actually mixing. Nobody online cares that it’s prerecorded. Everyone is having a laugh, and that’s what matters.
“Survival Is Vengeance” verse riff 2 - Mindforce (New Lords, Triple B Records, 2022)
There’s a finite amount of notes that a guitar can play and every single year, someone comes up with a nastier and nastier way to play those notes. I don’t know if there’s a sicker riff this year than the riff from :44 to 1:10. It’s a dark staircase that you fall down until you reach the torture chamber of spinkicks at the end of the song. “Survival Is Vengeance” starts with the opening of a faultline and you follow those cracks as they rip through the earth. At :44, that crack reaches a skyscraper, the tallest one you’ve ever seen. The building sways back and forth for the next 25 seconds, and then at 1:10, it splits in half and crumbles. You knew it was going to happen as the swaying started but you were unable to look away. As it comes down, you forget there was ever a building. The dust and rubble envelop you as the song ends. It’s cartoonish. There’s no way it lives in the same reality of Chat Pile. Two polar opposites
Sound and Fury/Gulch’s final set - 7/30-31/2022
To be completely real, I entered Sound and Fury annoyed. I missed Raw Brigade, i needed more coffee, I was hungry, it was too hot, I was offended at the amount of people standing in line for the Brain Dead merch booth. I sorted myself out as fast as I could. I got a burger and a coffee and watched GUNN but not before I waded through the large snaking line of people standing in line to buy merch brought to you by one of the more prominent streetwear brands in the industry. These people were not watching music, they were waiting in lines. I clutched my pearls. I could feel my glasses breaking in two and sensed the tape wrapping around the bridge1. At that moment, I became a reactionary nerd. Was the death of hardcore as I knew it? Co-opted by *shudder* streetwear????
There were 5000 people there. 5000 people around me who all cared about hardcore (or a pair of Brain Dead-branded Gulch sweatshorts) enough to show up early and who paid for at least one day of music. Maybe it wasn’t the death of everything. Maybe it was just the beginning of a new era. That first night, I heard those 5000 people scream “187 on a P-I-G” during the Sunami set. Much like the Turnstile show two months before, I knew this was different. Sure, some of these people waited in line all day for merch and missed most of the bands, but they were there for Sunami, a band with 10 songs out at that time. They cared. Lightning struck in the same place the next night at Gulch’s final set. I saw people go absolutely insane. It was bedlam. I saw people climbing trees to get a better look at the stage. I saw several hundred people climb on each other to sing along to a Siouxsie And The Banshees cover. The police showed up with helicopters. I’m not exaggerating. Perhaps it was a precautionary measure to disperse a huge crowd but it did happen.
There’s a phenomenon in hardcore called the Horseshoe, sometimes known as the “Fuck You Horseshoe.” I’m not sure if it’s a magnetic pulse created by an opening band or if it’s the basic instinct of a herd of coremen to make an arc at the front of the stage that no one can penetrate. There’s a DMZ at every show and to be caught too close to an opening band is social suicide. As one comment on the Sound and Fury Instagram page said after the festival, “S&F defeated the horseshoe.” Not that there wasn’t a way to make one, but nobody cared to do it. Hardcore lives.
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