ALBUM REVIEWS

Who Owns The Graveyard By Elvis Depressedly Michael

ROMANO

On Who Owns the Graveyard’s first track, Matthew Cothran sings of his typically American love of “sex, drugs, and money.” His voice, autotuned but otherwise unaffected, sits atop a sparse synth line. It’s almost jarring. Elvis Depressedly is known for sloppy, guitardriven lofi - not experimental pop. In light of the album’s opening lyrics, you have to wonder what prompted this change. Is this commentary on his own preoccupations with money and success? Is it a thinly-veiled attempt to amass more popularity? Regardless of the answer , Who Owns the Graveyard is easily Cotharan’s most ambitious album yet. While much of the album has a pop aesthetic, Cothran plays a range of styles, including country, rock, and hyperpop. After hearing “Hold Me Down’s” tapped guitar solos or “On Earth’s” wailed vocals, a fan might find themselves thinking, “I didn’t know he could do that!” Lyrically, Cothran says a lot in few words. On “Piper,” he shares memories of “making love when love was enough,” somehow sounding both wistful and devastated. He “thanks the lord” for putting an end to his sobriety on the tradcountry detour “Sober No More;” he is not just parodying country music, but also engaging in a bit of gallows humor. On the title track, Cothran insists that “this is not music you hear right now / you hear only your mind.” In a way, this is Who Owns the Graveyard’s thesis statement. In listening to the album, you are confronting a confusing - and often confused - mess. You choose what to make of it. Maybe Cothran’s change in musical direction is a selfdeprecating commentary. Maybe it’s a cynical calculation. Maybe it’s just an artist making the kinds of music that excites him now. Whatever you come away thinking, it may say more about your mind than his music.

Good Riddance

BY GRACIE ABRAMS LILLY TANENBAUM

Gracie Abrams, like all other fans of Joni Mitchell and Taylor Swift, is familiar with breakup songs about a past lover who has caused pain. Think Swift’s “All Too Well” or Mitchell’s “A Case of You.” But what makes Abrams’ first full length album, titled Good Riddance, interesting is not the ways in which

Abrams follows in the footsteps of her musical heroes, but rather the ways she separates herself from them. Good Riddance is not an album about being heartbroken and left behind - it is an album about being the one who leaves. On the opening track, “Best,” Abrams confesses “You fell hard / I thought, good riddance / I never was the best to you.” On the next track, “I know it won’t work” Abrams asks “Why won’t you try moving on for once?” While the ‘you’ in many of our classic breakup songs is cruel and imagined to be off living happily while the narrator wallows, Abrams shows that life is rarely this simple. Abrams is honest about her part in the breakup, and she is just as heartbroken as the other person seems to be. Good Riddance is set apart by its honest, whispered confessions that show life in your twenties is never as clearcut as you want it to be. She is unable to stay in her relationship but misses it just the same, she turns to drugs to escape a place she isn’t truly ready to leave, and she is happy about leaving her home while she misses it.

IT’S BEEN A WHILE

BY SPIRAL XP VAN MONDAY

Spiral XP rips. Hailing from Seattle, Washington, the Max Keyes-led project released It’s Been a While in February on Danger Collective Records. Wall-to-wall fuzzy guitar riffs, distorted vocals, compressed drums, and a stereotypical shoegaze album cover create a pure project. It’s not necessarily anything new; it would be easy to compare the project to records released by shoegaze giants like My Bloody Valentine. However, I would urge listeners to look past comparisons and listen to this EP for what it is, rather than who influenced It’s Been a While. In my mind, there is something distinctly Pacific Northwest about the project. On “Free Thinking,” Keyes sings over a repetitive guitar riff, his voice recalling the low-hanging clouds. The opening track, “Deja Vu,” (not to be confused with the song of the same name by a much more well-known popstar), opens the EP with driving guitar and hypnotic drums, as the lyrics echo over the top of the instruments, singing “All my life / I’ve been here twice.” At just under two minutes, it wastes no time in presenting the EP’s sound. Like most other shoegaze outfits, the lyricism is melancholy, opining on life, death, and everything in between. That’s not to say there’s