Tiny Engines Rock & Indie 52 Items

Philadelphia’s So Totally are a portrait of utmost devotion, and how longevity in any kind of relationship can’t occur without it. Since 2015, the band originally called So Totally In Love has humbly studied their surroundings and themselves, perfecting a sound that from inception was present. So Totally’s shimmering guitars and melodies typically sit underneath lush vocals that concurrently embed themselves in a listener’s subconscious, haunting them with heavy mood and nostalgia for 90’s rock groups like Swirlies, Pixies, and The Breeders. Previous releases, and their dedication to spending years playing regionally, brought So Totally to the point of singular focus on drafting a third album, entitled Double Your Relaxation, while in quarantine in 2020.

Upon formation, So Totally collectively bonded over an admiration of Land of Talk. While the influence is certainly present in vocalist/guitarist Roya Weidman’s sugary vocals, the band's love of comfortably resolving melodies, and auxiliary percussion, So Totally sonically have more in common with bands like Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, and Spirit of the Beehive…creating massive walls of sound on each record that plainly implies the quartets towering live experience. Such huge tones aren’t only because of Weidman and guitarist/vocalist Matt Arbiz playing, but the collective effort of the band, which is rounded out by bassist Ryan Wildsmith and drummer Joe McLaughlin.

Lyrically and thematically, Double Your Relaxation explores where influence and “hypnosis” exist in life, specifically in environment, media, relationships, and self (via mental illness), bouncing between perspectives of witnessing, interacting with, and contributing to illusion and how that ultimately affects our idea of identity. The moody and, at times, surreal nature of the songs lends itself very appropriately to the shoegaze and heavy indie style So Totally plays, making them a perfect addition to the canon of the genre.

The Three Times collects the first three EPs from Oslo, Norway's Flight Mode. Led by singer/songwriter Sjur Lyseid, each EP contains four songs referencing a year and place in Lyseid's life. It's a coming-of-age novel across an emo/punk rock trilogy of EPs. From youthful exuberance (TX, '98) to jaded indifference (Torshov, '05) to the overwhelming realities of life (Tøyen, ‘13)... Flight Mode presents twelve songs and The Three Times.

On “We Are Where We Are,” a glimmering mid-tempo highlight from Annabel’s new album, Ben Hendricks sings of “a modern way to fill the empty space.” Worldviews, the band’s fourth LP and first in nine years finds the band reconciling with the ways the world has changed in the decade since they’ve been away. His protagonists are trying to determine the boundaries between what’s real and imagined, navigating their worldviews and the dominant ones around them, fighting for an escape or at least a distraction, wondering where the time goes, “going through the motions, running in a circle.” That could’ve been Annabel’s fate, too. But the core of the Ohio band is brothers Ben and Andy Hendricks, and as long as they’ve got each other, we’ve still got Annabel. In a world that feels so uncertain and so disconnected, where else is there to turn but back to Annabel? Think of Worldviews less like a comeback and more as the product of years spent gestating.

Hendricks spends the chorus of “All Time” promising to “make up for all the lost time,” and Annabel makes good on that promise for the next half hour. Worldviews is the most locked in the band has ever sounded, perfecting and building on their indie-emo sound. The title track and “Dog” are classic Annabel, sprightly and jangly midwestern rock songs, while “Defense Mechanism” is a rougher-edged update; when they go in the opposite direction, it results in some of their best work: “Every Home Needs a Ghost” is spartan and spectral, worthy of its title, and the beautiful “Small Victories” dabbles in downtempo electronics. They don’t sound like a band returning after nearly a decade; they sound at the same time hungry and lively like scrappy upstarts and wizened and seasoned like they never left.

Featuring current/former members of Light The Fuse And Run, Wow, Owls!, Weak Teeth and Jesuscentric, Best Practices is a return to the fundamentals of punk rock. On the band's Tiny Engines debut, The EP LP, the quartet lets loose a whirlwind of (garage power pop) punk fury. Recorded with Will Killingsworth (Orchid, Ampere) at Dead Air Studios, Best Practices pummel their way through 9 songs in 12 glorious minutes. The band comes close to careening off the edge at points but never seem to overtake themselves. Chock full of razor sharp hooks Best Practices lays down a furious gauntlet that is as catchy as it is exhausting. All your left with as The EP LP fires towards the finish line is the feeling that you just want to do it all over again.

If Somos was a pop punk band when it formed in 2012, then the Boston-based trio is now a full-blown guitar pop band by comparison. For singer and bassist Michael Fiorentino, guitarist Phil Haggerty, and guitarist Justin Hahn, that evolution came naturally. On their third album, Prison On A Hill, Somos sound like the mellifluous intersection of The 1975 and Alkaline Trio. Gleaming synths and '80s-style percussion steer songs like 'Absent and Lost' and 'Young Believers.' Yet despite that, the album still carries the energetic spirit of their breakout debut full-length, 2014's Temple of Plenty. Just listen to the blissfully anthemic 'Untraceable Past.' Fundamentally, Somos are writing pop songs; they just happen to be intertwining guitar-driven rock as they do so.

The fact Prison On A Hill exists at all may come as a surprise. In 2016, Somos announced they were going on a hiatus, the result of exhaustion from constant tours. They quietly invested more time in other jobs and local activism efforts. Meanwhile, Fiorentino and Haggerty began writing music for an undefined side-project ' that is, until it became clear those songs were meant to be Somos songs. 'It's funny,' says Fiorentino. 'We didn't think the hiatus would be this short. But once we gave ourselves the space to write music free from a project, we started writing Somos songs again.' Their efforts spawned two standalone singles in 2017, 'Strangers On The Train' and 'Permanently Lost.'

Free from expectations or outside pressures, Somos found themselves doing what they were always drawn to: writing songs, ignoring genre expectations, and, above all else, having fun as friends. You can hear all of this in Prison On A Hill. Recorded with Jay Maas (Defeater, Bane, Title Fight) in Boston this past winter, the tracks seem to come effortlessly, as if Somos fused the youthful energy of Temple of Plenty with the pop creativity of 2016's First Day Back. It should come as no surprise that Somos were influenced by The 1975, Churches, The Japanese House, and the Rock Against Racism movement. Beneath the lush musical scope Somos created are lyrics hoping for political reform. In 'Mediterranean,' the band tackles the rise of the far-right movement in Europe. In 'Iron Heel,' they examine authoritarian rule a post-fascism world, Mad Max-style. Even the album's title'a riff on the phrase 'city on a hill,' an idealized term used to describe Massachusetts Bay Colony and later adapted by Ronald Reagan as a warped American Dream for the U.S. at large'has political roots. As Somos return to Tiny Engines with Prison on a Hill, the trio has a similar eager-eyed look as it did during their breakthrough year. Somos are back to having fun again, though they're plenty serious about what they're singing about, too.
(Bio by Nina Corcoran)

Listening to Peaer is like watching someone solve a complicated math equation with grace. Each moment is executed with precision, care and foresight for how it will serve a later part of the arrangement. Every note - and the space between - is integral to the composition. Comprised of two studio engineers and a guitar teacher, Peaer's music is naturally methodical, but not at all rigid or convoluted. In fact, the Brooklyn trio's new album, A Healthy Earth, is profoundly introspective, genuine and colorful: a sensational balance between meticulous sonic construction and self-analytical lyrics that open up into thought-provoking social commentary.

Summer Cannibals fourth album Cant Tell Me No is a defiant release whose very existence is the result of taking back power. After escaping a manipulative personal and creative relationship, guitarist/vocalist Jessica Boudreaux chose to scrap an entire record that had been finished for over a year and start from scratch. Along with Cassi Blum, Devin Shirley and Ethan Butman, Boudreaux wrote, recorded and mixed many of the new tracks during 14-hour days, emerging with the Portland, OR band's first entirely self-engineered and produced album. The Cannibals formed in 2012 and gained a fervent following on the local Portland scene, eventually playing with some their musical heroes including L7, Mudhoney, Stephen Malkmus and The War on Drugs, and touring with Ted Leo & the Pharmacists and Cursive. Along the way, they released 2013s No Makeup and 2015s Show Us Your Mind on their own label, New Moss Records, and 2016s Full Of It on Kill Rock Stars. Show Us Your Mind appeared on NPRs Sound Opinions Best of list in 2015, and Pitchfork said that on Full Of It, the Cannibals expertly balance flame-belching Mad Max riffage with lyrics frankly exploring questions of co-dependence and need. Cant Tell Me No is, as much as anything, about finding love and acceptance on the other side of pain. On a larger scale, the album stands up not just to a relationship or an industry, but to the people and constructs that have been trying to silence women and hold them down for so long. Its about doing the right thing, says Boudreaux, even when its terrifying.

Footballhead is a Chicago-based alternative rock band headed by singer/songwriter Ryan Nolen. At its heart, the band is a vessel to toil forward through internal and external insecurity. It also serves the unrelenting spirit of new-millennium Midwestern youth, with MTV and skatepark dreams in the core of their memories. By blending pop structures with alt and emo sounds, Footballhead channels the frantic, dramatic, and anthemic to map the pressure points of existence. It’s outcast music, revitalized in search of a modern, blissful awakening. Nolen was a skate kid from the western Chicago suburbs; the one who only kicked it with older neighborhood kids. The punkish attitude of late-90s and early-aughts alt-rock galvanized Nolen, from the infectiously fun music down to the fashion. A teenage relocation to Palm Springs, CA coincided with Nolen inundating himself with all the music he could: Warped Tour, 411 videos, Limewire, and the like. The Footballhead ethos comes from this comfort zone of pop impulses and raucous energy, carried by a DIY spirit that grants Nolen the autonomy to facilitate honesty and reflection. Joined by Adam Siska, snow ellet, Liam Burns, and Robbie Kuntz, Footballhead crafts supercharged rock songs like brief, open secrets. However weathered one is from their struggles and mistakes, this music offers unbridled fun as a reprieve, and salves for the shaken. These are your old friends inviting you in to commiserate, elevate, and believe.

awakebutstillinbed return with chaos takes the wheel and i am a passenger, on Tiny Engines, their first new full-length album in five years. From the very first moment, with its warm, opening guitar strum, the Bay Area emo band pick up exactly where they left us at the end of their debut album. Produced by Joe Reinhart (Hop Along, Beach Bunny, Modern Baseball) and engineered by Jack Shirley (Joyce Manor, Jeff Rosenstock, Deafheaven), the new album is sonically massive, allowing the band to peak higher and swoop to more intimate depths than ever before.

awakebutstillinbed return with chaos takes the wheel and i am a passenger, their first new full-length album in five years. From the very first moment, with its warm, opening guitar strum, absib pick up exactly where they left us at the end of their debut album. Produced by Joe Reinhart (Hop Along, Beach Bunny) and engineered by Jack Shirley (Joyce Manor, Jeff Rosenstock), the new album is sonically massive, allowing the band to peak higher and swoop to more intimate depths than ever before.