Tiny Moving Parts has always been a vehicle for catharsis, and that’s nothing new on breathe. The fifth full-length by the Benson, Minnesota, trio sees vocalist/guitarist Dylan Mattheisen and his cousins, brothers Matt (bass) and Billy (drums) Chevalier, tackle issues such as mental health, anxiety and mortality while also expanding their sound. Recorded with longtime collaborator Greg Lindholm and established pop producer John Fields (Jimmy Eat World, Goo Goo Dolls, All Time Low), breathe is a valuable reminded that we’re all in this together, channelled through the band’s trademark blend of math-rock, pop-punk and emo, albeit with a few new musical tricks (including some electronic flourishes and a banjo). More than just a collection of songs, breathe serves as an important emotional crutch. It’s the friend we all need at our darkest times. It’s the sound of a band coming to terms with their own mortality, their own anxieties, their own self-doubts. And it’s a reminder that, as long as there are songs sung back as if our lives depend on them, we are never alone.
Action/Adventure shouldn’t be here. At least, that’s what the Chicago-based five-piece seem to think. They’re wrong – very wrong – but that’s the overriding theme of their debut album. That’s partly why they named it Imposter Syndrome – because when the band signed to Pure Noise Records, they couldn’t quite believe it. Even after they released their seven-track EP Pulling Focus in 2021, and even after that EP’s lead track “Barricades” went viral on TikTok, it didn’t feel real. After all, this is a label that’s put out some of their favorite albums by some of their favorite bands, and now they were a part of it. That sense of confused bewilderment was compounded by the timing of it all.
“For us,” says lead vocalist Blake Evaristo, “having a debut on Pure Noise is insane. Especially because, when “Barricades” blew up for us and we got all that TikTok clout, it happened during the pandemic, so we didn’t even play a show till nearly a year later. And I feel like in that time, we were having imposter syndrome, hence the title. It didn’t feel real.”
“And honestly,” adds vocalist/guitarist Brompton Jackson, “it still doesn’t even feel real. We’ve just been asking questions like is this real? Do we belong here? Is this even happening?”
Much as the band – completed by drummer Adrian Brown, bassist Manny Avila and guitarist Oren Trace – might feel that way, the facts are simple: it is real, they do belong here and it is definitely happening. But their imposter syndrome runs deeper than that, namely because they’re an entirely BIPOC band in the pop-punk scene, which automatically adds an extra layer of depth and uneasiness to everything. It’s what the TikTok video for “Barricades” was all about, and it’s an inherent part of their identity. That video was never meant to blow up, nor was it meant to be overtly political. It simply captured how they felt about who they were and was uploaded to TikTok by Jackson one day on a whim.
“It was the first video we put on TikTok,” says Evaristo. “Brompton made the account that same day, and to see it connect with people has been amazing. But we’re also here now to show that we’re more than that one song! We’ve had hate comments saying that we’re race baiting, which is so frustrating.”
“But we’re 100% not,” adds Jackson. “Me, Oren and Adrian have been playing music together for the past 16 or 17 years. We went to high school together and grew up playing music. Manny was originally friends with Oren’s wife, and we found Blake on Craigslist. It was kismet.”
Still, Action/Adventure are acutely aware their existence is nevertheless important in terms of visibility. They’re just also keen to stress that their initial intentions were all music-focused, and that it’s chance, not design, that they’re all BIPOC.
“Those two parts have to co-exist on completely even playing fields,” explains Jackson. “One can’t really outshine the other. Growing up in the scene, I almost felt like a pariah – I could count the amount of other black people going to shows on one hand. One of them is Adrian! You’d always see the same four or five other black people at shows, so you get to know each other. So it’s important to not lose sight of that, but I also don’t want us to be a token band. We’re just a band. We’re a group of people playing music that we like to listen to and that we like to write – and we just all happen to be people of color. It was an accident, it wasn’t planned.”
“We just wanted to play music,” adds Brown. “We all played music individually and ultimately it just seemed easy to play that music together. And while you don’t see a lot of people of color doing this kind of music, not many people I knew in high school liked metalcore and pop-punk, so when you find those people you’re naturally drawn to together. I just wanted to create the feeling that I got when I saw bands play.”
If that was the band’s intention, they’ve achieved it. Imposter Syndrome begins with the emphatic rush of the title track. Its blitz of flurried, angular guitars that are simultaneously aggressive and poppy, before doubling down on the main concern that plagues the record: ‘We’re the imposters’. The irony is that that song, and this record, proves otherwise. Elsewhere, “Save Yourself” is a powerfully urgent call to arms that brutalizes (in a positive way) the typical pop-punk template, while “Losing Streak” lays bare their insecurities, but pits their defiance and determination against it.
“In good times,” says Brown, “I can listen to it and be like ‘Hell yeah, I survived.’ And in bad times I can hear it and be like ‘Don’t forget to keep pushing.’ It hits me and my spirit 110%.”
“There’s a lyric in that song that goes ‘No matter what the cost is we’re still chasing losses’,” adds Avila, “and that’s so true. Because no matter what it does cost, we’re still chasing it, still going, still pushing.”
One of the other hesitations that manifests itself in this record is the fact the members of Action/Adventure are older than most pop-punk bands who release a debut album. If it’s not quite a chip on their shoulder, it’s certainly something that’s nesting in the back of their minds. But it also lends their music – as youthful and full of vitality as it is – an extra level of gravitas. It makes it matter so much more.
“We joke that it’s pop-punk for adults,” smiles Evaristo. “But our ages do add to our imposter syndrome. Age and time has just always been a struggle, and you can hear it in the lyrics too. A lot of it talks about the frustrations of that, because pop-punk is always seen as young persons’ genre and we’re just getting started. We are a little older, but we want to show that it’s never too late.”
“Over the years,” adds Jackson, “I feel the genre has really become like a meme. A lot of people don’t take it seriously – when people ask what kind of music we play and I say I’m in a pop-punk band, I’ve gotten responses like ‘I used to listen to pop-punk when I was in high school.’ It’s real tongue-in-cheek. But having it feel very genuine and being able to articulate that these are our actual feelings and emotions and thoughts is very important to all of us.”
One listen to this record, and that’s clear. It’s emotive and erudite, sophisticated and serious, fun but also full of the trials and tribulations, insecurities and uncertainties that make us all human. All that is channeled into these 10 impassioned and precise, vigorous and spirited songs. The fact that it hits so incisively and profoundly demonstrates why – even if they use the term with tongues firmly in cheek – pop-punk for adults is the perfect description. It’s precisely because they’re adults and have known each other for a very long time, that it’s able to be that.
“I’ve existed with these people for so long that they’re integral parts of my life,” admits Jackson. “They’re not my bandmates, they’re my family. We’ve all been in many different projects, and this is by far the easiest project I’ve ever been involved with. It’s not hard at all. I mean, it’s hard for the reasons that being a band is hard, but being in a band with these four other people is completely second nature at this point. That part of it isn’t work at all, and I’m eternally grateful for that.”
“Even if half of the lyrics are whining about being in a band,” chuckles Evaristo. “But I hope people listen to it and see through our own eyes that being in a band is fun, but that there’s some real shit going on, too. This might be our first album, but we’ve all been through the wringer, and I hope people hear that we have real stuff that we’re dealing with – whether that’s being in a band, being a person of color in the scene or chasing a dream that seems so hard and unattainable. I really hope people can feel what we’re feeling.”
Greywind are an alternative emo rock duo frm Ireland formed by siblings Steph and Paul O’Sullivan. The Greywind story is a potent reminder that a whole new world of possibilities could be waiting just a few clicks away. Rewind a few years and an aspiring band had one option: to hit the road and get their talents in front of as many potential fans as humanly possible. By contrast, Greywind’s rise to prominence started before they’d even played a single gig. Located on the shore of the Lough Leane lake in the south of Ireland, Greywind’s home of Killarney is a beautiful town and a popular tourist destination. For young people passionate about music – like the O’Sullivan siblings Steph (vocals) and Paul (guitar) – it’s a place of limited opportunity. “My best friend at the time said, ‘you live in Killarney, you’re never going to be a singer’,” recalls Steph, who admits to being an outsider as she grew up. “I was shy and people probably just thought ‘there’s that weird girl who listens to My Chemical Romance’.”
Inspired by the likes of Thrice and Jimmy Eat World, the O’Sullivans would dream of a bigger future: touring the world and playing on the Warped Tour. Bargain flights to the UK to see some of their favourite bands live offered a glimpse into a whole other existence, but a dearth of other local musicians meant that their dreams of forming a band never really progressed beyond that. One potential guitarist jumped ship before he’d even joined. “We told him, ‘We don’t want this to be a hobby, we want to tour the world.’ We probably sounded like lunatics when we’d never even played a show,” laughs Paul. The turning point came following the suicide of their uncle. Grasping the shortness and fragility of life, Steph and Paul decided to forge ahead despite their lack of a conventional band line-up. Still a hive of enthusiasm, the siblings’ bond is evident with their continuing eagerness to finish each other’s sentences. “We wanted to make a start and feel like we were doing something,” explains Paul. “And we thought it would take years,” interjects Steph. “Which it usually does.”
Those anticipated years were condensed into a single week. On an ordinary Wednesday night, the pair polished off the lyrics to their first completed song ‘Afterthoughts’ and then recorded a demo of it the following day. They uploaded it on the Monday and were then immediately deluged by a flood of industry interest. The journey only continued. BBC Radio 1 quickly took notice when Zane Lowe played the demo and called it “a moment you won’t forget if you’re a fan of rock music”.
After the industry-focused rush of meetings subsided, Greywind recorded their debut album during a three-week stay at Texas’s Sonic Ranch Studios. From the studio’s rich history to the scorching weather, it was an opportunity of a lifetime. Most importantly, however, was a chance to hear their ideas – almost entirely written on acoustic guitar – evolve into beefy layers of sound. Featuring lyrics which address the dark heart of the human condition, the resulting album possesses the visceral crunch and the soaring hooks of the bands that have so inspired them. Dynamically, however, they move in ways more mysterious than that template would suggest. Often an ethereal drift of atmospherics explodes into controlled chaos – an approach that echoes their love for the post-rock soundscapes of Caspian and Explosions in the Sky. Alternating at will between tender, evocative and aggressive, Steph’s voice is the magic ingredient that elevates Greywind into another dimension.
