happy post-halloween. i was beat from jet set radio. i broke my fav orange tinted sunglasses because i used them as my costume. jack and i went to a pumpkin patch so i got lots of carving pumpkins to play with and harvest their seeds... hmm what else? went to a giant party lol, saw two great shows (hooky/snoozer on 10/30 at hidden fortress, total wife on 10/31 at philly style pizza). don't sleep on total wife, to me they're some of the truest shoegaze ive heard in a sec. from nashville, members of total wife are also in melaina kol, another amazing band. also massive chillers i am always so excited for them to crash at our place

hm maybe i dont actually have much to say today, i thought i did so i started typing... i really have almost exclusively been listening to pet sounds and beach boys in general. theyre like the only artist thats ever made me want to learn music theory so i can understand what is going on, how it makes me feel so insane, how it's arranged so precisely. never really clicked for me before as an artist but im so glad they do now, as we fully hack into album writing. we've sort of been getting our bearings at home since we got back from europe and have a lot of studio-build work to start, along with some shows in november and an NTS residency to start. so excited to have fun with the residency.... sorry everyone we're listening to experimental electronic music and brian wilson

today i am monitoring at the printshop, which is fun. i run the riso there with others. i gotta get some screenprinting side hustle work done too, but ive been having so much fun printing on paper that im hoping i have some extra free time to fuck around.... yeah idk im logging off this was a mid blog post lol have a good sunday

good morning everyone! today i have some screenprinting work to complete and work at my venue job. i successfully finished my edition of 100 prints for the fundraiser calendar, so i am all done with that (pics incoming soon in my printmaking page, which i also want to redesign). im really happy with how it came out, and its the first time ive printed on paper in literal years, so i am really excited and inspired to do more work for paper that isn't just risograph. i think i am finding my identity a little bit easier as a printmaker--for so long i've defined myself by my technical ability, by my former employers, by the equipment i used to run... and doing work for the band has obviously really pushed me out of familiar spaces in terms of production AND learning photoshop/illustrator and design. but i find that the stuff i want to make most of all centers around the internet, around 3d models, html layout, etc. things that exist in digital space being repurposed and redesigned for a physical space. i did some 3d renders that i then printed with riso (but i think i can do better), and i saw an amazing workshop online about doing animation with riso (printing flipbooks and assembling) so i have some idea for turning blinkie gifs or short animations done in blender (or god forbid, bryce7) into some sort of flipbook... we will see. i also had an idea for doing html or css code from my website in letterpress. but that's a bit more difficult because there isn't many < > signs in leaded type...

going home for a funeral tomorrow which really fucking sucks but there are some good things happening overall. our cat olivia is now on steroids and isnt puking as of the last week! huge news. she can now eat treats and dry food. as time goes on we're gonna bring the steroid levels down to a minimum dosage that keeps her appetite up and her weight steady. i love my cat and seeing her be normal is awesome. she loveeeesssss dry food and treats, must be awesome for her to get some variety back! shes a star and is currently grooming herself on her cat tree, with a perfect view of the backyard squirrels.

we're working on getting our music on vinyl by the end of the year/early next which is awesome. i struggled hard for a sec with art and layout stuff but we're not alone this time, and im learning to really appreciate a team effort... i can be a bit of a control freak when it comes to design stuff so im feeling really grateful for everyones patience and also for the commitment everyone has to making us happy and doing right by our old music..... have i said too much? haha. time to practice some scales ttyl

found this randomly on youtube and listened to it while writing out today's update. like stereolab pitched up for a jet set radio game:

having like an insanely lucid productive happy week. even the day i slept 12+ hrs and rose from bed at 4pm, dylan and i made the most out of it. i honestly think a lot of this success can be credited to 3mg melatonin before bed. but also i am trying to go to bed earlier and get more stuff done. i went to the gym yesterday (usually i only ever go when i'm on tour, most hotels have a nice little spot for me to run when im aimless parked 2hrs outside of a major city) and felt so inspired even after workout to make a giant pot of lentils (yummy)!

on the screenprinting front i got some odd jobs to complete (three orders under 100 pieces each), need to reclaim those screens, and prepare to print my soapbox calendar page. i love love love the design... my december inspo was those cutesy glitter gifs and oversaturated holiday chain emails... sincere graphics made for a holly jolly new year! my two color idea has been fleshed out to four colors lol. lets hope i can print an edition of 115 with minimal misregistration or else my halftones are gonna look like dog shit........ im not worried though. paper printing is a dif beast from tshirt printing but i literally have printed 10,000 hours of my life at this point fr so like i know i can do it. i even got an offer for some help from the printmaker who's doing the calendar cover. very cool. it helps to have extra clean hands when printing paper since yours will likely be covered in water/ink and paper is unfixable when you get stuff on it. again im really not worried.... dedicating a lot of next week to banging out these prints. excited to share on the website how it looks.

i've been practicing bass more too because i major slacked after my last couple lessons in july. reached back out to my instructor, learning those scales. i got a new bass recently and i love it. like i kinda mentioned in my last post, sometimes i do things that i do all the time and my brain sends off extra sparks like damn i fucking LOVE this what am i doing NOT fucking doing this every day? it feels so good to play. i think about how cats purr to help healing, those low vibrations have direct value in regenerating damaged tissue. so bass must do the same right? even just unplugged, low notes sinking into my knees.

been on a big coaltar of the deepers / japanese shoegaze kick this week, definitely sparked by working tickets at the mass of fermenting dregs show. they were pretty good--their vocals were mixed SO loud in the live sound, which kinda was sick. i only dabble in math rock because i don't love emo, and i hadn't listened to them much before working, but i was definitely moved by their vocal harmonies, how much they ride/dig into their chords, and especially how Fucking Loud they were hahahaha. coaltar of the deepers has some misses for me but their submerge ep is so good, listened to it in full yesterday and was so delighted to catch their sadesper record remix. anyone who knows me knows im fucking obsessed with their singular ep (theyre a coaltar side project). other band i want to mention is luminousorange. theyre the goats i love them forever. dylan and jack showed me "drop you vivid colors" when i joined the band in 2019 and i love them for it, such an amazing artist... also related is that i wish i was working the boris show on 10/19 but we're going home for a funeral... ttyl

long time no update, so sorry.... just been plodding around the house the last month or so. drinking some kirkland signature coffee right now. some heavy stuff has blanketed the home and makes moving around slow and difficult at times. but flashes of inspiration and good communication give me direction at least, struggled a lot with figuring out what i wanted to design for the calendar month "december" (also my birth month) for the soapbox's yearly calendar fundraising project. i volunteered myself to do a month that pushed me out of my comfort zone (specifically, paper weight being too thick for the risograph, which makes halftone and 100+ editions an afternoon's task) and have finally found what i wanted to make and figured out how to execute it. so very exciting. the longer i work on it though, the more colors i add to my design.... silkscreen has got to be one of my favorite things that i have learned to do. when i was printing my test prints yesterday, lining up registration and seeing it come together, i was literally thinking to myself like "damn i love screenprinting so much" lol. now, to finish up my jobs and reach out to the last couple people about potential orders...

it's been beautiful weather in philly and i've been waking up earlier the last few days. my mom was in town with my uncle and my little sister to catch soul coughing which was great and amazing, i love them all so much and i feel really blessed to have a place to share with them that's comfortable and fun. soul coughing of course was incredible and i never thought i would ever see them live. the upright bass through all of their songs and arrangements goes so fucking hard, he shreds, it's so groovy and warm and low. mike doughty sounds exactly as he did 25+ years ago, and as he did the last time i saw him sometime in the 2010s in buffalo ny. my mom and uncle tony are devoted doughty and soul coughing heads so it was a great luxury to go with them.

we did a big day out in old city day after the show and i showed them the oldest homes in philadelphia, we walked through chinatown and bought lots of stickers and trinkets and perused a lot of art. we started with the museum of illusions which was pretty small and expensive but truly redeemed itself through the vortex--a spinning dark tunnel that makes you feel like youre walking drunk, or in a half-sleep state. also the table puzzles fully captivated everyone except my mom. we eventually solved it and it was so fucking satisfying.... we stopped into a very pop art gallery owned by a quirky woman named catherine starr. and we went to the museum of wood arts which was so beautiful and gave me such strong tactile cravings. looking at all the incredibly complex and smooth curves of carved wood, the craftmanship required to make something that looks simple, that has a simple purpose, the pure art of functional wooden things like spoons and chairs. i highly rec the museum of wood arts to anyone that loves the smell of sawdust or needs some inspiration.

general reminder to love your loved ones deeply and dont be shy about it. thinking on what else you can do to make someone feel loved or to help them thrive or succeed. or just listen. cook food for someone else. get out of your own head about what you think is happening and be around for what actually is. feel sun on skin. wind through hair type shit. idk ive definitely fallen off in some ways but am practicing always reaching my arms outward

hmmm what have i been up to? i went to costco for the first time, absolutely legendary place...struggling a lot with falling asleep at a normal hour but sometimes being awake before the pm. an occasional win. gaming has been awesome, cutting flowers and displaying them inside, hanging out with my beautiful cat olivia.... drinking a ton of matcha green tea lattes courtesy of the latte mix left by my catsitter! yummy yummy. hmm what else.... been getting really into watercolor painting. it's so engaging to my brain. im gonna add some scans of my little postcard sized paintings to the website at some point...

this week i got my soil test results back and my garden has been SAPPED of nitrogen by my ever blooming tomatoes! all good though, i got some concentrated fertilizer and am ready to re-up on nutrients. i'm basically sure of what i'm doing at any given time. my next goal for the fall and winter crop will be broccoli, spinach and arugula, but i love my tomatoes and basil so dearly i'm not ready to let them go! just tonight dylan and i collab'd on dinner making a delicious sauce from mostly cherry tomatoes for our shrimp and pasta. who knew cherry tomatoes were so versatile? even i am surprised! my backyard is still a mess but i did begin my biochemical warfare plan against mosquitoes (getting those eco-friendly dunks in a couple of buckets). so far im still covered in bites but trust the process joel embiid

long time no post--i've been struggling to catch myself up to being home from tour (as expected). fb2 landed at home about two weeks ago, after an exhausting 8 hour flight from london... then i promptly got sick and lived in my room for another week recovering. the joys of international travel!

it was fantastic though, i'll update the blog with more details.... but for any who are reading: on july 24th we departed to do eight shows over two weeks with DIIV for their album release tour, supporting alongside friends horse jumper of love.. hjol just dropped their own new album, go listen rn! we played in the biggest rooms we've ever played, including prince's famous first avenue and the recently renovated brooklyn paramount. it was a great experience. DIIV and HJOL are awesome.

we left nyc the night of the final show, drove home to philly to sleep and pack, and then immediately returned to JFK airport to fly out to gothenburg, sweden for way out west, this giant festival that sort of takes over the modest city. we played the after-fest shows (stay out west) and ran into the homies hotline tnt... caught skepta and fever ray playing the big main stages.... mostly we ate a lot of very nice food and rode little electric scooters all around the city on very safe bike lanes, to parks, through little residential roads, past trains and trolleys.

we went to stockholm to meet with the crew at year0001 and they were amazing hosts, we had some studio time, took some band pics, ate more insane food, and got a private tour of the teenage engineering office. stockholm is truly one of the most gorgeous cities ive ever seen, and we spent a lot of time bopping around on scooters and meeting up with the gang for activity after activity. we love sweden for real, i think our brain chemistry has been completely changed by swedish summer, breezy long sunshiney days with actual public infrastructure lol.

then lastly we stopped over in london to play the shacklewell arms for their 20th anniversary of being an independent venue! never did i ever think we would sell out a sat nite in london for our first show ever there. it was truly surreal and we met some great people at that show. staying in hackney was pretty sick too, right by hoxton park.... rip andrew weatherall

i love sweden and england so much but also nothing is as sweet as walking past endless west philadelphia gardens and seeing your friends coming home from work and stopping to chat. getting a bit tipsy with friends outside the ethiopean joint. happy to be home and healthy and tending my garden again, kissing my cat in the sunlight.

hey all, back again. tour crunchtime is on. it's been stressful since we need to reconfigure our van layout best for some big cases containing our light show. we got most of them (the most annoying parts) in solid packed cases, with foam we cut up ourselves and mapped out to fit. hopefully all merch fits and whatnot. this tour with diiv will be shorter in terms of merch (a lot of off days) so i think the extra space being taken up will be ok in this instance. but for the future we are fighting for room in our van. i think we will need to upsize soon, which sucks, because we all love our minivan, the only touring vehicle we've used to my knowledge. maybe we can get something new enough with a backup camera or something....

...olivia, our cat, is doing so normal and fine, just random vomiting once / every other day. full schedule seems to be worked out, which is awesome, its so stressful trying to figure out who can keep our girl alive while we're hundreds to thousands of miles away. she's totally normal energy levels, normal appetite, normal playfulness. just vomiting too much. when we come home i hope to get to the bottom of her true medical issues and treat her to the best of our ability. i think when i wrote my last post i was true in my feelings, truly afraid of losing her and losing our routine. much like her in that way, but not exactly. all she knows is now. all i was thinking about was the future being hard. its unfair but expected. i love my baby so much.

garden update for anyone who has noticed: 1 of 4 zucchini remain. no fruit. guaranteed bugs. but the plant appears to be fine so i'm monitoring the grub situation up til we leave, and if in that month's time we get fruiting zucchinis i'll be blessed and excited. but all housesitters are aware of the damage. lots of tomatoes so far! a couple of fruit from the oldest plant seem to have blossom end rot (cut it off and eat it anyways, water more). apparently it typically happens for the first round or two of fruit anyways. it's been 95+ here for a couple weeks, almost consecutively, but lots of thunder and rain. my eggplant in a pot is doing great with lots more water, might transfer it over into the bed to take over some of that relinquished zucchini space!

...my birdfeeder has also been finally noticed. dozens of sparrows, several catbirds, hopefully the breeding pair of cardinals have noticed. one big fat squirrel scaled the window of my kitchen and i was able to scare him away with a knock and through opening the window to actually yell at him. i have loved seeing birds fly right up to my window, eating suet messy and desperately. today i cleaned the cedar birdfeeder with soapy hot water (no avian pox or flu on my watch!) and left it up in the front yard to dry. i set up a birdbath for them too on the hottest philly days. i can't tell if they use it or not, but i change the water anyways, and when its really hot i add some icecubes for them.

.......not sure if i'll have time or be around digitally enough to update this blog while i'm on the road. maybe i'll do it retroactively. i push myself to write while i'm away because one day i won't remember. might be sooner than i'd like. all the best

having a hard time getting enough thoughts together to write a blog post over the last week or so. i think my depressive bout was amplified by some classic premenstrual syndrome so yay, glad thats happened and over. i'm afraid to even write about this because i still need help w/ cat sitting and gardening but stuff is changing quickly for the worst and we're really struggling at home the last week or so.

i'll start with the garden: apparently there's a moth called the vine borer that lays little rusty eggs the size of the pinholes on the undersides of leaves and stems of hollow-stem squash plants, i.e. my zucchini. the eggs hatch into fat white grubs that burrow into the stems and eat and eat and eat until they get large enough to cocoon up, overwinter, and emerge as beautiful moths with transparent and green wings. of my four zucchini plants, all thriving until friday of this week, one was reduced to three tiny leaves attached to the main stem, the largest plant with fruit and all flowers attached came right off the rotted stem and root system, with several grubs inside the middle cross section, embarrassed exposed to the air. the third plant is wilted and it likely won't survive. the last plant still has its leaves held high and even though its main stem is missing chunks and distressed, rotted, with woody hardened sections still keeping it attached to the root system, i buried it with some fresh soil in the hopes it can grow new roots and also in the hopes that i can keep removing these tiny moth eggs and stopping the moth's life cycle. if the eggs hatch before i catch them, i have to use a razor to slice into the stem and manually extract each bug from the plant. it's completely fucked. some cursory googling makes me feel better and worse--this happens to basically anyone who has ever tried to grow squash. and it's near impossible to fix, only lightly possible to prevent. i'm reminded that this is what happens in nature. specific ass bugs built to feed off specific plants do tons of speciaized damage to them. and they live and carry on. not sure how much i can be mad at that. it's my own fault for not doing the research on the plants i chose in the first place. but it's also okay. you live and you learn and you lose things you love.

on that sad, placating, zen note, that's where i am this week. we've been taking our beautiful tabby cat, olivia, to the vet a bunch this month because she started puking on the daily a couple weeks after we returned from tour with george. we took out dry food and she's ravenously hungry and gets fed 4-5 times a day with wet food. we took her in to the vet and they advised we get a bigger better ultrasound to get a better idea of what's going on with her, but they believe it's either cat inflammatory bowel disease or small cell lymphoma. both of which present identically in cats--thickened organ lining, vomiting and diarrhea, sudden food intolerance, restlessness, hunger, no hunger... the treatment in both is steroids for the rest of her life, and if its cancer, it's chemo til she's in "remission" which cats never really achieve because they just don't get nuked with chemo like humans get. her prognosis is basically you have a chronic disease so its as good as a year to four+ depending on treatment and quality of life. we're heartbroken and faced with a number of expensive, difficult choices. how do we give her daily medication when we leave for weeks at a time? does she want this? can she live her life as normally as possible with monthly vet apts? what's the right choice for her and for us? she's thirteen, is that old or young? she is so full of life. i read cats handle chemo better than people--is it because they hide weakness as predators, or is it really much less stressful than it is for people? is it insane to prolong the inevitable, is it selfish, is it what we need to do, is it what she wants? tour approaches, ten days remain, and we'll be gone for four fucking weeks.

we can't ask her and we have to talk to the vet and get our questions together and answered on monday. her symptoms are just occasional vomiting and seeming extra hungry, maybe a bit restless. i hate this. i love my cat. no part of this feels easy to understand or think about. i know that once she's gone we won't be in this position maybe ever again. to olivia the band is just a weird unexplained amount of movement in the house, rooms blocked off and loud, time where we've disappeared and then come back home like nothing has changed. dylan's had her for eight years, it'll never feel long enough. my mind and my heart returns to harvey, dylan's dog who suddenly got sick and rapidly declined within a little over a month back in 2021. when that happened i didn't think i could experience pain like that but suddenly was, we had no choices at all by the time we figured out what was going on, his xray finally showing cancer throughout his whole body. olivia and harvey really loved each other, and when he died, she sat at the door looking through the tiny windows waiting for him to come home. when we toured back then, back before covid as the old band, they kept each other company in the house. they really loved each other. i'm sure i'll have some sort of update for you soon. if you're someone i asked to catsit, please don't run away. keep our little family in your hearts and keep your little families and households and ecosystems close. with love

it kinda struck me by surprise last night, but what i intended to be unrestrained relaxation, being "unhindered" for the next under-three weeks and being able to sleep in as late as i want, actually feels closer to a depressive episode than it does to anything else. it's not very cool to talk about feeling like this especially to noone in particular, or everyone in the world who can open a webpage, but i don't really feel like i care enough about what anyone else thinks. i do this shit all the time. it's not much of a surprise to anyone. i'd like to think my errant sleep isn't because i'm massively depressed all the time, because i don't always feel down like that. but i've been sleeping so long that my lower back is tight when i get up. i'm not eating regularly and my appetite is really low. i think stuff is just overwhelming and i'm falling into depressive habits as a way to keep myself from getting through stuff i need to do. just avoiding things. here's to trying again every hour and every day.

i'm falling off from all sorts of things i love to do but also i do have some highlights to share:

my garden is looking really good. got a dozen or so cosmos sproutlings in the front yard, some snapdragons that i had to deadhead so they'll regrow, some sunflower seedlings i'm hoping will have enough time to get big and strong even though it's july. in the garden box, i have a handful of tomato flowers and i have some small striped zucchini growing from each plant. i harvested over half of my basil to make some phenomenal pesto last week and the plant has already doubled in size. isn't it amazing how a plant can lose its main stem and double in response to the blunt force trauma, rechannel its energy and grow two new heads, try to flower, expand from beneath the leaves of other plants and itself? i want to give it lots of kisses because it smells so good and it is doing so great in the yard. to all the basil plants i couldn't give this beautiful growing environment, i'm so sorry. i do this for all of you. and for me, because i love pesto, and i love to eat it on a fancy sandwich or in my pasta. it's so goddamn good. anyways

i had my first bass lesson and it was great, i think it definitely helped right away with improving my fingering technique and hand positions, i've been noodling along to the practice exercises to strengthen my hands and tendons. it's been really cool to feel some minor improvements already and to get familiar with my instrument in a new way. i've always been self taught and sort of resistant to change and the "proper" ways to do things but i think my natural skills are not necessarily as developed as they could be. i could be so much better. so that's really cool and i am really thrilled about the next lesson. need to get my bass setup asap..... this shit goes out of tune every song

writing always helps me see clearer, feel better. i write privately too in a journal because i feel really strongly that if i don't make an archive of my life and experiences now then i won't have one, and i won't remember, and i won't know what to do or what i've done in the past. i also love writing with a pen on paper. nothing really compares to writing like that for me, typing is a cheap imitation... i love to see ink sink into the paper. i've had a favorite pen for a long time (over ten years?) and i always carry a bunch with me. i always apologize to my journal for not updating enough because i think i owe it to someone(something)(myself) to be consistent. have a good weekend

happy sunday, i'm posted up at the screenprinting studio today doing odd jobs and maintenance tasks. i get to gather all the potted plants and give them water every week. it's lunchtime and it's so horribly humid outside it took me a full hour to stabilize and adjust to the indoor temp. ugh. anyone who knows me knows that i do screenprinting and design stuff for the band as well as friends and other bands. i spend my sundays at this shop so i can come in whenever and get my own work done. it's a great gig and when it's over i will be lost....

ecstactic to report that fb2 finally has nothing! going! on! for the next three weeks. no shows / no travel / no logistics / no setup //// nothing til we get prepared for the last leg of diiv's album release tour. which congrats to them, we're so excited to join them and it seems like the tour has been nothing short of amazing! of course we (myself) will probably spend 1.5 weeks of that 3 week span freaking out somehow, overthinking merch numbers, trying to figure out how to scale and pack for the amount of shows we have, where we'll be playing, etc. some of the biggest rooms we'll have seen will be on this tour, but also we have a lot of off days, so like, how much merch is enough? that's my eternal tour burden to figure out. jack and dylan are my sounding board for figuring out how many and what we wanna sell on the road. i learn a lot every time about what sizes are most popular, what colorways sell faster than others, what my labor per design looks like and how that relates to how many i still have left to sell after whatever push we do online or a show we play. everyone i talk to (other printmakers AND other musicians) who ask how we make the merch or what it entails to do screenprinting always get an earful from me. i always go into Great Detail in the hopes that a. someone knows what i'm talking about and maybe has input or advice, b. is as enthusiastic or interested in the print process as i am, or c. i can rest on their shoulder and vent because it's a lot of work that constantly occupies my mind...

after the diiv tour ends in brooklyn in august, we're gonna be zooming home to philly for a night to sleep and (re/un)pack and board a plane to sweden to play way out west festival.fucking insane lol. teenage cass is screaming and kicking and crying about sharing festival billing with a thom yorke project (even though we'll be missing that set). playing the same day as pulp and slowdive (i s2g i better be able to see SOME of that...)??!! i don't even know. crazy shit lol. looking for any and all recommendations for places to go, things to do in sweden, europe more generally, and london. as we also got a show in london around the middle of the month. we will have a good amount of time while we're there to hopefully make music, meet label people and have fun.

... another thing i have to do in the next three weeks is find someone who can watch our cat and my garden. i'm honestly a bit stressed out about it already but trying to put on a brave face. i have a feeling that no one is going to want to harvest my tomato plants in the four weeks i will be absent. finding someone to watch the cat in the way dylan is most comfortable with is also pretty tough. where are all the professional house sitters?? someone please hit my line...

hey everyone, happy sunday. if you're in philly or the general northeast, be mindful of the heatwave. obviously staying hydrated gets all the flowers but you gotta dress right and structure your life like its always this hot. get your tasks done in the morning or the evening. cook cold foods inside. especially if you take certain medication, humid heat really can fuck you up, so be on top of it. i did a bit of reading about wet bulb temps can you blame me? anyways....

our spiral show was last nite, and it went so amazing! it sold out, it was air conditioned, i got to see some old and new friends and ate a banging banh mi from the spot next to trans pecos. we got to nyc at 4:30pm on the dot and immediately got to work setting up our light show rig. yesterday was the official debut of our full professionally-programmed light show, after a quick self-programmed, no-strobe light show at julia's war fest this year. it went amazing and it feels crazy to play along to something so synced with what you're doing on stage. it elevates my feelings while performing and adds to my own goosebumps. i think we will need to figure out a way to make it more programmable on our end since we really like having creative control over our visuals but for now i really enjoy being surprised by what the lights do for each song. we got to watch each song twice, and our main set three times before this saturday, it's that new to us! so thank you to everyone who came out. everyone who performed!! and to everyone who helps us get all of this stuff done. this is our second time selling out a headline show in nyc and it feels crazy surreal to write that. it's an amazing honor to do this music shit up for real... excited to continue to share our next steps as they pan out and fall into place. we'll see you across the pond soon ♡

wanted to share this taxidermists song, we listened to this whole album on the way home from the show. driving deep. late at night towards the moon. we were home when the sun started rising and the birds called more passionately than ever. this band features one of the people in club casualties who were amazing last night. and i remember dylan and jack showing me this band enthusiastically when i first joined back in 2019. it's truly a treasure of a listen. some of the most wonderous indie rock i've ever heard. it has big fucking riffs and this beautiful childlike curiosity and sincerity. and the song structures feel like a mind wandering during a meditation. worth a listen at least, i know i'll be bumping it again for a sec. reminds me of my college music scene and the types of music i got to see live regularly. it also reminds me of winter. maybe some of that is from going on tour back before covid, western massachussetts feeling like an oasis of subculture. my thought process today is like, big shoutout to everyone i've ever met hahahaha. i've never seen anything like this before! i've! never! seen anything ever before!

i'm having a lot of fun highlighting what i'm listening to and what resonates with me. i've always loved shit like last.fm and music-related social media or games or whatnot. i think i'll continue to do so on here. it's a sweet muscle to stretch, trying to describe how a song makes me feel, how it communicates with me. i think about what i'm doing now and what i've always been interested in doing and i find it always returns to music and how i relate to it. so glad i know what i love and get to shape my life around that. and be shaped by it in return. tysm

hey good afternoon! today begins a philadelphia heatwave. jack's mom (a nurse) checks in to make sure we're staying safe in the adverse weather. i think i'll spend day one mostly inside, besides a bit of garden tending. making it my lifes mission to bring dragonflies to the backyard as it is packed with mosquitoes and i'd like to spend time in my shady yard. dragonflies have a 98% success rate for hunting, truly fearsome stats for such a gentle and friendly prehistoric creature! apparently you need to bring flowers and tall perches for them to rest on, and they'll do the rest!

been bumpin some andy loebs this week. i missed their show last night but their music is so FUN!!! the arrangement is so playful and andy is of course a spectacular producer... i really like this release. the music league i'm in is focusing on underground music of 2023 and 2024 and this week's prompt is "chewing five gum" so i needed to share the crispiest most refreshing songs around.... yummy high end ear candy... and the cover is so fucking excellent too

been smoking that colorado pack we got on tour (the lowest thc weed we could procure because i'm anxious) and listening to so much boards of canada. they're by far my most loved and revisited electronic group. i don't think anyone comes close to them when it comes to production and the world each song inhabits. people have written a lot about how boc falls into/engages with hauntology and ariel pink-style nostalgia, which i totally get, like yearning to return to the finished basement you spent your teen years in and warbly tape-soaked love songs is definitely evocative. but boc rule because they are this more ambiguous entity, a local tv channel or maybe a government initiative fallen into obscurity, connecting these little nuggets of maybe educational programming to disembodied resampled laughter, guitar soaked and sunbleached, chorusy synth pads that resonate in a greenhouse. i started learning to think more critically about music than "it fucking slaps" through working on music myself and still boc blows my mind because all sounds and samples are so delicately mixed, the songs feel alive like algae, blooming across the waters surface.

i don't think i can pick a favorite boc song but i've been revisiting the campfire headphase this weekend because it's come up a bunch lately and it was the first album i ever listened to by them, in probably my senior year of high school. nostalgia permeates all even though i think it's limiting to exclusively focus on achieving or satisfying nostalgic feelings. i could be listening to NEW music but of course i return to the first love, of course! listening to this album teleports me to finally getting out of school for lunch, walking down the block across the sprawled lawn of the art gallery in the cold bright sunlight, always rushing and always late, tired, so intense. feeling so much, cold hands and feet, ears nipped in the wind. listening on an old red edition ipod shuffle (no screen, controlled by earbuds) that i stole from my little sister. it was like a salve to me and my developing teenage brain, lipbalm, soothing and tingly. this is also the same time in my life when i first listened to my bloody valentine, but thats a different story altogether. what a coincidence, they both returned in 2013...

excited for dylan to come home from rochester today, i miss him and we have a lot of work to do for our upcoming show at tv eye this saturday. we're debuting an even bigger light show than we did at julia's war fest and we gotta make sure everything works right and that we can fully set it up and take it down quickly and efficiently. all lights need to basically be daisy chained, connecting to a box that decodes midi information from the computer into light show information. not sure what we're gonna be able to do after this show with the complex setup we're borrowing and working off of, but whatever we do will be fucking sick because nothing can stop us from doing cool shit..... yea thats right, hehehehe

today i rose from bed at 2:30pm. i need to get my sleep schedule on track.... i usually stay up til at least 2am, usually 3:30 because dylan and i are night owls, and we've just started season four of fraiser... but show irregardless, we stay up super late together all the time. and i love it because i love being up at night, and i always have. since high school my routine has been to stay up til everyone else in my house had fallen asleep. i think some of that was born from anxiety... and then sometimes i stay up til the sun comes up (4am-5am is the singular best time to do a bit of birdwatching). i love staying up late at night because it feels escapist. and i love staying up late at night because i love hanging out with dylan of course. we've just celebrated five years of being together. ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ five whole years~!

the tide has turned in my favor for earlier rising as i have PLANS tomorrow to get up BEFORE noon and meet my dear old friend dani for coffee and a farmers market jaunt. see??? i will be up and out in the "morning" so to speak!!! and dylan is home for fathers day weekend so i will be sooooo bored that i'll have to put myself to bed before 3am. right? time will tell. i love the farmers market for real though, i love spending $20-60 and coming home with 2-5 items that have no relationship to each other (2 quarts of strawberries, a single butternut squash, boutique hand soap, 3 for $5 succulents). i love running my little errands and spending my little money... impulse spending is something that never truly gets old. there's always a new quick hyperfixation or deal. i don't even feel ANY shame now when i buy a dropshipped pair of rings that i still have yet to wear (who am i kidding??? skull emoji x 4)

it was so so so excellent seeing my mom and sister! it was truly so nice and heart-satisfying to see them in my spaces and enjoying their time. my mom got a taste of philly driving to and from the mann center... and she requested that we get saad's again since it was apparently national falafel day, and saads does it best. scar showed me so many insane tiktoks. and i cooked them breakfast the day of the show (sunny side up egg with avocado toast on wegmans bread, no less! and a sweet potato hash... yumyuymyumyumyum). i was also blessed to see my sister recently too, when we played in pittsburgh in april, she drove all the way over from rochester to come see us play!

my relationship with family has changed a lot as i've gotten older. i used to react so strongly in situations, stress response, anger, frustration, blame, shame. and those are normal responses to the stuff that happened and the things we went through back then. but moving out of the family home(s) was a bit like adding wd40 to the joints and gears and interlocking pieces. with time and distance i can see the machine runs a lot better. sometimes you need the perspective to appreciate who people are and who they've been and to take it at face value instead of reactively. nothing is ever perfect but all things change, sometimes it changes for the better.

today i am cleaning the house in preparation for my mom and sister to come visit! we're seeing the pixies and modest mouse tmrw, two bands ive seen before as a teenager and two of my historical faves. surfer rosa is still probably one of my favorite albums ever made and im a lifelong kim deal stan. i like frank blacks solo stuff too dont get me wrong... and modest mouse is a band i really used to love and will probably always have a soft spot for. both my parents are huge musical influence-shapers for me growing up, and my mom is like the ultimate in prioritizing the show above all else. she's taken me to so many shows throughout my life, proudly starting with the grateful dead while i was an infant, but also pixies in '09, cake, modest mouse (twice!) on their we were dead before the ship even sank era (with johnny marr on guitar?!), radiohead during tkol and a moon shaped pool (rip, theyre not dead, but their vehement zionism has been on full display, so not a dollar more to them than i've already spent) death cab, various local bands, etc. she's also bringing my sister who's starting to develop her own tastes as a middle schooler.

i've been playing this game called music league for the last couple of months and i have to highly recommmend it. i'm in a couple leagues with friends and ended up joining three more with strangers. its been a real delight to listen to new music (both familiar and unknown) and it's inspired me to create playlists to help prepare for the prompts for each league each week or so. i have a few friends who've commiserated with me about not knowing what to listen to, or feeling stuck in a rut when it comes to discovery and i'm trying to get everyone to join in on this game because its truly so much fun! just make sure you submit AND vote or else you'll likely miss out on the ranking elements. i'm feeling the sting of that today :(

been feeling pretty energy-less the last few days. i think i know why for like 50% of my fatigue but its hard to rise above it some days. stil managed to get all my laundry downstairs and clean my room a bit so there's a couple wins right there! today's tasks also include band laptop research, music video scheming, final mix notes, and preparing for our shows at the end of june. it's been nice being a tad less busy but i do struggle with consistent productivity and feeling like i've earned being lazy. i am a lazy person at my core i think. i am very grateful to those to keep me on track

lastly, some plant news: i got some snapdragons rocking in the front yard and i took down a lot of the stray ornamental grass that's taken over the yard. the birds are stoked to see all the grass seed scattered on the pavement. i am working in a loose plan to remove all the opportunistic yard weeds and grass and put in some cosmos that i sprouted last week (all seeds germinated!). it's been six months since my old friend shannon passed away from medical complications and her birthday is october 15th. cosmos are one of the birth flowers for october and they remind me a lot of her--cute, bright flowers that almost look like they came from a coloring book. if you knew her you'd know she was pink and sparkly in all situations. so six months without her has been lonelier and darker. i think of you daily, shannon, and i love you. you're very missed. ♡

for the past two weeks i've been obsessed with building a raised garden bed. it's been all i can think about. i started seedlings as soon as i got home from tour and nearly all of them sprouted, so i've been feeling guilty about thinning the seedlings out and planting half of them. of course i want all of them, i want all of them to live and grow! how could i decide which ones live or die, after i bring them up on my hot sunny front porch? how much water? best time to water plants? planter box dimensions? lumber sizes? soil composition? root depth? companion planting? how far apart to plant?

so i committed to building a big bed out of cedar planks. i was feeling energized (manic) and i went to lowes and bought big wooden planks and then sank into my bed all weekend with the weight of following through bearing down on me. i got so in my head about whether or not this was stupid or if my neighbors would think i was crazy. dylan reassured me to see the project through, and i ordered 200 gallons of soil. i stapled hardware cloth (extremely sharp galvanized steel wire mesh) to the box i built in the driveway with jack, and lined it, and then spent a couple days shoveling in dirt. it's all completed now! to start i'm growing tomatoes, zucchini, basil, nasturtium and marigolds, all of which live in harmony with each other, keeping pests away and influencing the taste of the fruit.

maybe i have acid brain a little bit or something but i think i've alway sort of been like this, thought and felt this way about plants and nature--i feel like they embody magical qualities. it's magic that they exist at all, let alone in such vast ways, in all places, all reaching upwards, unstoppable in their desires. growth and chemical conversion to energy. it's all scientific and there's complex relationships between all elements and life but in that way its magical. i think instead of god or religion i feel deeply spiritual about plant and animal life and believe that we are more alike than the systems we've created allow us to realize. but yall probably already knew that!

all in all i am very proud to say the garden i imagined is the one i was able to build. i hope it bears lots of fruit even though i'll be on tour for a bit and not able to reap the benefits all summer. it's a big responsibility, maintaining a garden! i hope i can handle what i built for myself. i'm hoping maybe becoming a mini-farmer can get me up in the actual morning (8am-10am) instead of the musician's morning (11am-1pm). even when i'm grumpy and tired, i love to step out into dappled morning light. now, if only the birds would notice my birdfeeder in the window....

hello again! long time, no update. been so busy these days... we went out on the road with george clanton for an entire month and it was great. i never get tired hearing his music, always so fresh and powerful. jack played drums for the entire run with him too, which is crazy amounts of double-dutying. we saw the solar eclipse and went to florida and i observed many, many new birds and plants. ♡

i didnt even update yall but julia's war fest came and went this weekend. we spent basically the last two weeks building and programming a light show and now that its over, i dreamt i would have a day off or so. but we've got plenty more work to do. it was so great to see so many friends this weekend and just lose yourself in a great set by a great fucking band. ♡

coming home from a month-long tour for the second time in a six month period has got me thinking a lot about my relationship to routine / schedules. tour is so regimented and repetitive. it is so important to rest and get solo time while you're on the road because you truly only have so much time in each day, and most of your day is spent in the car or in the strangest room to ever exist in a venue. take a walk and be back exactly before 5:30pm.

tour also reminds me how important it is to be nice to others and yourself. every goal is shared. you are on a mission sent with your bandmates into the great unknown.... the trust and communication you cultivate with the ones bonded to you through music will carry you through all obstacles.