There’s something kinda magical about naming your band saturdays at your place. Right off
the bat, it calls to mind images of collapsing onto a friend’s couch at the end of a long week, and the kind of nights that turn into stories you’ll tell for years to come. For the band from
Kalamazoo, Michigan, it’s more than just a name; it’s what’s held them together through college and the strange process of becoming an adult. Whether unpacking tour burnout or the shame of outgrowing your past, they’re constantly rejecting irony in favor of something much bolder: sincerity.
On their upcoming second full-length, these things happen (out September 12), saturdays at
your place take everything that made their early material resonate—twinkly guitars, heart-on-sleeve songwriting, a distinctly Midwestern ache—and stretch it into something even more resonant. It’s a record about growing up without growing cold, and it’s also a testament to where they’re from, both literally and musically; proof that a band with strong hometown roots can still shake the ground.
Formed by three friends who met at Western Michigan University, the band—Esden Stafne (vocals/bass), Gabe Wood (vocals/drums), and Mitch Gulish (guitar)—have always used music as a way to map the wretched trajectory of growing up. But on these things happen, they’ve stopped asking for directions and started finding their own way through the chaos. The result is a heartfelt, emotionally chaotic and self-aware glimpse at adulthood in all its many complexities.
A lot of inspiration for the record came from Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 film, Magnolia. In the movie, strangers’ lives collide in a grand way, for no reason. There’s no greater meaning to unfold, just happenstance, and similarly, the album doesn’t offer listeners any new information on what to do once you’ve ascended into adulthood; it simply provides a more relatable cushion.
Channeling the gut-punch angst of bands like Modern Baseball and Hot Mulligan, lead single “waste away” is a standout moment about both wishing you were dead AND remembering how much fun life can be, too. Elsewhere, “what am I supposed to do?” finds the band reflecting on individuality and people-pleasing; and “I’d rather be in michigan” is an attempt to capture the struggle of finding stability amidst a nonstop tour cycle.
Then there’s the gut-wrenching closing track, “i give in.” A cinematic portrayal of codependency and trauma, it wraps the album in a sort of quiet comfort, one that comes to terms with the shared weight of what we all carry in our day-to-day lives. “I wanted to write that song for a long time,” Gabe says. “I’ve never felt like I was the right person to offer any sort of unique perspective on that kind of situation, I really didn’t want to get it wrong. But being open and honest about it is actually what I needed to finally let go and forgive and move on.”
The hype for saturdays at your place first kicked off with their 2023 EP, always cloudy, and has since blossomed into a steadily-building wave of momentum. “tarot cards” instantly had fans on the hook with its undeniable melody and quirky pronunciation, but the entire record has since gone on to cement their place as one of the most exciting modern emo bands around. And while always cloudy was a strong introduction, these things happen marks a decidedly more introspective future for saturdays at your place; it’s also the first music they’ve released since 2023.
Overall, these things happen isn’t an album that provides many answers. Instead, it’s a cathartic companion to survival with friends at your side, gear in the trailer, and enough hope to keep showing up. For saturdays at your place, that’s enough.
Carpool
Sometimes, it’s good to take a step back and remember why you started doing something in the first place. That’s what Carpool decided to with My Life In Subtitles, the four-piece’s second full-length (and first for SideOneDummy). As such, the majority of these songs were written by the band’s two mainstays, Chris ‘Stoph’ Colasanto and Tommy Eckerson, who formed Carpool in Rochester, NY in 2018. The result is that the band—now completed by drummer Alec Westover and bassist Torri Ross—have made a record that both harks back to the purity of its beginnings but which also evolves their sound at the same time. After a period in which band members came and went, it’s a streamlining of intentions, a chance to regroup, re-find and reassert their identity once again.
“We wanted to bring it back to the band’s roots,” says Colasanto, “and the original concept of why we started doing it—just me and Tommy writing songs together. It felt like we had so many members of the band at one point that there were too many cooks in the kitchen almost. This is more genuine and authentic.”
“I think a big thing, too,” adds Eckerson, “was that the house Stoph was living in while we were recording the album, and leading up to it when we were rehearsing for that, had an upright piano in it. So Stoph sat down with the piano—which is where the piano intro and some of the softer dynamics came to fruition. We were really making an effort to have dynamics on the album where there are low lows and high highs in terms of the instrumentation and the themes.”
My Life In Subtitles does indeed ebb and flow through those low lows and high highs. Recorded with Jay Zubricky—a Buffalo-based producer who has worked with Every Time I Die, Pentimento and Marigold, among others—the result is an album with has a cohesive thematic and musical narrative. It begins with that plaintive, piano-led title track, a time-stopping 93-seconds of fragility that mixes pathos and humor to great effect. ‘My life in subtitles/What a terrible show’ sings Colasanto, setting up a duality that runs through the album’s remaining twelve songs. Those already familiar with the band might be surprised by such a calm and graceful opener, but as soon as the PUP-meets-Weezer attitude of second track “Can We Just Get High” kicks in, the Carpool people will be expecting comes crashing through the speakers in a surge of quasi-nihilistic recklessness. It’s one of many tracks that blend careless fun with abject desperation to create an existential crisis you want to dance to—whether that’s on the math-rocky rush of “Open Container Blues”, the brilliantly-titled, thankfully un-Radiohead-like “Thom Yorke New City”, the nervous, neurotic energy of “Crocodile Tears” or the late night, self-flagellating restlessness of “No News Is Good News”. There’s also the vicious, high-octane hardcore blast of “Car”, which sounds like a dam bursting continuously and a song The Locust would be proud of.
But in between all of that controlled chaos, there are also more tender, nuanced moments of quiet contemplation—the (relatively) gentle lilt of “Done Paying Taxes”, the golden yearning of “Kid Icarus” and the gorgeous 75 seconds of closer “Every Time I Think Of You I Smile”, which neatly wraps up the theme and title of this record, while also proving that songs don’t have to be long to have profound emotional resonance. The overall result is a beautifully cohesive record with a beginning, middle and end, which was very much the intention from the start.
“The two different styles or genres or feelings—whatever want to you call them—are a sign of the way we’re maturing and growing as people as musicians,” says Colasanto. “We’re starting to write for ourselves and we’re also writing songs that we would want to hear. They way I like to listen to music is to put on an album and listen to it start to finish. I like albums that take me on a journey and that show me what those songwriters were feeling while making you feel the same way.”
At the same time, that honesty is in part responsible for a paradox that exists at the heart of My Life In Subtitles. That titular lyric appears a couple more times on the record after that first track, and reveals how Colasanto feels about laying out details of his life—and all the emotions that go with that—in the band’s songs. The idea for that line initially came when the singer was talking to somebody who then quoted one of his own lyrics in the conversation. Understandably, that set off a chain reaction of thoughts in his head.
“They referenced one of the lyrics from an old song which were about an event that had happened in my life,” Colasanto says. “From there, I just thought how it really is like my life in subtitles, because you can go through and read any of the lyrics from any of our songs and can literally, line by line, read a story of my life. It makes me uncomfortable sometimes, because people talk to me and they think they know who I am, but they just know fragments of things I was thinking or feeling at a certain time. They don’t know me as a person.”
Ironically, with My Life In Subtitles, Carpool have crafted a record brimming with honest heart, and one that takes you deep inside the minds that created it. Colasanto certainly didn’t hold back in telling his truth, despite whatever discomfort that may cause. That truth—and by extension, this record—is also heavily rooted in the band’s hometown of Rochester. Although Colasanto has since moved to Brooklyn, these songs wouldn’t have been made if it weren’t for the experience in the Rochester scene. That’s another way in which the band take a step back with this album. Because while Carpool have long since achieved and outgrown their initial goal of playing that city’s 200 capacity Bug Jar venue, their hometown is still embedded in their DNA. This record is a wonderful homage to where they’re from, and the way the Rochester scene’s vital, youthful abandon continues to inspire them. At the same time, My Life In Subtitles is the next stage of Carpool’s journey, and serves as a warning to the rest of the world what Rochester has already known for years.
“I don’t think anyone reps Rochester as hard as we do,” chuckles Eckerson. “I feel like we’re the from the fucking Holy Land. Carpool is a band about sharing smiles with your friends, but they should never have let us play the Bug Jar, because now we’re menaces.”
“We honestly wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for that community, adds Colasanto. “So thank you, Rochester!”
Harrison Gordon
normal, Illinois coworker-core i am the most famous person on the planet harrisongordon_il on IG harrisongordonmusicil@gmail.com
TRSH
trash from the midwest
