Real Friends
For as much as the world has changed since Real Friends first emerged in 2010, the band's mission hasn't. The Chicago, Illinois quintet continue to bleed without apology and write songs that make it okay to feel everything: The ups, the downs, and everything else in between. Rather than shy away from emotion, the renowned group runs right towards it with distortion cranked and hearts opened, tightening their careful distillation of pop-punk and emo on each subsequent release. When the band - made up of longtime friends Dave Knox [guitar], Kyle Fasel [bass/lyrics], Eric Haines [guitar], and Brian Blake [drums] - welcomed Cody Muraro [vocals/lyrics] in 2020, the goal stayed the same as they crafted new music.
Can't Swim
One of New Jersey's prodigal sons once mused "who says you can't go home?" - but CAN'T SWIM have never really left their Garden State surroundings.
Sure, they've certainly logged tens of thousands of miles over the past seven years, bringing their cathartic blend of rock, punk, and emo to audiences around the world on bills with A Day To Remember and Senses Fail and at festivals like 2000trees. But at their core, Can't Swim are innately Jersey through and through: from the ghosts of Tri-State hardcore giants that oscillate through their high-octane sound to the very garages and studios where those songs take shape.
Now, the band plant their Garden State flag even deeper on their fourth LP, Thanks But No Thanks, an album that quite literally finds them going back to their roots.
Carly Cosgrove
Philadelphia trio Carly Cosgrove's debut LP, See You In Chemistry, is about growth, but not the tidy, Instagram-ready kind. At its beginning, vocalist and guitarist Lucas Naylor is steady, stable, and happy: the work has been done, progress has been made, things are alright. Over the remaining 11 tracks, and across a complex, earworm patchwork of riotous emo punk, towering post-hardcore, mathy indie rock, and crystalline shoegaze, things fall apart: bands dissolve, friendships end, and self-doubt, depression and anxiety triple-team their way to victory over happiness.
"Chronologically, this record comes after a point where I thought I got a lot of personal growth done," says Naylor. "But at a certain point I just found myself hitting a wall, I felt like I was moving backwards. Whenever people talk about growth, it's always in triumphs: 'Look at this destination I've finally reached.' With this, the whole record is kind of a step backwards."
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