Posted: by The Alt Editing Staff
Buddie – Glass
The hooks on Buddie’s new album feel like anti-affirmations. “I alone can’t face it” and “I lose a piece of myself again” and “we’re all deflating“—it all feels dire on Glass, and none of those lyrics even come from the songs titled “Stressed in Paradise,” “Impatient,” or “No Fun.” Daniel Forrest can’t cope with modern life and, worse yet, can’t cope with the feeling of being overwhelmed trying to cope. What he can do, though, along with the rest of Buddie, is channel those feelings into skyscraping indie rock earworms.
The lyrical perspective of Glass might suggest gloom, but the songs could hardly sound brighter. Even as Forrest casts himself as “a fish in a stream full of grizzly bears” on the opening “In the Glass Shell,” he sings the words like a nursery rhyme, slipping into his upper register; the album ends with the chant “we’re no fun / there’s no fun,” but it’s delivered with the glee of a cheer squad. The band points to Alice in Chains as an influence on their louder moments, but that isn’t quite what comes through—Soul Blind they are not. That side of them is closer to Weezer at their fuzziest and their fizziest. The guitars on, say, “Stressed in Paradise” and “Antarctica, 2005” sound huge, for sure, but aren’t heavy by any means; it’s far better this way anyway. Forrest allows the fuzz to carry his vocal melodies like they’re being pulled out to sea—and even if he may feel that way sometimes, he still knows how to turn that distress into gold.
Disappointing / Average / Good / Great / Phenomenal
Wishes on a Plane – Lost Songs
Wishes on a Plane’s story can be a bit confusing. They formed in 2001, put out a self-titled EP, contributed a few songs to splits and comps, and then recorded five songs for a follow up to Wishes on a Plane before calling it quits. Those five songs saw the light of day in 2020 as Unreleased, along with a reissue of their debut the next year, and in 2023 they put out We’re Still June / Blanket I, a double single comprising a track from a comp and a split with German post-hardcore band Bail. Now they’ve dropped Lost Songs, which collects three songs from comps, an alternate take of “Anywhere” from Wishes on a Plane, and three acoustic demos; they are, frontman Daniel Becker says, are the last songs the band had in the vault.
It’s hard to imagine why these stayed there so long; the four rarities here rank among Wishes on a Plane’s best. The opening “Untitled” captures the messiness that made so much of the emo of the 1990s so powerful—all overlapping vocals clamoring to cut through, like Becker’s tripping over his words to get it all out, and sudden dynamic shifts with a real sense of tension and release. That formula gets streamlined a bit on “What’s Left of What Is” to great effect, the band pulling back every every chorus only to come back even louder, like hikers losing their footing climbing a mountain, and the version of “Anywhere” that appears here heightens the contrast between its softest and heaviest moments. The album takes a bit of a detour between “Untitled” and “What’s Left of What Is” with “Tide,” which allows the band a chance to cut straight to the hook—it’s the most straightforward emo-pop song Wishes on a Plane has put out. The acoustic songs that close Lost Songs are a nice addition, but they don’t sound too far off from Becker’s more recent work with Amid the Old Wounds. With just his voice and a guitar, they aren’t as dynamic as the songs that precede them. They ultimately serve as reminders of the potential this band had; who knows what a song like “New Year’s Eve,” the prettiest and most compelling of the three, could’ve become? In the end, though, it’s hard to think of higher praise: one’s left wondering what more could have been. There are, undoubtedly, countless other emo bands from the same era whose work was lost to time. Thankfully Wishes on a Plane isn’t one of them anymore.
Disappointing / Average / Good / Great / Phenomenal
Mini Trees – Slow It Down
Last year’s Burn Out EP was a reset for Mini Trees. Citing Frou Frou, A.G. Cook, and Charli XCX as inspiration, Lexi Vega took the electronic elements that cropped up throughout her debut and pushed them to the forefront of her sound; while Always in Motion was lovely, but the glossy sheen helped elevate Burn Out. On their sophomore album, Mini Trees take the next step from that EP, pushing further into the realm of pop than ever before. Even still, Slow It Down never loses what made Vega’s songwriting so compelling in the first place.
There have been tons of albums like Slow It Down over the past few years, and the beloved indie rocker to (often failed) pop star arc is becoming cliche; what helps Mini Trees avoid the pitfalls that plagued other artists making similar shifts is that Vega weaves these new influences into her songwriting in a way that feels natural, a next step rather than a cynical pivot. Songs like “Underwater” and “Numb” from Always in Motion seem, in retrospect, like test runs for the material here. “Hard to Love” and “Sucker Punch” are clear refinements of the formula of that LP, just punchier and catchier; cuts like “It’s Not You” and “Hollow” are obvious evolutions, too, aiming for the mainstream while keeping one foot each steadfastly in the world of indie rock. The pre-release singles demonstrate that Vega’s got the chops to make a real shot at pop radio; if that was her ambition, it’d be easy to churn out a full album of songs like “Spinning,” “Close,” and “On Repeat.” Instead, Slow It Down offers up a bit of everything Mini Trees can do, and not a second feels perfunctory.
Disappointing / Average / Good / Great / Phenomenal
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Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
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