Chasing Fridays: 2hollis, Shower Curtain, Drook, and more

It's Friday again, and while you're reading my below thoughts on indie-rock and hyper-rage, I'll likely be on my second or third listen of the long-awaited Nettspend mixtape, BADASSFUCKINGKID. It'll either be the stupidest thing I've cared about all year, or yet another buzzer-beater inclusion on my big 'ole list of the 100 best albums of 2024, which I've been chipping away at and plan to publish on this blog within the next couple weeks. It'll be dope (obviously), but for now, you'll have to get by on this week's Chasing Fridays, which includes a couple album recs, a single review, and then some sprawling thoughts on an artist who just might be to my 2025 what Ken Carson was to my 2024.

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Shower Curtain - words from a wishing well

Stereogum writer/friend of Chasing Sundays Danielle Chelosky told me to check out Shower Curtain last week, and now I'm kicking myself for not doing so sooner. Sure, the idea of a Brooklyn band named after a banal household object who play Fuzzy Indie-Rock might not make your neck hairs stand at attention, but the group's recent debut, words from a wishing well, (out on Fire Talk) is a worthwhile listen. The record's very first guitar stroke made me think, "Oop, someone likes Blue Smiley," but I was actually happy to hear Shower Curtain steer clear of shoegaze tropes and build their identity around killer indie-rock hooks encased in grayscale guitar slush. "wish u well" and "you're like me" are the standouts, though I recommend throwing on the full LP and letting yourself appreciate Shower Curtain's abnormally high hit rate.

Forty Winks - "Spurs"

I recently wrote about my favorite young Pittsburgh band, James Castle, who didn't deliver what I hoped on their debut EP, yet bring it live to such a degree that I'm confident they'll get the recording right on the next go-around. Forty Winks are another young Pittsburgh crew coming out of the city's noisy, gazey college basement scene, and "Spurs" is their first single on local-ish label Crafted Sounds – who were releasing Feeble Little Horse and Merce Lemon music before anyone outside of the 412 was paying attention. Supposedly, Forty Winks are rather particular about not being labeled a shoegaze band, which I find amusing because their sound is so obviously informed by groups like TAGABOW and Blue Smiley. Call it shoegaze, call it Noisy Indie-Rock – it's oppressively fuzzy, vocally indecipherable guitar music played by college kids in camo rocking Jazzmasters and stepping on giant pedal boards.

To be fair, "Spurs" is spikier and harsher than your average Julia's War act. The shrill distortion is wielded less like a weighted blanket and more like steel wool. The coarse daggers of feedback leave rugburn on your ear canals, while the woozily melodic lead riff – outfitted with a synth-like pedal effect that sounds like a malfunctioning calliope – offers an oddly aloe vera-like reprieve on the senses. The stray screamo howls add more chaos to the mix than is necessary, but fortunately they're only employed once. The song's conclusion is a marvelously cocky math-rock lick that sounds like if The Fall of Troy were really into Chavez. So no, if you're looking for another Ride then 'gaze elsewhere. Forty Winks are rerouting the last five years of American shoegaze into the land of hammer-ons.

2hollis - "cliché"

"Is this song good, or do I just like it?" is a question I asked myself a lot this year, and even wrote about back in the spring when I was mainlining a bunch of questionably bad pop music. Over the last month, I've been obsessing over 2hollis, the 20-year-old mystic giving rage rap and hyperpop a dual facelift by stitching them both together under the same knife. His 2024 singles "trauma," "gold," and "crush" provide the giddy sugar rush of 2020-era glaive or ericdoa – and 2023-era Skrillex, for that matter – while simultaneously triggering the same stimuli that Ken Carson and Yeat have caused me to depend on for emotional regulation. 2hollis put an album out back in June called boy, but it already feels like he's evolved beyond that record's uneven blend of overwrought sophisti-pop and cutesy EDM. The booming rage beats of "trauma" and "gold" notoriously set crowds ablaze when 2hollis opened for Ken Carson earlier this fall, and the sound of those particular songs – along with 2023's fan-favorite "jeans" – feels like the most effective course for him to chart going forward.

In between bumping "trauma" and "gold," I also can't stop listening to "cliché," a 2hollis song from 2023 that points toward a totally different creative arc the young artist could've taken. It's basically a pop-punk song written on a DAW in which 2hollis adopts an emo-rap cadence (somewhere between Bladee and Mark Hoppus) and alternately quavers and groans over a basic chord progression. As the title suggests, the lyrics read like a prompted exercise in writing about a generic situationship, featuring a one-sided conversation between 2hollis and an ex-fling he's attempting to rekindle via flower bouquets, café hangs, and make-outs in the rain – all while knowing that it's ultimately doomed to fail ("And it might not ever be the same, but I'm down for the game").

I've listened to this song at least a dozen times over the last few days, and I still can't decide if "cliché" is a meta commentary on will-they-or-won't-they love songs, or just an earnestly down-bad pop song that 2hollis is thinly veiling with a post-ironic shrug. I'd like to think it's the latter. The way 2hollis hollers the hook has too much aching desperation to be a put-on. The synth motif is so simple that he probably cooked it up in an hour, but the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus-outro structure – a songwriting convention 2hollis doesn't lean on in his other tracks– is too pristinely arranged to be unmoored from genuine emotion. It sounds like the way you fastidiously clean and decorate your living room before your crush comes over, only to open the door for them and bashfully lead with, "sorry it's kind of messy in here."

Whether it's a genuinely great song or merely a great genre exercise, "cliché" makes me feel how all great songs written by 19-year-olds should: like I'm 19 years old again, an age where everything indeed feels like one big cliché.

Venturing - "Famous girl"

Venturing is the alter ego of Jane Remover, the digicore producer-turned-shoegaze disembodier-turned-Tinashe remixer who's released some of the most interesting and inventive music of the 2020s. Jane's 2023 album, Census Designated, dropped shortly before her labelmate Quannnic's Stepdream, and I think of those records as fraternal twin titans of shoegaze's TikTok-era metamorphosis. As Jane Remover's 2024 singles veered back toward the realm of avant-garde electro-pop, it seems she's using Venturing to continue the rock throughline she started with 2021's frailty and Census Designated. The project's debut LP arrives in February, and "Famous girl" is the record's third single, released earlier this week.

I think it's just OK. The previous track, "Halloween," is a trudging doom dirge with hissing guitar feedback and boulder-bashing riffs that sound like tree trunks tumbling down a steep ravine. The other one, "Sister," moves at the pace of a blinking oven timer, and something about the digi-dusted guitar strums and yearning vocals effectively reels me into Jane's world in a way "Famous girl" doesn't. It begins with the chipper hyper-rock that permeated her last two albums, but then gets lost in a fog of ML Buch-like pangs. There're some great lyrics in here ("I smell like his cologne/and how he treats his home") but the music isn't interesting enough to support the narrative about highway speeding, falling in love, and the emotional bond of writing songs together. Still, in the context of a full Venturing album, this might work better. I'm looking forward to it.

Drook @ Mr. Roboto Project

Drook are a band from Richmond that someone on Twitter recommended I check out last month. Their 2024 debut, The Pure Joy of Jumping, is a unique amalgam of sounds that sometimes reminds me of The 1975, sometimes post-hyperpop Porter Robinson, and other times feels more akin to the ethereal psych-pop of Mid-Air Thief. There's even a little shoegaze in a song like "Girls Around Me," and the album's best track, "Sprinter," sounds like an epic linkup between The Go! Team and Magdalena Bay. The record's all over the place, and while it doesn't all provide the same glorious headrush of "Sprinter," I'm entertained by Drook's sprawling ambition. This feels like a sleeper hit that's currently gestating in the underground, but will gradually pick up support amongst the heads.

Live, Drook are a fucking dynamo. I saw the trio play to a scant 20 people on a chilly Tuesday night earlier this week, and I walked out of the room believing they have star power. Their older tracks have more of a band-in-a-room feel than the sampledelic Pure Joy of Jumping songs, and they bring the energy of a razor-tight punk band in the live setting. When she wasn't striking chords on her Jazzmaster, vocalist Liza Grishaeva would pull her hood over her head and thrust around the stage with an unconscious swagger, cupping the mic as she wailed into a vocoder effect like someone doing "Runaway" at karaoke the day after a breakup. Freakily locked-in and uncannily special to behold.

Other times, like during "Sprinter," she'd just be choke-barking while flailing her bangs around, either vomiting up or sucking in her words but always finding the downbeat at just the right second. There were no pauses between songs, but the band went directly from "Sprinter" into "She," a song from Drook's 2020 EP that I had never heard until they played it live. It sounded like the best song from the Meet Me in the Bathroom era that you never heard. It reminded me of the way people talk about seeing the Strokes or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in small NYC clubs in early 2001 and knowing – just knowing — that they were going to be huge. As soon as I got home, I listened to the recorded version of "She" to chase the high, but was disappointed that they structure it differently live. Instead of breaking down into feedback at the three-minute mark like it does on my headphones, Drook built it back up into a gloriously romping reprise of the main chorus. I wish I filmed it so I could listen over and over and over again.