Chasing Fridays: Haywire, Liquid Mike, Midwife, more
The ordination of hardcore's latest genre leaders. Plus, reviews of some other stuff.
Happy Friday and welcome to any new subscribers who are just now joining the Chasing Fridays – ahem – ritual after reading my Pitchfork review of Sleep Token's Even In Arcadia. If you haven't yet given that a read, it's one of my favorite pieces of criticism I've written in a long time, and I'm grateful for all the kind words I've received about my unmerciful takedown. While I wrote about some Sleep Token-adjacent metalcore in last week's Chasing Fridays, this week is dedicated to covering much different music.
I went long on one of the best hardcore shows I've ever seen by the band who are set to define the genre for the next year at least. I also weighed in on new singles from a band I've had mixed feelings on, and then a couple other bands I really love. And lastly, I wrote about a death-metal record from 2019 that I can't stop listening to after seeing the group live just last weekend. As always, that final portion of Chasing Fridays, in which I go in on an older piece of music I've been spending time with, is for paying subscribers only. So you can toss me $5/month to read that and all other weekly paywalled content on my site. Many thanks to all of my paying subscribers. I wouldn't be able to do this without your support.
Liquid Mike - "Groucho Marx" / "Selling Swords"
I was harsh on Liquid Mike's last release after reviewing their first LP pretty positively. However, in the spirit of fairness and nuance, I decided to give this band's new duo of singles a good faith listen. The verdict? I'm rocking with one of them and politely nodding my head to the other. My issue with Liquid Mike's cult-adored 2024 album, Paul Bunyan's Slingshot, was the canyon-sized gully between how people raved about the songwriting (deliriously catchy, lyrically charming, amply riff-tacular) and how the songs actually sounded to me (forgettably serviceable indie-rock with a quaint emo scrappiness). Friend of the blog Steven Hyden called Liquid Mike "the next great Midwestern rock band," and Liquid Mike's loudest internet soldier, Keegan Bradford, rode out for them with the galloping urgency of Paul Revere. I listened to the album several times and thought it was supremely fine.
The second of these new singles, "Selling Swords," is also fine. There're some acoustic strums, a twiddling trumpet solo, and nasally vocals that never fully materialize into a compelling hook. "Groucho Marx" is the inverse: a crunchy fuzz-pop ripper where singer Mike Maple's strained delivery has some actual grit, and his vocal lines curl into a melody that clings to my noggin' like wild burdocks. I wish the refrain came back around for a second go, but at least the guitar solo properly chars the way all good fuzz-pop should. I'm still not convinced this band are the next Fountains of Wayne, or whichever power-pop titan their feverish fans compare them to. But if you like tuneful guitar music buttressed by honkin' distortion and unpolished vocals, then it'd be hard to dislike a song like "Groucho Marx." It's a winner.
Aunt Katrina - "Peace of Mind"
Aunt Katrina are the band led by Feeble Little Horse co-founder Ryan Walchonski, who departed the Pittsburgh indie-gaze mainstays earlier this year. The first Aunt Katrina release from a couple years ago had some nice tunes on it, but "Peace of Mind" – the lead single from their forthcoming debut LP, This Heat Is Slowly Killing Me – is their best yet. It's softer and more focused than any of Walchonski's work in Feeble, though you'll still hear his knack for whimsical sonic details: the fluttering loop dancing in the back of the hook, the chopped-up choral vocals filling out the first verse. I'd be remiss not to compare it to Alex G, but not in a way that feels reductive or uninspired. Just in the way that most new indie-rock sounds kind of like Alex G. Except this is better than most new indie-rock.
Midwife - "Signs"
Last week I wrote about my love of Midwife in relation to my indifference to Maria Somerville's new album, and then in a divine act of coincidence, Midwife surprise-released a new song. This one's called "Signs" and it's a B-side from last year's No Depression in Heaven LP, an album about grieving people, places, and inanimate objects that no longer inhabit this plane. "Signs" also ruminates on loss. Madeline Johnston begs a higher power to "give me a sign" to help make sense of a loved one's passing. She chooses to remember the departed as "wild and free" instead of the opposite – the burdened state in which they passed. Johnston is so effective at stringing together personal vignettes and delivering them with a calm, solemn profundity. This is music for visiting grave stones during the day time. For feeling a breeze on your shoulder and getting the uncanny sense that someone who's no longer with you physically is reminding you of their presence.
Haywire @ Preserving Underground
Code Orange. Terror. Drain. Sunami. The Acacia Strain. I've seen them all headline this room and make the walls shake, but never like this. Never like Haywire's set last weekend. You see their name on the flier, fourth from the top? Yeah, don't be fooled. They were the headliner. I knew it was going to be that way hours before they played and their merch line stretched so long it had a right angle in it. Sunami, the evening's nominal headliners, and one of the hypest, most reliable hardcore draws this decade, had no line at their booth. Pain of Truth, Sunami's co-headliners on this cross-country trek, and another lockdown-era hardcore success story who've dominated over the last few years, also had no line. It's a new era. The early 2020s are done. The second half of this decade is up for grabs, and Haywire will likely be the band who define it.
It was obvious that Haywire's momentum was building last fall when I saw them outshine Terror and Cro-Mags at this very venue. And after mainlining footage of Haywire's Northeast DIY run with Balmora earlier this year, and then seeing videos from Haywire's stage-crushing LDB set late last month, I knew the Boston band's star was rising in a serious way. However, I didn't expect them to get the kind of response in Pittsburgh that Trapped Under Ice and Mindforce do at major festivals. I'm not an avid Haywire listener. I honestly wouldn't have even considered myself a true "fan" of the band until this show. So when I say that their set was historical, that it was one of the greatest hardcore displays I've ever witnessed, and that it solidified in my mind that they're the most important band in the genre right now, I'm not just saying that because I like them. I'm saying that because it's the indisputable truth.
Eli Enis
Haywire are the people's hardcore band. They have the undying respect of dancefloor hooligans and crewed-up elder statesman because singer Austin Sparkman has been a notorious hooligan himself for the last decade, chiefly as the frontman of now-defunct Boston bad-boys Buried Dreams, and also a playing member of Conservative Military Image, Think I Care, Rude Awakening, Skinhead, and Suburban Scum, who he's fronted since their 2023 reunion. From the moment Haywire emerged in late 2023, they had an entrenched pedigree among the most impenetrable cliques in contemporary hardcore, and since then, they've rallied a generation of kids who came up on Sunami-style beatdown to appreciate old-school stomp-and-holler hardcore punk. Last weekend, I saw hordes of teenagers I've never seen at shows before rocking Haywire merch and screaming the words to their songs – right alongside the toughest, proudest faces in Pittsburgh hardcore. I've never witnessed a hardcore band earn such an enthusiastic thumbs-up from gatekeepers and gate-crashers alike.
Haywire's resonance is a confluence of many factors: electric live energy, undeniable melodies, adversarial lyrics, heart-on-sleeve vulnerability, nasty mosh parts, eye-catching iconography, and an attitude that's both authentically hostile and warmly accepting. They're also playing a style of hardcore that runs counter to the metallic chugs that have consumed the genre's zeitgeist over the previous decade. Their sound is classic, a throwback to the Boston bands they came up on in the mid-2000s (The Rival Mob, Stop and Think, No Tolerance), but in today's metallized hardcore climate, they sound immensely fresh. They make people stage-dive and sing along without using the pop-punk cheat code that Koyo, One Step Closer, and Anxious have used to garner similar responses. All throughout the venue, Haywire had hung at least two dozen posters that read "Join the Haywire army." Their set felt like bootcamp. Haywire had the attention of a whole new generation of hardcore-curious fans and were training them to understand what a real hardcore show sounds and feels like. Endless stage-dives. Countless mic-grabs. Clobbering mosh behavior. Risky front-flips off the monitors.
What impresses me most about Haywire is that nothing they're doing is being done at the expense of hardcore's subversive spirit and outsider edge. The songs on their new split with No Guard, Shirts Vs. Skins, have a street-punk catchiness that veers to the outskirts of hardcore's sonic boundaries, but they don't feel like ploys to widen the band's audience or "reinvigorate" the genre with ham-fisted alt-rock parts. Sparkman is a tremendously charismatic frontman who lead the room like the cool teacher in high-school who even the bad kids respect. He encouraged rough-housing and lectured the room on the importance of The Rival Mob before their "Boot Party" cover, but also spoke sensitively about his lyrics and encouraged everyone to hug their friends. I saw people of all ages, races, and genders losing their shit to Haywire, and none of the enthusiasm felt forced or trend-hoppy. Their songs are magnetic, and the band's presence is irresistible. Participation didn't feel mandatory – it felt necessary. I don't remember the last time I was in a hardcore crowd that was living so blissfully in the moment.
At the end of the night, Sparkman told the room that this was the best show Haywire have ever played. You could tell he meant it. In the middle of their set, Haywire filmed a music video for their song "Always By My Side," and whenever that gets posted, you'll be able to see why Sparkman felt that way. You'll get to see that everything I'm writing here isn't hyperbole. Better yet, go see for yourself. If you live in the U.S., then you're guaranteed to have an opportunity to see Haywire this summer. The Pittsburgh show was day nine of a 96-date DIY tour that Haywire are embarking on from now until the end of July. By the time it concludes, virtually every hardcore scene in the country will have been enlisted in Haywire's army. It's the only draft that's not worth dodging.
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