Tag: indie rock

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Diary Shares Jangling and Yearning “Stevie”

Rising Brooklyn-based indie outfit Diary — Kevin Bendis (vocals, keys), Chris Croarkin (guitar, vocals), High Waisted‘s Jessica Louise Dye (guitar, vocals), Two Man Giant Squid‘s Yan Kogan (bass) and Adam Sachs (drums) — can trace their origins to a shared love of jangle-pop, shoegaze, dream pop and psychedelia. 

Last year, the Brooklyn-based outfit released the Speedboat EP, an effort loosely inspired by Renata Adler’s novel of the same name that as the band explained is “about living in New York City and the neuroses that come with it.” They continue, “We’ve always been an NYC band but never fully explored what that meant to us. Living here and playing music here there’s a ceaseless oscillation between anxiety and anticipation. Even as you sleep and dream about the buildings and the hum of the street.”

Sonically, the EP’s material was inspired by Sister-era Sonic Youth, early Dinosaur Jr, Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Methadrone, Swirlies and Drop Nineteens. “But at the end of the day, we just love big pop songs that run super loud and fuzzy.”

“Stevie” is the first bit of new material since last year’s Speedboat EP. The new single is a nostalgia-inducing bit of jangle pop that recalls The Smiths and the like, while anchored around deeply introspective and seemingly lived-in lyrics, Bendis’ yearning delivery and the band’s penchant for razor sharp hooks.

“Lyrically, the song drifts through the strange intimacy that can grow through the algorithms—how a face, a stack of books, or a record sleeve glimpsed online can spiral into a fantasy,” the band explains. “It’s about longing for someone you don’t know and the sweet ache of wanting to believe in a constructed connection.”

Directed by Jane Burns, the accompanying video, which is shot on film, features the band in at a large estate/mansion goofing off and performing the song in the woods and gardens.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Starling Shares “120 Minutes”-era MTV-LIke “I Can Be Convinced”

Founded and led by Kasha Souter Willet (vocals, guitar), rising Los Angeles-based indie outfit Starling was started without a vision of what it would eventually become. Last year, the project became a full-fledged band with the addition of Erik Sathrum Johnson, Grace Rolek and Gitai Vinshtok.

With their debut EP, last year’s 2324, the quartet quickly established a sound and approach with a soft heaviness that effortlessly weaved from classic grunge to singer/songwriter and shoegaze. They combine bedroom warped production with angular leads and rich vocal melodies. Although the band’s sound is genre agnostic, the feel is a general yearning for contentment, a person, a place. The result is a vulnerable yet enthralling style of rock.

The Los Angeles-based quartet’s highly-anticipated sophomore EP, Forgive Me is slated for a June 27, 2025 release through San Antonio-based label, Sunday Drive Records. Confusion, frustration, love and loss are all expressed through the new EP’s material. Written over the course of roughly a year, the band recorded themselves in various sheds, apartments and garages. Adding to the DIY ethos, the EP was mixed by the band’s Erik Sathrum Johnson and the EP’s artwork was shot by the band and their friends. The material was mastered by Greg Obis, who has mastered work by MJ Lenderman, Wishy and Duster.

Forgive Me is a fully DIY and deeply personal effort in which the band has shaped every sonic detail themselves. So, every chord, melody, rhythm and feeling is internationally placed and wholly theirs.

The EP’s lead single “I Can Be Convinced” would fit in perfectly on a 90s grunge/120 Minutes-era MTV themed playlist as the song features angular and jangling guitars and soaring synths for the song’s verses and fuzzy and scorching power chord-driven choruses and hooks serving as woozy, barely controlled bed for thunderous drumming and Willet’s dreamily coquettish cooing. While reportedly one of the EP’s more upbeat tunes, the song is ironically deceptive with the song examining all-consuming, contradictory and confusing love that’s simultaneously exciting and confining.

“Smothered. Wrapped up in a warm blanket so tightly you cannot move. A song written about needing stillness, to be told no, to be confined all in a confused love,” the band says. “Kasha did not intend the song to take such an upbeat direction when she brought it to the band. Although it is a sad and yearning song, the beat and arrangement made this song our lead single.”

Directed by David Milan Kelly, the accompanying video for “I Can Be Convinced” was shot in and around Los Angeles and features a collection of ballerinas dancing on the streets and in the studio as the band performs the song.

“The ‘I Can Be Convinced’ music video came together with a lot of hard work from our friends who believed in the project, scraping all resources to make it happen,” the band told the folks at Flood Magazine. “David Milan Kelly is a close friend of ours who directed the video and worked with us to create a visually interesting music video that honored the feeling and matched the pacing of the song. David and Kasha both separately had the thought to add ballet dancers to the mix, so when it was brought up by Kasha, they knew it had to come to fruition. From the big white skirt Kasha found at a thrift store not knowing what it would be used for at the time of purchase, to the dancers who came ready to improvise and learn poses on the spot; as much planning as we did a lot of this came together by trusting the process and allowing things to fall into place.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Native Sun Shares Swaggering and Groovy “I Need Nothing”

Rising New York-based indie outfit Native Sun — Colombian-born Danny Gomez (vocals, guitar). Justin Barry (bass, vocals), Jack Hiltabidle (guitar) and Argentine-born Nicolas Espinosa (drums) — have been celebrated for a visceral, untamed live show and for Gomez’s sociopolitically-charged lyrics that confront reality head on, channeling disillusionment into action while lovingly documenting the lives of society’s misfits and marginalized.

Over the past couple of years, the band has received coverage from both sides of the pond, including BrooklynVegan, DIY Magazine, Dork Magazine, Flood Magazine, NYLON, Paste Magazine and Rolling Stone. Adding to a growing profile, the rising quartet has played alongside the likes of A Place To Bury Strangers, Geese, Indigo de Souza and Nation of Language, among a growing list of acclaimed acts.

The New York-based quartet recently signed to NYC-based TODO, who will be releasing their highly-anticipated, full-length debut, which is slated for release later this year. in the meantime, their debut album’s first official single, the Jonathan Schenke-produced “I Need Nothing” is a swaggering, hook-driven, Stone Roses and Happy Mondays-like tune, anchored around a hypnotic, stoner-like groove, distortion and feedback-drenched guitars and passed out drum patterns that serves as a lush bed for Gomez’s insouciant and defiant delivery.

Lyrically, the song expresses a yearning desire for liberation and detachment from the chaos and bullshit of the surrounding modern world while reclaiming your time and peace. If things have been weighing you down lately, this song’s for you.

“‘I Need Nothing’ is our response to the chaos of a world in crisis – where every day we’re inundated with noise, distraction, and a kind of manufactured anxiety designed to keep us disengaged,” the band explains. “It taps into a collective exhaustion – being bombarded by political dysfunction, performative media, and the hyperreality of late-stage capitalism. But the song isn’t about apathy; it’s about stepping back to reclaim space, to think clearly, and to act with intent. It’s a defiant refusal to be consumed by a broken system—survival and self-liberation through clarity and detachment.”

Directed and filmed by Tim Nagle and Conor Cunningham, the accompanying video for “I Need Nothing” is shot on 8mm film and features the band performing the song in a studio, complete with fittingly hallucinogenic effects that sort of mimic a psilocybin trip.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: Jahnah Camille Shares Rousingly Anthemic and Cathartic “sit with you (pain)”

Rising, 20 year-old, Birmingham, AL-born and-based singer/songwriter and musician Jahnah Camille (pronounced as “Hannah”) can trace the origins of her music career to her childhood: Overhearing her father’s guitar lessons, she first picked up a guitar when she was four, and by the time she turned 10, she was writing her own songs. 

Throughout her life, supportive coincidences have pushed Camille’s creative tenacity. Her mother encouraged an elementary school-aged Jahnah to perform for their apartment’s maintenance man, who then gifted her a red Gibson SG and an amplifier. At a hippie kids camp, she met a mentor, who helped to champion her early crowdfunded recordings. 

“My mom was always having me sing and play guitar for people,” says Jahnah. “I’ve always had people who believed in me, and I feel like I’ve internalized that. That’s been really beautiful.”

Later opportunities to open for acclaimed artists like Clairo and Soccer Mommy led to her burgeoning status as a keenly self-examining indie rock singer/songwriter in a Birmingham scene saturated with punk and hardcore bands — many of which she played with in her earliest DIY shows. 

“The first year after I graduated high school was kind of horrifying,” says Jahnah. “I had just basically broken up with most of my band. I wasn’t going to college. I was seeing how everyone else that I had known growing up, their lives were changing. I knew that whatever happened in my life, it wasn’t going to be that, and there wasn’t really any proof that things were going in a positive direction.”

The rising Birmingham-based artist’s sophomore EP, the Alex Farrar-produced My sunny oath! is slated for a June 13, 2025 release through Winspear. The EP comes on the heels of a run of tour dates with Blondshell and previous shows opening for TOPS,Soccer Mommy and Clairo — and after the success of her debut EP, last year’s i tried to freeze light, but only remember a girl. 

My sunny oath! is set in the pressure cooker of new adulthood and is reportedly features a defiant collection of alt-rock, lo-fi grit and sardonic grunge that channels Jahnah Camille’s influences, including The Sundays, Liz Phair, Minnie Ripperton and Japanese Breakfast among others. 

Last month, I wrote about EP single “what do you do,” a 90/120 Minutes MTV-era indie rock inspired anthem, anchored around a classic grunge rock structure paired with the young artist’s remarkably self-assured vocal turn and uncanny knack for an enormous, well-placed hook. “I wrote this while trying to understand the feeling of losing control,” the rising Birmingham-based artist says, “I was paralyzed by a need to control how other people saw me and needed to write about it.” 

My sunny oath!‘s latest single “sit with you (pain)” begins with a lush and dreamy, singer/songwriter, acoustic guitar section with gently rumbling feedback that slowly builds up into a full-throated, bombastic, feedback and grungy power chord-driven anthem. While continuing to showcase a young songwriter, who can craft a big, rousingly anthemic hook and chorus, the song is anchored in deeply lived-in and earnest hurt.

The song “is about cutting someone out of your life who you still care for deeply,” she explains. “All of your critiques and drawbacks are still secondary for the love that you have. I wanted to make a habit of doing things that were good for me even if they hurt.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Rising Aussies Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers Share Raucous and Rowdy “BALCONY”

Currently split between Ngunnawal/Canberra and Naarm/Melbourne, the rising Aussie indie outfit Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers — Anna Ryan they/she, vocals, guitar), Scarlett McKahey (she/her, guitar, vocals), Jaida Stephenson (she/her, bass) and Neve van Boxsel (she/her, drums) — broke out into the national and international scene with 2022’s Pretty Good For A Girl Band EP, which received praise from The Guardian and Teen Vogue, as well as airplay from triple j.

Pretty Good For a Girl Band EP‘s lead single “Girl Sports” landed at #55 on the triple j Hottest 100 list. Their full-length debut, 2023’s I Love You debuted at #6 on the ARIA Albums Chart and included “I Used To Be Fun,” which landed at #52 on the Hottest 100. That same year they opened for Foo Fighters — and they were named one of Spotify’s New Noise Artists to Watch for 2024.

Adding to a growing list of accolades, the band received a J Award-nominations for Australian Album of the Year and Song of the Year for “I Used To Be Fun,” an APRA Award-nomination for Emerging Songwriter of the Year and Rolling Stone Australia Award-nominations for Best New Artist and Best New Single. They also won an AIR Award for Best Independent Rock Album or EP, a MusicACT Award for Artist of the Year and the Michael Gudinski Breakthrough Artist ARIA Award.

Last year’s deluxe album, I Love You Too featured standout collaborations with Softcult on “Dull” and the rapidly rising The Linda Lindas on “Please Me.”

While developing a reputation as one of the Australia’s most urgent and exciting contemporary acts, the band has also received attention for their political concerns, including advocating for Green Music’s No Music on a Dead Planet, contributing to an Aussie Parliamentary inquiry into live music and being outspoken supporters of AAM’s Michael’s Rule. The rising Aussie outfit has found ways to channel their passion for music and social change into everything that they do.

The Aussie quartet’s latest single, the raucous Catherine Marks-produced “Balcony,” finds the band channeling the likes of Wet Leg, Amyl and the Sniffers and Dream Wife with the band pairing rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses with a relentless motorik groove, angular and fuzzy power chords, McKahey’s punchily coquettish delivery and a glitchy trip hop-like bridge. At its core, the song describes a desire to get out there, drink, party, flirt with some pretty young thing and just cause some fucking chaos. It’s a Friday, and you just got out of work song y’all.

“BALCONY IS FOR WHEN YOU’RE FEELING CHEEKY AND WANT TO KISS SOMEONE ON THE FACE AND GET KICKED OUT OF A BAR!!! CHAOS!!!!!” The band says.

“Balcony” marks a bold new chapter for the band, with the band expanding their signature sound with a widescreen flair. It’s the first bit of new material that came out of a five-week recording session at New South Wales-based The Grove Studios with Catherine Marks, who the band calls “a frickin’ dream.” They add “We have learnt heaps from her and have been such huge fans for so long! She’s stupidly hardworking and makes us all feel very motivated and inspired, which is hard to do when you’re locked in an isolated studio for 5 straight weeks. Hallelujah and god bless Miss Marks.” 

Directed by Nick Sullivan, the accompanying video for “Balcony” features the members of the band at a rowdy house party, including the titular balcony. Of course, there’s booze, lines for the bathroom, folks making out and hooking up — and drunk POV shots. Maybe you shouldn’t be doing that — but you know, YOLO, right?

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sunflower Bean Shares Shimmering “There’s a Part I Can’t Get Back”

Formed back in 2013, while they were still teenagers, New York-based trio Sunflower Bean — Julia Cumming (vocals, bass) Nick Kivlen (guitar, vocals) and Olive Faber (drums) — are arguably one of the New York metropolitan area’s most acclaimed and commercially successful, contemporary indie bands. Since their formation, the New York-based trio have released three critically acclaimed albums, 2016’s Human Ceremony, 2018’s Twentytwo in Blue and 2022’s Headful of Sugar, which featured several chart-topping singles. 

The band has supported those albums with sold-out tour dates as headliners and as openers for the Beck, The Strokes, Cage the Elephant, Interpol, Courtney Barnett, The Pixies, The Kills, DIIV, Wolf Alice and more. They’ve also made the rounds of the international festival circuit with stops at Glastonbury, Governor’s Ball, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Reading Festival, Leeds Festival and others. And famously, they opened for Bernie Sanders during primary campaign rallies. 

Late last year, the band returned with the Shake EP. The self-produced and self-recorded effort featured some of the band’s heaviest, most immediate and loudest material they’ve written and recorded to date. Influenced by the doom-laden, riff-driven sound of Black Sabbath and others, the EP is an embrace of rock tropes and excess, while nodding to the band’s first two albums. 

“SHAKE was inspired by our first years as a DIY band, the spirit that birthed us and gave us the chance to have this enduring journey together,” the band says of the EP. “We wrote, recorded, engineered, and produced these songs so nothing was filtered through anyone else’s idea of us. We always felt like rock and roll was a feeling, not a sound. But sometimes there is no subverting it or explaining it. We’re now offering it exactly as it occurred to us.” 

The JOVM mainstays highly-anticipated fourth album Mortal Primetime is slated for a Friday release through Lucky Number. Three years have passed since the release of Headful of Sugar and in that time, the members of the band drifted from one another as they pursued new projects and confronted personal challenges, tragedies and transformations. The album reportedly finds the band with a deeply renewed sense of purpose after nearly losing everything they’ve built together. “You get to decide what your prime is, and you fight for it,” the band’s Julia Cumming says. “This is ours, and that can’t be taken away by circumstance. We can’t take it away from each other. This moment, where we are now, is what we’ve always fought for.”

Mortal Primetime‘s material was inspired by alternative rock and psychedelia and rooted in arena-sized ambition, which results in a sound that’s not just undeniably theirs, but also sees the band celebrating their history while boldly pushing into the future. 

Earlier this year, I wrote about “Champagne Taste” a song title that’s a nod to the band’s long-time alias when performing secret shows to test out new material. Anchored around scuzzy riffs, arena rock friendly, power chord-driven hooks and choruses paired with Cumming’s sultry, The Idiot-era Iggy Pop-styled croon, “Champagne Taste” sees the band simultaneously channeling a synthesis of 80s glam rock and 90s riot grrl alt rock and punk. But at its core, is a fierce, almost feral determination.

“This song came after a period that felt like rock bottom for the band. It is about feeling beaten down but still driving forward, to keep faith, to grow and to continue to create on our own terms, our Mortal Primetime,” the band explains.

Mortal Primetime‘s latest single “There’s a Part I Can’t Get Back” is a Laurel Canyon-like tune that nods a bit at Twentytwo in Blue while featuring chiming guitars and one of Cumming’s most beautiful and earnest vocal turns in some time. But at its core is the simmering anger of being mistreated and denied innocence; of having an inability to trust; of knowing that you’ll live with the impacts of that treatment for the rest of your days.

The song, which is about personal experiences with being groomed finds Cumming being “as intentional and direct as possible,” as she grapples with what she’s experienced — and how it has shaped her and her life.

“This song is about the lasting scars of grooming—the parts of yourself that are stolen and the anger you carry because of it,” Cumming explains. “It came to me in such a raw and direct way, there was no second-guessing or wondering how I felt. I didn’t want to write a song about being healed, I wanted to be angry about needing to heal at all. The line, ‘If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord lets me get even first,’ is important because it captures the intensity of these feelings and how they go beyond logic. I am confronting the pain and the questions that will never be answered.”

Directed by Harv Frost, the accompanying video for “There’s a Part I Can’t Get Back” visually exploring Mortal Primetime‘s central themes while seeing the trio supporting one another as they fight to regain their footing in gorgeous, almost painterly settings.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Yumi Zouma Shares Breakneck and Melodic “Bashville on the Sugar”

Formed back in 2013 in Christchurch, New Zealand, the multinational and multi-continental JOVM mainstays Yumi Zouma — Melbourne-based Christie Simpson (vocals, keys), New York-based Josh Burgess (guitar, bass, vocals, keys), London-based Charlie Ryder (guitar, bass, keys) and Wellington, New Zealand-based Olivia Campion (drums) — have had an acclaimed run that began with their shoegaze and dream pop-driven debut EP, the aptly-titled EP I and included their critically applauded albums, 2014’s Yoncalla, which saw the band dabbling with synth pop; 2017’s Willowbank, 2020’s Truth or Consequences and 2022’s Present Tense.

The JOVM mainstays have received praise from Pitchfork, Stereogum, Consequence, The FADER, SPIN, The Guardian while receiving airplay from SiriusXM and Australia’s Triple J. The multinational and multi-continental outfit have also developed a reputation as a mainstay on the global touring scene — first through opening slots for Air France, Jamie xx and Lower Dens, and then as a headlining act.

Recently, Yumi Zouma signed to Nettwerk Music Group, who will be releasing the band’s latest single “Bashville on the Sugar,” their first bit of new material in over 16 months or so. Beginning with a Foo Fighters-like “I’ll Stick Around“-like drum fill, the acclaimed outfit’s latest single may be the most downright breakneck tune they’ve released to date while continuing to showcase Simpson’s ethereal yet expressive delivery paired with cascading and chiming guitar work from Burgess and Ryder and MTA field recordings. Written in bursts across Mexico City, New York and New Zealand, “Bashville on the Sugar” captures the energetic pulse of commuting on public transportation in a large city, as well as the excitement and sense of infinite possibilities that could happen — right before that subway door closes.

“The first song on our forthcoming project that we really dug into, it’s an ode to the subway and public transport, New York’s in particular. The band has a deep affinity for it; its reliability and the access it provides are unlike anything we experienced in New Zealand,” the members of Yumi Zouma explain. “At the same time, its unpredictability—what you’ll see, who you’ll bump into—keeps each trip rooted in the present.”

Directed by the band, the accompanying video for “Bashville on the Sugar” features a blend of photo studio footage, Mini DV footage shots in New York and clips, and manages to capture the band’s sweet and goofy nature while evoking the endless motion at the heart of the song.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe Shares Dance Floor-Friendly “Somebody New”

Tunde Adebimpe, the frontman of the critically acclaimed Brooklyn-based band TV On The Radio will be releasing his long-awaited, highly-anticipated solo debut Thee Black Boltz Friday (!) through Sub Pop Records.

The Adebimpe and Wilder Zoby co-produced album features additional production and contributions from TV On The Radio’s Jaleel Bunton and Japhet Landis and more. The album’s material will not only showcase Adebimpe imitable voice and visionary soundscapes, but is a nod to his propensity to write and sing about the human condition — in all its form, under all its stressor, both big and small. 

Thee Black Boltz isn’t a TV On The Radio album. But for Adebimpe, in a lot of ways, the excitement of doing something on his own for the first time ignited a similar creative spark as during the early TVOTR days. The songwriting process is the same, he says, but with his bandmates, Adebimpe always knew that have didn’t have to complete his musical ideas. “I’ve been doing this thing with this group of people for so long, that I can just have a vague sketch of a concept and I know Jaleel or Kyp will have five brilliant ideas on where it can go,” he says. “But for Thee Black Boltz, I didn’t have that scaffolding to hang on. That was both terrifying and exhilarating.”

The album’s title is Adebimpe’s response to the macro unease of a post-pandemic world careening towards violent authoritarianism and the immense grief that has come from deeply personal losses, specifically the sudden passing of his younger sister while making it. In many ways, Thee Black Boltz is the TVOTR frontman’s desperate grasping of small moments of joy amidst the dissonance, chaos and sadness in any way he could. And understandably, the album was a way of processing everything in his life. “It was my way of building a rock or a platform for myself in the middle of this fucking ocean,” he says. 

As he writes in his notebook, “The sparks of inspiration/motivation / hope that flash up in the midst of (and sometimes as a result of) deep grief, depression or despair. Sort of like electrons building up in storm clouds clashing until they fire off lightning and illuminate a way out, if only for a second.”

“Also,” he adds. “it’s a good name for a cool metal band, and I think that most people would describe me as akin to a very cool metal band.” 

Earlier this year, I wrote about the Jahpet Landis-produced “Drop,” a meditative and deeply introspective song featuring looped beatboxing, shimmering and strummed bursts of guitar, whistling and skittering beats serving as a dreamy and subtly uneasy bed for Adebimpe’s plaintive delivery questioning the purpose of it all, when things seem so brutally nonsensical.

Thee Black Boltz‘s fourth and latest single “Somebody New” is a dance floor friendly synth-driven bop that recalls 80s synth pop — i.e., Nu Shooz “I Can’t Wait,” Depeche Mode‘s “I Can’t Get Enough,” Yaz‘s “Situation” and the like — but while rooted in modern thematic concerns.

The Adebimpe-directed video for “Somebody New” is a feverishly trippy and surreal bit of time travel back to the days of Soul Train and American Bandstand as we see the TVOR frontman performing the song in a crowded room of beautiful young people dancing — and a glammed out Gritty-styled puppet.

“I’m positive I fell asleep on a couch with the TV on sometime in 1982 and fever dreamt this exact thing,” Adebimpe says of the new video.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Slow Fiction Shares a Furious, Breakneck Ripper

Rising New York-based quintet Slow Fiction — Julia Vassallo (vocals), Paul Knepple (guitar), Joe Skimmons (guitar), Ryan Duffin (bass) and Akiva Henig (drums) — have received attention for a sound that inspired by Sonic Youth and The Jesus Chain and Mary Chain with elements of naughties-era guitar rock paired with contemporary angst.

Their latest single “When” is part of Speedy Wunderground‘s Speedy Singles series. It’s available on all DSPs right now — and will be available on 7″ vinyl with a dub remix B side by the label’s Dan Carey titled “Who Is the Dub.” You’ll be able to purchase the new single and the rest of the singles in the series here.

As for the new single “When” is an urgent, breakneck ripper that’s one-part Walkmen one-part The Jesus and Mary Chain while arguably being one of those most defiant and confrontational songs of their growing catalog while evoking desperate unease.

“I think everyone has had a moment where their expectation of the world, a relationship, the audience they are performing for falls short, and it sends you into a wild spiral downwards,” Slow Fiction’s Julia Vassallo explains. “Losing faith feels so desperate, like falling into a pit of snakes. And the snakes all have faces that seem familiar, and they’re talking, but the words are all garbled. I guess this was trying to get to the bottom of that pit of disillusionment, or maybe get out of it altogether.”