Week of 7/7: Skullcrusher, Gunk, Ian Sweet, Kendrick Lamar
Eric plugs new Skullcrusher, Miranda glows about Ian Sweet, Eli gives a defunct Philly band their flowers, and Michael looks back on a standout from Kendrick Lamar's 'Section.80.'
Welcome to Endless Scroll, the brainchild of Eli Enis (he/him), Eric Bennett (they/them), Michael Brooks (he/him) and Miranda Reinert (she/her). Since Feb. 2019, we’ve been a weekly podcast about music, the internet, and where those two things intersect. On Substack, we’re also a weekly roundup of songs. Our format is simple: each of our four hosts picks a song they love and writes about it. There will be one free post every week, and more at the end of every month for paid subscribers. For the sake of your wallet, don’t start a paid subscription on Substack. Instead, sign up at the 2$ tier or higher on Patreon and we will gift you a subscription.
Skullcrusher - “Storm in Summer”
Eric Bennett:
Skullcrusher is one of indie’s up-and-coming acts that’s most fascinating to me. Helen Ballentine’s project is certainly making music that’s of a type. One that’s very hot right now, for that matter. Leagues of music listeners, myself included, are finding themselves gravitating to music that’s slow, wispy, and quiet, but full enough with humor or drama that it never feels dull or redundant.
After hearing Ballentine’s first single “Places/Plans, ” I knew I'd be on board for whatever she did. I went on to really enjoy her debut EP, also called Skullcrusher. That's why I’m shocked it took me this long to finally give proper attention to her follow-up, Storm in Summer. Perhaps it got buried in the pile of excellent music that’s come out this year, but I was depriving myself of more tunes catered to my interests.
Skullcrusher might not be pushing herself to her full potential yet, but the growth between Skullcrusher and Storm in Summer is noticeable. The latter's title track feels like she is nudging at the boundaries of her project. It carries the same gothic melancholy that her songs seem to generally emanate, but it moves, it has a liveliness to it. Her voice is the only facet that remains unchanged, although it's still very pretty. The vocal effect she chooses plays up the spectral quality of her vocal delivery, and it complements the tone of the music well. The guitar on her songs once felt like set dressing and now feels full of bright confidence. Much of her first release was marked by a stillness as if each chord or lyric were encased in ice. “Storm in Summer” could be the beginning of her letting that stoicism thaw out, just a little.
Gunk - “Terrified”
Eli Enis:
Something that intrigues me about the internet is how it’s simultaneously easier and harder than ever to prevent bands from slipping through the cracks. As anyone on Emo Twitter can attest, if a tiny, never-before-heard artist gets the right plug by the right person, they could have a booking agent and a sold-out run of cassette tapes by the end of the month. There’s so much music being uploaded online ever single week and obviously the vast majority of it is being overlooked by listeners who aren’t in those artist’s immediate orbits, but I do feel that generally, when a band is of some importance to a style/scene of music that’s of some importance, it’s pretty rare that their influence goes unacknowledged.
Gunk are an exception. The defunct Philly band were only around for a couple years in the mid-2010s, but I think they’re the missing link between the early-2010s style of dingy, fuzzy indie-rock (Ovlov, LVL Up, Pile) and the darker, weirder shape that it took by the second half of the decade — specifically in Philly (Spirit of the Beehive, Blue Smiley, Knifeplay, etc.). They’re actually an extremely Philly sounding band because their 2013 album, Gradual Shove, also has the power-pop influence of Radiator Hospital and Swearin’, which is probably making certain people reading this think, “Hm I wonder if it sounds like Dogs on Acid.” It does, and that’s largely because Nate Dionne — who was in Snowing prior to Gunk, and then went on to form Dogs on Acid after — was in Gunk. The band also boasted drummer Dan Angel, who’s done time in Pile, Soul Glo and Bad History Month, and Josh Mackie, who played on SOTB’s Pleasure Suck and fronted the Philly band Dark MTNS (who sound kinda like fellow Philly indie-scuzzers Alex G and Shelf Life).
I have no idea if Gunk are still whispered about effusively in Philly basements, but I had never heard much about them until I heard SOTB frontman Zack Schwartz namedrop them as an influence when I interviewed him earlier this year. SOTB’s early music is ear-bleedingly loud, dank and borders on noise-rock, so I was curious to give Gunk a go and see how strong the lineage was. It’s definitely there. Gunk’s Gradual Shove sounds like what countless bands were doing in the 2017-2019 period of East Coast basement indie — slithering between shoegaze, slackery indie-rock and the type of lo-fi power-pop that’s shy about how damn hooky it is, arguably to its detriment.
There are some truly phenomenal melodies on that record that, fortunately, Dionne was able to air out in the brighter and slightly sleeker Dogs on Acid, but I love hearing them wade in between screechy feedback, throttling basslines and podded-down vocals on Gradual Shove. Closer “Terrified” is a great place to start, because frankly this is a record that really picks up on side B, but there’s a lot here that pretty much anyone with a vague interest in any of the bands I’ve named (or their influences) could get down with. Unless I’m missing something, Gunk aren’t canon, but they sure as hell should be.
IAN SWEET - “Show Me How You Disappear”
Miranda Reinert:
It took me several months of having the album saved to actually listen to Ian Sweet’s new record, Show Me How You Disappear. That turned out to be a chump move because as soon as I did it shot to the top of my favorite albums of the year so far. I love the more chaotic, noisy songs early in the record, but it’s the title track that has stuck with me most. That breathless urgency in Jilian Medford’s voice just gets me every time. Medford has said the song is about wishing she hadn’t had to spend so much time in mental health treatment and balancing that feeling with knowing you can’t change what happened. That feeling of somewhere between calm and longing for a different scenario alternates through the song and is what makes it endlessly interesting to me. The tone of the whole album is spot on and compelling and I’m looking forward to it growing on me even more over the year.
Kendrick Lamar - “Hol’ Up”
Michael Brooks:
I consider Kendrick Lamar to be a part of a small group of artists who are as good, if not better, than everybody says that they are. I wasn’t even a teenager yet when Lil Wayne started hopping on songs and screaming that he was the “best rapper alive” but even my adolescent brain could tell that he was telling the truth. In the years following the release of Tha Carter III, I wondered what rapper would take up the torch in his absence—Drake, who had already received Lil Wayne’s blessing, seemed all but destined to be next in line, but it wasn’t until Kendrick Lamar arrived that we finally found the rightful heir to the throne. I’m sure somebody out there reading this will argue that for a brief period of time Drake was the “best rapper alive” but news flash, this is my newsletter not yours, and I’ll be damned if I give that much credit to the same dude that recorded “Show Me A Good Time.”
Section.80, the debut studio album from Kendrick Lamar, was released ten years ago. I couldn’t tell you exactly when I heard the album for the first time but it couldn’t have been more than a couple weeks after it dropped, it was the summer after graduating high school so my time was split down the middle between checking out blog rap and trying to find somebody to buy me and my friends beer. You could make a case for Section.80 being the moment that Kendrick Lamar became the “best rapper alive” but I don’t think that really took shape until the release of good kid, m.A.A.d city the following year. But looking back on this album over a decade after it was released, it’s pretty obvious that Kendrick was rapping circles around pretty much everyone else. Maybe I’m getting a little too off topic here but whenever I’m trying to figure out who the “best rapper alive” is at any given moment I feel like former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart who once said “I know it when I see it” when trying to define porn. If “Hol’ Up” isn’t Kendrick Lamar trying to prove that he is in fact the “best rapper alive” then I don’t know what is.
I think part of the reason that this song has stuck with me for so long is because of how effortless it sounds.
Compared to his subsequent projects filled with big ideas, a song like “Hol’ Up,” where Kendrick is just trying to have sex with a stewardess on his flight, might seem a little insignificant, but there’s so much great rapping on here to dig into. The second verse kicks off with “Back in this bitch, in the back of this bitch / With my back against the wall and your bitch on the edge of my dick, jump off” which is, in my opinion, a fantastic couplet. “Hol’ Up” constantly skirts the line between Kendrick at his most adventurous and his most reserved, it’s the perfect balance of shit talking and showing off his chops. If you were looking for a song off of Section.80 to prove that Kendrick Lamar has always been a gifted MC you would probably go with “Rigamortus” and if you wanted a song to show how “deep” his music has always been you might choose “A.D.H.D.” I think Kendrick Lamar became the “best rapper alive” by making timeless music even when it felt like he wasn’t trying to and that’s exactly what “Hol’ Up” is to me.