Scratch the surface
It’s perhaps strange that I haven’t properly seen one of my newest favourite bands play live yet, despite buying their one full-length record at a show they played. Blame it on my aggressive loyalty to late friends – not the dead kind, just the kind who don’t arrive on time.
The Get Up Kids played an Amsterdam date on their Something To Write Home About 25th anniversary tour* earlier this year and being the old men we are, a few high school buddies and myself went to see them play this iconic album from start to finish. A great time was had by all, a lot of cringe memories of tearfully and incredibly sincerely singing Out of Reach at a campfire came flooding back and I remembered that I’m glad to be a fully grown and more emotionally mature man at this point.
But back to the issue at hand: due to some tardiness, we missed all but the last two songs of opening band Between Bodies. At times I now lay awake and wonder if it wouldn’t have been better to have missed the entire set, because hearing those last songs made me kick myself for not ditching my tardy friend and being on time for the entire set. They were so captivating that I immediately stormed off to the merch table to get myself a copy of their 2024 record, Electric Sleep.
Let me cut to the chase: it’s a perfect record. For me.
For some reason, it slides into the grooves of my brain in such a way that it has simply built a home there. In the same way that I would listen to just one record on repeat as a teenager, Electric Sleep has been my constant companion for the second half of 2025.
In an age where you can just listen to the damn record online, I won’t try too hard to convince you to listen to it, but here's the quick pitch: it’s a blend of pop punk and midwest emo with an edge that just really clicks for me. Think: a bit more of an uptempo and raw version of The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die and you’re halfway there.
In a world where the sentence "subtext is for cowards" has been taken to an extreme, Between Bodies deserve praise for their lyrics as well, straddling the knife’s edge between raw honesty and poetic license perfectly. Dissecting poetry is for madmen, but let me share at least one of my favourite bits from the song On A Grave:
Better to be angry than nothing at all / Better to be gone when the curtain calls / It's the tiniest things that keep life interesting / Like an airplane crash or a school shooting / The danger is you don't resist / The danger is you die like this / Oh, I won’t wait for what time may bring / The way out is the way in.
Just click below and play it for yourself.
sourjay
Between Bodies is not an immensely popular band, though of course opening for the likes of the Get Up Kids is nothing to sneeze at. But stadium rock this ain’t. And yet, their LP has been one of the best things I’ve listened to in a long time, which is saying something considering the quality of music being put out independently these days.
It got me thinking about the nature of pop music and how popular bands seem to connect with so many people.
I have Theories™
In a world torn asunder by polarisation, I honestly do try to be understanding of other people’s viewpoints – or at the very least of the journeys undertaken to the shores of their opinions. Having said that, one particular type of person I will wholeheartedly reject out of hand, is the type who considers music to be a commodity. A nice-to-have. Perhaps even a luxury. People who do not live by the grace of arranged tones and pitches, what miserable lives they must lead…!
Far be it from me to proverbially yuck anyone’s yum, but it is my estimation that people who simply stick to popular music tend to not have any actual profound love for music, or at the very least have never explored beyond the pyrite surface of musical entertainment.
And it’s not because I find the likes of Taylor Swift’s creative output to be that reprehensible – though for me emotionally it’s the equivalent of a watching grey paint dry. I merely have too much faith in my fellow earth dwellers to think that this is such a pinnacle of creative achievement that it touches such a wide group in such an intimate way. In fact, I feel music is such an intricately woven web that no single artist could truly connect with so many fans.
What I wish for these people, then, is to merely take the next step and dig just a little bit deeper to find something a little more unique for them. Something that connects to their brains a little bit better and fires those neurons just a bit more correctly. I wish for them what happens to me from time to time when I hear a band that just grabs me, much like Between Bodies did this year.
The issue, of course, is that these people never feel the need to seek out music, but rather they are content to have it be something that just happens to them. In ye olden days this would be whatever was played on the radio or your local music tv station – which in turn of course was all just pre-arranged stuff, the result of business. Deals behind closed doors between wealthy people about what song off of what album will play where and when. Of course, now it’s prearranged playlists and algorithms, but the thought is the same.
Despicable.
Thankfully, we possess free will, access to the internet and, hopefully, friends to go to shows with. Or fuck it, go to shows solo-dolo. You’ll still have a good time.
In plain sight
Since my first exposure to Between Bodies, I've racked up a few dozen hours of listening to Electric Dreams between the physical record and streaming. It just so happened (and happens, still) to scratch a cerebral itch that’s very satisfying to give in to.
Commodification be damned, there is too much music to love to get stuck in the big names.
The best music for you could be hiding somewhere on the internet, in a local venue or in the earbuds of the person next to you on the train. You never know. But you have to keep looking.
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*For proof of me being a decrepit old man: this was one of three record anniversary tours I went to this year. Besides this one, I saw Shelter play a 30th anniversary show for Mantra and Poison the Well play a 25th anniversary show for The Opposite of December. I shall now crumble to dust.
