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Today is the 10-year anniversary of Slow Motion Commotion’s first album, ‘Nice Things Don’t Happen to Assholes Like Us’.

In 2013, Shane Deaver and I were just a couple of young punks, dealing with immense grief, righteous and impotent anger, and a deep yet ineffable yearning. We would take those feelings and our guitars to a bench at Loose Park in the time between evening and morning, trying our best to bottle them into words and chords played at speeds fast enough to draw blood.

We didn’t know at that time the journey this would take us on. In the years to come, we would collaborate and become friends with some truly incredible people, we would play shows with some our favorite musicians, and most of all, we would get to be involved in and help build an amazing community. Some of the best memories of my life only had the chance to happen because we made the choice to share our music with the world. It is perhaps the thing in my life that I am most proud of doing. What we put out was raw, imperfect, but honest to ourselves and our feelings. All we could have wanted out of it was for one person, who was dealing with their own sorrow and rage and doubt, to hear it and to know that at least somebody out there has felt those things too. But we got so many more than one. Even now, after 5+ years of essentially being dormant, we still receive messages from people halfway across the country who have managed to stumble onto our music and just want to tell us how much it means to them. It is a surreal experience, and one that never fails to humble me.

There are so many people that supported us on our journey, to list all of them would be impossible. But I want to shout out just a few of them: Marion Merritt, Ann Stewart, Mark Manning, Nate Allen, Taylor Marie Gwin, Nate Knepper, John Hanson, Sarah Hanson, Joanie Flanagan, Christi Deaver, Ron Deaver, and so many many more. To anyone who ever took the time to listen to one of our songs or come out to one of our shows, know that you will always have a place in my heart and I can never thank you enough.

Live a life electric ⚡️ And stay rad, y’all.

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YOU!!

Hi ::3

I found your music on complete accident on youtube a couple months ago. And what a lucky find!

I've been thinking about making an animatic (partially animated music video, nothing fancy, i only got so much willpower and free time ToT) of your song The Ballad of Antonio (pt I) with my original characters because it bangs so hard and reminds me of them

however if i wanna do that i may need the lyrics (i looked and could not find them anywhere ToT) as i am not the best at processing audio

does that even make sense? imma eat a brick omg

anyway if you could help me with that it would be greatly appreciated o7

Well hell yeah, of course! We actually do have the lyrics to everything off the first album on our Bandcamp, you can find em on the individual song pages. But I’ll save you the trouble on this one and put ‘em here (it’s also got the chords for it as well)

Am C

I got no money, I got no friends

F E7

I got no means to reach my ends

Am C

I’m a pariah in my hometown

F E7

Don’t believe me just ask around

Am C

And I’ve been shit on, and I’ve been fucked

F E7

I have straight up run out of luck

Am C

And I’m a black cat breaking a mirror

F E7

So please darling don’t come near

F C

But it’s ok cuz I’ve resigned

F G

To losing my fucking mind

Am C

And if you stick around long enough you’ll find

E7

That life’s a bitch...but so am I

Am

Am C

When I leave this town, I’ll burn it to the ground

F E7

with a smirk as I walk away

Am C

And on that day I’ll depart, you should have known from the start

F E7

That it was going to end this way

Am C

But if it keeps up like this, knowing i won’t be missed

F E7

It’ll surely be the death of me

Am C

I was just a man with a dream one I was trying to redeem

F E7

But that’s not all it’s cracked up to be

[chorus]

Am C

I’m the portrait of anxiety, the antithesis to sobriety

F E7

A symbol for all the broken and all the cold

Am C

But I’ll be fine, don’t worry, I don’t mind

F E7

I just hope to god that I never grow old

F C

But it’s ok cuz I’ve resigned

F G

To losing my fucking mind

Am C

And if you stick around long enough you’ll find

E7

That life’s a bitch

That life's a bitch

And we're all here to die

We’d love to see the animatic when it’s done! You gotta promise to send it our way 💜

Forever stay rad,

S.M.C.

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Howdy y’all, been a long time. Both of our albums are now back up on Spotify for your listening pleasure! And we’ve got some new stuff formulating as well, so stay tuned!

Forever and always stay rad,

SMC

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Check our Ian and Shane’s new podcast!!

Hey I’ve got a new podcast with my buddies Shane and Ryan where each week we’re tasked with creating a new song mashup and it’s very fun and dumb and you should plz check it out

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my humble offering for Out of Touch Thursday

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Zoe is fucking rad and a friend of ours, go check out Kississippi

Interview: Kississippi Talks Glittery New Single and Triple Crown Signing

Photo by Kaytlin Dargen

The track is called “Around Your Room,” but from the twitterpated lyrics (“Throw your heart at me / I’m a sucker for you”) to the glittery candy bomb of a video, it’s clear it resides in the space inside Zoe Reynolds’ head. With her first new single as Kississippi (referred to affectionately as “Kissy” by fans and Reynolds too) since she self-released gauzy, emo-tinged Sunset Blush in 2018, Reynolds has affirmed her plunge deeper into pop. Kississippi stepped out of a blush-tinged, guitar-driven world and into an electronic landscape steeped in hot pink. 

Releasing “Around Your Room” on October 8, Reynolds anxiously anticipated the reaction from those who have been around since her first EP, We Have No Future, We’re All Doomed, with its minor riffs and languid vocals. “I’ve been working on this stuff for so long I kind of forgot that people don’t know that that’s what my music sounds like now,” Reynolds, who co-wrote the song with Sarah Tudzin of Illuminati Hotties, says. But a glittery pop aesthetic was always sprinkled throughout Reynolds’ music and performances—sometimes literally, like the doughnut sprinkles she once affixed to her frosting-pink guitar. Even the shift from We Have No Future to Sunset Blush saw Reynolds inching closer to dream pop, writing not the music she felt like was expected of her given the scene she was part of but the secret songs that had always resided within her. Inspired by female-fronted pop music from Britney to Beach House, it was just a matter of time until Reynolds broke the mold. 

“I’ve been thinking about it recently, and it’s the first time that I’ve really come to terms with the fact that I was holding myself back a little bit,” Reynolds says. “I feel like I finally found my voice on this shit.” It’s not just on the track itself. Reynolds, a visual artist, designs most Kississippi merch herself. When she writes songs, she doesn’t just hear the notes, but she envisions them in swaths of colors and textures. If you haven’t watched the “Around Your Room” video yet, you aren’t getting the full Kissy experience.

“Visuals and music connect in a major way for me; my brain just only works artistically,” Reynolds says. Working with a team including Josh Coll, who directed the video, to Kay Dargen, who did the album art, her vision was brought to life. “I just had such a good creative team behind every single part of this single,” she says. “I hardly had to explain anything”. The image of Reynolds with a pastel-colored, high-strapped electric guitar became so familiar as she toured to promote Sunset Blush that it’s somewhat shocking she hardly picked up a guitar writing “Around Your Room” and the rest of the songs that will comprise her as-yet-unannounced second LP (and her first since signing to Triple Crown Records this fall). “It’s a big change, but it’s what I’ve been wanting to do forever,” Reynolds, who wrote “Around Your Room” in spring 2019 while on tour with Laura Stevenson, says. Using the digital audio workstation Reason to write opened up a lot of different paths to electronic music for her.

The Taylor Swift comparisons have come in a steady stream, but Reynolds doesn’t mind a bit. Personally, that’s “the highest compliment,” she says. “When I heard some of these songs for the first time, I was like, ‘These are my 1989 songs.’” The timing is, if not ironic, notable, given that Swift just changed her own sound dramatically on folklore. But it’s exactly that kind of freedom for female pop musicians Reynolds finds so exhilarating; if she wants, her new album can be a little 1989, a little Melodrama, a little …Baby One More Time. Sure, “Around Your Room” is a youthful exaltation of infatuation, but not all pop needs to be. And it’s the emo sensibility Kississpi brings from We Have No Future and Sunset Blush that makes her new offering stand out in a landscape of pretty synths and beats.

Being part of the Triple Crown family too will be a big change for Reynolds in her next album cycle, given that she unexpectedly had to self-release Sunset Blush when her former label, SideOneDummy Records, underwent a major restructuring (read: laid off almost its entire staff). Without dwelling too much on details of the past, Reynolds acknowledges that finding a home at Triple Crown, hitting the ground running releasing “Around Your Room” and its accompanying video, and discussing release plans for her next LP is all the sweeter given the previous trials. 

“I’m really grateful for meeting so many people through that label, like [director of marketing] Jamie Coletta, [production and digital director] Christina Johns and Erica Lauren [social media],” Reynolds says. “Getting to meet them through that label was worth all of the strife, in my opinion.” As she shopped her forthcoming record to labels, Reynolds never forgot how supportive Triple Crown founder Fred Feldman had been during her self-release of Sunset Blush, and ultimately, the decision of who to sign with became not a decision at all.



“Now that I’ve ended up with Triple Crown it just feels really right to me,” Reynolds says. “I already have trust for him and have seen how much he’s done for so many friends’ bands, I don’t think I could ask for a better situation.” As for the butterflies she felt before the single’s release, Reynolds needn’t have worried. The song was featured on Apple Music’s Alt Pop, Indie Pop, and Breaking Alternative playlists, NPR Music’s New Music Friday playlist (and our own!), and was spotlighted on Billboard. 

“It’s so much better than I could have even imagined,” Reynolds says of the reception. Before putting it out, aware of the sonal leap, she wondered, Are people gonna be down with this? “And then I was like, well, how could they not be down with this if this is the best thing I’ve ever done?” That level of confidence can only stem from the gut feeling that Reynolds is finally making music cut from cloth that is wholly her own—a prismatic assortment of electric shades and sparkles.

—

Michelle Bruton | @MichelleBruton

The Alternative is ad-free and 100% supported by our readers. If you’d like to help us produce more content and promote more great new music, please consider donating to our Patreon page, which also allows you to receive sweet perks like free albums and The Alternative merch.

Interview: Kississippi Talks Glittery New Single and Triple Crown Signing was originally published on The Alternative

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Woah hey it’s been forever

Just poppin in to share that you can pre-order a unique 7” lathe-cut vinyl copy of one of The Last Innkeeper’s (Ian’s solo project) new singles through Leesta Vall Sound Recording’s Shut-In Sessions! They’re hella good songs and the Shut-In Sessions is a super cool project.

Stick Around is a good old folk love song, and Blue & White is Ian’s tribute to the often-overlooked third crew member of Apollo 11, Michael Collins aka ‘The Lonliest Man In The Universe’.

You can only order it through September 30th so get yours now! Get it here > https://leestavall.com/products/shut-in-thelastinnkeeper <

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Whoa hey we’re not dead! At least not yet.

Slow Motion Commotion as a unit hasn’t been up to much lately, but Ian has started a solo project called “The Last Innkeeper”, and if you’re a fan of SMC then you’re probably gonna like the new project as well. Follow the link above to like the FB page to keep up-to-date with it.

As for SMC, we aren’t sure what the future holds. Taylor has moved to Pregon and as a result is usually about 26 hours late to practice. Shane and Ian are still gonna keep making music together, whether it be in the form of SMC or something new, and we’ll do our best to keep y’all updated.

As always, stay radical!

-SMC

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Shane and Ian are playing vidjya gayms and you can watch

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im not black so i won’t speak over y'all but i will gladly stand next to, behind, or with y'all. anything i can do.

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Hey y’all! 

Shane and Ian have started a 5th-edition Dungeons and Dragons podcast with some other friends of theirs. If DnD is you thing, take a listen! 

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A #spotifyplaylist of the some of the rad #folkpunk bands we’ve rocked with over the years including: @paulbaribeau, @brookpridemore, @defianceohio, @daysndaze, @slowmotioncommotion, @thetaxpayers, @ramshackleglory-blog, @andrewjacksonjihad, @sleddingwithtigers.

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Yo, what's the line in Liquor Like Nostalgia, "but it's a dream that I keep having that I can't put into words, it's the shrieking of cicadas, and the _____ of the birds?" I need to know what the birds are doing

The hymnals of the birds is the lyric you're looking for! Ian considers it one of the folkiest lyrics he's ever written.

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Slow Motion Commotion meets Titus Andronicus! Got to hang with Patrick and the rest of the band. They some good dudes.