ONLY NOISE: How I Turned COVID Blues Into The First Virtual Emo Nite Hosted By Non-Male DJs

The author in her childhood bedroom.

Celebrating the arrival of 2020 immediately took me to 2010. I rang in the new year at Barclays Center with a friend, seeing The Strokes for the first time. It felt appropriate, given how at the end of 2019, I had mentally regressed to feeling like my teenage self.

The year ended on a rough note. I lost my job and months later, a friend died at a very young age. After spending the year working on bettering myself by going to therapy, exercising, drinking less, and leaving toxic relationships behind, suddenly all progress was lost. I was emotionally fragile and reckless, incapable of having a positive mindset. As someone whose work is tied to her identity, I didn’t know who I was without it.

I sought validation and anything that’d distract me from my depression. In a misguided attempt to find happiness, I entered a brief, unhealthy romance with someone. What was meant to be a distraction brought more emotional distress. In a way, it made me feel like I was sixteen again. At that age, I had turned to music to cope, listening to songs that made me feel less alone while dealing with heartache. This time, I decided to do the same. I revisited old favorites that accurately described what I was dealing with, such as “Glendora” by Rilo Kiley and “Title Track” by Death Cab for Cutie. I reminded myself that there was a reason why Jenny Lewis wrote about these issues: it’s common to seek validation from the wrong people, and it doesn’t make me any less of a person to have a moment of weakness.

Music helped, and later things started to fall into place. I was hired at my dream job. I eased up on drinking to cope with grief and depression. I was exercising regularly again, focusing on using it as a designated time to clear my thoughts. My friends were supportive as I attempted to rebuild my life. But just when I was finally feeling like my old self, the COVID-19 pandemic hit New York City.

I began quarantining in early March out of precaution, before the city declared a state of emergency. My parents were very concerned, and though the pandemic was still in its early stages, my family urged me to return home with them to Puerto Rico. I initially said no, but after much convincing from my mom, I decided to temporarily move back home with my parents.

Typically, I’d avoid spending more than a week back home. It triggers painful memories from a decade ago, when I desperately wanted to leave the island. I didn’t have true friends growing up and spent much of my time isolated in my room, making internet friends and learning about bands through Tumblr and last.fm.

As a teen, I had no idea that finding solace in music through online communities would shape my future. My childhood bedroom walls are adorned with posters featuring some of the bands I’ve interviewed: Vivian Girls, Of Montreal, Best Coast, and Los Campesinos. I wish I could tell my teenage self, who felt so lost and insecure, that I’d accomplish so many things beyond my wildest dreams at that age. But being back home also felt like I was returning to feeling disconnected from the music-based community I had formed in Brooklyn.

In quarantine, I stopped hearing regularly from friends – it was reminiscent of that loneliness I felt as a teen. My depression returned and made me incapable of leaving the house; I didn’t have the energy to even take a quick walk around the block. No matter how much I accomplished at work, my depression caused me to be very hard on myself, making me think I was going to permanently lose the life I had in Brooklyn. This feeling persisted for two months, becoming worse each day.

One day, music writer Arielle Gordon tweeted about hosting a virtual emo night and after attending with my sibling, I realized I could create an online community of my own that would make me feel less alone. I told my sibling that I wanted to make my own virtual emo night, but with non-male DJs, widening the space for fellow music journalists, tour managers, artists, and anyone involved in music who, like me, were craving that sense of community they’d lost.

After tweeting about wanting to do it, I quickly received a response from Lindsey Miller and Mel Grinberg – both of whom are managers whose work I deeply admire – saying they wanted to get involved. Within two minutes, we had a concrete plan, and we invited Arielle and Rolling Stone editor Suzy Exposito to join. I named it Home, Like NoPlace Is There after The Hotelier’s album – appropriately about confronting depression and dark memories.

Before planning it, my depression was making me feel like my life had no purpose. Planning this event made me realize that others were in need of a community as much as I was, and it was exactly the positive, healthy distraction I needed. People I hadn’t met before began promoting it and were excited for it.

It was nerve-wracking, though. It was the first time I had planned a virtual event. Would it even work? What if something went wrong and the event failed? When it was time for the event to start, there were already 20-something people waiting on Zoom. The number of people kept increasing throughout the night, and the awkwardness of having a virtual emo night dissipated. The Hotelier’s Christian Holden even joined! People made new friends and found a safe space where they could talk about music and joke with each other.

Many reached out later saying it was the most fun they’d had since the pandemic began. That was true for me, too. For the five-and-a-half hours of the emo night, I felt happy and appreciated; I was overjoyed that my fellow DJs felt seen and appreciated, too. The last thing I thought I’d do in 2020 was revisit emo, a genre I have a complicated relationship with due to feeling like my writing about emo wasn’t respected as much as male colleagues’ – not to mention how the genre is often tied to bands that represent toxic masculinity. But now, emo carries a more positive meaning for me. It ties different generations together, and on Friday nights, everyone gets to feel like they belong somewhere – no matter who they are.

With this emo night, I have something to look forward to weekly that gives me an excuse to (virtually) socialize and dress up. While it’ll be some time until things are back to “normal” – if that ever even happens – I’m excited to feel like my regular self.

Follow Home, Like NoPlace Is There on Twitter for ongoing virtual emo night events.

HIGH NOTES: An Acid Trip on a Third Date, in Music

J and I met on Tinder and developed a relationship equal parts unconventional and beautiful. Our first date was vegan food and a late night beach walk, our second was mushrooms, and our third, perhaps the richest with meaning, was acid.

J had a few hits left over from a prior trip, which he was waiting to take with the right person. I had a few tabs a friend had given me to microdose. Together, we had enough for one hit and one re-up each.

It started off in my sunlit bedroom, with its lacy curtains and white king bed, where we each mixed the liquid with a lemon drink I’d bought and drank in down with anticipation.

Then, it transitioned to the sun, the shine of Venice Beach, where we ambled down the boardwalk, stopped to chat between cacti, and lay in sand where fleeting traces of mermaids scampered. Feeling how burned we were getting, we bought sunscreen, and he tenderly rubbed mine into my skin, a gaze of deep affection on his face. Once he was done, his eyes diverted back to the ground.

Back to the room we went, where we re-upped and put on music. After a lull in the song selections, I told him I’d channel the next song to play from above. For some reason, “Lazy Eye” by the Silversun Pickups popped into my head. I found it on Youtube.

“This song always made me sad,” I told J.

“Why?”

“I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life / But it’s not quite right,” I quoted the opening line. “It’s like when you’re trying to make a relationship work.” Tears came to my eyes. I couldn’t explain further.

“Did you notice something special pass between us, when you were putting on my sunscreen?” I asked as we held each other in piles of blankets and pillows.

“I know what you mean,” he said.

“I want to look you in the eye again.”

He peered up for a second, then hid his face in a blanket. “It’s scary,” he said.

“To appear sad / With the same old decent lazy eye / Fixed to rest on you / Aim free and so untrue,” the Silversun Pickups sang.

“What do you feel you need to hide?” I asked.

“Do you think I’m hiding?”

“Well, when you’re afraid to look people in the eye, there’s usually… shame.”

He buried himself further, then pulled himself up to meet my gaze at last. His eyes looked particularly beautiful in that moment, like sunflowers in a field.

My own eyes met his as I whispered, “You have nothing to hide.”

“Still the same old decent lazy eye / Straight through your gaze / That’s why I said I relate / I said we relate / It’s so fun to relate,” the music continued. “It’s the room, the sun, and the sky / The room, the sun, and the sky.”

After the room and the sun came the sky, the satellite-speckled Santa Monica sky that we lay under and talked about the siren sounds nearby, the song of the sirens, how Odysseus plugged his ears and Oedipus stabbed out his eyes.

“Everyone’s so intimately rearranged / Everyone’s so focused clearly with such shine.”

Back in the room, now full of sand from the sun and the sky, he told me about his goal to be more adventurous, inspiring me to play another song.

“I read with every broken heart / We should become more adventurous,” Rilo Kiley sang. “And if you banish me from your profits / And if I get banished from the kingdom up above / I’d sacrifice money and heaven all for love / Let me be loved / Let me be loved.”

We fell down a Rilo Kiley rabbit hole, and “The Absence of God” came on: “And Rob says you love, love, love / Then you die / I’ve watched him while sleeping / And seen him crying with closed eyes.”

He decided to go home. I wondered if the intimacy scared him. It didn’t scare me anymore.

“And Morgan says maybe love won’t let you down / All of your failures are training grounds / And just as your back’s turned / You’ll be surprised, she says / As your solitude subsides.”

Our fourth date was molly, our fifth was a cacao ceremony followed by a sex party, and our sixth was a San Pedro ceremony. After the latter, we lay in my bed talking again, and J told me about a friendship of his that almost became a relationship. “It’s like that song,” he told me. “Like what I’d been waiting for all my life… but not quite right.”

“You know,” I said, “that’s how I feel about us.”

“Me too.”

“No wonder I picked that song.”

“Nailed it.”

Then we gazed into each other’s eyes, eyes unafraid and unashamed, eyes that cried open, eyes that were more adventurous, eyes that were lazy no more.

TRACK REVIEW: Jenny Lewis “Just One Of The Guys”

Jenny Lewis

Jenny Lewis

There’s only one difference between you and me

When I look at myself all I can see

I’m just another lady without a baby

Jenny Lewis has had a long and fruitful career since she began singing as the lead vocalist for Rilo Kiley back in 1998. After putting out five albums with the band – Take Offs and Landings (2001), The Execution Of All Things (2002), More Adventurous (2004), and Under The Blacklight (2007) and rkives (2013) – Rilo Kiley called it quits. During this time, Lewis moonlighted with The Postal Service, providing the female vocal counterpart to Ben Gibbard’s rather infamous electronic project on their debut album, Give Up (2003). Lewis also formed her own band with Johnathan Rice, appropriately named Jenny And Johnny, releasing their debut album I’m Having Fun Now in 2010. Jenny Lewis has also had a successful solo career, and has released two solo albums to date – Rabbit Fur Coat (2006) and Acid Tongue (2008), as well as a soundtrack for Very Good Girls starring Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen in 2013. Once a child actress herself, Lewis is now set to release another solo album, Voyager, via Warner Bros. Records on July 29th. She’s been performing teasers from the record at live performances, but now she’s officially released “Just One Of The Guys,” the first single off of the upcoming album.

Produced by Beck (who also provides the background vocals), the track is reminiscent of the floating and relaxed country/indie/folk blends that both artists are known for. “Just One Of The Guys” rolls through each verse and chorus with accented 2nd and 4th beats (on a steady 4/4 metre) that acts to keep the song moving while the slow tempo relaxes the mood. The drums actualize this rhythm as an electric guitar lazily strums over the beat. While the bells in the background add to the charm, nothing is more charming than Lewis’ vocals. While she rests in her middle range for the majority of the tune, she stretches into her soprano towards the end of the track, and the breathy beauty in her voice is fully realized – a fragility artfully counteracted by Beck’s lower, grumbling vocals.

Regardless of its musical pleasantness, “Just One Of The Guys” is actually a pretty angry song.  The frustration and dismay inherent in the narrative are mapped out plainly in the opening lines: “All our Friends, they’re getting on, but the girls are still staying young.” Lewis goes on to tackle the particular nuances of gendered double standards, in particular society’s approval of older, single, bachelors and subsequent disapproval of unwed, motherless women of a certain age. It’s not just societal faults that plague Lewis; as the chorus continues into the second verse, she wonders at the thing inside that won’t let her be as disaffected as her cooler male counterparts. And it’s not just her feminine emotions getting the best of her, but also that pesky biological clock. While her honesty is nearly cringe inducing, the last bridge of the song reflects a shoring up of resolve and a recognition of the strength of the so-called “weaker” sex: “I’m not gonna break for you, I’m not gonna pray for you, I’m not gonna pay for you, That’s not what ladies do.” The simplicity of the song belies the potential complexity of its content, and while it’s not clear if Lewis is really attempting to buck tradition or desperately give into it, it is still, in its way, astute and astoundingly relatable. It’s not quite “Just A Girl” but it’s got all the makings of a successful indie pop hit.

Jenny Lewis is currently in the middle of a national tour; Voyager comes out on July 29th. In the meantime, check out the lyric video for “Just One Of The Guys” below:

LIVE REVIEW: Jenny Lewis @ The Roxy

Jenny Lewis

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Jenny Lewis
Jenny Lewis performing at Shaky Knees Festival in 2014 (Photo by Robb D. Cohen/Invision/AP)

Much anticipation led up to Jenny Lewis’ May 6th stop at The Roxy. After touring with The Postal Service for most of 2013, Lewis has only granted her fans five solo shows, and Tuesday would mark her first appearance at  The Roxy in 2014. Long awaited, and much overdo, she returned with new material to make audiences squeal.

Having fallen hard for Jenny Lewis in my late teens, my first time at The Roxy (or in West Hollywood for that matter) couldn’t have been more filled with excitement, as my adolescent dreams would coming to fruition in an instant. After perusing her setlists from the Bridge School Benefit and much earlier shows, there really was no predicting what Jenny was going to pull out of her hat. All anyone really knew was that she was on at 9:30, and her opener, described as magical, was on at 9:23.

And magical he was! The rather cheeky magician performed a shrinking card act, a self-mending string trick, and ended with a cutout paper snowflake that eventually read The Voyager, the title of Jenny Lewis’ upcoming album. When the magic act ended, the curtain dropped suddenly and the real anxiety began.

If there is anything that is certain about Jenny Lewis fans, it is that their love for her does not stray from the extreme. I found myself gushing with fellow fans moments before the curtain rose, the type of gushing where you are unknowingly blushing and clutching your heart in swoon. When the curtain rose, the crowd erupted and Jenny sat down at the keyboard for the first song. I couldn’t help but notice that the performer had barely aged in the last ten years and is as energetic and on point than ever.

She opened with “Head Under Water,” a solid choice considering that the wonderfully upbeat piano ballad with a kick-drum rhythm got the crowd moving. After her first song she couldn’t help but crack an infectious smile; the crowd went nuts. She remarked  how long it had been and then busted out a Rilo Kiley classic, “Silver Lining.” Now, for me, the Rilo Kiley songs hit me hard, and by the gasp of the crowd, I could tell I was not alone. These were the most poignant moments of the night, and they warranted the best sing-alongs.

Lewis’ performance is magnetic; when she stands at the mic with her guitar, her eyes move from person to person, making intimate eye contact with every single fan, even if just for a split second. It is evident that this woman has spent most of her life in the spotlight because she certainly knows how to command the attention.

She prefaced every new song with hints about their themes, at one point divulging that Megadeth frontman, Dave Mustaine, is her spirit animal, confessing that, after all, she and Mustaine have the same hairstyle. Her anecdotes made the new material all the more enjoyable, which could have been difficult for a less gracious artists with such a beloved back catalogue. I’ve been to shows before where the artist plays new material, perhaps too heavy-handedly. There’s a fine line between giving the fans some new material to get excited about and inundating them with material that they’re not yet familiar with. Lewis did a superb job of mixing up her setlist with her classics, from Rilo Kiley and her own solo repertoire, and the new stuff.

To her credit, the highlights of the show were clearly the new material, which is so fresh and reinvigorating that you can almost (almost) forgive Jenny for taking so long to release a new album. As she hasn’t actually set a released a date for The Voyager, fans will have to continue to be patient. Also, she pulled out a very special Rilo Kiley treat when she played “A Man/ Me/ Then Jim.” Her encore was enchanting, as her new band stepped out from behind their instruments to sing backup vocals on “Acid Tongue.” She closed out the show with a new song, which I felt was a very risky move. But, as expected, she nailed it, because “She’s Not Me” is such a rockin’ jam.

From what I can gather about The Voyager, it is going to arguably be her strongest album to date. Acid Tongue saw Jenny Lewis honing in on her sound, and this new material sounds as if Jenny will be reinventing that sound in a very retrospective sort of way. Whatever it ends up being, I’m more than glad that she’s back and will be on the look out for more post-album release tour dates;  I will certainly be seeing her again.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]