For all of the talk of streaming services and their nowness unraveling the fabric of the album format, an album is all the members of The Ocho can think of. It’s not just an album. It’s the debut. Ten or 12 or 14 songs which — like a boat docking into harbor — say to the music world, “We’ve arrived.”

In a year from now, if they’re successfully touring off the album, driving together in a van that thankfully has air conditioning now, they’ll consider it a job well done. Until then, the elusive debut album hangs above them as they continue to tinker with it. No release date has been given.

That’s not to say they haven’t been releasing music throughout. Formed on the University of Georgia’s campus, the band has given fans a trio of distinctive EPs in the past four years, with the most recent being 2025’s Sweet Sincerity, the band’s most pop-forward project. Their new album cycle kicked off with the upbeat lead single Why Should All the Fun Stop? The June release has all the hallmarks of a live crowd pleaser; crunchy guitar solos, a catchy hook, and a lively pace set by Ashwin Gidwani’s drums and Tommy Trautwein on the bongos.

A second single released Aug. 18, showcases the band’s sensibilities for softened melodies. The guitar pulses with a warming glow on Third Street. I was reminded of Mt. Joy’s song Bathroom Light — another track retro-fitted to 3 a.m. smoke breaks on strangers’ fire escapes — only to hear The Ocho invoke that very song in the lyrics: “Staying up all night / Playing Mt. Joy / In the bathroom light / Just you and me.”

To date though, nothing has surpassed the 2023 smash-hit Wasted In Athens, a song that glows with golden-hour energy juxtaposed by lyrics that detail entrapment at a party where faces are foreign. “She keeps showing me the basic music / That she listens to on her phone,” is an all-time line, and one the crowd scream-sings back to the band night after night.

I sit down with the members of The Ocho — lead singer and keyboardist Garrett Seitz, guitarist Patrick Dries, guitarist Jonah Bergman, bassist Parker Foles and their drummer Gidwani — in the Pie Shop’s green room on a February evening, a venue named after the sweet and savory pie operation on the first floor. I order the sausage, fennel and tomato pie before the show. We’re an hour out till they hit the stage on their first headlining tour, one that will see them venture into the previously uncharted northeastern cities of Boston and Philadelphia. D.C. is set to be a sold-out show. Set back from the venue itself, the exposed brick and rafters of the green room, or shed, does little to cut the chill. The only things the wall mirror in the center of the room reflects are the dozens of band stickers pasted onto it in ritual, with even more adorning the outside of a fridge.

It was an apt setting for my conversation with the band — bones exposed, abrasive edges — seeing that I wanted to understand The Ocho on a level that went beyond the epidermal layer. Underneath the laid-back personas, past the empty Zyn containers and without their instruments of art in hand, The Ocho is five (not eight) friends that at every turn have chosen one another on a path headed for becoming full-time musicians. That has looked like working day jobs in the tour van, smooshing together in a hotel room where who gets the pullout couch is decided on a rotating basis and deciding to all be roommates under one roof for the second time. “It’s a hard industry, and we want to do it full-time,” Bergman, who is also the band’s manager, says.

* * *

The Ocho started where so many hopeful bands end: Playing enlivened covers of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird at booze-soaked frat parties for beer money and good times. Their repertoire included all the hits: Doses and Mimosas by Cherub, Tongue Tied by Grouplove, Stevie Wonder’s Superstition and Brazil by Declan McKenna. At this time, Foles recalls how everyone played every instrument. “Whoever knew the bass part would play the bass part.” Alexa Finkelstein, the weekend events chair for her sorority Delta Delta Delta and friend of the band, told me she booked the band whenever she could for events. Her voice beams with pride when she recalls her role in helping the band land early gigs. “They were good then, and they’re even better now,” she says after that evening’s show concludes, her first time seeing the band in three years. “They seem, all of them, so happy up there and everything seemed so natural. Hearing the crowd scream back the lyrics, I could tell they were so happy. And it makes me so happy. I’m so proud of them.”

Foles, who has the most prominent drawl of the group, says in college the members all lived together in an old house. The room he shared with Bergman, one of eight in the place, earned the name “The Ocho” for the painting on the wall of an eight ball. It’s also where they stored all the music gear. When it came time for shows, the name was basically a foregone conclusion.

Eventually, lawn parties turned into private events at bars and a show at Georgia Theatre on the heels of the band’s first single Izzy, released in 2022. Dries remembers “botching” The Knack’s My Sharona in front of the 500-person crowd, but it was also their moment to showcase their own sound defined by bright, airy music passages masking more somber lyrics. In this case, Izzy sees someone pleading with the titular “Izzy” to end her current relationship and be with him: “Izzy is he really stupid / Enough to let you go.” Seitz’s voice curls around the ending line, singing “I kinda hope so.”

A few words on Seitz’s vocals. To call his vocals gravelly would be a mischaracterization. Gravelly is Tom Waites or a singer stuck on a pack-a-day habit. Instead, his voice is pebbly, adding just the right amount of husk to his phrasing. It suggests he has seen some things but still has much of life’s lessons in front of him. “We just threw [Izzy] out into the void, no promo. We were just like ‘Our song came out today’ to our 10 followers,” Dries says.

In the first two weeks, they watched it hit 1,000 Spotify streams, then 10,000 and, before long, 100,000. As of publication, it sits at around 460,000. They have yet to numb to the shock of each new milestone. Even if that milestone is 30 or 40 people listening to their music in Birmingham, Alabama. “There’s like 30 tickets, and you’re like that didn’t feel like a lot. But then you think like ‘Oh, 30, 40 people in Birmingham — I’ve never been there before in my life — want to buy tickets to see us!” Dries says.

At one point, the boys hype up Gidwani for meeting a girl in London that knew of The Ocho’s music. “Didn’t you meet a girl and she knew all the music?” Foles asks.

“Partially, yeah,” Gidwani replies, his first contribution to the interview.

To illustrate their growth, Foles looks to see how many people are listening on Spotify in that moment. “We’ve got 69 people listening ….” He is cut off by a roomful of immature laughter.

Not much has changed since college for the bandmates. They now live together in a house north of Atlanta. To be exact, the sprawling family home is in Sandy Springs, which rests alongside the Chattahoochee River — made famous by Alan Jackson’s country love tune. What was once an art studio for a previous owner’s wife is now The Ocho’s personal studio, although the entire house is a venue for creativity. Bergman says it’s not uncommon for someone to knock on his door with an idea for a new song arrangement for a live show. That proximity to one another all the time manifests in ways only an outsider might realize. Foles knows Seitz’s social security is one digit off from his own.

As if to illustrate the palpable, nervous excitement around the album, Seitz reveals that hours earlier, he recorded a voice memo titled “Pie Shop.”

“Will it be on the album?” I ask. Seitz laughs.

I look at my watch and inform the fellas they are onstage in 20 minutes. That’s fine, I’m told. “Let’s finish the interview.”

* * *

Just as The Ocho are looking for their unique sound on wax, they were also looking for sound in the opening minutes of their D.C. set. A power supply issue with the venue meant amps and pedal boards positioned stage left sounded hollow or not at all. Crowd expectation only grew in the resumed chatter. When the sound was finally restored, the band seemed understandably shaken on a small stage that stifled movement. Their opening number Heaven Heard didn’t have the same fluidity that defined the rest of the show. But that was real. Nerves and technical glitches are part of the unpredictable nature of live shows. After song one, though, The Ocho found its groove. Fifteen minutes later, the band played an inspired cover of Mt. Joy’s Let Loose, seeming to heed the song title’s command in the process.

Then came Spring Without a Lover, Seitz’s personal favorite in the catalog. Once again, the music is cheery — with funk-filled baselines and guitar solos galore — while the lyrics lament loneliness in a season that should be anything but. “I’ve always really liked sad music. I’ve written a few happy love songs. They haven’t just gone anywhere yet,” Seitz says. And there will be more breakup songs inbound on the new album.

It was during this song the band reached a flow state, eyes closed, tuning out the crowd until it became an amorphous wall of sound rather than distinctive beings. Lots of bands are described for their explosive energy onstage. That isn’t The Ocho. There’s a reserved diligence each of the members plays with. They aren’t ready to rock out and throw guitars behind their heads or crowd surf. It wasn’t that long ago most members were watching YouTube videos to teach themselves their instrument. At this point, The Ocho are grateful to be onstage playing its catalog and meeting fans who connect with the music.

Video courtesy of Lucas Hozza

Even when a night ends, they aren’t living the flashy, rock star life with booze, groupies and other debauchery found in the runtime of Almost Famous. The only shiners anyone is getting are from sleeping next to Seitz, who has been known to throw a few jabs in his sleep. Touring, Bergman says, is tiring. Fans might not think it, but there’s significant downtime spent in the van and logistics that often take away from city exploration.

One of the standout moments from a career still in its infancy is when Houndmouth’s team asked The Ocho to open for them at the Georgia Theatre, Dries says. Gracing the same stage as the band that informed his listening habits on the Pandora app in seventh grade seemed too good to be true. At first, he thought the email request was a scam. “It was the most unprofessional, super short, like, not great punctuation email: ‘Hey, Houndmouth wants you to open for them at the Theatre.’ And I was like ‘What’s their angle, how are they scamming us here?’ And it obviously ended up being real.”

Out of the whole night, the biggest song in terms of fan reaction was the little-known track from the new EP, Bed By Noon. After the show, Seitz says he was shocked to hear one of his own favorites get sung back. He expected the crowd-pleaser, Wasted in Athens, to get the sing-back treatment — not a song that’s somber in form and lyrics.

The Ocho - Feb. 11, 2026 at The Pie Shop

1. Heaven Heard

2. My Cries

3. Let Loose (Mt. Joy cover)

4. Spring Without a Lover

5. Her Face Screams

6. Slightest Bit of Effort

7. Keep it in the Dark

8. Disco / Tall Boy (Widespread Panic cover)

9. Izzy

10. Bed By Noon

11. Wasted in Athens

12. Cigarettes with Barbacks

13. Pool House (The Backseat Lovers cover)

14. Wet Socks

15. French Bay Hotel

Amid a tapestry of lovesick songs, listeners can hear Seitz’s influences drawing from his musical upbringing in Baptist churches. On French Bay Hotel, the evening’s closing track that doubles as an “it’s over” text in song form written to a girl with champagne taste, Seitz sings, “I drink my wine in church / This could never work.” More than that, church was his exposure to the piano, making him one of the few frontman cloistered behind a keyboard. Those hymnals eventually inspired Seitz to ask his parents for a piano when he was young. Songs like Heaven Heard showcase his full-bodied piano chops pulsing with melodrama — reminiscent of the hammering church sounds. And a recut version of French Bay Hotel, released in April, transforms the song into a driving piano ballad.

“Heaven Heard is happy!” Seitz says, answering my question about if they have any upbeat songs five minutes too late.

At the night’s end, after manning the merch table and autographing shirts, it was time to break down the stage and load up the van. A reminder that this forthcoming album could be the missing piece in their catalog that ensures they never have to heft the equipment themselves again. “The time where I know we’ve made it is when we don’t have to load in and load out our gear,” Seitz says in between making sure a Venmo payment processed and gifting a fan a free shirt in the wake of a canceled Charlottesville show.

* * *

Those final minutes of the interview swung back to the debut album and its stark contrast from the earlier EPs. Those were practice, Seitz says. Reps that needed to happen to find their sound. This is the band’s first real try and what they consider to be the most accurate representation of The Ocho.

I finally ask the question on behalf of every fan: Why wait so long to release a debut album?

Seitz’s mishmashed answer includes studio costs, fanbase growth and a keen attention to detail for why the band remains sans album. Foles adds the songs on their latest EP never felt like a fit for the new project that’s shifting away from pop and toward rock. “It’s the perfect snapshot of where we are in life,” Seitz says.

There’s a famous scene I’m reminded of in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, in which Frodo Baggins accuses the long-bearded Gandalf the Grey of arriving late to Hobbiton. “A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.”

Similarly, the members of The Ocho know there’s impatience among their fanbase to deliver a full-length project sooner rather than later. But that’s the point. The Ocho has a fanbase now; one that traveled up from Georgia to D.C. to see what’s become of that one band they probably saw, well, wasted in Athens. In effect, the three EPs did their job. The Ocho’s album is not going to be released too late. When it comes out, it will be right on time.

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Day 94: Dear Diazepam - Charlie Noordewier

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Day 93: Ciagrettes & Aftershave - John Buckley

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The stretch of rain-soaked days continues here in D.C. Recently, I was caught in a torrential downpour and somehow the way my shirt clung to my chest and my shoes squeaked the language of dampness down the street, I was reminded of equally irresponsible days as a kid—fighting my parents to not wear a coat or encumber my hands with an unwieldy umbrella.

If you need any insight into who is writing this, I still don’t own an umbrella. Why spoil the fun?

It also transported me back to when I first heard a song by Peter Groppe, one of the artists I interviewed in college. His song Summer Rain captures the unpredictability of mid-July sun showers, and while some may be inclined to curse out the warm rains, Groppe counters those complaints: It could be winter!

Peter Groppe profile (2022)

Day 92: Summer Rain - Peter Groppe

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Day 91: How Did It Happen to You - Hathway

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Day 90: Bloodline - Mon Rovîa

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If you’ve watched Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey—once a text read begrudgingly by high school students, or not at all, and now a 3,000 year-old poem that bookstores can’t keep on shelves—then you’ve heard it. The sound of Odysseus (Matt Damon) plucking his bowstring as if it were a lyre and not a weapon used to vanquish his enemies. There’s a purity to its resonance that mirrors Damon’s Odysseus; portrayed at times as chivalric, headstrong, didactic, mighty as the gods themselves.

It’s revealed that the master archer plucks the bow to warn enemies and prey. To give them a chance in the fight. The line between confidence and delusion is thinner than an arrow’s tip it seems. But thanks to Ludwig Göransson’s soaring film score that consumes viewers in great gusty waves of bronze gongs and ancient two-headed woodwinds, this gesture can only be seen as a declaration that Odysseus is everything the legends have said about him for 20 years. And more.

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This piece of audio will go down in cinematic history as one of a handful of iconic sounds. Blurring the lines between diegetic music and music only the audience can hear, of all the gods, monsters and otherworldly locales, the plucking of the bow might be the most fantastical moment in the film. When I was younger, I unearthed an archer’s bow belonging to my dad. It wasn’t the one he talked of that he carved by hand with a Buck knife—stories like those always made my life feel impossibly mundane—but it allowed me to notch an arrow into my imagination. Letting an arrow fly through the backyard at a birch tree standing in for an enemy, I never heard more than a dull thwump. And yet, in the theater, whenever Odysseus let his bow sing, the reclining seats trembled and my bucket of popcorn teetered on the edge of my tray table with trepidation.

There’s only one other sound connected to a character that has struck the same tone between foreboding and valiant: The discomfiting harmonica played by the character known only as Harmonica in Sergio Leone’s 1968 spaghetti Western, Once Upon a Time in the West. More audiences are apt to be familiar with his film, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, which also employs certain musical licks to introduce each character. But with Harmonica, a character with somehow even less lines than Clint Eastwood, his instrument of choice speaks for him. His harmonica theme plays in the opening minutes, appearing to be just one in a string of composer Ennio Morricone’s tunes. But as a train passes by, a group of outlaws see the man behind the unsettling song; the last sound the trio hear before being gunned down by Harmonica.

Both Harmonica and Odysseus presage their enemies’ impending demise through organic sounds. I don’t know if Nolan thought of Harmonica when he decided to make it a leitmotif and go beyond Homer’s text, but I cannot think of another movie that uses diegetic sound—because there’s plenty of songs used to introduce characters for the audience’s delight (think Star Wars)—to the effect that Leone did, and now Nolan. And I won’t spoil either movie, but even the themes of both dovetail in their handling of trauma.

If you’re in search of more than the sound of a plucking bow or the siren song of a harmonica sweeping over the desert, then here are some songs and projects that in some way capture The Odyssey and its themes of wayward journeys, mythology and a love deferred:

Hozier - Unreal Unearth

Hozier might not have been inspired by Homer’s poem, but he has said of this project that during the pandemic, he picked up Dante Alighieri’s Inferno from The Divine Comedy, and was immediately moved to produce his third album. The project is a loose patchwork of songs that takes listeners deeper and deeper into the rings of Hell, conjuring up imagery from Alighieri’s most famous cantos and connecting each song to a specific sin. Start to finish, there’s allusions to Francesca and Paolo’s sordid affair, lakes of fire, and the myth of Icarus. If what you seek is another sumptuous serving of mythology, start here.

Laufey - Silver Lining

Maybe it’s because I studied Alighieri’s seminal work for four semesters in college (yes, four), but I can’t help but picture Laufey as the aforementioned Francesca pulling Paolo down with her on this track. As the story goes, Francesca da Polenta was murdered by her husband after he discovered her with Paolo Malatesta, his younger brother. In Laufey’s words, sung with her signature croon: “I met you at the worst time / Fell in love on a whim / Now we pirouette in fields of rosy sin.” Allusions to sin sit next to images of children on playgrounds in a song that is so syrupy in its sweetness, that it’s hiding something darker: “When you go to hell, I’ll go there with you too.”

Marcus King - Delilah

Much of what we see of Odysseus involves a longship caught in maelstrom winds, all to get home to his beloved Penelope. In Marcus King’s song, the narrator is “rolling on a southern wind” and trapped in the eye of a storm. The entire song is about his journey homeward and the passion which he sings to be reunited with Delilah mirrors Odysseus’ own hellbent attitude. There’s no mythology to be found here, just an example of why Homer’s epic still resonates with each new generation.

Clover Country - Limbo

Without spoilers, Nolan’s best scene in The Odyssey is when Odysseus ventures into Hades and encounters the ghost of Agamemnon. The shores of Oceanus—the river dividing the realm of the living and the underworld—are bleak with gloom that obscures the shades submerged in black sand. However, in Clover County’s version of Limbo, a similar liminal space at the outskirts of Hell, the scariest part is that she can’t seem to find the beat during a dance with a cowboy-boot-wearing Satan. Interestingly, Clover County’s reimagining of Limbo is a place for people whose only sin was that they “loved a little too hard they couldn’t move on.” It’s one of those rare story songs reminiscent of The Charlie Daniels Band’s The Devil Went Down to Georgia—as Clover County switches between characters within verses. But in the end, her journey to the land of the dead wasn’t to two-step with the devil and give him false hope. It was to free one of those lost souls who believed they would never love again: “Operator could you pull me through / I'm coming to Limbo tonight to marry you.”

Andrew Bird - Sisyphus

The opening song on Bird’s album My Finest Work Yet begins with some of the finest whistling put to wax. Like Travis Scott’s bard character in Nolan’s film, it announces the project to come, one that covers themes of pacifism, environmentalism, and a myriad of other -isms, often set to Bird’s sweeping violin. On Sisyphus, Bird subverts the Greek myth featured in Homer’s Iliad and questions if Sisyphus ever became fed up with his eternal punishment of rolling a rock up and down a hill: “Did he raise both fists and say ‘To hell with this’ / And just let the rock roll?” It humanizes the mythological figure known better for his damnation than his life story. With phrases like, “For those who sit, recalcitrant and taciturn / You know I’d rather turn and burn than scale this edifice,” Bird’s syntax has a literary feel, making it feel less like a song and more akin to spoken words backed by music.

Cameron Winter - Nausicaä (Love Will Be Revealed)

Start looking for allusions to Homer in modern media, and you’ll quickly find culture is awash with them. One of the biggest criticisms Nolan’s movie continues to incur is his omission of Nausicaä—the Phaeacian princess that found a naked, shipwrecked Odysseus washed ashore after escaping Calypso’s island. She is credited as the figure who proved most instrumental in Odysseus making it back to Ithaca. During their meeting, she suggests to her handmaids that what lays beneath his breastplate is husband material. Whether Winter is in fact speaking of Homer’s Nausicaä or the character from Studio Ghibli’s 1984 animated flick, his song captures a yearning sentiment to understand someone else. In the context of The Odyssey, the parenthetical title of the song—Love Will Be Revealed—then serves as a coda, an answer to what if Nausicaä and Odysseus gave into desire?

Pinback - Penelope

On Pinback’s song, Odysseus appears to voice genuine concern for his wife Penelope. He undoubtedly knows everyone has anguished over his presumed death, but now it’s his turn to express worry to the winds carrying his vessel: “Oh Penelope, are you filled with air?” he asks. He continues to reflect upon how Penelope has struggled over these years with her husband absent. The notion of “home” becomes his “treasure” in the song, one he is desperately trying to reach: “I'm treading water with my oars / Glass galleons anchored, ocean's floor / I'm diving down with all my gear / In search of treasure, para mi corazón.” Pinback’s foreboding guitar work heightens the dramatic monologue. All that, only to realize Pinback is singing about the fear of finding a red-finned fish floating belly up at the top of the bowl.

Ripto - Icarus and Apollo

A simple Spotify search of the song title “Icarus” yields dozens and dozens of tracks. Mumford and Sons, Iron Maiden, Kansas and Bastille have all dipped into the myth of father Icarus and son Daedalus flying “too close to the sun” on feathered wings. Many of these songs paint images of the skyward voyage with their lyrics, but Ripto’s song sees the titular figures, Icarus and Apollo, as guides through the aftermath of what seems to have been a tumultuous split involving the narrator. In the soft ballad with a twangy, rolling fingerstyle guitar part, the warming rays of sunshine become a painful reminder of what once was. Our narrator opts instead for the coldness of the moon.

Tamzene - harbour

Recently, I watched a documentary about Lilith Fair, the first major tour running from 1997 to 1999 featuring an all-woman lineup that included Sarah McLachlan, Sheryl Crow, Erykah Badu, Indigo Girls and Bonnie Raitt. At a time when shock jocks dominated radio airwaves, and a sense of earnestness relegated artists to the cultural periphery, these artists found community, and financial success when the industry thought to the contrary. Tamzene’s new song is of that time, sounding like a bonus track on Norah Jones’ Come Away with Me thanks to vocals that ride the percussive rhythm like a full-bodied red. All Odysseus wants is to reach harbor in Ithaca, and her song embodies why. Depicting the story of someone sailing homeward, the song foretells of a journey riddled with obstacles, but one that is worthwhile: “Pack and send me on my way / And hope I’ll make it back some day / Girl you’ll meet chaos, girl you’ll meet calm / And maybe the harbor of someone’s arms.”

It even manages to slip a reference to the sirens that Odysseus and his crew faced: “Don’t listen to the sirens / they’re not calling you home / They’ll pull you to the rocks and break your bow.” When the layered echo blossoms, it grants the song an orange-tinted warmth; the kind people try to achieve and fail by hanging wooden planks adorned with “home sweet home” in their foyer.

This year, Olivia Rodrigo announced a new iteration of Lilith Fair called Daisy Chain Fields with artists like Chappell Roan, Doechii and Mitski. Add Tamzene to that lineup.

Matt Maltese - little person

One of the most talked about scenes from Nolan’s movie is when Odysseus and his crew come face to knee with the Laestrygonians, a breed of giant, man-eating cannibals. On this song, Maltese interrogates what it is to be a “little person,” in a sea of people living their ordinary little lives. He sings it with the dreamy restraint of someone not wanting to take up too much space, and in the end, like Nolan’s Odysseus, he dreams of going westward with his person.

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Day 89: Love Machine - Golden Boy, Levee Wolf

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Day 88: A Lingering Love - Fruit Bats

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Day 87: Tenants of Mrs. Madrigal - Montera

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Song of the summer. It’s a title crowned to many songs that are perfectly suitable for family vacation road trips, sun-soaked beach days and for cracking open that third beer as responsibilities fade like distant flickersome fireflies. The success of a song of the summer rests in its blissful universality. It’s Danny Zuko pinned atop of Sandy Olsson on the shore in the opening moments of Grease; fun, fleeting and free of deeper emotions.

A new song from singer-songwriter Stevie Bill—with co-writing credits to Jacob Geoffrey and Alejandro Vilarrasa-Corriero—meets listeners at the moment where emotions dare to deepen, and in doing so, they have penned a track defined by dueling emotions.

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Since May 20, followers of Bill’s have been teased by videos with the same looping chorus, wondering if the full song officially titled Pieces would ever be released, or if they would be left wanting. Like the last song I was introduced via the Instagram Reels algorithm, I had seen so many of these teasers that I began to wonder if the track had lasting power past this punchy section. Once again, I was pleasantly surprised to hear a song with compelling verses where every word wields pent-up impatience.

The lyrics paint a portrait of a woman’s musings in which some lines are missing connective tissue so as to illustrate her uneven feelings. It’s not a will-they-won’t-they song, but rather the type of song written to complement those self-proclaimed night owls who have equally tangential, profound, messy, even delusional 2:00 a.m. thought patterns. In under three minutes, Bill seems to ask a question she isn’t quite ready to answer: What are we?

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Bill’s vocals are as bouncy as they are vivid in their wanting. Somehow, she imbues meaning into every word through her delivery. In the first verse, each alternating line wrestles with passion of the mind and body: “Say my name / And lead with your touch / I find you / In the curves of my body / I wonder / Are you sleeping on us / Cause my heart is wide awake now.” Bill blurs the lines between lust and genuine romance, falling into the category of something like optimistic heartache.

For all of the wanting Bill sings of that’s making her heart skip beats and the lush soundscape that only complicates matters of the heart further, the continued refrain is one that all but closes the door on something more. “If it’s love and it isn’t quite what you need / But / You can’t have / These pieces of me.”

In effect, Bill is setting the terms and conditions, walling off the vulnerabilities that come with the more that once scared Danny Zuko off after all of that summer loving. Bill is far more coy in her delivery, as if to suggest the ball is in his proverbial court and she wants to see if he goes with a whizzing forehand, a slicing backhand, or makes an unforced error. The song then is also a matter of discovery for Bill, as she grasps for meaning in this short-term fling. Does she want to promote him to full-time beau, or send him packing like an associate at summer’s end? What’s interesting is Bill doesn’t want to answer these questions. She wants his answer, and that starts with him being truthful as to “what’s behind those eyes.”

For each time Bill says you can’t have these pieces of her, there’s a line rebuking that very refusal. She calls him a “hideaway lover,” and yet she’s wondering if he sees the same set of constellations in the sky. Casual she is not but song of the summer this might become to a subset of listeners looking for lyrics that go beyond clear-cut emotions and narrative arcs.

By the song’s end, I imagine Bill’s character frantically calling a friend with equally unhealthy late-night tendencies to unpack everything. Or, to use the less glamorous, more realistic phrase, dump everything onto this friend. To replay texts and the little moments others might gloss over with the precision of VAR.

The dutiful friend listens and then gives the best advice no late-night spiraler wants to hear after three hours of vascillating emotions and overwrought hypotheticals.

Go to bed, we’ll talk about it tomorrow.

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Day 85: Crosswords - Olivia Dean

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Day 84: Connaissais de Face - Khruangbin

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Day 83: So It Goes - Penelope Road

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Happy Independence Day on this 100-degree semiquincentennial of the nation’s history. Do we have another 250 in us? 250 years sounds like a long time. But in the grand scheme, it’s a few pages with pull quotes and Getty-sourced images in the annals of human history. If you’re 50, congratulations, you’ve lived through a fifth of American history. The same cannot be said for much of the world’s population. The United States of America, as history professors love to remind students, remains an experiment.

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A day like today is meant for looking back at a nation that, at times, has been polarizing, innovative, cruel, optimistic, domineering, unpredictable, unfair, patriotic, pioneering, prideful, painful, dogged and fearless. Examples like the World Cup and Team U.S.A. show the best of this nation. Videos of fans singing the unofficial team anthem, John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads, suggests there’s more harmony than division here. Thinking about America’s past on a day like today shows how close this history is to us. The final Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. Three years earlier in 1860, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville’s voice was immortalized as the first ever recorded singing voice. He sang a snippet of the French folksong Au Clair de la Lune (no, not the Song of the Day, keep reading). Which means the entire history of recorded music only started about 65 years before my late grandmother was born in 1929.

For my vinyl heads, shellac records called “78s” were invented in 1898, and were popular until World War II. Actual vinyl records made from polyvinyl chloride weren’t introduced to the market until Columbia Records did so in 1948. Which also means my grandmother lived almost two decades before my earliest LP in my entire collection was ever printed (for those curious, that’s an album called “James Bond Thrillers” from 1965, with performances by the aptly-named Zero Zero Seven Band).

In that way, she provided proximity to history. The word “history,” makes it feel distant; stories of a life lived running parallel to history make it real. Her brother, my great-uncle, told a five-year-old me first-hand accounts of being overseas during World War II as I tried to sit still in his barber chair for a haircut. He recalled camping out next to Mount Vesuvius and participating in Operation Dragoon to liberate Southern France. When he handed me one of his medals earned in that conflict, it was the same feeling I remember from when I opened my first vinyl on Christmas morning—that dog-eared James Bond record. Both of these gifts were tangible tickets to interact with the past.

For me, this put everything into crisp perspective. I’ve lived my life with access to the entirety of recorded music at my fingertips. All of these artists were just there, blueprints of success, with many of their careers already etched in permanence: The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, the Eagles, Billy Joel, Nina Simone, Carole King, B.B. King, Jim Croce, Elvis Presley, Dean Martin, Luciano Pavarotti. Each in their own right is such a fixture in the music arena that it’s hard to wrap my head around, say, a B.E.—Before Elvis.

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Part of the reason I started Doors at Seven is because the next great artist or band, the one that enters the zeitgeist and never leaves once a proper introduction is made, is just waiting to be discovered. On a small scale, I’ve watched it happen with Mt. Joy. A band that I tried to put everyone onto in my college days is now common knowledge. They’re just there now. And yet, like my grandmother with the Beatles and Elvis and Dean, I can remember just a few years ago when they weren’t just woven into the culture.

I had to look up who said it, but astronomer Carl Sagan’s oft-paraphrased quote then has far-reaching implications on a commemorative day such as this: “You have to know the past to understand the present.” Put another way, the essence of his words fueled history teachers everywhere, encouraging us that to understand the changes in our world, we had to know where we’ve been. In seventh grade, I remember my own history teacher—it was called “social studies”—saying that there was a possibility America would cease to exist in my lifetime, or that the threads bonding these U-N-I-T-E-D States together could become U-N-T-I-E-D. Rome eventually fell. Who knows? California could decide to be a sovereign nation and Texas could go and do it’s own thing, she said. That stress on history’s importance always suggested history lay between the pages of a textbook written by McDougall, Duncan and Some Other Old Guy. But history thrives in the splices of Technicolor films and in the aisles of antique stores, the truths of great literature, and certainly in the grooves of vinyl records.

In the spirit of understanding, I turned off Spotify and combed through my own shelves for a fitting song choice for the ongoing Song of the Day series. I could have chosen Jimi Hendrix’s provocative performance of The Star-Spangled Banner, a scathing commentary on the Vietnam War done without uttering a single lyric. I could have chosen José Feliciano’s performance of The Star-Spangled Banner at Game 5 of the 1968 World Series, met with jeering boos because he dared to adapt the song to his own folk sensibilities. But today is not just the Fourth of July. It’s also Saturday, and only one song combines these two ingredients. Saturday in the Park by Chicago. You know the line: “Saturday in the park / I think it was the Fourth of July.” Mark your calendars because this won’t happen again till 2037.

Thanks for reading another off-the-cuff dispatch! More hard journalism coming your way soon, but catch up on this week’s picks for Song of the Day and comment what you’re listening to this weekend:

Day 82: Saturday in the Park - Chicago

Day 81: Hotel Room - Ax and the Hatchetmen

Day 80: Special K - Margot Sinclair

Day 79: Material Lover - Sienna Spiro

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Day 81: Hotel Room - Ax and the Hatchetmen

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Day 80: Special K - Margot Sinclair

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Day 79: Material Lover - Sienna Spiro

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To round out this week’s offerings, we have Abigail Osborn. If you’re the chronically online type, then there’s a chance that while her name might not stir any recognition, you’ve undoubtedly encountered her twangy, coming-of-age chorus from her new song Take A Drink that came out Friday.

In the lead-up to the actual release, the indie singer-songwriter received endorsements from Quinn XCII and country artist Russell Dickerson. I say she’s an indie artist because her previous projects have acoustic bedroom pop sensibilities—shimmering production, delicate vocal lines—but on this song, Osborn reinvents herself as a line-dancing, boot-clicking, denim-wearing country singer. The irony is that she was based in Nashville for her indie era and now, based on her latest videos, stopped in New York City to celebrate her song in what might be a departure in her sound.

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A moment to discuss the song’s rollout. In the five weeks from when she first announced the song, she’s posted 23 videos on Instagram with snippets playing in the background. Fans can be seen clamoring in the comments section for a release date. A few weeks later, Osborn unveils an official choreographed dance. From the outside looking in, it can all look like a bit much. Put another way, she’s flooding the zone. But these days, having name recognition (or at least a song you can’t seem to rattle out of your head) and palpable hype before a release is vital to virality and what comes next. Did Osborn ever intend to release it on June 9 as she promised? Or is the teasing part of the game? I’m pleasantly surprised it’s out today, knowing now that the song has more legs to stand on than simply its hook. Either way, she knows what she’s doing, we know what she’s doing, and yet, all that matters is the song.

Regardless, what is factual is that Osborn laced the song’s chorus with an addictively potent blend of sing-along lines that disprove the going sentiment that the worst thing a girl can say is no to an admission of love. As she has explained, the song came about following an episode when her guy friend said those three words to her. Except he did so in a drunken stupor: “Thought it’d take time / Take the whole summer / Thought it might take me meeting your mother / To pour out those three words / You just spilled to me.” She sings it as if the listeners have sat down for the coveted debrief. In some ways the song is a big eye roll, an “Ehh, wrong answer” moment. She even has a choir singing a cappella, complete with hand claps to get the point across. And yet, it’s also a tale of right place, wrong time. It’s clear Osborn has thought of him saying it, just not like that.

Thus Osborn has gifted the music world a new adage: The worst she can say is no? No. The worst she can do is immortalize the moment in a three minute song that’s on the precipice of going majorly viral and kicking off what might just be a flourishing career.

Thank you for reading another of these late-night missives. Before catching up on this week’s Song of the Day additions, catch my discussion from this week on how two artists, Olivia Rodrigo and country up-and-comer Stella Lefty, used imagery connected to cigarette smoke to illustrate a lingering love:

Day 78: Take A Drink - Abigail Osborn

Day 77: Holding On - Tobias Lund, EddieAngel, Phono Magic

Day 76: Real Thing - Drugdealer, Weyes Blood

Day 75: cigarette smoke - Olivia Rodrigo

Day 75 (also): Slow Dancin’ - Stella Lefty

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Day 77: Holding On - Tobias Lund, EddieAngel, Phono Magic

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