This past weekend I was exchanging music with one of my friends because I remembered this awesome band that unfortunately went away a few years ago, taking all of their spotify profile with them. That band was called Dream Haze, and they only had two EPs and a few singles before they went radio silent, but my brother and I will remember them as long as we live. Well, at least my brother will, because I totally forgot they existed when their spotify profile disappeared. It’s actually a funny thought: realizing that as soon as something stops being readily available at the touch of a button it gets forgotten.
The reason I remembered them though was because my brother and I were playing this game where we send one or two lines of lyrics from a song that we used to enjoy and the other person has to figure out the song. It’s a really fun way for us to experience some nostalgia for music we loved and shared together. He sent a few lines from the beginning of Dream Haze’s song Posture, which we both listened to a lot back when it came out. I immediately recognized the lyrics but couldn’t place them:
“… Is it in my wrinkled shirt?
Try and fail again or just sit back?
’cause I thought I’d make a new start”
Looking back now this was honestly a diabolical set of lyrics to give because the line before this starts AND the line directly after would have given it away immediately. The song actually starts with the line “Where’s my confidence?” and then directly after the lines above it goes “May-be I’ll..” in cadence with 3 hits on the snare and floor tom to kick off the song. By giving me just a little sliver of either side of these recognizable sections, he made this a super difficult one for me to guess.
I ended up spending hours over two days just listening to a ton of music from our past that seemed to align with what I had in my head. At one point I stumbled across an album from the band Sleep in. and thought that had to be it, But alas, I was wrong and continued my search. Then I remembered another awesome emo/post-hardcore band called Hazing, and even though I knew it wasn’t them that made the song I still latched onto this idea. I finally texted my brother in desperation: “dude is this band even on spotify??” To which I received a “no” with the devil smiley face emoji. So then I basically gave up and needed him to tell me the answer because I’m useless without spotify these days. I knew in my heart what the song was and remembered that there was a part of it talking about avoiding people you know in public because you don’t want to talk to them. Plus I think my subconscious was trying to tell me something when I latched onto two bands that had something to do with sleeping and then “haze” in their names.
So Dream Haze is great, I wish they were still around, but maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll make a return eventually. I mean, stranger things have happened, right? Like Seasons releasing an album after almost 12 years of silence. Check out their stuff on bandcamp and give it a listen, it also looks like it’s free to download all of their music which is cool, even though I’m all for supporting small artists anyway. Also worth mentioning there are a few great live videos of them up on youtube that are really fun to watch.
If you were paying attention at the beginning of the article, I mentioned I was exchanging music with a friend but then brought up my brother. Well that’s because I’m a tangent-style story teller and I wrote way too much about the lyric game before getting to the other main point of this article; Jonesing. A friend of mine who has amazing music taste (similar to my own, of course) really enjoyed Dream Haze, and in return sent me the band Jonesing. They’re an indie/emo/etc band from Boston, Mass who quite literally changed the trajectory of my current music listening habits. I obviously have been leaning more toward melodic hardcore and progressive metalcore in recent months, and I recently listened to Good Terms, a heavier pop punk band from LA, and it put the idea of pop punk back into my head as something I wanted to listen to (I also saw them last Friday and it was tight). Then, this Jonesing album just really solidified me going back through some pop punk and midwest emo type music.
I fired up this album on a long drive two weekends ago, and at first it was just a pretty good vibe while driving. The second song, Waiting, had this angelic riff in the beginning that was right up my alley. Not to mention the chord progression in the song felt pretty unique. I mean I always say that I’m not a guitarist, but I’ve been trying to teach myself more guitar theory lately and I’ve always been put off by the idea of a “unique” chord progression because I figure pretty much any combination of chords has been made by this point. Despite that, this song does have a chord progression that almost feels wrong the first time you hear it, but then grows on you. The content of this song was great because it was about a long distance relationship, which I’ve experienced plenty of and I can relate.
I was also drawn into this song by the line “when everyone is only thinking of themselves, not once putting anyone before themselves.” I think I like this line because even though I feel like I have some selfish tendencies, I notice a lot of entitlement and self-centeredness coming from those around me living in a place like San Francisco. The pure amount of money in this area due to tech just makes people lose touch with reality and get caught up in serious materialism. I probably sound like a mega hippie right now (perfect for San Francisco, too) but I think right now more than ever it’s important for people to have empathy for those around them, especially people in situations different from our own. Enough preaching though, this is not the main thing I wanted to discuss with this album!
The next few songs on the album, Out of Place, Make Yourself at Home, and Growing Pains, are all great songs, and I enjoy them as part of the cohesive album, but I’ll admit that they blended in on the first few listens. The next song to really catch my attention was This Pattern. I think it ties back into my comments about Waiting earlier; The song content is mostly centered around not being content with what you have, and I think it’s heavily influenced by the modern era of information. Everyone is chronically online and social media shows us all of these people who are doing things better than us or living the life that we think we want. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to step away from that and be happy with what you have and what you’re doing now, as cliché as it sounds. I love how in this song the singer is pointing this out but then humbly admitting that he’s guilty of it too, and he wants to change this pattern.
Freeport is the next song on the album, and it’s one of my favorites. It starts out with a pretty strumming intro and has a voice sampled in the background. I actually didn’t pay much attention to it until I was looking around for info about the band and read through their description of this album on bandcamp. The voice belongs to Chris Babbitt, the vocalist of the band, and he’s saying:
“So everyday I cant help but have a thought. A thought I know isn’t always true but I cant help but see it, its everywhere I go, its in everything. I try to look past it but it just seems to be getting worse. This feeling that no one around me is even really paying attention, stuck inside this rollercoaster of a movie we all play a lead in, than I realize, the same goes for me.”
I’m glad they included this on the bandcamp, because even going back and listening to it now that I know what’s being said, it’s still super difficult to make out. I like how it ties together the themes from various songs that I’ve discussed here, and I like even more how this song mainly is about a breakup and not directly about themes of tunnel vision and main character syndrome. The lyrical content of this one brings up some of the same lines said in Waiting, so obviously the song is about the same relationship mentioned there. The guest vocalist on this song (Joey DelPonte) also makes it really nice, I love the harmonies they create together. Freeport starts out very somber and slow, and the sadness reaches its pinnacle at “We can’t forget what we said, it’s time to find ourselves, grow up and go our own ways.” I think anyone who had a rocky relationship, especially when they were younger, can relate to this. Everyone always talks about how people come and go in your life, but even if you know it’s going to happen that doesn’t make it hurt any less.
The next two tracks on the album are Hollis and Where’d You Go? the first of these tracks is a bit of a “preview” for the latter track, which happens to be my favorite on the album. Hollis is actually just a voice memo of one of the band’s practice sessions as it’s getting interrupted by Chris Babbitt’s…. niece? Whose name is Hollis. It’s a really cute little clip and I love the idea of sharing the gift of music with children, because they absorb so much from that kind of stuff at a young age. It also features the main riff of Where’d You Go, which is one of the most immaculate things I’ve heard in a long time. The second I heard it I knew it wasn’t ever going to leave my head. I like to say that everyone has some specific frequencies or frequency groupings that do something special for them, and that’s exactly what this is for me. In fact, I had a weird epiphany moment this past week as I was listening to this song; I was having a really rough week and was dealing with a bunch of stuff all at the same time, and life was definitely life-ing, as they say. Then I listened to that song and I thought “Everything’s going to be okay, because music like this exists and is the source of so much passion and inspiration.”
Continuing on about this one, there’s also a really cool yet simple drum part in this song where the normal snare pattern is on beats 2 and 4, but he adds a snare hit on the and of beat 1. It’s not very complicated but gives a cool prog vibe to the section. I would say that this song has lyrics that fit both general themes that I’ve talked about. The first few minutes of the song are most likely talking about the same relationship from the other songs, though I could be wrong. The end of the song is more similar to the other ideas on the album, questioning where has empathy gone, where has honesty gone?
While there are the two clear themes of strained long distance relationships and the existential crisis of modern day life, I would say they work together to create a really great album and show one central theme of growth. On one hand we have the dealing with a really hard relationship but knowing that it’s time to grow up and move on. On the other hand we have the acceptance that no one is perfect and we should all focus on being true to ourselves. I intentionally waited to talk about Jonesing more in depth until the end because I thought that the circumstances surrounding the album might lend some insight to how it feels and connects together.
Like I said before, Jonesing is a small band from Boston, and before the release of this self-titled album in 2020, they were on a long hiatus. Their first EP, Dad Jokes, came out in 2014, which is also a great listen. Going through the post history of the band it seems like they’ve always been on the less active side, and I assume they might not have ever had intention of touring or anything, they’re just doing it for the love of music. They described on bandcamp how none of them ever thought the self-titled album would actually be finished and released. The band members weren’t all living close together anymore, so the vocals were actually written over mostly completed songs and then also recorded in a different city at a different studio. I think the album actually came out remarkably well considering all of this, but I would also say that the common themes and lyrical content make sense if a majority was written by Chris as he lived separate from the rest of the band. I could also be totally getting this wrong because I don’t know these guys, I’m just speculating. It could be that all the lyrics were written by other members of the band Evan and Brian, who apparently wrote a majority of the songs before they had vocals.
Speculation aside, I’m really grateful that this album was made despite all of the challenges the guys in Jonesing faced. The vocals and vocal features were done really well, and I believe they truly did achieve a sense of community in bringing the entire thing together. Some of these riffs will never leave my brain and probably influence me in the years to come. The amount of monthly listeners they have is criminally low, and I hope more people discover this band and have the same experience I did. I’ve already sent this album to at least 10 people so if those 10 people send it to 10 people and then…
If you dig this album or have any recommendations, please comment and let me know! Always down to check out new stuff. If you like this band, check out bands like Ben Quad or Origami Angel that give off this midwest emo type vibe with some really great melodic guitar. Castele is also a good choice due to some similarities in normal vocals. Like Dream Haze, Jonesing has all of their music for free on their bandcamp page, though you can still throw them a few dollars if you’d like! Lastly, check out this video of Dream Haze performing the mystery lyric game song that I couldn’t guess:
I do not own the images in this article, all rights reserved to members of Dream Haze and Jonesing
