Albums of the 2010s - 2018 - Haley Heynderickx's 'I Need To Start A Garden'

Trigger warnings, lads. If you don't wanna hear about blokes being cunts, look away now.

2016 was "Rock's not dead, it belongs to rap now". 2017 was "Rock's not dead, it's the perfect reaction to [Brexit/Drumpf] now". 2018 is "Rock's not dead, it belongs to women now."

Towards the back half of the decade, lots of female artists and female-fronted bands came to the fore in a way they hadn't really in previous decades of rock and indie music. This isn't to say there weren't any women in bands before, but they were either well spread out or ghettoised into 'riot grrrl' or 'Lilith Fair shite'. 2018-ish is when you could confidently say that the biggest indie rock acts about - St. Vincent, Mitski, Phoebe Bridgers, Haim, and so on - were pretty much all women. How'd that happen, and why should you be arsed?

This is, weirdly enough, kind of an outgrowth of emo, and it is thus instructive to read "Where The Girls Aren't" by Jessica Hopper. It was written in 2003. The quick rundown is emo, as time progressed, got sexist-er and sexist-er. It's very easy to go from something like 'Song About An Angel' by Sunny Day Real Estate, all reverent and "God, I shouldn't even be allowed to exist near you," into the stuff from bands like Brand New in the mid-2000s where women were agents of Satan designed to ruin our poor lead singer's life. Hopper hoped that with time, 'radicalised women' would return to the punk and emo scene and change the misogynist outlook of those bands. "We deserve better songs than any boy will write about us."

The change was slow, because writing isn't magic and those emo bands were fucking huge. But the change did occur. Sleater-Kinney spent their career forcing such a change; outpunking everyone on 1997's Dig Me Out, poking fun at the overserious boy bands on "You're No Rock'N'Roll Fun", and then making a blown-out classic rock critical darling in 2005's The Woods. If Sleater-Kinney weren't exactly a purely political riot grrl band the way Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker's previous bands were, their radicalism was just as deep - sure, their mere existence as a girl band, but as an LGBT one too after Corin and Carrie were outed by some journalist in the late 90s, at a time when that wasn't as widely accepted - and probably more effective because of the group's higher profile. This is the weird paradox of political music. Sleater-Kinney are probably less RADICAL than Bratmobile or Team Dresch, but, like, I've heard of Sleater-Kinney. You've probably heard of Sleater-Kinney. They were on Bob's Burgers or something! Is it better to dilute oneself a little in order to infiltrate the mainstream or to remain always correct on the sidelines? I don't know, just worth a thought. 

St. Vincent came up in a different scene - she toured with the Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens - but has spent the last ten years cementing herself as rock royalty. Ms Clark, like The Woods-era Sleater-Kinney, is more concerned with the rock canon than many of her peers might've been. She namechecks heavily venerated artists like Hendrix, Bowie, King Crimson, and Tool, she made a collab album with David Byrne, and her media image is 'guitarist''. She's got a very successful Music Man signature guitar, the kind of thing people associate with more 'rockist' musicians like Hendrix or Eric Clapton. She's also 'out', so to speak, in that she's repeatedly told interviewers she's not arsed with gender and spent the mid-2010s in a relationship with the also-famous Cara Delevingne.

Returning to emo, I can't really do this article without mentioning Paramore. Here's a Pitchfork post that pre-empted me - I've been working on this post for a WHILE lmao - but still: as if in direct response to Jessica Hopper's call for more women in emo, Paramore formed in Tennessee in 2004, and pretty much since then vocalist Hayley Williams has been one of the most visible women in rock, for better and for worse. Even when the band started, long before the eyes of the world were on them, them and their label were "edgy about the whole female thing". The band have endured a tumultuous existence, with band members coming and going like a revolving door, and the allegation - later confirmed by the band - that technically only Hayley was signed to the label, relegating the rest of the group to 'just a bunch of dudes' against their - and her - wishes, but Paramore have indeed endured, and thrived, securing hit after hit as their sound evolved from the music you'd expect a bunch of Tennessee hardcore kids to make, to something more poppy and more eclectic.

It feels relevant that in 2018, Ms Williams promised the band would never perform "Misery Business" again, one of their biggest songs, because she felt the line "Once a whore, you’re nothing more, I’m sorry, that will never change” was too sexist for her to continue singing. This song came out at the same time as the likes of Glassjaw and Brand New saying and doing far, FAR worse, and Hayley was only 17 when she wrote it about a real girl in high school that had treated a boy friend (later boyfriend) of hers badly, so I think she would have been well within her rights to leave the song alone. We all do cringy, emotional shit when we're seventeen, she's just uniquely fucked in that she has to keep singing about it. The choice to retire the song, however, felt momentous. It was in the wake of Jesse Lacey from Brand New admitting to being a predatory nonce, and more generally in the wake of #MeToo, and for the elder stateswoman of the burgeoning 'women in rock' scene to say "No. We don't let that shit run anymore," it felt a big deal.

incidental placement, don't think about how ronaldo definitely did whatever he was accused of, don't, don't do it, stop

Okay, so who's in this current scene? These bands and artists don't sound all that similar, necessarily, but they all arrived at a similar time, and they all seem to be friends, so it feels alright to call it a scene. Start with the members of boygenius, the Crosby, Stills, and Nash of the Twitter age. Julien Baker keeps the emo influence strong. She's from Tennessee, like Paramore, and really got into music following exposure to Death Cab for Cutie and My Chem. The straight edge hardcore scene helped her get out of her tough teen years, and the personal, soul-baring quality of her music probably owes as much to that emo upbringing as it does the canonical honest lady singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell. Lucy Dacus operates in a similar mode to Julien, but subtly different; perhaps a little less confessional, a little more slacker indie than urgent emo, a bit funnier, for lack of a better term. Phoebe Bridgers, though, is the most famous of the three now, having really broken through with Punisher last year. An Elliott Smith fangirl with a passion for bluegrass and for collaboration, what's most impressive about Bridgers is the music, but a close second is her handling and exploiting of the media. She managed to spend pretty much all of 2020 and large parts of 2021 being talked about, whether it was releasing Punisher, covering 'Iris' with Maggie Rogers to celebrate Drumpf losing, or smashing up a guitar on SNL. She's also emo-adjacent, having formed Better Oblivion Community Center with Bright Eyes frontman and sadboy king Conor Oberst. Things came full circle when all three members of boygenius backed Hayley Williams on Petals For Armor II.

There are others. Jay Som and Japanese Breakfast bring more shoegazy-sounds - and Michelle Zauner (who is Japanese Breakfast) was in a Philly emo band, Little Big League, around the revival times of 2013 before striking out alone. Big Thief, led by Adrianne Lenker, have taken the more folk-tinged end of this sound and run with it, and Soccer Mommy have (has? I don't know if it's just her) taken the poppier side. Mitski has run the gamut of all these styles, even though she doesn't really want to be doing music at all anymore. Kacey Musgraves is nominally a country artist but still works in this same kind of confessional idiom and has the same sort of fans. And so on, and so on. While Britain was churning out all those 'post-punk' bands America was doing this.

In the midst of all that attention, Haley Heynderickx dropped her debut. While I like and admire all the people I just listed, I truly love this album. Maybe because it's smaller in scope, maybe because it was less acclaimed and I'm an insufferable hipster, but it just hits the right spots. Heynderickx is heavily influenced by American Primitive guitar wizard John Fahey, one of my favourite musicians ever, but where he would often sprawl into massive half-hour Western classical- and gamelan-influenced solo compositions, Heynderickx keeps things focused with her short, witty songs and tight four-piece band, as showcased in this Tiny Desk Concert.

You'd assume a folk album indebted to John Fahey wouldn't have shit to do with emo, but something about the way the album's centrepiece song, "Worth It", unfolds and takes all these unexpected turns compositionally really reminds me of the revival, as do the plaintive little trombone figures scattered everywhere. This is why I was so adamant on covering the revival in 2014; I think that, more than anything else you can point to, any other trend, that DIY explosion of bands in the early 2010s is so, so influential on all that has come since, including this 'scene'.

A band from that revival that I wanna briefly touch on, now that I've traced the arc that led to Haley Henderickx, is Pinegrove. In that early 2010s era, Pinegrove were coming out of New Jersey with a revolving door band of "basically whoever was about" for a gig, a la The World Is A Beautiful Place And I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, and a blend of alt-country and emo revival that seemed to really connect with people. People, even including Kristen Stewart, would get ampersands tattooed to show their support for their band, as well as the two interlocking squares on the cover of 2016's Cardinal. I saw them in London on the tour supporting that album - Lomelda opened, and she's another good example of this wave of indie-country women - and it just made sense. The music was good, country-tinged without being pastiche, emotional without being overwrought, but the key is how singer-songwriter Evan Stephens Hall was able to connect with his audience. I thought they were due some serious indie success; I think the way people talk about Big Thief right now, particularly, was absolutely attainable for Pinegrove. And then Evan fucked it.

The allegations levied against Stephens Hall are weird, to be perfectly honest with you. This isn't like Jesse Lacey, where the girls were underage and he literally wrote about getting drunk and assaulting them on "Me vs. Maradona. vs Elvis". Nor is it anything like what Ryan Adams has done to Phoebe Bridgers, among countless other women. The two things Stephens Hall were addressing were that connection with the audience - a connection he felt he abused and took too far by sleeping with girls on tour - and a relationship where he sexually coerced his partner out of her relationship. Unlike basically every example of emo guys being massive cunts, from Brand New to *shudder* JANK, Evan brought the news to light first, and then, true to his word, he shut the fuck up. For over a year. 

I'm not here to comment on what he did - it's definitely not GOOD, but it definitely felt more like "mutually appalling relationship of the kind most twenty-somethings get into" and "the reason 90% of boys start bands" rather than "objectively monstrous behaviour" - but at the time, people weren't just dealing with Pinegrove. As stated, 2017 was Peak #MeToo. The women we're focused on were just coming into view and asserting their own position in the musical hierarchy, and Evan wasn't just Evan Stephens Hall but all the people in the genre, and in the world, who had wronged women and faced basically zero consequences for it. If the punishment didn't particularly fit the crime, so be it. People still love Pinegrove, and they were making their way back when the rona hit, so it clearly hasn't ruined his life, anyway. Much like Hayley Williams disowning "Misery Business", though, it felt bigger than it has turned out to be. After almost thirty years of bollocks, emo was finally reckoning with itself.

I don't think the #MeToo thing is a tenuous link, by the way. The general tenor of the 2010s was a gradual movement towards women in popular culture being allowed/empowered to be themselves, and this glut of female singer-songwriters was but one part of it. TV shows like Girls, Broad City and Fleabag presented not just two-dimensional love interests, or 'Busy Business Lady Whose Life Is Missing Something But She Doesn't Realise It Because She's So Busy With Business'-style #GirlBosses who were always on top of their shit. 

Remember when Beyoncé was, like, a demigoddess? I feel like that has died down recently - when was the last time you heard anyone talk about Everything Is Love by the Carters - but for a good ten years and a good four albums - I Am... Sasha Fierce, 4, and especially Beyoncé and Lemonade - she was the blueprint. I feel like Lorde and her acolytes were the Kidz Bop version of that kind of scene, all defiance and confidence, "I will not Sit Still, Look Pretty", "Don't Kill My Vibe", etc, etc." You couldn't move for middle-class women of all races and backgrounds - in fact, everyone, really - who just adored Beyoncé back in the day. That sort of thing doesn't really work anymore. Again, remember Tramp Stamps? They tried this WE'RE GIRLS AND WE LIKE PUNK, GET USED TO IT #GIRLBOSS behaviour and got absolutely destroyed by the rump of Tumblr girls that still frequent the now-all-but-dead site. You can't really go a week without seeing SOME poor holdover from the "Hillary is going to be president" era getting utterly cunted by dead-eyed young women who are way the fuck over that attitude.

The women we see now in culture are kinda fuckups, losers, and often bad people doing things they aren't always proud of, and the music has been similar. Mitski sings about not feeling American enough for Society, in the abstract, and really wanting someone to kiss her after having a breakdown in Malaysia. Haley says her existence is a comedy, Joker-style, on "Oom Sha La La", a song that she says is purposely embarrassing in that Tiny Desk Concert up there. Phoebe Bridgers has straight up said Fleabag influenced a lot of Punisher, and then got Phoebe Waller-Bridge to direct the video for "Savior Complex".

This is a double edged sword though, to my mind. What it reminds me of is the pop culture of 90s American blokes. Slack Motherfuckers with Green Minds and absolutely no internal motivation were everywhere in the 90s, from Archers of Loaf to Clerks to Jack from Fight Club. But Fight Club isn't exactly a blueprint for empowered women to follow. That film, spoilers, ends with a guy shooting himself in the head and the world exploding. The ennui expressed by Waller-Bridge, Mitski, Bridgers, et al, is similar, and it comes from a similar place. Gen X guys were promised, and exposed to, almost-idyllic lives at the hands of Der Ewige Boomer, and when those jobs, that wife, the picket fence, failed to materialise, they mentally checked out, listening to Pavement and getting high after their minimum wage jobs were done. That 90s era skewers the more grindset-esque 80s - c.f. American Psycho the film but also maybe "80s guy" from Futurama? - just as TikTok girls own #StillWithHer feminists. Millenial gals were promised similar - "no sis, you CAN have a full time job, and a happy marriage, and kids, and a gorgeous home, and make gorgeous food every evening, everything. You DESERVE this all, and it's EASY!" and the soundtrack was #empowering music, chiefly the aforementioned Beyoncé. 

   

One Great Recession that we never recovered from later and these girls were renting in Bed-Stuy/Mile End with liberal arts degrees that prepared them for no non-barista jobs, thousands of dollars worth of debt, men that smelt like particularly hoppy pale ales and regrets, and takeout. The kids that adored Daya and Sigrid graduated into a world of Boris, Drumpf, and then a pandemic. Beyoncé would no longer cut it. You don't even need to get into how if Beyoncé got cheated on, there was no hope for us mortals. I am Fleabag's fourth-wall-breaking panic at the state of everything. I am not fierce: fucking hell, man, I'm finished. Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

I was careful to say "allowed/empowered" when I started this. It all, as it always does, comes back to 'No Self Respecting Woman Would Go Out With Makeup'. If you have been empowered, someone gave that power to you, and they can very easily take it back. There's a quote from that post I think about a lot when I consider this scene: "if some field keeps the trappings of power but loses actual power, women enter it in droves and men abandon it like the Roanoke Colony." What does it mean that at a time when guitar playing, and guitar music, has never been more irrelevant in the public eye, more women are playing - and therefore buying - guitars than ever? What does it mean that when a combination of streaming services eating into music purchases and the closure of mid-level music venues across the world (I know that sounds like a rona thing but I promise it's not just that) are making it harder than ever to actually make a living as an indie musician, the way those 90s bands like Dino Jr, Failure (one of Hayley Williams' favourite bands btw), et al did, most of the biggest acts in indie are women? Television matters less than it has at any point since the Dumont existed, as kids my age abandon it for social media and streaming services; Girls, Broad City, Fleabag. Someone's getting snaked here, right? Who's zooming who? 

I don't know, it probably doesn't matter. I definitely don't write this to say [your fave] does not, in fact, rule, or that Girls is feminist propaganda, or whatever, the point is simply that successful art is a product of its economic circumstances as much as its cultural ones. Yes, the stage had been set by Sleater-Kinney, and Paramore, but for this music to come to fruition and really connect with women you needed the GirlBoss stuff from the early-mid decade to peter out and curdle. Ten years later, it's a lot harder for pop culture to pretend that you're one good day away from transforming into Beyoncé, and so: you're a fleabag. You've got emotional motion sickness. You need to start a garden.

Also this Olivia Rodrigo plant was made in a lab to combine Phoebe Bridgers & Taylor Swift under a latina patina— dominating white girl demos into futurity.

— R.Сам 🦋🐏 (@Logo_Daedalus) June 9, 2021

I don't think there'll be a "backlash" to this stuff, by the way. It's not like 2017 where they all sound exactly the same and eventually people will get exhausted. I've seen a really vague backlash against Phoebe Bridgers specifically for her perceived dominance of the narrative for the past year or so - like I said, she managed to keep herself in the public eye pretty much from when "Kyoto" first released (April 2020) to that SNL performance (last February) - but that's just what happens when you're popular. Now that she's NOT constantly Doing Stuff that sort of feeling has disappeared, at least from the corners of the Web I frequent. 

Anyway, the original slacker rock bands didn't exactly 'die' either: Yo La Tengo have never broken up, don't think Superchunk have ever broken up, Dinosaur Jr DID break up but they got back together in 2007 and have released some of their best shit, and so on. I think this is a sustainable musical scene, for as long as girls are getting snaked by Modernity. So, you know, a good while. I don't know if Haley Heynderickx will be caught in the updraft and start scoring new episodes of Euphoria or whatever it is girls like these days. I don't think, based on the very little I know about her temperament, she'd want to - she's not made owt since I Need To Start A Garden caught a bit of buzz, unfortunately. The only thing I CAN see happening is what Logo's suggesting - heavy, heavy co-optation. That is, after all, what happened to the original college rock bands, as legions of vaguely jangly R.E.M. acolytes (cf Hootie and the Blowfish) and moody post-grunge Kurt wannabes (cf Nickelback) flooded the charts in the mid-to-late 90s, and it's already started this time out. Olivia Rodrigo, then, will act as the Lorde to Phoebe Bridgers' Beyoncé, yes I'm aware of how stupid a sentence that is, acclimating zoomer girls to the disappointing blokes and societal expectations they're gonna have to weather. Good for you, ladies.

Anyway, I'm done. Lemme bring this full circle. "We deserve better songs that boys will ever write about us." Would a Tweet do, Jessica?

next time you feel like shit just know I once let a man whose top song is an acoustic cover of wonderwall hurt me

— traitor joe (@phoebe_bridgers) March 17, 2021