While Audio Drag is not a perfect distillation of their live act, Gustaf’s debut is still great fun as the band leans on its storytelling ability to explore the various anxieties, desires, and fears of the titular "ego slob." Lydia Gammill gladly makes herself the joke, inhabiting a narcissistic narrator that is both self-absorbed and needy.
PACKS’ debut Take The Cake has all the unassuming beauty of nature in suburbia; subtle and spare, the album follows Madeline Link as she drifts through post-adolescent malaise. The romantic gloss Link imparts on everyday life doesn’t hide the disconnect between Link and the world around her as she struggles to find her place within it.
