By Genre: Emo
Favorite Tracks: “what am i supposed to do,” “i’d rather be in michigan,” “i give in “
In his 2003 book, NOTHING FEELS GOOD, Andy Greenwald defined emo as “the sound of self-making.” General, sure, but weirdly needling; it demands something sweeping and transitional. Unlike the leading discourse on what is and is not emo, Greenwald’s interpretation ignores the qualifiers of certain tunings, geographical inclinations, and lyrical themes, and focuses instead on the personal momentum songs must contain in order to fulfill the genre’s purposefully vague requirements. In his view, above all else artists must contend with themselves to be truly emo.
But that was 2003, written in the lasting shadows of the ’90s midwest sound and the blinding spotlight of MTV-emo. What does self-making even sound like today? Well, it sounds a lot like saturdays at your place’s sophomore album, THESE THINGS HAPPEN. The Kalamazoo trio is made up of college friends: Esden Stafne on bass and vocals, Gabe Wood on drums and vocals, and Mitch Gulish on guitar. In a moment of misapplied midwest emo labels and nostalgic obsession with the genre, saturdays at your place sits amongst the chaos, touring month after month, selling out venue after venue, and most importantly: self making.
In 2021 they released their debut LP, SOMETHING WORTH CELEBRATING to a DIY scene still recovering from the pandemic’s toll. However, their emo stardom as we know it now didn’t really kick off until the release of their 2023 EP, ALWAYS CLOUDY. It was here that they were formally entered into the emo canon with their cult-classic hit, “tarot cards.” It’s an unavoidable song in heavily-online emo circles, with fans still poking at Stafne’s regional pronunciation of “tarot.” But it’s more than just that song, ALWAYS CLOUDY offered a brief, but rich window into the twinkly possibilities of saturdays at your place. Since then, the band has spent the past two years building up to their current headlining tours.
THESE THINGS HAPPEN opens in a panic with these meteoric past couple of years as a backdrop, “cross my heart” borders on a frenetic heartbeat as Stafne balances a slew of questions with internal admittances and breathing exercises. In “waste away,” their first single, Stafne rounds on himself and begs to disappear. It’s a jarring way to start a highly anticipated album.
There isn’t a singular voice of saturdays, rather the songs alternate between those written and performed by Stafne and those by Wood. While they culminate into saturdays’ constant casual turmoil, their styles are remarkably different, with Stafne’s songs focusing on an inward uncomfortableness and obsessive self-reflection and Wood’s drawing intense conclusions about external relationships. The difference between “waste away” and “what am i supposed to do” reflects this. “waste away” toils in an internal fight for continuing on, while “what am i supposed to do” is jagged and teeters on hysteria before caving in completely. Wood’s strangled voice screams, “I swear we’ve had talks about this / but you never cared to fix it.” and continues with the berating self deprecation of, “everything I say is dumb / everything I say is wrong.”
The lyricism of saturdays is one the most defining aspects of the band. In the past, they’ve released melodic, scream along songs, and THESE THINGS HAPPEN is no exception. When “waste away” dropped, it was clear that it was created with audience participation in mind, a song for everyone to sing together at one of their sold out shows. But it’s more than that, the band deals in memorable lyrics. THESE THINGS HAPPEN is decorated with questions like, “Do you ever think of me when you’re alone and can’t sleep?” thoughts like, “closure is my enemy, I’m sure I’ll fight him soon,” and fourth-wall-breaking admittances: “I only write when I’m all mad.”
One of the album’s more romantic lyrics is woven through “forest bubbles,” in which Wood describes a crush-y memory where “while passing me the joint, your fingers slip and rub on mine.” This scene, combined with a bobbing, aptly bubbly beat skips through the song before it takes a downward turn, Guilish’ guitar spilling its sadness across the song. This variation is typical of saturdays at your place, especially with Gulish manning the guitar. With his fingertips, this burgeoning guitar god has created the sound of saturdays, from the dance-y riffs of “i’d rather be in michigan” to the bright strumming of “strawberry” to the zig-zaggy and overtly emo “loon mobile pt. 3.” No guitarist in emo today is playing the way Guilish is, and while his bandmates may sing their hearts out, he holds his own, playing his heart out.
Despite their meme-centric rise and online popularity, saturdays at your place are a pretty offline band. While their often-compared predecessors, Modern Baseball sang about meeting someone on Facebook and their similarly popular contemporaries, Origami Angel, recently released an entire album trapped in cyberspace, saturdays panics over tense personal interactions and relishes in the tangible. Sometimes that interaction is more than just a crush or a fight. The album ends on the tragic “i give in,” a song that cascades across the album. Like ALWAYS CLOUDY’s frustrated closer, “eat me alive,” Wood ends THESE THINGS HAPPEN, this time with a melancholic, yet electrifying song, caught in a lyrical refrain of a dreaded “never felt like this before.”
And that loop, that confrontation with buried feelings and eventual anthemic turns, is the sound of self-making. In THESE THINGS HAPPEN, the band confronts the throes of adulthood and the strife that comes with distance and miscommunication. It captures the band while they are still self-making: still falling in love, still growing through difficult chapters, and still recovering from broken hearted memories.
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