Yes, my friends, I too am a sucker for nostalgia, and this song immediately brought me back to 2008. Aggressive but soft. Propulsive and focused but also lilting. It reminded me of Vivian Girls and Times New Viking. It made me feel the way I felt when I stopped seeing that one therapist who said if I could try to make friends on the Internet if I was having troubles with loneliness. A lot of 2022 has been spent trying to avoid discussion of the late-aughts lest I get sucked into vibe-shift discourse, but ‘I’m Trying’ had me missing the music scene that proliferated right before chillwave.
Nostalgia in and of itself is almost never interesting, but the why behind it cane sometimes have merit. HUSHPUPPY really nails the crux of what made lo-fi and shitgaze so compelling. We wanted music that sounded like equal parts having-a-crush and about-to-fight. I still don’t know why.
