saturdays at your place - these things happen
2025 • MANY HATS • POP PUNK / EMO
73/100
I recently finished reading Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield and have been reading Barbara Kingsolver’s contemporary, Appalachian adaptation, Demon Copperhead. In both, broken promises drive David/Demon as he comes of age through foster care. In Demon Copperhead, especially, Demon learns as an elementary-aged child that promises are empty, and “I’m sorry” is just filler for not knowing what else to say. Having only experienced instability, David/Demon misguidedly connects with those who would harm him and rejects those who have his back. Then he realizes his mistake.
These same themes permeate saturdays at your place’s new album, these things happen, self-released on September 12, with help from Many Hats Distribution. “I swear we’ve had talks about this, but you never cared to fix it. What am I to do? I just wanna know you,” closes the lead single “what am i supposed to do,” demonstrating the middle-ground this album exists in, lyrically. In doing so, does SAYP fail to commit, or do they capture the aggravating purgatory of never knowing where you truly stand with someone you care about?
Comprised of vocalist/drummer Gabe Wood, vocalist/bassist Esden Stafne, and guitarist Mitch Gulish, the up-and-coming pop-emo band from Kalamazoo, Michigan, does what they do well: heart-on-sleeve, punchy jingles with sick drum fills. On these things happen, their articulation is repetitive, but the tunes are catchy and carry the album.
Multiple references to long, lonely, sleepless nights (“cross my heart,” “i’d rather be in michigan,” and “stay”), the inability to intelligently communicate (“cross my heart,” “what am i supposed to do,” and “forest bubbles”), and relational tension (“i’d rather be in michigan” and “loon mobile pt 3”) make up these nine tracks (and one instrumental intro). SAYP doesn’t say anything new, and they say it over and over, but they slot right into the nostalgia-fueled parts of my brain that visualizes the amoebic aura of someone with whom I have one-sided beef so that I can feel something when I belt out, along with “what am i supposed to do”: “What the fuck am I supposed to do when you treat me like I’m invisible to you?”
Introduced with “welcome,” which might as well be an acoustic 2000s suburban family sitcom theme, that melody continues into “cross my heart,” that sounds deceptively full, considering SAYP is just a three-piece. They perfected their sound on their standout 2023 EP Always Cloudy. And “i’d rather be in michigan” exemplifies this sound most succinctly by seesawing the doom thought cycle of “I’m afraid if I stick around then it could all just be a waste” with buoyantly bouncing guitars. It’s as if you’re listening to a song that says, “look. life is bad. evryones sad. we're all gona die. but i alredy bought this inflatable boumcy castle so r u gona take ur shoes off or wat.” Musically, like their content, the songs are different versions of the same thing: they begin like a cool spring day, only to switch up with gang vocals, breakdowns, and I’ve-had-two-beers singalongs.
Though it is what holds the album back, this simplicity and quick familiarity does make SAYP songs easily accessible. On “waste away,” they get right at the heart of the mantra that no emotion is final when the song builds to “remind me to remember that this won’t last forever, but can we really count on that?” that would be right at home on a Wonder Years track. The most breathtaking song is the poignant, nearly five-minute closer, “i give in,” which seems to detail the night a friend, in a drunken haze, committed an act of self-harm. Here, the work of songwriting is done for SAYP, because all they must do is tell the story: “Your arm’s so red, bleeding on the carpet. I move in, alcoholic swaths of breath. I tried to help, but you won’t let me in.” A post-rock guitar tone hovers, like a siren in the background, help on the way. It’s frozen me completely every time I’ve heard it. With it, SAYP finally, with specificity, articulate what the rest of the album hinted at.
NBA COMP: PHOENIX SUNS - 2020 BUBBLE EDITION
They beat around the bush and showed us some tantalizing potential before crushing it for eight straight games to end the season.