Category: Columns

This is a column on Polyvox mag dot com. The column is called Makeout Music, which is indicative of the contents. My name is Jenny Hanover. I’m usually a poet from Pittsburgh, PA. However, I double as a former college music director and kissing connoisseur, so I’m going to be breaking down some of the best albums to kiss to of all time. 

Before I was old enough to go to bars, the local happenings that ever felt worth my time were DIY shows.  There was one, not so long ago, called the Deli, which was essentially just a huge party where you could drink in a parking lot while a band played. They always had fantastic booking, too, which wasn’t true of every venue.

Local music is a huge part of my life, especially as someone who used to book local bands weekly to play on air. Fortunately for you all, however,  this column is about tonsil hockey and not which basement I stood in on a Friday night when I was nineteen with a Mickey’s 40. 

Gina Gory is one of those bands that manages to get a gig everywhere and anywhere around the city of Pittsburgh, and it’s more than deserved- they’re doing this drum machine shoegaze thing that’s refreshing up against the sea of regular shoegaze slowcore stuff. I’ve seen them open for Dear Nora and Horse Jumper of Love, and they wowed me both times, so when this record came out in October of this year, I was positively foaming at the mouth. It was just as good as I wanted it to be- actually, it was better, because it was mixed so well that you could hear everything individually if you chose to pick it out from the wall of sound. It’s sludgy, not muddy, and that’s what makes it tick. There’s a delicate current that sweeps through this whole record, like pulling a flower out of the slime. 

I recently kissed to this album, which is what inspired me to choose it for this week’s column. It was purely accidental- I never would have thought to write about Died Laughing, but I like to write this from experience, and the experience is fresh. 

This record is surreal as far as making out goes. It works in a time where things are stormy and hazy, when you feel like you’re upside down and somewhere you shouldn’t be. It plays out like a good kisser, which you’d have to be to keep up with some of the changes in pace and volume across the songs. This isn’t a slow drag or a sweet treat like Ask Me Tomorrow or Sap Season. It’s elemental and mysterious and all it’s own. Making out to Gina Gory feels like sticking your head out the car window when you’re drunk and your friend’s friend is driving you home through the tunnel, across the bridge. It feels like tripping on mushrooms at an 80’s themed New Year’s Eve party. It clings on like someone you’ll never see again, and it creates a sense of bodily memory that is feverish and sensual. Go ahead and make out to this album, but don’t be scared when you wake up in the sunlight and wonder if any of it even really happened at all. 4.5/5