The haunting first lyrics on “Leather Daddy” from Microwave ‘s latest record, Death is a Warm Blanket, come in packed with depth, substance, and relatability. When front-man/guitarist Nathan Hardy sings, “If you don’t want to talk, then just don’t talk /I’m fine with us just sitting in silence / If you want me to go then just say so / You can drop me off somewhere / I don’t know…I don’t have anywhere to go,” it’s nearly impossible not point to a relationship or friendship in the past or present that fits in with this rhetoric. We’ve all been in relationships when things just aren’t clicking, and it feels like we reach a point where we stop caring. Microwave are able to bottle up a ton of angst and polish it up enough to make an album worthy of being engulfed in.

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As I stare down my mid-twenties, I see the rest of my life hurtling toward me at full speed like a freight train with the brake lines cut. I feel my experience is nothing short of ubiquitous among those of my age group. Each of us may be staring down different issues: a full-time job that is perhaps not an actual career, mounting student loan debt, relationship troubles, and more. That uncertainty seems to linger there, just under the surface, at all hours of the day. These are the mounting insecurities and anxieties and, let’s face it, sometimes depression, that come with a perceived lack of direction in life.

We are all searching for someone who is trying to find that same meaning. It’s no surprise then, that the music we love often reflects back these same uncertainties, the same occasional short-lived self-loathing, and the probing existentialism of everyday life. And no record this year has struck that particular nerve for me in quite the way that Microwave’s Much Love has.

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