4 Music Zines Pulled from my Physical Media Collection

Faulty Cognitions might be the most underrated punk band working today. Seriously, why did I go to one of their shows and there were only five people there? (If you see them coming to your town, please go — they’re worth it!) Anyways, that is a damn shame because they are deserving of huge fucking crowds for their timely pop punk songs that are melancholic but also super catchy. It’s the perfect music for aging DIY-lifers like myself who are disheartened by the state of the world but know that community is our way through it all. The zine that accompanied their album “Somehow, Here We Are” really captures everything that makes them so great. This zine features a page for each song, with scribbled song lyric snippets that read like rallying cries. the gritty, grainy hand-collaged and doodled textures mirror the shambolic jangle of their sound. Real good stuff.

Instead of showcasing an album’s lyrics in a zine, Marissa Paternoster illustrates each of her songs. She is probably most famous for fronting the band Screaming Females, but when they broke up, she started the Paternoster Listener Alliance via patreon, a project where she crafts a brand new song every month, accompanied by an evocative illustration that brings the tune life. At the end of the year, her patrons are treated to a complete album and zine that collects her months of work into one tidy package. I’ve got the first 2 volumes and treasure them both. Marissa’s drawings are angular and emotive, featuring jittery high-strung characters. Her illustrations are dense with cross-hatching and stipple, visual equivalent of the buzzsaw gravel of big muff pedal distorted guitars. Seeing each song represented by a vignette, a scene, it really deepens the meaning of each song for me. Before she began the listener alliance, I was only really familiar with her music, and I am so glad that this project has brought her zines and visual art into my life.

Lein’s 2022 album “Home Sick” and its accompanying lyrics zine are evocative, mysterious, morose. A little bit foggy and a little bit romantic. The zine is lovingly hand-collaged and fragments of typewritten lyrics are arranged over eerie antique photographs of foxglove flowers, deer, and seances. It’s a dreary, dreamy zine, the perfect visual encapsulation of their sound. The jagged edges of the hand-cut prose mirrors the layered drone of their music, all slightly out of tune or skewed a jar the way an antique photo is blurred slightly with time, like an artifact.

“Safe Sins” is the first full-length album by one of my favorite bands, Gladie. This is a classic lyric zine, straight forward with little embellishment aside from a few choice antique photos. This simpler approach lets the language of the lyrics shine, which I love because Augusta Koch’s lyrics are, to me, the musical equivalent of a perzine. She writes lyrics that are honest and pithy and rich, and capture the way emotions can feel so big and overwhelming or buried deep within. Gladie’s vulnerability is their strength. Her lyrics make me feel seen. When I put on “Safe Sins” and read along with her words, it really deepens the experience of listening for me, and for that I cherish this zine.