“Don’t wanna do this Combat shit anymore, but people seemed to like this last record,” Holden Wolf spits on the second song of Combat’s second album, Stay Golden, and later, in the midst of an eight-minute, multi-part suite called “Weird Ending Explained, Pt. 1,” he adds, “Think I’ll write another record, reference all my past endeavors. I’ve got sharper claws and leitmotifs.”
On top of being meta and self-referential, it’s also a pretty wild thing to hear on what’s poised to be a young band’s breakthrough album. The “last record” in question is the Baltimore band’s 2022 debut LP Text Me When You Get Back, a scrappy emo/indie/punk album recorded in one day with engineer Don Zientara at his legendary Inner Ear Studios and then mixed by the band themselves. Text Me When You Get Back didn’t turn the band into stars or anything, but it did noticeably strike a chord. According to an interview with Ian Cohen for Stereogum, the band’s shows behind the record generally attracted just a few people, but at least one of the people at the shows would know every word, even in a city miles away from the band’s home. It was enough to inspire Holden to write a followup, and as far having sharper claws and leitmotifs, he walks the walk. Stay Golden, the band’s Counter Intuitive Records debut, isn’t just a step-up from Text Me; it’s a leap of faith.
Stay Golden is a concept album / semi-rock opera with recurring lyrical themes, musical reprises, and not one multi-part suite but two. (The latter is called “Weird Ending Explained, Pt. 2.” It clocks in at nine minutes and closes the album out with a cinematic strings/piano coda.) It’s a hybrid of emo, punk, pop punk, indie rock, and even a little folk punk and ska, played with the energy of a band that reaches the verge of explosion on every song. Combat is a full band (they’ve played shows with as many as 12 members, though they usually settle for five), but Stay Golden a deeply personal album for core songwriter Holden Wolf, who constantly reaches soul-baring catharsis throughout these 14 songs. The album is overflowing with ambition, yet still sounds like the work of a band that plays DIY punk houses, and it takes its inspiration from other albums that did exactly that, like Bomb the Music Industry!’s Vacation, Prince Daddy & the Hyena’s Cosmic Thrill Seekers, and Origami Angel’s Gami Gang, the latter two of which came out on the same label as Stay Golden. The production was also handled by Origami Angel’s Ryland Heagy, who helped make Combat sound massive compared to the tinny Text Me When You Get Back without abandoning any of the band’s raw charm.
Holden scream-sings hooks that are already up to par with his heroes, and his lyrics unravel in a wordy, stream-of-consciousness fashion that sounds way more catchy and digestible than you’d guess from reading them on paper. The album has references to Black Flag, Dan Deacon, George Michael, and multiple songs that bring up Combat themselves. At one point, he rhymes “bottomless sarcophagus” with “rhymes that all seem arduous.” On another song, he’s reliving a childhood memory of him and some friends letting food go to waste at a fast food joint because their eyes were bigger than their stomachs. On the next, the 20-year-old songwriter is wondering if being in an emo band wasn’t the right move when “everyone I know is getting good jobs and stable homes.” Some moments are so casual and conversational that you feel like Holden is speaking to you directly, and others are such brutally honest reckonings with downward mental spirals that you feel like you’re listening to his inner thoughts.
Throughout all its shambolic maximalism, Stay Golden is the kind of album that seems to succeed in spite of itself. When it bites off more than it can chew, it chews it anyway. When the wheels fall off, the bare axle will just have to do. It’s definitely the most ambitious emo album I’ve heard all year, and it just might be the year’s best emo album too.
For a deeper look into Stay Golden, Holden walks us through the entire album, track-by-track, and you can stream the album below and read on for what he had to say…
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COMBAT’S HOLDEN WOLF BREAKS DOWN STAY GOLDEN, TRACK BY TRACK
“Intro”
Had always planned on this being the introduction of the title track and of the album itself. I wanted to show the musical scope of the album to the listener right out of the gate.
“Stay Golden”
This was the first song that was written for the album and subsequently the song that the rest of the album was written around. The song kind of forces everything that characterizes Combat as a band into one sub-two-minute track.
“Faith”
This was the second song written for the album that was very deliberately written to be a follow-up track to “Stay Golden.” This is the song that most clearly establishes the central themes of the album.
“Put Me In, Coach”
This was the very last song written for the album, we felt like the A-Side felt slightly rushed and didn’t mesh together super well so we decided one more fast catchy song should do the trick. The song ultimately came into its own when we took it to the studio and feels much more than just a filler track for album pacing’s sake.
“Good News”
This is probably the song that took the longest to nail at practices. I wanted to write a song with just a blisteringly fast almost hardcore-esque intro that still had a catchy hook.
“Full Speed Ahead”
For a while I had deliberated wether or not this song would just be cut from the album entirely but it ultimately ended up becoming our third single and lots of people’s favorites or at least second favorites on the album. In its demo stages it felt overly simple but bringing it to the studio definitely helped bring the song to life.
“Cool For a While”
For about a year this song was just the outro to “Full Speed Ahead” but it slowly became its own song and works now more like a companion piece to the prior song. The intro of the song is I believe the most technically difficult part of the album for me to play on guitar
“Weird Ending Explained Pt. 1”
This song is really 3-4 songs that I had been playing with for a year condensed into one song. I had written lots of separate segments of the song that kind of came together all at once like puzzle pieces, there were lots of ideas that I had for the album like callbacks to prior records and songs that I was really happy I was able to squeeze all into one track.
“Stay Golden (Reprise)”
This is the intro that we played for Stay Golden for years when we’d play it live. Initially it was only ever meant to be a live thing but I thought it sounded too cool to not have recorded in some regard and its placement on the album (start of the B-side) acts to sort of mirror the start of the A-side.
“Happy Again”
This is definitely the oldest idea for a song that I had that made it onto the album. It didn’t end up getting actually written and fleshed out until much later in the writing process but because of that we were able to include much more in the song that lends itself to the rest of the album. The ska break acts as a slight reference to the Title Track’s given that they are both the start of their respective sides of the album. The song ends with a really satisfying left/right dueling guitar solo that we’re really happy with.
“Merrow Lanes”
It was intended that this would be the third single, though we ended up swapping it for “Full Speed Ahead.” The song is about a Magic: The Gathering deck that I like to play that is not very good at all, I’ve had to do so much tinkering and adapting with it in order to even stand a chance to my friends’ decks but I accept the difficulty of playing it because it has so much charm. In the song I liken this to trying to make something in life work out that I recognize is definitely not the best thing I could be doing with my time but still I try regardless of what I keep telling myself I should be doing.
“Compound Sentences”
This song was written to be a bit more similar to some of the songs on our last album, Text Me When You Get Back. It has a much more country feel to it with acoustic guitar, slide, tons of vocal harmonies, very wordy autobiographical lyrics, etc.
“Epic Season Finale”
This song was initially written as a song that “couldn’t be a Combat song” and was likely just gonna get thrown out. After a couple of months of sitting on it I pulled myself together and we worked out an arrangement for it that would work as a Combat song and I’d say it works pretty well. The rhythm and melody of the verses are just slightly off, building up tension throughout the song to lead up to a huge rewarding melodically satisfying singalong chorus.
“Weird Ending Explained Pt. 2”
This was the song that I was the most proud of while writing the album and most nervous to record in the studio. It’s got lots of timing changes, long drawn-out string sections callbacks to prior songs. It is certainly the most ambitious song on the album and the most difficult song to get right. I think we got it right.