I get irrationally attached to the music that I listen to. I love strange, cryptic stuff (I'm really coming around on Noise, I swear!) and for a while, I was buying tapes on Bandcamp pretty much by random. It wasn't some hipster impulse to get in at the ground level, at least I don't think so. I think I had just purchased a tape player and wanted to fill out my collection with stuff from small labels-- plus it was a fun way to branch out a bit more.

At some point along that process, I had come across Talk, Tired Thanatoid, an indie band that was releasing stuff on Pacific Nature Records. This story isn't about Talk, Tired Thanatoid, but I do want to say that they make good music and that Sunflowers Bitter as Ocean Water was one of the best tape pickups I've made (the Mountain Goats mentioned on one of their tracks, Taylor Swift, I think?). I wanted more, so I leapt with reckless abandon into the rest of PNR's releases.

Their catalogue is broad. It definitely rules (although, they're on an extended hiatus and have been for a bit). Raw indie rock, synth-wave dream pop, the label was full of treasures. I've always been a sucker for bedroom pop, though. I think Linda Smith really opened a lot of doors in late 80s and early 90s and Bandcamp helped tons of people leverage that into an ever-growing genre. I think this may also be why the modern lo-fi genre has shifted so substantially from tape-hiss and washed out recordings into dreamy, looping hip-hop. This is also not what the story is about; I just have a lot of thoughts, okay?

Anyway, I was digging through the PNR catalogue looking for more tapes to buy, and after a few hours of listening and thinking, I found a beautiful bedroom pop album. It was sad and soothing in a way that very few records have ever felt for my brain, beyond the Mountain Goats and the Weakerthans. I instantly bought it. The album was by an artist named Emma St. Clair, and shared her name.

Sadcore Is A Legitimate Genre And We Demand To Be Taken Sadly

The tapes arrived in the mail a few weeks later. I think at the time I bought them (probably early 2020?), PNR was already in the midst of their hiatus, although their Bandcamp didn't reflect it. I wasn't too pressed about it; I got two brand new tapes in the mail and they were unbelievably good. Sunflowers sounded even better through the whine of my old-piece-of-garbage Naxa CD/Tape player, and the Emma St. Clair tape came with a few square stickers that read "Sadcore Is A Legitimate Genre And We Demand To Be Taken Sadly."

I've grown to love small goodies in small-label orders. Maybe I've been Pavlov'd from the Airheads that you get from ordering a Jeff Rosenstock tape from Polyvinyl, but I really love small gestures like that. I set the stickers aside and kept digging through the package, just to make sure that I didn't miss anything. I turned the package upside-down at the end to be 100% certain. Nothing else, cool.

I remember opening the Emma St. Clair tape for the first time. It was in one of those soft plastic tape cases, the ones that kinda eat the J-Card's edges a little bit when you close them. When I opened it, a small square of paper landed in my lap. I grabbed it and flipped it over. Scribbled on it in black marker was the phrase "This is the last tape. Treasure it." The tape was numbered, 13/25.

I didn't really think much of it--for all I knew, I had gotten really lucky and got the last tape from an album with a limited run. Donut Girl ended and I popped Sunflowers back into its case. "Time to try out Emma St. Clair," I thought. The album sounded incredible. I really do believe that bedroom pop was meant to be heard on cassette and I won't take any more of your time justifying it here. This sadcore tape especially sounded divine.

I remember falling in love with the Communist Sympathy series of songs on this tape immediately on my first listen. They were full of frustration and anxiety, but Emma's voice delivered the lines with a soothing cadence that made them seem almost comforting. I finished the Side A and blazed through Side B too. The J-Card notably left out the 10th song on the album. Cool, maybe it was meant to be a bonus track? I remember getting ready to hear "Sorry" before being completely blind-sided by the real bonus track.

YOU ARE OKAY

A monotone robotic voice began speaking to me through the Naxa, reminiscent of the text-to-speech on those clunky old Mac desktop computers.

"You are okay. I say it five times fast until the meaning separates from the syllables that are crawling over my lips. You are okay. I'll see you later this week. But I play pretend, you play dead. You are okay. I swear I won't touch you or look at you even when I'm supposed to. I am a responsible adult and I am lying to myself on the daily. I am eating all the details, dissecting every conversation we've ever had, breaking it down to the smallest molecules, the last atom of hydrogen in a nuclear reactor. Boom. Impact. You are okay. I say it slowly until it's a mantra, a prayer, I am begging you to believe me. You are okay. I won't see you when you get back, but I'll ask anyway. Same story. You are okay. I swear I'll let this go or even write it off as high-school bullshit. You are okay. You are a responsible adult and you are lying to yourself on the daily. You're eating up all the details. Acceptance is the first stage of recovery, but you're already on the edge. There's nowhere left to fall to. Boom. Impact."

I didn't really know how to react. It was unsettling, to say the least. I had no idea about the significance of that spoken-word at the time that I heard it. It was cryptic, and I remember thinking it was a cool idea to include at the end of a limited release.

The next few months dragged on in the way you'd expect a global pandemic to. I didn't revisit this tape much, but Communist Sympathy in Your Hometown was on a few of my playlists over that period of time. At this point, I was already deep into my current Monthly Playlist routine, and I remember In Your Hometown and In the Northern Orange County Area bouncing in-and-out of the rotation. When I find an artist with that much sticking power, I'll usually try to dig a bit deeper to find more of their work.

I returned to PNR's Bandcamp, this time determined to find more Emma St. Clair. I found her own personal Bandcamp, not tied to the label. She released a sequel to her self-titled album, but hadn't put out any new songs in awhile--bummer. Her Bandcamp linked to a few of her other Social Media accounts; Tumblr and Twitter were still actively available, while her Facebook page was a broken link at that point. I checked the Tumblr page first, thinking that this would be the place that I'd catch any new artistic endeavors. Maybe she was performing with a group or under a different name?

No dice. The last post was from years ago. Her Twitter account was the same story, no posts since July 22, 2016. Her real name was linked in these accounts, and was actually also listed on the tape as well; I just never really looked that close. Determined to find more music, I kept digging. I searched her real name on Google and found her Twitter again, her Tumblr, the Emma St. Clair Bandcamp, and then, the fourth result down, was this article from the Washington Post.

'Don't Let Me Die'

I dug into the article for awhile. I hadn't put the pieces together yet, but it didn't take long. You can read the article above if you'd like. If not, I'll summarize it here. Emma, 18 at the time, was kicked out of her house less than a year after releasing her self-titled album because she was in the thralls of addiction. She was sent to live with her boyfriend at the time, before returning home in early 2016 to seek help with recovery. Six months after, she was declared dead after an overdose on July 22nd, 2016. Earlier that day, she was posting about Pokemon Go on Twitter, and just as suddenly, she was gone.

There is a lot to be said about recovering from addiction, and I don't think I'm the person to say any of those things. I've battled with some smaller substances over the past few years, most predominantly alcoholism, but booze doesn't come with the same uncertainty that getting hooked on prescription medication or cocaine do. I can drink a handle of vodka, and I'll know that it's just vodka. You never truly know if your score is clean when you buy drugs.

I was reeling for a few days after finding all of this out. I've turned it over in my mind for almost 4 years at this point, not sure if I wanted to write about it. I hate the idea of trying to tack on an inspiring ending at the tail-end of this story, mostly because there is nothing inspirational about death. To Emma's friends and family, this is the worst thing that could've happened. She didn't want to be a martyr for a never-ending struggle against fentanyl, she just wanted to make music with her friends. She was sad, she was struggling, she was barely out of high-school. She didn't deserve any of this.

This tape has been devastating me for awhile now, but I wanted to share this story because I don't really know what treasuring the last tape really meant beyond telling people that Emma existed. She made amazing music and ran a DIY label with her friends. She pioneered sadcore in her small corner of the world in Orange County, CA, and lost her life too soon.

If you or a loved one is struggling with substance abuse, you can find the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website here or call the free, confidential hotline at 1-800-662-4357. You can also text your ZIP code to 435748 to find treatment centers near you.