Life’s Work: A Podcast About Laura Stevenson’s ‘Sit Resist‪'‬ Don Giovanni Records

This final episode discusses the lasting impact of Sit Resist, including on the songwriters that started up in its wake and how the album helped to widen the umbrella term “punk.” Stevie Knipe of Adult Mom and Lucy Dacus outline how Stevenson’s music...

On this week’s episode of “Life’s Work,” focus is placed on the songs that would make up Side B of Sit Resist. The second half of the album explores themes of depression, isolation, and fear of the unknown. Here we see the juxtaposition of heavy subject...

Episode 5 sees Stevenson and the band enter the studio to record Sit Resist, focusing on the songs that make up Side A of the album. A wide range of influences, aesthetics, and approaches - some specific to the early 21st century time period in...

Episode 4 covers the DIY scene of the late aughts and early 2010s, and Stevenson’s full-band performances with a revolving cast of accompanying musicians at Death By Audio, Silent Barn, and the annual Hillstock festival which bandmate Alex Billig...

Episode 3 takes a deeper dive into the writing and arranging process of the songs that would make up “Sit Resist”, as the primary contributors assemble in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn in late 2009 and early 2010. Also discussed are the earliest musical influences on Stevenson’s writing, which predate her experiences in the punk and ska scene: those being the Great American Songbook standards popular in the era of her musically-virtuosic grandparents. The arrangements of this pre-rock n’ roll period of popular music would inform Stevenson’s own rejection of modern, contemporary pop and rock song-structures. Interviews with Jeff Rosenstock, Mike Campbell, and Stevenson herself offer insight into their collective arrangement process. Also interviewed in this episode is solo artist and boygenius band member Lucy Dacus, who expounds on the profound early influence Stevenson’s music had on her as a burgeoning songwriter.

Episode 2 tells the story of Stevenson’s early days growing up feeling out of place, eventually finding comfort in the Long Island ska scene. It was there that she first met Jeff Rosenstock who would eventually recruit her to join his new band Bomb The...