Side projects are supposed to be fun. They're supposed to be reasons to fuck around -- chances for musicians to get away from the people they're usually working with and to get loose with a whole new group of people. They're supposed to be opportunities to explore a whole new genre, to try out ideas that didn't quite fit with the main band. But nobody told Cameron Boucher. Boucher also leads Sorority Noise, the melodically gut-scraping emo band whose 2015 album, Joy, Departed, was one of the most powerful things that's come out of that genre in the past decade or so. Joy, Departed was an album about drugs and recovery and death and loss. It was heavy. You might think that Boucher would get a little less heavy with his side-project band. You would be wrong. The first song on Slow Burn, the second album from Boucher's band Old Gray, is called "Pulpit," and it ends with these lines: "For the longest time, I contemplated death as the only escape / And the only way to make myself rid of the feelings I have left / I've lost too many friends to feel that way anymore / To know that my life is not a continuation of theirs / So I sit at home, and I waste away, and I grow tired of the things I love." So yeah. Boucher isn't having a lot of fun here.