THiC/Photo: Brandon Mendoza
Roommates Micah Miller and Ehmed Nauman may no longer live in a house that creaks, but that hasn’t dampened their enthusiasm and musical productivity as the creative nexus behind Chicago band This House Is Creaking. Had I made a Top Ten list for 2025, I’m sure their second album, “I Want to Feel at Home Here,” self-released in July, 2025, would have shown up somewhere.
As Miller says now, “It makes it a little hard to listen to sometimes, going back, just emotionally, but I’m so proud of putting those feelings into words.” Nauman continues, “I didn’t think I would be a part of something so poignant, or be able to express and discover things about my insides like that album does in a poignant way.”
Miller and Nauman were never “just two guys with guitars.” If anything, they seem to be even less so on those nine songs, and more of the less (without subtracting any of the guttural impact) on their two most recent singles, released last fall. September’s addition to their oeuvre, “2 Lamp (lava lamp),” which at one moment sizzles on a fuzzy frying pan and at the next dives into a roaring fire of electronic bits and glitches. It’s as if the duo has determined that “turning it up to eleven” is too passé; it’s time to crank this song up to infinity.
“We wrote that song pretty early into moving into our new apartment, and we were thinking a lot about ‘new chapter’ stuff,” Miller says. Nauman continues, “The first two records were both written and recorded in our old apartment, and this was the first song we wrote in this apartment, and with that idea, there were pent-up, difficult feelings, given the circumstances at the time… I think moving is, in general, the start of a new period… Moving here, where we can live freely and comfortably, unlike the other apartment.” “I always like going back to the line, ‘Cleanse me, I’m making a change,'” says Miller, concluding that that is “the main thought process behind the writing of that song.”
Hopefully the lava lamp safely made the move with them to their most recent digs, in Albany Park, which THiC (pronounced like “thick” for short) now calls home base. It serves as a close commute for Miller, whose day job is at a local independent coffee shop, and Nauman, who does marketing via his computer. Both of them are glad for the flexibility they have in their positions, making it relatively easy to tour versus punching a clock in an office nine-to-five.
“2 Lamp (lava lamp)” single artwork
November’s single was “Something Else,” and I confessed that it successfully threw me for a loop. Miller begins with some contemplative lyrics, delivered in a flat and dour manner that echoes Sebadoh or even Lou Barlow’s duo Folk Implosion, before the guitars provide a rhythmic cliff, then a break, then… a farting sound, and audible laughter as the track coalesces and deconstructs, repeatedly from there, to mind-blowing sonic effect. That fart sound was a “whoopee cushion” that they had procured the day before, and the core duo are quick to shout out Peter Schultze and Hunter Borowick from fellow locals Tuff Sudz for collaborating with them on this single. Nauman credits Schultze in particular for coming up with the guitar riff, as the foursome were simply improvising in the THiC environs. Judging from what I’ve heard from Tuff Sudz, it seems like their funny bones may be contagious.
On their Bandcamp page, THiC says that “Something Else” is a song about “accepting mediocrity in the face of failure, even when you cannot figure out why it is you’ve failed, and trying to fix things that seem to have broken without understanding how they broke in the first place.” I feel like everyone has been to that movie—I know I have, far too many times.
Where do those singles fit in with the previous THiC music, and where will their music go next?
Miller and Nauman say that they have “a lot of music” either in progress or just waiting to land in the listeners’ ears. “A big practice of this band, I think,” Miller continues, “has been: ‘Don’t hyperfixate too hard, and delay, and make up excuses for not putting things out,’ which is something we both have done historically.” But in This House Is Creaking, the twosome have adapted a “devil may care” attitude, and Miller says now they let a song “be what it is, and let’s write the next song… There are so many songs to write.”
They promise something more than singles, but less than an album, coming out sometime in 2026. Clearly THiC has plenty of songs to come.
Up next, they are excited about their first time playing the Tomorrow Never Knows Festival, which is also This House Is Creaking’s first time playing Lincoln Hall. They’ll be opening for DIIV, about whom Nauman says they’ve probably been listening to “since, like middle school,” when Miller says he was sitting in the passenger seat of his sister’s Volvo, when she said, “You gotta check these guys out.” His reaction was, “Whoa, this is really fucking cool.”
Their excitement for the show is palpable, and This House Is Creaking is also “very excited” to have been asked to play the Chicago show for the Ground Control Touring abortion fund benefit at Empty Bottle on January 24. “It’s such an honor to be asked to be a part of something that is not only just a show but also politically relevant, and very much in line with the way we approach the world, and politics and everything in general.”
Saturday, January 17, This House Is Creaking plays Tomorrow Never Knows, opening for DIIV at Lincoln Hall, 2424 North Lincoln. Accessory is also on the bill. Doors at 7pm; show at 8pm. This performance is 18+, for more information and tickets, visit tnkfest.com.
Saturday, January 24, “Ground Control Touring Presents: Fourth Annual Abortion Access Benefit Series A Night of Music in Support of Abortion Funds, Community, and Bodily Autonomy,” at Empty Bottle, 1035 North Western. Doors: 8pm; show at 9pm. This performance is 21+. Lineup: Action/Adventure, Good Flying Birds, Mass Text, This House Is Creaking, Tobacco City. Hosted by Kenya Elan. For more information and tickets, here.
