Three Years On, kicklighter's "Isn't This So Fun?" Still Sounds Like the Future of Coastal Georgia Rock
Three years ago today, on July 28, 2023, three brothers from Woodbine, Georgia released a debut album with a question mark for a title and a wallop of a chip on its shoulder. kicklighter — siblings Baxter, Hunter and Asher — put out "Isn't This So Fun?", and the coastal-Georgia indie-rock scene has been quietly organizing itself around them ever since. On its anniversary, the record deserves another spin.
The origin story is the good kind of implausible. The band met producer Aaron Gillespie — the drummer and voice behind Underoath and The Almost, and a touring player for Paramore — while sharing a bill at a gig in Jacksonville. Gillespie ended up recording, mixing and producing the album. That is a serious pedigree for a trio of brothers from a Camden County town most Georgians could not find on a map, and it shows: "Isn't This So Fun?" is a dynamic, loud-then-tender record that starts in anger and works its way toward something like hope, built around processing loss. It is not beach music. It is the sound of young players who grew up near the beach and wanted more.
The market has been paying attention. At the Golden Isles Music Awards — the "Goldies" — kicklighter took Artist of the Year and Best Cover Art in February 2025 for their single "Common Sense" (released March 15, 2024), then returned in February 2026 to win Best Live Performance. Two years running, in other words, a room full of local players and judges has looked at the field and pointed at the Woodbine kids.
Why spotlight a three-year-old album instead of chasing a new release? Because in a small market, catalog is the scene's memory, and "Isn't This So Fun?" is fast becoming the record local musicians point newcomers toward when they want to prove the Golden Isles can produce more than competent cover bands. An album with national-caliber production, made by hometown players, that keeps winning regional hardware — that is the kind of artifact a scene builds an identity around.
If you have somehow missed them, the streaming links are one search away, and the live show — per the Goldies judges, anyway — is the real argument. Put the record on, then go find a gig. Isn't this so fun? Annoyingly, yes.
Sources: kicklighter Release Debut Album, "Isn't This So Fun" | Rock Da Fuq Out; kicklighter | Spotify; Goldies return for 4th annual music awards ceremony | The Brunswick News