I love record stores the way some people love churches. Respectfully and with the understanding that I will walk away with something I technically didn't need when I walk away. I collect vinyl, and there's a particular feeling I chase every time I open the door to Reckless Records here in Chicago: that dust and cardboard perfume and the possibility that my personality can be upgraded for the low low price of just $29.99.
During my hands-on preview of Wax Heads, I discovered that the indie story sim about managing a record store understands that feeling intimately. It loses it, and not only the aesthetic but also the social choreography.
Taste is currency
The game drops you into Repeater Records, a cozy punk maze of records, zines, posters, arcade cabinets and gossip. As the new kid in charge of making vinyl recommendations to customers, you get a mantra: the customer is never right, but you are. It's a blinkered inversion of retail logic, but it captures something true about record store culture. Your recommendations are equal parts taste and ego.
Your job is less of a salesperson and more of a music sommelier. The customers slip in like characters from a comic strip, each in search of the perfect slice. The tapes are all fictional; Mimi, the Scandinavian metal group Jarhead, Kerri Krow with her vocals that are just a toothbrush, but their album descriptions read like they were taken straight from the vocabulary of a real box digger: “sizzling fast verses”, “blending identity”, “oversized posturing”. It's the same kind of language I see on staff recommendation cards at Reckless. It's affectionate satire that can only come from people who have absolutely squabbled over B-sides before.
Each customer gives clues as to what they are after, sometimes obvious, like a die-hard Mimi superfan who very clearly wants nothing else. Other times they are slippery. Someone might ask for something “harmonic,” and you're forced to analyze whether that means lush indie pop or experimental jazz. There was one particularly clever scenario where a father holding his child's pile of toys is looking for something for himself, specifically something his child wouldn't like. The toys mirror discs in the store you absolutely should not recommend. It's funny and a little sad in that specific, grown-up way.
Wax Heads know that record stores were never just about music
The store itself is steeped in punk culture. Punk began in the 70s as a reaction to economic frustration and anti-establishment anger, and evolved into a do-it-yourself movement rooted in labor solidarity, feminism, and queer liberation. You can feel this line in the details of the store. There are “Unionize” posters on the walls, trans flag buttons and direct stabs at the patriarchy. It feels lived rather than performative, like a place where politics and music bleed into each other naturally. The art reflects this punk style in a sticker-like and lovingly hand-drawn way. It gives every album and customer a look like they could peel off the screen and stick to your laptop.
Between customers, you design flyers, organize bulletin boards and collect drinks from the bar. There are mini-movies about the staff and musicians, silly interjections between days, even a Tamagotchi embedded in the mix. These details are what make the store feel like a community rather than a puzzle box.
If I have one quibble, it's that some clues can be a little too vague. Even after combing through album descriptions, I sometimes felt like I was guessing instead of drawing conclusions. The game offers a useful dialogue tracker on your in-game phone, allowing you to revisit conversations if you missed something, but sometimes it still felt like there wasn't enough information.
What stays with me, however, are the glimpses of people's lives. I think of customer moments as a breakup hinted at in a single line, an obsession with fandom bordering on devotion, and helping a girl telegraph her crush to her crush. Music becomes the bridge. Helping someone find the right disc feels meaningful because it is in reality.
Every time I walk into a record store, I hunt for a moment of attunement when an album feels like it understands me better than I understand myself. Wax Heads recreates that feeling with so much affection. It knows that a record store is more than a store, it's a place where identity is negotiated in four-minute increments.
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