On Summer's End With Queen of Jeans and Eliza & The Delusionals
It sounds like summer, and white guitars.
And by the time you read this, summer will be over—like, the season, as it is measured on the calendar. In recent years, and maybe in years passed, and I have simply forgotten, I have noticed that, despite whatever wishes you may hold, warmer, and at times, uncomfortable temperatures, can and often will hang on well beyond the first day of autumn.
By the time you read this, summer will have come to an end but for right now, from where I am sitting, it is the middle of August. The month, I suppose, where there is the promise of what is to come, when the days slowly and inevitably grow shorter, and there are hints of the chill in the air.
In that promise, though, there is a need for patience. Because even in the cooler air of an August morning, or evening, or when a cold front moves in, and temporarily pushes temperatures below 70 degrees for two or three days in a row, it is easy—all too easy, really, to get ahead of yourself. You get a small taste of what is to come. The promise. And you then wish for it to be, and sometimes dress for it to be, much cooler than it actually is.
By the time you read this, summer will have come to an end but for right now, from where I am sitting, it is the middle of August. Today, it was 78 degrees, at one point—warm, only a little uncomfortable, and I wore a sweatshirt. Because of that promise. Because yesterday it never got above 70. And you end up hanging onto that feeling, wishing to sustain at a time when it is not yet ready to be sustained.
The first summer I can remember feeling compelled to pick a song that I deemed to anyone who would listen to me as my “summertime jam” was in 2003—the summer between my second and third year in college. The song I picked is ultimately embarrassing to mention now, for myriad reasons, but I will confess it was “Shake Ya Tailfeather.” It isn’t a good song by any stretch of the imagination—that is not the point. And that is not why it is embarrassing to confess, now, 21 years after the fact.
It is mortifying, to confess, because it is performed by Sean “Puffy” Combs and Nelly—neither of whom time has been kind to, in terms of allegations brought forth about their character and their treatment of women.
The first summer I can remember feeling compelled to pick a song that I deemed as my “summertime jam” was in 2003—“Shake Ya Tailfeather” was a song written and recorded for the soundtrack to the film, Bad Boys II. The movie itself, like the song, is not good by any stretch of the imagination. I have only seen it once, that summer, and have not felt compelled to revisit since—from what I remember, arriving like eight years after the original (which is a guilty pleasure of mine if I am being open and honest) it failed to recapture the elements that had made the first Bad Boys movie as fun as it was.
You want a “summertime jam” to be fun. A song that is released, at some point in the year, during the warmer months—anything after August, regardless of how fun, or rollicking, or jubilant it might be, in tone, or aesthetic, it might be, is, at least for me, disqualified.
You want a “summertime jam” to be fun. To be inviting. Joyous. The kind of song that doesn’t embody the feeling of long, oppressively hot days, but of a kind of carefree sensation that, despite the heat, and the discomfort that often comes along with it, that summer sometimes still feels like at times. A youthful kind of freedom, or exuberance. A letting go. Giving in. Surrendering to something.
You want a “summertime jam” that you can ultimately surrender yourself to—the kind of song that, regardless of how insipid it might be, or how it might, eventually, age poorly for whatever reason, you want to move your body to it. Like, you cannot help yourself. You are compelled to do so. The song itself pulls that out of you. You can let go, or forget, for just a few moments, while something fun, infectious, and potentially cathartic in a way, rains down on you.
It sounds like summer and white guitars.
You can love a “summertime jam.” But. What I have found, over the last two decades, in sporadically finding a song that I can give that title to—not every year has had one—is that the song, after summer, and autumn, and into the winter, that song does not have to be your favorite of the year. It could be on the list, certainly, but you are, as the listener, entitled to find a favorite, for whatever reason, in something else.
The “summertime jam” is indicative of a feeling, certainly, but more than anything else it is representative of a moment in time.
Often, when I write about music, or think about music analytically, I tend to associate certain albums, or songs, or even artists, for any number of reasons, with specific times of the year—and perhaps it is because I am sentimental, or wistful person, by nature, but I find I hold more associations, musically, with the autumn, and the winter months.
Spring—I have so few albums, or songs, or artists, I connect with spring.
And there is summer. What does summer sound like. Or feel like. In a song. In an album. How wistful, or sentimental, do you wish to be. How do you capture, if you can, a kind of freedom, or a youthful exuberance. Of a surrender or giving in to how the music compels you to move.
What does summer sound like. Or feel like, In a song. In an album. How do you capture, if you can, that kind of exuberance or freedom or surrender. Is it in the music itself—built in, somehow, in the notes, and in the melodies, and in the arranging. In the instruments. The guitar tone. The way a song swoons, or sways.
Or is it as simple as when the album was released? The time of the year? When you first heard it, and then really opened yourself up to it, during the long, hot days, with the allure of the occasional, cooler evening and the promise—the assurance, of the crisp air that will come.
* * *
I’m not sure how long ago I had this thought—maybe last year, even. Or earlier this year. It was recent, regardless. And my thought was this—how were we, as a society, unable to do better than the word “horny” to describe sexual arousal.
It is embarrassing, honestly, to tell someone you are “feeling horny,” and it does, at least for me, and perhaps for you, as well, if you are of a very specific age, bring to mind Mike Meyers yelling, through an obnoxious English accent, “Do I make you horny, baby!”—one of the charming catchphrases from the Austin Powers films he starred in.
It is embarrassing, honestly, to tell someone you are “feeling horny.” It feels like it should be accompanied by a nervous, middle-school snicker—and it feels like there should be other words. Better. More articulate. Less cringey. That we can use, to describe, when we are in a state of sexual arousal or excitement.
And, I mean, there are better words. Certainly. But we, colloquially speaking, seem to return to the word “horny.”
“Sexual Arousal Hangover,” though, does not roll off the tongue, exactly, especially if you are using the phrase within the context of a shout-along chorus of a pop song.
“I get a horny hangover every time you cross my mind,” Miriam Devora sings in a way that is somehow both straight-faced and playful. “I know that I owe myself more than this when I slip,” she continues. “I’m still trying, ‘cause I don’t want you, and I can't stand you.”
But, like so many bands, or artists, that are put on my radar, I am unable to recall how I first heard of Queen of Jeans—was “Horny Hangover” featured on a Spotify curated and recommended mix that I listened to? Or, as so often is the case, did I see something about the band on Twitter?
A long featured review of All Again, on Stereogum, during the week the album was released, certainly caught my attention—and, of course, an alliterative song title with the word “horny” is also excellent for attracting the attention of potential listeners.
As is the song itself, when you sit down with it—it is a slice not what of Queen of Jeans do the “best,” but what they do that makes All Again such thoughtful and wildly fun album from beginning to end. Bright and blistering, “Horny Hangover” is one of a handful of songs included on the record that treads this line of being an infectiously writing and structured pop song that structured around brash, or bombastic, or even at times, snarling electric guitars.
Like a number of other similarly minded groups that find the space between shimmering pop music and “indie rock” aesthetics—“Bubble Grunge,” is the theoretical genre that Spotify would certainly classify the band as on your year-end Wrapped—Queen of Jeans are more than a group that is able to, seemingly effortlessly, conjure catchy and anthemic guitar-driven tunes. What is most impressive about All Again, aside from the cyclical nature it ends, and then begins, within (calling to mind the way Death Cab For Cutie’s Trasatlanticism ends and begins), is how introspective and dreamy it can be—a huge, regularly dazzling statement, occupying the space in the convergence of the swooning and soaring, and lyrically, is often from within the collision of lust and longing.
*
In writing about music, I will regularly describe an album as being thoughtful and intelligent—those are different things, however, and an album can be both, yes, as is the case with All Again. It is a thoughtful album, the longer you sit with it, and appreciate the observations and musings that Devora makes in her writing—that place where a sense of longing, and a feeling of lust, have blurred together into what could be best described as a need. But there is a poignancy, of course, or a great depth, in that need.
All Again is also an intelligent album, because of how the songs are arranged—with the group working to find a balance between tension and release. It is an album, sonically, that does play its hand in how it wishes to build toward something within the first three songs, and really, the first three songs on the album exemplify the dynamism Queen of Jeans have. They can do slow burning and swooning, they can do biting and bombastic, and they can continually shift a song, pushing it further and further out until it explodes in an absolutely dazzling sense of the word.
The third track, “Karaoke,” is where you hear that shift, with the band gradually working through the verses, arriving at what is commonly referred to as a “pre-chorus,” where there is a very deliberate build-up until the shimmering, soaring, and infectious melody of the chorus.
Too often I have written about the difference between “love songs,” and songs that are about love—all of the facets that come with loving another person. A “love song” implies the best parts, or the early stages of something; songs that are about love can be about that, yes, certainly, but they can also be about the challenges, of when someone is difficult to love, or, in the case of “Karaoke,” when a relationship is over, and the song’s protagonist is search of something to distract.
The arranging of “Karaoke” works in tandem with Devora’s lyricism—in the nerves, and melancholy depicted in the opening verse, she’s accompanied by the clattering of the hi-hat cymbal and the sharp pinging of the snare drum, and jittery, tentative, and muted guitar string plucks, all of which begins to open up wider, and wider, in that aforementioned “pre-chorus” build-up, making way for the emotions to come pouring out, and the spirits of the song to lift to enormous, towering, and glistening heights.
“I sang karaoke at the bar so I wouldn’t have to wonder where you are and what I lost,” Devora begins with slight trepidation in her voice. “I looked around at the crowd—it took me half the song to figure out the mic was off,” she continues, with just the slightest wink, or smirk, to the listener at the misfortune in her anecdote.
The build-up, leading to when the song really does take off, involves a kind of rumination—“I’d been careful on my own,” she observes. “Now I’m not always so careful on my own…,” she continues with the band slamming down on the notes, growing in intensity and volume behind her. And this section, leading into the chorus, does this songwriting trick where one of the lines is pulled and stretched into the start of the next one in, like, a very anatomic, exciting way. It’s impressive—the kind of jolting exuberance in a song that makes you want to shout along, regardless of how many times you may have heard it.
“And I just thought I’d be much,” Devora sings before taking a huge breath in. “Better off this time—I felt better in my mind,” she belts out while the arranging behind her ascends and shimmers, leading up to the conceit of the song, which is, of course, a song that is about love—and here, it is about that need for another person, even if the relationship, as depicted in the song, seemingly has come to an end.
“No matter what I try, I just work better with you in my mind,” she confesses before the song resets and finds itself back to the jittery exposition of the second verse. “The cart’s lighter at the grocery store,” Devora explains, before the anecdote here takes a surprisingly darker turn. “I can’t deal with people anymore. I swear some guy in an aisle yelled ‘Are you fucking crazy?,’” she recalled before hitting the punchline. “Said, ‘Do you wanna find out, baby?’”
Even in the balance of tension and release, with the band working to build “Karaoke” up and then naturally find where it needs to be pulled back in, there is an unrelenting nature to it, simply because there is a lot happening—there are the infectious and large scale melodies of the chorus itself as well the moments leading up to it. But. There is also a bridge section, that introduces additional ideas into the song, both musically, as well as lyrically, with Devora revealing slightly more about this growing, urgent need for the off-stage antagonist in the song.
“When I fixate on my flaws, you build me up,” she exclaims near the end. “We watch them fall…I want you to hold me ’til I break them all.”
*
In the way it is structured, All Again turns itself a little more inward, after the growing bombast and excitement of “Horny Hangover” and “Karaoke,” being sequenced back to back—receding in its enthusiasm on “Enough to Go Around,” before it slowly builds itself back up again, in the swooning, and swaying “Neighbors.”
Like the bright, and big moments on the record, swooning and swaying, at a mid-tempo, is the kind of thing that Queen of Jeans does extremely well—it is the sound they lean further into on the album’s second half, tipping their hat, perhaps unintentionally, to a kind of Brit Pop grandeur from the mid-1990s, and certainly to specific songs from the canon of the group The Sundays.
“Neighbors” has a gentleness to it, as it tumbles forward in its momentum, and not that there is, like, an edge, exactly, to a lot of the music on All Again, but it does have a little less of the ferocity, or brashness, that is hinted at in other places. The percussion is steady and does quite literally tumble forward in its progression, along with big, airy strums of the acoustic guitar and jangly, shimmery riffs played on the electric guitar that floats on top of it all.
And I did describe “Karaoke” as unrelenting, because of the way it continues to push itself into different places, and adopts different melodies. I would argue that a song like “Neighbors” is also unrelenting but in a much different way—it is consistent, rarely if ever breaking from the rhythm and tone that it creates from the moment it begins.
“Neighbors,” is, too, a song that is about love, but it, too, like a number of the other songs included on the album, is not a “love song.” It comes from a place of nervousness—not from the beginning of a relationship, or the difficult aftermath, but from a place of awkward and potentially unspoken tension occurring after a romantic connection, of some kind, has taken place.
There’s a sense of urgency, and worry, in Devora’s voice—it’s gorgeous, and lilts where it needs to, weaving itself in and out of the dreamy, swooning instrumentation underneath. But even in that pleasantness, you can hear the visceral pleading for assurance.
Set against the backdrop of neighbors embroiled in a days long fight who do, eventually, reconcile near the end of the song, the strain that is central to the narrative is in the anxiousness that Devora, as protagonist, is experiencing.
“You are spacing out, quietly lost in something,” she observes in the moments leading up to the chorus. “What’s it all about? I get weird when we stop talking.”
Later, after the second verse, she manages to work just a small amount of humor in, even though there is still the seriousness of the uncertainty hanging over her. “You are on a jog—thought it’d help you clear your mind from a lifelong fog,” she muses, then adding, “While I just live in mine all the time.”
The pleading, and immediacy, of “Neighbors” comes in the chorus—when the swooning, and swaying feeling that the song has worked to create does build just a little, ascending thanks to the higher notes that Devora carries. “You know me,” she assures. “I’m not here to tie you down, make you wait, promise you a million things,” she continues, urgently. “I want it clear, you still feel like we’re okay—like there’s no change.”
Not that All Again is an album that is in search of resolution, or finding answers to difficult questions, and there are places, of course, where the collision of a lustiness and of longing result in something that is a little more hopeful, or if anything, less daunting. “Neighbors,” though, is not one of those places, because even with the desperation that continues to increase, for assurance or a kind of calming, from this off-stage character within the narrative, Devora does not ultimately receive that before the song comes to an end.
*
Too often, within the last few years, I reference, when I write about pop music, the idea of “The Kingdom of Desire.” It’s something that Hanif Abdurraqib writes about in an essay w/r/t Carly Rae Jepsen, and about the sense of longing in her songwriting—there is always a want, and a chase. The want is just out of reach, for whatever reason, and her songs, or at least a bulk of her canonical works, take place within that space. Either the before, or the after, and rarely during.
She’s either recovering from heartbreak, and we see her, as the narrator, in the wake of a relationship’s demise. Or, a romantic entanglement is on the cusp. And we are taking along just up to a point.
It is, in terms of creating a narrative, a fascinating device, and it often makes for exciting and genuinely interesting pop music. And it is something that I look for outside of an artist like Jepsen—it is, of course, something that you can hear throughout the bold and often shimmering All Again.
I’m not sure how long ago I had this thought—maybe last year, even. Or earlier this year. It was a recent though, regardless. And it was this—how were we, as a society, unable to better than the word “horny” to describe sexual arousal.
There are other words, of course. Lusty. Thirsty. There are other descriptors, that are clunky. Turned on. In the mood. But we have somehow landed on “horny.” It’s embarrassing, honestly, to tell someone that you are “feeling horny,” and for as embarrassing as it is, it is a word we, as a society that is often feeling lusty and thirsty or is often feeling sexually aroused, fall back onto using.
And I mean here, within the context of a song called “Horny Hangover,” regardless of how I may, personally, feel about the word, it works. And it works well. Thankfully.
I don’t know if some of the songs on All Again were written with the intention of being a single, or of being exponentially more accessible, but if any of them were, a song like “Horny Hangover,” complete with that title designed to get your attention, or at least make you do a double take, is one of those songs, undoubtedly.
“Horny Hangover” wastes no time, and like the band does in other places on All Again, it is unrelenting in how it is structured, from the moment that all the instruments come, quite literally, slamming down on the first note, as a means of punctuating a specific word within the extremely vivid opening line.
“Let’s start at the top,” Devora begins, casually, then through gritted teeth as the tale actually begins. “I fell desperately in love with someone I knew was bound to fuck me up.”
Placed second in the album’s sequencing, “Horny Hangover” is, tonally, a sharp juxtaposition from the moody, slow-burning ache of All Again’s opening track, “All My Friends,” and the two of them, back to back like that, at the top of the album, really does an incredible job of showing the range that the band has—“Horny Hangover” should leave no question of just how big, and how bright of a pop song Queen of Jeans are capable of putting together, seemingly with ease.
Lyrically, Devora effectively blends the imagery of the overconsumption of alcohol and how rotten you certainly will feel in the morning, with the confusing sentiments—lust, and regret, that linger in the aftermath of a relationship’s presumably tumultuous demise.
“This drink in my hand—my pride’s devastatingly thin,” she confesses in the moments that lead up to the gigantic chorus. “Another shot to soothe my head—all I can say is I get a horny hangover every time you cross my mind.”
Devora’s narrative becomes more humbling, as well, or self-deprecating, the further into the song we go after she details a dreadful night out. “Spent the better part of an hour trapped by the saddest lesbian crying it out there on the dance floor,” she recalls. “Describing your mouth, she said, ‘I think I know who you’re talking about.’”
“That’s when it sinks in,” Devora continues, with the narrative turning not into a darker place, but one that, in its stark realization, provides a sharp contrast to the dazzling enormity of the arranging. “I’m one more person on your list. You ever mix up all our faces, loading up those bases?”
There is a kind of resignation implied within the lyrics, especially near the end, to “Horny Hangover”—“I know that I owe myself more than this, but fuck it, I’m still trying,” Devora sings, laughing just a little bit, with a knowing wink to the listener. The song concludes with the repetition of two lines, like a mantra, that is used throughout in the ascendant chorus—“I don’t want you and I can’t stand you,” but even in that kind of declaration, there is also a hint that it is also an attempt to convince yourself of something that you are, perhaps, simply not in a position to accept, or make the space for.
There is the resignation that the hangover, however “horny” it may or not be, is the pain, or discomfort that we know, and even when it is uncomfortable, there is still some kind of solace, or comfort, in what we know, or what is familiar, rather than an unknown, or in the case of the song’s narrative, a true letting go.
*
One of the ways that All Again is such an intelligent listen from beginning to end is how well structured it is. Given the amount of shimmer and bombast to be found across the entirety of the record, Queen of Jeans, working closely with producer Will Yip, who is credited as engineering and mixing the album as well, structures the record so the staggeringly enormous moments are well placed throughout, giving the experience a little bit of a jolt, or some excitement, after moments where it has taken a more somber, or inward turn.
Songs like “Horny Hangover” and “Karaoke” are huge, yes, and also very accessible and welcoming in their pop sensibilities—that is not to say that other moments on the album are less accessible, but it is to say that there are places within the second half to All Again that the group leans into just a little bit more of an angsty “alternative rock” sound that treads the line between the melodic and the melancholic.
The hush that “Books in Bed” begins with is not misdirection, but it is not indicative of the cathartic heights that the group brings the song after the first, like, 25 seconds, giving way to that line Queen of Jeans walks—the emotional stakes are huge, the melodies are still infectious, but there is a downcast nature to it all as it tumbles and swirls around in a beautiful kind of musical slow motion.
As they are, musically, in other places on the record, “Books in Bed” has a relentless nature to the way it unfolds—the guitar strums are huge, and the percussion rattles more than it tumbles, as it does elsewhere. It all has a very Brit Pop kind of feeling to it—with the enthusiastic bashing away receding slightly in its intensity during the verses, then kicking it back into the place where it is, honestly, just astonishingly powerful to hear during the howling choruses.
As a lyricist, Devora can be direct, or at least less concerned with stretching a metaphor, in other places on All Again, but when she does opt to write within a specific kind of conceit as a means of exploring an idea, it works incredibly well. Like the morning after a night of drinking too much that she uses to unpack the feelings she is still grappling with in “Horny Hangover,”
“Books in Bed,” hinging on the payoff of the chorus, takes the aftermath of a breakup—sorrowful, rather than feeling confused and angry, and sets it to the imagery of a cluttered bedroom that, within the course of the song, feels it is being pulled apart in an extraordinarily cinematic fashion.
“All these boxes piled up on the floor—carry what we’ll leave unsaid,” Devora begins, hesitantly, in the quiet introduction to the song. “There’s no use trying anymore.”
The depiction of this breakup grows more bleak, or dire, within the second verse. “Check the stove and lock up all the doors. They said it wouldn’t hurt so bad,” she laments, in a line that does become imperative to the song later on. “There’s no use trying anymore.”
And for as dark lyricism, it doesn’t get dressed up, exactly, by the song’s soaring melodies and unrelenting nature, but it is, like, entirely too easy to get lost in the feeling of “Books in Bed”—it is a song that is, in a sense, begging you to let go, or give in. Not to a moment much larger than yourself, but just to sit with it, or make space for it, as it were—the raw emotions that undulate throughout.
The giving in, also, comes in the enormity of the chorus. “I feel the bottom falling out from my bed,” Devora shouts over the torrential downpour of guitars and thundering percussion. “From holding it all inside of my head. Wishing that you were here instead of all these books I’ve read to fall asleep to dreams I won’t regret.”
“Books in Bed” is one of the largest, in scope, songs on All Again, and it is certainly amongst the most musically powerful just in how it plays with tone and emotion—there is a specific moment, though. And, I mean, certainly there are a number of moments on this album that do make you a believer, or a faithful, of Queen of Jeans. Like, even when the pacing slows down a little here and there, it is still a wildly impressive album from a band that has continued to grow and mature into their sound since forming roughly a decade ago.
That moment, though, in this song—the kind of moment that does knock the wind out of you slightly, comes after the growing intensity of the bridge, when the music drops out, just briefly, and is replaced with a squall of feedback as Devora, and the rest of the band, yell, “They said it wouldn’t hurt so bad,” prior to everything rushing back in for a final, gasping chorus.
*
Nearly a year ago, in wondering how to find a way in to writing about Olivia Rodrigo’s second album, Guts, I thought about if there is a place for me, a man, who at the time of the album’s release, had recently turned 40, in the audience for an artist who is making music for an entirely different, and much much younger, demographic.
There is. I mean, I think there is. I like to think there is. To the extent that there can be.
Something else that I gave a lot of consideration to when I was sitting down with Guts, was the conceit of the album’s fuzzed out, writhing second single, “Bad Idea, Right?,” where Rodrigo flirts with the idea of reconnecting with an ex for the night. The song, structurally, is barely able to remain in one place for very long, and in the moments leading up to the explosive chorus, Rodrigo chants, “Seeing you tonight is a bad idea, right?,” with her voice growing more and more manic and intense with each utterance—delivered in a way that implies she is, more than anything, attempting to convince herself that it is, in fact, not that bad of an idea.
She punctuates that, in a little smirk to the listener, by whispering, in the briefest fragment of silence, “Fuck it—it’s fine.”
Something else that I gave a lot of consideration to when I was sitting down with Guts was that we have all had, at some point in our lives, a “Fuck it—it’s fine” kind of moment. A choice we knowingly make, and in knowingly making it, understand that it might, in fact, not be the best choice, or may cause regret, or other uncomfortable consequences. But we say fuck it. It’s fine. In the moment. The moment you make the choice to, perhaps, lose yourself to someone or something, the jolt of electricity surging through you.
I tell you all of that to tell you this—for as much of All Again operates from a kind of Kingdom of Desire-adjacent songwriting, just in terms of what Queen of Jeans’ principal lyricist, Miriam Devora depicts in her narratives, there are moments where she does take us elsewhere—places where there is still very much an intersection of lust and longing and a little bit of sadness.
One of the album’s finest moments, tucked away near the end of All Again, the swooning, theatrical, urgent, and lusty “Go Down Easy” is a place where a sense of yearning, a burning desire, and the confusion that sometimes comes with a surrender, all tumble and collide into something otherworldly in how gorgeous it all sounds.
God damn you, and I mean it.
What makes a song genuinely interesting? Or, rather, so compelling that it grabs your attention during the initial listen. Is it the melody, or the instrumentation it uses? Is it the way it positions itself allowing for a give and take of dynamics in sound or intensity? Is it a voice you hear? Or the words that are being relayed by the voice?
“Go Down Easy” is not as relentless its arranging as Queen of Jeans can be in other places on All Again. Or, I guess, it is not as relentless from beginning to end—it does begin quietly, and then continue to simmer, leading up to the huge moments that are unrelenting yes but also are a kind of breathtaking, swooning, indie rock grandeur.
What makes a song genuinely interesting? Or, rather, so compelling that it grabs your attention during the initial listen? Is it a perfect opening line? It often can be. Which is what “Go Down Easy” has. Devora wastes no time, sounding exasperated in the opening seconds of the song while uttering the phrase, “God damn you, and I mean it,” while a little shimmer of an electric guitar can be heard twinkling underneath.
“Never should have let you in,” she continues. “It’s like I’m seventeen with all these feelings running ‘round in my head again.”
There is a breathlessness to the way that Devora, then, lures us into the larger narrative of “Go Down Easy”—fragmented, yes, as it unfolds, but also very vivid in the moment it portrays. “She calls me up when she’s too drunk,” she begins. “Says I need to pick her up. So I sped on over to be near her—I’m not a hero,” she specifies. “I’m not her hero.”
“I’m driving home, she shouts ‘no,’” the story continues. “Smiles, and says to take it slow. Then her face grows colder, pull onto the shoulder, we both get out, kisses my mouth and I—,” and it is of course, here where the band does the thing that they do throughout All Again, where there is this overlap, or carrying, of an idea, or phrase, from a portion of the song, into the chorus.
Here, the chorus is the admission that Devora, in fact, goes down easy—unable to resist sinking into the embrace and of an intimacy that seems both unexpected and not.
The portrait of the tempestuous nature of the relationship continues well into the second verse—still detailed in a way that is poetic in that it just gives us enough to build a larger world around. “First try harder, show you love her,” Devora proclaims. “Forgive her when she finds another way to hurt you, cause you sorrow, it’ll all blow over—you’ll see, tomorrow, when she comes over, leans in closer, reaches out, kisses my mouth, and I go down easy.”
For as caught up in this moment, or situation, as Devora trepidatiously is, she does return to the feeling of frustration, and begins to repeat the opening line of the song, as a means of reassurance to herself, before arriving at the bridge. “And you know your smile could tear me in two, but I won’t let you,” she professes. “Even if you had one last excuse, I won’t go down easy.”
There is a theatricality to the swooning, grand nature of “Go Down Easy,” and yes, there are certainly big, swoony moments elsewhere on All Again, but there is something about the glistening, slow-motion beauty of this one—or maybe it is just that the stakes seem just as little bit higher in Devora’s lyricism, that propels it forward in a way that is more compelling, and in the material itself, is more accessible or relatable in terms of a small reflection of the human condition where we have all, more or less, been on the cusp of a “Fuck it, it’s fine” moment and had the decision to make.
*
No one sees me like you see me, and I’m convinced without your voice, I’d float away
For a number of years now, I have been fascinated with the idea of a convergence—the idea, however nebulous or specific you wish for it to be, of two things that are not totally dissimilar, but dissimilar enough, slowly closing in on one another. And I think, more than anything, what is most compelling to me is what occurs in the middle of that convergence. The space where those two things begin to overlap.
It maybe should not have been a surprise to me, but it was brought to my attention that I am extremely earnest and sentimental. It’s just my nature, though I think that, as I age, and my edges, in some regard, do begin to soften, my sentimentality and earnestness has grown. So in saying it is my nature, what I am acknowledging is that it is not the nature of everyone to be as earnest or as sentimental as I often am, which is also surprising, at least to me.
I tell you all of that to tell you this—there is a difference between romance, or being “romantic,” and romanticism.
I had never really considered it before, though perhaps I should have, given my penchant for sentimentality and earnestness, and for affection, and for the fascination I have with a convergence. The difference, or at least pointing out that there is, in fact, a difference, is referenced in the press materials for Hana Vu’s blistering Romanticism, written by Kyle Lucia Wu, author of the novel Win Me Something.
“Romanticism does have less in common with lovetorn ballads than it does with 1700s Europe, when artists called for heightened emotion over argued reason, and sensory details over logical ones.”
And there is a place where romanticism, and romance, or being “romantic,” do inevitably converge.
There are, of course, moments of absolute brilliance throughout All Again, with Queen of Jeans grabbing a hold of us as listeners and taking us all the way to the top of the towering heights that some of these songs climb to, with ease, in their ambitious pop sensibilities. The finest moments, though, or at least the ones for me that resonate the most, are the ones that, yes, are still rather infectiously written and structured, but are also the ones that are the most thoughtful or introspective of their writing.
There is a tenderness that All Again opens up with, on the swirling, sentimental, and absolutely gorgeous “All My Friends,” which is a place where, once it opens itself up, becomes a place for that convergence. The idea of romanticism, in how the song’s ideas are presented, and or being “romantic,” because it is a small, beautiful glimpse into a side of Devora’s songwriting that we have not heard much of, if any at all, in this collection of songs.
“All My Friends” begins quietly. Not, like, whisper quiet. But in a hush, with slow, dreamy guitars glistening, and the delicate voice of Devora floating in on top of them. And I think something that I admire most about the song, outside of the sentimentality and romanticism of the lyrics, is how it does really take its time. Unlike the bombast of the more straightforward “pop” songs on All Again, “All My Friends” is a smolder, with the band being very deliberate in when all of the instrumentation comes in, and the kind of restraint they use in their playing—nearly all tension with little release, honestly, in how the song could, truly, get away from Queen of Jeans, in terms of its intensity and ascendancy, but it remains in a shimmering holding pattern that does find its way into a slight, but undeniable groove.
And I have said, of course, that there is a difference between a “love song,” and a song that is about love—both the good and the bad things that come along with caring for another person so unabashedly, and there is of course, like all things, a place where those two things do slowly converge upon one another. All Again, as a whole, does operate from within the “Kingdom of Desire” in the sense that it is full of longing, and is also a little lusty, and regularly uncertain what to make of both of those feelings at once. But in the slow burning of the opening track, Devora and Queen of Jeans are working from a place of love, or a fondness and sentimentality that I do find so compelling, and completely identifiable.
It is the most personal, or at least most revealing song on the record in what it depicts about the connection between two people, and the kind of yearning that does occur when you are not physically near them.
“Thought I’d call tonight—hear how you’re dealing,” Devora begins in a delicate range. “Philly is freezing. I’m trying to play,” she continues. “The words aren’t there yet, but somehow it’s healing.”
And it is within the second verse of the song, before the rest of the band comes slowly tumbling in to punctuate the final lines, leading into the chorus, where we do begin to understand the dynamic between her, and this off-stage character, a little bit more—or at least have a better concept of the depth in connection, and the kind of earnestness and sentimentality, and romantic nature is present.
“Which city are you in? I’ll read all about it—alien sightings, tourist spots on the bay,” she says calmly, before delivering the kind of line that is the most earnest, and even saccharine of the album, and perhaps in the hands of a less confident artist, it wouldn’t work the way it does here—just the right time and right place to make this kind of heartfelt admission, with the promise of the rest of the band’s swirling instrumentation waiting on the other side.
“No one sees me like you see me and, I’m convinced without your voice I’d float away.”
A majority of the rest of “All My Friends” is based around the reputation and melody of the titular phrase—“All my friends around me,” Devora explains, before adding, “But I’m not home.” And it is much later, toward the conclusion of the song, that the thought is completed, and the romantic nature, and romanticism, or sentimentality of the song, is fully revealed to us as listeners. It might be, given the tone of the song, a little expected or predictable, but, again, the gentle swooning and swaying nature of the arranging, and the fragile vocals of Devora make it so it does really work and is truly believable by the time it all comes into focus.
“All my friends around me, but I’m not home ’til I’m alone,” she confesses. “With you.”
“All My Friends” is not the kind of song that is looking for resolve, really, as it gently finds it way to a reprise of the first verse, and concludes. The resolution, then, I suppose comes in the act of Devora being, eventually, reunited with the object of her affection. And for all of the tumult that is depicted in All Again, and the heartbreak that does seem to come, or is present in the narrative of the album, this is, like, a moment that is both beautiful and offers just the brief flicker of optimism.
All Again ends with what is more or less a title track, but also an epilogue, of sorts, to the album. At less than a minute, and barely rising above a whisper, “Do It All Again,” with the muffled guitar strums and atmospheric noise that does connect it seamlessly right back to the opening moments of “All My Friends,” features one line, repeated three times. “If I got to do it all again, I’d find you there, like I did back then.”
There, too, I suppose, is a sliver of optimism, or at least a kind of hopeful sentiment—and I am uncertain of course how much this line, and this epilogue are intended to tie back to some of the more difficult depictions of romance found on the album, but it does, as much as it can, attempt to reconcile with them in a thoughtful, concise way, regardless.
All Again is, even when it slows in its momentum, is an album that hardly, if ever, truly falters—an enormous, technicolor, fully realized statement from a band that is inherently still continuing to grow, that carefully balances itself between full-on guitar-driven pop music and melodic “indie,” and does it with a thoughtful, self-deprecating, admirable grace.
* * *
It sounds like summer and white guitars.
And by the time you are reading this, summer will be over. Like, the season, as it is measured on the calendar. But. As I have found, in recent years—last year, specifically, I am remembering that it was insufferably hot on October 1st—that despite whatever wishes you may hold, the warmer temperatures can and will hang on well beyond the first day of autumn.
By the time you read this, summer will have come to an end. But for right now it is still holding on. There is the promise, though, as this month fades. From where I am sitting now, the Minnesota State Fair is on the horizon, which is, as I have come to understand, a kind of last gasp of summer.
I was at a small gathering the other evening, and one of the hosts of the event, within the context of what she was saying, lamented, “Summer’s over, kids.” I quickly responded with, “Thank goodness,” which, as the looks of disdain I received from the others at this event conveyed to me, was not the wrong answer, exactly, but perhaps the wrong answer to give in this setting.
There are people who enjoy the longer days, and the pacing of the summer months. There is, maybe, less responsibility for them. Or they, for whatever reason, may thrive in the warmer climate—finding comfort in the extreme heat of the sun or the way the air hangs in the humidity.
There is the promise, though. The days slowly and inevitably growing shorter. The hints of a chill in the air. But in that promise, there is, of course, the need for patience.
It sounds like summer and white guitars.
What does summer sound like. Or feel like. In a song. In an album. How wistful, or sentimental, do you wish to be. There is a kind of freedom that I think, if the dirty looks I was given at the recent social gathering I attended when I expressed a little too much excitement for summer’s imminent end, that people still associate with the season, regardless of how many years removed from a “summer break they might be.
There is a youthful exuberance. That often shimmers, or glistens. What does summer sound like like? It somehow manages to capture that kind of freedom, and that wistfulness. A kind of endlessness that you know does inevitably end.
* * *
My best friend and I, sometimes, wonder if we would have gotten along as well as do now if we would have met one another under different circumstances or had met at another point in our lives.
There is, of course, the part of me that likes to believe that we would have—though what I understand, in being as self-aware as I have become in more recent years, is that she probably would have found me to be insufferable. And if not insufferable, perhaps much less endearing than I am today, and have been since we met in a book club a little over two years ago.
“I used to be way more intense,” I told her, to which she pointed out that I am, in fact, still rather intense.
Which, she explained, is okay—it’s endearing, up until it isn’t.
I think what I was trying to say, though, in describing myself as being “way more intense,” and I have, also, just phrased it this way, is that I, reflectively, used to be way more insufferable. I’d like to think that I am less so, now. Though there are days where I am uncertain.
And I tell you all of that to tell you this—something that I struggle with, still, which does ultimately impact how I listen to, and how I write about, pop music is that I take myself too seriously. I would like to think that, like being less intense or less insufferable, finding a better sense of humor about myself is something I have been slowly working toward, but I am by no means there.
Something that my best friend has taught me, during the course of getting to know one another, and both celebrating where we are similar, but also respecting where we are different, is how to appreciate music that is, what she has described to me, more “vibe based.”
Because, and I think that I have written about this before—not everything has to be as analytical as I make it, in listening. I don’t, on the page, and in my life, have to take everything so seriously.
And yet I do.
And I tell you all of that to tell you this—Make It Feel Like A Garden, the second full-length album from the Australian trio Eliza and The Delusionals, is both a “vibe-based” listen, and it is not. It is not in the sense that the longer you do spend with it, there is quite a bit to unpack and process from the lyric writing of the band’s namesake, singer Eliza Klatt.
But. Here’s the thing.
The album—like, nearly every song on it, does the songwriting trick, or technique, or whatever you wish to call it, that I have become fascinated with recently, and am always trying to identify, where a song can have bleak, or melancholic lyrics, but musically, it is dressed up, or infectiously written and structured, or in the case of Make It Feel Like A Garden, where the songs catapult themselves into absolutely towering heights of glistening pop bombast, that in being dressed up and infectious in structure, it distracts you enough so that you do not realize, for many listens, just how dark of a song it actually is.
It’s impressive the first time it happens, early in the album’s first side. And it is still impressive—even more so, maybe, because they are able to sustain this kind of enthusiasm for that long, when it happens towards the end of the second side. And regardless of stark or somber of a turn the lyrics might take, the song itself, as a whole, not only beckons you, but commands you, to move your body in a moment of honest jubilation.
*
In terms of how big the group wishes to make many of these songs, Eliza and The Delusionals do not waste any time at all, playing their hand by the time the first chorus arrives in the titular track, not exactly working from within a “quiet/loud/quiet” structure for the song, but definitely giving in to the extremes one could take the notion of tension and release.
And, of course, the conceit of this—and, if you will allow me, close to 9,000 words in, and just beginning to talk about an additional album, to break the fourth wall and address you, the reader, directly, was to talk about two albums that came out relatively close together, that are different, certainly, but similar enough in places that it was worth the effort to talk about them both within the same breath.
The thing about Eliza and The Delusionals—specifically here, on Make It Feel Like A Garden, is that the band doesn’t transcend the ability to be classified within a genre or a sound, per se, but they to ascend well beyond what one might expect, or anticipate, from said genre. It is a pop record, yes. But it is also bigger and brighter and more infectious in its melodies than you can comprehend. There is a dreamy quality to much of the music, certainly, but in their hands, it sways and swoons and shimmers with a more focused intensity.
It’s an album that, by the end, has made some stark or at least more inward or personals observations with its lyrics, but it is also n album that is balances itself on the idea of having fun. The band, in many of these songs, sound like they are having the time of their lives, and in turn, wish for you to do the same as you listen.
There is a slow-motion kind of anthemic quality to the titular track, which, after a brief instrumental introduction, is placed second in the album’s running—not really a thesis or mission statement, but more than anything, just a bold, dazzling declaration of the places that the group wishes to take things, sonically, the further along into the album you’ll be pulled.
“Make It Feel” is a song that, even though there is certainly some depth to the writing, really hinges upon the feeling it does successfully cultivate—there is a quiet, sleepy kind of nature to the verses, with Klatt’s delivery floating in a little bit higher of a register, with even a little dissonance on some of the words, giving the song a slight, sharper edge, the melody itself is charming and memorable, as it leads us to the actual explosion of the chorus, which is literally just the band slamming down on their instruments, building up the sound until it seems like it is going to burst, with Klatt shouting above the noise, “Make it feel like a garden.”
And with the heights that the band has their sights set on with the song, and how it does reach, and honestly, surpass those, there the more the band hollers the titular phrase, the more that you do realize that, in the gossamer catharsis that they are constructing, there is a bit of a pleading in the repetition of that phrase. A pleading, and a demand. And the severity or least implications of a kind of serious need, or nature, in asking someone to make it feel like a garden, is hinted at elsewhere in the song, though, again, because here, there is more of a focus on the feeling, overall, rather than the lyrics’ importance over the music.
“I don’t feel like home,” Klatt murmurs in the moment leading up to the chorus. “I don’t want to wake up in the garden again. I’m here, and I’m just pulling along. I’ll stay ’til I find my own love song.”
*
What does summer sound like.
There is something wistful, or nostalgic, about the autumn for me. You can, of course, be wistful or nostalgic during any season, though. I think more than like a specific summer, in mind, one might feel a sense of nostalgia, or a wistfulness, for a more nebulous idea of summer—the kind of youthfulness, or even the kind of freedom, at times, that comes with it.
A youthfulness, and nostalgia, or course, do play a large role in shaping the sound of Eliza and The Delusionals. Certainly, you can hear it on their debut full-length from 2022, Now and Then, but in the interim, they have focused more on taking the penchant for bold pop-leaning songs, amplifying the dreamier textures, and making all the things that glisten shine just a little brighter.
When I think of nostalgia in pop music, or music that does owe a large part of its sound to a specific time, or place, in listening, I find I am often attempting to put words to the feeling. It’s one thing to say that a group, like Eliza and The Delusionals, for example, are influenced or inspired by a sound that is akin to the 1980s and the first part of the 1990s. But it’s another thing to go a little further and ask, like, what kind of feeling is the band trying to conjure, within the context of a sound inspired by the past.
I tell you all of that to tell you this. Yes, the album as a whole does really bring to mind a different era for pop music, but there are two places without question where Eliza and The Delusionals are working towards crafting songs that sound like they would not be out of place—rather, sound like they were written explicitly for, 1990s coming-of-age movies, i.e., She’s All That or even Clueless.
The first of these, “She Sits Up So High,” is sequenced as the album’s second proper track—making for an energizing double shot from nearly the second Make This Feel Like A Garden gets underway.
And I have, of course, run the risk of overusing certain descriptions, thus far, in writing about both this album, and the similarly minded All Again from Queen of Jeans. Things are bright. Things shimmer. Or glisten. They dazzle. That is the nature of these albums, though, and certainly the nature of a band like Eliza and The Delusionals—enormous pop songs that are beyond infectiously written, and arranged in a way that is reminiscent of sharing directly into the sun. “She Sits Up So High” is that blinding in how brightly it shines.
Certainly a song that does lend itself to being more vibe based because of how it sounds, yes, but also, like so many songs on Make It Feel, it works because of the enormity of the chorus and the catchy melody woven into he verses, there is some depth within Klatt’s lyrics.
Fitting that “She Sits Up So High” exists in a world that sounds like it was pulled from a scene in a 90s teen-oriented film, because in that depth, Klatt sings of an admiration, yes, but also an unrequited love, and a kind of palpable longing.
“For what it’s worth, I’m not alone when I can hear you on the phone,” Klatt begins. “But you’re right, should I still knock when no one’s home,” she wonders, before revealing a little bit more of the yearning within the narrative in the second verse. “I pick you up and drop you home. And I think he already knows that you’re mine,” she continues. “Don’t have to tell me it feels right. I can see it when you cry—I just wanna make you happy.”
Later, then, in the album’s second half, the group returns to this kind of 1990s, teen coming-of-age film pop bombast on what is perhaps the brightest, or sunniest sounding track on the album, “Will She Know Today.”
And I have, in writing about music, often talked about comparisons. And how as much as I do not wish to make them—drawing a connection between one artist, and another, because I feel it is a little diminutive, even if that isn’t the intention. But I also understand that sometimes it is hard not to. Because there is an ease to it. To simply say, well, this band does something here, and it sounds like this other band, or this other song, that you are probably familiar with.
I tell you all of that to tell you this—the commitment to this 80s and 90s pop-inspired sound is certainly not, like, a “new” idea in music now, in the year 2024. But there is something so fun, and clever, about the way that Eliza and The Delusionals handle the homage that it never, at any point, runs the risk of sounding derivative, and is honestly refreshing.
I tell you all of that to tell you this—that even in its refreshing take on an inspiration in sound, and even in my hesitancy to use a comparison as a means of description, I will say that one of the bands that I can here, whether it was intentional or not, channeled through a number of places on Make It Feel, is the beloved group The Sundays—I am specifically thinking of the final Sundays album from 1997, and their surprising pop slanted single, “Summertime,” which was a far cry from the gloomy, plaintive dream pop they were making on their first two records.
“Will She Know Today,” outside of calling to mind the final, triumphant scene of a teen-oriented film from the mid-1990s, does also give the feeling of “Summertime.”
Beginning with both a jaunty, glistening guitar riff, and a drum machine pattern that is heavy on the tambourine, “Will She Know Today” does strike the balance, immediately between tension and release, with both the band, and Klatt’s vocals, coming from a place where there is noticeable restraint, before absolutely soaring during the spectacularly gigantic chorus.
A song like “Will She Know Today” is impressive, of course, because of its complete dedication to such a specific sound, or style, which the group absolutely nails, but it is also a place on the record where the arranging is so catchy and so enormous in sound, that it does an incredible job of distracting the listener, at least at first, from how sad the narrative actually is, in its depiction of someone careening through a kind of self-destructive attraction.
“She goes away for days,” Klatt sings in the few lines just ahead of the ascendant chorus. “And then comes home late. Can’t get so caught up undecided, and then hold me. There she goes again.”
The chorus itself, then, too, in the stratospheric places it is taken, is just as bleak, or paints an unflattering portrait of its protagonist. “She knows her way when she’s drunk, she’s drunk,” Klatt observes. “And she’ll come to stay just to fuck, to fuck. But she’ll never say what’s wrong, what’s wrong. Will she know today?”
*
And there are a few places on Make It Feel Like A Garden where Eliza and The Delusionals turn their sound slightly inward—though, it often does not remain that way for very long. After the back to back to back exuberance of the first three proper tunes on the album, the pacing changes, at least at first, on the slower, and slinkier “Another You.”
Opening with a little acoustic guitar riff, and a glitchy drum machine beat, Klatt’s vocal delivery quickly finds its place in the stuttering rhythm of the song as she allows the lyrics to come tumbling out.
And there is a longing, in the wake of loss, that is depicted in “Another You,” with the first two verses in it for the long game, just in terms of setting a tone, and pacing, that is then completely disrupted once the song blasts off at the chorus.
“Heartbreak. Mistake. Always—I look for you in everything,” Klatt begins, and throughout the song, as it continues building, oscillates between wishing to let go, and the desire to hold on. “Breathing—breathe in,” she continues in the second verse. “Healing, and let someone else in. Lover to a friend. Does it have to end? Or can we just pretend?”
The slower, jitterier rhythm of the song, during the first half, then gives way to one of the more propulsive, anthemic moments on Make It Feel, with the urgency surging through “Another You” as the pace quickens—no to a place of feeling frantic or out of control, but palpable with immediacy. “Gonna be hard to find another you I like,” Klatt confesses in the chorus. “Gonna be hard to see the day through without you by my side. Gonna be hard to feel somebody new hold me when I cry,” she continues, with the reluctant understanding coming in the last line. “Gonna be hard to find another you, another you.”
There are not a lot of places on Make It Feel Like A Garden where Eliza and The Delusionals slow down their enthusiasm, or the momentum in moving from song to song—it is, and I think I have gotten the point across without too much hyperbole, an enormous, jubilant album and it sounds like the group is having the time of their lives making this kind of iridescent pop music. There are the moments where they do turn things inward slightly, and perhaps the most surprising shift in tone comes at the top of the second side, on “Lately,” which features additional vocals from Brian Aubert of the group Silversun Pickups.
There is a musical ferocity, and, I suppose, a snarl to the way the lyrics are delivered as well, on “Lately”—a darker, fuzzier sound that makes it unlike anything on the rest of the record. But, even for as surprising of a turn as the song is, especially coming at the top of the second half, it it is still based around infectious vocal melodies within the verses, where Klatt and Aubert layer their voices, along with a soaring, very theatrical chorus.
With its downcast turn, “Lately” still has what I hesitate to refer to as a sense of humor or whimsy, because it is a darker song, and it does, at least at first listen, feel almost void of humor completely, but throughout, you can hear an old 1990s modem squalling throughout the mix, buried low under the thundering drums and the distended, often searing guitar riffs.
And I suppose it makes sense that with the more downcast nature of the song’s arranging, the lyrics too would be a little darker, or have a different tone to them, when compared to the kind of longing, or affection, that Klatt writes and sings of in the album’s more bombastic and bright moments. There is still the longing, sure, but it is depicted in a much more self-effacing, desperate way.
“Lately, you’ve been on my mind,” she begins, in unison with Aubert. “Not in a weird way—think about you all the time,” they continue. “Have I been on your brain? Not in the same way as you’ve been in mine.”
The sentiments take a starker turn in the second verse—“Would you be so kind this time to devour me alive?”
The chorus then, beautiful, kind of harrowing, and executed in a slow motion kind of ferocious grandeur, provides a vivid portrait of the kind of emotional tumult that the song’s protagonist is feeling—“I love you, but I don’t want to,” Aubert and Klatt howl together. “No one loves you like I do.”
*
For as strong as Eliza and The Delusionals’ commitment to the sound of pop music from a different era is throughout, there are places where it is exponentially more impressive—like the further they choose to lean into it, there are places where it sounds like they are having even more fun, and it does make for these moments on Make It Feel Like A Garden that are simply triumphant.
“Hurts” is one of those moments, sequenced near the end of the album’s first side, and musically, and in how it unfolds, it is one of the most playful songs on the record.
A word I certainly use perhaps too often to describe the feeling of a song is “slinky,” or that the rhythm “slinks” along, but that is certainly the only words that does come to mind when I think about “Hurts.” There is a flirtatious feeling to it, from beginning to end, making for the kind of glistening pop song that would have been a huge Top 40 hit had it been released as a single in, like, the late 1989s or early 90s.
“Hurts” moves along in an unrelenting way—it’s not abrasive, or, like, too much, but it does really never cease in terms of the rhythm, and the way that rhythm does, right from the start, beckon you to move your body along with it, as the song bounces along with accessory percussive elements, jaunty keyboard progressions, a thick, rolling bass line, and wriggling electric guitar strums, all of it structured around a kind of slight restraint that the band shows even in the chorus, allowing the song to climb to just where it needs to in terms of enthusiastic intensity, specifically in the moment leading up to the writhing, pleading bridge section—one of a handful of bridges on the album where, in sitting down with Make It Feel Like A Garden and listening analytically, I noted that you could create infrastructure within a city with bridges built like this.
For as dazzling and slithering as “Hurts” is musically, the kind of longing that is depicted in the lyrics is surprisingly dark, or at least here, Klatt pulls us into the less flattering, or exponentially less fun part of yearning for someone. “Heaven felt like you for days now. I’m on my way ‘round to your place to tell you things I shouldn’t say,” she begins at the top of the song. “‘Cause I said I loved you yesterday.”
The doubt, then, comes in the lead-up to the chorus. “I don’t know why I don’t feel right. You say that change is uncomfortable. I say I feel tired—I tell you good night. Maybe I should just let you go.”
Klatt doesn’t let her voice soar exactly in the chorus, but it does find a place that is very bold, allowing it to coast just over the top of the undulating rhythm. “And you hurts,” she explains. “The strangest things to keep you out of my mind. It feels worse,” she continues. “I’ll own this pain for just a little while.”
By the time we arrive at the bridge, there is a very real sense of immediacy to how the music builds, with Klatt’s breathless, urgent delivery. “Drive all night so I can stay. Shades of blue across your face,” she utters, her words coming out in bursts, and falling right into the propulsion of the music below her. “Break your heart in the same way. Said I loved you yesterday. And I can’t even help myself,” she then bellows. “The truth is that you’ll always hurt. Somehow, I just make it worse.”
And there is of course that moment, between this bridge, and the final chorus, where the music drops out just slightly and rushes back in. It is not as dramatic, or theatrical, as it could be, or as Eliza and The Delusionals can be in other places, but it is effective. The way it comes swooshing back in, and how the song, from the time it starts, right up until the end, never stops shimmering, is simply fun as hell, and arriving at roughly the halfway point on the record, does really cement Make It Feel as an album that wants you, regardless of how serious the lyrics might become, to have as good of a time as it is having.
The group returns to that sound, and feeling, and make it even more joyous, and buoyant, near the end of the record on “Somebody,” which is one of Make It Feel Like A Garden’s finest moments, and without a doubt, one of the most rollicking pop songs I have had the fortune to hear in 2024.
Like “Hurts” before it, “Somebody” does take its time, and is very deliberate in how it works its way into the glistening pure pop perfection it becomes, with arranging that does truly skip and bubble along, rising slightly for a simple chorus that does lend itself to shouting along to.
With the way the song ripples along, and introduces just a few more elements by the end (like the very earnest, unironic saxophone solo) it maintains a pretty steady level of intensity, rarely rising, and if it ever does, it is done as a means of offering slight punctuation to a moment that is approaching.
With the way it unabashedly sounds so sunny, and free, like a top down, speakers up kind of feeling on the most pleasant day, Klatt, in her lyric writing, takes us to a stark place, and then to a lustier place, the latter of which is not surprising exactly, but it is not a space that this album spends a lot of time in.
Returning to that breathless, kind of urgent delivery, Klatt begins, “I can see you in the darkness. I can see you in my garden. You can tell me when the night ends, ‘Cause I can’t tell when you’re done anymore.”
The conceit of the song is not exactly very heartfelt, or at least it is a little bit of a backhanded sentiment towards a former partner, and she works towards this as the first verse continues. “Wish I left you in my memory—something that could make me happy. I could think about it from time to time to time to time. But it’s better if my heart breaks,” she confesses. “So I know I’ve made a mistake. It’s a lie. I lied. I need you—I needed you or somebody like you.”
“Said I loved you down in Chelsea. There was something there about me,” she coos at the start of the second verse. “Wanna take you in the back seat when you put your arms around me,” she continues, though the tone does shift quickly then from lust to a kind of remorse. “Something’s just not right. I want to be alone. And I can get so high but body’s feeling low. And I could stay the night, simmer in your glow—remember it this time someday, and watch it go with somebody like you.”
*
And I do, of course, talk a lot about, and think a lot about, the idea of the “Kingdom of Desire,” simply because once you do think about it, or are aware of it as a place that exists in songwriting, it is hard not to, at least for me, try to find other examples of a song that lives within that environment.
And there is desire, and are desires, to be found across the entirety of Make It Feel Like A Garden—because it is more of an album that works to capture a specific kind of feeling, or energy, I am less concerned with Klatt’s lyricism and the difference I often speak of between “love songs,” and songs that are about love, and everything, both savory and not, that come with it.
And there are bright and bombastic moments as the album begins, certainly, within the first two proper tracks—and, I guess, now is as good of time as any to mention the difference between how Make It Feel Like A Garden appears on vinyl, and on digital platforms.
On streaming services and if you download the album from the band’s Bandcamp or Apple Music, it is a surprising 18 tracks—because it features a number of interludes that often connect the ending of one song into the beginning of the next. There are five total, and the album itself is bookended by instrumental pieces, but the vinyl pressing removes those five additional pieces, slimming the track listing down to 13, and shaving a little over three minutes of of the running time. It is a curious decision, but one that does not really impact the accessibility or enjoyability of the album. If anything, the experience from listening on vinyl is one of a momentum that does not really break.
There are bright and bombastic moments as the album begins, certainly, within the first two proper tracks, but the brightest and most bombastic, and certainly one of the album’s finest moments, is the song “Falling For You.”
“Falling For You,” ultimately, takes place within the Kingdom of Desire—and in doing so, it takes place when the terms of the relationship, or romantic entanglement, have not been determined, and Klatt, as protagonist, is struggling to find her way. “Face down—got me thinking it’s something I’ll feel bad about,” she frets in the second verse. “Baby, you’re a dream I wanna forget about. I know you’re screaming but I’m just hearing no sound.”
There is a resistance, and a hesitancy, as the song pulls itself in, before the huge burst of the chorus. “Eyes so wide, close them tight. And I can’t keep falling,” she exclaims. “I’m holding tight but my heart keeps falling—falling in love. I keep falling for you, I don’t want your loving. I’m not your love song,” she concedes, in the kind of line that implies it is about Klatt trying to convince someone else of this fact, as much as it is about convincing herself.
The bridge, too, here is another moment of pure pop perfection. Short, it gets right to what is at center of “Falling For You,” before it is complimented with another appearance of the saxophone. “I don’t feel he same but your love keeps talking,” Klatt admits. “I don’t wanna feel your paint, but my heart keeps talking.”
*
And there is a line, I think, that Eliza and The Delusionals strike—certainly they did on their debut, Now and Then, and you can hear them walking it carefully here on Make It Feel Like a Garden. It is an album that is representative of enormous growth for the group, in terms of songwriting, as well as having a commitment to a very specific, stylized sound. It’s not so unlike the glistening pop trappings of their earlier material, but it is much more hyper-focused. But the line that they walk is the one between taking themselves, or at least their craft, seriously, but also wishing to have fun, and wishing for us, as listeners, to have a good time along with them as well.
For a number of years now, I consider Carly Rae Jepsen to be my “orange alert” artist—and that of all her canonical works, Emotion is my “orange alert” album. Which is to mean that, if I am not doing well—like, having a bad mental health day, which is, if I am being open and honest, most days for me as of late, I will listen to her, or that album specifically, as means to try to jettison myself out the bleak place I am in.
Make It Feel Like A Garden quickly cemented itself as an album like that after only a few listens. It is a immeasurably huge pop record that, yes, it does have things to say, but it also does not get too hung up on what it wishes to say, or convey, but rather, spends its time wisely focusing on how to say them. And how in saying them, compels us to move, and to feel something transcendent during the hour we spend with the record.
* * *
It sounds like summer and white guitars.
I’ve been thinking about that line, a lot, since I first heard it in the spring, said in the haunting, unique range of Hana Vu, in the song “22.” A song that, among other things, is about the delicate balance of nostalgia.
What does summer sound like. Does it glisten. Is it bright. Is it fun. Freeing. Does it feel familiar even if you are hearing it for the first time. Does it grab hold of you the instant the first notes hit your ears?
This will, of course, sit for nearly a month. Because when you, the reader, will see these words, summer will officially be over. It will be the first day of autumn. But from where I am now, still crafting every sentence meticulously, we are inching closer and closer to the end of August. Today, up until the mid-afternoon, it was cool, and breezy. I, again, getting ahead of myself in my attire, wore a sweatshirt today. Which was comfortable up until a certain point, as it gets later in the day, and warmer, or at least more humid air, is now pushing through.
There is that promise. The promise of how cool it is in the mornings, before the sun has really risen. There is the promise that the temperature will remain that cool all day.
From where I am sitting now, the leaves have already started to fall slowly from the trees.
This will, of course, sit for nearly a month.
I read something once about the idea of brinkmanship. You push things off until the last possible second and more or less use that kind of desperation to propel yourself through whatever task you have been avoiding. I never wrote, either personally or professionally, that close to a deadline. But I did use to write with an urgency. There is still an urgency, or an immediacy, that I feel. But I no longer feel in a rush. This can wait. Because the timing has to be right, and I just am unable to rest. Unable not to be working on something.
You spend two weeks immersed in writing about two albums. You get it ready to go. For four weeks from now. You don’t forget about it but you without thinking move onto the next thing.
What does summer sound like.
It sounds like a moment. Like a feeling. It can be wistful. Sentimental. There is the freedom. The youthful exuberance. The surrender you give in to.
You swoon. You sway.
You grasp as hard as you can onto the promise and the allure. You open yourself up during the long, hot days and savor the cooler evenings or crisp mornings with the assurance of what will come.
It is a moment. A feeling. Wistful. Bittersweet. There is a promise. There is allure.
Make It Feel Like A Garden is available now via Cooking Vinyl Australia.
All Again is available through Memory Music.
Comments
Post a Comment