by Allison Kridle
I can’t think of a place more intimate than a bedroom. Most of us close our bedroom doors to sleep, think, hide, and if you’re like the indie band, Thanks For Coming, write and record music. For some, the bedroom is the ideal place to create because it is usually a space where people are most vulnerable and authentic. As it turns out, it serves as the perfect hideaway and studio space for Thanks For Coming to produce most of their discography and a new EP titled Sspplliitt via Yellow K Records.
Lead singer, Rachel Brown, splits their time between Chicago and New York (evident by the song titles and track arrangement on Sspplliitt) and has been creating music under the moniker Thanks For Coming since 2012 when they released the album Attic on Bandcamp. Thanks For Coming has always been the lo-fi bedroom rock band who welcomes listeners into their personal spaces and into a comfortable setting that feels a lot like home. Whether you listen to Sspplliitt or any one of Brown’s 50 EPs, you’ll find yourself sitting across the room from them as they sing in their soft, warming voice.
Thanks For Coming’s raw DIY recording methods makes them and their music feel tangible, but that sense goes beyond how they tape their sound. I feel like a fly on the wall when I listen to the track “Twin Sized Bed (Chi),” but I don’t feel like I’m a nuisance or an intruder. Brown sings, “We fit into my bed twin sized against all odds and maybe one day we’ll own our own / I light the matches in my childhood bedroom to watch them burn me down.” They tell about their growing relationship and searching for a sense of belonging and stability against gentle, melodic guitar riffs, but shortly after picks up the rhythm when they sing, “Have you found what you’re looking for / I’ll mail it to our new front door so everybody knows that we can call this home.”
Brown’s revelatory lyricism hits home in every track. The album opens with Brown singing, “It’s so goddamn easy to lose touch/ I’ve been around but I haven’t been around that much/ Do you think I’m losing it/ Do you think about me at all? / If you’d call I’d answer but you never call,” in “Losing Touch (NYC).” They swiftly transitions from their bassy deep voice to a chiming and hazy falsetto emphasizing their anguished question, “Do you think about me at all?” They give us a more hopeful love ballad in “Escape from Planet Earth (Chi),” when they describes how the outside world doesn’t matter when they're with their significant other, but they see the beauty and memories that unfamiliar places possess anyway. Brown coos, “I can’t believe we found each other/ I’ll hold your hand until it hurts/ I can’t believe the world is over/ I’ll be here as it turns.”
In a world (or room) full of other bedroom indie pop bands, Thanks For Coming knows how to guide listeners through the dense walls that separate musicians from their listeners allowing them to explore their sound and stories in an intimate and organic state. Even when you choose to escape from the outside behind your own walls, Thanks For Coming never seems so far away.