by Conor Lochrie (@conornoconnor)
It was only a matter of time until our art started to reflect this unprecedented situation around us. In their own inimitable and small way, Thanks For Coming has released their early entry into the Coronavirus Canon. Led by songwriter Rachel Brown, it is of little surprise that they have succeeded in turning around a related release so soon after lock down when one considers the band’s Bandcamp prolificness - their music may be described as lo-fi due to its raw sound but the term also complies with their startling consistency. Untouched (for purposes of brevity I’ve obviously decided not to type out the full LP title each time) came a mere week after the band’s last Bandcamp release, It’s All Good I’m Laughing, but it’s still homespun with indie pop quality throughout.
For Brown has always been endearingly loquacious and there is space in these nine tracks for several lines of lyrical gems. Untouched takes as its overarching theme the idea of unrequited love, for an unnamed person; quarantine surely presents the most opportune time to write such an album. On opener “March, April, May, but Definitely Not February,” Brown’s pained echoing voice simultaneously yearns that they “want to get closer, I said I want to get closer, closer/I want to get closed off, closed off, closed, closed”. Similar confusion follows on “Intersection” - the quickening acoustic guitar sounding very much like the anti-folk of Kimya Dawson - as Brown ponders “are we on the same wavelength or are you standing out there waving cuz you’re so polite”.
Brown is undoubtedly a self-aware songwriter (if the album’s rambling title wasn’t enough indication) and Untouched never devolves into overwhelming melancholia or romanticism due to her lyrical control. On “Personal Interest,” Brown concedes “who can care less? I can yeah I can” before immediately remembering that “I want to feel the pressure/I want to feel the churn/of acid in my stomach/when I know I’m unsure”. A sense of anonymity rightly pervades the narrative: “Maybe Someone’s Gonna Save Me” features the refrain “somebody special/someday somebody”; there is no specificity because lock down conditions don’t allow for it.
The hum of instrumentation is languorous throughout, never raising above the soft melancholy of the acoustic guitar and in this way Untouched favourably recalls Karen O’s (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) unfairly maligned 2014 solo album Crush Songs, a wonderfully intimate collection of lo-fi love ballads. Perhaps the greatest sentiment arrives on “Knees,” the most lovelorn track on the LP. Brown sings “it’s all in my head again/good to know that’s where I am” over the quietly strumming guitar. It’s so easy to descend into dreams or memories to ward off the suffocating loneliness of lock down - lucky, then, that some of us can turn it into a collection of songs like Thanks For Coming.