by Wade Phillips (@wade_phi)
“…all of these things wrapped up inside / they’re coming to find me / oh no.”
With this lone lyrical line and roughly 30 seconds of atmospheric melancholy, opening-track “Find Me” effortlessly sets the tone for Racoma’s debut full-length This Front Room. Propelled by a strong self-tilted EP released in 2018, two years of exceptional live shows around Seattle, and multiple acclaimed NPR Tiny Desk submissions (i.e. see “The Kicker”, or “Howl”), the band spent the better part of a year writing and recording at home led by Racoma-guitarist and recording engineer Sean Collopy. After emerging from their basement in Fall of 2019 to put the finishing touches on the record with engineer and producer Mike Vernon Davis (Cumulus, Great Grandpa, Special Explosion) at Seattle’s Hall of Justice studio, Racoma have delivered something pretty special with This Front Room.
There is a lot wrapped up inside this album— almost too much to unpack in one listen or even after several listens. This is in large part due to the beautifully cryptic songwriting and vocals from Glenn Haider. With lyrics that dance around topics of self-doubt, miscommunication, mental health, family and selfishness, Haider regularly touches on just enough to leave a lasting impression without giving away too much. Delivered with striking vocals reminiscent of artists like Wintersleep or Horse Feathers, the songs on This Front Room engage the imagination via details and subtle cues that are polished and packaged as neatly as the songwriting and instrumentation that I’ve come to look for from the likes of Slaughter Beach, Dog or Andy Shauf.
The opening lines of “Jeep” are a great example of these cues (“I’m picking up steam, in the back of your jeep / I only talk about it much when I’m piss-ass drunk”); serving as a short interlude of sorts in the middle the album’s twelve tracks, it’s perhaps the most heartbreaking and vulnerable song on the record whilst simultaneously a celebration of self-awareness and personal growth. With three or four other standout tracks that weren’t even released as singles (e.g. “Dear Brother”, “Dog Bones”, “Hesitant”), it’s exciting to see where this album will take the band.
In contrast to the last lyrics of album-closer “Heavy Being You” (“one step forward / two steps back / keeps you from moving, keeps you from getting on track”), it’s obvious that Racoma have taken several large steps forward with the release of This Front Room.