by Jeff Yerger (@jyergs)
Charlotte, North Carolina might be one America’s best kept secrets – a beautiful, unassuming, affordable city with delicious food, killer breweries, a really nice airport (seriously, they have rocking chairs, foliage, a communal piano, and Bojangles) and apparently, a buzzing indie music scene.
I’ll admit, the extent of my knowledge about the Charlotte music scene ranges from the fact that it is mostly a country/bluegrass town (I think), and that the Avett Brothers are from there (I think). Generally, Charlotte tends to live in Raleigh/Durham’s Merge-shaped shadow when it comes to indie music. Even Asheville to its west at least has Angel Olsen (among others), which is reason enough to turn that whole town into a historical landmark.
The fact is, however, that Charlotte does indeed have a vibrant and diverse music scene, and the new record I’m Doing This to Myself by Charlotte punkers Alright is proof that we all need to start paying more attention to the Queen City.
I’m Doing This to Myself – Alright’s first full length after a series of EPs – is a strong, spunky statement of fuzzy indie punk that’s chock-full of hooks. For this record, the band connected with producer Kyle Pulley (Thin Lips, Kississippi) and cut the album up north in Philadelphia at Headroom Studios. “When it came time to record, I really wanted to record in Philly,” Sarah Blumenthal, the band’s vocalist/guitarist/leader, tells me via email. “Kyle really pushed us in a lot of ways to make this a great record.”
As it turns out, Alright and Pulley make a great match. Every riff and every hook on here is engineered for maximum impact, like on the mosh pit-ready opener “Scraps,” or the quick adrenaline hit of “Tiptoe,” neither of which would sound out of place on an early-nineties Sub Pop comp. Elsewhere on the album, Alright turn crunchy guitar riffs into soaring and cathartic emotional releases on “Lapse,” “Dewdrops,” or album highlight “Parallels,” in which Blumenthal wonders out loud “Do you say that to everyone, or do you mean it when you’re saying it to me?”
Throughout I’m Doing This to Myself, Blumenthal second-guesses her every past move. “I love lamenting my mistakes,” she tells me, “and apparently I love writing songs about it too. Moving on from things has never been my strong suit.” Ain’t that a familiar feeling? The Replacements once sang “the ones who love us least are the ones we’ll die to please,” a sentiment that pretty much sums up Blumenthal’s writing here. On “No Good,” she sings “You don’t answer my calls / And I don’t hear from you anymore / But you still find a way to occupy my mind / From time to time.” Why is it human nature to get hung up on people who treat us like shit? Why do we waste countless hours lying awake at night with our anxieties? Blumenthal does a lot of that on I’m Doing This to Myself too, whether it’s “the stupid things” that keep her up at night on “Back Bench,” or thinking about “everything you’ve ever done and all the things I didn’t do / late at night when I can’t fall asleep” on “Dewdrops.”
Luckily for Blumenthal (and for us), she’s able to release all of her nervous energy and pent-up frustrations into thirty minutes of catchy indie punk on I’m Doing This to Myself, which makes for a fun and thoroughly enjoyable full-length debut from start to finish. It’s high time we all start paying attention.