by Mark Gurarie (@emgeeteevee)
On gossamer threads of swirling, arpeggiated guitar lines, synth layers, driving bass, and tight four-on-the-floor drums, All Feels’ This Place Is A Message (Flower Sounds) stakes out territory we should find familiar in 2024. Here is depicted the anxiety of facing collapses both personal and environmental, the absurdity and necessity of love and its consequences, and the contradictions of living authentically in a bruised world among those who are equally but differently broken. Sung in luminous harmony, the opening lines of the first track, “Shoreline,” paint a picture of stasis in the face of looming apocalypse: “The questions have no answers/ Only hesitation/Nuclear winter isn’t here”. This moves to what could be the driving force for the album as a whole: the contradiction of being “all at once aware, of how ridiculous every feeling is” and taking every feeling seriously.
Hailing from Easthampton in Western Massachusetts, All Feels is led by songwriter, guitarist, and synth player, Candace Clement (Footings, Bunny’s A Swine), who’s been constant in a shifting line-up. On the recording, she is joined by guitarist Josh Levy (Outro), bassist Will Meyer (Stoner Will & the Narks), and drummer Jon Shina. It’s clear this ensemble found a vibrant synergy in the studio; the arrangements are tight and well thought-out, yet there’s a liveliness and breeziness to them, and nothing feels stiff. The band might invite comparison to any number of indie, indie-pop, or even shoegaze groups—you could position them on an axis that includes Palehound, La Luz, the Breeders, and Slowdive—but there’s something undoubtedly unique in their combination of sounds. It’s grounded, earthy, and feels rooted but is also a bit alien: the slight twang in the bright guitars and wall of sound vocals lending a noir quality to the vulnerability on display.
Listening to one of the record’s standout songs, “Middling,” assemble itself from a floating reverb-y guitar line, a groovy bass line, and jaunty drums, you can’t help but think of Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “Happy House.” In both songs there’s a kind of ironic detachment at play, and both speakers are staring through windows. Looking in, “we’re happy in the happy house/ to forget ourselves and pretend all’s well/there is no hell” Siouxsie announces, to which Clement responds, “Consider that there is no purpose, go spend all your money on therapy/ because you deserve it,” while looking out. The direct address—speaking to the “you”—in the latter adds an emotional register, and the line, “should have burnt the bridges when you had the chance,” lands almost like a punch.
This Place Is A Message should be listened to from start to finish; the album has a distinct arc. Though it may wander territory, it seems to always comes back home, with each song peeling another layer off the onion. On the second to last tune, “Honestly,” everything seems to be laid painfully bare. Against the backdrop of jangly guitars, “This wrecked me/ So I’ll wreck you,” Clement assures us in closing. This threat of emotional mutually-assured destruction—a mushroom cloud, a Nuclear winter—haunts the extremely hooky, slightly-distorted ascending scales of the final refrain. Here we are dancing together in the wreckage.