Potty Mouth Go Back to Basics on “SNAFU”

Listening to Potty Mouth’s new album, SNAFU, I’m reminded of that “Treehouse of Horror” episode of The Simpsons with Bart’s evil twin, Hugo, who is determined to be “too crazy for boys town” and “too much of a boy for crazy town.” In the last few years, the Massachusetts trio of Ally Einbinder, Victoria Mandanas, and Abby Weems have found themselves in an analogous predicament: they’re too pop for punk town and too punk for pop town.

This is their first full-length album since 2013’s Hellbent and first non-single release since 2015’s excellent self-titled EP, which raises some questions — with all due respect to the band’s music, it’s not like they’re in the studio laboring over a follow-up to Loveless here. In interviews now (and in tweets and song lyrics), they’ve discussed being courted by a major label, who burdened them with endless comparisons and expectations that left the band tangled in bureaucratic red tape without a sense of direction. Eventually, they parted ways with the major, and so now SNAFU finally surfaces on a friend’s label with not much PR or “momentum.”

For a band with such a faithful 90s aesthetic, it’s fitting that even the process of making the album sounds like something straight from 1994, with the scrappy indie band struggling between major label ambitions and staying true to themselves. While it was a winding road to get there, I’m glad they chose the latter. None of that self-doubt and struggle is heard in the sound of SNAFU, which brims with confidence and is the product of a band who now knows exactly who they are. It barrages the listener with one impossibly catchy chorus after another and its sugary rock sound is reminiscent of the best parts of The Go-Go’s and Veruca Salt. It might be my favorite pop album since Carly Rae Jepsen’s EMOTION, and it makes me think the people who work for that major label have no idea what they’re doing — though, of course, I would never suggest that anyone working in the music industry is less than competent.

I’ve mentioned this before, but writing about music inevitably warps how you think about it, and sometimes I get into a mindset where I feel like any “great” album needs to come with like, a thesis statement and a bunch of cooked-in narrative. After all, you can’t just write “this has good songs that sound good” and expect anyone to care. Sometimes I think artists have internalized this from writers, too, and some seem almost afraid of writing songs that are too poppy or too frivolous.

So there is a gutsiness in how SNAFU totally owns its status as an enjoyable pop album. It doesn’t bury its massive hooks under a bunch of lo-fi gimmickry in an effort to seem hip. It doesn’t have overly complex lyrics that might distract from the songwriting. It hits that perfect sweet spot where the songs are so well-crafted but never sound like they’re trying too hard. It may not challenge listeners much or break new musical ground, but there is an appealing self-assuredness to these songs — the album sounds like a band being who they want to be instead of what others expect them to be.

That theme is explicitly stated on a couple of the songs that I have been listening to repeatedly over the last weekend. “Smash Hit” (initially released as a single in 2016) kisses off that major label with a chorus that is a list of meaningless adjectives that you can just imagine one of those record label guys breathlessly telling to the band as if he is providing them with the best career advice of all time. “Plastic Paradise” is a more general commentary on the fakeness of shopping advertisements that burden everyone with societal expectations; listening to it is about the closest anyone can get to time traveling to the mid-90s. Another highlight, “Fencewalker,” is slightly more contemporary, with some critical and relevant lyrics about people who don’t engage with the world around them. It was written with Gina Schock of The Go-Go’s, just in case Potty Mouth’s intentions on this album weren’t already clear.

While it lacks the edge that most associate with the genre, I think SNAFU is in the true original spirit of punk. It provides a blast of simplicity in a context where a lot of artists are trying to out-think each other and push the limits of complexity, sometimes to self-aggrandizing degrees. In that sense, it’s a really smart album in addition to being impossible to stop listening to.

“What Chaos is Imaginary” Shows a Band in Flux

In one of my recent posts, I lamented the way really young artists are disproportionately hyped in the music industry due to novelty. That doesn’t mean I don’t listen to any of them, and one of my favorites in the past few years has been Girlpool, who started out making amateurish, heartfelt songs that were reminiscent of The Shaggs on Before the World Was Big, then evolved into a full-fledged indie rock band on 2017’s Powerplant. They overhauled their sound while maintaining the band’s biggest strength: the genuine connection between Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad, who sang in interlocked harmonies and conveyed authentic, youthful feelings instead of trying to sound older than they are. It made me feel like I was hearing the band grow up and change on every song.

That theme continues on their new album, What Chaos is Imaginary, but in a way that is much more dramatic than I would have expected. Tucker came out as transgender last year and started taking testosterone, which lowered their singing voice. It’s a courageous decision that is way more important than music, and it feels like trivializing it to analyze how it impacts the band. But they did put out a new album with Tucker’s voice on it, and it’s impossible to ignore how it has fundamentally changed the band’s aesthetic — those lockstep feminine harmonies are gone, which is what gave Girlpool their distinct style that reminded me of a musical version of nursery rhymes or “Little Red Riding Hood.”

Not to be too clinical about it, but all of this makes What Chaos is Imaginary fascinating to listen to. It’s not just hearing a band evolve like all of them do from album to album; it’s a band that has lost one instrument and replaced it with a new one. And parts of this album reflect what must have been the difficulty of figuring that out — I think it runs a little too long at 14 songs and 45 minutes and it sounds like they’re trying many different types of songs without a clear idea of what the band should be now, especially compared to the focused and confident sound of Powerplant.

While Tucker and Tividad always sang simultaneously before this, here they settle into more of a traditional lead singer/backing singer dynamic on most songs. The ones where Tucker takes lead are the biggest departures from the band’s previous material; “Lucy’s” and “Hire” show their new voice and are the most traditional indie rock songs the band has made. Tividad’s songs like “Pretty” and “Stale Device” are closer to the familiar Girlpool sound with the harmonies and mix of sweet melodies and abrasiveness. Chunks of the album feel almost too traditional to me — without the unique harmonies of previous material, a lot of this sounds like a normal indie rock band, and I feared the magic from previous recordings may have been lost.

But they find something that really works in the back half of the album. “Minute in Your Mind” and the title track are spacy ballads with keyboards that add an extra layer of psychedelia to the band. On the former track, Tucker’s voice sounds at home in the more subdued mode, and Tividad harmonizes on the back half of the song in a way that is reminiscent of old Girlpool but still inherently different. Tividad takes the lead on “What Chaos is Imaginary,” which adds strings to the mix and is the band’s most ambitious recording yet, with a larger sense of scale than anything they’ve ever done.

The way Tividad and Tucker separate from each other on the album is reminiscent of how tight friendships can fade away or change in meaning year by year. The change here is drastic but it also feels true to life, and there is a lot to like here in the songwriting (which is as soulful and endearing as it’s always been) and the band’s ability to find new sounds and push themselves on every recording. Part of me still is unfairly focusing too much on what was lost and is mourning the old Girlpool sound from Powerplant. But something has also been gained on What Chaos is Imaginary, and it is exciting to think of the future of this collaboration that surprises and evolves with every album.

I Guess I Like Yoga Music Now

It is weird that I’ve gotten to a place where I’m listening to an album called Tides: Music for Meditation and Yoga when I don’t meditate or do yoga. That I listened at all is mostly a testament to the genius of Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, who has an innate ability to make what should be background music into something that is engrossing and full of spirit. This is one of those new old albums; it was recorded in 2013 and commissioned by her mother who wanted a soundtrack for the yoga classes she teaches. This makes it one of her earliest recordings and one that offers insight into her development making music on her Buchla modular synthesizers.

Smith’s last two albums are among the most immersive, thoughtful, and imaginative I’ve ever heard. 2016’s Ears was a colorful collection of songs that fused her synthetic sounds with her love for nature, and 2017’s The Kid built on that style with layers of deep, affecting storytelling and whimsy. Due to its reason for existing, Tides lacks the ambition and diversity of those albums, but it shows Smith figuring out what would become her signature sound through various synthesizer tones and repetitions.

There are a lot of negative connotations for this type of new age hippie music, and I’m still surprised that I love Smith’s fluttery, spiritual style as much as I do. In addition to sounding so vibrant, there is a sincerity and braininess to her approach that reminds me of artists like Broadcast and Björk. Even on an album like Tides where she doesn’t sing, I get a strong sense of who Smith is through her music — there is real charisma here and it finds a way to transmit itself through sound.

Tides doesn’t really aspire to be more than background music, which actually becomes part of its appeal. It’s a chance to hear Smith tinkering and learning in a relaxed way at a stage in her development where she hadn’t yet figured out how to make the mesmerizing ambient pop songs of Ears and The Kid. This makes Tides a useful chapter in the story of her career, which is defined by her growing and progressing on every song and album as she gains more mastery of her tools.

I can’t really evaluate it from a yoga or meditation context, but I assume it works quite well for that purpose too. I imagine I’ll listen to Tides a sneaky amount this year while I’m writing or falling asleep, or when I feel like hearing one of my favorite artists starting on the path to finding her voice.