Pool Kids – Pool Kids // POOL | Split Review

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Pool Kids // POOL Split Cover Art

Skeletal Lightning

On the heels of the dizzying success of their 2022 self-titled release, Pool Kids’ newest project is a collaboration with…themselves. The Pool Kids // POOL split sees the Floridians playing off their own extremes, with three decidedly hardcore tracks under the alter ego “POOL,” which serve as foil to side one’s signature twinkly emo sounds. Has this ever been done before? Has a band issued a split with a different iteration of themselves as the second band? Amidst a music industry fraught with stale money grabs, THIS is the kind of fun, fresh thing we need here in the dismal, dreary Year of our Lord 2023. 

The EP starts with the only truly new Pool Kids track, “No Stranger.” Maybe I just have Cocteau Twins on the brain, but the singing here seems like it’s shrouded just a layer or two more than it has been in the band’s past work, delivered in a dreamy haze by vocalist Christine Goodwyne. The song’s urgency builds to a shoegazey bridge, brought back down to earth by the final bass and guitar notes ping-ponging gently off each other. What captured my heart in this song is the pop urgency of the melodies—it’s a subtle but compelling departure from the meandering American-Football-esque constructions of their previous album. However, the sounds of emo and pop-punk roots persist in the layered instruments and Goodwyne’s lyrical phrasing. Is this my new favorite Pool Kids song? Feels crazy to say, but maybe!

The second track is an alternate, slowed-down version of “Talk Too Much,” one of Pool Kids’ 2022 bangers. This reimagined version capitalizes on deliberate softness, paring back the original’s chugging guitars and turning down the dial on the vocals. It’s not necessarily quiet, though; atmospheric keys wrap Goodwyne’s voice in droning layers. The drums in the last portion of the song take me straight to Death Cab For Cutie’s “Grapevine Fires,” perhaps suggesting a throughline of indie pop that tethers some of the band’s songwriting to other disparate influences.

The twinkly guitars make a brief comeback in the third track, a pseudo-acoustic version of the 2022 album single “Arm’s Length.” Andy Anaya’s electric guitar pops in with riffs on the first couple of verses, reminding us who we’re listening to (Pool Kids), and then cedes to a melee of acoustic guitars, sparse drum machines, and even an accordion (I think??!?!). The restrained quality of Goodwyne’s voice gives the song’s lyrics a new dimension: the minimum wage complaint of verse two sounds more despairing than frustrated, for instance. And, of course, the relatable first verse—

I'm in a group chat
With twenty-one goddamn people
I wish I was exaggerating, but I'm not
My phone crashes thirty-seven times a day

Where these lyrics once came across as tongue-in-cheek, it’s astonishing how goddamn lonely they suddenly sound when cast in a soft, twilight glow at this new tempo. It’s a gently haunting end to the Pool Kids side of the split.

Then, the twinkles fade, and the mosh pit opens. Yes, it’s a little bit of whiplash, but what did you want, the same old predictable EP that’s half singles you’ve already heard? Get off your ass and RAGE! (This pep talk is as much for myself as it is for the reader, as I am old and somewhat sleepy.)

Without warning, the first POOL track begins with crashing hardcore guitars that lead into a beautifully thrash-worthy breakdown, complete with brutal shrieks and pounding double bass drums–the whole nine yards. At only a minute and 19 seconds, “Cleansing” is a brief and brutal whirlwind, and the funny thing is that it absolutely makes sense in the context of Pool Kids’ technical precision. Guitars? Check. Drums? Check. See, not so different from a Pool Kids song!

For a bit of a history lesson, the mission statement for POOL was first laid out in an emojipasta April Fools tweet back in 2019:

The band put a corresponding two-song single on Bandcamp and even a batch of 7” flexi discs, with the proceeds going to marine research on red tide. Hilariously, Paramore’s Hayley Williams happened to shout out Pool Kids—a career-boosting milestone—that same day, meaning many new fans’ confusing first encounter with Pool Kids was actually the April Fools’ tweet. The band cleared the air the next day with a Twitter thread and promised more POOL shenanigans in the future since it was clearly such a hit.

Making good on their April 1 promise to wreak annihilation, the fiery “Inside A Wall” opens with a breakneck tempo, only to slow down to a heavy chug halfway through. Again, POOL keep it short, with the song clocking in at a slim 1:28. It’s absolutely insane how deftly these guys are picking up an entirely different genre for a couple of songs. 

The final track, “Death Sentence,” feels like the guttural icing on the cake of POOL’s side of the split. Multiple tempo changes wrangle the song into three acts, a quick, yet face-melting saga. Fuck, this would be fun live, wouldn’t it?

When Pool Kids’ self-titled album knocked it out of the park last year, their meteoric success had a lot of people—including the band themselves—curious about what was next. How would they manage to keep such a trademark twinkly emo sound fresh? Philosophically, the answer lies within this split. Chop up the formula: subtly, gracefully, wildly, imaginatively.

In a recent interview, guitarist Andy Anaya beamed confidence at what lay in store in the near future: “We’re just really excited about what’s coming up for us.” The conversation progressed to what the next step looks like: “‘Now, we just want to create something that endures,’ says Andy, with Christine adding, ‘I guess we’re shooting for longevity.’”

I can’t see into the future, so I can’t speak to Pool Kids’ longevity yet. But if we’re talking industry impact, if we’re talking ingenuity, if we’re talking icon behavior (three things that lend themselves to longevity), this split reaffirms that Pool Kids are knocking it out of the park.

Katie Wojciechowski is a music writer and karaoke superstar in Austin, Texas. She is from there, but between 2010 and now, also lived in Lubbock, TX, Portland, OR, and a camper. Her life is a movie in which her bearded dragon Pancake is the star. You can check out her Substack here. She’s writing a book about growing up alongside her favorite band, Paramore.

The Best of Q3 2022: Part 1

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Not to sound like a guy in a suit, but it’s the end of another “quarter,” and *adjusts tie* that means it’s time to tell you about some of my favorite releases from the last few months. After all, what better way to celebrate the return of fall than getting all sentimental and retrospective?

If you’d like to read about my favorite albums of Q1 and Q2, click here or here. Other than that, read on for some of the best releases of the summer. Part 2 is coming soon because a bunch of great albums dropped in the last few weeks of September, and I’m working on my own time, baby.

Brady - You Sleep While They Watch

Flesh & Bone Records

Sam Boyhtari has had a busy year. Somewhere between nationwide tours with Foxing, Home Is Where, and Infant Island, his band Greet Death managed to drop a phenomenal EP called New Low. Forecasted by a breadcrumb of fantastic singles, this 21-minute collection of songs found the Michigan shoegazers digging a little deeper and going a little darker. Impressive for a group whose last album is literally called “New Hell.” After releasing that EP out into the world and relocating himself to a different part of the Midwest, Boyhtari finally had enough time to dedicate to his Chicago-based heavy rock project simply called Brady. 

Self-described on Bandcamp as “the perfect blend of hick shit, innuendo, and a sad story,” it’s hard to think of a better elevator pitch for the group than that. Fans of Greet Death will likely feel at home here, as most of the LP still hovers around a baseline heavy rock sound. What's surprising, however, is just how much Boyhtari has to say and how he decides to present it. 

Much like the writing on his other project, songs like “Radon Blues” and “Family Photos” find their structure with a catchy phrase and a compelling instrumental build. Meanwhile, on songs like “Big Future” and “Catherine,” Boyhtari has enough time to get beautifully poetic and surprisingly grounded. The entire album weaves a stark, urgent, but ultimately beautiful portrait of life in 2022. You Sleep While They Watch is an album that is equal parts crushing and compassionate. A necessary balance to strike in the face of our increasingly-oppressive world. 

Read our full view of You Sleep While They Watch here. 


Carpool - For Nasal Use Only

Acrobat Unstable Records

Can we please talk about Carpool? I’ve been dying to talk about Carpool. For basically the whole summer, I’ve been lucky enough to have For Nasal Use Only on repeat. The EP has soundtracked foggy walks along the Oregon coast, much-needed trips back home, and long flights to visit my girlfriend. Simply put, there’s no collection of songs I would rather have tied to the memories of this past season, and you should be excited at the prospect of attaching these potent tracks to memories of your own this fall. 

The latest dispatch from the Rochester emo rockers offers dancy spurts, catchy chants, and even a left-field acoustic number. After an impressive debut album in 2020 with Erotic Nightmare Summer, the band’s latest EP proves that the group’s penchant for immaculate and hooky emo rock was no fluke. Carpool is one of those bands that make it easy to be a fan. The good news is, with Nasal Use finally out and even more exciting things on the horizon, there’s never been a better time to buckle up and join the ride.

Read our review of lead single “Anime Flashbacks” here. 


Holy Fawn - Dimensional Bleed

Triple Crown Records

Can you feel that? It’s the push of cold fall air gently cresting over the horizon. This change of seasons brings not just crisp weather but legions of darkened shoegaze to earbuds worldwide. Something about the dead leaves and the colder nights makes the genre feel slightly more appropriate right now than during the throes of a summer heatwave. 

Dimensional Bleed is the sophomore album from Holy Fawn and a record that feels tailor-made for this time of year. The release sees the six-piece effortlessly shift and morph between blackened metal, shoegaze, post-rock, and more. There’s a shared murkiness to all these sounds that makes the band feel like a wendigo or a smoke monster, silently gliding behind the listener, waiting for the just right time to unleash their violent fury upon their prey. Songs like “Death is a Relief” and “Lift Your Head” stick out as initial highlights, but really, the whole appeal of this album is slipping in and willingly surrendering yourself to the music for 49 minutes. 


NATL PARK SRVC - EP4

Self-released

Where have all the indie rockers gone? It’s a question that’s been on my lips (and apparently everyone else’s) as of late. For the last half-decade, NATL PARK SRVC has been crafting sweeping indie rock songs with an emphasis on early-aughts sounds that Pitchfork would have eaten up back in the day. For the last half-decade, the group has also been refining their bombastic big band style, typically boasting around seven members or more depending on the occasion. 

While I loved last year’s The Dance, at times, the full-length left me feeling looped around and overwhelmed over the course of its 48-minute runtime. For that reason alone, the five tracks on EP4 feel like a more concise and compact sample platter of what this band does best. Opener “BLOODY” is a hard-grooving track that builds to an ultra-dancy Frank Ferdinand guitar riff as lead singer Dylan Wotock croons, “why don’t you punch me in the faaaace / why don’t you put me in my plaaace,” stretching the last syllables of each line like a kid playing with silly putty. After a Billy Corgan name drop and a Will Toledo-style monologue, this chorus dovetails with a series of carefree vocalizations for an ornate display that bands like Spoon could only dream of. 

From there, lead singles “UP ALL NIGHT” and “VHS” keep the forward momentum with boppy instrumentals featuring the standard mix of guitar, drums, and bass, but accentuated by everything from violin to saxophone and trombone. It’s an ambitious feast for the ears, all spectacularly produced and remarkably clear. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention “SUMMERSIDE,” an undeniable queer anthem that navigates the muddy and often cliche-ridden waters of figuring out your own sexuality. 

The EP’s crown jewel can be found in its closer “PSALM 11:02 PM,” a remorseful and morbid piece with an unshakable Midwest flavor. The song finds Woytcke lamenting the funeral of a close friend, turning their individual grief into a sort of communal outpouring backed by the force of the full band. Mentions of funerals give the song a raw and open-hearted feeling that evokes the honesty of everyone’s favorite Hotelier song. Instead of finding catharsis in a throat-shredding shout, NATL PARK SRVC ascend into a hypnotic repetition of “I still think about it sometimes / I still dream about this sometimes,” which Woytcke sings over a group chant and a winding riff that eventually finds its rest on a charming bed of strings. A beautiful close to a stellar 20-minute release where no second is wasted. 


Pool Kids - Pool Kids

Skeletal Lightning

Throughout their self-titled sophomore record, Pool Kids lay out the various phases and emotions of a breakup, then shuffle them around, deconstructing the experience and distilling it into an explosive and cathartic album-length experience. Their first collection of songs as a full band (outside of a half-jokey hardcore double called POOL), Pool Kids balances its emotional heft with impressively technical instrumentation that will stagger even the most jaded math rock fans. 

At points, this album feels like an amalgamation of every genre I’ve ever loved growing up: emo, metal, pop-punk, prog, and 2000s alt-rock are all represented, everything wrapped in crystal clear production courtesy of Mike Vernon Davis. It’s a testament to both the band’s musicianship and vision that everything folds in so nicely under the Pool Kids banner. 

Pool Kids is unique in that it’s a breakup album in neither the “boo hoo, I’m so sad” territory or the vengeful “fuck you, I will make you pay” camp. At times it has elements of both, but the part that feels true to life is how jumbled and non-linear the process feels. Breakups aren’t all raw heartbreak or revenge fantasies; it’s both of those and much more. Breakups are pity and longing, regret and self-sabotage, moments of reflection and reconnection. Pool Kids recognizes the many facets of emotional turmoil and recomposes them into something anyone can find a piece of themselves in.

Read our review of lead single “That's Physics, Baby” here.


Quinn Cicala - Arkansas

Self-released

Quinn Cicala is back, yee-fuckin-haw. Since 2017, Cicala has quietly been making some of the best alt-country in the whole country. I’ll admit, I first found my way to the musician as a way to ween myself off Pinegrove, and while that may still be a sticky comparison for some, it at least gives you a point of reference for what to expect with this EP. The good news is I eventually grew to love the Cicalaverse on its own merits, and I’d even go as far as to call “24” one of the best songs of all-time. Heavily grounded in the American South, the five songs Quinn Cicala offers up on Arkansas are expectedly pleasant and beautifully compelling. Guided by a folksy twang and breezy instrumentals, these songs unfurl like a sleepy cat in a warm sunbeam. The humid southern air clings to the bones of this release. Whether the band is depicting true love in the heartland or talking about frivolous news publications, it’s easy to find a home within these songs, even if it’s only for a quarter-hour.


Russian Circles - Gnosis

Sargent House

I ran the numbers, and it turns out Russian Circles have been a presence in my life for 16 years. My Russian Circles fandom is officially old enough to drive. Ever since I heard the pummeling guitar of “Death Rides a Horse” back in high school, I’ve been hooked on everything the Chicago trio has put out over the course of their hyper-consistent career. Always a reliable source of instrumental metal riffage, Russian Circles seem locked into a new mode of operating on Gnosis, sounding tighter and heavier than they have in years. Every style and speed of the band is represented here; “Conduit” is a ferocious and gnashing song, while the title track is a slow-simmering black cloud that mounts into a torrential downpour. Regardless of where I’m at in life or what I’m doing, I can always count on Russian Circles to be there, scoring the scene with brutal metal that crushes me in a warm embrace. 

Pool Kids – That's Physics, Baby | Single Review

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I’ve waited years for this moment, so I’m just going to come right out and say it. There’s a new Pool Kids song.

Whew, that felt good.

For those not in the loop, the Florida math rockers first made waves in the emo scene back in 2018 with the release of their debut album, Music To Have Safe Sex To. Spawning from an initial friendship between singer and multi-instrumentalist Christine Goodwyne and drummer Caden Clinton, the duo booked a short studio session that resulted in a collection of nine proggy, freewheeling rock tracks. With no shortage of goofy song titles, iconic riffs, and references to mathy predecessors like TTNG, these songs immediately placed Pool Kids in a continuum of bands walking the line between overwrought emo and tappy, hyper-technical guitarwork. These elements, combined with endearing brushes with pop-punk greats, quickly signaled that this band was destined for something more than the rigid confines of “emo music.”

In the time since their first album, the group has been rounded out by guitarist Andy Anaya (of fellow Florida greats Dikembe and You Blew It!) along with bassist Nicolette Alvarez. Together, they make four of the most talented musicians ever assembled, as anyone who has seen ever Pool Kids live can attest. While fans were treated to a jokey hardcore one-off for April Fools Day 2019 and an Audiotree session that captured the newly solidified lineup’s full prowess, specific weirdos like me have been eagerly waiting to see what this band would do next because, at times, the possibilities truly seemed endless.

Pool Kids even signaled their return in early 2020, going back to give album highlight “$5 Subtweet” a proper video, but whose grand plans haven’t been disrupted since then?

Now that you have the background, you can appreciate when I say that the return of Pool Kids is something I’ve been anticipating for years. Years of wondering what this newly minted lineup would result in, countless nights spent swaddled in my Pool Kids hoodie listening to Safe Sex, and now we have ourselves a new song. I am happy to report that somehow, some-fucking-how, lead single “That's Physics, Baby” lives up to my insurmountable hype. 

In what feels like a nod to the band’s origin, the track begins with the two people who made up the first iteration of Pool Kids; Clinton and Goodwyne. We hear a drum hit and then are immediately dropped into a shreddy guitar lick. Together, these instruments fuse into an innovative groove that could only have come from the minds of this band. Soon, the bass and a second guitar join the fray, rounding out the riff and pushing the song up into the stratosphere. 

In the music video, we watch a listless Goodwyne struggling with her “Untitled Documentary” as bills pile up on the desk of her cozy wood-paneled office. Set in Washington, we see the band as a motley crew of filmmakers staking out the lush Pacific Northwest wilderness in search of some type of small furry creature. Adorned in the finest early-90s attire and armed with cutting-edge home video technology, the band hams it up, making their way through forests, caves, and mountain tops, all in pursuit of the perfect shot. Things get even more Twin Peaks-ey as this narrative alternates between this communal journey of the band and shots of Goodwyne drinking, smashing mirrors, and struggling to assemble her project.

As the video’s tone bounces back and forth from dark to goofy, the lyrics languish in the painful feeling of a failing relationship. The verses hinge upon a persistent theme of losing time, whether it’s lines about clocks moving backward or just a general sense of wasting away. It’s a slow-sinking quicksand of a feeling that any bad relationship inevitably hits. This pain is punctuated by an immensely catchy chorus of “Telling you what I / Telling you what I need / I’m telling you what I / Telling you what I need.” As much as I can’t wait to sing along to this live, within the song’s narrative, these lines are delivered with a sense of frustration, Goodwyne practically pleading for the person on the receiving end to listen to what she is saying.

The video ends with an over-the-top slapstick moment as Caden cracks open a soda, the can exploding in his face and knocking him backward off his chair. As the rest of the band doubles over with laughter, the chorus plays out one last time, and the camera resolves on a close-up of Goodwyne staring off into the distance… Is she catching a glimpse of the animal they’ve been searching for the whole video? Is she experiencing a moment of clarity? As we hear “Telling you what I / Telling you what I need” one final time, the lyrics become re-contextualized. I choose to interpret this shot as a realization that, despite the arduous journey, emotional strife, and financial difficulties, this group of friends, and maybe even that one laugh, was the thing Goodwyne was truly in search of all along.

Pool Kids’ self-titled album is out on Skeletal Lightning 7/22. Pre-order here.