SLOW PULP
SLOW PULP:
Alex Julian Leeds: Bass Guitar
Emily Massey: Vocals, Guitar
Teddy Matthews: Drums
Henry Stoehr: Guitar
Mixed & Mastered by Henry Stoehr
Cover Artwork by Alex Julian Leeds
Composed, Produced, Arranged and Performed by Slow Pulp
Released May 15, 2019
saudade (noun): a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia for an absent something or someone that one loves and may never return
It's too short.
At just under 11 full minutes, "Big Day," the latest EP from the Madison, WI. originated now Chicago, IL based quartet Slow Pulp, is over and done with its four songs within that scant time frame. Now, I am certain that you may already be wondering if this observation and exclamation is indeed a criticism towards this new effort. On the contrary, I wish for you to think of this quality just as I do as it solely means two things: that I am anxious for even more music from this band and most importantly, I just did not wish for this EP to conclude.
Slow Pulp's "Big Day" is the full culmination of of the band's evolution from existing as a trio under a completely different band name (and corresponding EP which is no longer available), the arrival of songstress Emily Massey and her full inclusion into the band for the captivating, transitional "EP 2" (released March 9, 2017) and the two outstanding singles "At Home" (released June 5, 2018) and "Steel Birds" (released November 1, 2018). For me, it has been a pleasure without question to regard this group from my vantage point, witnessing how these four individuals arrived, grew and congealed together with such rich, textured, and multi-layered skill, talent and confidence.
With "Big Day," Slow Pulp has elegantly us with a diminutive package that contains a bounty of musical gifts, showcasing a band announcing its full arrival glowingly and with a deeply felt lushness that surprisingly conjured up powerful emotions that exist somewhere in the realm between bittersweetness, melancholy, discovery, warmth, grace, and an inexplicable state of nostalgia while also living and breathing exuberantly within each passing moment.
In doing so, Slow Pulp's "Big Day" is the band's finest moment to date as it is a work of enormous, urgent beauty.
1. "Do You Feel It"
The first selection clocks in under two minutes and possesses lyrics that do not extend terribly further than the song's title. And yet, with the song's immersive drone that is augmented by Henry Stoehr and Emily Massey's cyclical guitar patterns that ascend to triumphant Pete Townshend-esque strums, Teddy Matthews' percussives that phase into the proceedings to gift the track with a gently driving urgency and Massey's ethereal vocals which ask if we are feeling the purposefully undefined "it," this song is an wondrous introduction that contains the rising emotion of a new day's dawning.
2. "New Media"
A work of utterly stunning timelessness, as the EP's first song proper arrives as if from some unknown dimension in which the dreamy 1970's haze of Massey's intoxicating vocals and a musical bedrock that feels like the post punk 1980's, the post rock/shoegaze of the late 1990's into the 2000's, and even some musical territories as delivered via their contemporaries in Madison, WI's Post Social, can co-exist in sublime harmony.
It feels like an Autumnal wind at dusk.
3. "High"
"I have too much in my pockets. I wish they were empty," sings Massey on the EP's third track during which Slow Pulp begins as if in a dream and then, gets loud and vibrantly awakened. Opening with a somnambulistic daze, complete with acoustic guitars that sound as if transported from the 1990's alternative rock scene (mostly like a time period during which the band members were perhaps toddlers) and descriptions of sweaty palms and feelings of unreadiness ad overall reluctance for some significant event soon to arrive.
And then, the band crashes in, forcing the song's narrator to floor along with the changes or be swept away by them. Thankfully, the song and singer settle into a rhythm that compliments each other, possibly signifying the full acceptance of the forced changes, and therefore, the emergence into new territories.
4. "Young World"
"Big Day" comes into its full fruition with the EP's final track, a breathtaking, heartbreaking, emotionally resounding wave that exquisitely brings all of the EP's elements together, fully informing everything we have just heard while also serving as an expansive, cumulative statement.
With a musical bedrock that is off the same musical universe as "New Media," "Young World" gorgeously, compassionately takes flight into the mystic, the philosophical, the existential as the band contemplates experiencing something for the first time and pondering precisely what such an experience would be like--as if viewing the world through the eyes of a child being introduced to the world itself.
"How does it feel to be so young?"
For me, that lyric propelled itself from the speakers and burrowed firmly into my heart and consciousness, partially due to the way Massey sings the line but mostly, due to the sentiment and overall concept. It was striking to me to hear such a lyric expressing a question as the band members are young people themselves. For whom are they posing the question? To the listener? To a child? To themselves?
The journey of "Big Day" rests within that very question for when we do experience something for that very first time, we are able to recognize and reflect upon that experience and the emotions it conjured much more easily as we age due to our ability to readily engage with our perceptions, emotions and consciousness. Yet, what of that small child? A figure who is most likely so firmly relating to the present, to being so completely within the NOW that the question itself is meaningless because for them, there is no real answer to be had or given.
So, in essence, even though we gain perspective and the ability to articulate our emotions as we grow older, even when we are young people, what do we ultimately lose when we are not simply engrossed with the act of being? Hence the inherent melancholy of growing older.
Saudade, indeed.
I honestly do not know if this is indeed what Slow Pulp had in mind when they composed the song, but this is the band's crowning achievement to date, making the entire release a work of art that rewards you with repeated listenings, growing in its sublime lushness.
When the surviving members of The Beatles were creating their celebrated "Anthology" series during the 1990's, I vividly remember George Harrison remarking about the full length of the band's "Anthology 2" (released March 18, 1996), a double disc collection which clocked in at 2 hours, by expressing confusion with having a work that possessed such a duration because The Beatles attempted to place as much music as possible within 2 minutes!
I found myself returning to that comment as I listened (and still listen) to Slow Pulp's "Big Day," as the band clearly placed as much music as possible into the scant 11 minutes of the entire EP, ensuring that what the listener received was not something abbreviated or weakly conceived but truthfully, a complete statement that needed no more than the time span the band allotted for their material.
With a production aesthetic that finds the band at their most glistening, Slow Pulp continue to solely serve the needs of the song itself, rather than attempting to have one band member's own star shine brighter at the expense of their bandmates.
Yes indeed, as the lead singer and now official frontwoman, Emily Massey more than deserves any and all attention she is bound to receive as she has possessed a certain je ne sais quoi that is perfectly made for the role she plays in music, from her time in the celebrated and now defunct Madison, WI based Modern Mod, the intriguing but also defunct Melkweed to now, her place in Slow Pulp, a band she seems to be tailor made due to her warm, seductive, enveloping presence throughout.
That being said, her bandmates in bassist Alex Julian Leeds, drummer Teddy Matthews (who often evokes the glide of Pink Floyd's Nick Mason)and guitarist Henry Stoehr, lifelong friends and veterans of more Madison, WI based bands including Dolores and Trophy Dad, respectively, are completely armed with formidable musical gifts that showcase their tastefulness as well as their overall melodicism.
By joining forces so seamlessly, Slow Pulp has more than effectively achieved that very inexplicable quality that several of the bands of the Madison music community has amassed, the ability to lovingly reference the music that has influenced them and yet, to invent a musical identity that sounds like no one else other than themselves.
Slow Pulp's "Big Day" remarkably announces itself at the perfect time, a period during which the band's notoriety is beginning to ascend to new heights...and as far as I am concerned, deservedly so. During a current music era where so much of what we are being given is dangerously homogenized and becoming increasingly relegated to being an innocuous accessory rather than art to be treasured, Slow Pulp has beautifully delivered music designed to attract and engage potential audiences desperate to feel something when listening.
Slow Pulp's "Big Day" is precisely a work during which you are being asked to get in touch with some deeper emotional territory and arrive on the other side unquestionably moved by that elusive, evocative feeling that you cannot quite capture but you know it intimately once it arrives and settles into your hearts.
Yet, as a side note to the band...do you think that next time, we can have a full length album? Just to make the feelings last even longer??? Even when they are filled with as much melancholic longing as "Big Day."
BANDCAMP:
https://slowpulp.bandcamp.com/album/big-day
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