By 
Trepid – TOGETHER // APART
Genre: Indie Rock
Favorite Tracks: “Party,” “Backbone,” “Watch Me”
The scum of the summer has arrived early in Athens, Georgia: Roadkill rotting on the side of long, empty stretches of highway; ticks hiding in the long blades of grass covering unmowed fields; hot beers simmering on the patio. Long days, longer nights. Emerging from the kudzu, local band Trepid has released a soundtrack for summer sludge.
For a little over a year, Trepid has been building themselves up, collecting momentum while their own feedback gathers around them. The band’s discography is small, but growing. Last spring, they released “Comeback,” a melodic single that perfectly introduces the sonic vision through a relentless crash into itself. A year later, they followed it up with “Watch Me,” a haunting, cathartic single ahead of their debut EP, TOGETHER // APART. Trepid describes itself as “grungegaze” and “cigrit smokin’ music.” While these aren’t wrong, on TOGETHER // APART, they are embarking upon something broader.
The EP begins at the end, or at least an end—the day after a gathering. On “Party,” Ethan Houseman’s drums and Adam Smith’s WORD bassline incite J. Ben Turk and Turner Chastain’s cascade of guitars—opening enough space for May May Bryant’s gripping voice. She sets the scene casually; it’s the day after she went out drinking and lost her keys at Foster’s party, all while caught up in an idea of you, but she’s figuring all that out. The difference between figuring it out and what constitutes actually getting something figured out, especially in the midst of an unwinding relationship, is at the crux of the song. In the second verse, Bryant clarifies with a change of perspective. Out of her body, she admits her beer hangover, she asks for medicine, contemplates giving up drinking for more mental clarity, and walks to Foster’s to find her keys and drive back home.
The instruments collide around her as she cleans up the aftermath of the night, climbing and climbing as she repeats “on and on,” and ends on the questions she repeats in the chorus, “What is it that you were saying? Did I hear that you were staying outside town?” This question is the first representation of the EP’s title, TOGETHER // APART. The band circles instances of closeness and feelings of isolation, and the internal complexities of both. The question gains ferocity when Bryant ends the song on the admission that, “I hope it’s true that you’re staying outside town,” and kicks the door open for the rest of the EP.
The climactic ending of “Party” leads into the grind of “Amy,” the grimiest Trepid has sounded so far. Teetering on the edge of theatrical metalcore, her distorted voice intertwines with a metallic guitar tone. Bryant’s voice, or voices, turn to jeers, dripping with a kind of malice as she asks “Amy” if she’s okay and if she’s crying on a Tuesday. The near-malice tinting “Amy,” makes the shift to “Flowers” all the more jarring. While the sharp edge of Turk and Chastain’s guitars on “Amy,” still echoes, their instruments are softened into something more hopeful on “Flowers for Algernon.” Named for the sci-fi story by Daniel Keyes about a mouse undergoing experimental mental treatment, a thematically relevant story that complements Bryant’s searing self-observations. This internal strife reappears as she belts “Watching through the window / always through the window.” Trepid are still exploring the contours of their sound, but these two songs have created new bookends for their developing range.
“Manual Labor” starts with the wail of a guitar before Bryant’s voice enters, accompanied by a chorus, as she croons about looking for work, but mostly how it creates her invisibility and listlessness. While she might have been watching through the windows in the previous song, her actual location on Earth is harder to pinpoint without, “No papers that tells you where I have been.” The song swings with Bryant’s voice, ebbing and flowing alongside her. While a pointy guitar solo finds the highest point, Smith’s bass anchors the song close to the ground.
As the EP’s thrashiest and perhaps most melodic song, “Backbone,” has been stuck in my head since the second I heard it. There’s something intrinsically Athens about this track. Maybe it’s the lyrical reference to the distance between the east side of the town and presumably the west side. It’s a bit annoying to write out, but maybe it’s because Bryant’s almost goofy, sing-songy delivery of “Did ya lose your backbone?” creates a slight alliance to The B-52s punkier side. Maybe it’s the hints of beatdown skirting around the edges of the song. Regardless, it’s an incendiary song from the start, a distorted strum, to the end, Bryant’s muscular bark on the final word “steel.”
The EP is full of questions: Did you lose your backbone? Are you crying on a Tuesday? Did I hear that you were staying outside town? But it ends without any. On “Watch Me,” Bryant is not looking for answers; she has them. She’s figured it out. With mosquitoes buzzing around my ears and moths circling the lights outside my apartment, TOGETHER // APART has become essential listening. It feels too hot to figure it all out, too sticky to care. But you’ll figure it all out, too.
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