By It’s our Bandcamp Picks of the Week, featuring Puddled’s emotionally sludgy self-titled EP and MEER’s proggy melodrama WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS!
Puddled – S/T
Genre: Grunge, Shoegaze
Favorite Tracks: “This Time,” “Smn Good,” “Tides”
No one is ever the first person to reach an inflection point in their mid-twenties. After splitting with her partner, Naomi Davidoff of Puddled pulled the trigger and moved from Baltimore to Philadelphia, seeking—you guessed it—a new beginning. And at the most vulnerable, it’s encouraging to notice peers who are undergoing their own metamorphoses. This second chapter is the closest you’re ever going to get to freshman year of college. Like the drop-shipped Etsy design says, “put your hair up in a bun, drink some coffee, turn on gangsta rap, and handle it.”
On the band’s debut self-titled EP, she ebbs and flows between her safe old roots and potential for growth. Kyle Balkin’s swelling guitars, Jesse Hutchison’s raucous drums, and Laura Banner’s assertive basslines all nod to fuzzy ‘90s rock. Meanwhile, Davidoff quiets the negative voice in her head. Her bouncy vocal delivery buffers against the sludgy instrumentals. Even in the depths of her despair, she never feels isolated, a consolation for listeners enduring similar life changes.
“Swallow your pride,” she repeats on the opening track, “This Time,” which retraces the breakdown of her relationship, acknowledging both people’s shortcomings and ultimately wondering if she made the right choices. But those decisions don’t matter anymore, she comes to realize on “Smn Good,” which “is about recognizing when you need to make that change and take the leap for yourself—because it won’t happen otherwise.” On all six songs, tight hooks drip with grunge-pop charm, promising Puddled a spot in Philadelphia’s prolific alternative scene.
The band doesn’t wallow in the past like so many other post-breakup albums but instead simply acknowledges it and keeps charging forward. In fact, chalking this up to a “post-breakup” album doesn’t address her move and its compounding anxiety. Davidoff’s ability to independently and all at once verbalize regret, longing, and autonomy veers away from “woe is me” narratives.
“Moving away from the things I believe / Feeling sick, wondering who I’ll be,” she mulls over on “Tides.” Instead of leaning into the trite and self-pitying “confessional” genre, Davidoff sings with the quiet confidence of someone hyping themselves up in the mirror, whose trembling hands can push beyond their comfort zone into radical transformation. Listen on Bandcamp. [Gilliann Karon]
MEER – WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS
Genre: Progressive Rock, Orchestral Pop
Favorite Tracks: “Chains of Changes,” “Today Tonight Tomorrow,” “Mother”
Contrary to popular belief, progressive rock can be more than just middle-aged fogies jamming out and flexing their chops for an obscene amount of time. Progressive music, in its original form, was simply the marriage of rock and roll with classical song structures and instrumentation to create “elevated music.” Irrespective of how pretentious that sounds, one can’t deny the results. This was the era of PET SOUNDS, SGT. PEPPER, and DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED—albums revered for eternity as forward thinking. The artistic blueprint established by the likes of Brian Wilson and The Beatles has been referenced across the decades, and though many bands have twisted it to make ungodly monstrosities, MEER have largely adhered to it more than any notable contemporaries.
To compare WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS to any of the aforementioned records is obvious blasphemy, and the band would agree with that assessment. This is not transformative music by any stretch of the imagination, but neither is it derivative. People might lump them in with the likes of the prog-adjacent Bent Knee or Dim Gray, but MEER’s ties to the classics are clearly stronger. Opening track “Chains of Changes” is perhaps the best encapsulation of this ethos, with its ambient-esque intro; refined melodies; layered mix of violin, viola, piano, keys, bass, and guitar; and astute lyrical observations about how fear mongering from the news can result in the creation of echo chambers. The fact that they’re able to make this six minute excursion fly by like a breeze is a testament to their songwriting skills.
Just as noteworthy as MEER’s compositional chops is their ability to balance the disparate sonic textures on each song. This is a group that sounds like they’re accompanied by an orchestra on tracks like “Take Me To The River” but never fall into the territory of overshadowing each other (a real testament for a band of 8 people). It’s uncharacteristic for prog, which arguably makes their musical excursions that much easier to follow. The opening rhythm to “Behave” sounds like something Billy Idol would croon over, “Golden Circle” flits between disco-esque motifs and Max-Martin vocal hooks, and “Today Tonight Tomorrow” is a straight up power ballad expertly sung by Knut Kippersund Nesdal. These stylistic experiments are welcome for a group that sometimes skews too closely to the formula established on their previous release, and even alleviates some of the pacing issues present on WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS (though it can not completely overcome the feeling of things being drawn out). At 60 minutes long, there’s undeniably some fat, but if you can put up with lesser songs like “To What End” and melodramatic album closer “This Is The End,” one will find an album worth re-spinning as they discover new layers amidst the dense instrumentation and layered compositions. Get lost on Bandcamp. [Connor Shelton]
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