Filled with gut punch hooks, the Tallahassee band’s second album is carried by their battle-tested friendship and irrepressible chemistry.
While Pool Kids have made their name in Florida’s vibrant DIY emo scene, their second LP works in the musically agnostic style of “breakup album.” All of those tried-and-true narrative beats—devastation, resilience, reconciliation, catharsis, probably in that order—have coalesced into a genre of their own, drawing in people who might not otherwise be interested in someone slumped over their piano or acoustic guitar or sampler. Pool Kids announces its intentions from the jump with “Conscious Uncoupling,” its Goop-pilled title at hilarious odds with the realities of an aimless, twentysomething relationship collapsing and taking everything down with it: “I’m probably never gonna clean this house again/I’m probably never gonna see your mom again.” But from that shellshocked opening, vocalist and guitarist Christine Goodwyne mashes a 47-minute song cycle into a supercut that scrambles the typical breakup album timeline: One second she’s spitefully yelling that she’s not acting out of spite; the next she’s softening her tone and wanting nothing more than to look back and laugh. By the end of the song, she’s back on that stupid couch again, unaware that she’s going to do the same thing again 11 more times.
Of all the razzle dazzle of Pool Kids, the most diabolical trick is its first: faking like it could be mistaken for any of the sad bop-type beats clogging your feed. It lasts less than a minute before Pool Kids bring back everything that made their’ 2018 debut, Music to Have Safe Sex To, as adorable as it was invigorating: double-kick drums and harmonized, tapped-guitar leads betraying their roots in Florida hardcore and emo revival, and Goodwyne shouting at the rafters even though they’re only a foot above her head. The two most popular songs on Music were titled “Overly Verbose Email Series, Pt. III” and “$5 Subtweet,” and Goodwyne continues to explore how the tone and cadence of Twitter discourse spills over into real life, because really, what’s the difference anymore?
Yet the most rewarding parts of Pool Kids come during its numerous moments of respite. As he did on exquisite sounding LPs from Special Explosion and Great Grandpa, Seattle-based producer Mike Vernon Davis uses Transatlanticism as the gold standard for formerly scrappy indie rock bands making albums that sound rich but not expensive, a veritable lookbook of emo textures—the soft scratchiness of worn furniture, the heavy haze of a hangover stubbornly lasting until lunch time. Pool Kids isn’t a required headphones listen, but it’s filled with so much tactile, subtle post-production that even a decent set of AirPods turn it into a deluxe version of itself. The dualities of Pool Kids—instrumental exuberance and lyrical devastation, the pine-scented breeze of the Pacific Northwest and Florida’s elliptical rhythms and gut punch hooks—play out like tennis aces locked in a tiebreaker, the mesmerizing builds punctuated by knee-buckling, angular shifts.
These moments are likely what caused Hayley Williams to liken Pool Kids to an earlier, much rawer version of her own band; or at least what Paramore could have sounded like if they aspired to play Fest or ArcTanGent rather than Warped Tour. It was the most consequential cosign in this realm since Mark Hoppus discovered Hop Along’s “Tibetan Pop Stars,” a pop-punk icon showing admiration for a knottier, more humbly charming band that could be big, if not MTV big. The biggest hooks on Pool Kids—“You wanna start a fight! You wanna start a fight! You wanna start a fight!” or “I’m telling what I/Telling you what I need”—are exorcisms of obsession and frustration, even when they sound like triumph.
“I’ll bet you didn't think we'd make it this far/But we’ve made do,” Goodwyne sighs on the gorgeous, moody centerpiece “Comes in Waves,” maybe at an ex-partner or online troll, but probably at herself. Pool Kids have been through a little of everything since Music. (Drummer Caden Clinton’s mother died in an accident prior to the recording of Pool Kids, and towards the end, the band’s gear was destroyed in a flood.) The closing “Pathetic” samples footage they took of the destruction: “What can we make of this?” It’s the album’s final line, though it retroactively echoes through every previous song that asks how can anyone move on, whether stuck in their own head or on their phone. The solution apparently has something to do with leaping out of a plane, Pool Kids filmed themselves skydiving for the video of “Arm’s Length,” a song whose first line complains about the energy it takes just to get out of bed. But Pool Kids power through with an unshakeable belief that their battle-tested friendship and irrepressible musical chemistry can get them through anything.
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