Written By: Noam Asulin
Album review - Pool Kids - Pool Kids
Release date - 22.7.2022
Record company - Skeletal Lightning
Genre - Alternative/Indie
(Photo: Kay Dargen)
"Pool Kids" is an indie/alternative band from Tallahassee, Florida. The band includes four members. Christine Goodwyne (guitar, vocals), Andrew Anaya (guitar), Nicolette Alvarez (bass), and Caden Clinton (drums).
The eponymous "Pool kids", is the band's second album, while the debut album "Music To Practice Safe Sex To" was released in 2018.
Before I tell you what I think about the album, I want to focus on the cover for a moment. Some of you surely remember the experience of flipping through the record shelves, when suddenly an interesting cover catches your eye and makes you want to listen to it even though you don't even know the artist. How many albums and artists did you get to know this way, just because the cover intrigued you? For me too, the cover is the first impression, when I go to listen to an album of a band I don't know. If the cover is interesting enough to me, I'll listen to the album, even if it's an artist I don't know or a genre I don't usually listen to. In this case, I really liked the cover. The rainbow on the blue background and the minimalistic design was very interesting, caught my attention, and made me interested and curious about the musical material inside.
But, in this case, "the cover" did not really indicate "the inside". In my opinion, this is a fairly average album that has only some gems in it. If the whole album sounded like these gems I could say that this is an amazing album, but unfortunately, this is not the case. If we consider the songs as a whole, most of them are quite tiresome to the ear. For me, indie is not an easy genre to listen to, but I think that in this case it could have been made much more accessible and this album would have sounded much better (as was done, for example, in the last album of "Wolf Alice" - "Blue Weekend").
As mentioned, there are some gems in this album. The first track "Conscious Uncoupling" is surprising and gives hope for a fun and kicking album. A rock song with an even more interesting C-Part. The rockish and energetic "I Hope You're Right" and "Swallow" also continue in the same direction and are really wonderful, but unfortunately this is where it ends. Every time I listened to the album I felt as if I was forced to continue to listen to it. The songs, for the most part, are just not interesting enough, not kicking enough, and feel a bit monotonous to me. The non-monotonous songs are actually the best songs on the album and it's a shame that there are only three of them.
In conclusion, despite the disappointing feeling I was left with, I'm still very curious to know what "Pool Kids" members will bring to their next album, hopefully, more songs like the three pearls I mentioned above.
For Listening: Deezer, Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music