Boosegumps is the recording project of Heeyoon Won, who also plays in the indie rock band Secret Mountain (who, by the way have an album out soon). She makes lo-fi bedroom pop that sounds pretty and sad and is infused with that sense of anxiety and loneliness that seems to define the youth of the twenty first century. The songs feel very intimate and personal, less diary entries than actual thoughts rattling around inside Won’s head, all those little worries and losses that accumulate throughout day-to-day life. While the album isn’t exactly cheery, it’s certainly not dull and gloomy either, and, while I was predisposed to liking an act whose name was inspired by R.L. Stine, it honestly is very good.
Won is certainly not afraid to share her feelings with the listener, and I get the sense that that’s kind of the point, that writing songs about the things that get you down can sometimes pick you back up again, or at least give you a sense of perspective and shows how things are not as bad as they seem. The good news is that this effect works two ways, and what acts as therapy for Won as a writer/musician has the same effect on us as the listener. It’s one of my favourite things about this kind of music, the way that an entirely personal and cathartic process is released into the big wide world to help others too. Some sad music can be dispiriting, sucking the hope from your brain via the auditory canal, but stuff like this has the opposite effect, neatly sidestepping melodrama in favour of unflinching sincerity.
The sound of the album is in that bedroom pop vein (e.g. Kissing Fractures, Alanna McArdle, Free Cake For Every Creature et al.). ‘Best Friends’ uses a drum machine and twinkling guitar to support Won’s questions of, “Where did all your best friends go?”, while ‘Fade Away’ sounds like jangle pop slowed to half pace. ‘Awake’ is largely instrumental with a slow build and some breathy background aahs and ‘March Sadness’ is all echoey lo-fi with added xylophone.
The songs also contain some really nice writing, such as on the anxiety-ridden, ‘I Feel So Small’, in which Won sings, “Hid in the floorboards til you came home, I feel so small without you” (which brought to mind this image). But it’s a line on the deceptively hopeful-sounding ‘Forever’ which steals the show, and sums up the entire album rather neatly:
“I don’t feel too alive today
this strange feeling won’t go away
I think it is here to stay
forever”
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You can download 🙂 on a name-your-price basis at the Boosegumps Bandcamp page. I’d recommend you get right to it.
P.S. Did you see Boosegumps on our Favourite Free Music of 2014 List?