GRNDMS are Catherine DeGennaro & Suzy Jivotovski, a duo who craft experimental folk-tinged bedroom pop whilst living 400 miles apart. Capitol Mill is their debut album, the result of a personal challenge slash social experiment in which both members set out to write and record five songs each, independent of one another. So I guess Capitol Mill is in reality less an album proper and more a split double EP? Whatever the case, from such disparate origins comes an album that I think you’re going to like.
‘Mass Observation // Whistles & Bells’ is like a soundcheck for the album, with its hesitant guitars and barely there lo-fi vocals. ‘White Hot Mess’ is a breezy acoustic track, something that will sounds good to fans of Frankie Cosmos, etc. etc., with sweet little doo doo doos and poetic lyrics about the mundane day to day. It’s quietly carefree, like waking at noon and happily moseying round the house for the rest of the day.
“If I forget to water plants at my parents well tell them I fell asleep.
And I woke to find myself in a hollow and hot star that you know I could not keep.
If I can’t bring myself to shine all the dishes and the pans
or sweep the floor.
I will curl inside myself, hold the hand of the stereo,
I don’t know what I’m waiting for”
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‘Bending Out’ is much softer and gentler, the doo doo doos replaced with mmm mmm mmms. The lyrics are great here too:
“Burning stuff with lighters,
firewood and fingers,
does your throat feel like its squeezed,
are your symptoms more at ease
or is it hell?”
‘Linger On’ starts with a guitar that rings like a bell and then gentle drum machine percussion kicks in. ‘Last Past Life’ has some crunchy guitars and some really interesting lyrics, a combination which brings to mind Casiotone for the Painfully Alone or Trace Mountains:
“Mother Mary I confess
I broke your porcelain head
and hid it by the dishes.
Double meaning got me curious,
eyes are open it’s luxurious
to see with every fibre.
Sequence will repeat
breathe ash before you eat
swallow birds whole
so you can cry over the cruelty
in your next best life”
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‘Observation Satellite’ has bright sunshiny-morning folk guitars and lovely vocal harmonies and lyrics that dream of escape to somewhere simpler, while ‘Pwr Chords Drool’ takes a sticky psych route with its echoey lo-fi vocals. with its electric guitars ‘Echo Chamber’ is a twangy affair, while ‘Spoonless’ is a lovely little song which has the childlike air of making fun for oneself (“Walking with my eyes closed, its a game I made up, its really hard to win cos stairs will do me in, anyways I’m playing, anyways I’m playing”). The album ends with ‘Resolute’, which builds on soft acoustic strums and earns bonus points for describing clouds as “soft and lazy things”.
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The entire album feels simultaneously intimate and bright and airy. It is unlike a lot of other bedroom pop acts in that it doesn’t stare long and hard at painful memories or anxieties, or if it does it does so in a more breezy, untroubled manner. The lyrics read like playful poetry but still hold an emotional connection, like the musings of someone who has managed to maintain a child-like mindfulness of the world around them. Capitol Mill is proof that sunny little songs need not be mindless nonsense, and that you don’t need to write explicitly sad songs to resonate with the listener.
The tapes have long sold out, but you can still get a download at the Fox Food Records Bandcamp page.