Illinois pop punk band Nectar began as the solo venture of lead Kamila Glowacki. The project was intended as an outlet for the songs that didn’t quite fit the punk bands Glowacki worked in in the Champaign-Urbana DIY scene. After a series of shorter releases, Glowacki has turned Nectar into a full band, enlisting the help of Aaron Shults on guitar, Isabel Skidmore on bass, and Jake Mott on drums to make their debut LP, Knocking at the Door.
Opener ‘Blinds’ is a song about mouldy lemons and powercuts and learning to be alone, the perfect introduction to how Nectar blend introspective writing with bouncy pop punk. The song is simultaneously fun and affecting, Glowacki’s lyrics diary-like observations that sometimes allude to a sense of worry and isolation is sidelong glances, and sometimes tackle those feelings head-on with a sense of clear-eyed purpose.
“The hours last so long because I know you are not home
Trying to learn the difference of being lonely and alone”
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But, like almost every track on Knocking at the Door, the whole thing clocks in at less than two minutes, and is breathless and buoyant despite its serious subject matter. And therein lies the power of what Nectar do. Things never slip into the moody or self-absorbed because all of the emotion and anxiety is presented with such energy. These songs feel like both a much-needed acknowledgement that negative feelings exist and a blast of confidence that assures you that everything can be overcome. As Christine Pallon puts it in the album’s blurb, Knocking at the Door “[explores] sadness through short songs and fast riffs, each track a new anthem for learning to grow and conquer loneliness.”
‘Ursa Minor’ expresses that woozy rush of contentment exclusive to summer nights (“lyrics”), while, as the title suggests, ‘Smile’ is about willfully accepting change (“Smile and walk away cos it’s okay,” Glowacki sings). The sometimes stifling nature of routine is the theme on ‘Days’, a track that tackles the trials of the familiar, especially in that cold and dark stretch between the end of summer and the beginning of spring. But again the track has a glimmer of hope, this time in the fact that there is solidarity in this feeling, or as Glowacki puts it “I’m not the only one, to watch the days come and days go.”
‘Slouch’ is another standout, beginning with the hushed, almost confessional line “I can’t stop crying, even in the most public place,” before erupting into that same cavalcade of catharsis that comes with an intense crying fit. The song distills the Nectar ethos into a hundred seconds, that weird paradox of embracing helplessness in order to feel stronger and grow.
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“How on earth can you be so naturally happy?” Glowacki asks on ‘Happy’, which kind of triumphantly embraces the state of never feeling triumphant, while ‘Somewhere’ switches focus to someone else, a track infused with the hope that a person can find a way to be okay (“I want to know if you can find somewhere / a place to go where you can feel better”). By far the album’s longest song, finale ‘Birthday’ is a relative slow burner, a big full-bodied rocker that sits in the aftermath of a relationship, infused with a subdued wistfulness but also a sense of strength and acceptance, the feeling that perhaps things will work out for the better.
“And you’re not quite sure how to pronounce my name,
and I’m not quite sure who’s fault it is to blame”
On Knocking at the Door, Nectar show that personal and introspective songs need not be slumped and mumbling, that springy guitars and catchy melodies are sometimes just the tools to capture how it feels to traverse the weird experience of trying to find a place in the world, of overcoming difficult patches and easing that loneliness that creeps up on us all from time to time.
You can get Knocking at the Door via Infinity Cat Records from the Nectar Bandcamp page.
