You probably know Remember Sports better by their previous moniker, SPORTS. Well, having graduated, the band, comprising of Carmen Perry (vocals, guitar), Jack Washburn (guitar), and Catherine Dwyer (bass), relocated from Midwestern college town of Gambier, Ohio to Philadelphia. Adding a new drummer in Connor Perry, SPORTS shed their skin and dressed their name in the nostalgic past tense. “It’s a reference to the narrative that our last album was our swan song” Dwyer explains of the knowing joke to The Fader. “How people would be like, ‘Aw man, remember Sports? They were so great.”
So, while new album Slow Buzz is technically their third, the reincarnation as Remember Sports makes it seem more like the first of something altogether new. The record deals with the breakup of a relationship, and the subsequent hardship and heartbreak, but allied with an increasingly mature sense of nuance and depth. Like the Nectar record we wrote about recently, Slow Buzz treads outside of the stereotypical angst of breakup records to explore other emotions, tempering loss and longing with a sense of giddy joy and freedom, and balancing it all with a meditation on the supportive and healing power of friendship.
Despite the potentially painful subject matter, Slow Buzz has all the energy and fun of previous SPORTS releases, though this is more than ironic juxtaposition. Rather, Perry’s introspective lyrics are elevated to bold and brave statements by the sheer enthusiasm of the instrumentation. Opener ‘Otherwise’ provides the perfect example, beginning with a reflective, minimal arrangement of vocals and keyboard which set the emotional scene for the album, before tumbling into a full-blown indie rocker. It’s impossible not to get swept up in the messy catharsis of it all, as Perry sheds every little worry and hang-up and throws them into the tumble, before finding renewed (if wry) contentment in whatever is left. As they put it: “at least I’m okay otherwise.”
Lead single ‘Up From Below’ deals with the end of a relationship pretty explicitly, a close detailing of the awkward death throes of intimacy with the dual emotions of guilt and acceptance. But despite the heavy subject matter, the track is undeniably playful, and as such becomes less a morose reflection than an anthem to bolster and assure.
“I found your sign in the sky last night
I’m a song that you keep in the back of your mind
With all of the things you compartmentalized
You’re not mad at me you just can’t look in my eyes”
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Because of the dynamism of the other tracks, ‘Dripping’ feels like a slow-burner. Smoldering strength and hope and melancholic nostalgia coalesce into a mesmerizing rhythm, never quite sparking into the runaway energy of other tracks, yet content in the knowledge that the heat is stronger just under the coals. Then, as if to prove the fact Remember Sports refuse to include a single scrap of filler across all 12 songs, the rattling follow-up ‘Calling Out’ arrives with breakneck speed, leveling out just enough during the verses for Perry to deliver her lines defiantly.
A veritable slow buzz, ‘Nothing’s Coming Out’ makes the switch back to a more considered pace, aching with a balance of yearning, remorse and self-belief, though ‘The 1 Bad Man’ responds with a boisterous, volatile temperament (“I’m not afraid of what I did but / I’m not getting over it,” Perry sings. And I know that you asked me to stay / I’m just a bad man today”). Again, consciously or otherwise, this serves to subvert the tropes of ‘break-up’ music—refusing to flatten the scenario into a simple melodrama of hurt and miscommunication, and instead adding layer upon layer of conflicting emotion and complication.
Having been revamped since it first appeared on 2013’s self-titled release, ‘Temporary Tattoo’ is a tale of worry and self-doubt rollicking through in under two minutes, all anxious tics and unsent aggressive text messages, while ‘Pull Through’ sees a return to the slower, more considered sound. That said, there are still some crunchy guitar licks to add a bit of foot stomping catharsis to proceedings, suggesting that Remember Sports are even subverting the pattern of subversion, side-stepping any simple binary of happy-sad/quick-slow across the record.
With disarmingly simple lyrics suffused with real emotion, ‘No Going Back’ is embraces this ambiguity within a single song, the killer shout-along chorus likely to cause tears and grins in equal measure. Lyrically, the track could be setting into resigned sadness or else be casting around for some level of acceptance, the narrator experiencing a kind of paralysed shock as the changes become apparent, the realisation that communication has broken down to loaded stares and unsaid sentiments. “Guess I’ll go home now I got tired and you’re staring at me blankly”, Perry sings, “take a shower brush your teeth and remember all the good things. Back to the warm sad place in my chest, where I miss you like a sunset.”
‘Making it Right’ plays like a reaction to this, an attempt to shake free of the stasis, before Slow Buzz ends on a bittersweet note with ‘Unwell’. Beginning as a gentle admission of past mistakes, the song reserves one final blast of catharsis at the very death as a final reminder. It’s the perfect breakup song, avoiding both sulky moping and sugar-coated fakery, feeling sad but resilient. Such sincerity could be said to represent Slow Buzz as a whole, though sincerity not as some sentimental force rather a commitment to what feels true, no matter how messy and conflicting. There’s something in the Remember Sports story at the heart of this earnestness, the possibility of progressing without sacrificing an entire ideal, of reincarnation where one returns not as some different creature entirely, but a new version of oneself. A truer version, at least for now.
You can get Slow Buzz via Father/Daughter Records on vinyl and cassette, or via the Remember Sports Bandcamp page.
