american poetry club is the project of Jordan Weinstock (who you may also know as the figure behind It Takes Time Records). Weinstock has been putting out releases under the american poetry Club moniker since 2017, creating bedroom pop songs that are short and sweet and sincere. Their latest album, we are beautiful, even when we are broken!, sees american poetry club make a big stride forward as a band. The songs were penned by Weinstock and then taken to his friends, who came together to make something infused with a sense of solidarity and companionship. “I think there is something truly vital about screaming one’s everyday love in basements with friends,” Weinstock says in the album’s blurb, a statement which captures the feeling across the record as neatly as one could ever hope to.
‘forklift’ is a slow motion emo-tinged indie rock, though one which thuds suddenly into a heavy midsection, a hint at stormy inner turmoil deposited beneath the song’s slow and reflective veneer. ‘summers with Ethan!’ begins as a sluggish track about shampoo, before segueing into something emotive and full of memories, the guitar gathering intensity as the words become increasingly sincere. “Remembering 2009, when I first met you,” Weinstock sings, “you were small and unbroken, and impervious to ridicule, I couldn’t say it well back then, but know that I miss you.”
‘the sum of your parts’ recalls Nana Grizol in the way it combines seemingly mundane observations (“I took calculus my senior year I did well enough”) with the jubilant maximalism of trumpet and clattering drums. The result sends the familiar american poetry club bedroom pop soaring skyward, perhaps the biggest and boldest song Weinstock has ever made.
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A two and half minute jolt of pure energy, ‘a quick reminder that you are good’ is the most thrillingly upbeat track on the record. It sees Weinstock deliver his lines, which hold a childlike sense of hope and goodness, with carefree abandon. There are shades of Free Cake For Every Creature in the sense of earnest friendship, although the throat-scratching yelps in the finale give it a more desperate edge.
“Will you hold my hand today,
I mean it in a friendly way”
In some ways this is the defining characteristic of the record, the balance between wistful reminiscence (if not sadness then at least nostalgia or regret) and shameless sincerity, an updated emo that doesn’t take itself too seriously, and believes that things are going to turn out okay. Compare the turbulently emotional ‘kmd (and you are ever so dear in our hearts because of it!)’ with the group-shout of ‘how i felt at parties’, as Weinstock declares “just because I’m not in high school, doesn’t mean that you’re not still and won’t always be, you will always be my best friend.”
‘snbm’ covers both in one song, beginning sluggishly somnolent and growing into something bold and defiant (“we are bursting at the seam / we are a brilliant sunbeam”), before the album’s outro sees american poetry club goofing around in a basement, the perfect aural illustration of the album as a whole. Not that the songs aren’t serious, but rather that their main purpose is the connection and sense of community that comes with them.
we are beautiful, even when we are broken! is out now and you can get it from the american poetry club Bandcamp page.