the bluest star is the latest album from Philadelphia indie pop band free cake for every creature, aka Katie Bennett and friends (most notably Francis Lyons and Heeyoon Won). The band make self-described “soft pop,” which is a pretty perfect description of their gentle bedroom aesthetic. Yes, these songs are relatively quiet, and probably not going to draw rushing crowds to the dance floor, but they’re crafted with a disarming sense of confidence and self purpose, songs for swaying by yourself in your room, or feeling okay driving along in rosy evening sunlight.
Take for example ‘shake it out’, as patient and considered an indie pop song as you’ll hear all year. The opening hush is broken after almost a minute, dawning guitar heralding the first chorus. It’s undeniably affecting, despite the fact Bennett barely raises her voice beyond a whisper. It’s just one of many songs that’s shaded with lots of feelings, a heart-swelling joy and sense of connection tempered by the difficulty of allowing people to drop out of your life.
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But, as with all free cake for every creature releases, everything on the bluest star feels smooth and sunny, with even the sadder songs illuminated with a gentle golden glow. Importantly, it avoids the pitfalls of becoming too sugary or twee, maintaining a genuine sincerity across it’s fourteen tracks. ‘around you’ is giddy with feeling, built of observations that come straight from the schoolyard (“you left some things unsaid and I liked you more for that” Bennett sings “and in the girls room, hip to hip / a circle of ‘I admit I… I just want to hang around you'”). ‘hometown hero’ also looks back to earlier times, a nostalgic story of riding bikes to the edge of town and covering The Cure in the graveyard, while ‘tom or mike or pat or’ looks back at a relationship in a series of poetic but specific images.
“tom,
come to me
two smudges on the breeze
sick with our untold stories”
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‘sideline/skyline’ echoes with Pete Gill‘s pedal steel, a slow blue country song for the twenty first century (“I’m nobody’s mother,” Bennett sings, “and I don’t have to hold it all together”), while ‘sunday afternoon’ perfectly captures that small freedom of an purposeless weekend, of stepping outside of the bustle of everyday life and just floating along at your own pace for a while.
“walked for hours aimlessly
washed in the nothing, happily
the world went on without me
and i let it, happily”
It’s refreshing to hear a record that’s about the uncomplicated joy of friendship, the breathless pleasure of relating to someone and having them relate right back. ‘in your car’ is a great example, featuring Felix Walworth on banjo and Meghan Center with additional vocals. It’s a song about whiling away long summer evenings in a parked car with Pavement on the radio, and again displays what Bennett does so well, focusing on small details to infer larger feelings, all wrapped up in a transportive atmosphere and a genuine gladness.
free cake for every creature don’t make sad songs exactly, usually tending toward a kind and hopeful feel. Yet there is something intangible about them, a strange sensation that weaves its way into quiet moments, like a kind of everyday poetry or nostalgia that we all recognise but don’t have a name for. The case in point is the penultimate song, ‘be home soon’, which somehow portrays a subway ride home as something beautiful and magical.
“eating clementines on the subway
put the peels on my blue jeans
should i offer my seatmate a piece?
turn up the song in my headphones,
this afternoon will be so naturally sweet”
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the bluest star is out now and you can get the LP, cassette or digital download via Double Double Whammy, or the free cake for every creature Bandcamp page. free cake for every creature are heading across the Atlantic to the UK/EU this winter, and you can see the full dates below.
Tour poster by Nora Einbender Luks