Following a successful tour with Lacy Dacus, West Philadelphia‘s Crooks & Nannies (AKA duo Madel Rafter and Sam Huntington) are announcing their debut EP No Fun, coming early 2023 on Grand Jury Music. Building upon the foundations of previous single ‘Control’, the release takes emo heart and some country-inflected twang to create a brand of indie rock capable of exploring ideas both personal and societal. The difficulties of working through your own identity, and the challenge of living true to yourself in a world often hostile and cruel.
To accompany the announcement, Crooks & Nannies have shared brand new single, ‘Sorry’. We described ‘Control’ as a song capturing “the knife-edge of mental health and the often unseen work which goes into maintaining the balance,” its rhythm building into something increasingly chaotic and strained, but the new track mimics an altogether different emotional experience. Tender, uncertain verses rise into big widescreen crescendos, then a lingering aftermath ringing with the expended energy. A song which gives in to the rollercoaster ride of intense emotion, no matter how high the peaks or deep the troughs.
“‘Sorry’ is the first and only song I’ve written entirely in one sitting,” Huntington explains. “I recorded a demo immediately afterward, and the final vocal is still the take from that demo.” The immediacy of the process is not only apparent in the track, but speaks to the moment in which it was created. “It came to me in 2018, at an incredibly overwhelming and unstable time in my life,” she continues. “I had recently made the decision to stop ignoring the fact that I was transgender but was struggling to grapple with what that meant for me personally, and was feeling a lot of frustration toward myself for not having figured it out.”
The situation was confounded by a break-up, leaving Huntington single for the first time in a long while at the very time the comforts and supports of a relationship were keenly required. “I was in over my head,” as she says, “looking for strength in the wrong places and having an increasingly difficult time seeing a future for myself.” The track’s volatile energy is therefore hardly surprising, its big dips and fast climbs conjuring a moment where the seatbelts have been lost, brakes cut, the cart possibly running out of line.
