Last year we wrote a little on Diving, the 2020 debut full-length from Buddie on Crafted Sounds. Led by Philadelphian Dan Forrest, the band make fuzzy, noisy indie pop that utilises “pliable song structures and triumphant loud-quiet dynamics making for something both fun and far-reaching,” as we wrote of Diving. “Urgency and empathy sit side by side,” we continued, “catchy melodies and moments of crunchy catharsis cradling stark and sincere explorations of the tangled web of crises that define our age—from depression and anxiety to our destruction of the planet.”
After the release of Diving, the band hurried back to the studio to record the new songs they had been working on in the meantime. This sense of urgency was with good reason. Forrest was scheduled to move out west to Vancouver to attend grad school and no-one knew if Buddie as a project would survive the move. As it turned out, these worries were unfounded. Forrest found new members to reassemble the band and successfully assimilated into the Vancouver music scene, even earning the opportunity to open for Built to Spill at Sled Island.
But they didn’t know that at the time, and so worked quickly to record all the new material they had written—almost twenty songs in total. Proving too much for one record, Buddie have decided to release a four track EP, Transplant, as a nice surprise to close out the year, before releasing their sophomore LP sometime in 2023. As its name suggests, Transplant is a record that deals with the prospect of moving across the continent, as well as the wider issues that affected everyone from 2020 onwards.
‘Indecision’ is set in the anxious run-up to relocating, a swirl of restless worries and conflicted emotions, while ‘Northern Skies’ has the same sparkly sense of wonder as more recent Wild Pink releases, what Forrest says is “about how traveling can bring out a love for home, for family, for place-based identity, for community.”
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The other two tracks widen the scope thematically, although approach these broader themes in very different ways. ‘Sunday Morning’ is a rich and enveloping indie rock song that finds a pocket of cosy contentment in a world that sometimes feels actively hostile to such an emotion. “Waking up early on a Sunday morning,” Forrest sings in an opening line that captures the song’s balance between the intimate and the global, “while the world around us falls apart.”
‘Take What’s Left’ on the other hand moves from the personal to the ideological, a commentary on our neoliberal, hyper-capitalist society, a world in which wealthy lifestyles are built on the suffering of others. “This song is written from the perspective of a utopianist who’s questioning how the rich can live with themselves,” Forrest describes, “knowing that their lifestyles require the exploitation of other people and lead to other peoples’ suffering.”
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Transplant is out now via Crafted Sounds and available from the Buddie Bandcamp page.
