Luckily it wasn’t the end. Four of the new songs became Transplant, a short EP released on Crafted Sounds late last year. What we described in a review as “a record that deals with the prospect of moving across the continent, as well as the wider issues that affected everyone from 2020 onwards,” the EP served to announce a newly-assembled Buddie on the other side of the continent, where they have played festivals, live radio sessions and even opened for Built to Spill.

Now Buddie are back with their sophomore LP, Agitator. Again released on Crafted Sounds, Agitator finds Forrest and co. stronger than ever, an album the label describe as “packed full of earworm choruses, ‘loud-quiet-loud,’ bubblegrunge, and 90s influenced indie rock.” Opener ‘Break of the Sun’ displays almost all of these qualities immediately, opening with patient guitar and vocals that ebb and flow before kicking up a gear at the midpoint into a hefty rock song. ‘Game of Global Consequence’ follows suit, holding back the drums for a cathartic drop after the first verse, while ‘Backwards Beyond’ leans toward pop punk with its bouncy percussion and propulsive chorus.

But, as with previous releases, Agitator is far more than a simple slice of fun and cathartic indie rock. Forrest has always had a wide thematic scope in his songwriting and this record is no different. Crafted Sounds say the album “revolve[s] around healthy communication, trust, anxiety, living in the moment, sense of place, joy in resistance, growth, change, dystopia, classism, mutual aid,” and Buddie explore this tangled web of interconnected themes with a mixture of righteous anger, uneasy disquiet and tender empathy.

Single ‘Class Warfare’ is a good example, both a searing indictment of the actions of powerful nations and a reminder that even the biggest, most institutionalised problems can be overcome. “View from the peak / Clouds float underneath,” he sings in the closing lines, “Winds will blow them away,” hinting that a better, more equal society is possible. “In ‘Class Warfare’, I grapple with the thought of imperialist nations, like the US, Canada, the UK, always putting themselves first, to the detriment of everyone else… from hoarding COVID-19 vaccines to the militarization of police,” Forrest describes. “I aim to draw attention to these problems, but end the song in resolve, trusting that learning, activism, mutual aid, and prefiguration (creating pieces of the society you want) can blow [the problems] away.”

Perhaps the biggest strength of Agitator is how it blends these big social issues with smaller, individual ones, shifting from widescreen views of the world at large to something decidedly more personal. A song Forrest says “is about reassuring someone that you’ll always be there, willing to learn, grow, and change with them,” ‘We’ll Never Break’ sits at the latter end of the spectrum, Great Grandpa’s Al Menne providing harmonizing vocals in what’s a moment of warm reassurance wrapped up in a crunchy indie rock exterior.

Penultimate track ‘Labyrinth’ is similarly intimate, challenging the prevailing societal notion of success in favour of something deeper and more substantial. As Forrest describes:

“Labyrinth” is about breaking away from the dominant western views of ‘the good life’ and embracing ideals that run counter. Where so much of our culture incentives wealth and material consumption, eurocentric ideals of aesthetics, fast-paced lifestyles, constant work, and high achievement, I hope to share my vision of ‘the good life’—where my happiness and fulfillment come from: love, friendship, and community, disconnecting from the overstimulation and embracing the present, finding serenity, and living sustainably.”

The song comes complete with a video by Andrew Silverman and starring Forrest alongside Dana Kluchinski and Lindsay Partin.

Agitator is an album which understands the need to do more than its title suggests. Agitating the prevailing systems of power is the easy part. Having the vision and bravery to imagine a more compassionate way of living is where the true value lies. “Now we know the questions / But the answers do evade us,” Forrest sings on closer ‘Restive Summer’. “Like a serpent they betrayed us / Wondering how we’d ever score more / We worked ourselves up to the point where we broke.” But acknowledging the fact feels like half the battle won, and Agitator moves forward with this knowledge, trusting that perseverance and kindness will bear fruit in the end.

So we take it day by day
Much too fickle to foresee it
To adapt we speak and breathe in
And the little things mean more than we knew

We put the work in to the point where we know

Agitator is out now via Crafted Sounds and available from the Buddie Bandcamp page.

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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.”

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.”

Transplant is out now via Crafted Sounds and available from the Buddie Bandcamp page.

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Which is not to say they are some tired derivative. In truth, Buddie make music quite unlike anyone else. Diving saw Buddie build on the guitar-centric vibes of previous releases to include elements of folk and pop, its pliable song structures and triumphant loud-quiet dynamics making for something both fun and far-reaching. Urgency and empathy sit side by side, 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.

The album’s opening track, ‘Boiler’ is one of Diving‘s weightier moments, lead Dan Forrest’s vocals emerging from a crushing rumble. Though just as the sound threatens to be overwhelming, Forrest manages to climb to the surface, surfing the dense textures if not to safety then at least an end more dignified and thrilling. For this is a song about finding transcendence amid contemporary doom. Freeing oneself from the dreadful confines of the physical moment. Not beating the looming disaster, but submitting to the eventual freedom it might offer.

Drowned in salty black depths
Overworked and gasping for breath
But, as the flames grow
And the water’s almost boiled
Though it seems no different
You can leave this state behind

Pushing towards your critical temp
Molecules break free from their vessel
Free to float upwards and go anywhere you’d like
Free to diffuse into thin air you’ll intertwine

Today we have the pleasure of unveiling a music video for ‘Boiler’. Animated and edited by Philadelphia-area illustrator/sewist/educator Natalia Navarra, the video sees the track’s lyrical themes manifest in monochrome stop-motion. Check it out below!

Diving is out now on Crafted Sounds and you can get it from the Buddie Bandcamp page. There are a handful of cassettes left too, so grab one before they’re gone.

Band photo by Ashley Cordoba

The post Buddie – Boiler appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Here is a list of songs from 2020 that we liked but didn’t get around to writing about.

If you find something you like, follow the link in the embed to support the artists and labels on Bandcamp. And of course, there is a whole year’s worth of pieces on releases we did manage to write about, so have an explore through our reviews, previews and interviews from 2020.

The post Music We Missed in 2020 appeared first on Various Small Flames.