Song You Need: Pool Kids’ lived-in post-emo melancholy

The FADER’s “Songs You Need” are the tracks we can’t stop playing. Check back every day for new music and follow along on our Spotify playlist.

Few rock bands can make melancholy sound as sweet as Pool Kids. It’s far from their only emotional state: on last year’s self-titled album, the Tallahassee four-piece used math rock, emo, post-hardcore, and pop-punk to harness catharsis that comes from relationships; there were moments of good humor, such as on “Arm’s Length,” which explored the agony of interacting with other people via phone. But for the most part, the album’s music represented a dissolution at a cellular level, and the attempt to reconstitute it into something worthwhile.

“No Stranger,” the opening track from Pool Kids’ new EP Pool Kids // POOL, begins with a tinge of bitterness from lead vocalist Christine Goodwyne: “You’re nicer to me now / I always knew you’d come around.” These two lines are sung with an introvert’s conviction, forcefully yet with eyes averted. That’s the song’s only trace of venom, with guitar melodies and a wandering bassline stacking on top of each other like an impossibly beautiful Rude Goldberg Machine, a stark contrast to Goodwyne’s lyrical tale of a journey back from rock bottom. Her pleading gasps of “carpet apartment” are evocative enough to make you smell the mold and disrepair. It’s a lived-in sadness that turns you into a palm reader, looking for your own patterns and signifiers in its creases.