The quarter-life crisis is a particularly 21st-century way of describing the eternal rituals and humiliations of young adulthood and all the pointless jobs, free-floating ennui and messy loves that come with it. If you’re lucky, one day time will allow you to laugh about how dramatic and important it all seemed. But if you’re really lucky, you’ll get to turn your frustrations into wide-screen anthems to which we can all sulk along.
Feeling stuck is a state of mind that comes naturally to Chicago-by-way-of-Madison quartet Slow Pulp. It recorded its 2020 debut, Moveys, remotely due to COVID, which also forced frontwoman Emily Massey to work on the 2023 follow-up, Yard, in isolation. Teaming with an outside producer for the first time (SZA/Björk collaborator Elliot Kozel helped out alongside Massey and guitarist Henry Stoehr), it sounds determined to break free on Melodie, its most effervescent and cohesive outing yet.
Sharing lyrical duties, Massey and Stoehr dissect modern ruts and relationships you can’t quite seem to end. Over purring synths that help the anxiety go down smoothly, “Entertainer” examines the knotty resentment of finding yourself becoming your partner’s de facto caregiver while also fretting about the unavoidable end. “Better Man” is an anthem for anyone who knows, deep inside, that they are a mess holding back their partner, but Massey belts it out like a new wave torch song, an empathic plea for a lover to finally get it together over waves of blissfully insistent dream-pop throbs.
As Massey and Stoehr contemplate the difficulties and necessities of moving on, they’ve crafted a series of songs that never sit still, with “Red Car” gliding along on the sort of deep-funk, post-punk bassline that always reliably gets the indie disco started and the title track delivering Britpop by way of Blondie’s dance-punk rapture.
