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When the members of Slow Pulp discuss Yard, their second full-length record and first for ANTI-, their vocabulary often defaults to synesthetic imagery and sensation."We have so many visual cues for how we talk about music," singer and guitarist Emily Massey says as she stops herself in the middle of explaining how the album's second song, "Doubt," sounds like wakeboarding. "Doubt is quite dark lyrically, but it is found in this upbeat and almost campy environment."
On Yard, the Wisconsin-bred, Chicago-based four-piece nestles comfortably into pockets of nuance, impressions, contradictions — sonics and lyrics finessed together to bottle the specific tension of a feeling you've never quite
been able to find the right words for. In that regard, listening to Slow Pulp can feel like being in a room with someone who's known you so long that they can read your every micro-expression and pinpoint exactly how you're feeling before you can. Perhaps this spawns from the band's own shared history and chemistry; in various ways, the four of them grew up — are still growing up — together.
Guitarist Henry Stoehr and drummer Teddy Mathews attended elementary school together in Madison. Not long after, they met bassist Alex Leeds at the west side location of the now-closed local music program called Good'nLoud Music. And while Massey didn't enter the fold until later on in college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with Mathews and Stoehr, it turns out she was in the same program on the other side of town at Good'nLoud's east side location. In fact, the chords to Yard's addictive track "Slugs" are from a song Stoehr wrote for his crush in the sixth grade. "Imagination," Mathews immediately chimes in with the name of Stoehr's original.
The album's iteration of the song is, fittingly, also about a crush: "You're a summer hit, I'm singing it," Massey swoons over a warm wave of guitar fuzz and syrupy background vocals.
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