The band that sounds like a distant cousin of Mac DeMarco

Peach Pit’s ‘You and Your Friends’ album review

By James Wetmore, Contributor

4/5

This album sounds like those warm summer days where you and the boys get some foldable lawn chairs, a couple cold ones, and sit in the garage with the door open. I’m not sure what that means, but the woozy guitar and softly sung vocals on this record paints that picture in my mind. Most of the album is about feeling alienated from your friends and breakups, so maybe I’m weird for visualizing it that way. The music does carry a sense of strange nostalgia, which seems to be a common theme for similar-sounding bands. Something about the surf-rock / psychedelic guitar and laid-back vocal performance just resonates with warm summer nights and memories of late-night antics.

Peach Pit’s sophomore record You and Your Friends was released April 3. It reminds us of past adventures—while also referencing the social isolation many are feeling right now amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a bittersweet record that I feel will be heavily played through the “summer” as people gradually get more antsy and quake at the thought of spending another second away from friends—strange considering the subject matter of some songs.

Peach Pit hasn’t moved too far away from the style they cultivated on their 2017 debut record Being so Normal; they still embrace garage rock sounds and aesthetics meshed with modern indie rock and emo stylings. The production is noticeably cleaner and studio effects like panning are used more often (which is probably the bonus of some extra studio time now that they likely have some extra cash kicking around). The main difference between this album and their first is the level of polish; songs sound more thought out and there are more intriguing harmonies between the two guitars.

There are two standout songs on this album, with “Thursday” being the first. It sounds like a standard cut, complete with the normal lead guitar melody throughout the song and lyrics dealing with the fear of being a burden to your friends. “Black Licorice” is the second hit on this album; it is a vibey song opening with a piano drenched in reverb and vibrato, building up to a wall of sound in the chorus carried along by an avalanche of drums.

There isn’t a bad song on the album, although there’s not something mind blowing or completely foreign in any of the songs either. No songs break any new ground for the band as they stick to the formula of guitar-driven melodies and soft-spoken vocals—which they do very well. It can, at times, feel like you’re listening to the same song on repeat—

but Peach Pit manages to keep it sounding just new enough that you keep on listening. Overall, You and Your Friends is a definite improvement from their debut record that manages to keep their music fresh and entertaining while giving a timely shoutout to the social isolation and lust for summer that many of us are experiencing.