Grey Gordon: Forget I Brought It Up

Grey Gordon got his start as a mostly acoustic solo performer, but he’s spent the past couple years releasing intimate, nervous records of confessional songs that push his sonic envelope with echoing guitars and propulsive drums. Forget I Brought It Up, his new album for No Sleep, continues that push, now into full on brooding pop-punk. It’s his most open sound, and provides for deep hooks like the slashing notes on “Count Me Out” or the churning crunch of “Indianapolis 2008”. But if the sound is open, Gordon himself is isolated, sometimes he’ll “play dead for weeks inside of [his] house”, sometimes he’s finding out who his idols really are, and elsewhere he dreams of taking off for somewhere else.

That dream, though, feels far off in these isolated, fidgeting songs. There’s a convincing emotional center to this, and the music ups the edge in Gordon’s delivery. But in immersing himself fully in pop-punk and emo trends, he’s also tying himself to music that has already spent a lot of time covering this kind of youthful ennui. Perhaps his reasons get lost in that shuffle, but it’s not always easy to tell why this loneliness exists and where it comes from, but Gordon is deft at conveying it in the moment. The vocal melodies might not catch you as quickly as the guitars do, but Forget I Brought It Up does enough to get remembered after the last note rings out.