As summer winds down, I always begin to anticipate the records that will come out and capture that fall feeling: a mix of melancholy and reflection. Well, Pool Kids threw me off my orbit, releasing a perfect fall soundtrack in early August. Those who long for flannel hoodie season, reading outside in the sun with coffee, and the critic-bait music and movies that flood these months, Easier Said Than Done is an early gift, a powerful collection of songs that will be on repeat all season and beyond.
To borrow from another band that’s created a few cool-down classics of their own, if the self-titled was Pool Kids’ Transatlanticism, Easier Said Than Done is their Plans, a more mature-sounding release that shows significant growth in lyrics and arrangements without sacrificing the rawness of the feelings that made their previous release endlessly replayable.
Pool Kids’ self-titled release was a significant leap forward in songwriting and production, making the most of the evergreen trope of the breakup album, infused with dark humor in titles (“Conscious Uncoupling”) and mixed with matter-of-fact, yet fresh, takes on heartbreak. It’s a testament to lead singer Christine Goodwynne’s heartrending delivery that a line like “I’m probably never gonna clean this house again” can be rendered so weighty.
Here, the thematic scope is a little broader, but she’s still throwing heaters like “And now you’re crying on a curb outside a CVS / In the middle of Missouri, and you’re holding a test / Is it really all my fault? / Oh, is this happening again?” Her vocals have never sounded better, too, as she sells every line of this record with conviction and vulnerability on the title track. It takes nerve to put it out there as plainly as “I let people walk all over me / I take things too personally / Just let me down easy / I only want your company.
Producer Mike Vernon Davis is back again, and his credits on recent touchstones like Foxing’s Nearer My God, Ratboys’ The Window, and Snarls’ With Love are all examples of records that capture these groups at their best. Here, he does the same, taking the best aspects of their previous collaboration and expanding them, making them bigger and more widescreen.
Pool Kids’ appreciation for pop, evidenced by the series of covers of hits like TLC’s “No Scrubs”, Beyoncé‘s “If I Were a Boy”, and SZA‘s “Kill Bill”, perhaps tipped off the fuller, radio-ready sound of this collection. The title track begins with vocal effects that might make longtime fans fear, for a moment, that Pool Kids have gone full radio, but in a matter of seconds, their signature sound is all present. “Tinted Windows” has a riff that recalls the first Sunny Day Real Estate record and features the vivid, heartbreaking line referenced earlier.
“Bad Bruise”, “Leona Street”, and “Last Word” deliver everything that makes Pool Kids irresistible–the delicate verses that explode into head-nodding choruses. Andy Anaya’s hooks are so sticky on these tracks that they threaten to take the spotlight from Goodwynne. “Sorry Not Sorry” and “Dani” are the tracks that best show the growth on the record, with Davis’ production casting a melancholy over them that matches the delicacy of the former and the epic quality of the latter.
Closer “Exit Plan” veers from the fall heartbreak playbook of winding down with its anthemic closer, which shows the band haven’t discarded their punk touchstones. When a group reach another level of mastery in craft, an easy word to go for is “maturity”, but Easier Said Than Done deserves better than a clichéd missive like that. It’s a weary, addictive, heartrending collection that will likely take its place in the fall canon, becoming a perennial listen as the first chill hits the air.