Written by Brandon George
After seven years together, Boston-based Indie/Jazz band “Really From” have finally reached the point where they’re ready to answer that haunting eponymous question. Their third album, a self titled release, is contemplative, explosive, and measured.
Throughout its relatively short length, clocking in at under 35 minutes, the four musicians deftly navigate through tokenization, fetishism, intergenerational trauma, and diaspora. It is lyrically fraught with tension, and the ebb and flow between jazzy, unified sections and rock-filled moments of catharsis bring the listener along on the most cogent and powerful release from the band yet.
This record exercises its most powerful moments in juxtaposition and restraint. After dancing through a whimsical 5/8 groove for much of its runtime, “Quirk” then transitions into staccato vocals and guitars, surrounded by trumpet player Matt Hull’s brilliant melody work.
This leads into a buildup, spurned by vocalist Chris-Lee Rodriguez’ pained shout, “Your father knew this / Your mother did too / The fault’s not on them.” Drummer Sander Bryce takes advantage of the growing emotion to slam into the toms with hulking speed.
Just at the moment when it feels the song should explode into a slow, guitar-driven close, it instead leaps back into the same delightful composition of the verses, still carrying with it the same lyrical and emotional weight. The effect is profound, understanding the listener’s expectations to both surprise and reward in equal measure, and it’s just one microcosm of the album’s masterful use of this idea.
“Yellow Fever” trades between vocalist Michi Tassey’s airy tones over grungy guitars and a poppy chorus where she lets her voice ring. Often harmonizing with herself, she outwardly decries the perturbing fetishization of Asian women she has experienced in explicit terms, shouting and then crooning, “You see me in the ways you want me to be / I see you, broke and sick, with a fucked up wet dream.”
Much like the band’s usage of catharsis and expectation, their lyricism similarly builds and bends around these moments of clarity. Tassey and Lee-Rodriguez will spin a picture of the everyday, and then build to moments that act as heart-rending capstones to each song.
By the time the listener reaches the whisper-quiet entrance of “I Live Here Now,” lines like “Between the screaming, silence in the / Way it’s so quiet”, and the open half-time section punctuated by Hull’s winding trumpets are just nails in the emotional coffin. For those familiar with the band’s discography, “Last Kneeplay” will elicit an emotional reaction just upon seeing the track title.
There is a definitive finality to the record, not in that it feels like it’s the last thing the band will ever release, but in that it feels as though the band has reached a new beginning, a point at which they are articulating something in such a cognizant way, musically and lyrically, that it is impossible to be ignored. This leads, of course, to “I’m From Here.”
There are moments on this record that are frothing with emotional tension, there are moments that are violently cathartic, but the peak of them all is the moment Lee-Rodriguez and Tassey’s voices duel back and forth, the band rising behind them, finally giving way to let Lee-Rodriguez pose to himself the question present since the band’s decision to rename themselves. The lyrics read, “If you ask me where I’m from / I’ll say the rage, the lights, the sea / I’ll say the pain passed down on me / And when you say it’s not enough / I will pretend it won’t get to me.”
It’s a statement born from the very thesis of the record, drenched in history and emotion and compelled by the sense of holisticity the band has created. The moments like this on this album aren’t rare.
It’s an LP that utilizes its comfortable runtime with such a kinetic efficiency it makes frequent relistens not only desirable but inevitable. Once I listened to it for the first time, I immediately started it again.
In asking that daunting question, Really From has crafted an album that is infectious, raw, and exciting. Its composition is heartfelt and acute, it’s fun, and it’s philosophies are relevant and important.
Really From's self-titled album ia available wherever you listen to music, and you can keep up with the band by following them on Twitter @ReallyFrom. Let us know what you thought of the album by tweeting us at @lgndsoftmrw!
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