The music of Atlanta trio Omni has always swung fast and hit hard. And Souvenir, their fourth album and second for Sub Pop, packs their biggest punch yet. Inactive during the majority of the pandemic–the longest downtime in their history–they approached this recording with lots of pent-up energy. Guitarist Frankie Broyles, singer/bassist Philip Frobos, and drummer Chris Yonker converted their creative fuel into sharp, driving songs that land immediately, sporting chopping riffs, staccato beats, and wiry melodies.
Why does Souvenir sound so sharp? Because each track is a compact unit that stands on its own, reflecting the time and place in which it was created. That’s why Omni called the album Souvenir: it’s a collection of audio objects, a stash of musical miniatures. Think of it as a family photo album, a binder of rare playing cards, a shoebox holding precious gems.
Take “Plastic Pyramid,” the first song Omni wrote after coming out of lockdown. Filled with twists and turns, it’s a journey unto itself, charged by clanging chords, spinning rhythm, and Frobos trading lines with Izzy Glaudini of Automatic, with whom Omni toured with last fall. (Glaudini sings on two other Souvenir tracks, the first guest vocalist the band has collaborated with). Or take opener “Exacto,” a slicing web of intertwined guitar and bass. Its razor-fine notes and syncopated beats perfectly match pointillist Frobos lyrics such as “Exacto, de facto, concise, quite right”–a line that could well be an Omni mantra.
The precision and clarity of Souvenir comes from some new Omni developments. For one, this is their first album with Yonker as their full-time drummer, and his forceful playing adds exclamation points to every pointed moment on Souvenir. In addition, the trio worked with Atlanta-based engineer Kristofer Sampson for the first time. Sampson pushed the band to a higher degree of power, with Frobos’s vocals more upfront in his pulsing mix and the rest of the music leaping out of the speakers.
You might notice that Frobos’ singing is a bit more emotional and even nostalgic this time around. In crafting his vocals, he was inspired by the early college radio rock of formative favorites like REM, the Cure, and Big Audio Dynamite–the kind of bands whose melodies could have been top 40 hits in an alternative universe. The lyrics on Souvenir are also by turns funny, absurd, and even cryptic. A wry humor has always coursed through Omni’s songs, and this time, it comes in shades of both dark and light. In “Granite Kiss,” an “astronomical” love story concludes with the hope that “we can decay together,” while in “PG,” a romantic walk in the park includes a rose-colored mugging.
Immediacy rushes throughout every moment of Souvenir, making it the band’s most powerful album to date. Omni has truly crafted a musical keepsake–a set of songs that you’ll want to keep close, an aural memento you’ll cherish for the rest of time.
Philadelphia’s So Totally are a portrait of utmost devotion, and how longevity in any kind of relationship can’t occur without it. Since 2015, the band originally called So Totally In Love have humbly studied their surroundings and themselves, perfecting a sound that from inception was present [and can be heard in such choice cuts as “Love + Alchemy,” and “Rare Form,” from 2016’s A Cheap Close-Up of Heaven, and “Pluto,” on 2019’s In The Shape Of]. So Totally’s shimmering guitars and melodies typically sit underneath lush vocals that concurrently embed themselves in a listener’s subconscious, haunting them with heavy mood and nostalgia for 90’s rock groups like Swirlies, Pixies, and The Breeders. These two releases, and their dedication to spending years playing regionally, brought So Totally to the point of singular focus on drafting a third album, entitled Double Your Relaxation, while in quarantine in 2020.
Upon formation, So Totally collectively bonded over an admiration of Land of Talk. While the influence is certainly present in vocalist/guitarist Roya Weidman’s sugary vocals, the bands love of comfortably resolving melodies, and auxiliary percussion, So Totally sonically have more in common with bands like Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, and Spirit of the Beehive…creating massive walls of sound on each record that plainly implies the quartets towering live experience. Such huge tones aren’t only because of Weidman and guitarist/vocalist Matt Arbiz playing, but the collective effort of the band, which is rounded out by bassist Ryan Wildsmith and drummer Joe McLaughlin.
For Double Your Relaxation, So Totally went with Erik Kase Romero (Lorde, Bouncing Souls) at F. B. Brass Studios in Asbury Park, NJ and Evan Bernard (Spirit of the Beehive, Soul Glo) at Second Street Music in Philadelphia for engineering. For mastering, So Totally enlisted the services of Andy Clarke (Speedy Ortiz, Spirit of the Beehive). So Totally’s tones over each work are especially remarkable as Double Your Relaxation is So Totally’s first in-studio record; in other words, their first record that wasn’t completely self-produced.
The three year process of crafting Double Your Relaxation was, for Weidman and Arbiz, an extended moment of observation and interpretation of the band’s near decade of existence as well as the pair’s cohabitation. The album’s title is taken from a self-hypnosis tape that serves as its main creative influence, with fragments of samples from the tape itself playing throughout the record. The guitar work is the most adventurous it has ever been, taking more influence than ever from off-kilter chord progressions that still resolve nicely, but not without challenging the listener’s ear first. Additionally, the guitars rhythmically modulate on songs like “Distinct Star,” and “Grass,” as though there’s a modular synth present, or perhaps, a kill-switch on each guitar.
The title Double Your Relaxation refers to “the exact moment one is able to enter the psyche and become susceptible to influence.” For So Totally, Double Your Relaxation is the result of the deeply existential analysis that 2020 quarantine required of almost everyone. When it comes to the relationship between Weidman and Arbiz, the band offers this: “Sharing a creative outlet with your partner can sometimes result in art sharing two different views of the same feeling, or same event. Our songs try to convey both the beauty and the pain of love in all its forms.”
Lyrically and thematically, Double Your Relaxation explores where influence and “hypnosis” exist in life, specifically in environment, media, relationships, and self (via mental illness), bouncing between perspectives of witnessing, interacting with, and contributing to illusion and how that ultimately affects our idea of identity. Double Your Relaxation’s three singles, “Distinct Star,” “Doz Roses,” and “ Strange Way,” all seem to address different sides of the phenomenon of individual control, and a single person’s experience with all that does and doesn’t affect them, and vice versa.
“Distinct Star,” explores the commodification of identity in an age where art is primarily driven by expression of it and the experiences of different groups of people, “Doz Roses,” is about self-forgiveness in the face of an inability to change patterns and recurring situations, and “Strange Way,” describes releasing self-hatred and doubt that is metaphorically depicted through a dream of Weidman’s involving tree roots which become snakes that whisper her own insecurities in back to her. The moody and, at times, surreal nature of the songs lends itself very appropriately to the shoegaze and heavy indie style So Totally plays, making them a perfect addition to the canon of the genre.
