Album Review – You Haven’t Missed Much by Thanks For Coming (2022) (Danger Collective Records)
I was surprised when I heard Thanks For Coming had signed to the Danger Collective Records cassette label to release this hand-picked 14 track career retrospective compilation by Rachel Brown (who you might better know as one half of Water From Your Eyes).
My surprise is purely narcissistic and based upon the fact that the previous going places 2022 (going without you) EP was written purely for me as it simply conversed to me on so many levels of intimacy and emotionality, however a record label makes me begrudgingly concede that perhaps many others were experiencing a similar connection.
For across three interlinked nuances You Haven’t Missed Much always connects in its simplistic conveyance of the life’s frailties concerning loneliness, the futility of every day existence and destructive and/or fleeting faux relationships.
Initially tracks such as Stephen Hawking’s Goldfish Analogy (Demo), My Name and Panic feel the most pervasive. All dank dark and slightly droning in vocal delivery, this is the sound of resignation knocking at the door of post-punk with an urgency that Brown has always been able to capture out of her sound despite the sedate bedroom-pop foundation.
The sombre remains but the dank is usurped in U R Not Sick, Yr Electric (Demo), Me, Missing You and Niagara Falls (Demo) with acoustic guitars that act as something akin to a gentle landing place for the albums most melancholic vibe as Browns vocals flutter around on hushed plaintive wings and seemed strangely desperate for acceptance. Perfect vulnerability if you will.
However, the very best of the album is heard in Losing Touch (NYC), new single Plagiarizer, Missed Connections and My Keys Were In My Pockets. Here the aesthetic slides into mid tempo on the coattails of casual jangly riffs and incidental melodies that offer machinations of twee-pop, but are still so very jangly.
Imagine the sweet sound of Kimya Dawson becoming an adult mixed with Girl in Red, Snail Mail, Soccer Mommy style chanteuse, and then augment it with a Maripool or Girl on Bus natural weird and you have stumbled into a musical ballpark housing one of the best bedroom-pop sounds of the year.
This solo recording project started way back in 2022 and has never seemed so vital.
janglepophub.home.blog 