Artist: Sorority Noise
Album: It Kindly Stopped For Me EP
Genre: Acoustic, Indie
Label: Topshelf Records

In these four songs lie a very modest ancillary of Sorority Noise – one we saw emerge out of their last record Joy, Departed. That portion speaks largely from the backburner end of lyricist and frontman Cameron Boucher’s psyche; the part wherein a seemingly overwhelming feeling of despondence takes the foreground and thrusts into the world a far-from-anecdotal series of sad lullabies.

Opening with “Either Way,” a bit of familiarity kicks in. It Kindly Stopped For Me immediately feels like it’s been waiting a long time to make a home out of your cigarette burns. The words all crawl into your skin and the instruments hammer them in.

Quiet strings, keys, and record scratches accompany goodbyes in “A Will.” With lines like, “I’d leave you my whole heart if there was one left to leave,” a listener is left to their thoughts. The beautiful enveloping piano arrangements throughout the record could not have stood out more even in its simplicity.

Hazy and delicate, “Fource” calls to mind a more somber semblance of the classic Bright Eyes ballad, “At The Bottom Of Everything.” Here we find a spoken verse pressed up against everyday sounds. The first few notes makes you feel more connected with Sorority Noise than you’ve ever been. Suddenly you find that you’ve embodied a first-person point of view. The following lines take a quick jab: “We lost another one today / That makes more than I can count on one hand.” From there everything else soaks into the last line, “…I’ve had a few.” The subdued closing track, “XC,” with its xylophones and subtle buildup, is cinematic and ultimately leaves you with a sense of loss and a slight inability to cope.

It Kindly Stopped For Me is a record that accompanies you as you take it upon yourself to salvage pieces of your heart that the world has inexorably occupied. In doing so, however, you allow yourself to accept and move forward.

“I saw you smile,
But I must’ve mistook it.
Sometimes we hide ourselves,
And I wish I could go back
To when fragility and innocence is all I knew.”

SCORE: 9/10

• Author
• Recent Posts

Dana Reandelar

If not hunched over her desk writing about music, Dana can be found binge-watching old episodes of Gilmore Girls or condensing long rants to 140 characters. She also writes for Idobi Radio, and is an Off The Record podcast contributor.

Latest posts by Dana Reandelar (see all)

• On The Road: May 2016 tour roundup - May 2, 2016
• Pinegrove announce first US headlining tour - April 30, 2016
• REVIEW: Sorority Noise – ‘It Kindly Stopped For Me’ - April 20, 2016