Amending my 2020 Album of the Year

 

In my 2020 album of the year list there was a very special record at my number two slot that I wanted to take a bit more time to celebrate because, frankly, I was wrong about its placement. No disrespect to Stand Atlantic, who put out Pink Elephant that year at all of course, and maybe I should clarify that side of the story first. In 2019 I discovered StAt through a Modern Baseball cover and dove into their debut record, casually at first, but soon became a nonstop listen. When COVID hit, the band started dropping a track a month stating that a real album cycle didn’t feel realistic in the climate of things. Eventually, the pandemic was consuming too much time and the record had to come out. The night I listened to it, at midnight, for the first time my jaw dropped. I declared this a ten-on-ten and my new album of the year after having another one locked in since February. I think, ultimately, I was coming off the high of watching them at a festival, meeting Bonnie Fraser and feeling a little validated that people were starting to take notice of a band I was already so enthralled with.

All that to say, I’d like to, on the record right here, amend my 2020 album of the year list. Honeymoon by Beach Bunny was always my favorite from that year, and while Pink Elephant is a top ten I don’t go back to it all that much. I listen to Honeymoon basically every week. With each passing hardship and life lesson I go through I find myself immediately putting this on in the car, on my turntable or whatever is available to me. 2020 was a pretty bad mental health year and the record got me through so much of that. Quick note before we dive into the songs and why I’m so into this, I am going to be referring to Lili Trifilio as simply “Lili” where normally I’d use an artist's last name. This post is not really a review, more a reflection of how this record has benefitted my mental health in my day-to-day and I don’t really want to be formal. In a way, I’m glad I wasn’t reviewing music at the time, as I feel that with almost two years with this and having seen the band live before Omicron started closing events again I have a lot more to say.

“Promises” was the second Beach Bunny song I had ever heard. I heard “Rearview” by itself then decided I very much wanted to dive into the record. This song is actually a perfect example of the fact that Beach Bunny doesn’t necessarily do anything that no other band is doing, Lili is just so good at using simplicity within the genres she writes in that it makes it stand out anyway. This is sort of an emo song in that it’s fun instrumentally, goes over great live but the chorus offers a clear emotional mission statement;

“Part of me still wants you, part of me wants to fall asleep.

When we’re all alone in your bedroom you came like a recurring dream.

Part of me still hates you, how could you love someone and leave?

When we’re all alone in your bedroom do you ever think of me?”

Now, I know I’ve sort of overwhelmed you with the entire chorus there but think about that from a songwriting standpoint. Lili didn’t come to this record to dwell on her past and make herself sadder about it. She came here to look at her issues constructively and work through them through the songs. While I personally have never really had a romantic breakup, the sentiment she offers here is something I can definitely resonate with. I can remember strained relationships of other kinds and having to ultimately separate from a person I care about. That feeling when someone was once a huge part of your life but now they’re gone. They haven’t passed, they’re just gone from your world and you find your mind drifting to that very question;

“Do you ever think of me?”

On an episode of Lead Singer Syndrome, in reference to blink-182, Shane Told talks about the difference between an artist’s best work and what your favorite is. I don’t think Cuffing Season is an S-Tier Beach Bunny song but it is the one I personally like the most. In a live setting I had a blast singing and swaying along to this between the drum pumps, the post-chorus and an instrumental somewhere between indie and proto-ska. In many ways I think this song walked so that “Love Sick” from the band’s Blame Game EP could run as they have similar frameworks. Again I have to call to a chorus by Lili on this one;

“Maybe we are getting too close, paranoid permanence is just an empty promise.

Sometimes I like being on my own, I’m afraid of winding up alone.”

On these lines, I have to question how much of this is the need for space or just straight up isolation. I mean, when you isolate you do need space, but is there such a thing as taking it too far? In the past I have had a habit of blocking out everyone I care about when I get to a certain low point and over the past couple of years I’ve started to unlearn that, but I have also found a balance of what the space I need truly is. Too little space can lead to a worse time but too much and you strain your relationships and burn yourself in the process, at least that’s what I’ve found but now I also make time for myself to do things like write about records I enjoy.

To me, the mission statement on “Promises” is continued on “April.”

“Are you out there somewhere? What are you up to?
Have you changed your number? I’ve been trying to call you since April and now it’s October.
I’m not overthinking but I think about you a lot and lately I am just an afterthought.”

Where on “Promises” Lily is wondering how much people from the past think of her, she’s giving way to thinking about them. Something I think hit us all in the first wave of COVID was this feeling of learning who is truly there for you and who was just in your life as a social factor. It starts to wear on you when you’re the only one making an effort and you aren’t as cared for as you’d maybe like to be. Musically, I like that this song is somber without sacrificing too much active rock energy. The big rock ending that leads into the next, stripped back track makes for a perfect cherry on top. As a fun fact, Christmas may be over, but Lili has confirmed this was written as a Christmas song initially. Below are the original lyrics, but this past December Beach Bunny did release “Christmas Caller,” a song about fair weather friends and exes who only call during the holiday season. Funny that it’s almost the Blame Game-ification of this very track.

If “Cuffing Season” is my favorite song from this record, “Rearview” is by far the best. Even if you aren’t a fan of this band I don’t think anyone can truly deny how strong this one is. Between how catchy and simple it is to the huge transition to full band in the dead center of the track and record I have caught just about everyone with this song in particular, with one exception that I want to go over later. This was the first song I heard by this band and at that drop I was all in, I had goosebumps. I think what it does on its placement in the tracklist is a power move as well. It’s right in the middle, it ends side A of the vinyl. It’s almost like an intro to its second half, the flatline of mulling over your sadness is about to change into working those things out, facing them with a bit of poise and sarcasm and grief. I never really considered the rage behind Lili’s words because the presentation is so somber. The line;

“Was I ever good enough for you? There’s always someone I’m trying to live up to. I could never get to you, you always seemed closer in the rearview.”

Really makes me reflect on people I have thought were worth my time and effort but turned out to not care about me at all in the same way and I think it closes that thought from the other tracks so nicely. Sometimes they just aren’t really your friend, you have to let them go and that’s sad. That’s hard, but you need to drive forward.

As I said with “Rearview,” “Ms. California” kicks off a side of the record that's happier sounding and more introspective in terms of lyrics. It does a lot of effective, though classic, songwriting strategies for example making the melody of the chorus come back on the guitar solo. Lyrically Lili talks a lot about jealousy and wishing she was the titular character on the song. This Ms. California not only has everything she wants, not only lives in this mystical land where “everything’s better,” but has the attention of her own love interest as well. Something this song helped me personally put into perspective was the notion of jealousy and the concept of the grass always being greener on the other side. Sure, California sounds magical and perfect but you don’t really put into perspective what Ms. California might be going through, does she wish she was out of her home state and in Chicago or New England? Does she even want this attention she’s getting? I think it’s easy for us to come to resent the people we envy, but we don’t see life from their side, maybe we have something they wish they had, everyone is going through their own battles.

While I usually refer to Beach Bunny as indie rock, “Colorblind” is the first real indie song on the record and it comes at track six. With its fun yet technical instrumentation and lyrics that are seemingly nonsensical but probably have deeper meaning than I can gauge without picking Lili’s brain, I always thought this was a more underrated cut by this band. For an example of that instrumentation I want to point you to yet another post-chorus riff. Lyrically though Lili shows more pre-Blame Game ideas. There’s a certain snarkiness to;

“You stay, you go, you say you’re sorry, I’m sorry too.”

Joyful as the melody is, it’s almost like she’s quoting her side of a heated argument and finally throwing back a false sentiment. A line that also always stood out to me was;

“You’re a part of my biology, I can’t separate myself from you.

An apology anthology, he says ‘try to see my point of view.’”

So, I’ve already dissected the apology bit, but to be honest I always thought that first bit was just ot force a rhyme scheme, which, I feel pretty dumb about now. There’s two life lessons I can sort of pull out from here. On one hand, when you care about someone so deeply it feels like you can’t live without them. On the other, when someone is toxic to you, it feels like no matter what you do you can’t break away. It’s like an external tumor, it’s a part of you and while it can be removed the process will be long and difficult. On a lighter note, after performing this live someone in the crowd asked Lili if she herself was colorblind and she excitedly told us no but went on a story about the way her eyesight is bad in other ways. During that entire show it never really felt like we were the fans and the band was above us, it felt like they were at the show with us.

“Racetrack” is probably my least favorite song on here but I don’t think it’s a bad one. I just think it isn’t very in depth and serves more as an interlude than a fully-fleshed out track. It does have some cool keyboard work and vocally Lili really impresses me. When Blame Game dropped I thought Lili had improved as a vocalist because in a lot of ways she just sounded so different. She was using tones and inflections I had never heard on the old songs. On this track though, she sounds like a different singer than even “Colorblind” before it and it hit me what that was. The talent she shows in changing her voice depending on what’s needed is incredible to me. Some personal history, before I had this blog to spill thoughts into, I used to do this to my friends, which, I’m sure was in no way overloading. So when I made the album of the year list in 2020 I showed this record to a friend of mine. They didn’t love it the way I did but they found particular interest in this track, the track I liked least and I always thought that was a really nice and bonding interaction. They said it reminded them of music they liked, which I’ve provided above. Everyone finds different levels of enjoyment in the exact same sounds and I think that’s something truly special about music as a whole.

While I don’t have too much to say about “Dream Boy” I can say that my first experience with it was a pretty warm one. On Spotify there was a gif at the time where it was the band playing in a backyard dressed for winter, which I later found out was part of the music video. It just gave me a sense that they had welcoming personalities and once I saw them live I knew I was right. I also saw Origami Angel cover this song at Good Noise Fest, which was a pretty interesting watch.

Something I keep talking about is the slow uptick in mood on this record and that comes to its highest close on “Cloud 9.” A love song that may not be as happy as presented as Lili has talked in detail about how she wrote the song to save a failing relationship that ultimately fizzled out in the end. Despite the truth about it, it allows the narrative of the album to end on a happy note celebrating love in your own life that you can enjoy. In the first track, I talked about how I have to warp the meaning of break up songs to relate to them. On the other side of the coin, I’ve never really been attached to love songs because they’re usually cheesy beyond relatability. That being said, the line;

“Even when we fade eventually into nothing you will always be my favorite form of loving.”

Actually does make me think of my partner and how we’ve stuck it out for over a decade, especially these past couple of impossible years. Another sentiment I’ve always admired that this song brings about in me is the notion that love can come from anywhere it doesn’t have to be romantic. In the music video, an animated character has a great time hanging out with their pet snail. No matter how alone you feel, you probably have a pet, a family member, a friend, a member of the community who wants to see you become happy. Outside of my partner my friends make me feel welcomed, my rabbit makes me feel loved unconditionally, love is everywhere. You don’t need a lover to feel it.

This record and that track didn’t end with 2020 however. In 2021 the song “Cloud 9” was blowing up on Tik Tok and fans asked Lili if she could create a more inclusive version that uses more than he/him pronouns in reference to the love interest of the song. She took that request up a huge step, teaming up with Tegan and Sara to make a version where Lili sticks to the classic line, the guests vocalists use she/her and in the final chorus they all use they/them. Lili got to work with one of her favorite artists of all time and didn’t use them to make something new. She used them to give the fans what they wanted in the name of inclusivity. She didn’t have to, but she did it for us.

As I said before, this is not a record where Lili is here to spiral, she’s writing to get through something. With the shift in emotion from the sad, introspective Honeymoon, to the more angry and sarcastic Blame Game and now with a happier single in “Oxygen” I think the record accomplished its goals on her end. You know, it's funny. Now that we’re in 2022 I was thinking of making the blog more of a singles-focused space with more emphasis on records that I enjoyed in more of a big picture sort of way. Had I not taken a shot-in-the-dark listening to this album in 2020 though we wouldn’t be here. I didn’t catch any of these singles on release and yet this album, this songwriter, this band has become a favorite, maybe even of all time, for me personally. Just like the person writing it, this got me out of my own dark times with the past two years being as hard as they have been and this has resonated with me in a way that I don’t think I’ve allowed a band to in years. When you’re younger and forming your tastes I feel like you discover the basis of the sound you like and those bands serve as an entry level for you to discover ones that maybe are a bit better. I’ve spent two years now exploring the scene and genre that Beach Bunny is attached to and I don’t know if I’m still in a honeymoon phase of my own or I really did walk in on the best of the best. Their second album should be here this coming year, I’m hoping I have a happier year in my personal life as it seems that’s the mood of what’s to come. I also hope I love it just as much, but even if I don’t do either of those things, I always have these songs to come back to.