Double Goer by Poolboy

“Are you not disturbed? Are you disturbed?” The contradiction, the paradox, the tension on Poolboy’s Double Goer, their latest EP, leaves one constricted throughout. There is beauty in the watery darkness of clever wordplay, which at the same time mocks such notions and dynamic attempts.

Poolboy’s development as a band has evolved from reaching out to twist heads with macabre lyricism to now caressing listeners while simultaneously pushing them away with musical abstractions and complex compositional structures. The sound is not as aggressive, yet pulls with a current that is almost schizophrenic. Yes, it is something like drowning in a river—catching a few blessings of fresh air when the band allows your head above water.

The atmosphere is driven by chorus and delay drenched guitars that drift from light licks to crushing walls of distortion. Songs at times hover in an ambient reality before kicking into jazz grooves. Self-analyzing is a constant—the mirror spinning from the giver of words to the world. Conversations are had, with whom it’s not known. Perhaps lovers, doppelgängers, enemies, dead selves, or general bad apples—these five songs revel in slashing the faceless leaving it up to us to figure out who’s being cannibalized.

What we do know is the echoes are returned. The revelations of “oh my God, that’s how I would die...”, stumbling down staircases at horrible house parties, the reverb rippling through the existential emptiness of modern life, Poolboy has discovered secrets of itself as a collection of artists and seers who only wish to show us fragments of what they’ve found. We’re told change has occurred, we wouldn’t recognize faces, but what they’ve become is shown here only for a glimmer—teasing us for that eventual full statement of an album to come.

—Trevor Sensor

Poolboy is an indie-rock band from Minneapolis, Minnesota.
In 2017, they were named City Pages' Best New Band.

poolboyband.com