by David Wilikofsky
Texas musicians Claire Rousay and Mari Maurice are nothing if not prolific. The two have emerged as major musical forces over the past few years, releasing both solo works and collaborations with artists from across the experimental underground. Though I thoroughly enjoyed many of these projects, their work as a duo has always stood out. Last year’s an afternoon whine, for example, was a portrait of their friendship sketched by etherial guitar melodies, pulsing ambient soundscapes and the rustling sounds of a day spent together; I called it a “fringe pop masterpiece” on this very site. Their latest album together, Never Stop Texting Me, takes their sound in a new direction but keeps its most important element in place: their enduring friendship.
Both Rousay and Maurice are artists whose solo work skews towards abstraction; Rousay especially has gained recognition for her musique concrète compositions constructed from the ephemera of everyday life. While previous collaborations felt like a natural extension of their sonic universes, Never Stop Texting Me appears to be a left turn. It’s an unabashed pop record, one where where pop punk riffs rub up against PC Music maximalism and the emotional rawness of emo rap. Perhaps the closest comparisons are 2020’s </3 or “smaller pools” from an afternoon whine, but the sonic palettes explored on these records were more subdued. The duo referred to those recordings as “emo ambient”, but there’s unequivocally nothing ambient about Never Stop Texting Me.
However, first impressions can be deceiving. Though they have made a pop record, the duo’s more experimental tendencies can’t help but shine through. Catching some of it requires close listening (e.g. the musique concrète elements that subtly creep into intros and outros on a few tracks), but its most apparent in the songwriting itself. Though all the requisite elements for a song are there, at times they don’t seem to cohere correctly. Vocals caked in autotune melt into the backing tracks, becoming indecipherable. Riffs occasionally feel out of place, almost exploding out of nowhere. These glitches in the matrix are few and far between, but each time one bubbles up it’s fascinating. Where previous records constructed music out of their everyday, their latest just reminds us that songs can be source material and their composite parts can be molded into thrilling new shapes.
Much like last year’s an afternoon whine, what makes Never Stop Texting Me so joyous isn’t its embrace of pop but the friendship at its core. Each song has the warmth of an afternoon hang or iMessage thread; Rousay and Maurice reminisce about their bad luck with boys, spend money earned from Bandcamp Day on food delivery and wax philosophical about their friendship. Lyrics that could easily be interpreted as romantic entreaties (such as “Do you think of me every time we’re apart / Do you hear my name do you feel it in your heart” from opener “same”) come off as commentaries on the closeness of their bond. Late in the album, Rousay sings “all I know is that when I’m with you it’s next level” to Maurice, and this album is proof of that statement. They’re a duo who has yet to put out anything less than spectacular.