by David Wilikofsky
I managed to catch Still House Plants live when they swung through New York last year. Nearly as memorable as the music was the couple in front of me who spent the entire concert engaging in aggressive PDA. That would be a choice at any concert, but it really felt out of place when listening to the band’s brand of discordant, experimental rock music. After spending the last month with this album, I’ve begun to wonder if that couple understood the vibe of that night a bit better than me. While I still wouldn’t consider this makeout music, If I don’t make it, I love u is as open and vulnerable as Still House Plants have ever sounded.
The album’s title is the first signal of this new direction. Previous albums’ titles (Long Play and Fast Edit) referenced form and technique. If I don’t make it, I love u is more open to interpretation; it could be a banal apology for missing an event, an emotionally charged message before an impending catastrophe, or something else entirely. Once you listen to the music itself, it’d be easy to think that this analysis is bogus. In most ways it sounds exactly like what you’d expect from the band: angular, dynamic, disorienting. Drums and guitar parts circle around each other, seeming to simultaneously operate independently and move in tandem. The distinctive warble of vocalist Jess Hickie-Kallenbach trades off flitting through the fray and floating above it. All three members seem engaged in an unsteady dance, locking into tenuous grooves that drift apart as often as they reconfigure themselves. In a nutshell, it’s exactly the type of off-kilter avant rock that has put the band in a league of their own.
If you listen a bit closer, the band’s subtle transformation begins to reveal itself. The odd cutups and murky sounds of Fast Edit are gone, replaced with a newfound sense of clarity; Still House Plants’ music has always demanded precision by its very nature, but never before has the band actually sounded this crisp and precise. Though Hickie-Kallenbach’s vocals are often more emotive than they are intelligible, the phrases that stick out are direct and to the point. “I just want my friends to get me, I just want to be seen right” she sings on opener “M M M”; elsewhere she croons “I think I’m very understanding“. They point towards a nakedly emotional core beneath the band’s roiling sea of sound: a longing for connection, the desire to see and be seen. And even though I’d be hard pressed to classify Still House Plants’ music as accessible, the skewed melodies here are easily some of the poppiest music they’ve committed to wax. It’s the most inviting the band has ever sounded.
Whenever I listen to Still House Plants, I think about the persistent claims that rock is dead. Still House Plants are clearly influenced by the genre (at various times I get hints of noise rock, slowcore, Midwest emo, post-rock), but they scramble its DNA and shape it into something all their own. When we reviewed Fast Edit back in 2020, I declared it something special. If I don’t make it, I love u solidifies their status as one of the best rock bands in the world, one of the few who manage to surprise and thrill at every turn.