Posted: by The Alt Editing Staff
Philly-based indie punk band Remember Sports have come back with their first album in five years, The Refrigerator, via Get Better Records. After bursting into the scene with their classic first two albums Sunchokes in 2014 and All of Something in 2015, the band released their magnum opus in 2018. That album, Slow Buzz, seamlessly combined punk bangers with slower, more expansive indie rock songs, and even the faster songs were musically diverse. It was one of my favorite albums of 2018 and honestly the one that should’ve made them big as the songs sound big and catchy. For whatever reason it’s their least popular album, as none of the songs on it are one of their top streaming songs, which is a crime. They followed that with Like a Stone in 2021, a great record that continued their musical growth—including one of their best songs, the tropical indie pop banger “Out Loud”—and now The Refrigerator shows everything that Remember Sports are capable of, and it’s their best since Slow Buzz.
The band are at some of their most fiery yet on the punk rippers “Bug,” “Thumb,” and “Cut Fruit,” the latter two featuring singer Carmen Perry giving some impassioned screams. The middle section of the album in particular finds them continuing down the artsy route they embarked on with their last two LPs, such as the experimental “Ghost,” which features off-kilter fiddles, bagpipes, and an overall droning sound, and the drum machine-led “Roadkill.” There’s also a folksy Americana influence that the band’s been gradually embracing over their career, especially on songs like “Across the Line,” the playful “Selfish,” and the lo-fi acoustic number “Fridge.” Last year, Perry came out with her first solo album Eyes Like a Mirror, which found her turning down the volume in favor of something softer, and she works in that side of her on even the loudest songs on this record, making for a great counterpart to the new Wednesday and Ratboys albums. It definitely helps that Will Henrikson of the rising indie-country band Florry plays fiddle on “Ghost” and “Zucchini.” Even if Remember Sports don’t necessarily count as part of this burgeoning wave of indie-country bands right now, they definitely share a lot of common ground with some of them.
Something I’ve always loved about the band is how detailed and introspective Perry’s lyrics are, as the mundane stories she weaves into her songs are relatable snapshots of suburban life and its upsides and downsides, but they feel so personal and metaphorical that they never feel cliched or like anything you’ve heard before. Perry’s lyrics reflect on things as varied as the rejuvenation of new love on album closer “Nevermind,” or various foods—a running theme on the album (it is called The Refrigerator, after all) like stepping on a chip on “Bug” or discovering the fruit in her kitchen has gone bad on “Cut Fruit,” or dealing with the immediate aftermath of a breakup on the latter (“You asked if I had an appetite / I wanted to die in your arms”). But this is also the first Remember Sports album released since Perry was diagnosed with autism, and as someone who’s also autistic, lyrics such as “And I know that it gets harder and harder to defend / Why can’t I get this?” on “Selfish” and “I’m 28 years old, but I’m still scared like a little kid” on “Fridge” hit hard and very much apply to the experience of trying to navigate the world as an autistic adult, even if they weren’t meant to be written from that perspective. It feels great, though, that I can connect to a lyricist from this scene who’s just like me and knows what these struggles are like.
There’s also, both lyrically and musically, a sense of childlike wonder permeating through these songs, inspired by Perry taking up a job at an elementary school post-COVID and finding childhood memories flooding back to her based on this experience. The Refrigerator varies from a series of experiences Perry had that came from different versions of herself that informed who she became—in her words, “A convergence of all my into one sad adult who needed direction and reassurance and, most of all, safety.” The album really benefits through this arc of healing she enters, as these raw and messy feelings result in a beautiful sense of catharsis Perry reaches.
Remember Sports are at the height of their powers on The Refrigerator. This is some of their most sentimental and adventurous music yet, and they’ve found a happy balance between their fuzzy indie rock and Carmen Perry’s singer-songwriter material that makes for an extremely appealing mix of styles. “We don’t know what genre we are,” the band says. “We just want everything to sound like us.” It’s been the case for a long time, but as this album makes clear, they’ve honed in a sound that’s distinctly theirs.
Disappointing / Average / Good / Great / Phenomenal
The Refrigerator is out now via Get Better Recrods.
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Matthew D’Iorio | @loveisworry14