School is in session and the weather is starting to cool down, but British indie rock band Lovejoy isn’t letting the changing seasons stop them from dropping an upbeat, scream-the-lyrics-in-your-car album. Pebble Brain was released October 13 as a 35-minute YouTube video before becoming available on Spotify and Apple Music with seven songs. Compared to the band’s first EP, Are You Alright?, Pebble Brain is just as complex, but much brighter in its musical intensity.
Musically, Lovejoy’s signature components are all apparent. Supplemental trumpets can be heard in just about every song, as are well-blended instrumental breakdowns; and, of course, nearly every song deals with romantic relationships, as is lead singer and content creator Wilbur Soot’s lyrical motif. However, this does not mean the artist did not challenge himself. Pebble Brain is full of choppy, strong rock vocals, especially in the breakdown of “The Fall,” highlighting the narrator’s mania moments before the beginning of a depressive episode. The bold, scraping vocals of this album are a far cry from Are You Alright? or any of Wilbur Soot’s solo songs, but they are not at all unwelcome and only add to the feelings of anger, frustration, and passion present throughout the album.
Pebble Brain opens with “Oh Yeah, You Gonna Cry?”, a jaunty track with a bright bassline and guitar. The song is all about how much better the narrator is than their partner’s ex. “I thought you knew her better than me” closes out the chorus, and this playfully mean tone remains consistent in the lyricism throughout the entire album, from the drunkenly confident “Concrete” (“If I had it my way, you’d sleep on the concrete”), to the bitter and paranoid “Perfume” (“You say your ex-boyfriend’s a policeman / Well I say you need better standards”). Even “You’ll Understand When You’re Older,” which follows the struggles of a waitress during the COVID-19 pandemic and a co-worker’s abusive relationship, holds a level of cruelty masked by humor, such as in the lyric “And if you think that it gets better / Just you wait until next week.”
Only one song in the entire album does not include the lyrical motif of relationships, and that is “Model Buses.” Keeping the sardonic witticisms, the band turns their focus to critique Boris Johnson (who attempted to explain his interest in making model buses in a The Guardian interview) and the British Conservative Party. They call out the traditionalist mindsets of those in charge, singing out “You’re just scared / you’re just scared of the future” in an impassioned musical retaliation.
Long-time Wilbur Soot fans were also treated to a re-creation of “It’s All Futile! It’s All Pointless!”, a scrapped song from his first album “Your City Gave Me Asthma.” The song follows the narrator, comparing how he imagined his life turning out in college to how he imagined a romantic relationship turning out – both turning out differently and, by proxy, altogether disappointing. Compared to the deep vocals and fast-paced acoustic guitar of the scrapped version, Lovejoy crafts “It’s All Futile! It’s All Pointless!” to be a bright, upbeat track that still accurately portrays negativity in a more realistic way.
Most albums dealing with breakups, toxic or abusive relationships, or just generally awful life situations take on a reasonably dark tone, and Pebble Brain is no different. What truly sets Lovejoy’s album apart from any other is their ability to not only blend the harmonious guitars, fast-paced drums, blaring trumpets, and a thrumming bassline present in light-hearted rock with these same themes, but balance them out in an upbeat, beautifully composed, and downright fun album.
