Listening to Bloom Cheek, the new album from What Laura Says, is like reminiscing about spending a lazy summer day with your buds. The sun was going down behind your backyard’s cinder block wall, the beer was cold, and the clouds that would (hopefully) bring monsoon storms were hiding on the edges of your sight, waiting for night to fall.
Those days were great, weren’t they? Your job was shitty and you slept on a friend’s couch every night, but so little mattered. Having fun was the be-all end-all of experience.
Thinking back on those days from here, with its mortgages, business-casual apparel, and lack of mind-altering substances, is kind of sad. Bloom Cheek feels like an embodiment of that sadness. With its acoustic guitar, piano, and layered vocals, the album makes me remember getting shitfaced in Tempe’s dirt backyards. And it hurts. I can’t go back, and those memories are slowly but surely, disappearing from my mind.
The new album won’t throw any fans for a loop. If anything, Bloom Cheek takes the best of the band’s previous output and focuses it. The music still has a shambling feel, a “stoned in the park at midnight” feeling, but it never trips over the line into noodling redundancy.
An unbroken string of “chilling in my lawn chair” songs would lead to, well, sleepytime. What Laura Says know when to change things up. With the bluesy stomp of “Keep Running Shoes Special” and the funky bassline/guitar rave-up of “Roll Some Coin,” the band keeps chilling out from turning into a nap.
What Laura Says have crafted a great album for looking back, smiling, and tearing up a little. It’s a feeling we all need once in a while. It reminds us of important lessons we have learned. For any of you still partying in backyards, here’s my wisdom for you: MD 20/20 and Sapporo do NOT mix.
