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When the members of Slow Pulp discuss Yard, their second full-length record and first for ANTI-, their vocabulary often defaults to synesthetic imagery and sensation.We have so many visual cues for how we talk about music, singer and guitarist Emily Massey says as she stops herself in the middle of explaining how the albums second song, Doubt, sounds like wakeboarding. Doubt is quite dark lyrically, but it is found in this upbeat and almost campy environment.On Yard, the Wisconsin-bred, Chicago-based four-piece nestles comfortably into pockets of nuance, impressions, contradictions sonics and lyrics finessed together to bottle the specific tension of a feeling youve never quite been able to find the right words for. In that regard, listening to Slow Pulp can feel like being in a room with someone whos known you so long that they can read your every micro-expression and pinpoint exactly how youre feeling before you can. Perhaps this spawns from the bands own shared history and chemistry; in various ways, the four of them grew up are still growing up together.Guitarist Henry Stoehr and drummer Teddy Mathews attended elementary school together in Madison. Not long after, they met bassist Alex Leeds at the west side location of the now-closed local music program called GoodnLoud Music. And while Massey didnt enter the fold until later on in college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with Mathews and Stoehr, it turns out she was in the same program on the other side of town at GoodnLouds east side location. In fact, the chords to Yards addictive track Slugs are from a song Stoehr wrote for his crush in the sixth grade. Imagination, Mathews immediately chimes in with the name of Stoehrs original. The albums iteration of the song is, fittingly, also about a crush: Youre a summer hit, Im singing it, Massey swoons over a warm wave of guitar fuzz and syrupy background vocals.With Leeds attending college in Minneapolis and the other members in Madison, the quartet started recording, playing shows around the Midwest, and eventually released their first EP as a four-piece, EP2, in 2017. Its an intimate, restless, and decidedly lo-fi 17-minute debut by a band with an obvious knack for creating sticky hooks that tend to stay in the space behind your eyes long after the songs are finished playing. So obvious that, without much promotion on the bands end, EP2 picked up traction across YouTube channels and blogs, and thanks to the power of the internet, Slow Pulp unexpectedly found themselves amid their first wave of buzz.
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