SOUNDCHECK
Chelsea Days Chelsea Days ON ITS FIRST PROPER LP, ONE OF OKLAHOMA CITY’S BEST NEW INDIE BANDS EVOKES BLISSFUL EASE BEYOND ITS EXISTENTIALIST BORDERS — AND HOW! By Evan Jarvicks
For such a breezy, feel-good band, reads like a post-Saul Bass brand logo Chelsea Days sure seems to be haunted in its typography, geometry, and old by mortality. On track after track of its game show color scheme. The design self-titled studio debut, sunsetted also looks destined for the center of a memories and future ghosts swirl in vinyl record should the day ever come shimmering depths of existentialism. that pressings become affordable to The songs are never outright deindependent bands. pressed, but neither do they ever quite Chelsea Days is a modern record, find joy. They simply swim with the though, and nothing conveys that more tide, taking comfort not in dreams but than the lyrics. With news cycles perin acceptance. One might think this petually reminding new generations would result in a deflated record, but of Americans that their society is it is nonetheless fruitful in its indie doomed for one reason or another, rock island of relaxation. From beginyoung music artists are grappling with ning to end, a sweet sea of warm emoill fates, and Chelsea Days is no exceptions rises to greet the senses. tion. “Better Days” sings that “Better Atmospheric flourishes of whirring days are far behind / Nothing’s gonna synthesizers, clean guitar, and dewlast the test of time.” “As I Go” fixates drop effects on the physcreate layers ical aspects of gentle of mortality. sonic blan“ J e n n y ’s k et s to Song” is drown out more interthe listener’s ested in exsurroundploring the ings. Softafterlife rock saxothan the p h o n e present, frequently saying that woos the in“We’re all strumentajust waiting t i o n for the end / throughout But I’m not the tracklist. patient.” It Meanwhile, gets pretty crisp drums dour. and self- Album art for Chelsea Days by Chelsea Days. Photo provided. It does sampling sound gorglitch manipulations keep the songs geous, though, and not in a way that from drifting too far into the mists by glamorizes the gloom. If anything, it sprinkling the breeze with zesty feels numb to it. Some of these songs photons of sunlight. This is the casual, come from the band’s phenomenal summertime soundtrack for a rooftop 2020 demo, Unemployment Tapes, poolside cocktail party filmed in hazy which was created in the Twilight slow motion. Zone of the COVID-19 pandemic. That Where many of its peers are still sense of unclocked time permeates finding retro inspiration in the 1980s, Chelsea Days, aided by moments of Chelsea Days seems to be more intertrack beginnings and endings bleeding ested in the late 60s and early 70s. Its into one another. Ruminating on exguitar sounds echo the birth of psycheistential ideas can feel like floating in delia, and its moderately paced arrangethe abyss, and that’s what the band ments sometimes feel like technicolor captures here with a key twist. When lounge music. If indie rock could sound one accepts the void as a blank canvas like a vibraphone, this is it. There are rather than a black hole, the colors one even some tiny bits of brass in lead single manifests can be euphoric. “Dealer’s Hand” that sound like Henry Mancini-era easy listening. It is no coincidence that the minimal album art 28 J U N E 2 9 , 2 0 2 2 | OKGA Z ET TE .COM MUSIC
