Welcome Home: A Pretty Bitter coming of age
I can guard a secret with my life, but I am absolutely awful with surprises. I get too excited and too eager. I am notorious for giving gifts early and ruining the anticipation, because when I am presented with joy the very first thing I want to do with it is share it.
So imagine how hard it’s been for me to keep my mouth shut about Pretty Bitter’s new album, Hinges. This album has been glowing in my back pocket all month and I’ve been dying to introduce all of you to it (and to your new favorite band).
Pretty Bitter was born on the internet. Through various apps and comments sections, the band members found each other and inevitably started creating. Like all great origin stories, they’ve gone through a few evolutions (and a name change) to get to their current form. Em Blecker, Miri Tyler, Zach Be, Chris Smith, and Jason Hayes make up the five piece unit that is Pretty Bitter. They are musicians based in the D.C. area, signed to Blossom records, and they’ve just released their second album, Hinges.
While you could pinpoint foundations rooted sonically in pop punk, Pretty Bitter’s sound is a kaleidescope of many things all at once. There’s synthpop, indietronica, a sprinkle of folk, and psychedelia throughout their new ten track album. The tracks themselves are a perfect representation of a band that defines itself by dichotomy.
It’s an album full of Pretty songs about Bitter things.
Hinges album artwork
I knew I was going to love this album before I even listened to a single note, because this album artwork is iconic. It’s actually a real photo of Em Blecker’s (lead vocalist) grandmother from the 1940’s. There’s something so silly, joyful, slightly unsettling, and so very human about this photo. It completely defies what we would expect from a photo of a woman in this era, taking the traditional idea of femininity and legacy and breaking them, which just so happen to be two very big themes that Pretty Bitter dissects in the tracks on their album.
“She’s Pure Astral Light (Or So She Says)” opens the album with a celestial crescendo that falls from grace, landing into a serpentine bass (Miri Tyler)that leads us into the song. Blecker’s vocals are silky, but laser sharp as they sing about the myths we all make of ourselves; the ways we lose ourselves in what other people think, and how we try to elevate ourselves, even when we live less than glamorous lives. This is represented in the friction of lyrics like “Amy told you that she’s a healer” followed by “but her mom pays her rent”. This song feels like visits back to your hometown after being gone, like you’re too big for your own skin, aching for something bigger.
The second track, “The Damn Thing Is Cursed” feels like a song lifted from a Greta Gerwig coming of age film. The guitar immediately drives the action of this song, harkening back to those pop punk roots we mentioned earlier. The chorus is sung by multiple members of the band and it creates such a satisfying catharsis, especially on the paramount lyrics of “I hope you learn for yourself who you are when nobody’s around”. I’m dying to hear this one played live, just for that incredible moment about halfway through the song with the drums (Jason Hayes). Spiritual.
One aspect that I find so impressive about Pretty Bitter’s music, is how they successfully lead to the climax of a song, while subverting expectations. “Fashionable Exit” starts out in an expected way, with an insatiable bass, high energy guitar, and two versus and choruses. After the second chorus, you’d think we’d go through a bridge and then a final chorus, but instead the band takes us through a false stop of stuttering through the repeated “Wait!”, which all culminates into my favorite part, around the 2:44’ mark. The bass walks us right into a satisfying head banger of an ending section, with a guitar that wails into the stratosphere, and accompanying vocals that add breadth to the sound. It’s like the band has taken the song and pulled it apart like taffy, stretching it and finding new pockets to explore.
A reoccurring theme on Hinges is that of the home. A literal place, but also the mental space inside yourself. “Beeswax” feels like a dissociative dream that starts off with a glittering synth and fuzzy The 1975 sounding guitars, with a vocal line that could have been written by Michael Angelakos (Passion Pit). The lyrics suggest feeling at odds with yourself, or being stuck in a kind of nightmare where you are numb and trying to come back to home yourself. Pretty Bitter takes us through the gauntlet, until we finally “wake up” from the nightmare, and although not everything is perfect and we’re not completely healed, we’re still here. And we’re staying.
My favorite track on the album is “Final Girl”. It’s a song from the perspective of the girl that survives the horror movie. I love the way that Blecker opens the song vocally. They have an almost jazzy sound with a slight vocal filter on the first phrase, that evokes the feeling of hearing this through a phone. I’m sure that was a deliberate choice, since later in the song there is a lyrical reference to Sidney Prescott, the Final Girl of the Scream franchise. I love the tension between the beachy, summer sounds in the guitar and synth with the biting lyrics that offer a feminist commentary on the commodification of trauma. Whenever they decide to do a film adaptation of Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix, someone better make sure they use this song in the trailer.
You’ll be the final girl, you’ve got the jawline.
“Trust Fall” showcases the powerful nature of Blecker’s vocal range and how it can move from raspy and enticing, to a howl that slices through the cacophony of sound that erupts on the track. Loneliness saturates the lyrics (“I’m nobody’s daughter”) and anxiety seems to manifest itself in the piano that tries to break through. It’s like the entire time, we’ve been free falling with various sounds all around us, until the 2:53’ mark, when we’re finally “caught” and all of the instruments line up with the guitar reinforcing the melody with the piano.
I’m a sucker for some strings and I love when musicians use them in more intimate, or vulnerable moments. “BDI / Lore” sweeps in an intensely vulnerable and bare moment for Pretty Bitter. It’s a voyage through struggle of mental illness and the attempt to let yourself be loved, set upon the back drop of the self-scored Beck’s Depression Inventory. This song is a masterclass in clever writing. All the babies with family trauma will need a moment after the lyrics, “It is hell sometimes to love me/ You climb the aches of my family tree/ It scares me just to breathe”. The subtle instrumentation on this is a testament to the musicianship that the members of Pretty Bitter hold. They are not one trick ponies, giving us one emotional experience. These are storytellers that have the range to bring us into the scariest parts of ourselves, holding our hands while we try and find our path. It’s stunning to experience.
I know I’ve already said that “Final Girl” is my favorite track, but I think if you opened my heart, you’d find “[Redacted] dies at the end” etched in there somewhere among my veins. This song is a literal homecoming. It was written after Em Blecker visited her childhood home. It had been sold to someone who left it exactly as it was when Em had been a child (down to the paint and writing on their childhood bedroom walls). There was a sign on the door that the house was going to be demolished and wouldn’t you know that the front door was left unlocked, giving Em the opportunity to visit the ghosts of that house that sat there waiting for them.
I love the intimacy of the recording with the creaking chair and the whispers at the beginning, like we’re all there in the recording booth too. The guitar was actually recorded at a Guitar Center (in secret!) on a vintage Martin. I love that tidbit so much. I love when art finds ways to grow through the concrete like that. For me, this is the most special moment on the album. It’s an incredibly deserved, tender moment that’s just beautiful. I love the softness of the vocals, that remind me of Lily & Madeline, and the second the banjo and fiddle came in I was washed with memories of Freelance Whales. It’s reflective lyrics leave me feeling like Em and Miri read pages out of my diary. This song aches and burns sweetly.
My mother’s favorite word is legacy,
I wonder if she knows what she passed onto me.
“Numb it Down for Me” is a ten minute odyssey that feels like a culmination of the major themes of the album. I was honestly a little surprised it didn’t close out the album, but regardless, it’s a true representation that Pretty Bitter holds a deep understanding of musical narration. There are bands that have been around for decades that are unable to do what Pretty Bitter has done in two albums.
I feel like “Numb it Down for Me” is a great testament to their talent as individual musicians, but also as a collective. As we get deeper into the song, it starts to unravel, revealing more and more of itself to us. We start off with 90’s grunge sounds, a heavy drum beat and a now signature fuzzy guitar, punctuated with a piano and dreamlike vocals. When the chorus enters, the vocal line is doubled in octaves and the sound begins to widen and spill over. The lyrics take us through the themes of feeling lost, growing up, trying to find our way home, and wanting to be seen and known for who we are. Just when we think we’re nearing the end of this journey, when it feels like maybe we’ve found our way and figured it all out, the instruments drop out and we’re left floating through a celestial drone. Everything slows down, the piano and vocals drift in like they’re moving through molasses. This is a great musical metaphor. Finding yourself and who you are isn’t easy. Sometimes it feels like we’re stuck in this exact musical space, unable to move forward, numb and suspended. Eventually, the drums enter again and move us onward, where we sprint to the end of the song. The music strobes, the drums thunder, the synth underscores the motion and miraculously, we’re left standing in the end.
I want you to know the way back home
I know you can meet me here.
I want you to know me, feel me.
Finally, we close the album with the effervescent and quick “What Now”. It’s a self aware, tongue in cheek tune that vibrantly wraps the album up in a bright red bow. The bass drives the song from the beginning, the lively piano evokes the likes of Elton John, and the vocal harmonies accentuate the snark of the lyrics. Pretty Bitter could have left us in a tender space with all of the heavy themes that are unwrapped in this album, but instead, they leave us with a little bit of humor and hope, “I think I’ll live through this, like I’ve lived through all of the others.”
Right now, we’re living in that sweet slice of time where all of our favorite musicians are releasing their quarantine albums. The albums that are incredibly introspective and vulnerable, that unpack our secrets that we had to face when we were alone with ourselves. Hinges deserves to sit right next to all of those albums that we’re currently celebrating for doing just that.
When I spoke with some of the band members, I was struck (and invigorated) by how they pieced this album together. Recording it “in basements and closets” and secret sessions in a Guitar Center, sending recordings back and forth to each other, slowly building it together while they were apart. Pretty Bitter’s Spotify bio describes them as “Music for finding yourself”. I couldn’t agree more. Hinges feels like that coming of age album for the kids that had to grow up too fast. For the kids that are just now holding their traumas and pain in their hands, feeling the true weight of them and discovering those hidden parts of themselves. But Pretty Bitter doesn’t leave us in the dark, they help us find the humor, the joy, and the slivers of light that peak through the cracks. It feels like an album made by your best friends. It’s for you. It’s for me.
It’s our homecoming to ourselves.
You can find more information on Pretty Bitter here. You can stream their album, Hinges, on Spotify and Apple Music.