Pool kids
Pool Kids are energy. Raw, sporadic, and indisputably authentic, the four piece group originally hails from Tallahassee, FL. The band’s sunny Floridian disposition shines through in their mathy, intricate guitar work, which is matched only by the emotional vulnerability expressed in singer Christine Goodwyne’s lyricism. Pool Kids, the band’s masterful self-titled second album (out July 22, 2022), fuses fan-favorite math and art rock familiarities with a tide of emotional and technical growth, engulfing the listener in a wave of impassioned indie rock angst. A recording process that was flooded with both an outpouring of collaborative affection and with literal water, Pool Kids takes on a life of its own, representing not only the reformation of a submerged hope, but also the reconfiguration of a band that has expanded to find its final kinetic form.
Pool Kids first emerged as a two-piece, with vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Christine Goodwyne and drummer Caden Clinton writing the entirety of the group’s 2018 LP, Music to Practice Safe Sex to. The new self-titled record finds the addition of bassist Nicolette Alvarez and guitarist Andy Anaya, together helping to shape the bright, genre-bending sound that bleeds and blends into each individual track. Post hardcore guitar riffs ripple on the surface of songs like “Further”, while the album concludes with the indie-folk-pop track “Pathetic”, ringing out like an synthy, heartbroken echo. Goodwyne explains, “This was our missing piece. We are a family, this is it, the truest form of the band.”
Pool Kids is more polished than ever. Crisp and layered, sound cascades out of the record like an avalanche, hard, cool, and blanketing. Structurally, the group moved away from the oft-chaotic arrangements on Music to Practice Safe Sex to, and instead leaned into more instantly memorable choruses. Goodwyne recounts, “I was listening to a lot of pop over the past year or two. I’ve been totally leaning into radiopop, like Charli XCX…Lady Gaga, very select Taylor Swift songs, and just really dissecting what I think is catchy and earwormy.”
Following the release of Music to Practice Safe Sex to, the long distance band was immediately hungry to create more. Spread out between the South, Northeast, and Midwest, Goodwyne recalls that the bleary eyed four-piece was ready to create together “IN PERSON. Not Postal-Service style”, unbeknownst to the Pandemic that would strike shortly after. Pool Kids were able to reunite three times, under the unobstructed skies of Moonshine Mountain, North Carolina, and in the bustle of Miami, Florida and Chicago, Illinois. Still, it was not until the three month recording session in 2021 under producer Mike Vernon Davis in Seattle, with the help of Samuel Rosson and Jake Barrow, that Pool Kids came together in full. Davis was crucial in fully realizing the songs on the album, adding synth textures and keyboard melodies, as well as boosting the overall morale of the band.
And of course, the band’s morale did need boosting come September. Worn down and weary after staying up until 3 AM to finish recording the final song for the album, Pool Kids went to sleep feeling nervous. Alvarez fretted, “I feel like something bad is going to happen. This is just going too good.” And she was right. Not even three hours later, the group was shaken from the slumber with an ominous five words by assistant producer, Jake Barrow, “Bit of an emergency situation.” Heavy rain had flooded the basement of Isaac Brock’s Ice Cream Party studio, destroying equipment and nearly drowning the original recording of the album’s closer “Pathetic'' in a pool of electrified water. Goodwyne recalls, “The worst part about the flood was not even the gear, it was the momentum that it killed. We were so on one and spirits were so high and we’d really gotten into the flow…we could’ve walked away with a finished product if that flood never happened.”
The group reconvened several months later, determined not just to recreate what had been destroyed, but to better it. The shifting current that threatened to rip the album apart suddenly calmed upon Pool Kids’ reunion, and the band retired their exhaustion for collaborative perseverance. “It felt like magic was happening, we were meshing so well creatively, and just having so much fun. It’s really unbelievable how good of a match this whole crew was,” said Goodwyne. Not only was producer Samuel Rosson introduced into the picture, but drummer Caden Clinton’s handy cam footage of the flood was recovered. Now, on the final moments of the album, the sounds of the band sloshing through the flooded studio linger on as a reminder of endurance in the wake of disappointment.
Pool Kids is about regeneration—from trauma, from heartbreak, from culture. Goodwyne reaches into the murky depths of shared existence, pulling not only from her own struggles, but from the universality of emotion. Recovery from the dissolution of a seven year relationship and childhood religious trauma shape the most personal lyrics of the LP, but so do the topics that Goodwyne didn’t experience first hand. “Some of the details in the stories are not 100% accurate to my life, but the emotions behind them are personal to me. Moments of pain and hurt, like in Pathetic, feel so real and true to me and the situation…introducing that extra fictional character helped me to address [feelings of jealousy and pain] without being limited to the details of my reality,” explains Goodwyne. On standout track “I Hope You’re Right”, Goodwyne details the experience of a friend’s disrespected boundaries, disclosing that it’s about “men just not even realizing what they're doing that is harmful, thinking ‘I’m not like that’ while just being totally blind to what they're actually doing and not listening/accepting what you tell them when you try to explain.” What makes Pool Kids so impactful is the departure from this idea that for music to be personal, it must be unique to the writer. Pool Kids is personal because it’s personal to everyone.
TEAM
BOOKING
US
David Galea at United Talent Agency
Europe:
David Hughes at Free Trade Agency
LABEL
PUBLICITY
Jamie Coletta at No Earbuds