Pool kids
Pool Kids' third album, Easier Said Than Done, shimmers with emotional clarity and courage. It's the sound of a band whose members have built powerful trust as they've grown together, who cheer each other on through their triumphs and catch each other when they fall. Adrenalizing and irresistible, the record marks a new stage for the group: one where they bring the dynamism of their live show into the studio, cultivating a style that's unmistakably their own.
Pool Kids first started playing together on Tallahassee's house show circuit. Even before they had a name, the band -- then Caden Clinton on drums and Christine Goodwyne on guitar and vocals -- booked visiting acts in Goodwyne's backyard, slotting themselves in as the opener. They started touring the United States by cold-calling bars and asking to play their stages. They recorded their debut album, 2018's Music to Practice Safe Sex To, in a friend's kitchen. It earned a fan in Hayley Williams, who said she wished Paramore had sounded like that when they were first starting out.
In the following years, Pool Kids rounded out to a four-piece with Andy Anaya on guitar and Nicolette Alvarez on bass. Their 2022 self-titled LP netted wide critical acclaim with its lush, high-contrast mixture of pop, emo, and math rock. They've shared stages with The Mountain Goats, PUP, Beach Bunny, and La Dispute. Throughout their rapid artistic growth, they've held fast to the principles of their DIY origins. At their shows, they hammer home the message that anyone can do what Pool Kids do. Anyone can start a band. Anyone can make a record. Everyone deserves to chase their dream.
For Easier Said Than Done, Pool Kids returned to Seattle to work with Mike Vernon Davis (Foxing, Great Grandpa), who produced their self-titled. The band funded the studio sessions with money they’d saved from years of steady touring, eager to explore the freedom that comes with making a record independently. They spent five weeks recording in Washington in the summer of 2024, staying with friends, at motels, and in the studio itself to save money. They recorded late into the night, driving to the edge of the city to shower at a Planet Fitness once they'd wrapped for the day. Working from the trust they'd built during their earlier studio sessions, the band focused on pushing the record to its fullest emotive potential.
"We felt a lot of pressure to recreate the magic that happened last time," says Goodwyne. "We did a lot of searching, playing each song a million different ways and deciding which one sounded the best." Songs evolved through multiple iterations, assuming different genres as they went, from synth pop to slacker rock and back again, or from gentle acoustic balladry to driving anthemic rock. "We tried out new ideas on the fly, wrote and reworked songs, keys, chord progressions, and runs together," says Alvarez. "We looked at everything as a collective through an even more powerful microscope than before." Piece by piece and day by day, the record started to take shape. "We dove into these rabbit holes trying to figure out the right sound for each note," says Anaya. "It was a deeply exploratory process."
Davis encouraged Pool Kids to try new recording strategies: he set Goodwyne up with a microphone over her air mattress on the studio floor so she could track vocals for the blissful acoustic number "Perfect View" as soon as she woke up the next morning. Engineer Sam Rosson attached ping-pong balls to the strings of a piano to record "Sorry Not Sorry." After learning that Rush's Neil Peart recorded drums into a microphone taped to his chest, Clinton committed to the same point-of-view technique to capture the sound of the stainless steel drum kit he had built himself. "Every day for the two weeks we tracked drums, I would tape a microphone to my chest," he says. "I would go out to eat with a microphone taped to my chest, because it was a pain to untape me and tape me back up. So I would just put a hoodie on over the mic. I looked like an operative." The band's experimental verve and careful attention to detail set the songs aglow.
“We tried to take the trust we have in each other and pour it into a collective belief in our band,” says Anaya. “We weren’t going to wait around for outside support because the goal at the end of the day was to make something we believed in.” That leap of faith paid off – after months of seeking a home for the completed album, Pool Kids signed to Epitaph.
While writing Easier Said Than Done, Goodwyne challenged herself to focus on the present moment and only use lyrics she had recently penned, rather than looking back through old notes for starting points. The album sets its gaze on the way relationships smolder and erupt over time, the way life on tour strains connections to loved ones, and how memories of childhood friendships can look strange in adulthood's glaring light. On “Leona Street,” Goodwyne sings about walking past the house of an old friend she had a falling out with. “This was a person who really knew me, and was familiar with my futile cycles of trying to get better,” she says. “I was thinking about how they would laugh if they saw me outside on a run, once again going through the motions of trying to get it together. It forced me to confront that I am still the flawed person this old friend would remember, the kind of person that let the friendship die in the first place.”
"I actually was diagnosed with OCD a week before going to the studio," Goodwyne continues. "I thought I had it, but after getting the official diagnosis, I looked back at a lot of the lyrics, and I thought, 'this is kind of an OCD record.' It’s hard to explain because it’s such a misunderstood disorder, but a lot of the themes on the record are fixations that my OCD latches onto." The album's title track flickers with anxiety and then crashes into catharsis as Goodwyne screams through her inability to let go of her preoccupations. "OCD can just rob your life of joy," she says. "Things can be going so well, and then it just sucks any enjoyment out of it." On the thundering "Tinted Windows," she grits her teeth at the way spending months on tour and missing important milestones can stress close relationships. Album closer "Exit Plan" memorializes the experience of saying goodbye to friends at the end of a string of shows, all while knowing those powerful bonds forged on the road may never feel the same way again. On "Bad Bruise," over billowing guitars and synths, Goodwyne spikes her voice into a bid for understanding: "Pretty please, empathy / Got me on my knees," she sings while the band closes ranks around her.
"There’s a lot of Florida imagery and a lot of really specific glimpses from tour on this album," Goodwyne says. "By letting myself get specific, I feel a lot more emotionally connected to the songs. It's a very personal record for me and for the whole band, too. I was writing about what life has been like for all of us over the last few years. I feel like all of us can relate to a lot of the songs."
Pool Kids' powerful collectivity rings through Easier Said Than Done -- in the dynamic interplay between Goodwyne and Anaya's guitars, in Alvarez's gravitationally binding basslines, in Clinton's nimble, whirling drum patterns. They lock together into a unified force, each leaning on the other, propelling themselves forward into hard-won release. With its irrepressible communal energy, Easier Said Than Done impresses one of the most important reminders anyone can hear: You don’t have to do anything in this world alone.
TEAM
BOOKING
US
David Galea at United Talent Agency
Europe:
David Hughes at Free Trade Agency
LABEL
Epitaph
PUBLICITY
Jasmine Muldrow at Epitaph