It shouldn’t come as a surprise that cootie catcher formed during the pandemic. Across three different vocalists leading the group (bassist/vocalist Anita Fowl, guitarist/vocalist Nolan Jakupovski, and synth player/vocalist Sophia Chavez), a sense of remoteness pervades their lyrics. In the Toronto band’s choppy vocal samples, warping guitar parts, and Auto-Tuned harmonies, you feel the exhaustion that came with being stuck inside, watching milliseconds of vertical content online when you’d rather pick up your guitar or go for a walk while listening to Rocketship. Their music isn’t designed to clear your head but clutter it up—and, in the process, they’ll lodge a melody somewhere in there.
Something We All Got is full off-axis instrumentals that whiz by you. Electric guitars fray and detune as songs chug along, live drum grooves from Joseph Shemoun take up arms against the programmed beats, and Chavez’s scratches recall the DJs of ‘90s pop rock. The entire thing is twitchy and uneasy, the soundtrack of being twenty-something and figuring it all out on record. A lesser band would lose themselves inside their laptops, doubling down on digital abstractions, but cootie catcher remains firmly enthralled with the possibilities of being twee. Even with a few radio-ready moments, the catchiest song here is called “puzzle pop,” the title of which basically sums up cootie catcher’s whole deal as well as anyone could.
But if cootie catcher is all post-modern pop collage, situated somewhere between the Vaselines and Disco Inferno, Something We All Got contrasts that bursting-at-the-seams sound with songs about typical frustrations that come with mediocre relationships, odd jobs, and fairweather friends. The language they use is casual—and occasionally interrupted by la’s, oh’s and ah’s—but all three vocalists manage to relay real disappointment. “Gingham dress” sees Chavez exasperated with a date who doesn’t “know where this will go” after eight months; “Straight drop” centers around the image of Fowl crying on the bus; the Pavement-like stumble of “No biggie” finds Jakupovski grappling with a slipping relationship. Together, the three present a unified, bummed-out perspective.
On first glance though, cootie catcher’s melancholy might be hard to pick up on. The instrumental gumbo of Something We All Got is sometimes close to congealing into a headache-y buzz. But even if the spread of whirring synths, heaving vocal edits, and random glitches can overwhelm, there’s plenty of steady songcraft to latch onto. “From here to halifax” recalls This is Lorelei’s acoustic ditties after getting sent through a bitcrusher, while “Pirouette” is Fowl and Jakupovski at their most Pastel-like. Even before a needling guitar line wonderfully scrambles the whole equation, “Puzzle pop” has the energy of a bike that’s lost control, toggling between a cowbell sample and an intruding whistle. It’s held together with a little vocal sample, ominously going “I know what you’re like” at random.
In less playful, deft hands, all the disappointment and despair that’s shared here could be stultifying. Something We All Got remains pretty fun to listen to and it’s not just because of those indietronica eccentricities. Between overlapped vocals and intersecting feelings, cootie catcher showcase what a genuine sense of community might sound like. If there’s a solution to the string of mediocre partners and bland jobs that Fowl, Jakupovski, and Chavez sing about, it can be found between the lines, all of them commiserating together, sometimes in harmony. [Carpark]
Ethan Beck is a Pittsburgh-born, Brooklyn-based journalist and critic who has written for The Washington Post, Public Source, Los Angeles Times, and other publications.
