There’s a certain charm to an after-school band. In an age of industry plants and X Factor it-boys, listeners still crave the intimacy of bedroom pop and the rough authenticity of garage rock. Atta Boy has carved out a home between the two homegrown genres, and no wonder: the LA band’s four members met in middle school, formed the group in their early teens, and released their debut album, Out of Sorts, around the time of their high school graduation. After an eight-year hiatus spent pursuing other interests—one of them being a starring role in Yellowstone and another in Top Gun: Maverick—the band reunited in 2020, returning with a tighter, more layered version of the sound that made Atta Boy a cult favorite in the first place.
Silt marks the band’s first effort since 2022’s Crab Park. Through nine songs and thirty carefully knit minutes, Atta Boy pairs the restless uncertainty of youth with adulthood’s quieter, grayed-out existential dread: piecing an identity from the void left by a parent’s absence, teetering between substance enjoyment and substance abuse, and, of course, toying with the idea of dying alone. For such a short record, Silt is surprisingly expansive: brash, jagged grunge-rock sidles up next to horn-filled dirges and starry-eyed acoustic numbers. This range can feel whiplash-inducing, but it keeps the music from becoming mired in its (admittedly vivid) depictions of familiar emotional paths.
“Scratch” is a lesson in discontent, all nineties sliding distorted guitars and Virgin Suicide corporeal lamentations. “Thank you, mom, thank you, mom,” lead singer Eden Brolin snarls over a feedback-heavy loop, and one would be hard-pressed to find her gratitude sincere. “Full Cloud” is another exercise in adultified teen angst, with Brolin’s and Freddy Reish’s fuzzy electric guitar and Lewis Pullman’s propulsive drumbeat creating a fog around the singer as she croons, “I don’t know what I want and I don’t like my taste.” Self-pitying and churning, it’s the sort of song to be listened to while brushing side bangs out of your eyes.
But Silt is at its best in its sweetest moments, most of which are found in the album’s second half. “Oh, Mama” showcases Brolin’s floaty head voice as Atta Boy dives into the pastoral, paying homage to Mother Earth. The song cradles the listener the way the trees cradle its grateful narrator, suspended in a canopy of layered horns. “Silt” is similarly soothing, a love song hidden in riverbeds and shrouded beneath leaves. “I’m below you, you’re above me,” Brolin purrs in a prayer of self-abnegation, while mellotrons, synths, and acoustic guitars pour into each other. “Haven’t Yet,” a pouting number on the growing gulf between two lovers, stacks Brolin’s vocals atop one another over a muted, light piano.
Silt is self-indulgent, sometimes to the point of being almost trite. That it avoids falling into that mode entirely is a testament to Atta Boy’s authenticity. Though its members are now in their early thirties, the band seems to understand that the uncertainties, insecurities, and quiet pains of young adulthood stick around long after we think we’ve brushed them off. The openness that accompanies that admission would make the record compelling on its own, and the band’s concise, poetic lyricism and atmospheric instrumentation only elevate it further. Silt is an album for anyone who’s ever felt stranded on the precipice of growing up—or realized, years later, that they never really stepped away from the edge. [Self-Released]
Miranda Wollen is a staff writer at Paste and is based in New York City. Follow her @mirandakwollen or email her.
