There’s nothing like a cramped bus ride or a long solo car trip to get your thoughts spiraling. The members of Toronto twee-pop quartet cootie catcher are well aware: The songs on Something We All Got, the band’s first studio-quality album, feature protagonists who doze off on the subway, hitch rides on bikes, and even drive through their dreams, forever in transit to somewhere more homey or exciting. The anxious impatience of being en route has permeated cootie catcher’s music since their earliest releases in 2021. Working in the vein of “laptop twee” acts like friends& and Worldpeace DMT, who fuse the genre-smashing maximalism promised by hyperpop with the whimsical optimism of ’00s buzz bands, the material on their 2025 album Shy at first is as dense and dynamic as the songs you try to compose in your imagination.
That record’s best moments embraced the glitchy creative freedom of early-aughts indie rock classics like the Unicorns’ Unicorns Are People Too and Animal Collective’s Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished. As indulgent as it is to kick your record off with a 90-second noise montage, for example, the warm, cozy production counterbalanced the chaos. Their new record, S.W.A.G., was recorded just months after the basement sessions that produced Shy at First, but it marks a shift toward more polished fare. With the crisper fidelity of studio recording comes music that’s more direct and guitar-oriented. They still have a taste for kitschy stock drum sounds and high-frequency synth trills, but they take fewer detours. This souped-up version of cootie catcher is sometimes reminiscent of the wistful power pop of new Carpark labelmates the Beths: breezy enough that the hooks surprise with their weight.
The harder and faster tracks are best-suited to the new digs. On “From here to Halifax,” which feels like a crescendo stretched to song length, and the caffeinated charge of “Quarter note rock,” complete with drum solo, their tinkering spirit sends loose nuts and bolts flying in all directions. That intentional raggedness (even when the recording is quite crisp) is essential to their appeal, and cootie catcher find clever ways to create artificial friction, like lowering the bitrate of the guitar on the bridge of “No biggie” until it sounds like it’s leaking from Nintendo DS speakers.
On the other hand, the shift from cozier lo-fi mixing leaves less fleshed-out songs exposed. Fun ideas surface on “Lyfestyle,” like pitched-up vocal chops fading into the background and a K.K. Slider-esque lead synth, but the song itself, which consists of a single verse and an extended outro, fades before really making an emotional impact. If Shy at first perfected cootie catcher’s version of the rustic, anything-goes sound of laptop twee, Something We All Got represents a tactical retreat into more recognizable songcraft so they can pursue grander aspirations later. Their identity isn’t as sharply defined here, but the hooks and surprises on S.W.A.G. are strong enough to fuel their soul-searching.
