A Meteoric Song of the Mundane, All The Same, Sees Sweater Curse At Their Best

In a year of self isolation and dissociation, the repetive nature of our regular lives has been pulled into focus sharper than ever before. To survive my own period of unemployment, I fell back on a roster of chores around the house, growing vegetables, reviewing new music on triple j unearthed and walking my dogs. Writing the same tasks out every week and ticking them off a list time and time again through the Covid-19 crisis kept me sane. As restrictions relaxed the countless conversations I have had with people I haven’t seen for six months seem to sound more and more scripted in their monotony.

It’s all the same, but it always has been all the same. Even before Covid-19 hit it had been. The same conversations, the same weather, the same actions and the same acting. The functions that make us feel who we are are often isolating in how inactive the thought processes behind them become. Leaving life as something that feels different to what you think it should. We should be happy to see our friends at a party and we are, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t a strange embrace of average over adversity that leaves a lingering feeling in the back of your mind. It’s this feeling that is encapsulated and shot to glorious heights on Sweater Curse’s latest release All The Same.

For a topic that I find challenging to think about, Sweater Curse find words:

I want to be in the next room
Finding ways to empty my brain
On the couch across from people
It’s not late but I am tired

Is the perfect summation of dissociation in a social situation. The feeling of wanting to be elsewhere, of wanting to be with people and of ultimately feeling tired. It’s brilliant songwriting that skims across the surface of a topic and allows your own mind to do the rest, spiralling into it introspectively. It’s this light touch to a dense topic that is carried throughout All The Same that leaves you reaching for the repeat button.

Musically All The Same is the sum of all it’s parts being continually pushed and twisted around themselves. Just as you settle into the song, a stop is pulled out and further gear is found within the vivid chemistry of Sweater Curse. Chris, Mon and Rei are phenomenal musicians that feed into each other in a way very few bands can. Guitars sparkle, vocals push anxiety or deliver release, drums take the wheel and moments of space coupled with claustraphobia keep the listener hooked in. It is a masterful control of musicality to create a mood that hammers home the sentiment of the song before sending it to another level.

All The Same absolutely soars across three and a half minutes, eventually finding a peak that completely flaws its listener.

Produced by Sam Cromack of Ball Park Music, All The Same, is an incredible moreish tase of what is to come on their new EP ‘push//pull’, out Friday 25 September.