Charlotte, NC quartet Serfs released their debut EP, Common Feelings, today for free download. The 5-song effort is a blend of garage rock jangle, the crushing-yet-vulnerable dynamics of shoegaze, the chaos of noise pop, the snarl of punk, and the charm of indie pop. "The songs on this record were born out of a personal crisis I went through last year," says vocalist and guitarist Phil Pucci. "The record is largely about friendship and on a bigger scale, my contradictory desires to at the same time fit in and run away from Midwood, the part of Charlotte where I live."
Two people come together, unified by a mutual love of, and for, one another. They work together to keep their relationship, to cultivate it into something they're proud of. But, one day, the one fractures back into two and the relationship returns to something about individuals rather than a unified whole. In his slow November, two guitars capture the essence of this frayed relationship, working together until the very end where they start to produce new rhythms unique unto themselves.
With a steady, progressively harder strum of his hand and lightly affected vocals, he fights off the pain as he reassures himself that he's not meant to be alone. There's something inherently optimistic about his chord progression that serves as foil to the melancholy he can't quite yet shake from his voice. This could have been drowned out by an overbearing amount of sorrow, but he's cognizant of the fact that pouring the detail of his emotions into his performance can say more than words ever could.
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He, being of course, Phil Pucci. Who may or may not write for the site from time to time. May. Does.
