Equal Vision Records and shallow pools are excited to announce the Friday, October 13 release of I Think About It All The Time, the Boston-based indie-pop band’s full-length debut album (pre-save/pre-order HERE). Featuring songs co-written with LGBTQ+ icon Lynn Gunn of PVRIS, I Think About It All The Time is a record that paints a vivid picture of the dystopian times we find ourselves in in 2023 — both in general, but especially in the USA if you’re a minority. It’s that unavoidable setting that dictated both the tone and the themes of this album, but also which propelled the band — all of whom are close friends who live together — to rally against the discrimination and oppression which seems to be becoming more and more a part of everyday life. “I feel like we always want to make some kind of statement,” says vocalist Glynnis Brennan, “and we wanted to write something that basically said ‘Fuck the haters’. As members of the LGBT community, this just feels really important to us.”
With the announce, the band release the music video for its new single “Nightmare,” which is a song about how the band won’t stand for the lack of respect for physical and emotional boundaries. While on tour, they experienced uncomfortable physical and verbal interactions with men in the crowd multiple times. Inappropriate touches and conversations. Backhanded compliments. Condescending tones. It became frequent enough that they started a note called “shit they said to us” just so they could document the ridiculousness of it all.
When they got home from the tour, they read through the note again and thought about how they could channel their anger and exasperation with the situation into a song. “We want this song to empower anyone who has been in a similar situation, and we hope that we’re one step closer to creating a safe space for everyone in the music scene. “We want this song to empower anyone who has been in a similar situation,” the band says. “And we hope that we’re one step closer to creating a safe space for everyone in the music scene.” Watch the music video for “Nightmare” on YouTube HERE.
shallow pools isn’t just a band. Rather, it’s four people who feel a compulsion to react to the state of the world around them and weave those emotions and their ideas into their songs to make a point. And while the Boston-based four-piece — drummer Ali Ajemian, vocalist Glynnis Brennan, guitarist Jess Gromada and bassist Haley Senft — often write about their own deeply personal struggles with mental health, they’re also never afraid to point out injustice when they see it.
The band’s fiery attitude and lyrics sometimes are at odds with its music, but that’s a contradiction shallow pools love to explore when they write songs. It’s not just an individual hallmark of the 10 tracks that make up I Think About It All The Time, but one that can be extended to the album as a whole. The thing that’s being thought of constantly, you see, is, as Ajemian succinctly puts it “not great stuff,” and it permeates every fiber of this record. “It’s kind of a concept album—almost,” laughs Ajemian. “But when we listened back to it, we realized it was less an end of the world album than just all the different things that consumed us, whether that’s environmental or external or internal things.”
Recorded at Reclaim Studios in Thompson, CT with Chris Curran, it’s an album that truly highlights just how much and how far the band has come since starting out playing together as friends in school about a decade ago, then forming shallow pools five or so years later. Listen, for instance, to the melancholy pop-punk-with-a-twist of “Dead Ends” or the lush, ’80s-inspired atmospherics of “Golden,” which marries emotional fragility with instrumentation that Bryan Adams in his prime would be both proud and jealous of. Elsewhere, “Now Or Never” was also written with Lynn Gunn because both parties enjoyed the experience of creating “Say What You Want” together so much, while “All We Got”—an incredibly beguiling up-tempo dance in the face of oblivion—was written with Cameron Walker from Twin XL.
As much as I Think About It All The Time was inspired by the end of the world, and as much as the band say the catharsis they needed from it didn’t really materialize, it nevertheless exists as a tangible, physical beacon of hope and defiance for those who listen to it. “The most important thing to me,” says Brennan, “is making people feel safe and comfortable. I know that’s something that I looked for when I was younger.”
Brennan adds, “Hopefully this album will give us the opportunity to play in front of more people because that’s my favorite part of all this. Because then you get to talk to people face to face and they can tell you what it means to them. And that gets me crying.”
I Think About It All The Time track listing:
Nightmare
Say What You Want
In Too Deep
Glass House
IHYK
Now Or Never
Dead Ends
All We Got
Golden
No Good At Goodbyes