"Alright, doing alright / Alright, getting some sunshine / And finding some little thing to love / Cause everything is fucked..."
The brittle senseless pain and glowing survivorship of "Care About", by Oakland based indie gaze outfit Pillowprince, is at once as beautifully powerful as it is sublimely sad. There is a hazy melancholia that is heavy and scorching. The tactile dense sliding guitar notes against Olivia Lee’s mournful vocal countenance that (to me) brings to mind an amalgam of Aimee Mann (circa 'Til Tuesday era) and Mitski. The glacial crystalline patter of sounds, booming bass hangs and Sea Snyder's swirling punching drumwork kill me. It is so incredibly moving as I stare up at the sky while feeling nervousness in my stomach. All these tattered feelings before knowing what the song is even inspired by. Just reading Lee's impassioned words feel like an emotional earthquake.
"Alright, doing alright
Alright, getting some sunshineAnd finding some little thing to love
Cause everything is fucked
All night, dancing all night
All night, laughing all night
With their painted faces shining so bright
Making some little kid feel loved
When are you gonna care about
Everyone that should be here now
How many faces and names ago
And the hate spewing through their mouths
All night, hearing them all night
All night, hearing them all night
So I’m finding some little thing to love
And tomorrow we will light something up
When are you gonna care about
Everyone that should be here now
How many faces and names ago
And the hate spewing through their mouths
When are you gonna care about
When are you gonna care about
When are you gonna care about
When are you gonna care about"
In the cold light of the day after, "Care About" is a eulogy, a testament, a cry for sanity penned after the anti-LGBTQ motivated mass shootings at the queer bar Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colorado in November 2022. Five people were murdered and twenty five others injured. Listening to "Care About" as I recall the facts, the heroes and villains and the cultural devolution we are currently in before and after voting Trump into office makes this song more painful and, in a way, more uplifting. Things will change if good people stand up for what is right, what is obviously right.
LINER NOTES (bracketed):
[Pillowprince is an Oakland-based indie gaze band that makes rock from cracking folds of leather and glittering chain link, from nights of red-gelled stage lights and mornings after that are way too bright, from hair matted with joy and danger and most of all from bodies making places for themselves only they know.]
[Songwriter and guitarist Olivia Lee (of There's Talk) sings about queer joy, pain, love and subversion, punctuating raw sincerity with vibrant brooding guitar riffs. Together with Sea Snyder on drums, they create dense, propulsive shoegaze anthems.]
[Massive and melodious, Pillowprince ebbs and flows between a dramatic intimate grandeur and irreverent indie pop on their debut EP, "pretty, baby!", coming out on Dune Altar in Spring 2025.]
-Robb Donker Curtius
https://www.youtube.com/@Pillowprinceband
https://pillowprinceband.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/pillowprinceband/
https://www.tiktok.com/@pillowprinceband
https://www.pillowprinceband.com/
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://www.youtube.com/@Pillowprinceband
https://pillowprinceband.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/pillowprinceband/
https://www.tiktok.com/@pillowprinceband
https://www.pillowprinceband.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Pillowprinceband
Pillowprince is an Oakland-based indie gaze band that makes rock from cracking folds of leather and glittering chain link, from nights of red-gelled stage lights and mornings after that are way too bright, from hair matted with joy and danger and most of all from bodies making places for themselves only they know.
Songwriter and guitarist Olivia Lee (of There's Talk) sings about queer joy, pain, love and subversion, punctuating raw sincerity with vibrant brooding guitar riffs. Together with Sea Snyder on drums, they create dense, propulsive shoegaze anthems.
Massive and melodious, Pillowprince ebbs and flows between a dramatic intimate grandeur and irreverent indie pop on their debut EP, pretty, baby!, coming out on Dune Altar in Spring 2025.
Pillowprince, shoegaze, dream pop, post punk, indie rock, alt rock, poltico post punk, songwriter - guitarist Olivia Lee (There's Talk), drummer Sea Snyder, "Care About", EP "pretty, baby!", sublime beauty,
Pillowprince is an Oakland-based indie gaze band that makes rock from cracking folds of leather and glittering chain link, from nights of red-gelled stage lights and mornings after that are way too bright, from hair matted with joy and danger and most of all from bodies making places for themselves only they know.
Songwriter and guitarist Olivia Lee (of There's Talk) sings about queer joy, pain, love and subversion, punctuating raw sincerity with vibrant brooding guitar riffs. Together with Sea Snyder on drums, they create dense, propulsive shoegaze anthems.
Massive and melodious, Pillowprince ebbs and flows between a dramatic intimate grandeur and irreverent indie pop on their debut EP, pretty, baby!, coming out on Dune Altar in Spring 2025.
Pillowprince, shoegaze, dream pop, post punk, indie rock, alt rock, poltico post punk, songwriter - guitarist Olivia Lee (There's Talk), drummer Sea Snyder, "Care About", EP "pretty, baby!", sublime beauty,
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