Split Second - LP

If there's a central question to Split Second, it's a universal one: How did we end up here? Grief mingles with breakups and reunions, with desperate treks across the country and moments of stillness in New York City parks. Mona Lisa, a dusty and lived-in acoustic amble flecked with autumnal electric guitars, is a love song written after Renny got back together with his girlfriend. Impossible Truth is the other side, a thrumming road song in which urgent drums and melodies inspired by angsty '00s mall-rock propel the narrator into relationship-rupturing arguments. Throughout, these autobiographical moments sit alongside more abstract meditations. After beginning life as a song about moving out of New York, Leaving The Zoo mutated into imagining what it must feel like to be on the precipice of life and death, it's murky verses and volcanic guitar breaks meant to echo the feeling of a leap into the unknown, Renny's vocals turning to a ghostly murmur as layers of strings and distortion eventually overtake him. Elsewhere, the two polarities collide, as in the psychedelic heaviness of Water's Edge channeling the surreal darkness of grief, or in striking San Francisco, 2005. Written in the months after his brother's passing, the song situates a journal entry flitting through disparate years and far-flung locations in a panged, earworm vocal hook delivered above a hazy bed of acoustic and electric guitars tangling together, as if mirroring his mind cutting through the noise to make sense of the aftermath.