Of all the things I do not know, what keeps me up at night most is why Covey is not one of the most popular DIY bands in America. Consistently excellent, the once-Boston, now-Brooklyn-based band self-released their indefatigable debut, Haggarty, in 2017, and have followed it up splendidly with this year’s Some Cats Live, Some Cats Die. Whereas Haggarty grappled with the post-college loss of community, Some Cats deals with a physical change in space, as singer/songwriter Tom Freeman decamped to a lonesome Long Island manor when his Allston apartment proved uninhabitable.
Written from this temporary new base, Some Cats fixates on the untrustworthiness of dreams and the impermanence of memory, asking “Remember when I almost killed us both?” on standout track “Cloudy Eyes,” and confessing in hair-raising falsetto that “I saw you in my dream last night, as I stood alone” on “Gecko.” Freeman has spoken about taking time in this eerie and empty house pictured on the LP cover to reflect on what brought him there, and how it felt like a personal failure. The self-defeating nature of which is nothing new for a Covey song. The yearning climax of Haggarty, for example, comes with the declaration “Maybe I should keep myself away from those I truly love.” But on Some Cats, the time taken to reflect seems to have delivered Freeman to the point of being ready to forgive himself. In the comforting swirl of “Stable Now,” one gets the sense that he’s coming to terms with his own shortcomings, even if he gets there reluctantly.
Somewhere in the interim between the hypnopompic beginning and sleep-deprived end of the album, Freeman’s stance, always delivered with deeply emotional richness, runs its course from recognizing that “I’m poorly designed,” to hoping that “Some day, I’ll smile soon.” The end result may be imperfect, but Covey’s prevailing path has always been off-kilter. Take the oft-appearing lo-fi propulsion of a single electric guitar, the album’s twee accordion throughline, or the surrealist Neutral Milk Hotel-inflected Balkan imagery that Freeman brushes on all things Covey—that type that colors dreams and sticks menacingly with you long after waking up. I’ll take a cohesive step in the right direction that feels jarring over shiny perfection any day.
Listen to Some Cats Live, Some Cats Die on Spotify:
