If you remove the major drama from our daily lives, we probably spend about ninety nine percent of our time wallowing in the mundane. And when you get older like I am, and not so far from that truth, it feels like we’re all just sitting around waiting to die. That’s not to say it’s a negative thing: it just means one needs to make sure they spend life the way they want to spend it. I’m not grabbing anything by it’s proverbial horns anymore. Other people can climb Mt. Kilimanjaro or create street art out of bottle caps and cat hair. I’m content listening to music, reading books, and binge-watching Adolescence like the rest of the world. New York City’s Pictoria Vark writes music for lives that are mired in the quotidian details. It’s music you might think you didn’t need, but once you hear it you grab onto it like the blanket you keep tossed on the couch every day. There’s a comforting familiarity to the songs she sings and the bed of music in which those songs rest.
Her new album Nothing Sticks is a familiar coat, the one you grab out of the closet even when it’s a little too warm to wear. We put it on because it feels like a mini-cocoon, a place to retreat where we can be the safest versions of ourselves. It’s an acknowledgement that while life is filled with fear and despair, we define ourselves by our relationships with others and the space in which we find ourselves. Vark loves to name-drop, but these aren’t the names of Hollywood artists or pop superstars. Gavin going to Andy’s wedding, wondering what color the bridesmaid dress will be; Sara, Phinney, and Jack weaving in and out of each other’s lives like fishing line caught on a submerged twig; the familiar streets of sunny San Diego, a place comfortable enough to disappear in and just uncomfortable enough to let you want to disappear forever.
Vark’s music creates a satisfying structure for deliberately ambiguous story-telling. She composes most of her songs on the bass, and this comes through in the modest, organic production. The bass drives most of the songs, but never seems to hog the spotlight. Opening song “Sara” is a great example of the creative fulcrum on which Vark’s compositions pivot. The bass line is a languid, satisfying introduction to the world being created on Nothing Sticks. Drums and a clean guitar gently envelope the bass line before Vark launches into her storied lyricism. ‘Sara outsmokes the sky,’ Vark sings the opening lines, ‘my hands graze the concrete.‘ Whether one reaches high or reaches low, we’re all in this life together, Vark seems to say. It’s a sentiment carried throughout the album.
Vark’s lyricism acknowledges that life is a mess, and there’s not much you can do about it except meet that mess on its own terms. After all, even a clean house doesn’t stay clean forever; the process of keeping things in order never ends. How we approach this disorder pretty much determines whether we make it through this mortal coil in one piece. In other words, we make our own happiness. Vark illustrates this in vivid color through the laid-back, backmasked thrill of “No One Left”:
‘When I clean the mess
Myths with bloody hands
I can speak through youAnd I think I could love you
I think I could love you‘
It’s a feeling that’s carried throughout the album. In Vark’s world there’s a sense of wearied acceptance. On “San Diego,” Vark sings of swinging a fist and ‘winning is this‘, the latter being deliberately imprecise. Vark’s vocal phrasing is often subtly off-kilter, with the ends of one verse starting the next. There’s a big difference between asking ‘is this winning’ versus ‘winning is this’, but Vark leaves this up for interpretation. Couple this with very self-assured instrumentation, and the music creates a sense of unhurried anticipation, something that compliments the lyricism effectively. She’s surrounded herself with top-notch musicians who understand that less is almost always more. “San Diego” swells with confidence, strings that resonate with an all-encompassing warmth and guitars whose tone is drenched in the rays of an early morning sun.
Nothing’s more stripped down on Nothing Sticks than the downbeat-driven, mid-tempo groove of “I Pushed It Down”. Vark’s languid vocals recall those of an early Phoebe Bridgers or Soccer Mommy. The rudimentary 1-2-3-4 beat of her bass and the straight-forward drumming act as a simple extension of her vocal tones. Clever additions of strings and electronics dress the song up in the same way moving your peace lily from one place to another make you feel like you’re in a brand-new living room.
If sticks and stones break our bones and names never hurt us, Vark’s single “Make Me a Sword” begs to differ. Vark’s unapologetic indie rock is a pretty apt way of projecting a world in which there’s always somebody wielding power over us, be it the schoolyard bully or the person with whom we share a bank account. In the context of a straight-up bass, drums and guitar arrangement, as if the band was playing in garage of your parent’s suburban house, the lyrics become even more poignant and alive:
‘The wind is sharp and it’s bruising
Your whims will always confuse me
I’m blown around and put down
My heart, it breaks when you use meMake me a sword to point against me
I’ll be your shield if it protects me
From the silent rage never-ending
I’ll play the fool, I’m not pretending‘
Vark’s willful acceptance of how things are isn’t surrender. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Crafting confident two- to three-minute pop songs within a musical construct that can trace its roots back over fifty years isn’t so much a subtle flex as it is an expression of youthful artistic desire. No one is going to be pushing the TikTok-saturated artists du jour off the top of the charts any time soon with nuanced and carefully crafted guitar-centered rock, but who cares? I’ve had the same leather jacket for almost four decades. It’s falling apart, has lost some buttons and the zipper doesn’t work anymore, but I love it because it’s part of me. They’ll bury me in that fucking jacket. Pictoria Vark‘s music is like that: it’s so familiar that it feels like it’s part of you.
The sludgy highlight “Lucky Superstar” is just like that. There’s a firm ’90s feel to it, like Built To Spill on ketamine. The snare drum pops like a slap to the face, and the dirgey, over-driven bass and guitar juxtaposed against Vark’s wickedly sardonic vocals give the song a slightly mischievous feeling. The lucky superstars Vark sings of seem to exist out of reach, but still elicit those ‘big, fat feelings‘ she comes back to again and again. Life is about the mundane. It’s about the ninety-nine percent of the time we just wake up and go through the motions. And if we idolize those of us who have seemed to overcome that tedium, then the joke’s on them.
It’s good to know there is still room in the world of rock and roll for voices like Pictoria Vark. There’s no screaming into the void on Nothing Sticks, because Vark knows that there’s no void to sing into. While our day to day lives may not be filled with drama, they are most assuredly filled. Be that with the people we love, the books we read, the meals we share or the pain we feel, there’s a lot of comfort in knowing we aren’t alone. There’s not a human experience that hasn’t been felt before, and that in itself should bring us closer together. What Pictoria Vark and her band do on Nothing Sticks is tap into that sense of belonging with an album that exudes warmth, empathy and familiarity. And in a world where it is often easy to feel alone, it’s nice to know that there’s someone out there offering us a hand.
