There are times you see someone start their career, whether it’s as a musician, an athlete, or an actor, and you just can immediately tell that there’s something different about them. I did not think this about Pool Kids the first time I heard them. In all honesty, I don’t even really remember when, or why I listened to Music to Practice Safe Sex To. It wasn’t a favorite of the year for me; it didn’t belatedly become one, it was just an album I listened to once or twice, didn’t think was bad, and didn’t think much about after. Their self-titled second album being as good as it is genuinely shocked me at first. It’s grown into one of my favorite albums of all time and maybe my favorite of the 2020s.
Going into Easier Said Than Done, I tried to keep my expectations reasonable, as there are some albums it’s just not fair to expect someone to immediately top, and I’d say Pool Kids is that kind of album. Also, given how bleak and personal much of the focus on that album is, part of me was hoping they would try to pivot and go away from it a bit. I’m not sure how many songs like “Swallow” or “Arm’s Length” you can churn out without it really weighing on you after a while. My main hope was that they could maintain their one-of-one sound while trying to experiment and expand any limitations (if they have any). They blew those expectations out of the water.
Much of the album focuses on the aftereffects of their quick rise, as I wasn’t the only one whose opinion on them changed very quickly, with most of that focus being the impact that touring so much has had on them. I know talking about money can feel a bit icky (and I’m definitely speculating a bit), but I imagine their quick rise has put them in a bit of a tough spot where they actually can essentially be full-time musicians as long as they tour as much as humanly possible. They’re hot, they’re a good opening draw and have toured with Beach Bunny, La Dispute, and been in a lot of festivals. If you follow them on pretty much any social media, you’d see that that’s basically what Pool Kids have been doing since their last album came out; it is rare you don’t see them with some opening dates or something. They have stayed busy. Their recent signing with Epitaph shows that it’s paid off, but Easier Said Than Done paints a clear picture of the consequences of living so much of your life on the road.
“Tinted Windows” paints a bleak picture of just how much of their personal lives Pool Kids are sacrificing to try and make things work as musicians. Lead singer Christine Goodwyne’s writing is exceptional here, I love the way she shows the passage of time throughout the back half of the song – it just makes the bottom dropping out on that ‘cause I’m gone’ even better. Being back home isn’t always easier on “Leona Street”, which is on the poppier side and I love the sarcasm the song is laced with. The blend of real pain in the lost relationship mixed with some humor of the absurdity of the situation works very well.
‘For Christmas Eve, I’ll make a big plan
Then I’ll spend it in a black Dodge Caravan
You’ll get a ‘happy birthday’ and a call on the phone, oh
But chances are you’re probably gonna spend it alone’
The conflicted feelings are capped perfectly on the outro “Exit Plan”. It really does an excellent job putting you in the moment where you can both feel the fun moments and the good times that Pool Kids have while on tour, but it also makes you feel the pain of separating and going back to your normal life before eventually doing it all again and knowing nothing’s really changing around you.
I also have to say, as this site’s Florida expert, it’s nice to have a band that’s this good and this open about being from Florida. There’s been a ton of big music acts from Florida, but outside of the (at times) vibrant Miami rap scene, not many actually rep Florida very hard. It’s nice to have a band that’ll mention alligator alley.
Pool Kids have one of the best and most versatile sounds in modern music, so it’s not a surprise that this album sounds fucking incredible. My absolute favorite track on the album, “Sorry Not Sorry”, is one of the most all over the place tracks conceptually I’ve ever heard, and I genuinely don’t know if there’s another band that could have come close to pulling this off. It’s an incredibly bitter, spiteful, and desperate track, laced with a ton of false confidence and bluster – it kinda sounds like if you took the bravado and raunch of a Trilogy-era The Weeknd song and turned it into a math-rock track. I’ve never heard a song that sounds quite like this before. Hearing the false confidence just fade over time as Goodwyne gets more and more shitfaced to cope is some of the best writing I’ve ever heard. I need them to do another song like this because there’s no chance I could get this elsewhere.
“Which Is Worse?” is another loss-filled track, comparing the potential pain of just letting the memory of someone you’ve lost for good go entirely or whether it’s better to hang onto the positive memories even if it causes some pain. There’s always been a bit of Paramore’s influence in aspects of Pool Kids’ writing (Hayley is a mutual fan too) and maybe the clearest this influence appears is on “Not Too Late”. It’s one of the poppier tracks the band has ever done, even a bit more than “Leona Street”, and it sounds excellent and only gets better as the track expands towards the end. “Perfect View” is an incredibly sweet love song, with some delightful strumming for the instrumental. Finding joy in the simple things in a relationship is a wonderful thing – also the numerous Florida mentions on this song turn the relatability up to ten for me, because I have done all of these things and there’s a 50/50 chance I’ve been to the Target mentioned in the song. The instrumental for “Bad Bruise” hits like a tank; it just gives you chills the second you hear it switch into gear, and it just never slows down. It also has some of Goodwyne’s best vocals as well.
The only moment on Easier Said Than Done I have slight reservations about is the track “Dani”, and even then it’s only a small hang-up. I think the effort and the attempt to try something a little different is interesting but it just didn’t entirely work for me. Sounds a bit more like something off their POOL EP/rework of some tracks off Pool Kids.
As I said before, it wouldn’t have been fair to go into this expecting Pool Kids to one-up Pool Kids and I don’t think that this is quite as good an album as their last. With that said, Easier Said Than Done is an excellent album, and there’s a strong possibility this will be my favorite album of the year. There’s just no one in their lane (or almost any other for that matter) that can even come close to matching their quality at this point. They’ve already mastered their genre-bending sound in a way I’ve never really seen before, and Goodwyne has developed into one of the better vocalists and writers in modern rock. With how fast their development has occurred and with how eager they have been to work in new elements, it feels safe to say that this is one of the few instances where a band actually does have limitless potential even if I didn’t see it at first.
