Are the walls closing in as you think about where you’re headed in life, late at night, or are you breathing in the smell of corn and daffodils in the middle of a wide open, North Carolina field? After a few listens of PLACES’ final album, Real Life Waiting, you’re still quite unsure what the answer is. The friendship trio toys with these dichotomous life paths on their slightly emo, slightly off-center shoegaze debut, seamlessly blending striking chords with melancholic lyrics. And maybe that’s the point: sometimes life is both simultaneously stifling and unpolluted; tender and maddening. The release also marks their decision to hang up the guitars for real life.
The first third of the album eases you into their grungy demeanor with extended melodious guitar riffs and pointed lyrics about designer name brands: “designer brands on a name brand motherfucker / gotta spend it all, now you’re looking cool.” But really, they’re thinking what we’re silently hoping they are—the coolest people don’t really care about name brands. They switch lanes and mull over 2 AM mistakes: “Are you an angel or is it just the dust in my eyes?” Meanwhile, “Roadkill” has us heading home from somewhere cool, or maybe not, as the internal back and forth usually goes. We’ve all been in a pedal-to-the-metal car ride, whether passenger or director: swerving on back roads, wondering where you came from and where you’re going, literally or otherwise. Sally West muses, “I hate it all” (who doesn’t?) before “Pretty Boys” pierces through the malaise with a distorted electric opening, waking you up with a jarring reminder that you don’t have it all figured out.
We’re then launched to a slightly darker corner of their orbit, where time moves more slowly and lyrics get more contemplative. This is after the party music; cigarettes get lit, and a friend of a friend starts dozing off on your couch. There’s a touch of whininess to vocalist Kevin MacKenzie defining the narrative with “I spend so much time alone I think I’m gonna break my own heart.” It’s almost too easy to project all your past failed attempts at romantic connection onto the picture your mind so instinctually conjures up of hearing “Pretty Boys” at a live show: the lead singer leans strategically into the microphone, his eyes are closed, his hair falls in front of his face, and he purrs the line. There’s you, alone towards the back, nodding along, arms crossed, sipping on a vodka cranberry, gazing ahead, thinking, well, actually, you didn’t have to spend so much time alone, not really.
“Massive Death Plume” takes you out of your stupor, and easily, with its clear, slow electric strums alongside blitzes of harsh drums. It’s here the album takes us back in the car with “taking back my time, taking back what’s mine,” continuing further into back road territory on “Countryside” with a simple, “wouldn’t it be nice in the countryside?” Except is it ever simple—the push and pull of an endless blue, green, and yellow landscape versus shining lights and noise and more complicated ways to satisfy curiosities? West doesn’t know all the answers, and thank god for that. A glimpse into someone else’s own intense existential crossroads; one we all come to when we leave our parents’ house, or leave a party, or leave a city for the last time. The best kind of songwriting holds a mirror up to our own decisions.
The project concludes with lines like “I’m wasting all my money on plastic shit” and “shoebox in the closet haunting you,” making sure we know how they choose to fill the void—with useless shopping, or holding onto the past too tight, or both. Background laughter and friendly commotion punctuate the middle and end of certain tracks throughout its 46-minute run, adding an element of levity to its somber realism. Turns out being in on the joke feels especially good in the countryside. At the core of Real Life Waiting is a call to action: roll down the windows more and remember to make waves with your hands. Microplastics and heartbreak be damned. It’s up to you to make good on that promise, but as they break through the lurid, brutal instrumentals with tender lyrics, PLACES carved out their place in the back road shoegaze scene before taking a final bow.
