In their emotively raw follow-up to Blessed Suffering, Philly natives Pill Friends continue to unabashedly wear their hearts on their sleeves with the group’s latest EP Fade Into Nothing. Like a lyrical epilogue to earlier tracks such as “Mall Goth” and “Rituals,” Fade Into Nothing’s “Samael” is intimate yet straightforward. Initially quiet, the track gradually gains momentum alongside warm chords and crisp dictation. Ryan Wilson’s earnest lyricism highlights the complexities of closeness and longing juxtaposed to a realist’s approach towards youth and mortality with lines like “I want to watch your body glow” and “live your life now / don’t care at all / it’s all ending soon / but death will hold you tight.”
The opening chords of “Promethazine” are acoustic and sincere. The track swiftly eases into a buzzing dissonant heartfelt chorus professing of deception, paralysis, and latent desire. The tone of the song and its subsequent brevity resonates with listeners in the way a well-crafted memoir might. Confessional yet universal, “Promethazine” beckons listeners to press play again and again. Like a less subdued echo of “I’ll Rise to Die Again,” Fade to Nothing’s second track flirts with the implications of ritual, personal suffering, and possible redemption. Wilson sings, “Living in a failed life / not looking for a way out / drown me in Promethazine / I don’t want to leave.” The similarly somber “Klonopin” opens with a percussive pulse and riffs subtlety reminiscent of post-punk preludes by greats like New Order and Modern English reinterpreted as stripped, minimalistic, and temporally drawn out. As if a meditation on childhood and the pitfalls of nostalgia, “Klonopin” conjures melancholy vibes with images of birthday cake, sleeping bodies, and caskets. In the midst of this grave soundscape, Wilson croons, “When I see you / I hope I can / fall asleep / and never wake up.” Its orchestration is a probable and well-executed revival of a sound that was quintessential to DIY indie circa the early 2000s and latter 90s.
In a similar spirit, Fade Into Nothing’s final track, “Pillspillspills” falls somewhere between the articulate anxiety of Saddle Creek’s lesser-known cassettes and the urgency of Rites of Spring. Definitively more aggressive than its preceding tracks, the energy of “Pillspillspills” fosters immediacy to Wilson’s vocals awash in crashing riffs. As always, Pill Friend’s anthems reveal themselves as fever dreams and bittersweet monuments that linger in the mind of the listener like a memory or a jaded ghost. – Dianca Potts