Carly Cosgrove

Rising from the fiercely DIY Philadelphia underground, CARLY COSGROVE graft achingly vulnerable lyrics atop a bed of mathy rhythms, intricate guitar work and a penchant for indie-rock cool meets emo authenticity. Their debut album, 2022’s See You In Chemistry, was the sound of figuring life out in real time, tracing personal growth through anxiety, depression, and self-actualization – heavy subjects for a band originally formed as a low-stress side-project stopgap in 2018. “Every record feels like me answering the question, ‘How are you doing?’” says singer/guitarist Lucas Naylor. “I don’t know much, but I know myself better than basically anything else.”

That quest for the answers to life's big questions is once again front and center on the band’s second album, THE CLEANEST OF HOUSES ARE EMPTY, as Naylor, bassist Helen Barsz, and drummer Tyler Kramer find themselves face to face with the chronic emotional struggles of life in the modern age. From the stop-start polyrhythms of first single “You Old Dog” and garage-rock sheen of “Random Dancing” and “What Are You, A Cop,” which sounds like Motion City Soundtrack filtering “Everlong” through their idiosyncratic rock tilt, The Cleanest Of Houses is the type of record Carly Cosgrove simply couldn’t have made last time – not musically, and certainly not emotionally. They needed to live, through hard touring and harder life experiences.

[Evan Lucy]