B-Side Guys

The drums never come. That absence feels intentional on Brood22’s latest, where empty space carries as much weight as the actual instrumentation. Portland’s slowcore practitioner understands that some emotions require room to breathe, even when breathing hurts.

Southern Arizona’s desert influence bleeds through the Pacific Northwest gloom in unexpected ways. The guitar tones stretch like heat mirages, wavering between presence and absence while maintaining that characteristic low-end rumble. When overdrive finally erupts near the track’s end, it feels less like release and more like the inevitable boiling over of suppressed frustration.

Brood22’s approach to codependency avoids both self-pity and self-righteousness. Lines like “i can be anything you want” arrive without inflection, stated as simple fact rather than complaint. The vocal delivery suggests someone who’s moved beyond anger into something more dangerous: acceptance. There’s no pleading here, just documentation of a familiar cycle playing out in real time.

The production choices serve the emotional content perfectly. Vocals drift over instrumental beds that seem to shift beneath them, creating the sonic equivalent of unstable ground. That “intimate manner” mentioned in the press notes feels accurate—this is music made for headphones and late nights, when defenses are down and uncomfortable truths surface.

What distinguishes this from typical slowcore navel-gazing is the clarity of vision. Brood22 isn’t wallowing in misery; they’re mapping its contours with scientific precision. The track’s title becomes its most devastating lyric, those two words containing entire relationship histories.

Sometimes the most radical thing you can do is stop pretending you don’t see the pattern.