Pool Kids vocalist Christine Goodwynne guides us through the making of their latest LP ‘Easier Said Than Done’, set for release on August 15 via Epitaph.

EASIER SAID THAN DONE

“This was the first song I had written for the album, and also the first demo I brought to the full band to work on, so it’s funny and kind of cool that it ended up as the first song on the album. The same exact thing happened with our last record, where the first song we worked on as a band ended up being the opening track. I wrote most of this song in my head while at my desk job at the time, and kept sneaking outside to record voice memos of the melodies so I wouldn’t forget them. Even the guitar solo was written that way. We ended up choosing this song to also title the record because we felt like it presented one of the main overall themes of the album, which is the pursuit of trying to change things about yourself, but never succeeding. The mantras of “I’m never gonna change” and “it’s easier said than done” are presented in this song, which together pretty plainly sum up that idea.”

TINTED WINDOWS 

“This song explores some of the difficulties and sacrifices of touring, particularly the strains it puts on your relationship with loved ones. I struggle a lot with staying in touch with everyone back home when I’m on the road. It is something that I’m always saying I’m gonna get better about, but ultimately always fail. But even for people who are good at staying in touch, it doesn’t change the fact that you’re not with them, and you often can’t show up for the ones you love when they need you the most. It can start to feel selfish to prioritize touring so much. But you feel pressured to keep playing the game for the sake of your career. Relationship struggles aside, touring wears on you in other ways. What you once had such a sparkle in your eye for can start to feel very grueling, especially when the tour is not going the way you had hoped. This song shows a few snapshots from a tour that isn’t going well, the relationships that are struggling because of it, and it leaves you asking yourself if it’s really worth all the sacrifices. It’s nice to have a handful of songs on this record that the entire band can relate to.”

BAD BRUISE

“There is a bit of a thread between this song and Last Word in terms of the lyrical themes. It’s about not being able to resist poking at something that’s bothering you, and the messes that unfold because of that lack of restraint. It discusses both the things that are bothering me about someone else, as well as the frustration with myself for not being able to let it go the way I wish I could. It originally had a much different ending that involved parts from a song we scratched from the self-titled record, but as we were working on it we realized it stood better as its own song. So we scratched that ending and wrote something that felt more in the world of the rest of the song. For a while we thought it was going to be the album opener.”

LEONA STREET

“The reactions from when I first showed people the demo of this song, versus the reactions we got showing people the final result of this song couldn’t have been more opposite. At first, there was a lot of hesitation, and I had never felt more disheartened. My twin brother (who normally loves my demos) even said it was “the worst song I’d ever made” and demanded that I stop listening to Taylor Swift. By the time we had it finished though, people were picking it out as a single, and my brother has now walked back his statement. To get it from point A to point B, there were a lot of lyric re-writes, a full step key change, and a lot of intention around the production. The song is about running into an old friend you had a falling out with, after many many years. It reminisces on old memories and in a way sort of mourns what could have been. It alludes to the overall theme of the album because it’s about realizing you’ve been kidding yourself about changing, and that you’ll always be the flawed version of yourself that let the friendship die in the first place.”

LAST WORD

“This is a song about being confrontational to a fault. The story kind of takes you through a first-person account of all the phases of a confrontation. It leads you through the simmering and preparation beforehand, then to the actual confrontation itself, and then you get a slight taste at the very end of the regret and wanting forgiveness afterwards. This one was a favorite while we were in the studio, and it was the first one that started to really sound complete. We were getting exhausted in the studio after several weeks of recording the foundations for everything and now knowing how it was all going to come together, and when Mike put the vocal effect on the intro for the first time, we were like “oh SHIT” and it really turned things around.”

SORRY NOT SORRY 

“When you feel like you’re somebody’s second choice, or like you’re not as important to them as they are to you, it can send you into this desperate, embarrassing sort of spiral. In phases like those, it can feel very empowering to pick yourself up, take control of the situation and be like “whatever, I’m not going to tolerate this, I don’t need this person’s approval”. I used to get caught sort of in the middle of those two approaches, swinging back and forth between totally desperate and totally in-control. It’s been many years since I’ve dealt with or felt anything like that, but it’s the kind of feeling that you never forget. Sometimes when I’m writing it can be inspiring to tap into those old, more potent emotions that I haven’t felt in a long time. It’s kind of an ode to an old version of myself that would’ve found a song like this very cathartic.”

NOT TOO LATE

“This is a big time overthinker and OCD song. It’s about being on the road and overthinking your interactions with people, ruminating and questioning if you’ve done something wrong or crossed a line. Sometimes with OCD, you make a compulsion out of seeking reassurance, or over-confessing things that don’t even need to be confessed. I wanted the lyrics to capture the contrast of the daunting feelings of doom, guilt, overthinking, and being in my head, against the warmer feelings of love, acceptance, and understanding from my partner, who has always handled my OCD like a pro. This is also one of those songs that underwent like 4 different key changes before we ultimately decided to stay with the original.”

WHICH IS WORSE?

“Which is Worse? is about the role that memory plays in grief. I wrote it at a time where a lot of people around me were grieving, and I was also grieving the passing of my grandfather and my dog. I was watching the way the people around me were coping, particularly my grandmother. Her and I both felt comforted by talking about him and reliving memories with him, but she also said she sometimes felt tortured by the memories. I found myself dealing with the same conundrum, where sometimes I wished I could just forget them entirely, just to not feel the pain anymore. But then that comes with its own guilt. Then at other times I found myself obsessively trying to preserve every single memory I could recall by writing them all down, because the fear of forgetting them also felt terrible. So the song is basically asking, which is worse: being tortured by the memory of a lost loved one, or forgetting them entirely?”

DANI 

“We are all very proud of this song. It’s actually been Caden’s consistent favorite throughout all the different phases of making this record. When I first brought it to the band, I shared with them two different demos; a fast version and a slow version. I was slightly surprised when everyone wanted to go the slow route, because usually one of the first adjustments we make when I bring a demo to the band is to raise the bpm. But we decided to commit to a dramatic slow-burn, and we love how it turned out. Lyrically it is inspired by a friendship from my very early childhood. It overall aims to capture the image of being a young girl and confiding in another young girl at a sleepover about things that are way too heavy for them to be grappling with. I think it’s something many women probably remember doing as a kid, and it’s sort of a sad reminder that children are smarter and more aware than what we give them credit for, and they have the capacity to feel very real, very heavy emotions.”

PERFECT VIEW

“I’ve always wanted to write a love song, but I knew it could never feel forced and that I would have to sit around and wait for it to come naturally. I went on a walk one day and was listening to Julien Baker’s Song Exploder episode on the song “Appointments”, and when I got home I felt super motivated to write. I started doing this fingerpicking pattern that I love to do in open D tuning, and the opening line “wake me up, make me yours in the morning” came to me, and I was like oh my gosh the love song is finally coming to me. I was so excited. It came together really quickly and I recorded the demo with a guitar and added some dorky synth parts. We ended up all really loving the demo and not wanting to stray too far from it, to the point where we almost considered just releasing the demo. We landed on a version in the studio that we all prefer, where everyone got to touch on it, while still keeping most of the modesty of the original vision alive. It even includes the original dorky synth parts from the demo. To record the vocals for this one, Mike got the idea to set me up with a mic next to the air mattress I was sleeping on in the studio, so that I record the vocals immediately after waking up to get more of a “morning voice” feel. It worked out, and I recorded all of them in pitch black darkness with my retainer still in.”

EXIT PLAN 

“I wrote this song after we came home from a long tour, and it’s about the struggle of saying goodbye at the end of a tour, and the challenges you sometimes face upon returning home. Touring can be a very isolating life, because sometimes it feels like you are never home long enough to really build or properly nurture any lasting connections, and the relationships you build on the road end up being what fills that void. So saying goodbye can feel tough. This song started out as an acoustic demo, which is very rare for us, and I love that it ended up doing a 180. It was one of our favorites while we were writing, and then for some reason we really struggled with it in the studio. But we got over the hump and ended up with something we love, and we look forward to getting emotional playing it on stage at the end of a good tour. I love that we were able to weave in a couple threads to the opening track here, by repeating the mantras of “I’m never gonna change”, and “it’s easier said than done”.”