'You Know I'm Not Going Anywhere' Review: The Districts unleash their most discordant and exuberant album yet
'You Know I'm Not Going Anywhere' is the fourth studio album of Philadelphia-based indie rock outfit The Districts, releasing on March 13 via Fat Possum Records. The band was formed in 2009 while the members were all still in high school. The current lineup remains pretty much unchanged, with frontman Rob Grote on vocals and guitar, Connor Jacobus on bass, Braden Lawrence on drums and Pat Cassidy replacing founding member Mark Larson on guitar duties.
Their last two studio offerings, 2015's 'A Flourish and a Spoil' and 2017's 'Popular Manipulations,' both broke into the Top 10 on the Billboard Heatseekers Albums chart, prompting the band to embark on a relentless touring schedule. But that unprecedented mainstream success nearly proved to be the straw that broke the camel's back.
After playing more than 200 shows over two years, the band members were getting fatigued and disoriented, and they were in danger of falling apart at the seams. Frontman Rob Grote probably felt it the most acutely. He was dealing with constant dissatisfaction and ennui, thanks to the anxiety-provoking state of today's fast-paced world, while facing a daily battle with the dire health problems of his beloved dog. The band was forced to step back and rethink everything, seeking a way out of the machine that the members had unwittingly integrated themselves into.
“This album was written as an escape and as reassurance. I was falling in love with someone new and trying to juggle this desperate desire to escape with the need to show up in my life. It’s pretty damn hard to be present and completely checked out all at once,” Rob was quoted as saying in a promotional statement. “It felt like much of my world had reached such a pitch that all I could do was try to tune it out. I felt really uncertain about the future of the band and super detached from much of what I used to identify with, on a personal level and with our music. I was thinking, ‘Do I want to keep doing music?’ ‘Do I want to keep doing it in this context?’”
Forced to start from scratch to get to the root of his creative and emotional blockages, Rob started writing with no objective other than to express himself. Liberated from expectations, and with an acoustic guitar, synthesizer, and drum machine at hand, he rediscovered his creative freedom in the form of 32 new song ideas. "I ended up taking these recordings super far along, whereas normally I would almost compulsively share them with my bandmates as soon as I had an idea. This time I was sitting on them and putting work into them in a way that I hadn’t known I enjoyed doing," Rob revealed.
The resulting batch of song demos hugely impressed his bandmates, who fully embraced Rob's new direction and sound. The band promptly sequestered themselves in a cabin in Red Hook, New York, where they whittled the songs down to 11 tracks, and then recorded and produced 'You Know I’m Not Going Anywhere' with the help of their frequent musical collaborator Keith Abrams, with mixing duties undertaken by Dave Fridmann of The Flaming Lips, Spoon, MGMT, and Tame Impala fame.
The brooding, atmospheric album opener, 'My Only Ghost,' is an ode to the secrets and memories we share with the ones we’ve lost, while the stripped-back acoustic number 'Descend' tackles weighty issues like death and separation. Speaking about the LP's trippy, anthemic preview single, 'Hey Jo', Rob revealed, “This song is about relationships unfurling amidst the dysphoria of the modern world.” Waxing philosophical, the frontman elaborated, “We are all imperfect products of the natural world, and more specifically, products of our own minds. This song was inspired by navigating how to be your best self and detach from what is destructive in you, to be something more perfect, gentle, and beautiful.”
Even the album's songwriting sees Grote tapping into a spiritual plane, finding solace in creating music while unraveling his own thorny issues. "Glory hallelujah!" he exults on the rapturous 'Velour and Velcro', a love song about the unknown future we’re all riding into. Despite its dark undertones, the nihilist disco of 'Cheap Regrets' finds The Districts as electrifying as ever, while 'Changing' is a fuzzy, effects-strewn take on the constantly-morphing nature of the world and its people. 'The Clouds' is a chiming, soaring, guitar-driven track further uplifted by some lovely harmonies, while 'Sidecar' is a pounding, alt-rock masterpiece complete with catchy hooks and classic lyrics: "The belt can barely hold my heart down!" whoops Grote, in a song that seems tailor-made for 'Need For Speed' exuberance. The album closer, '4th of July' is a pristine, finger-plucked acoustic ballad reminiscent of a hazy Elliot Smith-meets-Nick Drake fever dream, complete with shimmering bells and whistles - it's a gorgeous track to end this journey of surreal escapism with.
Following their creative instincts at every step of the way has resulted in The Districts' most sophisticated and adventurous record yet. This new album builds on the jagged, propulsive indie rock of their previous studio efforts while exhibiting a widened sense of experimentation and expansiveness at its heart. It's probably their most atmospheric album to date as well - they've employed synths, mellotrons, strings, samples, drum machines, tape loops, and ambient swells galore. Airy and understated, discordant and exuberant, and earnest all at once, 'You Know I’m Not Going Anywhere' is the culmination of The Districts’ growth and maturation through milestones and setbacks alike.