Review Summary: QTY dish out short and to-the-point songs of everyday life easier than the easy-going tracks on their debut album.
Dan Lardner and Alex Niemetz both meet at seventeen years of age on the streets of New York, where they ate ice cream and discussed music together. Their ideas would soon evolve into QTY, a band and duo, attentive to easy-going indie hooks and guitar, and cemented with its strands of lyrics on friendship and day-to-day life. Listening to their debut album, it’s obvious their relationship has since stayed strong; Alex Niemetz expresses, “When I first met Dan, he embodied everything that I wanted in a partner in crime and his lyrics exhibited what I was trying to express musically.” Their sound, as a result of their transcendent relationship, is care-free rock with accessible lyrics and understanding, no matter how deprived of boldness it has.
Lardner’s predominant vocals seem like a hybrid of Kurt Vile and Julian Casablancas—that voice with a lump of dust tucked under titillating, distorted speech. Well, Lardner makes use of it. Against the loud guitar that’s punched out on intro track “Rodeo”, there’s enough hooks for each to create a sort of giddy indie-rock hit—short, to the point, and catchy are three things that truly encapsulate the band’s feelings, and “Rodeo” is a good place to start. At ten tracks and thirty minutes, the album is quick and easy to digest, with each song straying close to breezy hooks and electric guitar. There isn’t a lot to rave about, other than the fact the duo know how to work together to emit such joyous rock n’ roll songs with a lot of comfort.
On track “New Beginnings”, the duo exhale their tight bond when it comes to music; it’s a slow, beatless track, equipped with a gentle chorus that pairs the two’s voices together. The song details a day’s work of trouble and anxiety; Alex sings “should I wear white or black?”, and the chorus comes into play, “thank god for new beginnings.” QTY also understand its listeners, particularly the ones who sleep seven hours towards eight hours of work. “Dress/Undress” talks about day-to-day routines, where the hell it’s going, and doing it all again the next day, with the duo on the chorus singing “Growing bored of my former glory / I puff out my chest, talent-less / Growing bored of my every worry / I just arch my neck, dress, undress.”
Some songs are familiar of Belle & Sebastian-like melodies; “Salvation” has one that’s probably the best on the album, and one that closes the whole thing in style. “Tell me the importance of sleeping,” Lardner sings with yet another relatable quote; his words are like anyone’s really, which is what makes the album something to come back to. The songs entertain, but, they somewhat fail to be anything more than what they are: feelgood rock, and it doesn’t do enough to surpass that. But with a half hour runtime, it’s easy to forget—in fact, the best thing about the entirety is how easy it is to identify and take in. QTY no doubt pull together an impressive and then some debut that flows by in a breeze, with a more than breezy attitude—and it feels like they’re totally cool with that.
