Longtime Philly performer and songwriter Allegra Eidinger last week released their first LP as AllegrA since 2017, all recorded at home over several years. Like usual, their solo productions sit at the groovy, sticky spot where new wave and post-punk meet bedroom pop, and they stay wonderfully honest on the mic.
“A lot of the themes I’m working with throughout the record have to do with the small minutia of communication and how easily we can get our wires crossed,” explains Eidinger. “I realized over the last few years that a lot of my music is about communication. I was a communications major in college, I’ve always been fascinated by how to most effectively communicate, and for this reason I started calling my genre of music ‘communicationcore.’”
With a cool delivery, they candidly unwind insecurities and misunderstandings in all kinds of personal relationships– a brave lyrical approach that has opened up rock music in the last few years and now feels more like home to me than ever. “Should I put it in the contract?” they wonder, “I’m feeling like I’m needing contact / even if it’s midnight / and I’m melting on the floor.” Though geometric, sputtering drum machines and synth patterns sound cold by comparison, Eidinger’s writing offers acceptance and care for listeners and the songs’ subjects, who probably hold the same worries inside but just struggle to share about them. “You puncture / all the walls in your culture / that make you afraid / to confront the past / and all your mistakes,” they commend on the title track.
My favorite was the breezy, up-tempo “on the ground,” which featured in the full band’s Key Studio Session from 2018, with its sweet twist into math-rock at the end.
Finda AllegrA’s full Key Studio Session from 2018 here. They also shared the outstanding single “pick your poison” in February and contributed “parts of me” to the Trans Lifeline benefit compilation on Z Tapes, which WXPN covered in 2021. Eidinger plays guitar with Adult Mom, who featured in this WXPN interview in 2021, and who recorded their last album Driver and its live counterpart at Philly’s Headroom Studios. AllegrA’s album buzzing came out last Friday September 1st, 2023.
