Mytty Archer, If I Had a Shovel

review by dave heaton

I can’t think of another DIY pop-punk album so situated in the family home…and it’s still as defiant, angry and loud as you’d want such an LP to be. “Don’t fuck with my family”, Jen Turrell warns on the second track, “BSMG” (‘back stab money grab’). This is a very personal work, clearly, and powerful for it. On songs like “Photogenic Memory”, she situates the whole DIY indie music-making endeavor that she’s been engaged in for so long (in Boyracer, as a solo act, in other bands) as part of building a life: “building a future / building a dream / building a home / building a family”. There’s an overtly autobiographical song called “The Family I Adore” about missing your family even when you see them all the time; about channeling that punk-rock determination and courage into the hard work it takes to build a family.

Other songs depict people who construct their home as a “perfect front” and find it empty (“Very Nice”), or who struggle to commit to a relationship and later find themselves lonely and jealous (“Miscalculation”). In that way, this album has a lot to say about life choices and the passing of time, about what we choose and how we think about it later. Those are pretty universal subjects, and therefore quite affecting when driven by fuzz, loud guitars, and bubblegum pop melodies. Loud as the album gets, it also gets quiet and introspective, or shifts between the two poles. It’s emotional, thoughtful music that’s also ferocious, high-energy, invigorating.

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