目录

专辑简介

“The Sound It Made” opens Two Wheels Move the Soul like the blaze is roaring to life before your eyes. Zack James’ shifty drumming hammers out a drum ’n’ bass redux like a panicked heartbeat while Carney Hemler’s bass lurches in slow motion, replicating the gut drop of a horrible realization. Singer-guitarist Nina Cates pieced together the lyrics in what she calls a “collection collage,” pulling from memories and journal entries she wrote during the period after the fire. Seemingly detached observations on weather and people-watching are flanked by an assortment of entities—sports radio, a smiley-face takeout bag, the trolley problem—that seem random until you realize the chaos is the point. “I don’t wanna get stuck like this,” repeats Cates, yearning for routine and calm.

Robber Robber don’t relive their apartment fire in literal terms on the album or dramatize the months spent living out of suitcases. Instead, they fill their songs with more oblique references to support systems, trash and grime, the insatiable need for stability—processing how class and community inform the experience of displacement. Gratitude for having a place to close your eyes doesn’t erase the loneliness of nomadic living. It’s especially true in Vermont, where wealth disparities separate generational blue-collar families from the snow bunnies and post-pandemic homeowners chasing the state’s idyllic stereotype in the face of a homelessness crisis. Rearrange her lyrics and Cates’ intentionally fractured scenes clearly flit between the trepidation, despair, and resigned acceptance familiar to certain locals.