https://youtu.be/4dghnD5PWGQ

Produced by Tim Green (the former guitarist of punk iconoclasts Nation of Ulysses, who has worked with Sleater-Kinney, Bikini Kill, Joanna Newsom and Jawbreaker, among others), Post Earth is a call to arms, interspersed with frustration and hope. “It wasn’t intentional to write a politically charged record,” says bassist Amy Allen, who constitutes FEELS with Laena Geronimo (guitar/vocals), Shannon Lay (guitar/vocals) and Michael Perry Rudes (drums). “But the way the world is functioning right now made it impossible to write about anything else. We all need to figure it out; we’re running out of time. The golden age is over.”

Maybe FEELS did not start their second album with a conceptual agenda but they definitely intended to speak out: “If you have any kind of platform, you should use it for good,” Lay states. Geronimo continues, “If our wildest dreams came true, the album would sound exciting to people while also inspiring awareness and action against hate, prejudice, greed, the destruction of our environment… apathy’s not cool and toppling oppression could be fun if we do it together!”

With a steadfast proportion of heavy and light, Post Earth never completely wallows in despair: disillusionment is met with a heady helping of defiance; hard work battles against apathy; and there are evenreferences to The Simpsons, courtesy of superfanLay. FEELS also strike a perfect balance musically between noise and energy, breath and space with a mix of angular, interweaving guitars, lush vocal harmonies, heavy bass and pummeling drums at times hearty and loud and at others stunningly harmonic and calm. These newly emphasized dynamics highlight the subtler, weirder, and sonically interesting elements of Post Earth and allowed the four friends (who have played intermittently in bands together since high school) room for experimentation.