Only The Poets operate with a certain heart-on-sleeve transparency, but their debut album, And I’d Do It Again, feels like the moment the glass finally shatters and the interior spills out. The fourteen tracks give a sense of four people locked in a room trying to outrun the ghost of every bad decision they’ve ever made. It isn’t just a collection of hooks, but more like a catalog of the bruises left behind by growth, jealousy, and the exhausting and daily work of staying resilient.
The record finds its pulse in a high-gloss and neon-streaked space that feels nocturnal, particularly on “Emotionally Hungover,” which moves with a liberating and frantic energy. It captures that specific moment when the adrenaline of a long night finally gives way to a shaky and raw honesty. The guitars and synths don’t just sit in the background though. They create a vibrating wall of sound that pushes against Tommy Longhurst’s vocals by forcing a delivery that feels breathless and swift. That same nervous energy is felt elsewhere on the record, particularly in the restless grind of “I Keep On Messing It Up”, where an elastic and twitching bassline acts as a nervous pulse by landing with the blunt weight of a realization you can no longer ignore.
A different and more haunting frequency pulls at “Guess She’s Cool”. It’s a track that swaps the record’s brighter textures for a sense of quiet unease. It feels like a lingering look at a door you know you shouldn’t open. This willingness to sit in the shadows eventually finds its most vulnerable expression on “Madeline,” where the band finally stops running. The song is intimate because of its stillness.The production settles down just enough to let the raw and unpolished ache of the song sit in the room without the distraction of a stadium sized chorus.By the time the final notes fade, And I’d Do It Again leaves one in the wreckage, feeling a little more exposed but significantly lighter. It is a declaration that the only way through a mess is to go right into the center of it and owning every jagged edge encountered along the way.
