TV Wife describes the recording of their debut EP as being “like one of those friendships that you tried really hard to foster until finally, some months later, you look back and think, ‘What the hell did I even see in that person?'” After hearing the wacky weirdness of Indoor Kids, one gets a sense of what they mean by this.
Indoor Kids sounds like that weird, hyperactive kid you would hang out with in elementary school just because they had all the cool new videogames: they may be difficult to understand, and sometimes come across as obnoxious, but the pros outweigh the cons.
“Throughout the spring and summer, I was off work and spent three months alone in my apartment with my cats, becoming weird. These songs were written and recorded in the seven months that followed,” says TV Wife.
The existential confusion that many of us felt while we were locked up in our isolated bunkers while quarantining is a common theme throughout the record; titles like “Social Distancing,” “Auto Immune,” “Quarantine Dreams,” and “Everything Will Be Fine” drive this theme home before you even hear a note.
Just seconds into Indoor Kids, TV Wife’s sonic template is clearly established — layer upon layer of fuzzed-out guitar, effects-laden synths and snotty vocals. Their voice can range anywhere from a drugged-up, howling Elvis impersonator to raspy crooning to warbly falsetto and dreamy whispers.
On the first track, the aptly titled “Social Distancing,” TV Wife sings about “finding [their] happy,” as well as how we’ll all be fine eventually because of social distancing. From the patronizing tone in their vocals, it seems as though TV Wife doesn’t believe their own words and is mocking all who look at this as a time to grow, self-improve and be productive.
Throughout the EP, TV Wife comes across as someone who was slowly unravelling from the inside out while trapped in their “room without a view,” as mentioned on “Auto Immune.” They fell further into the pit of paranoid despair after the tragic loss of a local squirrel they named George, who was their only outside interaction throughout most of their quarantine.
“It was three in the afternoon, and I went inside to pour myself a drink. I had another three glasses of vodka before I could cross the street and confirm what I already knew; my best friend was dead. I found his body stiff in the grass by the telephone pole, a small dark hole in his throat. I stared at him a long while and felt a despair that was more than a bit pathetic. And then I went back across the street and got sad drunk in my apartment,” says TV Wife.
As the album goes on, TV Wife wallows further into their drunken despair. During any other year, the subject matter on “Quarantine Dreams” would sound like the diary of some pathetic derelict — sleeping fifteen hours a day, rarely showering, drinking their weight in rum, lounging on the porch with no purpose, and growing sick of their own company. This year, however, most of us can relate to some — or all — of this sentiment.
The album’s lengthy, psychedelic closer “Everything Will Be Fine” sounds like “Comfortably Numb,” if it were written by a bunch of guys in their garage with pawnshop guitars and more effects pedals than they have any business owning. With TV Wife’s melancholy vocals and swirling, wistful instrumentation, when they sing “Yesterday I woke from a very good sleep and I told myself things would be fine if I want them to be” it sounds as if, over the past seven songs, they’ve begun to sincerely believe that all hope may not be lost.
Maybe they’re right.
While much music has been inspired by this year’s pandemic, and we’ll surely see more, TV Wife has written the quarantine soundtrack we never knew we needed with their “dead squirrel of an album” Indoor Kids.