Words: Amelia Callister
Los Angeles outfit Trapdoor Social have apparently been around for a few years now, though truth be told I had never heard of them until this latest, 'The Lie'.
From checking they seem to have arrived with an EP, 'Death Of A Friend', back in 2012, a whacking 14-track debut album four years later, and more recently a few singles, 'The Move', 'The Truth'. There has no doubt been a lot more in between the gaps, but this isn't a discography. They seem to have also gone from a duo to a five-piece in this time, although their latest image - see above - shows only three of them. And despite there being over a thousand pictures on their Facebook, this still feels like a band hard to get a grip on.
Apparently, says the accompanying press blurb, they are an environmental activist musical collective "who have a record of fundraising and activism supporting sustainability, producing outdoor solar-powered concerts around the US", with their "own brand of earnest, hot-blooded, independent alternative rock". Who knew? No, me, neither.
Skylar Funk (that's what it says), their vocalist/guitarist, writes on their Facebook page that 'The Lie' is "a bit of a curveball because we love to put out positive messages but sometimes life is a little more complicated. This song plays with that emotional complexity. It is a story of conflict, punctuated by a sweet repetition of the phrase 'this is gonna be alright'...but over time I realised the context I'd written around it reveals the phrase to be an empty mantra, something you just tell yourself because you don't know what else to do. It's a well-intentioned lie."
Trapdoor Social feel and sound very American, a kind of musical equivalent of Gwynnie Paltrow, which is perhaps why they aren't by now household names in the UK. But that said, 'The Lie' is a rather punchy little blighter, that contains some nice touches that travel away from "hot-blooded, alternative rock", and veer into melodic, arena-sized anthemic, radio-friendly proportions, and isn't at all hard to digest.
Give it a whirl. They might just be your new favourite band - even if you're in Lytham St Annes or Lyme Regis.
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