Illness, boredom, love, laziness: One of these things is not like the other.
Among the depressive states, love is the exciting fare of Casablanca, of first dates to restaurants you can’t afford. Love is the antithesis of boredom, and the effort to impress keeps you from being lazy.
To See Through Dresses’ principal songwriters Sara Bertuldo and Matt Carroll, though, maybe there's not such a difference. Each is a state of stagnation. Once you’re in love, what else are you working toward? Relationships fall flat, become boring, lazy and ill.
Such are the concerns of the forthcoming self-titled See Through Dresses record.
photo of See Through Dresses' Sara Bertuldo by Chevy Anderson
On one of the album’s first singles, “You Get Sick Again,” Carroll sings over siren guitars about each concept, accepting love with all its boredom and laziness and illness.
“I think I’m having fun now. I think I found love now.”
“Love can be a wonderful and horrible thing to write about, whereas boredom is beautiful and selfish,” Bertuldo says.
“You Get Sick Again” employs a dense arrangement in the spirit of ‘80s alternative rock, and Carroll’s voice makes itself at home in the same register at Robert Smith’s.
J.J. Idt mixed the album, and Carroll said his treatment of the material was “as good as we could have hoped for.”
“When you feel personally satisfied with a release, all of the anxieties of whether so-and-so will like it or whether or not a decent label will like it start to diminish.”
See Through Dresses will play an album release show at the Waiting Room in Omaha on Saturday night with The ACBs and Places We Slept.
Jacob Zlomke is Hear Nebraska’s editorial intern. He hasn’t been sick in like a year. Reach him at jacobz@hearnebraska.org.