I can't tell you where Stay Inside is headed, but I can tell you where they're at. The Brooklyn band released their debut LP Viewing in 2020 on No Sleep and it made a worthy impression on me. It showed that the band could write some memorable melodies, but it underserved the thematic punch that they seemed to be striving for throughout. A sense of cohesive emotional reality and urgency, the expression of which bands like mewithoutyou and Cursive have seized as their raison d'être. Their 2022 EP Blight, despite its name, feels more alive in contrast. Addressing some of the too-shy-softness of its predecessor, Stay Inside have sharpened the edge of their guitar work to enhance the dynamics of their performances with a heightened sense of atmosphere and piercing earnestness. These improvements are further accompanied by a willingness not just to pour out their lovelorn and vintage sentiments, but to crack the bottle open and drink from the shard of its neck, reingesting and further refining their catharsis at its point of escape. It's a process that sees them fearless in the face of their shadow selves, willing to reach into the void of their own recesses and expose the squirming arches that help them maintain their essential form in spite of themselves. Blight is an easy listen as well. Its overall smoothness and roomy interiority is reminiscent of the memorializing, interior conferencing and detailed external texturing of Pianos Become the Teeth, but its frequently encountered relief spaces and quietude do nothing to diminish the flush and immediate forcefulness that Stay Inside prevail in throwing themselves into. In doing so, they exhibit a prying kind of interventionism that could hardly be more exacting if it drove to rip and poke at your ribs like one of Birds in Row's barbered murmurations. Blight sees Stay Inside at their most healthful, vibrant, and fearless. Hopefully, it is the first yield of many boon years to come.
