Thanks for Coming's first LP with Danger Collective is steadfastly and deceptively modest as a direct corollary of its delicate nature. These mostly DIY recordings were selectively fished from singer-songwriter Rachel Brown's cascade of Bandcamp releases (numbering 79 in all!). The collection is dubbed You Haven't Missed Much, a bemusing title as it contains songs from the artist's formative high school salad days while tracing their trajectory through the threshold of a collegiate training in film. It is also ostensibly meant to be an introduction to Rachel's oeuvre for a fresh crop of ears after joining their current label. One impression that the title makes is that there isn't much to be gleaned from the artist's past catalog and that it might be rightly overlooked. But I don't agree. I don't think that's quite the case. I'm not a Thanks for Coming scholar by any means, but any assemblage of work that contains both the oscillating and winking shot of starlight that is the synth-derived ode "Belief in a World of Doubt," and the kitten-whisker soft cuff and dashingly befuddled declaration of teenage admiration that is "Yr Kind of Cool," is worth every second of time invested in it. Opener "Stephen Hawking's Goldfish Analogy" is a more recent single, originally released with a disposable plastic bag on its cover, a fitting splash of iconography for a wavy scrabble of submerged and pebbly progressions anchored in the vantage point that all things fade, except the things you wish wouldn't. The uncluttered instrumentation of many of these songs leaves a respectable sphere of motion within which Rachel's unguarded and sleepy vocal presence can rove and stretch itself into nervous combinations of light pageantry. "My Name" has the elastic rustle and pull of a Tegan and Sara penned projection of longing, while "U R Not Sick, Yr Electric" is a rawly recorded confession that places a gauging stressor on the melody of each line causing them to bunch up at the tail like Rachel was smearing a ball of clay with their thumb, or rather like Mal Blum squeezing the juice out of a moldy peach pressed between their chin and breastbone, ringing free a chunky drizzle of emotions in a messy but cathartic act of applied pressure. I can feel Rachel reaching through the bars of these songs in a generous extension of their warmth and humanity, but I'm afraid to take their hand less the added strain of bones and flesh gripping such a gift should cause the perfect tension that suspends it to shatter. Still, it is an affront to the spirit to deny such an offer. To experience their gesture returned to them is likely their intent and why they feel compelled to extend themselves in the form of songs in the first place. Their gratitude is presaged- it's in their name. They've already lauded your presence, the least you can do is relax and enjoy all they have to offer.
