sofa_so_good_totorro

Totorro is a French math-rock band that put out its last album nine years ago. Sofa So Good is a return to form for the four-piece band: joyful, excited, and cinematic.

The album starts of with a bang with Bang Bang: happy, fun, and hyper, letting us know they haven't lost a step. One of their singles, New Music, is another solid track to the beginning of the album. The groove on that one is like you're in a roadtrip movie, speeding along in a rusty beater with the band filling up the seats around you and you're crammed in the bitch seat. It's a magical ride and there's a little guy jumping up and down on the crash with the bass pluged into his back pumping fuzzy electric pulses into him to keep him going. The winding ride might drop a gear as we turn a bend here and there, revealing a new scenery, but the band has got places to be, so they're moving right along. The driver leans back over their shoulder, gives us a hint about what's to come, and waggles their eyebrows right before we're off to the next swirling path. The car accelerates, hiccupping and bumping us up and down off of our seats, making us nod our heads as the driver slams from gear to gear, still propelling us forward.

Much of the forty minute album is like this, but there are some quieter songs. Sensation IRL mixes up post-rock and pop-punk elements to wrap you up in a cozy, wistful, and melodic five-plus minute track. That then actually dumps you right into a plucky mathy head bop groove once again (Bernad Guez) - Totorro never go long without reminding you who they are and why you came here in the first place.

Bonnet Free Jazz constructs the crescendo of the album, collecting all of the style elements we've heard so far and erupting in a hard rock finish. After this Big Bang, we are treated to a float in the slowly expanding plasma of the song Smile Paste. The track trickles in warped synths and analogue effects which pave a placid foundation for dreamy guitars to sprout. We let the garden bloom slowly until, you guessed it, da boys start jamming again. We get to relive another crescendocore postrock explosion - this time more Godspeed than Explosions. You brace yourself against the violent tremolo as it whips into a screaming gale-force wind that picks you up into the air like a tornado, until you abruptly awake like Dorothy to a chiming toy-box guitar goodbye melody.

Again, this is just fun. I find myself popping on Totorro to brighten the mood, and I'm glad to have an increased pool of available music to turn to. Well done, frenchies.