ALBUM REVIEW: Overt – Popfree

Orange County, California’s POPFREE have been rooted in their DIY scene for a few years now. This community and creativity shapes every corner of Overt, as the band work through frustration and disappointment with an urgency for confrontation and catharsis through their music. Unfiltered and scrappy, POPFREE deliver a 90s soaked take on emo, maintaining a weight beneath the tracks, and striking a balance between mathy moments and a punkier immediacy. 

Opener Giving Up beckons out as a massive opening for the album. Desperate vocals twist through angular arrangements, and despondency finds itself wrought through the lyrics. Emotionally charged vocals pour throughout the album, as POPFREE work through their struggles with connection. From the tension of “push and pull” that snappily rings through White Spruce, to the vignettes of haunting memories spliced through the punchy melodies of All I Can Remember. With their hearts on their sleeves, the band make candor a priority.

This vulnerability is packaged with urgency on Overt, constantly moving and propelling the album forwards. They scarcely let you catch your breath. The band come into their own on Fools Gold as it hits the album’s midpoint with a big force beneath it. Frenetic drumming, textured riffs, and intense vocals all push the track forwards. Explosive in its nature, the track is a bold declaration of the sheer energy POPFREE are approaching the album with. 

The band are constantly work on Overt to keep the music intriguing and dynamic. As you move through the album, you find them working through their struggles, and ultimately using their own writing to process them. Can You Feel calls out with the declaration “This is the deal / We put the heart in these songs / We write to heal.” Paced over some of the album’s punchiest rhythms, it feels like a call to arms. Despondency becomes action, and music is the tool to process and enact, pivoting Overt as it heads to its close. 

A more hopeful tone enters in the concluding moments of the album. Carving Out A Frame ends on the affirmation “And I’ll be fine / Changing times / Moving on / Finding light”, with the guitars piercing through the track and offering some really interesting angular textures. The closing track Goodbye opens with gentler melodies and erupts into a dramatic ending, looking ultimately to the purpose found in attaching meaning to things. A journey traveled from the despondency of the opening, and one that is lay bare within the entire record.

POPFREE are offering a really interesting take on emo with Overt. Vulnerability is always at its core, but sonic dynamism is equally as essential, remaining scrappy and fresh and all points. It’s punchy, urgent and pulls just enough at your heart strings so that it both soothes your soul and shakes you awake.

Rating: 7/10

Overt is out now via New Morality Zine.

Follow POPFREE on Instagram.