Passed Out – I just don’t feel like myself anymore & Do you miss anything at all?
Buffalo’s own Passed Out has been a fixture of our local basement shows and bar stages for a decade now, but December 12th marks a massive shift for the five-piece. Instead of a standard release cycle, they dropped a massive double-feature on Buffalo mainstay label Harvest Sum: their first full-length LP, I just don’t feel like myself anymore, and a companion EP, Do you miss anything at all?. It’s a lot of ground to cover, especially since we haven’t had new music from them since 2021, but the wait feels justified. By splitting the songs across two releases recorded at different studios–Afterglow with Cody Morse for the LP and The Garden with Johnathan Bobowicz for the EP–the band gives us two moods to chew on. Both were tied together in the mixing stage by Justin John of Mammoth Recording, and then mastered by John Angelo, ensuring that despite the different origins, each release feels like a single side of the same coin.
Frontman Andy Pothier has always been the city’s primary conduit for that specific, trembly emo-folk energy. If you’ve caught one of his Bright Eyes tribute sets, the influence here won’t surprise you; he’s mastered that Oberst-style vocal delivery that sounds like it’s verging perpetually on breakthrough and breakdown at the same time. It’s a coat Pothier wears comfortably, and while the comparison may be low-hanging fruit, he does well to separate his craft from simple homage. There’s a weight to the five-piece arrangements that feels uniquely Buffalonian: a mix of mid-tempo poeticism and those sudden shifts into blistering, overdriven punk angst.
The LP is the “locked-in” half of the pair. You can hear deliberate focus in tracks like “Fistful of teeth” and “Friends don’t treat friends like this…” where the production is crystal clear, paving the way for Pother to add his signature lyrical gravity with lines like “there’s a ghost that’s haunting everyone / it’s there when the lights go out / it’s there when you close your eyes / and it’s there every time you say three little words / like I love you or it’s all over.”
“Drunk friends” is a particular gut-punch of a track; it’s dizzy and quick, capturing that specific late-night feeling of hanging on someone who is already halfway out the door. It’s scrappy, kind of aggressive, and 100% Passed Out. In contrast, “Postcards” feels like “Drunk friends’” spiritual twin sibling, providing a similarly snappy narrative look at long-distance longing, avoiding over-sentimental tropes with the blunt admission “I don’t want to be the shithead that let you get away.”
The EP feels brighter and a bit more freeform. You get the angular, Midwest emo arrangements of highlight “Changed/Changing,” the twinkling guitar lead and casual stroll of “Misallocated,” and the warmth of brass on single “Being Elsewhere.” The EP closes out with the sprawling “Force of Habit,” a nearly seven-minute epic that transitions from a jam-heavy first half into a poignant acoustic finale. The quiet-loud dynamic really works here, and that acoustic back half closes everything out beautifully.
Listening to the package holistically, it’s pretty clear that the two records are something of a roadmap for a band hitting some serious landmarks. The LP nods to both their past and present–polishing the scrappy and tremulous folk punk sound the band has spent a decade perfecting into a tight, professional nine tracks. The EP, however, feels like the band looking toward a potential future, stepping away slightly from the familiar and leaning into a brighter, more dynamic sound while retaining the breathless sincerity that makes Passed Out, well, Passed Out. Either way, it’s clear they’re not running out of things to say any time soon.
Categorised in: Album of the Week
This post was written by Ronald Walczyk