Kevin Bronson on April 4th, 2020

0

“Big Sound,” the lead single from the forthcoming album by Redlands’ I’m Glad It’s You, isn’t about the dynamics of the band’s music, though it is undeniably big. It refers to an echo — the excruciatingly painful death of a friend.

“Another long last look from the ambulance,” frontman Kelley Bader sings to begin the track, memorializing Chris Avis in the lyric: “You left a Big Sound moving through my spirit.”

It’s a heartrending moment on an album full of them. “Every Sun, Every Moon,” the band’s second full-length, sees Bader sorting through the anguish of Avis’ passing. The 31-year-old, a youth basketball coach in Bakersfield and videographer/chronciler of the SoCal punk scene, died in July 2017 when a van that Bader was driving rolled over on the I-15 near Barstow.

I’m Glad It’s You — Bader, along with guitarist Evan Dykes, keyboardist Robi Brown, bassist TJ Moneymaker and drummer Elliott Glass — open a vein of those emotions in music cut from the cloth of ’90s emo and college-rock bands. While minding their melodies, IGIY somersault from soft to loud, tender to tough, in quick-hitting changes that land like body blows.

“Every Sun, Every Moon” was produced by Jawbox’s J. Robbins, who’s in a lot of personal hall of fames for working on albums by the likes of Jimmy Eat World, the Promise Ring, Against Me!, Bayside, Melée, the Dismemberment Plan, Braid, Clutch, Murder by Death and (soft spot here) Actionslacks.

The album arrives May 15 via 6131 Records.

||| Stream: “Big Sound” and “Myth”