Coach Party – ‘Caramel’ album review: Big feelings to play loud
Sometimes what you need is something loud. Or at least, something that feels loud – where the feelings are big and clear, or at least bold in their complexity. Sometimes what you need is a head rattler, a record to blast anything else out of the mind to clear the path for 45 minutes or so. Coach Party can provide that.
They waste no time in providing that as ‘Do It For Love’ punches right in with singer Jess Eastwood musing on one-sided situations or, really, narcissists leaching love. That kind of captures the way these songs go. On the surface, they’re big and chantable, ready to make the walls and floors of venues rattle, but underneath, there is severity. You can either throw your body into the mosh pit or sit and stew in the lyrics, but either way, there’s a sense of trauma being shaken loose.
“I just remember my eyes filling up and thinking this is so difficult,” Eastwood herself said in the liner notes for the record, “But at the same time I knew it was going to be such a good thing when it’s out on a song. That was the first time I ever felt like that.” Plucking direct from heavy therapy conversations, Caramel feels like homework for it. It’s further purging in a productive way and, no doubt, in an incredibly cathartic way with her band behind her, there to punctuate every tough feeling with a loud drum that likely sounded just like solidarity.
Listening through, I find that for myself. On the day i’m writing this, there’s a gloomy cloud over me, but ‘Girls’ makes me feel like an army is surrounding me, all my best friends are in the ranks and so too are the millions of girls also feeling this way this week – there’s strength in numbers and in the sheer volume of the song, it feels like a band of billions.
Eastwood’s lyrical voice is a deeply relatable one, so that helps. The concluding message of ‘Still Hurts’ proves it perfectly as the band muse on the fact that you might be able to shake the trauma loose a little, but something’s still around for a while. Everyone knows it, it’s a song literally everyone will get – that army around me is all swaying together.
Sonically, it’s a bit samey, but it begs the question of what do you want? If you’re after a band to sit with you in big feelings and play loud to simultaneously drown them out and validate them, here you go. If you’re after a record that gets the blood pumping, Caramel does that. If you want a new band to go see live and feel the bass heavy in your chest as you headbang, you’re sorted. But if you’re looking for variety or rock experimentation, this probably won’t scratch that itch.
It’s samey, but it’s solid – A good old-fashioned rock album that demands a high volume. Balanced with some heavy emotions and a strong lyrical voice, it gets even solider. Perhaps by album two there was the hope for them to push things a little further, but maybe an emotional path needed to be cleared first. Maybe next time, it will be all about the sound.
Defining Track: ‘Girls’
For fans of: Music playing so loud in your headphones that everyone around you can hear.
A line from the playbook of a bad therapist: “Tell yourself it’s better, then just move on.”
A concluding comment from the committee of girls in rock: “Jess Eastwood, thank you for the new anthem, you’re a truly treasured member.”
Release date: September 26th, 2025 | Producer: Guy Page | Label: Chess Club
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