Down In the Dark

Limited colored vinyl LP pressing with double sided lyric insert plus digital download. 2016 release, the second full-length from Ontario pop-punk band Safe to Say. Music critics love when pop-punk bands mature, but most loyal listeners hate it, since it so often means stepping away from the eternally adolescent genre they love and into territory that may be too new, too different. It's rare, then, that a maturing pop-punk band can satisfy both the music critic and loyal listener, but Ontario's Safe to Say finds the balance on Down in the Dark. This balance wasn't struck without some toil, though, says singer and guitarist Brad Garica, who spent a year privately piecing together melodies on voice memos and scraps of paper, choosing not to share the songs with the band, even as they entered the studio. Though the writing process made recording more complicated, it also allowed Safe to Say's creativity to flourish. "We were tracking drums last, Garcia says, "so it gave us the freedom to exhaust all of our ideas before solidifying anything. We also weren't entirely done writing, so the album started to solidify itself as we tracked it." The result of this unconventional process is an unconventional product, one that embraces the pop-punk that Safe to Say mastered on their previous EP Hiding Games even as it breaks it's own rules.