ALBUM REVIEW: RIPE FRUIT ROTS AND FALLS BY CHOKECHERRY

Reviewed by Cecilia Pattison-Levi

San Francisco band Chokecherry (Izzie Clark and E. Scarlett Levinson) have released their debut album, ‘Ripe Fruit Rots and Falls’. The album plays with a variety of genres from lush shoegaze soundscapes to pop-punk adjacent songs; it’s really just classy indie-pop music. That is not a bad thing – I like classy indie-pop music.

Across the ten songs on this album, the duo fuse musical elements of pop, post-rock, shoegaze, alternative rock, punk, and noise pop to create songs with really interesting sonic atmospheric worlds. The word to describe the songs on this album is gorgeous. There is vocal layering, harmonies, big guitar led melodies and sweet spectral soundscapes of intertwined female voices.

The album opens with the lovely strummed guitars and spectral dreamy vocals of Chokecherry as they bring in the cinematic song ‘Porcelain Warrior’. The song is an indie-pop wonder before the drumbeats kick in and lifts the vocals and song into an atmospheric swirl. And most of the album follows this sonic mixture. Except when you get to song two: ‘Major Threat’. It is a punk-fuelled detour in the album with feminine rage informing the basis of the lyrics. There is also ‘You Love It When’ which is a great straight up rock song and the best track on the album.

Photo credit Whitney Otte

The song ‘Pretty Things’ is what the title says. Chokecherry deliver a beautiful shoegaze sounding song with dreamy vocals, harmonies and those chiming guitars. It ends with distorted guitars and is very on brand as the long outro bleeds into the next song. That next song is the beautiful indie-pop guitar melody of ‘Secrets’ with those harmonies in the vocals which is just lovely. The song is about running away from what’s familiar and embracing change. ‘Goldmine’ follows with its lush dreamy layered vocals as the lyrics speak of lovesickness.

Soft drum beats and a melodic guitar riff underpin ‘Part Of You’ with Chokecherry’s floating vocals high in the mix. It is a beautiful love song. The rock song ‘You Love It When’ follows and it’s a highlight. It is a very different sonic palette as it is a more angular rock song with great driving guitars contrasted with those dreamy vocals.

‘Oblivion’ is a song bathed in gorgeous gloominess and an angular guitar tension that slowly builds from the opening verses and choruses, escalating and erupting in a thrilling sonic explosion. Then, ‘February’ follows with its distorted pop vibe and scuzzy guitars and shoegaze style as it crashes down. The melody underneath this song is sweet and you can hear it in the great layered vocals that move in and out of that loud/soft dynamic. The album closes out with ‘Ripe Fruit Rots and Falls’ and it is an introspective mid-tempo pop song with chiming guitars about lost childhood. It’s almost a ballad, but not quite.

I really like this album, it’s kind of left of centre but it’s a straight melodic indie-pop collection of songs with ethereal vocals that Chokecherry deliver so well. The ‘Ripe Fruit Rots and Falls’ is sweet with that heady fermented sting in the tail. The songs atmospheric sounds can bring that shoegaze fever dream to the listener.