SAY SUE ME - We've Sobered Up LP (Sky Blue Vinyl)

Label: Damnably

Busan, South Korea’s Say Sue Me write songs about indecision, loneliness, and drinking—lots of drinking. The bar is the stage on the band’s second LP, Where We Were Together. Singer and lyricist Sumi Choi describes it as a crowded, noisy circus on “Let It Begin” and as a quiet, secret safe haven on “Funny and Cute.” When lead guitarist and principal songwriter Byungkyu Kim slurs the last couple syllables of a guitar phrase just a split second behind the beat, you can smell the place.

Halfway through the writing phase for this album, Say Sue Me drummer Kang Semin went into a coma after an accidental fall. King-size closer “Coming to an End,” written with Semin before his accident, is the band’s best work to date. Kim’s guitar starts as a flickering candle and erupts halfway through into a bonfire outro, a screaming, seizing solo that makes a single half-step down his guitar neck feel like a freefall into the Grand Canyon. It’s a convincing demolition of the argument that Say Sue Me can’t be anything other than gentle, and a persuasive case that they should be other things more often.