Very soon, on February 6th, the new band Best Actress will release their album with the playful title “I Know It Sounds Bad” to the world. Best Actress consists of longtime friends and already established musicians Georgia Pettit (from Our Lady of Sorrows), Ryan Jantz, and Erin Harland. They tenderly call their music “attic music.” “I Know It Sounds Bad” was created in a cozy home atmosphere, glued together from voice memos, daytime sessions, understanding and friendship.

Across 13 tracks, this measured domestic sound unfolds, produced by Nate Mendelsohn (Market) in his Navy Yards studio. When listening to “I Know It Sounds Bad”, you feel the layering of daytime sessions happening, where one melody flows into another. One phrase picks up another, completing it.

photo by Daniel Schwartz

I like the metaphor of “attic music” describing Best Actress‘s sound. What does it evoke for you? An attic is a place where things lie as they were once placed: spontaneously, randomly, because at that moment it seemed like “might come in handy.” Just like voice memos—they’re exactly those kinds of things. They’re not recorded for an album, they’re recorded because “what if we forget.”

But an attic is also a space of shared ownership. In a house, everyone has their own room, but the attic is communal. Things are stored there that don’t have a single owner: family photographs, old toys, letters. It’s impossible to say whose box exactly this is—it’s ours.

“Attic music” in Best Actress works the same way. Friendship in the attic differs from friendship in the living room. In the living room, we show each other what’s finished, presentable. In the attic, we dig through the unfinished, what didn’t work out, the drafts. And there’s a strange intimacy in this—to entrust another person with your voice memos means to say: “I trust you with my unfinished thoughts, my half-melodies, because you understand me.”

“I Know It Sounds Bad” and its conceptual design fully reflect the album’s sound. The sound is always somewhere between times and eras, like an attic, which is also a timeless space—things are stored there for years, in one space—here and now. You’ll feel this timelessness and at the same time familiar vintage sound in the track “Hymn“. It’s a short track, but in its minute it said more than sometimes five-minute songs do.

The song “Bunny Tattoo”, lasting two minutes, is the perfect starting point, revealing Best Actress‘s sound in full measure. Soft vocals, polyphony, warm guitars and intimacy—it has everything. I like the song “Something In The Room”—it lacks studio gloss and polished sound, all to capture the moment of recording and the moment when the musicians’ souls merge in inspiration.

There are fun, interesting tracks on the album, one of them being “Dalmatian“. It’s a beautiful, light song that sounds soft, swaying with a mobile rhythm and soft ethereal vocals. It’s amazing how in “Work At Night“ the sound of tape and voices weave together, which then unfolds into an aesthetically raw sound. The voice intentionally sounds slightly overloaded, sounding in unison with the guitar.

photo by Daniel Schwartz

Closer to the end, the song “Long Long Time“, lasting 1 minute 58 seconds, creates an atmosphere of meditation and a hypnotic new world. I like how the recording irregularities slowly sway in the arrangement, and the vocals quietly scatter into echo. Each burst of guitar strings leaves behind a soft cloud of vibration, and it sounds incredibly soothing. The album concludes with the track “I Know It Sounds Bad“. I’ll admit it’s one of my favorite tracks thanks to its swaying summer atmosphere, and you know, by the end of the release I had a persistent feeling that this album could sound on retro reel-to-reel tapes, hinting at warmth, understanding and coziness.

“I Know It Sounds Bad” will be released very soon, and it will be one of those albums the world needs right now. Music that is close and unifying. Music in which you can be yourself, not fear imperfections and make them into your own language. When two voices intertwine in raw live quality, you hear not just the melody, but the vibration. You hear how one voice seeks the second, how they tune into each other in real time, without the ability to re-record a take. In the attic, there’s no concert hall acoustics. There’s poor soundproofing and you can hear the creaking floorboards, noise, voices. And this isn’t a hindrance, it’s the context of presence. “I Know It Sounds Bad” exists not in a sterile space, but among things, among the time of day, among life that continues around. Right now the world is mired in lies, gloss, news, where deception hides even greater deception. “I Know It Sounds Bad” by Best Actress is a collection of cozy songs that don’t hide their imperfection and bring coziness and understanding to the world.

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