Popscene Presents
snuggle (Denmark)
In their SF debut!
Thursday, 5/7
$20.00 advance, $25.00 day of show
7pm doors, 8pm show, all ages welcome
snuggle
and their first full-length album, Goodbyehouse, make it easy to miss something you never had to begin with. Every song has the feeling of longing that comes from watching dusk on a hill with a collective of other strangers. There is an abject kind of intimacy in being alone with others, of playing music in your headphones; there is a vibrancy to feeling small in the world. That is how one can feel, being oh-so-gently smothered in Snuggle’s gorgeously feathered guitar riffs and soothing, airy croons.
Members Andrea Thuesen and Vilhelm Strange found an instant symbiosis as schoolmates at Copenhagen’s Rhythmic Music Conservatory, bonding over sprawling jam sessions. The self-professed “musical soulmates” lingered in Copenhagen’s underground for years before finally unveiling snuggle in 2023. Thuesen makes up a third of the trio Baby In Vain, which has been releasing albums since the early 2010s. Strange got his footing producing the left-field boy band, Liss. snuggle has become a shelter from life’s storms, oblique arrangements that peer into the forlorn aspects of existing from the safety of a hazy pop-dream.
snuggle also relies on the plurality of vision, as Andrea explains, “music has always been a social practice for me. A way to be together, and create, and have a community around something." But at the same time much of Thuesen and Strange’s output and inspiration comes from the intimate immensity of staying indoors, daydreaming in bed, improvising on guitar, and watching things; the relatable straddle between moments of shared solitude and isolation. The project’s name alludes directly to these pastimes. “When we came up with the name (snuggle), in one way or another, it just made perfect sense to me — we were both kind of cozy like that, when we need protection from craziness.”
That softness was immediately palpable on snuggle’s debut EP, Calendula, which fused earthy instrumentation, catchy vocals and aqueous studio techniques. Those techniques, a new way of finishing music, on an analog desk with no recalls, informed more than just the fidelity. "We found out that at some point in the process, stepping away from the computer made things more exiting in the sense that there was no going back unless you were willing to start over again."
Goodbyehouse — snuggle’s first full-length for Danish label Escho — emerged during a period of flux and duality: “We’ve both gone through changes and breaks-ups in different relationships and contexts the past year. Goodbyes have been said to important people and places- lovers, friends, childhood homes, regular hangout spots. A kind of separation anxiety and mourning mixed with joy and excitement for the “new” has inspired the album a lot. It took me a while to realize how much the album title actually encapsulates this feeling. Moving away from “home”.
Save for percussion contributions from Tobias Laust and cello courtesy of Naja Solié, the album is the result of Thuesen and Strange’s collective isolation, love of jamming, and desire to experiment. On “Sun Tan,” bittersweet memories of a summer romance are recounted over a grounded bounce of fuzz guitars and nostalgia for a sense of freedom that feels so specific to youth. “Woman Lake” is a surreal ode to the state of Minnesota. It conjures the thick foliage of the Midwest, felt distance, old flames, and an ill-kept oath for a forever that feels like it must have ended long before the beginning of the song.
With its post-punk-inflected bass and muted fretwork, the late album highlight “Water In a Pond” is gloomy, yet heartfelt, leaving space for us, the listener, to place our own longing. “It is both a song that has some self-awareness and it has some sorrow, but it is also a huge declaration of love for the people I love most in the world,” Thuesen says of the track. Across Goodbyehouse there are hypnotic melodies that could very easily transmute into earworms days after listening, but what seems the most likely to get caught in the locked groove of our hearts is not the songs necessarily but the yearning that is felt throughout, so soft and proddingly painful, it becomes almost addictive.
