Oh Pep! - I Wasn't Only Thinking About You… (2018) [Hi-Res]

Since breaking through the hemispherical sound barrier, Australia's Oh Pep! have become many things to many people. The duo's kinship is palpable not just in the way they relate virtuosically, but in the stories they conjure together and the ways they emote them to the audience. Oh Pep!- who are releasing their second full-length, I Wasn't Only Thinking About You... - have always been as driven as they have been wildly creative. The duo met almost a decade ago, and it was fateful. While attending a performing arts high school in Melbourne, Australia, Pepita Emmerichs happened to walk down a hallway past guitarist Olivia Hally. The latter was about to sing a song and asked if Pepi would join her on stage. "When we started hanging out," Olivia recalls, "we immediately started making music together." Adds Pepita. "We both loved musicians like John Prine and Lucinda Williams, who hit you really hard with their incredibly honest work. Studying music, we both understood the importance in instruments and arrangement, but we were also really drawn to lyricists." After graduating, they booked their own tours-mainly clubs or folk festivals-and just never stopped. Finally, in 2015, they entered a contest which won them a slot at the Folk Alliance International festival in America. A few years later, they played another FAI event, where they met Billy Bragg. He invited them to play a show with him in Adelaide. "We walked off-stage at this show, and he was like, 'What are you doing in June?' Do you want to play my stage at Glastonbury?" They wrapped up over a year of touring their debut album 'Stadium Cake' at Glastonbury in 2017. Over that year they had shared stages not only with one of their heroes in Billy Bragg (although it was Billy Bragg who said to Pepi "I'm not your hero, I'm your peer"), but also Lake Street Dive, Martha Wainwright, Valerie June and The Mountain Goats. All artists they had admired for many years. NPR enthused that they were "thoughtful, deep, funny, and poetic." The New York Times marveled at how adept they were at "sharing a melody that's both angular and affectionate." And Paste magazine opined about their "stomping, earthy energy." So what do you do after you've reached such goals? You get out of your comfort zone. "This album is darker form of pop than we have played before." says Pepita. "Basically, Liv wrote a bunch of hits."I Wasn't Only Thinking About You... thoughtfully explores the melody-rich expanse between indie pop and alt-folk, while dipping into themes of growing older, and seeing the world. Its first single, "What's the Deal With David?," is nothing short of intriguing. They pause. "Well, I wrote that as a note for Pepi," Olivia says of the bright, irresistible sing-along, "that excited energy about two friends talking about their love life." Oh Pep!'s anticipated return at once captures their spirit, their curiosity, their imminent likability.