By Sean McCall | Posted Wednesday, August 1, 2018
Coming Along Slowly is an EP by the South Jersey band Space Cadets. They are a two-piece emo/math rock band from Mount Holly, NJ, featuring vocalist/drummer Jarrett Wenzel and guitarist Matt Trinkle. The album starts with luscious and melodic guitars in the first track, “Angel.” Jarrett Wenzel pulls at the heartstrings with this song that seems to be talking about believing in a relationship between two human beings. Although going through hardships, he says, “But you’re the sweetest, kindest, most perfect human being,” which really hit me personally. The song ends with “I hope you believe in me” with the softest vocals and all the music cutting out at the end.
The soft clean tones and horns continue in the second song, “Slowly,” which features South Jersey band Regrown (Kyle Lloyd & Ben Greenblatt). The song is very melodic and beautiful. It ends with Regrown featuring on the emotional outro, “I’m sorry I put you through this, I just want to be forgiven.”
The third song, “DIY Machine Broke,” really hits home for me. The song discusses the hardship of being a musician as well as a human being. To me, they’re trying to say that we are all human; we make mistakes. Yet, the anxiety of being a disappointment in someone else’s life can sometimes overwhelm you easily. At the end of the day, at least they’re doing what they love -- creating art and music.
Moving onto the fourth song, “Committing” (which features Luke Knoblauch from South Jersey), they continue the theme of the hardships of life becoming overwhelming. They close the song with, “Can’t be an excuse, fix the problem at the room, let’s all agree to do the things we said we’d always do,” which seems to imply connection amongst community to make everybody feel a little more at peace.
The record closes with the song “Balcony.” Like the rest of the record, this one is just as emotional and discusses the fear of losing loved ones. I really love the percussive hip-hop samples on top of the tasteful jazz cords and emotional melodies. They also include some very beautiful intervals in their “ooo’s” while reintroducing the horns to close off the record.
I’ll be honest, this EP left me wanting more from the band, which in my opinion is exactly what an artist should aim to achieve. I really enjoyed the overall consistency of the theme of the record. I believe a sense of community amongst your peers and working as a team will always get you further towards happiness and further in life in general. According to their Bandcamp, they planned to record a full-length prior to their summer tour, however, they realized they wanted to put something out before touring and created this EP almost spontaneously. See what the vocalist, Jarrett Wenzel said about the record, below:
“A little while ago, I got an idea for what has become our newest EP. Earlier this year we had been writing songs for a full-length and planning our summer tour. Around April, we realized it had been a year since we put anything out, and that our summer run wouldn’t be in support of new music. So my idea was to write and record an EP with little-to-no preparation. We had about 4-6 weeks to write the songs and coordinate things with the featured musicians, but most of the writing was done in the two weeks prior to the dates.
I brought everyone (aside from Matt) into the studio without parts written or without knowing exactly what was going to happen. We never got together beforehand. There was so much room for failure but not once did I feel like it was a bad idea. I just believed in it wholeheartedly. I didn’t explain this more than briefly to anyone, I just kind of did it and made sense of the process along the way. I am so proud of what happened. I can’t thank my wonderful friends enough for lending me their time and patience throughout the recording process. I certainly could never thank them enough for being in my life. I would like to think that all of this is a metaphor for believing in yourself/your peers and being completely blown away by the outcome -- but who knows, maybe I’m just a sap and our EP sucks! In all seriousness though, have some faith, my friends. You just might surprise yourself."
-- Jarrett Wenzel