Written by Skye Taylor

Rachel Bochner's ‘I guess a sure thing couldn't go down gently’ is a raw breakup album, it goes through a wave of emotions and the true pain of grieving. Bochner as an artist has built up a large reputation for herself through her sharp, emotionally charged indie pop style. Each song within this album goes through the messiness and complicatedness of relationships and breakups through her candid lyricism and the unflinching willingness to discover the messier edges of what love really is all about and the aftermath your left with.

‘i guess a sure thing couldn't go down gently’ was made through her rough breakup and how it quite went down Aswell as her discovering her queer identity all at once. The album shows the difficulty of the situation, Bochner explains that when making this album she had recently gotten out of a long-term relationship with a man which imploded right Infront of her, and each song orbits this topic Aswell as her difficulties with her discovery of her queer identity and the immense grief she was feeling. This ep is almost like a documentation of her life events currently, two opposing things, the strange combination of grief and euphoria.

The album opens with the song ‘how was I supposed to know?’ almost opening us up to the situation Aswell as her own confusion. In this song we see through her lyricism that she's the one feeling responsible without understanding what truly went wrong. It sets us off straight away with the guilt heavy tone. The instrumental is driven by the drums, distorted guitars, bass foundation building us up into a tense, almost energetic atmosphere. Surprisingly enough that such an awful situation could be turned into an upbeat song that you could dance too.

As the album progresses with songs such as ‘Say that you dont’, ‘Furniture’, and 'By The Roxy' we get a true feel for Bochner's lyricism.

The tune ‘Devil’ this song is slower and much more emotional. Through the lyrics we see her letting the ex in question see her as the villian, with heavy guilt and regret ridden all through it. This song is genuinley beautiful and full of different emotions that really put the situation in these songs into a whole new light for us as the listeners. Theres a darker instrumental tone to this song. Really driving the emotions in. Bochner is delibratley building intensity through the use of her vocals.

This album is unbelievable, its a mixture of all the good things about indie pop. Its like clairo and faye webster had a baby and beabadoobee was just coursing through its veins all at once. Its immaculate.

As we get through different songs ‘Collar’ pops up. This song is unbelievable and heavily driven through the guitars. Its dark and fully amplifying the idea of her greif and heartbreak in her situation. ‘Collar’ is more sensual and intense through her instruments rather than her vocals in this one. The song builds up this Atmosphere that is unexplainable. As the song gets to the end, the use of repition to fully build up that insane ending through her vocals to hit that last note, into this angelic ending, as she sings ‘so, tell me who you wanna hold// write itdown, bend the trut over the centrefold’ which goes into a clean transition into the next song ‘dance around it’.

As the album gets to the end its almost like the instruments are picking up and the songs are getting faster and more jumpy. We see this in ‘fault line’, this song represents of a misguided retrospection, for when its easier to throw your hands up and call yourself the bad guy than to deal with the nuance of hurting someone you loved. Bochner goes on to basically imply to us that throughout this album she built up a narrative of her inherently being the destructive person doomed to repeat the cycle of hurting everyone she truly loves.

Coming to the end of the album with the last to songs ‘by omission’ and ‘gentle’ it becomes like the title, a gentle angelic tone. This soft elegeant tone almost like its representing her exhaustion with the situation and feeling like shes a bad person for doing what felt right. In the song ‘gentle’ the vocals almost feel high personal like a late night text or overshared thought cutting straight to the emotional core of her heartbreak.