Good Kid is a very particular kind of band.
Known for being an intensely DIY band and having gone to a lot of effort to make sure all their music is both Content ID and DMCA-free, you might wonder if Good Kid are trying to make it seem like they don’t care about their music or what happens to it.
Of course, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Having finally released their debut album, Can We Hang Out Sometime? last month, Good Kid spent the time recording the album trying to push their high-energy, inventive sound to new heights, will still trying to remain true to who they are as artists.
“This record is the most unfiltered and uninhibited we have ever been,” say the band. “There are so many things on this record that are irreproducible, sounds and methods that made every take unique. From writing a batshit crazy solo that’s nearly impossible to play to having Nick [Frosst, lead singer] screaming his lungs out in his vocals for the very first time.”
That sense of making music that might not even be playable live really harkens back to the technological improvements in the early-to-mid 1980s, where often you’d find bands that made music it wasn’t even possible to play in a live context due to the tech and power needed – famously, Tears for Fears contemporaries Naked Eyes never toured during their commercial heydays, due to not being able to replicate their complex synth needs in a live context.
But live performances really aren’t something Good Kid needs to worry about. As energetic as ever, the band has spent the time since the release of Can We Hang Out Sometime? Touring and playing live shows, and even setting up a whole skit featuring a “fan” climbing onto their stage and facing off with “security,” – which, like a lot of Good Kid’s schemes, received a lot of online attention.
That high-energy fun couldn’t be further away from what recording Can We Hang Out Sometime? Was really like. Confined to the studio during the 2025 LA wildfires, Good Kid found themselves growing closer as a band, the camaraderie stronger than ever in the face of a terrible event that left even the most powerful feeling deeply helpless.
According to guitarist David Wood: “We were under a tremendous amount of stress during the [recording] process. We’d wake up and it would just be huge plumes of smoke. The whole time we were on our phones trying to track the alert system to know if we should leave.”
The result of dealing with that, and being stuck in place, means that the album came out much grungier and more raw than Good Kid’s previous work, looking a lot more at interpersonal tension and connections with other people.
This very much comes across in tracks like “Eastside”, which is a song about the feelings you end up dealing with when you run into someone you feel a rivalry with, and how complicated that especially can be when that rival used to be a close friend. There’s also “Rift”, which is a story of obsession and toxic human connections that someone can find it hard to let go of and get away from. There’s the heartbreak of “Coffee”, which is about the quiet moments spent in the middle of chaos with your loved ones, and “Tornado”, which tells the story of connecting with another person even when everything is terrible, and how they can become the only bright spot in your life despite all the odds. And then there’s “Wall”, which, according to the band themselves, is all about what happens when you run into an ex – the ex, the one that your life could have been totally different with if you’d stayed together.
Can We Hang Out Sometime? is an album full of difficult emotions and strained relationships, all wrapped up in Good Kid’s big energy and particular sound, and it’s definitely something special.
