[PRE-ORDER] All My Friends [CD]

What makes a life well lived? Career, home, savings, family: these are the milestones that make adulthood legible as success. Friendship, meanwhile, is often treated as something that either endures or doesn’t, more a matter of luck than a relationship requiring its own devotion, maintenance, and care. When really, as the world becomes more isolated and artificial by the day, friendships may be the most important thing a person ever builds.

“A lot of times in life I feel like a late bloomer, like I'm still trying to get my shit together in a way that other people have already figured out,” says Chastity Belt drummer/vocalist Gretchen Grimm. “But then I reflect on my adulthood, and my top priority has largely been my friends, which I do not regret at all.”

That priority feels like the guiding principle on the band’s sixth album, All My Friends. Not that they set out to make an album about friendship—during mixing, the band's longtime collaborator and engineer, Samur Khouja, pointed out that a lot of the songs referenced the subject. Which makes a lot of sense.

Julia Shapiro (guitar/vocals), Lydia Lund (guitar/vocals), Hunter Truscott (bass/vocals), and Grimm have been making music together for 15 years. Friendship has sustained the Chastity Belt project as its members have grown alongside one another, both as people and as musicians. Across a resonant catalog, they’ve moved from the raucous wit of their early records toward the lush, introspective moods they’ve refined on each album since via trademark intertwining guitars, meticulous rhythms, and double exposure of melancholy and optimism.

All My Friends comprises songs recorded across multiple years, time zones, and studios, including Seahorse Sound in LA, Way Out in Woodinville, and a centuries-old house on the Greek island of Hydra. The oldest track dates back to around 2018; the newest were finished within the past year. These days, the band spans three cities (Los Angeles, Seattle, and Chicago); less writing/rehearsal time means songs are often worked out in the studio, relying on the spontaneity and instinct that comes from knowing one another so well. The result is rawer and less polished than their last couple of records, closer in spirit to the band’s roots.

Songwriting and recording are very real work, but Chastity Belt’s studio sessions also carry the celebratory charge of a reunion. On Hydra, they decided to skip the studio for a day in order to take a boat to the far end of the island. Back in LA, a December session produced the inaugural Seahorse Sound Studios Secret Santa: a strict $20 limit, every gift sourced exclusively from a gas station/corner store. Names were guarded with grave seriousness. Ceremonial paper-bag hats were worn. These interludes—shared dinners, charades, watching dumb YouTube videos together—are an integral part of studio time. The more fun they have making a record, the more they like the record.

At an age when the world keeps score in houses, careers, and babies, Chastity Belt has kept a different ledger. “I got to spend my 20s and early 30s traveling the world with three of my best friends,” says Truscott, “and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Friends and community are everything.”

All My Friends is the product of that philosophy—an album with themes of uncertainty, made within an unusually dependable haven. Chastity Belt may not know what any given adulthood is supposed to look like, but six albums in, they've built a life around returning to one another. There are worse ways to get your shit together.