I’m lost in the long ago this morning, remembering when Happy Valley weekends were bastions of blissed-out banality—this time of year, that meant Friday-night bacchanals blurred into Saturday tailgates and apartment parties, frat frivolities, and bar crawls long into the night. Sundays often found me tumbling out of bed in the pre-dawn and stumbling across campus to the Sparks building, the home base of Penn State’s student-run radio station, with a stack of my own LPs under one arm. I’ve written of my mid-1980s’ Folk Show days before on this blog, of course, including just last week, but—as now—there was much more than plaintive acoustic tunes and bluegrass romps coursing through my life’s soundtrack. DayGlo pop, ambient sound collages, plus “college rock” and the era’s top hits, which I heard during my twice-a-week visits to Sera-Tec to sell plasma, usually pulsated through whatever room I found myself in.
Which is to say, the Philly-area group Song People’s sophomore set, Tho I Seem Tame, sends me hurtling through spacetime like few other albums I’ve enjoyed this year. It sounds both new and familiar, with elements of such unlike bands as Jefferson Airplane, Pentangle, and R.E.M. swirling and twirling together as if a long-form auditory hallucination. It’s cool and compelling, the kind of collection that can’t be cast as background fodder; the music flows to the forefront. It’s post-punk and jangle pop, acoustic and electric, decidedly eclectic and eccentric. Singer Shaina Kapeluck’s vocals routinely soar atop Darian Scatton’s guitar arpeggios and Benjamin Schurr’s melodic bass lines. It’s a hypnotic trance, sonic dance, and aural borealis rolled into one, the kind of thing you hear and say, “Wow.” It’s a mesmerizing listen.
Lyrically, the album leans on Old English poetry, rabbinical legends, and folk tales, the kind of stuff that’s guaranteed to thrill old and new English majors everywhere. Unlike much modern music, in other words, prosaic-laden parables about love and betrayal are thankfully absent; Kapeluck enunciates and projects, and trades in long-form metaphors. “Silver Flag,” released as a single, is one example: It leans on the story of the Shamir, a mythical worm-like creature that’s said to have helped King Solomon build the First Temple of Jerusalem during the 10th century BCE, with the concise stanzas building to a chorus that encapsulates a truth forsaken by too many: “You can only do so much to protect yourself/If you keep letting fear erase your kindness.”
“Mead Hall” is another highlight; there’s an inherent grace in Kapeluck’s sandy-yet-slick vocals, which rise and wane beyond and beside the den(ny) of Scatton’s and Schurr’s provocative riffs. “Pile of Ashes” is yet another example; “Intervene on My Behalf” one more. I could go track-by-track, I suppose, as I often do, but don’t see the need. The songs ebb and flow, coalesce and disperse, and feed metaphoric morsels that resonate deep in the soul. To co-opt a line from the poet Wallace Stevens, they evoke “the total of human shadows bright as glass.”
The album is out Friday (October 9, 2026); it can be purchased via Bandcamp—and, if you click through the link below, you’ll see that I have done so. You should, too. Tho I Seem Tame is a rich stew of seismic-laden songs that resonates with the best of long ago.
