in a recent instagram story post, Dan Capalbo of Daniprobably made a casual remark about cooking. about how simple — but how special — it was. you take the ingredients, you put them together, you apply some heat (and maybe some pressure), and with time, it becomes something different. it’s a classic example of the sum being greater than the component parts. in physics, that’s called emergence.
in a recent interview with a prominent, well-respected, important music blog, Daniprobably talked the band’s origins. now they are a two-piece, but the band originally started as something of a solo project for Capalbo. after the dissolution of local indie-rock heroes Quiet Giant, she took a break and began recording songs under the name Daniprobably. bringing in different drummers for these sessions, she met Addy Edward, who until that point has been a solo artist himself. after recording an album’s worth of material, the resulting tracks were shelved. but why? that was something i didn’t understand. how could you just not release something like that? i couldn’t wrap my head around it until Daniprobably released Conditional Things, their debut EP this past week.
then the answer became clear: that album didn’t come out because Daniprobably isn’t a solo project. it’s a band. it is now something different, changed by time, pressure, heat, and other ingredients.
those processes of change seem to be something that Capalbo and Edward are not only conscious of, but fascinated by. the EP, Conditional Things, refers to the states of being that objects occupy temporarily. the EP’s artwork depicts a frozen popsicle melting, transitioning from a solid to a liquid. song lyrics recount interpersonal relationships, and how they’ve gotten better or worse with time. even the sounds, song-to-song, take on different styles and approaches. Conditional Things is all about change.
written, performed, recorded, mixed, and mastered by the band, Conditional Things is as do-it-yourself as it gets. even at the band’s release show, they created decorative popsicles with bandcamp download codes, matching the EP’s artwork (also developed by the band). that DIY attitude is to be expected by anyone who has caught the band live — the duo sound like a four-or-five-piece through inventive methods (like a looper pedals and a pitch-dropping vocoder for Edward to use as a bass). that same attitude, applied to Conditional Things presents DIY in an inspiring light: the restraints and limitations of self-recording are leveraged as a strengths.
here are my favorite three moments of Conditional Things:
“Unified Theory”: this is my favorite track on the album, and while i think that the pre-chorus and chorus make the song, there’s a specific moment that is revealing about Conditional Things and Daniprobably more broadly. that moment comes around 2:28, when a pause is broken with a synthesizer’s lead-in. as far as i know, it’s the only time the synthesizer appears on the EP, and it’s genuinely surprising and exciting. it’s a reminder that anything can happen; while the band is slings its rock-n-roll throughout the EP, they’ll do whatever it takes to make a track just right.
“Sweeter Than The Truth”: given that Capalbo is known to use a looper on stage when the moment calls for it, there’s a moment of ambiguity in “Sweet Than The Truth”. with two acoustic guitar parts, you might originally think what i thought — that both parts are being played by Capalbo. however, as the song progresses, Edward’s harmonies bloom, and it becomes clear: the song is an acoustic duet. that earlier guitar part was no loop — it was Edward playing lead. it’s a beautiful song, and another surprise from the band that exhibits their own change over time.
“Critic’s Favorite”: many of the songs on Conditional Things grow over time. like the popsicle on the EP’s cover, these songs change form. “Critic’s Favorite”, if you were to graph it out, would probably look like something freezing and melting; starting quiet and sparse, it builds into a loud rocker, and then in its final minute and a half, it allows itself to unfold and gently fall. as it fades out, it provides a perfect prelude to the opening notes of “Blooming”, the intro track to Conditional Things.
