Graham Epstein and Justine Dorsey are a match made in platonic-friendship heaven. The members of After—their anachronistic “trip-pop” band—were born on the same day in 1995; Epstein told The Cut that his pickup line after they matched on Hinge was “Do you like Creed?”; she listens to Addison Rae and he likes French Canadian black metal, but you know what, they both love Coldplay. They might’ve met in search of romance, but they were destined to be besties and creative collaborators: the musical equivalent of Delaney Rowe’s 2000s rom-com parody, which blew up on TikTok for its spot-on satire of its era. It’s cute, it’s endearing, it’s something.
Like Rowe, After went viral last year for being scarily good at imitating ’00s media. The difference is that the L.A. duo admirably sees itself as above a gimmick; their mission, they told Rolling Stone, is to make you “miss a memory you never had.” Into this state-of-the-art cocktail of zillenial yesterday, they pour the pure ephemera of new-millennium breakbeat pop, the heartfelt edginess of Bush-era mall rock, and the fantastical normalcy of a Tucsan mom’s adult-contemporary CD collection. On their full-length debut, Fell Asleep in the Sun, After continue to survey these sounds and feelings—but beyond pretty, era-accurate production, they can’t muster the conviction or atmosphere to really take us there. This is a set of nebulous love songs whose melancholic narrative is spoiled by flat lyricism and unfulfilling pop arrangements.
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As on their prior EPs, After’s ideas sound fascinating in theory but fail in execution. Epstein described the genesis of the duo’s songwriting process to The Cut: Dorsey would sing over drum loops from Akira Yamaoka’s macabre Silent Hill soundtracks, then he’d fit them with dramatic string arrangements. It’s exactly what we hear on opener “Take Me to Sunrise,” a song that could be about unrequited love or the album’s main theme of taking refuge in the past. Either way, the music offers little substance. Dorsey’s lyrics describe almost nothing about this “place [she’s] been before,” only that it’s “far away” and that we could totally “stay there if you want to.” Epstein and collaborator Jackson Shanks’ production should be there to fill in the blanks, but the stale acoustic shuffle doesn’t get the boost from those strings that it should—they’re hastily shoved into the hook and sour Dorsey’s gorgeous self-duet at the end.
“Breathe Your Air” hits the Yamaoka-does-pop note far better, with a dulcet, snail-paced breakbeat that contrasts beautifully with the poppy synth flourishes. “Blind” is the duo’s most original song to date, probably because it’s not trying to be something as amorphous as “trip-pop”; it’s a pull-no-punches alt-rock track with twinkling pianos and stinging lead guitar, and the vocal duet—burrowed just deep enough in the mix—sounds magnificent. They’re good songs that should be great, and the sense of burgeoning light dimmed by severe lapses in songwriting makes Fell Asleep in the Sun especially frustrating. Angst manifests in superficial questions like “Where did you go?” and “Do you even care?,” no matter if the music is at its brightest or darkest. The instrumentals attempt to sell the imagery—sample-CD hip-hop bricolage paired with whimsical ROMpler sounds to conjure that ’00s normalcy-meets-fantasy feeling—but dull lyrics and anemic pop structures shortchange what could’ve been a desolate narrative of confusion, memory, and unreturned love.