Easier Said Than Done is Pool Kids‘ road album. Their 2018 debut album Music to Practice Safe Sex To helped put them on the map, but their 2022 self-titled album–the first recorded by their full four-piece lineup of Christine Goodwyne (vocals, guitar), Andy Anaya (guitar), Nicolette Alvarez (bass), and Caden Clinton (drums)–was their real breakthrough and it’s an album that they’ve toured behind relentlessly. Naturally, life on the road seeped into its followup, as well as the juxtaposition between that and life in Christine’s various Florida hometowns. The album captures the chemistry that Pool Kids bring to their live show, and the lyrics are something that the entire band can at times see themselves in. “It’s not just like about Christine’s childhood or something,” as she herself half-jokingly told me on a Zoom call a few weeks before the album’s release.
Andy, who was also on the call, added, “As I’ve been listening to the test presses and the final mixes, I’m like tearing up thinking like, wow, this is a song that’s actually about my life too. It’s pretty crazy.”
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Making their self-titled album also helped Pool Kids, whose members live in different cities, realize that they work best when they’re all in a room together. The first album only featured Christine and Caden, and then they experimented with remote songwriting after bringing in Andy and Nicolette for the self-titled, but this time they went straight to doing a meetup where they could write and bounce ideas off of each other in person. They’d also developed chemistry with the self-titled’s producer Mike Vernon Davis (whose credits also include Great Grandpa, Ratboys, and Foxing), and they knew they wanted to go back to Seattle to record Easier Said Than Done with him. Christine calls him Pool Kids’ “secret fifth member” and “kind of a genius,” and credits him with bringing the more atmospheric, electronic elements to the hard-hitting rock sound that Pool Kids developed after cutting their teeth in the DIY emo scene. Working with him was “so special the first time around,” Christine says, that they “wanted to see what it would be like to have that Mike quality added to the songs we had for this.”
After going in a heavily math rock direction on Music to Practice Safe Sex To that Christine said was partially due to feeling like she had to prove herself as a woman guitarist, Pool Kids pushed themselves to embrace pop songwriting structures and write big, catchy choruses for the self-titled, which Christine once called “the hardest thing this band has done.” With that hurdle cleared, Pool Kids flipped their original script for Easier Said Than Done, putting all the initial emphasis on the structure and emotion of the songs and adding in the technical flairs later on. It’s their poppiest album yet, and they made that clear right away with the vocoder intro of Easier Said Than Done‘s title track, which opens the album and was released as its lead single. It feels like a statement-making decision to kick off a new era with such an overtly pop moment, but it’s also worth noting that Easier Said Than Done feels like as much of a natural progression from the self-titled as that album did from the debut. It is both a clear step forward, and distinctly Pool Kids.
Pool Kids’ poppiest album yet also comes alongside a jump from the Urbana, IL-based indie label Skeletal Lightning to Epitaph Records, the powerhouse punk label with a lineage that Andy says is “an honor” to be part of (“a lot of stone cold classics on there”). And especially after the band revealed the signing along with some glossy vocoder, it was easy to wonder if the new direction had anything to do with a bigger budget or the expectations that come with an “Epitaph debut,” but actually, making this album was fully DIY; Pool Kids funded the album themselves before settling on which label would release it. “I wondered if people were gonna think that,” Christine shares. “Like, Oh wow, they signed to a record label, now they’re pop. But all the creative decisions were made before we had any idea where we were gonna sign.”
Though “poppiest album to date” is true, a more accurate summation of Easier Said Than Done is that it’s the band’s most musically varied. It has those poppier moments, as well as folky songs (“Perfect View”), indie balladry (“Sorry Not Sorry”), and a crunchy ’90s-style alt-rock song (“Leona Street”) that the band says took cues from Everclear‘s 1997 alternative hit “Everything To Everyone.” (“It’s fun to chase those sounds,” Andy adds.) Lyrically, Christine found inspiration in singer/songwriters like Phoebe Bridgers and Andy Shauf, whose music she says helped her “focus on storytelling and describing scenes rather than just [being] straightforward and saying how I feel… trying to paint a picture instead.” From snapshots of crying on a curb outside a CVS in the middle of Missouri to smoking in the back of a truck in a parking lot in Christine’s childhood hometown of Tampa, that’s exactly what she did.
She brings detailed specificity to the songs on this album, and the more personal and specific the songs get, the more widely relatable they feel. Even if you’ve never been to the places Christine sings about, you can visualize the rose-colored nostalgia of suburban Americana. Even if you’ve never been on tour, the mixed feelings Christine conveys in the tour songs come across as relatable too. The latter is something she partially picked up from past tourmates PUP, whose “If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You, I Will” is one of the biggest “tour song” singalongs in recent punk memory.
“I’ve always been so afraid to do something like that because I’m like, ‘No one can relate to that. That’s just too specific,'” Christine says. “But then I see the way all these other people love that [PUP] song and scream these tour lyrics and I’m like… I guess there’s still something relatable about it.”
Christine has also called Easier Said Than Done “kind of an OCD record.” She was officially diagnosed with the disorder shortly after writing the album, though she “pretty much knew” she had it, and after getting the diagnosis she felt like she could talk about it more openly and she recognized how much of it shows up in her lyrics. She also recognizes how often OCD is misunderstood or mis-categorized as something that’s synonymous with perfectionism or tidiness. “A lot of my compulsions are mental compulsions,” she explains, “so they’re kind of happening in my head and it’s hard for me to explain what those are… ruminating is my main compulsion, lots of ruminating going on.”
“So,” she adds with a laugh, “if I’m gonna be putting this in, like, press releases and stuff, I need to figure out how to describe it to people in a succinct way.”
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With all the various styles of music that Easier Said Than Done touches on, one that I probably wouldn’t use to describe it if I heard the album out of context is emo, but the emo community is something that Pool Kids remain proud to be part of. “That’s the community that I don’t think we would be here without,” Christine says, regardless of how musically similar their new album is or isn’t to the other bands in that community.
The attitude towards emo that Pool Kids and a lot of other “fifth wave emo” bands have is a refreshing change from past-generation emo bands who made noticeable efforts to distance themselves from the word. But still, with a wide-ranging album like Easier Said Than Done under their belts, Pool Kids shouldn’t be tied down to any genre or scene. When I asked the obligatory “dream tourmate” question, Christine replied, “Touring with Olivia Rodrigo would be sick… if we’re talking dream, dream, dream.” And hey, if the Fontaines D.C.-covering, Weezer/Robert Smith/David Byrne/No Doubt-collaborating Breeders tourmate in question reads this, I’d say that’s a pretty perfect pairing.
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Meanwhile, Pool Kids will do a headlining tour with support from Truth Club and Pony this fall, including NYC-area shows at Asbury Park’s House of Independents on September 22 and Manhattan’s Bowery Ballroom on September 23. The tour wraps up with a few shows in the band’s Florida home state, including a stop at The Fest, where they’ll play Bo Diddley Plaza (10/25) with the insanely good lineup of The Get Up Kids (playing Something To Write Home About), RX Bandits (playing The Resignation), Jeff Rosenstock, Fucked Up, 7Seconds, Shelter (celebrating 30 years of Mantra), Drug Church, and Weakened Friends. Talk about dream shows.
Pool Kids will also be in NYC this Thursday night to celebrate the album release at Anchored Inn.
Easier Said Than Done is out 8/15 via Epitaph. Pick it up and shop for more Pool Kids vinyl in the BV store.
Pool Kids — 2025/2026 Tour Dates
with Truth Club and Pony:
Sept. 19 – Nashville, TN – The ‘58 At Eastside Bowl
Sept. 20 – Durham, NC – Motorco Music Hall
Sept. 21 – Washington, DC – Pearl Street Warehouse
Sept. 22 – Asbury Park, NJ – House of Independents
Sept. 23 – New York, NY – Bowery Ballroom
Sept. 25 – Philadelphia, PA – Ukie Club on Franklin
Sept. 26 – Somerville, MA – Crystal Ballroom
Sept. 27 – Montreal, QC – Bar le Ritz PDB
Sept. 28 – Toronto, ON – The Baby G
Sept. 30 – Hamtramck, MI – Sanctuary Detroit
Oct. 01 – Pittsburgh, PA – Thunderbird Café
Oct. 02 – Columbus, OH – A&R Music Bar
Oct. 03 – Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall
Oct. 04 – St. Paul, MN – Amsterdam Bar & Hall
Oct. 06 – Denver, CO – Marquis Theater
Oct. 08 – Salt Lake City, UT – Kilby Court
Oct. 10 – Seattle, WA – Madame Lou’s
Oct. 11 – Vancouver, BC – Fox Cabaret
Oct. 12 – Portland, OR – Polaris Hall
Oct. 14 – San Francisco, CA – Rickshaw Stop
Oct. 16 – San Diego, CA – Soda Bar
Oct. 17 – Los Angeles, CA – Lodge Room
Oct. 18 – Phoenix, AZ – Last Exit Live
Oct. 20 – Denton, TX – Rubber Gloves
Oct. 21 – Austin, TX – 29th Street Ballroom
Oct. 23 – Atlanta, GA – The Masquerade (purgatory)
Oct. 25 – Gainesville, FL – FEST 25
Nov. 4 – Tampa, FL – New World Tampa w/ Woolbright, Glazed
Nov. 6 – Miami, FL – Gramps w/ Woolbright, Palomino Blond
Nov. 8 – Nov. 13 – Coheed and Cambria’s S.S. Neverender
Feb 17 – Southampton, UK @ The Joiners *
Feb 18 – Bristol, UK @ Exchange *
Feb 19 – Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club *
Feb 20 – Manchester, UK @ The Deaf Institute *
Feb 21 – Glasgow, UK @ Stereo *
Feb 23 – Birmingham, UK @ Hare & Hounds V2 *
Feb 24 – Brighton, UK @ Patterns *
Feb 25 – London, UK @ The Garage *
Feb 27 – Paris @ Supersonic
Feb 28 – Brussels, BE @ Birmingham ^
Mar 1 – Cologne, DE @ Blue Shell ^
Mar 3 – Hamburg, DE @ Hebebühne ^
Mar 4 – Berlin, DE @ Berghain Kantine ^
Mar 6 – Eindhoven, NL @ Altstadt ^
* w/ Sydney Sprague
^ w/ Swain