If there’s one rule people should follow when approaching the Dirty Nil, it’s this: Never tell them how to rock ‘n’ roll. Ontario’s Juno Award-winning trio is a finely tuned rock machine that is at its best when the members are pursuing their penchant for thrashy riffs, bashed out drums, and levels-to-the-max volume. And on their fourth album, Free Rein to Passions, the band followed their instincts down to the note to produce their most authentic work to date.

The Nil’s back-to-basics approach was a direct reaction to their previous record, 2021’s Fuck Art, a creative process that brought too many industry people whispering in the band’s ears, telling them how to polish and tweak their songs to fit on the radio or streaming playlists or whatever other arbitrary whims the modern music machine demands.

In order to incinerate their apparatus, they had to destroy it completely. They jammed away in their practice space for weeks, not overthinking anything or taking any external input. They didn’t sweat the small details or fret over transitions and arrangements. Less second guessing, more reckless abandon.

Staring into the abyss of entertainment serfdom, the trio spat on it. They smashed the chalice of poison brought to their lips, grinding the shards under their heels. A rock and roll band is part religion, part small business and part pirate ship. Sabres were wielded and planks were walked for The Dirty Nil to bring Free Rein to Passions into this world.

Sometimes, it’s good to take a step back and remember why you started doing something in the first place. That’s what Carpool decided to with My Life In Subtitles, the four-piece’s second full-length (and first for SideOneDummy). As such, the majority of these songs were written by the band’s two mainstays, Chris ‘Stoph’ Colasanto and Tommy Eckerson, who formed Carpool in Rochester, NY in 2018. The result is that the band—now completed by drummer Alec Westover and bassist Torri Ross—have made a record that both harks back to the purity of its beginnings but which also evolves their sound at the same time. After a period in which band members came and went, it’s a streamlining of intentions, a chance to regroup, re-find and reassert their identity once again.
“We wanted to bring it back to the band’s roots,” says Colasanto, “and the original concept of why we started doing it—just me and Tommy writing songs together. It felt like we had so many members of the band at one point that there were too many cooks in the kitchen almost. This is more genuine and authentic.”
“I think a big thing, too,” adds Eckerson, “was that the house Stoph was living in while we were recording the album, and leading up to it when we were rehearsing for that, had an upright piano in it. So Stoph  sat down with the piano—which is where the piano intro and some of the softer dynamics came to fruition. We were really making an effort to have dynamics on the album where there are low lows and high highs in terms of the instrumentation and the themes.” 

My Life In Subtitles does indeed ebb and flow through those low lows and high highs. Recorded with Jay Zubricky—a Buffalo-based producer who has worked with Every Time I Die, Pentimento and Marigold, among others—the result is an album with has a cohesive thematic and musical narrative. It begins with that plaintive, piano-led title track, a time-stopping 93-seconds of fragility that mixes pathos and humor to great effect. ‘My life in subtitles/What a terrible show’ sings Colasanto, setting up a duality that runs through the album’s remaining twelve songs. Those already familiar with the band might be surprised by such a calm and graceful opener, but as soon as the PUP-meets-Weezer attitude of second track “Can We Just Get High” kicks in, the Carpool people will be expecting comes crashing through the speakers in a surge of quasi-nihilistic recklessness. It’s one of many tracks that blend careless fun with abject desperation to create an existential crisis you want to dance to—whether that’s on the math-rocky rush of “Open Container Blues”, the brilliantly-titled, thankfully un-Radiohead-like “Thom Yorke New City”, the nervous, neurotic energy of “Crocodile Tears” or the late night, self-flagellating restlessness of “No News Is Good News”. There’s also the vicious, high-octane hardcore blast of “Car”, which sounds like a dam bursting continuously and a song The Locust would be proud of. 

But in between all of that controlled chaos, there are also more tender, nuanced moments of quiet contemplation—the (relatively) gentle lilt of “Done Paying Taxes”, the golden yearning of “Kid Icarus” and the gorgeous 75 seconds of closer “Every Time I Think Of You I Smile”, which neatly wraps up the theme and title of this record, while also proving that songs don’t have to be long to have profound emotional resonance. The overall result is a beautifully cohesive record with a beginning, middle and end, which was very much the intention from the start.
“The two different styles or genres or feelings—whatever want to you call them—are a sign of the way we’re maturing and growing as people as musicians,” says Colasanto. “We’re starting to write for ourselves and we’re also writing songs that we would want to hear. They way I like to listen to music is to put on an album and listen to it start to finish. I like albums that take me on a journey and that show me what those songwriters were feeling while making you feel the same way.”

At the same time, that honesty is in part responsible for a paradox that exists at the heart of My Life In Subtitles. That titular lyric appears a couple more times on the record after that first track, and reveals how Colasanto feels about laying out details of his life—and all the emotions that go with that—in the band’s songs. The idea for that line initially came when the singer was talking to somebody who then quoted one of his own lyrics in the conversation. Understandably, that set off a chain reaction of thoughts in his head.
“They referenced one of the lyrics from an old song which were about an event that had happened in my life,” Colasanto says. “From there, I just thought how it really is like my life in subtitles, because you can go through and read any of the lyrics from any of our songs and can literally, line by line, read a story of my life. It makes me uncomfortable sometimes, because people talk to me and they think they know who I am, but they just know fragments of things I was thinking or feeling at a certain time. They don’t know me as a person.”

Ironically, with My Life In Subtitles, Carpool have crafted a record brimming with honest heart, and one that takes you deep inside the minds that created it. Colasanto certainly didn’t hold back in telling his truth, despite whatever discomfort that may cause. That truth—and by extension, this record—is also heavily rooted in the band’s hometown of Rochester. Although Colasanto has since moved to Brooklyn, these songs wouldn’t have been made if it weren’t for the experience in the Rochester scene. That’s another way in which the band take a step back with this album. Because while Carpool have long since achieved and outgrown their initial goal of playing that city’s 200 capacity Bug Jar venue, their hometown is still embedded in their DNA. This record is a wonderful homage to where they’re from, and the way the Rochester scene’s vital, youthful abandon continues to inspire them. At the same time, My Life In Subtitles is the next stage of Carpool’s journey, and serves as a warning to the rest of the world what Rochester has already known for years.
“I don’t think anyone reps Rochester as hard as we do,” chuckles Eckerson. “I feel like we’re the from the fucking Holy Land. Carpool is a band about sharing smiles with your friends, but they should never have let us play the Bug Jar, because now we’re menaces.” 
“We honestly wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for that community, adds Colasanto. “So thank you, Rochester!”