BIOGRAPHY
A reductionist view of Pool Boys’ music could claim four words: Loud guitars; pretty harmonies. Songwriters Emma Browne and Caroline Jackson weave their varied pedigrees together to form a unique sound in Portland music. Pool Boys thrive in dualities - they live in the space where soft and sensitive gives way to grit and ire. Browne’s melodic guitar hooks and oft-spacey, oft-grungy textures are thoroughly supported by Jackson’s weaving bass lines and all four member’s strong voices. The four piece feels equally at home with intricate art-pop outfits or with DIY punk bands.
Pool Boys is the thesis project of Portland music veterans Browne and Jackson, and their arrival as songwriters and performers is heavily apparent. Their live performance, with singer-guitarist Annie Dillon and drummer Jessie Seal, has become a sight to behold; they outfit themselves with blue of all shades and laugh together on stage like four pre-teens at a sleepover. Their passion is infectious to their audiences, who can often be seen singing along even the first time they’ve heard the songs.
Millennial Morse Code is a song that bemoans a mostly unrequited teenage love through the virus of social media. Do we all have photographic memories in 2018? Or have our actual memories just been obscured by digital snapshots? Can a love that was started on AOL instant messenger ever really fade into the ether? Or will the whirring servers keep whispering a time-traveling game of telephone?
Their new music video for Millennial Morse Code was produced with an all-female crew on location in Portland, OR. It replicates, shot-for-shot, the Beatles’ tossed-off garden and gazebo video for Paperback Writer. It was directed by Hanna Hagen, shot by Kia Anne Geraths, produced by Emma Browne, styled by Jessie Seal, and edited by Geraths and Browne.