Brooklyn/Pittsburgh rockers Colatura circle the drain on their new EP, whose four tracks serve up filled-out dream rock and a healthy helping of rumination.

The Pittsburgh dreamgaze outfit released EP If I’m Being Honest earlier this month. The four tracks are tightly focused and find vocalist Jennica Best tightly wound, stewing over a recent breakup. The album title fits, as does track title “I Can Talk To Your Voicemail.” The record seems to have emerged out of an exercise in bloodletting the thoughts, speaking all the anxieties and regrets circling the drain of Best’s grieving mind. 

The clear star is opener “I Wanna Get Better”—some track name that guarantees it’ll be a winner—which shimmers outward into a perfectly filled out indie rock sound. It sounds healthy, robust, lush. It shimmers. Best’s vocals are lilting with a touch of rasp, lending themselves to a cooler-than-pop punk hook. Colatura sounds grounded, confident and at ease. They’re at home in this pocket.

The following three tracks are equally sonically self assured, but in form and content they circle the drain. All three kick off with high strung strumming and straightforward vocals, then build up and shred over a repeated chorus phrase. In all three, Best sings into her mic everything she wishes she could say into her ex’s voicemail: “you said I was enough, guess I called your bluff,” “your new girl is pregnant, guess you didn’t want my genes,” “cause I just wanna figure out why this time wasn’t different.” 

There’s nothing wrong with Colatura’s formula: the group sounds cool and collected. Their sound conjures the familiar visual of someone on a beloved local stage, leaned over a guitar, hinged over at the hip, coolly bobbing their head with the groove. Best hits a sardonic sweet spot where her open-hearted lyrics recognize the quirky interest in the pain, and the warm slight rasp on her upper register hints at grounded indie rockers The Beths and Ratboys. Colatura sound like an indie band’s indie band because they are: the Brooklyn-to-Pittsburgh group have shared stages with the up-and-comers crew: Slow Pulp, Mamalarky, Pom Pom Squad and Jessica Lee Mayfield, and they’re supporting Blondshell in Pittsburgh this fall. 

But it’s notable that the standout track on this rumination record is the one that looks forward rather than back — it feels propulsive where the other tracks retread ground. On one level, the mesh of form and content is admirable. But on the other, replicating rumination on the track wears out the listener the way neurosis wears out the mind. They ask “I just wanna figure out why this time wasn’t different,” while repeating themselves across three of four tracks. In the first track Best wants to move forward. Doubtless, Colatura will crush even harder when they do too.