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Photo: Elizabeth Miranda

"Why does everybody drive the same car as you do?" It's the first line that The Greeting Committee frontwoman Addie Sartino utters on "Can I Leave Me Too?," and in turn marks the first words of the band's sophomore album, Dandelion - a raw, heartbreaking, and at times beautiful portrayal of life post-breakup.

Dandelion marks a noted departure from The Greeting Committee's lauded 2018 debut album, This Is It. It's a maturation spurred on not just by Sarino's ensuing grief following a devastating breakup but the band's shift from jangly indie chamber pop to nostalgic indie rock that calls to mind everything from cult icons to '90s trendsetters. The marked evolution pays off in spades, allowing the Kansas City-based band to explore a newfound level of emotional depth against an array of intoxicating, fuzzed-out soundscapes.

"Most of these songs are about feeling like you're watching your life instead of living it: just going through the motions and feeling stuck and wanting to break out of that, but not really knowing how," shares Sartino on the emotional undercurrent that drives Dandelion. It's a dissociation from oneself that reverberates especially true in tracks like "Float Away," where the repetition of the line "My life don't feel like mine these days, I find, these days" speaks to the outer body feeling of watching your own life pass you by.

And while songs like "Bird Hall" and the aforementioned "Can I Leave Me Too?" - with its lyrics that border on self-destructive escapism - find Sartino's heartbreak freshly inflicted, Dandelion, much like life, cannot help but move forward. "I wanted the record to really show the healing process, starting at a place of desperation and eventually getting to the point of being willing to accept reality," shares Sartino. This sense of healing first rears its head on "Make Out," a dynamic, driving track whose lighthearted nature is nothing short of cathartic.

As Dandelion's ten-tracks run their course, The Greeting Committee present love and heartbreak as a process that defines and shapes us. We will undoubtedly all go through our fair share of breakups, seek out closure where there is none, and so forth, but what Dandelion aims to impart is not some magical one size fits all answer to having your heart broken.  

Dandelion is a collective piece of solace, one that lets you know there is comfort to be found in when and how you choose to move on. As Sarinto eloquently puts it, "Dandelions are weeds, but depending on your perspective, you can shrug them off or you can choose to see them as a sort of beautiful flower, similarly to how we have the choice in what we see in ourselves."

Listen to Dandelion below: