Albums of the year can be a fickle thing. Sometimes, you think you’ve got your top five down for the year, and then a random band from some far-flung town you’ve never heard of comes and steals third place. Springfield, Missouri’s Pomfret have done just that with their debut album You’ll Be Back When Things Fall Apart. Released on November 25, 2024, and clocking in at just under half an hour, You’ll Be Back is like the quintessential Midwest emo album, with melancholic vocals and twinkly guitars infused with just a little extra math rock.
The album kicks off with an instrumental piano track. The first few notes are almost exactly the same as the piano intro on Combat’s album Stay Golden, but it quickly evolves into the church hymn equivalent of The Hotelier (apparently, Pomfret got the masters back for the album the same day Stay Golden released. They also opened for Combat this past October). The next song, “You Ganked My Spirit Walker”, follows the Midwest emo tradition of naming songs something ridiculous and unrelated to the actual song. Title aside, it would be hard to have a stronger start to an album, with screamy, melancholy vocals and shifty time signatures. The lyricism on the song also stands out, with heartfelt, anxious lines like “What if they never text back, / I am not something they lack?”