School Dance

Philadelphia-based duo Sam Tremble and Allison Lorenzen sent me this riveting single the other day. At first, I thought they shot this in my (not so secret) favorite spot in my neck of the woods, but it makes sense that they chose to shoot it with director Deborah Venegas while they were on tour in California. ”Sweet beats, dreamy synths, big bass, slow dance & tru luv” seems like a good mantra for any band. See more coming soon from these two. - YVYNYL

I don’t know about your student council but the DJs at my middle school never tapped into tracks quite as atmospheric as this new song by the Philadelphian duo School Dance. On “Slow Motion”, Sam Tremble and Allison Lorenzen layer smoky smooth vocals and spooky vibraphone melodies over a steady, jangly drum beat. True to its name, the tension between frantic percussion and eerie singing makes you feel like you’re trying to sprint but a cloud of atmospheric pressure keeps suspends your movement in dark, thick air.

The song is partly about the School Dance origin story. Sam and Allison met in a serendipitous art store encounter on the predicted apocalypse of December 21, 2012—an eerie date to start a band.

As Sam explained to me,”Slow Motion” also explores another unsettling encounter had by the band.

“[W]e saw an old woman knocked over with a bloody nose and tried to help but her friends didn’t think anything was the matter besides her embarrassing appearance.”

Both signs of the end times, one in the abstract and the other on the sidewalk, lend an oxblood shade of context to the ethereal track. The closely mic’d cymbals could represent the anxiety of living in a time when these types of floating, foreboding interactions shed a dark light on the unsavory future we may already be living in.

Stream the debut of “Slow Motion” below. You can check out more of the duo’s spooky sweet tracks on the School Dance Bandcamp. - Impose Magazine

There have been a lot of guitars coming out of Philly in the past month, all deservedly getting recognition. So it’s nice, every now and again, to not have to type the word “distortion” within a few sentences of the word “Philadephia”, and School Dance gives us (me) the reprieve so desperately needed. “Never Is A Long Time and So Is Forever” simmers in a darkwave space that is both haunting and alluring. Allison Lorenzen’s airy tone primarily floats above synthesizers, a vibraphone, and most distinctively, a perfectly loose snare drum/hi-hat rhythm. Eschewing the all-too-common electro-pop drum clicks, Sam Tremble’s snare rattles and shakes, setting the flowing tone of the track. School Dance does dream pop the right way—never forcing the dreaminess, instead letting the instrumentation and lyrics play their part in constructing the vibe.

“Never Is A Long Time and So Is Forever” is available to stream below. You can check out more of the duo’s songs on their bandcamp. - Niccolo Porcello

If there's anyone who's going to write accurate songs about how fucked up and weird love can get, it's going to be a duo with a name that gets right to the heart of where many people found the first trembling brushes of romance: School Dance. For the past few years, the duo have been playing songs blending electronic and indie to create poignant and moody tracks that latch into your brain. Now they're set to deliver a whole album's worth of music with their debut self-titled, and boy are you going to feel some shit!

There's no better way to get acquainted with these confusing feelings than by watching their new video for the song "Field." It's all about how terrifying it can be to develop an intensely close bond with another person—and how quickly ideas of love and niceness can quickly spring to you thinking about dying or your partner dying. It opens with a woman and a man lying around in bed, enjoying each other, and then it transitions to the woman suffocating the man with a pillow out of nowhere (very relatable). She then runs away into the woods, getting her arm cut on a branch, and bathing in the ensuing flow of blood (also pretty relatable). The music shows a capable blend of luscious electronics that create a huge sound, twisting itself from a sense of beauty to feelings of dread. Dread and love are personified in the video, when the woman finally arrives at a beach, burying herself and emotions into the damp, pale sand.

The band's self-titled debut is coming soon, and they're heading on tour with Memory Tapes next month. - Noisey Vice