The Greeting Committee Returns with Vibrant Alt-Pop Album
The Kansas City-based indie pop-rock band is set to release their third studio album, 'Everyone’s Gone and I Know I’m The Cause'—an ode to creative maturity that will make you want to dance
The Greeting Committee’s third studio album, Everyone’s Gone and I Know I’m The Cause, out on Friday, June 21, is a rhythmic, vibrant collection of alternative pop-rock tunes that untangles the past version of the band. It’s an upbeat, summery album that fits the changing of seasons—one that sees the band members in a new stage of their careers.
After a slight lineup change, founding members Addie Sartino and Pierce Turcotte have taken the foundation they’ve built over the past 10 years and run with a creative approach to makes songs that feel good.
At the start of every season, I find my musical tastes and playlist lineups tend to shift. With more sunshine surrounding my days, I yearn for feel good music—I throw more pop artists into my daily listens.
The Greeting Committee is at the top of that list. And they’re not pop stars like Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish or Ariana Grande. Those artists are thrown into the general category of pop because of their reach and overall appeal. Their music is easy to listen to, it’s catchy and it’s what you hear across social media platforms. The Greeting Committee isn’t that kind of pop, and that’s for the better.
The beauty of bands like The Greeting Committee is their ability to reach the right audience. Their songs, with intricate lyricism and a full-band sound, hit the right listeners when they need it the most. It’s all about timing and circumstance. And right now, for where I am emotionally and circumstantially, Everyone’s Gone and I Know I’m The Cause feels as though it was made just for me.
The album sounds like a delicious mixture of indie pop-rock and alternative artists of this age, including Hippo Campus, Charli XCX, The 1975, COIN, Peach Pit and Bad Suns—as well as renowned groups of the 2000s alt-pop scene such as Matt and Kim, Grouplove and Young the Giant.
Songs like Cyclical and Sex and Taxes recall The 1975’s 2013 self-titled album and their 2016 album i like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it—namely the song Chocolate, tapping into a more electro-pop rock vibe and still relying on instrumentation to lead the songs.
Everyone’s Gone and I Know I’m The Cause notes the band’s evolution, combining the experience and moods of albums This Is It and Dandelion. Sartino and Turcotte lived together when they wrote the album, which was produced by Turcotte and Josef Kuhn. In the album’s bio, Sartino notes the creative drought she was in before working on the album. The band had parted ways with their longtime manager and were navigating the roads of adulthood, personal grief and breakups. Instead of stepping away from the music, Sartino and Turcotte decided to approach it in a new way, with the creative freedom to write with vulnerability yet turn it into poppy tunes meant for dancing.
The album kicks off with Cyclical, a song about the cycle of bad habits, and concludes with Don’t Talk, which sets the boundaries necessary for growth. It’s a mature and honest take on learning how to grow up and be the person you want to be. As a 25-year-old who questions every aspect of my life, it’s a reassuring soundtrack for my day-to-day.
Joining the band’s lineup are longtime member Noah Spencer and newcomer Micah Ritchie. The band also collaborated with flipturn’s Dillon Basse on Where’d All My Friends Go? and COIN’s Chase Lawrence with songwriting on Little Bit More and How It Goes.
Sometimes, it’s hard to see artists change. I’ve felt embittered and haven’t been open to the shift in sound. I struggled when listening to new music from bands like Hippo Campus, who were the background music to my high school and early college years. But I’ve grown less critical because I’m also maturing in my tastes. In the case of The Greeting Committee, this change excites me. It’s not a complete flip from what they were doing before—it’s more developed and confident.
I remember the first time I heard the band’s song Sort of a Stranger in 2022. I was living in Boston, nearly 1,000 miles away from my family and closest friends in Chicago and was walking alone along the Charles River. I don’t know the true meaning behind the lyrics, and I don’t need to—I related the song to missing my people, to feeling alone and confused, to wanting to find my place. Although I’m not in Boston anymore, and I’m constantly surrounded by my loved ones, and know I’m where I should be, I still listen to the song daily. It resonates in a new way, as a reminder of how far I’ve come.
And all of the distance I thought I missed it / Don’t wanna feel it, don’t wanna feel / And it just gets harder, swear I feel smaller / Just wanna feel you, just wanna
Everyone’s Gone and I Know I’m The Cause is still quite fresh to me, and I’m searching for a song that could potentially have that same emotional impact as Sort of a Stranger. But again, it’s all about timing and circumstance, and that song will find me when I’m in need of it. (But How It Goes is in the running, too.)
The Greeting Committee head out on a summer headline tour on July 9 with support from TOLEDO, with a stop in Chicago at Bottom Lounge on July 24. Keep up with the band here.
Start with The Greeting Committee’s song How It Goes, and you might want to get up and dance.
Pay attention to the layers of the song. It’s an upbeat pop tune, but it has body with a full band of instruments. Pop doesn’t have to be driven by synth and beats—it can be both instrumentally intricate and catchy as hell, too!
Kendall Polidori is The Rockhound, Luckbox’s resident rock critic. Follow her reviews on Instagram and X @rockhoundlb, TikTok @rockhoundkp
