Pennwood Rd. might be based in Leipzig, but their music sounds like it belongs to long-forgotten side streets in Midwestern suburbs—places where the air feels heavy and silence lasts too long. Their new EP I Won’t a Friend opens like an old journal dug out of a drawer: raw handwriting, torn pages, thoughts left half-finished. It doesn’t follow a clean emotional arc. Instead, it documents what happens when growing up means piecing together your own instructions, often without anyone to guide you.
It’s a record built on real experiences—unvarnished, uncomfortable, and sometimes hard to talk about—but it doesn’t beg for pity. It’s about pushing forward, even when you’re not sure what you’re walking into.
The phrase “I Won’t a Friend” first showed up by accident in the rehearsal room. “I immediately wrote the phrase down because something about it moved me deeply,” the band writes. “Back then, I didn’t fully understand why. Now, in the context of the EP, it feels more than fitting.”
That puzzle—longing clashing with refusal—sits at the heart of everything on this record. Wanting support and closeness, but knowing when you need to walk away. The tension between need and autonomy.
Photos in this article courtesy of Reingebltizt, Dave, Raphael, and Valerian.
What the EP tries to unpack—without resolving—is the experience of growing up in unstable or unconventional family settings. Being forced to stand on your own early. Making mistakes. Breaking off from toxic bonds. Figuring things out not because someone taught you, but because you had to. An honest look at the internal reckoning that happens when the people who were supposed to protect you couldn’t—or wouldn’t.
“Much of what shapes us starts in childhood,” the band notes. And that theme cuts deepest in the track May ’95. The title points to an old Polaroid—parents with a child, the postcard version of a “normal” family.
But for the person writing the song, that picture was never a memory. Just a stand-in for a longing that never matched reality. The gap between what should have been and what actually was.
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June Bugs pulls inspiration from Alice in Wonderland.
“Like Alice, I didn’t understand much—the rules, the judgments, the punishments. I didn’t know who I was supposed to be, but I felt early on that I didn’t fit the image others tried to impose on me.”
The song deals with self-definition in the face of pressure and shame, and the line “Hold out for June” becomes a kind of whispered survival instinct. “Tomorrow will be better. Or at least: hopefully.”
Even the artwork is personal. The cover shows two children holding hands—one of them is the band member behind the lyrics. “This image, the title, and the songs all reflect the same tension between vulnerability and strength, longing and self-empowerment.”
The process of making the record mirrored its themes. At the start of the year, one member was unable to play due to overuse injuries. “I couldn’t hold my pick anymore,” they explain. “I was no longer able to record my parts.”
To finish the EP, guitarist Figui had to learn and record those parts instead. The tight schedule, the physical limitation, the emotional stakes—it all filtered into the music. “It was a nerve-wracking ordeal, but as a band we pushed through and are very proud of what we achieved.”
I Won’t a Friend sits in the tension. Between wishing and reality. Between what was promised and what was lived. Between needing someone and knowing when to walk away.
It’s a summer record in the way late summer feels—warm, but with a sting. Quiet moments of clarity scattered between a little chaos.
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