Courtesy Trouble’s Braids
Audio By Carbonatix
Trouble’s Braids is officially a full-blown band.
The Boulder indie-folk act first started as a duo between couple Emily Pennington and Oliver Franklin back in 2024, resulting in its debut EP, “The Big Tourist,” last summer. But while working on the follow-up release, “Tarantula,” which released independently on June 5, the two brought in local musicians Ryan O’Malley and Jordan Smith to round out the sound, before the drummer and bassist stayed on full-time.
“Each of them came into the picture as we were making the album, and we weren’t really sure if they were going to end up being band members,” Franklin explains. “So the record represents us getting a few new people, some more personnel into our orbit.”
The four songs that comprise “Tarantula” are Pennington and Franklin originals, but they explain the vision had always been to bring them to life with like-minded artists. The aggro cowpunk opener “Lion’s Mouth,” penned by Pennington, features violinist Maddie McCoy.
“I really wrote it with a full band, like a Gogol Bordello, folk-punk style with fiddle and accordion, in mind,” she says. “There are moments on this EP where I feel like the songs that we’ve been writing for years now are getting fully realized.”
At just over sixteen minutes, “Tarantula” — the title a nod to Bob Dylan’s obscure 1971 poetry collection — encapsulates Trouble’s Braids’ penchant for frenetic, folk-driven, witchy cowboy country, as Pennington and Franklin take turns showing off their respective chops, together and separate.
“It’s kind of this beautiful Frankenstein of four different genres that we like to play in a lot,” Pennington shares. “Throughout the course of listening to the EP you can really hear how we’re evolving and how we are adding new players who are strengthening our sound.”
Franklin points to his retro indie-rock entry, “Drug of Choice,” which closes the album, as the track that’s the most indicative of the newfound direction and how “we are stretching out sonically,” as he puts it.
Courtesy Trouble’s Braids
“It all hangs together. What’s starting to happen with the band and what people can expect is something like the sound you can hear on ‘Drug of Choice,’” Franklin adds. “It’s a rock band. It’s a big sound.”
But that’s always been in the Trouble’s Braids DNA. “We started off as a duo and just by the nature of a duo with two guitars and voices it looks like a folk act, but we were always a little bit too rowdy and too much of a rock and roll thing to fit that container,” he continues. “It was good, and we enjoy it, but in some ways, we’ve always been writing in a way that wants a fuller sound, wants something that really gets in the chest.”
The group is playing an album-release show on Sat., June 13, at Boulder’s Roots Music Project. Emily Barnes and Cat Plants are providing local support. Trouble’s Braids is pressing “Tarantula” and “The Big Tourist” on vinyl for it, too.
While the sound is beefing up, Pennington and Franklin are tackling familiar topics lyrically.
“We’re talking about a lot of the same themes — addiction, watching America slide into fascism, the influx of AI. How does it feel to have the world turned upside down on a six-month basis and floundering as an elder millennial and not quite sure where you’re going to find gravity?” Pennington explains. “I feel like if you looked at the lyrics to our songs, you’d be like, ‘These guys are so dark, do they sleep at night?’ Then if you saw us on stage, you’d be surprised that we laugh a lot.”
“We’re dorks,” Franklin quips.
“Yeah, we talk about really dark stuff in a way that’s totally danceable and rocks. I think melancholy for melancholy’s sake isn’t very interesting, but if you have a sense of humor, it can really pull people in,” Pennington concludes. “It can create these shared cathartic experiences where you can be really rowdy.”
Trouble’s Braids, with Emily Barnes and Cat Plants, 7 p.m. Saturday, June 13, Roots Music Project, 4747 Pearl St., Suite V3A, Boulder. Tickets are $23.
