Little Chair - Ladybug Cat (2025)
Artist: Little Chair
Author: Sarah
Date: 07/17/2025
Listen: Bandcamp
I've been meaning to write about this one for a while now, mostly because "Commercial Plane Combat" is probably my song of the year so far. With a song that good, it's unfortunately not a surprise that the rest of the album can't quite live up to that mark, but there's still a lot of promise here.
For the most part, Ladybug Cat is a fairly conventional twee pop album; sometimes they play faster, sometimes they play slower, but it's all very sweet and pleasant, almost but not quite jangly, and unfortunately washes right off of me. As is often the case, it's the moments where they add some new element (like the noisy breakdown at the end of "Summer Wow" or the organ on "Say Goodbye For Now") that really get me to perk my ears up. Albums like this live or die based on the songwriting, and while Little Chair aren't making any huge mistakes on that front, on most of these songs they're not pulling off any huge coups either. But then we get to the song that keeps me coming back to this band every day: "Commercial Plane Combat".
This one's gotta have one of the cutest concepts I've heard in all of indiepop, comparing a desire to see the world with the idea of a fight between airliners. Of course, cuteness and whimsy can easily backfire if the song can't hold up, but luckily this one's so well-done that somehow the whole song is built out of nothing but hooks. The first one that'll hit you is the one where she repeatedly sings about all the places that are calling her, but it'll soon be followed in your brain by the verse melody (and in particular for me, it was the lines "she said that I was dumb and full of crap / that I'd wind up dead in commercial plane combat"). Eventually, you'll be sucked in enough that the guitar riff, or maybe even the drum roll toward the start of the song, becomes your next earworm. There are indiepop bands who've been out there for years, bands I love, even, who've never been able to write a song as good as this, and Little Chair had it ready to go from day one! Look, I know all this might sound hyperbolic, but for a truly great song, hyperbole is the only rational response.