The push and pull of trying to get out of your own way can be challenging. It’s as if there’s a doppelganger of each of us, a slightly distorted, funhouse version of ourselves we judge ourselves by. As Connor Benincasa, better known as Comfy puts it, “It’s about trying to love and accept someone that you really can’t stand, but who you’re stuck with one way or another.” The contradictions of how we interact with ourselves and others are central to Comfy’s new album Volume For.

Comfy was formed in 2013, after Benincasa dropped out of college and moved back to his dad’s house in Utica, NY. “It was a typical Central New York winter and was freezing cold. I was eighteen years old and depressed, and was only working a few hours a week, so I spent a lot of time in bed,” he recalls. “I can vividly remember having the idea to call my band Comfy while I was falling asleep under a pile of comforters one night.” Under various lineups over the next few years, Comfy would become a mainstay at shows throughout western New York. 

As members came and went, sometimes the band would be a duo of just Benincasa on guitar with a drummer, at others a five piece with three guitarists. Eventually Benincasa would move to Philadelphia, then to Rochester, NY - all the while welcoming new members of the band to the fold. The transitions between place and people are reflected in Volume For. While Benincasa’s previous effort Thanks For The Ride was a solo affair, Volume For became Comfy’s most experimental and collaborative record so far, featuring contributions from members of Remember Sports (Father/Daughter), Another Michael (Topshelf/Run For Cover), A Million Dollars, Certain Self and more.

Recorded with Scoops Dardaris (Prince Daddy and the Hyena, Diva Sweetly) at the Headroom in Philadelphia, Volume For became so collaborative by necessity. “I was suffering from carpal tunnel and tendonitis during some of the recording sessions for this record, and called in a bunch of friends to play parts that I would typically have played by myself, acting as a producer during these sessions,” Benincasa says. “I tried to let go of the reins more than I’m usually inclined to, and that made for some really interesting contributions from other people, and a finished product that I wouldn’t have gotten by myself.”

The record opens with the brief, sparse “B Fun Demo” - a drum machine, with Benincasa deftly soloing over top. It’s an apt introduction to the way Comfy works, a band who once set a guitar on fire at a DIY show in a park. “Someone told me after a show in Buffalo that I shouldn’t play guitar solos behind my head anymore because it made me look like an asshole,” Benincasa recalls. That idea of grand gestures in small, unassuming spaces permeates Volume For from the dual guitar solo that leads into a string arrangement on “Should I Try” to the brief and autotuned “Destined.” The lyrics of album closer “Safehouse Monument Committee” are filled with these contradictions, sung by a narrator who is certain things are not what they seem, but does everything in his power to stop himself from revealing it.

In one sense, the record sounds like what you’d expect a Comfy record to sound like - sharp, witty power pop songs with earnest stadium rock heroics and studio pop productions that call to mind They Might Be Giants, Harry Nilsson, Fountains of Wayne and Weezer.  On the other, the textures are new, the viewpoints changed - the benefit of letting others look at the doppelganger you’ve created.