• News

• All

Feb 05, 2024 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Tracey Conoboy

Sick Day is a Chicago-based indie rock outfit, led by singer/songwriter Olivia Wallace. Wallace debuted the project with a pair of EPs in 2020 and 2021, followed by their 2022 album, Love is a State of Mind. The band has grown to include guitarist Ryan Donlin, bassist Kaity Szymborski, and cellist Chaepter, filling out their sound with infectious indie hooks to match Wallace’s plaintive songwriting.

Today, they’re back with news of another EP, Overexposure, out March 14th via Substitute Scene Records. Accompanying the news, they’re also sharing the record’s title track, premiering early with Under the Radar.

“Overexposure” evokes the band’s talent for grunge aesthetics and wiry melodies, shading Wallace’s vocals in layers of gnarled guitars and crashing percussion. The band crafts a swirling vortex of distortion, steadily growing more chaotic as the song winds onward. Yet they also weave in an impressively catchy undercurrent with a sticky chorus and sweet pop harmonies, letting the jagged guitars swirl as the melodies burrow their way into your head.

Kaity Szymborski says of the track, “‘Overexposure’ is my favorite song from the EP. It sonically evokes feelings of anguish, turmoil, self-doubt. A reclusive state where everything feels bigger than usual and you begin to doubt your perception of the world around. Is everything out to get me? Probably not. But in a death by a thousand cuts, you begin to pin yourself as the common denominator—and thus amorphously the cause of—your daily struggles.

‘Don’t make me laugh cause I’m feeling like a joke would turn me onto my head.’ There’s nothing lyrically indicating a hurtful or mean joke. It makes me think of the state of mind when ordinary daily occurrences and minor inconveniences can topple you over because of your own inner turmoil. A sort of breaking point that sends you spiraling inwards, doubting yourself and your perception of reality.”

She continues, saying of the video, “It’s entirely about tomatoes, yes, but it’s also not about tomatoes. When Olivia (Sick Day Leader, Songwriter, Vocals, Guitar) and I sat down to talk about the video, we kept coming back to the notion of an internal struggle. The protagonist is plagued by some external inconvenience time after time. However, her true albatross is her inability to send the food back and ask for it to be remade.

The video follows our protagonist as she orders a sandwich without tomatoes on it. It comes with tomatoes, and she contemplates sending it back to ask for it to be remade, but settles for peeling them off and eating the sandwich as is. Mistakes happen, and it’s not that big of a deal anyway.

The second time we watch her reach a breaking point - mistakes happen, yes, but does that mean she shouldn’t send it back and ask for it to be made the way she likes? She questions why she can’t work up the courage to send it back. What should be an uncomplicated ask builds into a mountain of internal struggle. How often do we tell our friends they deserve better, but then get stuck when it comes to advocating for ourselves?

She finds resolution after working up the courage and writing a script for herself for the next time it happens. We watch as the request is happily received, and the sandwich is remade without conflict. Our protagonist was finally able to rise up and conquer her inner qualms about sending an order back.”

Check out the song and video below. The Overexposure EP is out March 14th via Substitute Scene Records.