There is something genuinely refreshing about a debut record that resists the temptation toward endless studio perfectionism, and With Pulp commits fully to that resistance through its live full-take recording approach. Honey VHS, the Brooklyn folk-rock outfit built around singer-songwriter Cameron Roberts and guitarist Luca Moneti Schliemann, chose to capture this eight track debut through genuine ensemble performance rather than piecemeal studio construction, and that methodology gives the record a specific kind of honesty appropriate for material explicitly concerned with love, anxiety, and change. Working alongside bassist Jasper Grigsby-Schulte and guitarist Joe Bailey, the band built something that sounds genuinely lived-in rather than assembled, four musicians actually playing together in real time rather than layered separately across isolated takes.
If You Want Me opens the record with genuinely direct emotional vulnerability, a title suggesting conditional offering, someone extending themselves while leaving genuine room for the possibility of rejection or hesitation from whoever the song addresses. That opening choice establishes the record’s willingness to sit inside real uncertainty rather than presenting only resolved, confident emotional statements, appropriate for a band explicitly naming anxiety among their central thematic concerns. Blue Eyes, Sunshine follows with genuinely warm, visually specific imagery, suggesting the kind of concrete, sensory detail that folk songwriting has always excelled at deploying to ground more abstract emotional content within recognizable physical experience.
Jet Lag introduces genuinely interesting metaphorical territory, using that specific, universally recognizable disorientation, the strange feeling of being physically present somewhere while your internal clock remains stubbornly elsewhere, as vehicle for presumably exploring some form of emotional or relational disconnection. That kind of specific, physically grounded metaphor gives the song genuine accessibility even before considering whatever specific narrative content the actual lyrics explore, since jet lag’s particular disorientation carries immediate, widely shared recognition regardless of a listener’s specific circumstances. Never Left the Ground continues that theme of stalled movement or unrealized potential, suggesting something that promised departure or transformation but ultimately remained stubbornly grounded instead.
Cotten Rag introduces genuinely evocative, somewhat unusual imagery, and that particular title choice suggests the band’s comfort reaching toward more idiosyncratic, specifically textured language rather than defaulting purely toward more conventional folk-rock vocabulary throughout the record. November arrives with genuinely atmospheric seasonal specificity, that particular month carrying inherent connotations of transition and encroaching colder weather, fitting naturally within an album explicitly concerned with change as ongoing thematic preoccupation. Building a song around that specific month rather than simply invoking winter or autumn more generally gives the track genuine temporal precision, situating whatever emotional content it explores within a specific, recognizable seasonal moment rather than more generic seasonal imagery.
Childhood pushes the record toward genuinely reflective, backward-looking territory, suggesting examination of formative early experience and how that experience continues shaping present identity and behavior. That kind of retrospective songwriting fits naturally within a debut record specifically, since first releases often benefit from artists working through foundational personal material before moving toward whatever comes next across subsequent projects. Secrets Are for Losers closes the record with genuinely blunt, almost confrontational framing, suggesting some kind of hard-won conviction about honesty and transparency, appropriate closing statement for a record built around live, unguarded performance throughout its entire construction.
What gives With Pulp genuine coherence as a complete artistic statement is understanding how directly its recording methodology reinforces its actual thematic content throughout. An album explicitly concerned with anxiety and change benefits considerably from a recording approach that itself embraces genuine risk and spontaneity rather than allowing every element to be perfected and controlled after the fact through extensive post-production manipulation. That alignment between process and content reflects real artistic intentionality, treating the actual method of creation as meaningful extension of the album’s underlying emotional and thematic concerns rather than existing as separate, purely technical consideration.
Working with producer Lucas Saur specifically to achieve this live, full-take approach required genuine collaborative trust between the band and their production partner, since capturing convincing, cohesive performances in real time demands considerable technical skill from everyone involved simultaneously, unlike more conventional studio construction where individual elements can be recorded separately and corrected extensively afterward if needed. That approach carries genuine risk, since mistakes or imperfect moments become considerably harder to fix after the fact, but it also produces genuine ensemble chemistry and authentic emotional immediacy that more heavily produced, layered recordings sometimes struggle to replicate convincingly.
Drawing from folk, blues, classic rock, and jazz influences simultaneously gives Honey VHS genuine stylistic range to work from throughout this eight track record, and that combination of traditions shares an important common thread worth noting, each of these genres historically values genuine performance and improvisation alongside compositional structure, making them particularly well suited toward the band’s chosen live recording methodology. Jazz specifically has always prized in-the-moment musical decision making, while blues and classic rock traditions similarly carry deep history built around genuine ensemble interplay captured in real time rather than assembled through isolated overdubbing.
Formed in Brooklyn in 2025, Honey VHS arrives at this debut record relatively early within their existence as an actual working band, and that timeline matters for understanding With Pulp’s genuine significance within their broader trajectory. Rather than spending considerable additional years refining material extensively before eventual release, the band apparently chose to document their genuine current creative state directly, capturing wherever they actually stood as musicians and songwriters at this specific early moment rather than waiting for some theoretically more polished future version of themselves to eventually emerge.
That willingness to release genuinely representative early work, rather than waiting for extensive additional development, connects directly back to the album’s stated thematic interest in change and transition more broadly. With Pulp functions as a genuine document of where Honey VHS existed specifically during this particular early period of their collective development, presumably destined to sound different from whatever future work they eventually create as the band continues evolving and maturing together over subsequent years and additional releases.
By committing fully to genuine live performance capture rather than more conventional layered studio construction, and by building eight tracks around genuinely recognizable emotional and thematic territory concerning love, anxiety, and ongoing personal transformation, Honey VHS has created a debut record that succeeds specifically through its evident authenticity and ensemble chemistry. With Pulp offers listeners genuine access to four musicians working together in real time, capturing something considerably harder to fake than more heavily produced alternatives might achieve, the actual sound of a band finding their collective voice together in the specific room where they happened to be standing, uncertainty and all.
