Charlotte couple’s indie rock band, Alright, has new album out in the midst of COVID

Nearly six months in, the novel coronavirus pandemic has forced many to reconsider their careers, their means of income and what they value most.

But for Sarah Blumenthal and her husband Josh Robbins, who head up the Charlotte indie rock outfit Alright and own and operate Self Aware Records, those questions lingered long before COVID-19 made them hard to ignore.

In fact themes of inner conflict, longing for change, the comfort of habit and inevitable transition color Alright’s new album, “I’m Doing This To Myself” (out Friday digitally and on vinyl). Recorded in 2018, the album chronicles the lead up to both leaving longtime corporate jobs to pursue music full time.

When his approved time-off fell through, Robbins left a contract job with a large financial investment firm in order to tour behind his other band Late Bloomer’s third album. That led Blumenthal to reconsider her own work situation.

“It was almost like a crossroads for me,” says Blumenthal, who’d worked in medical research for years. “From where I was standing it felt like there wasn’t any where I could go. I hated my job. I was going nowhere. There’s not a lot of movement. (I thought), ‘If you’re ever going to try to take music any amount of seriously, now’s the time to do it.’ ”

By late 2018 they’d both left the corporate world to juggle touring with retail, teaching art and IT work (for her) and bartending and running sound at small venues like the Milestone and Petra’s (for him).

On “I’m Doing This To Myself,” the inevitable change is palatable. On the track “Back Bench” she sings, “And I don’t want anything to change/But I’ll die if everything stays the same… It’s just the stupid things that keep me up at night/While I watch myself become a person I don’t really like.”

For Blumenthal, who tends to agonize over such decisions, it didn’t come easy. “Hang Around” finds her inching toward a resolution with “I’ll split my time between where I want to be and What I want to leave behind/And I’ll split my mind between the things I care about and the things that hold me back.”

“There’s actually a few songs on the record that speak to that end of us working in those jobs, torn between the life you’re living and the life you want to live. We both felt like we were spinning our wheels and not going anywhere. That in itself is a lot of what the record is about,” she explains, noting that it isn’t just about work or career. “A lot of the songs are about dealing with the things in your past, so you can move on.”

Getting a push

Writing the record ultimately aided in her decision to move toward pursuing music more seriously.

“I always feel this need to have this reassurance. I had to work out everything that was going on in my head before I can move forward with anything,” she says. “I wonder if I hadn’t written this record, if I would have quit my job.”

Founded in 2014 when she was 27 as Blumenthal’s first band, Alright, in itself, was about creating the life she desired after years on the sidelines.

“I spent years watching boys play in bands,” says Blumenthal who grew up in Charlotte’s indie, hardcore and metalcore scenes where there were few females on stage. “I felt like I was waiting for someone to give me permission.”

Robbins was the push she needed.

“Josh pushed me into it I think because I’d been whining about wanting to be in a band for a really long time,” says Blumenthal, who picked up a free guitar online and began teaching herself to play “easy punk songs and built off of that. That’s how I’ve learned every trick on guitar.”

As a relatively shy person, performing didn’t come easy. She didn’t eat 24 hours before her first show, but has since logged tours with both Alright and her other band Faye.

While Alright’s sound is indirectly informed by her indie and punk influences (she mentions Get Up Kids and the Anniversary as favorites), her vocals and the ever-present layer of fuzz and distortion make it more comparable to female-fronted bands like the Breeders or Bully with splashes of Jesus and Mary Chain and riot grrrl.

“I can almost settle into it a little more,” she says of the comfort the fuzz and distortion create. “I don’t have to be on top of it, I can feel more a part of it.”