On fifth album YOU COULD'VE JUST SAID THAT, New York indie pop doyen Scott Klass, aka The Davenports, finds broad resonance through the thoughtful exploration of situations esoteric yet common to all. Coming from NYC bred / LA based indie label Mother West in January, the self-produced YOU COULD'VE JUST SAID THAT is true to its title in both sentiment and execution, making it the most heartfelt expression of a 25-year journey already characterized by frank, poignant insight. “I guess, ultimately, it’s about how normal it is to be evasive,” says singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Klass, the sole constant at the heart of the rotating Davenports collective. Participants have included Danny Weinkauf, Dan Miller (They Might Be Giants), Claudia Chopek (Father John Misty, Bright Eyes), Eleanor Norton (Beyoncé, Adele, Natalie Merchant), Tommy Borscheid (Honeydogs, Rhett Miller), Erik Philbrook, Rob Draghi, and Cheri Leone. Formed in 2000, The Davenports is well-known for “Five Steps,” the theme song for A&E’s long-running, Emmy-nominated series Intervention. Earning consistent critical acclaim for catchy yet nuanced songcraft and smart, narrative lyricism, Klass’ music has drawn comparisons to Weezer, Ben Folds, and Fountains of Wayne (Klass also plays alongside FoW frontman Chris Collingwood in Look Park). AllMusic praised The Davenports as “[offering] some of the most lyrically and musically rich modern guitar-pop.” YOU COULD'VE JUST SAID THAT is the first Davenports album self-recorded at home with Klass handling nearly every part. The result is charmingly unfiltered, moment-in-time expressions without third-party interpretations or expectations. Learning recording software as he went, Klass captured musical and lyrical notions right as they coalesced in his mind, free of the scheduled time constraints of commercial studios. “I really had tremendous freedom to just do whatever I wanted,” Klass says. While the songs aren’t always directly autobiographical, YOU COULD'VE JUST SAID THAT is the most intimate Davenports album to date, a record that embroiders a time-honored pop template tracing back to The Beatles, Jackson Browne, and Crowded House, heavy on melody and harmony, with layers of perception and reflection that peel back over several listens. Beneath the surface-level immediacy of ostensibly simple songwriting is a cultured emotional and musical intricacy that lends YOU COULD'VE JUST SAID THAT rare depth and longevity. Add in its uniquely homespun production, and you’re left with a delightful anomaly in an era of multi-writer, multi-producer, pristine pop. Taking micro, often uncomfortable everyday social situations as both indicative of life-shaping emotions and windows into the human condition, YOU COULD'VE JUST SAID THAT kicks off with the immensely groovy “When Everything’s Over,” its burbling bass and wistful melodicism flitting between nostalgic picture painting and dancy pop. The song asks how blunt you can be with an aging, narcissistic family member who had chances to “do better” but never really did. It sets off an overriding theme of the record about how indirect and evasive we all are with each other so much of the time. “The Annabellas of the World” is the only track on the album recorded in a studio with other players and co-produced by long time collaborator Charles Newman (Magnetic Fields, Bones of J.R. Jones). It includes They Might Be Giants bassist Danny Weinkauf and Klass’ bandmates in Look Park – Chris Collingwood (Fountains of Wayne) and Philip Price (Winterpills) – on backing vocals. The off-kilter pop song delves into the difference between people who let little things get to them and “the Annabellas,” who can turn the ridiculousness in the world into their own fun. A companion song to the album’s title cut, “I Am Lying,” is the inner monologue of a man who skirts the truth with his partner when he really doesn’t have to. “You inevitably end up stumbling all over yourself which ends up making things way heavier than they had to be,” says Klass. The string-soaked tune features cellist Eleanor Norton and violinist Claudia Chopek, who has written string parts with Klass on all of The Davenports records. “If You Put Me Next to Pati” revisits that cringing sensation of being seated next to the last person you’d choose at an event, the one who always just has a knack for making you feel bad. Fearing a ruined night, filled with rumination, the narrator imagines just being direct with the host to avoid the heartache. Like many of Klass’ songs, the dread is accompanied by fun with words, including a triple-entendre: “Ken burns toasts that meander….” Intimate personal dynamics once again meet groove in “We’re Talking About You,” which Klass describes as “taking the zen high ground” when you can. You offer a friend advice to merely take bad situations in stride, but when you’re the one ailing, you flip out. The song is one of many that features Klass’ son Matthew on lead guitar. The nostalgic waltz “Full-length Mirror” came from an exchange with Klass’ daughter. She was hanging a full-length mirror in her room, and when she did it, she realized that she had hung it too low, so she couldn’t see all of herself. To Klass, the metaphor was glaring. “I know people who have behaved badly a lot, but with time, selective memory, or just being evasive, have managed to gloss over it. One such person was particularly adept at it, and part of me wanted them to be held accountable. They hurt people.” Centered upon Klass’s finely grained timbre, the titular “You Could've Just Said That” is lyrically a mirror-song to “I Am Lying.” It’s the other half of the couple just saying, “it was silly for you to lie about something minor like this, but now that you have, and gotten all weird about it, I’m more suspicious than I should have been.” Reflecting on the universal pain of the past several years – from Covid to Trump – the narrator exclaims, “there are already a million reasons to worry / in a time that keeps deleting beauty left and right…and you just added more tonight for no good reason.” The first song that Klass tried recording by himself, and an experiment in start-to-finish three-part harmony, “I’m Not Gonna Bother You” is sung from the perspective of a neglected spouse, married to a narcissist. “It’s always particularly painful to see the ignored make up excuses for their partner, but you see it all the time. You dream about them being stronger,” says Klass. That role seemed a perfect fit for actor Rebecca Creskoff (Mad Men, Hung), Klass’ friend from college, who happily agreed to play the role in the song’s video. The song and video were released as a single in 2021. Consistent with Klass’ tendency to examine what’s not often examined in pop songs, “When I Tell You That I’m Sorry” is ultimately about how badly people can communicate, told through the particular lens of expressing condolences. “What really sparked this song was seeing people use emojis on Facebook to express something so serious. It boggles the mind. Beautiful relationships and lives and pasts being reduced to an internet cartoon: “For all your spotted supermoons / your car filled for our Mays and Junes / the tears of cold little cartoons just can’t be right.” Album closer “We Know We Want To” is a love song that delves deeper into the record’s core theme through the prism of a polyamorous couple with diverging desires. ”It just stopped working for one half of that couple. They loved their primary partner and reached a point where sharing was painful and stopped making sense. It was pretty heartbreaking to hear about how they just put up with it for a while, just fighting their truth.” “This whole project came directly from my brain to my hands, right onto tape,” Klass concludes. “It’s more authentic and cohesive than almost anything I’ve ever done.”