The Philadelphia outfit 2nd Grade weaves hook-driven indie pop, brisk power pop, and understated indie rock ballads into compact tracks whose spirit evokes Guided by Voices tackling the Teenage Fanclub catalog. Frontman Peter Gill lends the material an artless, buoyant charm, and the band’s full-lengths—debut Hit to Hit from 2020, its 2022 successor Easy Listening, and the 2024 multi-fidelity collection Scheduled Explosions—unfurl with an airy sweetness reminiscent of lemonade.
In its initial form the project consisted solely of Gill, who composed every song and performed every instrument. His first release under the 2nd Grade name was the 14-track cassette Wish You Were Here Tour, issued in 2018 by Philadelphia’s Sleeper Records; those brief, melodic pieces merged the concision of GBV with the melodic punch of Big Star. Before launching the group, Gill had performed with Friendship and Free Cake for Every Creature. When he sought additional members he recruited former Friendship colleague Jon Samuels on guitar, then added Remember Sports guitarists Catherine Dwyer and bassist Jack Washburn through Philadelphia ties, completing the lineup with drummer Will Kennedy. This configuration cut the slightly polished 2020 album Hit to Hit, which appeared in May on Brooklyn’s Double Double Whammy imprint and refined the approach first heard on the cassette. The same musicians later revisited eight selections from Wish You Were Here Tour, recasting them in full power-pop style; those versions, together with the original solo recordings and a previously unheard outtake, surfaced in 2021 as Wish You Were Here Tour Revisited. A second proper album, Easy Listening, followed in 2022, delivering sixteen concise, sunlit rockers rather than the twenty-plus tracks typical of earlier 2nd Grade sets. Gill returned in 2024 with Scheduled Explosions, another cache of short power-pop numbers captured across contrasting fidelities that range from Guided by Voices-style four-track lo-fi to the loose, shambling sonics associated with Flying Nun recordings.
