With their four-song EP Aggrocrag ( July ‘24), Quality Living continue evolving into what their ongoing series of singles had long suggested: a band that reliably delivers transportive and relistenable indie rock songs that are full of idiosyncrasies.

Hailing from north Jersey, QL is a collective that has rotated since 2015 around songwriter Darrel Norrell’s mercurial, distinctive storytelling and the hooky, jazz-inflected guitar playing of Albert Chua.

There was little, if any, original intent behind the selection of Quality Living’s name, but as time went by, and things became increasingly chaotic on an increasingly grand scale, it took on a funny little defiance. Their songs, set in lonely suburbs, vacuous getaway spots, and blurry dive bars, often seem to fight doggedly for some kind of comfort amidst the threat of repetitive gloom.

And no, there’s no reason the release was called Aggrocrag short of a vague fragment of memory, in which contestants on GUTS “take home a piece of the crag” as a trophy, having a strange, figurative importance in the EP’s leado title track. It contrasts heavily with “The Great Kabash,” the other new, non-album track in the mix, which flaunts its 80’s gated snare and chorused-out Cocteau Twins guitars like a peacock.

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