Pretty Bitter – Pleaser | Album Review

/

Tiny Engines

Washington D.C. is covered in monuments and artifacts — libraries dedicated to preservation, tours through important memorials, documentaries that weave the past together, and constant conversations about what D.C. used to be like. The whole city is a nostalgic town, drenched in continuous reminders of what stood there once upon a time and what histories remain. I propose it’s time for a new monument in D.C. — a dollhouse.

For Pretty Bitter’s new album, vocalist Mel Bleker and bassist Miri Tyler spent the past year decorating a dollhouse by hand. The final structure depicted on the cover is a colorful two-story home where each room looks lived in: the bed isn’t made, the refrigerator door is swung open (running up the dollhouse’s electricity bill and pissing off the doll roommates, I’m sure), and a bong sits abandoned on the living room table. The dollhouse is also full of smaller details: a real Pretty Bitter poster is pinned to the bedroom wall, a second, tinier dollhouse is tucked away in the attic, there’s a wine glass dropped on the kitchen floor, and the album’s title is scrawled on the bathroom wall: Pleaser.

Pleaser is the sophomore album from D.C.’s hometown heroes, Pretty Bitter, a band that I have had the honor of seeing countless times over the years I’ve lived in the city. If there’s one word I would use to describe them, it’s unflinching. There’s a resiliency to their music and a playful stubbornness to their attitude that I have watched them exude in every space they occupy. Their latest release triumphantly carries that confidence as a dreamy pop album that demands to be dissected – a perfect amalgamation of dance rock, synth-driven disco, bubbly ballads, and spunky emo centered around the clarion call of vocalist Mel Bleker.

“The Coroner's Song” opens the album with bleak table setting and tragic lyricism, like Bleker’s lingering “I didn’t die to prove something, I just thought that there was more.” One track later, the lead single “Thrill Eater” is where the lyric’s unexpected, and at times grotesque, imagery starts to antagonize the otherwise upbeat sound of the band. Against the pluck of a banjo and the thick strum of a bass, Bleker asks the haunting question, “What happens to a body when it’s scared?” followed by a sharp “What is your ailment, is it fixable in kind?” their voice slicing through the short syllables of “kind.” In the chorus, Bleker promises, “I can be your thrill eater / Broken bone baby  / With a splinter for a spine.” This lyricism is the gravitational center of the album, an instrument of its own as Bleker’s voice cuts through the sparkly and rhythmic sounds of the band, creating a texture of its own.

“Thrill Eater” is also where the title of the album comes into play. Bleker offers to be “your thrill, your pleaser” but begs this subject to “take as much as you want / as long as it’s not mine.” Pleaser is a really charged word. There are some sexual connotations and some pathetic connotations, but I think the first inclination is to think of a missing first word — people. A People Pleaser. In Bleker’s lyricism however, the songs deal primarily in the aftermath, leaving the pleaser without people and reconciling that loss. Time forces the pleaser to move forward alone.

From there, the album shifts into the ethereal “Outer Heaven Dude Ranch,” where Bleker proclaims “Time isn’t a fighter, but it will get its way / I’m getting older every word I say” over Jason Hayes’ endlessly emphatic cymbal crashes. From there, the group keeps the energy high, moving into the similarly relentless beat of “Tommy Deluxe Goes Hollywood,” which blends D.C. post-hardcore guitar feedback with the return of former bandmate Zack Be’s banjo.

If any line has stuck with me, it’s the unimpressed way Bleker sings “If it’s a joke, I didn’t get it” on mid-album cut “Cardiac.” The performance of these consistently raw lyrics varies throughout the album, while some songs use Bleker’s kind voice to undercut the menacing lyrics; other songs, like “Cardiac” or the following “I Hope You Do,” have a very direct and conversational tone. This makes the heart-thumping declarations all the more salient, like on “I Hope You Do,” where the lyrics lay out, “They will make from our ruins a monument, a reminder to ourselves that worship does not keep any temple from falling apart.”

Evan Weiss and Simon Small produced the album, and their co-production shines through the entire project, but especially in the back half as the band’s trademark synth bubbles and bursts through the violent yet fantastical “Bodies Under The Rose Garden,” and the unsuspectingly tragic 90s alt-rock track “Letter To Tracy In Her Bed.” 

While the band has rearranged a bit since the creation of this album, the lineup has solidified with Kira Campbell joining on guitar and Ekko Astral’s Liam Hughes on keyboard; their live shows remain a must-see performance. This summer, Pretty Bitter played both the inaugural Liberation Weekend and returned to Faux to obsessed crowds. When I hear songs like “Textbook,” where each part is so clear, all I can think of is the perfect harmony that the band works in live, each member in lockstep with a contagious smile.

Photo by Bailey Payne

The album ends on an extended leitmotif, “Outer Heaven,” which calls back to its twin “Outer Heaven Dude Ranch.” However, instead of using the refrain “Time isn’t a lover in the way it likes to play / I’m getting older every due I pay” like the initial song, “Outer Heaven” finishes the album on “Time isn’t a bandage / If you send it away / I will not abandon myself today.” This final song feels like stepping out of your own darkness and stretching into the sun. 

I’ve spent a lot of time deciding what this album, something so dense and bright, is about and what it means. I’ve thought about the dollhouse on the cover, something crafted with love, care, and time. I thought about Bleker’s exposed lyrics tied to the band’s dancing beat. I thought about how fuck-you-fun their shows are. And this has brought me to deciding that Pretty Bitter wants you to make that unbreakable promise with them: I will not abandon myself today.

Caro Alt (she/her) is from New Orleans, Louisiana, and if she could be anyone in The Simpsons, she would be Milhouse.

Greet Death – Die In Love | Album Review

/

Deathwish Inc.

As an artist, there are seemingly two paths you can go down after your first couple of records: either you shake things up and go in a new direction, or you become more of who you are. When you try something new, you take the risk of falling flat on your face after taking too big of a swing, but you also might connect and break through to an entirely new audience. When you refine yourself, you hazard turning your work into a trite carbon copy of itself, but you also might succeed in adding layers of nuance to your art. Flint, Michigan’s Greet Death opts for the latter on their third album, Die In Love, tinkering with their established gloomgaze sound by folding in new elements and enhancing what was already there.

On their debut, Dixieland, co-lead singers and songwriters Logan Gaval and Harper Boyhtari were making loud and lean songs that alternated between hard-charging alternative rock and dour slowcore. 2019’s masterwork New Hell saw the addition of Jim Versluis on drums and was a focused improvement on Dixieland as the songs were longer, heavier, and most importantly, shreddier. New Low, the rare EP that’s vital to a band’s discography, contains elements that range from Neil Young-esque country (harmonica included!) to speedy, sometimes radio-friendly shoegaze. 

But it’s not just in their sound that Greet Death has changed, in the time since New Hell, they’ve grown from a three-piece to a gang of five adding Jackie Kalmink, who serves a dual roles as bassist and producer, as well as Eric Beck on guitar, resulting in a richer sound and fuller approach to their music. It’s also important to mention that, in the time since their last release, Harper Boyhtari came out as trans, making it impossible not to recognize how both she and the band are growing more comfortable in their skin. And now, Die In Love finds the band deepening their craft, resulting in their most balanced effort and an album that displays all of their talents in equal measure. 

Right out of the gates, Greet Death send a message with the title track “Die In Love,” a fantastic blend of shoegaze sirens and indie pop which finds Logan Gaval stating the album’s intent loud and clear, “Find someone, die in love.” In the past, labeling this band as “misanthropic” would not have been much of a stretch, given songs like “I Hate Everything” and “You’re Gonna Hate What You’ve Done,” but with this album, Gaval and Boyhtari are now exploring the bliss of love. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of their trademark misery, but their new stance on life is “we’re all gonna die, might as well love someone before I do.” Boyhtari closes the album with a similar sentiment on the tender acoustic ballad “Love Me When You Leave.” Like many of Boyhtari’s best songs, the track is built around vivid characters; people grappling with the uncertainty of life, what they wish to make of it, and whether or not any of this is really worth it. Ultimately, the song’s conclusion is a simple but bold request as she sings, “Leave a sign for me / love me when you leave.” Regardless of how this all shakes out, keep me in your heart and cherish the memories we share.

Greet Death has always peddled in life’s ugliness, but on Die In Love, they're highlighting the fact that for life to be ugly, it must also be beautiful. On the sexually charged simp anthem, aptly titled “Red Rocket,” Gaval brings new meaning to wanting to be someone’s dog by capturing the feeling of being so horny that you might die, listing the macabre desires of climaxing. If telling someone “I could bring your fork to socket” isn’t romantic, then I don’t know what is. 

Boyhtari’s richly detailed “Country Girl” sidesteps the sentimentality of nostalgia in favor of the melancholy present in the past. Throughout the song, she combs through memories, picking out images of death like burnt churches alongside the comforts of seeing horror movies in the theater. Then, there’s the lead single, “Same But Different Now,” a five-minute ripper where the group displays some of their pummeling material to date. The track crescendos to an incendiary mix of charging riffs as Gaval shrieks, “We’re different now.” It’s a fascinating moment in the band’s discography because it holds the glowering moods present in much of their work, but they’re also pushing their sound into the red, culminating in something that resembles the more aggro side of Foo Fighters’ rawest songs.

Even though Boyhtari and Gaval trade vocals between songs, it is clear that Greet Death is a cohesive unit. When their two voices entwine on the final minutes of the record, there’s a beautiful sense of balance and completion. You realize that, ever since their first release almost a decade ago, even after all the sonic pivots and lineup shifts, Greet Death has always been these two people coming together to create something beautiful and crushing and honest. As the band has expanded physically and sonically, their sense of self has only become more realized. On each passing release, the band grows with intentionality, and on Die In Love, they have achieved their purest form yet by being true to who they are.

Connor is an English professor in the Bay Area, where he lives with his partner and their cat and dog, Toni and Hachi. When he isn’t listening to music or writing about killer riffs, Connor is reading fiction and obsessing over sports.

Smut – Tomorrow Comes Crashing | Album Review

/

Bayonet Records

Look, Smut kick ass, plain and simple. Tomorrow Comes Crashing is the band’s third studio album, which puts the Chicago-based quintet back into the muck, returning to the sludgy sound of their debut. It’s a type of album where, when I hear the songs, I get a feeling that the band knows exactly who they are at this point and are firing on all cylinders toward that actualization. The group recaptures some of their original DIY aesthetics while also incorporating new tricks they’ve learned along the way.

Smut’s previous record, How the Light Felt, sifted through the intricacies of 1990s dream pop and alt-rock, with more of the songs erring on the dreamy side of things. They smoothed out the rough edges found on their debut for an enjoyable second entry in their catalog–it was as if The Sundays had a lost album that was discovered in an abandoned storage unit and finally made its way onto streaming services.

Tomorrow Comes Crashing has similar elements to their previous records but now includes monstrous eruptions of distorted rock that bring the band to an apex of their sound. Vocalist Tay Roebuck, guitarists Andie Min and Sam Ruschman, bassist John Steiner, and drummer Aidan O’Connor tap into the sonic influences of their predecessors to create 34 minutes of pure rock ecstasy. The first step to achieving this sound was to enlist Aron Kobayashi Ritch as the production assistant, who turned the volume up to max power, giving the songs enough electricity to make Ben Franklin blush. Ritch has been on a hot streak of his own this year, with credits on the recent albums from Momma, Bedridden, and Been Stellar.

The single, “Syd Sweeney,” is something I could easily imagine on a 90s episode of Beavis and Butthead with them shaking and gyrating on their couch while watching the music video in between calling each other “fart knockers.” The song has all the ingredients of a certified banger, from the fuzzed-out 90s guitar riffs to the sludgy thrash metal outro, accompanied by some expert wailing from Roebuck. Not only can you throw your neck out headbanging to the track, but dig into the lyrics, and you’ll find a message about the objectification and stereotypes of women in art. A-list actress Sydney Sweeney is the namesake evoked as the shining example of being uber-talented in her own right yet still viewed solely as a sex object by some. For me, the sign of a talented band is when you can combine engaging music with lyrics that convey a distinct message that holds meaning for the artists.

What stands out to me throughout Tomorrow Comes Crashing is the voice of Tay Roebuck, who has an incredible range, accompanied by an unpredictable Tasmanian Devil-like energy. Her versatility is evident across the album; you can hear someone go through all the emotions, from a yell to a cry to a plethora of blood-curdling screams. On the 90s-inspired ballad with an edge, “Dead Air,” Roebuck’s voice rides the wave of crisp basslines with such effortless ease. A few tracks earlier, on the explosive, twisting metal riff opener “Godhead,” she belts a horror movie-like yowl that offers a thrilling, speaker-rattling moment. 

There’s a lot of fun to be had on the in-between songs, “Burn Like Violet” has guitar riffs you would hear in an 80s action movie scene. When I hit play on that song, I can just imagine a shredded Patrick Swayze in a bar fight throwing a jabroni onto a table, sending them through a bevy of glass mugs. “Spit” is a rough and rowdy song laced with chunky metal riffs and the perfect amount of fuzz. Each track also hosts an intoxicatingly catchy chorus that makes me just want to keep hitting repeat nonstop.

“Ghosts (Cataclysm, Cover Me)” is the band tapping back into their dream pop sound, which, by the evidence of their second record, they are entirely at ease revisiting that brimming well of inspiration. The song has a moody, Gothic feel, accompanied by hauntingly executed echoes of Roebuck, making this a staple track that should be on everyone’s Halloween playlist this fall.

The realization of the trials and tribulations a band encounters while trying to live out their dreams is the focus of “Touch & Go.” The mid-album cut shows the things people don’t see beyond the shows, like flooded basements ruining your gear or inhaling burnt coffee in Anytown, USA, and having to manage your van breaking down while trying to make it to the next gig. The will it takes to persevere in your aspirations of becoming a full-time musician is harder than ever these days. Smut are well on the way to achieving their dreams by relentlessly evolving their sound to newer heights with each album cycle. The record itself is pure, unadulterated fun, but what separates this group from the pack are the detailed lyrical messages behind the kick-assery. While Tomorrow Comes Crashing feels expertly timed as a summer release with red-hot, sizzling guitar riffs and thunderous choruses, that depth beneath the surface is liable to keep drawing listeners back, rewarding them for many seasons to come.

David is a content mercenary based in Chicago. He's also a freelance writer specializing in music, movies, and culture. His hidden talents are his mid-range jump shot and the ability to always be able to tell when someone is uncomfortable at a party. You can find him scrolling away on Instagram@davidmwill89, Twitter@Cobretti24, or Medium@davidmwms.

Dance Myth – The Shapes We Make | Album Review

/

Say-10 Records

When I was 19 years old, I first heard Listener’s album Wooden Heart Poems, and it made me realize that listening to music wasn’t good enough. Wooden Heart Poems was an invitation to write, and I needed to accept that invitation. I started writing my own songs and poems, often putting on Wooden Heart Poems as inspiration when I couldn’t find words on my own, borrowing lyrical motifs and stretching them until they resembled the shape of my own heart. Fifteen years later, I’m listening to Listener’s songwriter, Dan Smith, as he presents his new project, Dance Myth, and I’m struck once again as though I were still the 19-year-old finding er voice for the first time.

In many ways, The Shapes We Make feels like coming home, which is appropriate for a record that deals so much with death. Dan’s voice has hardly changed in the 15 years between my introduction and this new record, which makes this album feel deeply familiar from the first word said in the passionate spoken-word style that he’s built a career around. There’s a cadence to his vocal delivery that feels like a wave, scored by guitars, trumpets, synths, keyboards, and a multitude of other supporting instrumentation ebbing and flowing to create vast dynamic shapes that draw your attention towards the emotional urgency of his words.

If you miss some of the lyrics, as I’m sure many of us frequently do on initial listens of a record, you'll still catch that wave, but the true richness comes from diving in. Most of the record’s lyrics read like letters, diary entries, and memories. They’re correspondence between the writer, the listener, and unnamed third parties. The record reads as an invitation to converse with the music as it pleads, reassures, convicts, and comforts. In many ways, it echoes Levi The Poet’s 2014 release Correspondence: A Fiction, which similarly used dramatic scoring to support poetry about love and loss in the form of letters.

On The Shapes We Make, Dance Myth seems to speak directly to us, the listeners, imploring us to join in the shared humanity that makes us complete as people, flaws and all. In the album opener, “Gentle, Gentle,” you hear Smith plead, “Forgive yourself. If you can. For who you’ve been. You didn’t know then.” It’s an invitation to actively participate in the divine practice of grace rather than standing still in our regrets, our pasts, and our mistakes. This song offers a lesson I’ve had to learn time and again in therapy: to forgive oneself—a lesson that bears repeating, as it simply cannot be internalized the first time you hear it.

It’s often unclear whether Smith intends the songs and poems to be pointed at “you,” a specific individual, or “you,” the listener, but to my ears, it feels as though he’s speaking directly to my soul. It often feels as though Smith has chosen to sit down with each listener, allowing us to listen and meditate on the words he has carefully laid out. Even when the lyrics clearly show that a letter is for a specific individual whom the listener can never know, Smith still finds a way to make it feel universal in its specificity.

Lead single “Little Bird” reads like a eulogy, with Smith taking time to share about the pain of seeing a loved one leave this life. It serves as an apology to the subject of the song as he exclaims, “Sorry you couldn’t make it to where we were.” It isn’t all bleak, though. He celebrates the evaporation of life in death, referring to the dead as going “back into everyone I meet.” There’s a universality in the specificity of this piece, as we see a particular person cemented in the lyric. It begs us to share in the specificity that engulfs our lives, Smith confidently trusting that the listener can swap out the details to match their own loss, grief, and desire for peace.

We shift from grief to fear by track six, “This Accordion Life,” as there’s a palpable sense that something is wrong; Smith describes the way he’s seen by others as “just the shape of smoke from setting myself on fire” followed closely by exclaiming that tomorrow and the past are both terrifying. He leans on the hope of getting better, knowing that the only path forward is simply to keep going, a lesson that many minority groups have heard over and over in times of tribulation.

To speak personally for a moment, I want to mention that I’m a transgender woman, which has deeply shaped the way I view this record. In my experience, being trans is largely about self-identification. It’s about looking in the mirror and deciding who you want to be– no, rather, it’s about realizing who you are. Near the end of “This Accordion Life,” we hear Smith exclaim, “It’s embarrassing. All the times I’ve hidden or was made to feel I should hide any of the ways I shine. Told everyone I’m fine, and believed that lie myself.” It feels like a dagger in my heart as I sit in wonder and regret, asking myself why I took so long to find the ways that I should have been shining my entire life.

We return to death on “Dry County” as the pronoun shifts from “I” to “she” to “we” to “you.” The “I” represents the personal response to grief. “She” represents the person who was “waving like she had to go, and so she left.” “We” shows the intimacy of memory as Smith reflects on the past that was shared. Finally, “you” represents him speaking to a mystery audience who appears to be nearing death themselves. There’s a peace to the way that he speaks of death, as though he knows the comfort and fear that comes with that extraordinary adventure, choosing to optimistically opt into comfort in the great disappearing.

Finally, on the closing track of the album, we hear him end the record by singing “Tie me up, untie me,” appearing to reference mewithoutYou’s track of the same name, where lyricist Aaron Weiss sings that exact phrase, followed by “all this wishing I was dead is getting old.” Smith follows his phrase differently, however, finishing with “tie me up again.” I can’t begin to interpret what he means in that final moment of the record, but to me, it feels like a refutation of “all this wishing I was dead” that Weiss presented, choosing to emphasize the hope and joy of living a life that’s wild, urgent, and desperate for individual expressions of love.

The Shapes We Make is the record I want to hear while driving home from the gig or sitting in the line of cars as they leave the festival I’ve been at all weekend. Importantly, for me, it’s a balm that delivers contemplation through the noise, reassurance in times of hardship and grief, and peace in a time of wars: old and new, literal and figurative. 

It feels like an exhale. A restoration. An invitation.

“So, if you are alive, raise your hands. Keep them open. Reach out for anyone.”

Noëlle Midnight (e/er) is a transgender podcaster, poet, musician, and photographer in Seattle, WA. E can be found online with er podcast Idle Curiosities, tweets on Bluesky at @noellemidnight.com, photos on the Instagram alternative Glass at @noellemidnight, and movie reviews of varying quality on Letterboxd at @noellemidnight.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Phantom Island | Album Review

/

p(doom) records

Well, well, well. Once again, we find ourselves back in the Gizzverse. It wasn’t even a year ago that I was here telling you all about how death, taxes, and King Gizzard are life’s only certainties. And what did they go and do? They proved me right.

The Aussie psych-rock experimenters’ 27th(!!) album, Phantom Island, started with extras from the Flight b741 sessions. These songs were born out of the same hyper-collaborative energy as b741, but the band felt like they needed something else to be complete. After linking with the LA Philharmonic during their 2023 marathon show at the Hollywood Bowl, the Gizzards realized that live orchestrals were exactly what they needed to complete the circle. They connected with Chad Kelly, who created arrangements to accompany the meandering jams and stitched-together hooks locked in the Gizz vault. 

Phantom Island reimagines Gizzard’s home-grown rock-centric sound, filtering it through the lens of an opera house symphony orchestra. The symphonics are overdubbed atop the messy, chaotic jams, creating a mix of meticulous arrangements and free-wheeling improv that feels quintessentially Gizzard. Stu Mackenzie used a Tascam 8-track to blend the two sounds, combining them into one rock orchestra mashup. Phantom Island propels the sky-high, airborne stories of b741 into outer space. Gizzard broke through the atmosphere, sending their sound and their stories to another dimension. The result is an album that feels animated and colorful, even with its more insular narratives. When I close my eyes and listen, this feels like the soundtrack of its own movie or musical, bouncing between styles without losing cohesion. Would I be surprised if they turned this into a stage show? Not even a little—why shouldn’t King Gizz have their own Gamehendge? They dropped a “making of” documentary on YouTube last week, a 13-minute look into bringing the orchestrations into their cosmic sprawl. On the other side of the glass wall, the Gizzards sit on a couch in their flight uniforms from the “Le Risque” music video, heads hanging back as they listen to their jam fragments intertwine with the lush strings or grooving horns.

I’ve always loved King Gizz for their instrumentation. The high school band nerd in me is partial to Mackenzie’s penchant for flute, but I also remember being entranced by their dueling drum sets the first time I saw them live (Brooklyn Steel 2018, I almost passed out because I got too high). Gizz has always had inklings of symphonics in them, but Phantom Island is spacious, giving them more room to go on rambling tangents, switch from biker rock to chamber orchestrals, and delve even deeper into a narrative throughline. The album takes the listener on a journey from outer space to the underworld, with tales of being lost at sea (“Aerodynamic”), flying in a spaceship (“Spacesick”), or speeding down an anonymous open road (“Eternal Return”). Each song chronicles a different adventure and sometimes a different adventurer—whether or not the characters across the record are the same person, they’re all on their own journeys within the same greater universe.

Phantom Island opens with the title track, a jazz-funk jam that provides us with our setting: a feverish dreamland where nothing is what it seems (“Is this mental confusion or have I finally found my purpose?” and “The palm tree’s looking at me funny with a sideways belligerence”). The song unravels into its own miniature rock opera (“Phantom Island / Insane asylum” is now what my brain plays while returning to factory settings), making it clear early that nothing on Phantom Island is what it seems. 

The strings take center stage by the time we get to “Lonely Cosmos,” arpeggiating through unsettling minor chords and mixing with flute before fading into a sole acoustic guitar. It’s the send-off into space and the subsequent realization of your prolonged solitude. Where b741’s existentialism was strategic and hidden, Phantom Island gets right down into it. The unnerving string theme returns after the line “Are we alone in this cosmic effigy?” bending into its own dark, tangential underworld before yanking itself out of it, propelling back into its punchy acoustic melody with the line “I’m inhaling stardust.” It’s so casually random that I can’t help but chuckle. It’s that constant back-and-forth that keeps you on your toes, even when the orchestrals are at their most overpowering.

“Eternal Return” and “Panpsych” are the most b741 of the bunch, leaning psychedelic rock while still using the orchestrals as a central counterpoint. “Eternal Return” mixes spiky guitars and saxophone with sweeping strings and double-tracked vocals, creating a 360-degree sound that speaks to the song’s theme of being “on a round-trip perpetual.” “Panpsych” is equally as fuzzy and jam-centric, with flute tying the main theme together through cryptic lyrics (“The wind whispers secret message for those who’ve grown ears to hear it”).

Gizz holds the theme of “Lonely Cosmos” close through all of Phantom Island’s wandering journeys. Subsequent tracks place their characters in isolation, stranded or lost or eons away from anything familiar. “Spacesick” follows a nauseated astronaut on his first trip to space, already fantasizing about being back at home. “Aerodynamic” finds a lone sailor contemplating his last moments at sea. “Sea of Doubt” combines twangy country rock with pensive introspection, toying with anxiety, uncertainty, and the need for friends to help bring you back to yourself. Its opening is so bright and eager that the first lines, literally being “I’m on the edge of a cliff,” have delayed impact. The airy delivery, combined with the crisp guitar tones and trilling woodwinds, conflicts with the tension in the lyrics, namely in the lines about anxiety landslides, mind forests, and treading water. Two-thirds of the way through, the strings pull away, leaving just acoustic and vocals. A sweet falsetto, a harmonizing flute, a sigh of relief. “Here comes the sun to clear the fog / Here comes a friend for me to lean on”—bordering on corny, but its simplicity and gentle sincerity tugs at the heartstrings, an unexpected softness from the same guys who conjured sludge, fire, and thrash metal on PetroDragonic Apocolypse just two years ago.

By my twentieth trip around Phantom Island, it became clear that the whole journey could very well just be in my head, and that is precisely the point. The album drifts between structure and instinct, between story and sound. You can follow the narrative if you want, or simply let the whole thing wash over you. It will consume you regardless. The deeper you go, the harder it is to tell whether you’re hearing a rock record dressed up in strings or a symphony unraveling into a jam. Either way, we can take comfort in the fact that the Gizzverse keeps expanding. 

Cassidy is a culture writer and researcher currently based in Brooklyn. She loves many things, including, but not limited to, rabbit holes, Caroline Polachek, blueberry pancakes, her cat Seamus, and adding to her record collection. She is on Twitter @cassidynicolee_, and you can check out more of her writing on Substack.