- untitled (recs)
- 2026
deathcrash emerged from the same London art-rock scene that birthed contemporaries like Black Country, New Road and caroline, which means they’re young enough to still be figuring the world out but old enough already to have grown disillusioned with a lot of it. “This life is the best life/ Oh god, it’s the only one,” vocalist/guitarist Tiernan Banks laments on “CMC,” a highlight of deathcrash’s new album Somersaults, as a wash of arpeggiated guitars unspool around him. The more the phrase repeats, the more its meanings seem to multiply: Are deathcrash suddenly aware of temporal finality, or are they dissatisfied by the notion that this is as good as it’s ever going to get? Is it too self-piteous to identify with both?
Deathcrash say that their third album “comes from a place of growing up and giving up on adolescent dreams,” but that’s not to say the quartet — who often sound larger than four members — haven’t had any brush with success. Their 2022 debut Return was an audacious, hour-long collection of bleak post-rock that yielded comparisons to slowcore and post-hardcore greats like Codeine and Slint, leading them to tour with some of those bands’ r/indiehead successors like Have A Nice Life. The next year, deathcrash released their sophomore album Less, which was about half as long and wavered between moments of intentional restraint and sludgy, doomy distortion. Those two albums bore an overall dismal outlook that continues to guide Somersaults: “Baby, songs are supposed to be sad,” Banks croons on the ballad “Love For M,” just in case those prior releases hadn’t made their stance glaringly obvious.
Though it’s been a comparatively long three years since Less, deathcrash return on Somersaults with the type of urgency that materializes at the breaking point of realizing you no longer have quite as much time as you once thought you had on your side. Those slow-burning, Mogwai-esque breakdowns are still present — try “Stay Forever” or “The Thing You Did” — but Somersaults is the first deathcrash album to truly put vocals and lyrics at the forefront, like a breakdown unfolding in real time. Still, everything here is not quite as doomer-brained as it seems: “I think there was this do or die fatalism in our previous music that doesn’t exist here,” Banks has said about the album. Somersaults looks inward for guidance on how to keep navigating a broken universe, while acknowledging that holding yourself accountable can feel more anguishing than cursing extenuating circumstances. “I miss the weight of the world/ I miss my childhood as well,” Banks muses on the tried-and-true slowcore closer “Marie’s Last Dance.”
And so with their members a decade or so removed from adolescence, what, exactly, are those adolescent dreams that deathcrash claim to have relinquished? For starters, Somersaults is often quick to take some rather meta-sounding jab at being stuck in touring musician purgatory: “Thirty, no career, it fucking worries me/ And doing the band doesn’t help,” Banks sings over the searing, emo-inspired guitars of “NYC.” “We’re still making progress, so just don’t quit/ I am so much more than I can cope with.”
Earlier, on the opening title track, Banks wonders if his longtime childhood friend is still obligated to care about him after moving on to bigger and better things: “As you grew up into an elegant life/ My childhood room was still the center of mine…/ I like what I do, still I can’t keep it going.” It doesn’t feel so much like Banks’ narrator’s aspirations have been crushed for good, but there certainly is something crushing about when dreams come true but don't amount to what they could’ve been. Call it a case of Peter Pan Syndrome if you want, but it’s not an inaccurate reflection of what it means to be in your late 20s or early 30s right now.
The lyrics about professional woes are more compelling, but Somersaults is just as concerned with interpersonal relationships. There’s plenty of post-breakup strife, particularly so on “Stay Forever,” where Banks’ muffled vocals, begging a partner not to leave, contradict some Los Campesinos!-like group vocals in the background: “I hate you/ I won’t miss you.” Throughout the album, Banks references some less-than-flattering anecdotes — codependency, love triangles, totally phoning it in during sex — before giving way to some subtle self-acceptance and catharsis.
If there are weak points on Somersaults, they come when Banks’ vignettes feel too slight within the album’s narrative — the repeated, brief name-dropping of the characters within them risks feeling like you’re eavesdropping on a gossip session. But at the same time, Somersaults is right at home in those lightly-messy territories between naivety and wisdom, between success and failure, and between despondency and optimism. Somersaults doesn’t try to find solutions, but where there’s noise, it offers a good guitar part to drown it out.
Somersaults is out 2/17 via untitled (recs).
Other albums of note out this week:
• Mitski's Nothing’s About To Happen To Me
• Gorillaz' The Mountain
• Bruno Mars' The Romantic
• Iron & Wine's Hen’s Teeth
• Bill Callahan's My Days Of 58
• Cootie Catcher's Something We All Got
• Lala Lala’s Heaven 2
• Nothing's A Short History Of Decay
• Heavenly's Highway To Heavenly
• Buck Meek's The Mirror
• RJD2 & Supastition's According To…
• Landowner's Assumption
• Maria BC's Marathon
• Virginia MacNaughton's The Thread
• Tōth's And The Voice Said
• The Wave Pictures' Gained / Lost
• Crooked Fingers' Swet Deth
• Magoo's What A Life
• Eliza Noxon's Good Monsters With Bad Habits
• Asher Gamedze's A Semblance: Of Return
• Triple Blind's Cold Walk
• Rosie Carney's Doomsday… Don’t Leave Me Here
• LB aka LABAT's Feel So Good Around U
• Carpenter Brut’s Leather Temple
• The Early's I Want To Be Ready
• Voxtrot's Dreamers In Exile
• Dog Chocolate's So Inspired, So Done In
• Shane Parish's Autechre Guitar
• GENA's The Pleasure Is Yours
• EKEK's Mountains Moves
• Market's Cleanliness 2: Gorgeous Technologies
• Hotel Fiction's Staring At The Sun (Deluxe)
• Taroug's Chott
• Stephen O'Malley's Spheres Collapser
• Archive's Glass Minds
• Bill Frisell's In My Dreams
• Hey Colossus' Heaven Was Wild
• Deadletter's Existence Is Bliss
• Final Gasp's New Day Symptoms
• James Hood's Astronomica Soundtrack
• Em Beihold’s Tales Of A Failed Shapeshifter
• Will Dailey's Boys Talking
• Ben Sollee's Time On Hold
• Julianna Riolino's Echo In The Dust (Deluxe)
• The Gloom In The Corner's Royal Discordance
• David August's Hymns
• Talpah & Violent Magic Orchestra's EXO SWAG KILLA
• Caterina Barbieri & Bendik Giske's At Source
• Molto Ohm's Reality Pills
• Jupe Jupe's King Of Sorrows
• Station Model Violence's Station Model Violence
• BLACKPINK's Deadline Mini Album
• Fort Not's You On Repeat
• Kishi Bashi's Sonderlust (10th Anniversary Edition)
• 2charm's star scum city
• Ritt Momney's BASE
• Mateus Asato's ASATO
• kwes' Kinds
• GLOK/Timothy Clerkin's Alliance Remixed
• Ken Park's Ken Park
• Bibi Club’s Amaro
• Michael Cormier-O'Leary's Proof Enough
• Armbruster's Half My House
• Tinlicker's Dreams Of The Machine
• Max Kutner's Rogue Lash
• Andrew Bird's The Mysterious Production Of Eggs Box Set
• PEIRIANT's Plant
• Jeremy Fetzer's An Evening At The Fetzicon Lounge
• Michael Cormier-O'Leary's Proof Enough
• Ms* Gloom's J Is For Joon Mixtape
• Draümar's Draümar
• Endpoint's After Taste (Deluxe Edition)
• Paul McCartney's Man On The Run - Music From The Motion Picture Soundtrack
• Joey Valence & Brae's HYPERYOUTH (afterparty)
• Foggieraw's With All Due Respect
• Gord Downie, The Sadies, And The Conquering Sun's Live At Six O'Clock
• Varials' Where The Light Leaves
• Død Drøm's Pulverprinsen
• babename's Highlights
• sosocamo's Big Country
• HolyBrune's HighHopes
• Ceremony's Live At The Hollywood Palladium Live Album
• EVRO's Romance Inside: Saturn's Return EP
• Diva And The Pearly Gates' The Haunted House EP
• Grace Inspace's Heavy Hair EP
• Michael Cormier-O'Leary's Proof Enough EP
• Fleur Electra's Strike The Match EP
• Common Holly's They Will Draw Halos Around Our Heads EP
• Debbie Sings' Oh My EP
• NCT JNJM's BOTH SIDES EP
• Host Family's Extended Play EP
