Horsegirl

I’ll be far from the first to sing the praises of Horsegirl this year. The band built expectations on their 2022 debut, labeled quite vociferously as “youth’s return to the guitar,” which isn’t a fair albatross to hang on any band. The trio had barely broken into the world, playing songs in their parents’ basements and feeling out the growing pains of influence. Crafting a collection of songs that growl with a penned in ferocity, the debut also operated under the shadows of their elders’ amplifiers. With Phonetics On and On the band really sounds like they’re coming into their own, starting to climb the pedestal that’s been thrust under them. The record stretches out, and loses quite a bit of the claustrophobic tension of the last album. Guitars still set the tone, but the smudges of the ‘90s have cleared away in favor of post-punk’s austerity and icy exhale.

From the first moments, there’s an almost audible sigh as the band sheds the expectation to make a sequel to Versions of Modern Performance. Instead, Horsegirl finds humor and light on lead single “2468” playing with The Raincoats’ skeletal slink and the button-down brusqueness of Young Marble Giants. They revel in strings that knot around the listener rather than snowplow the senses, even dabbling in acoustics on “Frontrunner.” The bass supplants the guitar as the driving force of Horsegirl on Phonetics, letting its lightly rubberized tone ring around the speakers with an unfettered flow, free from the plume and pull of the band’s past experiments in distortion. The record clips catharsis in favor of an inquisitive spirit. Done with the resistance to feeling fenced in, the record revels in walking the streets alive and out in the air, soaking in a new city like a sieve. The band’s debut thrust them into the spotlight, but on their sophomore record, the band chooses to make shadow puppets from pop, paying delightful disregard to those who’d prefer they played grateful guitar martyrs.