The camaraderie between the members of feeble little horse is like jet fuel in the hands of arsonists. Set ablaze, their sophomore LP Girl with Fish blasts off into a fuzzed-out, DIY frenzy, brought down to earth by singer-bassist Lydia Slocum's languid succession of humorous anecdotes and existential grievances. Letting their creative urges run amok, Girl with Fish sees feeble little horse ascending to a whole new level of relentless unpredictability — one that's impossible to turn away from.
Emboldened by the process of creating their 2021 debut album, Hayday, Slocum, guitarist-producer Sebastian Kinsler, guitarist Ryan Walchonski, and drummer Jake Kelley approached Girl with Fish with a newfound sense of ease and trust in one another. An ode to friendship and letting go of expectations, the Pittsburgh quartet's self-produced and self-recorded follow-up album feels like an accidental all-night hang.
You know those conversations where you seamlessly transition from pet peeves, to your biggest fears, to the meaning of life and back again until the sun comes up? On Girl with Fish, it sounds a bit more like jumping from a side-eye crush on a school athlete, to deconstructing the facade of an emotional leech, to feeling painfully unremarkable, to the messiness of healing, to the tantalizing burn of online romance before walking home in the haze of the dawn with the fatalistic final verse of "Heavy Water" sloshing around in your head: "Big sip no choking / Tongue out for the rain / Soak down / Avoid it / All to drown the same."
Girl with Fish's lyrical journey is delivered in Slocum's soothing deadpan, but it simmers in a pot of glitchy guitar shrieks, battering drums, and whimsical keyboard that's ready to boil over at any moment. When it does (often), the chaos somehow always feels contained, like a peaceful malfunction. An exception might be during the bridge of "Pocket" — but even then, the moment of shock (as Kinslet and Walchonski test the limits of their amps and Slocum's cheeky query explodes into a roaring chant) swiftly settles into satisfaction, like blasting yourself with cold water at the end of a shower.
A dynamite collaboration from four artists who know each other as profoundly as they understand how far to reach past their edge, feeble little horse have refined the experimental noise-pop they introduced themselves with in Hayday into a frequency all their own. Intensely frantic and intimately vulnerable, Girl with Fish proves that sometimes letting things run off the rails pays off, so long as you have hands to grasp onto.
(Saddle Creek)Emboldened by the process of creating their 2021 debut album, Hayday, Slocum, guitarist-producer Sebastian Kinsler, guitarist Ryan Walchonski, and drummer Jake Kelley approached Girl with Fish with a newfound sense of ease and trust in one another. An ode to friendship and letting go of expectations, the Pittsburgh quartet's self-produced and self-recorded follow-up album feels like an accidental all-night hang.
You know those conversations where you seamlessly transition from pet peeves, to your biggest fears, to the meaning of life and back again until the sun comes up? On Girl with Fish, it sounds a bit more like jumping from a side-eye crush on a school athlete, to deconstructing the facade of an emotional leech, to feeling painfully unremarkable, to the messiness of healing, to the tantalizing burn of online romance before walking home in the haze of the dawn with the fatalistic final verse of "Heavy Water" sloshing around in your head: "Big sip no choking / Tongue out for the rain / Soak down / Avoid it / All to drown the same."
Girl with Fish's lyrical journey is delivered in Slocum's soothing deadpan, but it simmers in a pot of glitchy guitar shrieks, battering drums, and whimsical keyboard that's ready to boil over at any moment. When it does (often), the chaos somehow always feels contained, like a peaceful malfunction. An exception might be during the bridge of "Pocket" — but even then, the moment of shock (as Kinslet and Walchonski test the limits of their amps and Slocum's cheeky query explodes into a roaring chant) swiftly settles into satisfaction, like blasting yourself with cold water at the end of a shower.
A dynamite collaboration from four artists who know each other as profoundly as they understand how far to reach past their edge, feeble little horse have refined the experimental noise-pop they introduced themselves with in Hayday into a frequency all their own. Intensely frantic and intimately vulnerable, Girl with Fish proves that sometimes letting things run off the rails pays off, so long as you have hands to grasp onto.
