bitknot

I listened to this while making dinner most evenings for a fortnight before it properly took hold. Immediate enough to keep me coming back from the first spin, experimental enough that the hooks kept rearranging themselves each time.

feeble little horse are a trio now, founding guitarist Ryan Walchonski having left in early 2025, and bitknot is louder and stranger for it. Plain, detached, conversational vocals sit over electronic textures that keep getting shredded by bursts of distorted guitar. On “Dior” Lydia Slocum picks apart some indie frontperson by telling them who they aren’t: “You are not David Berman / You are not Kurt Cobain.” The person she’s actually addressing gets bleeped, redacted like a curse on the radio.

It saves its best for the end of its short running time. “Shopping” is all petty envy, Slocum eyeing a prettier girl and plotting to swipe her phone and scroll her designer wishlist. Then “DMT” (death, money, tech, and the drug) build into much bigger, almost nastier: Slocum listing those harbingers like a mantra while the guitars fuzz over her. Noise and melody at once.