4 out of 5

Label: Run For Cover Records

Produced by: Will Yip

Prepare yourself for many backhanded compliments.

This is, I think, a good album. It’s probably very good: framing the acoustic-leaning preceding [untitled] EP as a true sister release, the capitol big-U version rips out of the gate with 9:27a.m., 7/29, harkening back to A–>B Life’s punk hardcore, no concessions. This intensity isn’t done with after this point, either, tickling in to the big, grooving beats of another early-album shaded track – the Catch Us For the Foxes like Julia (Or, ‘Holy To The LORD’ On The Bells Of Horses) – and then rounds out an impressive opening trio with a Foo Fighters alt-rocker, Another Head For Hydra.

…Er.

So that’s the thing, and where this whole Pale Horses road has been leading: to incredible polish, and mwY being masterful wielders of their sound, capable of dipping in and out of adjacent styles faithfully. I initially wanted to knock this album down a peg for being too put upon in that sense, like Wendy & Betsy’s brutality is just a hat the group wears, then exchanges for a moody baroque one on [dormouse sighs], and, ultimately, it’s where I still draw a line of disconnection with the material, but I also can’t deny the passion in the performance. Additionally, Aaron Weiss’ lyrics are on another level of symbolism, getting an all-too-literate nod in Pitchfork that I feel stupider than usual reading, and Aaron then juggling this with enough emotive phrases that you can essentially get the gist without knowing the sources of reference. The backhanded part of this is that it is again performative feeling, a kind of studied version of songwriting achieved through practice and lacking some level of the rawness that this same approach produced on earlier albums.

If you’re reading this as me not “getting it,” I’ll cop to that; but as with the EP, it’s more that I accept that the band hasn’t been “my” band for quite some time. While I think my criticism of that intended companion release still stands – the sound is ultimately very generic – and the realization that I’ve checked out of mwY fandom still applies to this release, the difference is that I do think [Untitled] delivers on all mwY fronts, to an ultimate extent. Producer Will Yip has landed in a comfortable zone with the group, dedicated to the kind of in-your-face polish that makes the music sound rich and approachable, and there’s just a sense of everyone in the band truly knowing the agenda, song by song.

Adding to my sense that this is all a bit too clean, the way mwY used to kind of massage songs into one another is gone for the most part, sticking with very succinct runtimes that occasionally end before it feels like they’ve actually run their course; centerpiece Flee, Thou Matadors!, running over 4.5 minutes, is one of the few examples that allows for an entire picture to be drawn, instead of, in a sense, checking off the ‘punk rock song’ checkbox and moving on.

[Untitled] really is an accomplishment. It’s a pretty perfect summary send-off to a group of very skilled musicians’ careers under this moniker, with hints that going much further beyond this would’ve likely brought forth even more Foo Fighters tendencies and polished edges.