You thought 2026 would go by without a feeble little horse album? Despite the steady proliferation of equine musical acts, most of them have curiously decided to stay silent during the first half of the year. horsegiirL’s debut album comes out at the start of June – not to be confused with Horsegirl, the Chicago indie band whose latest LP is well over a year old – but the noise-pop disruptors have beaten the Berlin DJ to the punch, surprise-releasing their new album bitknot on a Tuesday – incidentally or not, the day albums used to come out up until the last Year of the Horse. Once again recorded across the trio’s homes in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the follow-up to 2023’s mesmerizing Girl With Fish isn’t exactly nostalgic for a time when tech and money were only responsible for human suffering in different ways, but it does grapple with the kind of discombobulation of memory and self that’s particular to this cultural moment. Using digital tools as an extension of their knotty group dynamic and Lydia Slocum’s wiry introspection, it interlaces sugary melodies and dizzying left turns that hardly pale in comparison to its predecessor, making it feel far from a tossed-off release.
1. Doorway
If Girl With Fish set the scene by teasing some amount of distortion, bitknot wastes no time letting the floodgates open, mirroring the feeling of icy wind hitting you on a Christmas morning, probably one deposited in the recesses of your memory. “The lawn is coated/ My tongue is frozen/ Against your silver neck,” Lydia Slocum sings, suffusing the bleary atmosphere with a tactile sweetness. It’s only twee for a brief moment (“In the center/ Best friends Forever”) before being eroded by the lack of remembering, juxtaposed by a physical archive that serves as a “yearly jumpscare.” Sebastian Kinsler makes a fun little game out of this thirst for permanence, chopping and screwing her vocals into a whimsical outro.
2. Poison
Less studio trickery foregrounds Slocum’s vulnerable reflections, which center around the toxic cycles of creativity within a capitalist culture. Abstract as they are – “Ladder to the tree, I was chosen/ Leaning on the part that was broken/ Sucking on the fruit that was rotten” – they’re accented by rough-hewn guitars that offer a taste of the bittersweet.
3. Rewind
Slocum makes you chew on the album’s first real infectious chorus – “It’s harder to rewind than/ To see it at the same time/ But if it doesn’t add up/ Then I’ll see you at the end of the line” – as if switching up meaning with each repetition. There’s a sense of continuity in the album sequencing that’s refreshing, as the tinge of regret over success bleeds into the personal, pondering whether it’s divergent paths or selves that caused a dent in the singer’s friendship. Jake Kelley’s drumming remains dynamic without distracting from the arrangement’s remarkably clean surface, suggesting there’s no resentment hiding between the lines of Slocum’s fervent curiosity.
4. Shady
There’s a crackle of distortion simmering underneath what seems like another cleanly produced track, underscoring the slight discrepancies that can throw off a friendship – one no longer tied to the past. The melody forces Slomac to stretch words in a way that’s mellifluous, even meticulous, which highlights the detailed effort the singer makes to curate her social image, not for the whole but for every single person: “I tailored this bit for you to read/ And I’ll tip-toe as I go from A to B.” Slyly, of course, the group structures the record in much the same way.
4. Dior
After a string of shorter, more subdued tracks, ‘Dior’ brings blown-out guitars and shapeshifting production back to the fore, which animates Slocum’s sense of humour. She tells a guy his chances are “slim like my Virginias,” and all the fuzz culminates in her not going to the Wednesday show, where “Kate saw you and she saw ✿.” (That’s how the lyric sheet transcribes the bleep censor.) It’s delightful from start to finish.
5. Paris
Woozy synths complement Slocum’s “Oui, we don’t have to talk” in a bubble of playful disorientation. Prime jet lag entertainment.
6. Cradle
Back home, domestic bliss – or the echo of it? – soothes the mounting confusion, at least for a short while. Unadorned, airy guitar chords lull the listener into a similar kind of trance.
7. Upside Down
After letting it out to dry, feeble little horse steep their sound in a flurry of samples and synths, running with the concept of being twisted inside out. The details are specific to them, but it’s the band’s closest equivalent to a Porter Robinson song.
8. Guts
Slocum’s knotty poetic associations hit their peak on ‘Guts’, matched by an especially wonky electronic riff. A bit of context is offered through the album artwork, which “is based on the coincidental core memory matrix, which was used in old computers to store memory / access information using 0s and 1s. Each core, or ‘bit,’ is accessed through the grid of wires, like a knot that stores secret details and memories.” What happens when those bits are auctioned off, monetized, diluted by our own patterned subservience? Will we have the guts to hold off our own destruction?
9. Shopping
Catchy and torrential, ‘Shopping’ epitomizes feeble little horse’s approach while delivering the album’s stickiest hook: “And would you fuck with these shoes?/ I wanna look just like you.” Parasociality teeters into paranoia, a thin line relayed in plain, relatable terms, so long as you’re familiar with Ssense and Ben Doctor.
10. DMT
If you’re chronically online enough to identify the “That’s my shit right there” sample stitched in before the song’s glorious breakdown, bitknot is both for and about you, the average consumer grateful to have their customized coffee order readied at the touch of a button while accruing debt just for being alive. If tracks like ‘Shopping’ leaned into the blissful ignorance just a bit, ‘DMT’ puts the discordance front and center. It’s also a pleasant send-off who might have assumed we wouldn’t be getting another ‘Pocket’-like moment of screaming and crashing out – only this time squarely into oblivion.
