Brooklyn quartet Tetchy won attention in 2020 with debut release Hounds, a four-song EP which introduced their grungy, punky brand of garage rock with a real bang. Lead by songwriter and guitarist Maggie Denning, the songs captured something of the contemporary moment, the songs combining emotional rawness and swirling, distorted noise to sound at once menacing and affirming. Factor in the subject matter of emotional labour, punchable Nazis and a less-than-welcoming world and you have the Tetchy aesthetic. A style dark, dangerous and sometimes disorientating, yet illuminated by the cathartic release of Denning’s delivery.
This month sees Tetchy return with brand new single, ‘Backyard’. A picture of grief in all of its surreal excesses, the song more than lives up to the precedent of Hounds. A track which opens with a near whispered croon and builds with a subtlety somewhere between ominous and earnest. Denning’s vocals spike to yelps on the odd occasion, adding to the volatile air, and the eventual unravelling into a chaotic tumult of emotion feels foreshadowed in the sound’s very texture.
This descent into disorder is intended to “mirror the stab to the head that comes as you meet your new version of reality over and over again, for what feels like the first time every time,” Denning explains. “[‘Backyard’] is about that exact moment when you remember what’s happened— and when you remember that it cannot be undone.” But more than recreating this experience, Tetchy lean into it with all their weight. Perhaps the fall cannot be stopped, but there is some agency in forcing its hand.
I know my place
Always on the front line
Five minutes late forever
Never again seeing your face
I know my place
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The song comes complete with a suitably head-spinning video co-directed by Denning and John Burgundy Clouse:
‘Backyard’ is out now and available from the Tetchy Bandcamp page.