The Exit Bags – Our Sun Will Clean its Holy Wounds

“At once striking and muted, confronting themes of existential urgency with a subdued, downbeat air, as though each song is played from the next room, a clamour with a blanket thrown over it.” That’s how we described Tower of Quiet by Edmonton, Alberta‘s The Exit Bags back in 2021. A record which fitted into The Flenser aesthetic of Drowse and Have a Nice Life to explore depression in all its strangeness, “evoking an unreal, disturbing mood that’s somehow both the sharpest and dullest edge.”

Now, Michael James has returned with Our Sun Will Clean its Holy Wounds, a new album from The Exit Bags, again released by Drongo Tapes and Joyless Youth. A release which again uses a blend of post-punk, slowcore, ambient and drone to weave a sound at once dense and drifting. Take the plaintive opener ‘Vanishing Cloud Burial’, which builds with an intangible quality as the vocals barely break a murmur, though eventually precipitates into its own storm. The result is something fearful and sublime, a mood typified by ‘At Least I Know Now’ and its direct reference to mortality. “I said I wasn’t scared,” as James sings. “I lied.”

A fear of death hangs over the record like a spectre, but with it too a twin terror of whatever comes between now and then. “[The record] is loosely based on the idea of becoming an increasingly unreliable narrator as time passes, while still trying to piece together one’s worries and fears,” as James explains. “Or, the concern that the way your mind processes information in the future will have regressed beyond your control, therefore making it impossible to satisfyingly reach closure.” Tracks like ‘Neglect’ and ‘An Injured Deer’s Final Moments’ offer an almost horror-esque picture, projecting life as the painful space between mortal blow and approaching darkness, while others like ‘Missile Gap Year’ blink in confusion as to why exactly the heart goes on beating all the same. The mood culminates on ‘The Cost of Living’, which mostly succinctly captures this sense of perpetual conclusion. How to go on living when the end seems so apparent? How to communicate through the static of a worried mind?

i don’t like letting you down
i will try to find my own way
across the end line
i will try to find the infected wound
that makes the choice mine
will you pull, and will you feel inclined
i wouldn’t judge you if you tried

Our Sun Will Clean its Holy Wounds is out now via Drongo Tapes and Joyless Youth and available from The Exit Bags Bandcamp page.

album artwork by airick delgado / design a.d.