With her debut full length Gruñona, Olive unpicks the knots and tangles that have developed through her life, both retracing steps and forging ahead to discover something closer to her authentic self. With Andres Fonseca, Ivan Pyzow, Sam Cantor and Sean Saville joining to form a full band, the record calls into question reductive racial/cultural stereotypes, and thereby challenges what Chimamanda Adichie calls the “danger of the single story.”

Fittingly, such a task requires a multitude of moods and attitudes. ‘The Architect’ is self-critical to the point of anger, a scathing attack not so much on herself but rather the flat narratives she allowed herself subscription, thus doubling up as a plea for freedom. “My fear hooked my arm,” Olive sings, “stole me from where I come / left me for dead, oh, please / I just get up and leave.” However, with such reflection comes the space for healing, the closing refrain of “I mistook my loneliness for bravery” sounding like an admission with cathartic power, and other tracks follow this more generous attitude.

This is best highlighted on opener ‘Marte’, a brooding track that hides a deep seam of forgiveness. “You suffer like it’s nothing,” sings Olive, “And I suffer like it’s nothing / And I take it on the chin / I take it on the chin / every time.” This is not some triumphant epiphany where a hard, true sense of identity is formed, but to concede that one’s self requires generosity as well as criticism feels like a healthy realisation, and one more robust and long-lasting than any bright white revelation. We, as people, cannot be reduced to single features or ideas, and self-interrogation allows not only an appreciation of one’s own nuance, but also a greater empathy and understanding when considering that of others.

Gruñona is a journey without a clear destination, a question without an answer. An attempt to map identity not to achieve some clear-cut conclusion but rather in the hope of better understanding how history and culture and personal beliefs shape the people we are and were, the people we will be.

We’re delighted to share the record in it’s entirety ahead of its release on the 18th August, so click below and dive in.

Album artwork by Izzy Olive, photograph on player by Maren Celest

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“Dark and gloomy
The sunlight almost threw me
And my guitar

Dreams depressing
They keep me second guessing
So I sleep high

When I get off
It’s like it never was”

‘More Stars’ is piano-driven and warm, a slow-burning ballad that sounds like a cross between DeYarmond Edison and Kalle Mattson, the joint vocals and introductory percussion feeling like the gradual dawning of some great feeling, a conviction that things are okay or at least can be, with the correct nurturing. The closing track, a beautiful rendition of Gillian Welch’s ‘Everything is Free’, begins slower and sadder but rises into something altogether more fierce, flipping between depression and anger and grim acceptance, the various stages of grief collapsed and jumbled and set ablaze.

“Everything is free now
That’s what they say
Everything I ever done
Gonna give it away

Someone hit the big score
They figured it out
That we’re gonna do it anyway
Even if it doesn’t pay”

If that wasn’t enough, Horse Teeth decided to record a cover of ‘Don’t This Look Like The Dark’ in honour of Jason Molina, a track which happens to fit in with their aesthetic really well. We’re going to take it as a given that WTD readers will already be huge Molina fans (if not may I point you in this direction?), and this cover really does the original justice.

“I thought that I’d live long enough
That the light would come shining through”

The Horseteeth EP is out now, including on cassette via Bad Looks Records. You can grab it and the cover of ‘Don’t This Look Like The Dark’ from the Horse Teeth Bandcamp page.

Artwork by Michael Steiner

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