For all that’s modified over the previous 30 years, you’ll be able to nonetheless take consolation in sure recurring phenomena, like Martin Scorsese motion pictures that require reserving a day off work and North Carolina acts elevating the bar for unkempt but emotionally stirring indie rock. When charting the style’s trajectory this yr, all roads result in the higher Asheville space, which has yielded pace-setting albums like Wednesday’s raggedly superb Rat Noticed God and Indigo de Souza’s charmingly eclectic All of This Will Finish. Now, their Raleigh compatriots Reality Membership full the 2023 Triangle triangle: Frequent showmates with the previous and occasional collaborators with the latter, the band additionally shares custody of Asheville studio ace Alex Farrar. But when Wednesday are just like the Superchunk-esque rallying level of the present NC scene, then Reality Membership are just like the extra enigmatic and forbidding Polvo, deploying extra indirect methods to equally arresting ends.

Working From the Chase is technically Reality Membership’s second album, nevertheless it captures a second of religious rebirth for the band. Whereas recording 2019’s wily and wiry Not an Exit, the founding trio of singer and guitarist Travis Harrington, bassist Kameron Vann, and drummer Elise Jaffe tapped Yvonne Chazal for extra songwriting help. Chazal formally joined upon Not an Exit’s launch, and her addition successfully reformulated the band’s DNA, encouraging a extra open collaborative course of and more and more unconventional methods. Their debut offered a band teetering between basic ‘90s slack-rock and second-wave emo; Working From the Chase each builds upon that basis whereas redrafting the structure, integrating DIY sound experiments—from the floor-scraping sounds of a musical-chairs competitors to cymbals being pushed over by automobiles—into songs as imposing and precarious as Jenga towers.

This isn’t easy fucking-around for the sake of it—Reality Membership’s alternately lurching and liberating dynamics mirror hard-fought struggles with psychological well being. A number of songs on Working From the Chase start abruptly, thrusting you straight into Harrington’s turbulent headspace. However after these sudden entries, it will possibly take a second to acclimate to the band’s slow-stalking actions and shapeshifting songcraft, the place wandering, half-spoken vocal traces progressively swell into fulsome melodies and stray guitar patterns intertwine into delicately latticed tapestries. They method these songs as if their very survival was depending on conserving their power: “Undergo Debt” is sort of a 4-7-8 respiratory train in musical kind, receding and surging at more and more dramatic intervals. Harrington paints a vivid portrait of making an attempt to maintain your shit collectively when your thoughts gained’t allow you to relaxation whereas additionally interrogating the very technique of turning private trauma into public leisure: Three minutes in, the band instantly shifts gear right into a raucously grungy denouement the place he abandons the poetic similes to talk extra bluntly. “Generally it feels so dangerous I can’t even specific myself/I don’t even know the place to begin,” he declares.

Working From the Chase is rife with equally scabrous sentiments that go down like damaged glass. Because the title monitor makes clear, the reward for drumming up the braveness to go away the home is getting your soul crushed by your day job (“Work till he’s useless/ work till we’re useless/Is there some other plan?”). “Is This Working?” transforms that existential quandary into riot-stoking unrest: “Every day: wake, fear, watch,” Harrington seethes. “Is that this working?/Are you working arduous?/Is it working for you?” However Reality Membership by no means appear absolutely paralyzed by their pessimism: Working From the Chase additionally affords up adrenalized, fuzzbox-kicking rave-ups (“Blue Everlasting”) that perform as needed pressure-release valves, and slow-burning moments like “Exit Cycle,” the place Reality Membership push again in opposition to the darkness. “Hopelessness asserts itself/Not the final time,” Harrington cautions, although he sounds much less defeated than ready for battle, whereas de Souza joins him on the frontline. Working From the Chase is an usually agitated response to a world intent on draining you of your vitality, nevertheless it’s additionally a reminder of the wonder in a group.

Reality Membership: Working From the Chase