Sincere Engineer is the band for everyone that’s ever felt like quitting but gets through it anyway. It’s for everyone that has had big dreams lead to feeling disillusioned and cynical, yet find the few hours to play in the sunlight. Bless My Psyche is a collection of vignettes about everyday failures, insecurity, anxiety, and the prosaic things we do to push forward.
Recorded in their hometown of Chicago, with long-time collaborator/producer, Matt Jordan, Bless My Psyche is the follow up to 2017’s Rhombithian, and continues to juxtapose hopeful expectations and the disappointment of reality through wry and witty lyrics and catchy indie punk. “I think my music is relatable and I hope it makes people feel like they’re not alone” shares singer, Deanna Belos, “I do it because it’s fun and I don’t want to do anything else.”
Tom Freeman—the Brooklyn-based British artist and musician known as Covey—has had a weird year. He did a Tour To Nobody, playing shows in rural locations across the American northeast for, well, nobody. He recorded the audio and video, turning the audio into a record, Tour To Nobody. He created a Tik Tok account, via which he began sharing the figurines which would adorn the cover of his next LP. In a matter of weeks, over 1 million followers were tuning in to learn about (and swap theories concerning) the increasingly intricate semi-fictional universe Freeman is building through his music.
Enter Covey’s new full-length record, Class Of Cardinal Sin. The record’s cover features a diorama depicting what, at first glance, appears to be a simple class graduation photo, complete with a blackboard with white lettering at the front. Upon inspection though, the classmates are in disrepair. Some are missing limbs; others are casting satanist spells; and most have a human body beneath the head of a creature. Still, they’re dressed and arranged like students, grotesque and miserable. The home, the class photo, the songs: these are all part of a network of synapses that comprise Class Of Cardinal Sin, refracted through Freeman’s acerbic, wrenchingly sharp storytelling. This
storytelling is backed by major-key melodies realized on acoustic and electric guitars, bass and
warbling keys, percussion that shifts from gentle to titanic.