After establishing her heavily nocturnal take on shoegaze across 2017’s Ms.Menthol and the following year’s self-titled release, Pittsburgh-by-way-of-Louisville songwriter Angel Diaz took her Vyva Melinkolya project in a more sparse and, well, melancholy direction earlier this year when she teamed up with the wispy dream-pop musician Midwife for a full-length collaboration. As it turns out, that was just a taste of what was to come—not only does Vyva’s follow-up solo release Unbecoming lean further into that doom-metal sensibility, slowcore sonic palette, and zero-gravity sense of guitar-fuzz atmospherics, but it even features Midwife’s Madeline Johnston’s spectral presence on album cut “Doomer GF Song.”
Yet Johnston is only one among several notable casting choices across the LP that lend Unbecoming its unique flavor—the recent angelic single “222” features underworld-Americana pop star Ethel Cain on backing vocals, while the late-album dirge “Bruise” features goth-pop songwriter SRSQ. And while each of these guests’ influences is duly noted elsewhere on the album, it’s the canonical slowcore groups—Duster, Carissa’s Wierd, Red House Painters—who get name-checked in Diaz’s track-by-track breakdown of Unbecoming alongside fellow vibe-weavers Grouper, Emma Ruth Rundle, Dan Barrett, and, of course, My Bloody Valentine.
With the record officially landing today, stream the project in full and read through Diaz’s commentary on each track below.
1. “Song About Staying”
This song is the all-knowing Greek chorus, a forewarning to the listener—and also a reminder to myself—of what can happen when we’re not careful, what can happen when we don’t get up to leave. The title is a reference to the final Carissa’s Wierd album, Songs About Leaving. I composed the guitar progression sometime in 2019 and it sat lyricless for a long time. The last track recorded for the album and by far the most intimidating to sing on. I’ve been opening my recent shows with it, and it has a nakedness that humbles me every time.
2. “I65”
This is my love letter to Louisville, the skatepark and highways. Truly the opening credits song; the title card. Watching chargers do burn-outs on Witherspoon street. Fireworks lit way too close to your face. Kissing boys on top of the half pipe. Summer 2020 will always be the dearest to me. Wanted it to sound just as “heavy” as [it is] “fun.” Like warm pavement and sweat and road rash. It’s the track with the most levity. I remember the chorus coming to me in the shower one day.
3. “Stars Don’t Fall”
Laying on the beach, waiting for a meteor shower—if only to make as many wishes as possible. This track is a “wish” more so than it is a “yearning”; my response to one of the best songs ever: Duster’s “Stars Will Fall.” I wanted this one to have extreme sonic density, its own gravitational pull. Showed it to someone before mastering it and they said it was “the slowest song I’ve ever heard.” The interlude at the end was a last-minute decision on my part, instrumental and “choir” recorded at home. The spoken-word section is Hayden’s [Ethel Cain] little sister DeeDee, recorded sitting with her and our friend Mara, summer 2022.
4. “Doomer GF Song”
This one’s for the Last.fm girlies. Being 22, feeling raw and untethered. Disillusioned with culture but feeling starved without it. The most jaded I will ever feel, I pray! Raising myself up on Grouper, Slowdive, and Have a Nice Life. I remember sitting on the floor in June 2020 and writing the lyrics in an hour or so, which usually isn’t the case for me. Guitar-wise, my favorite song to play live. Madeline’s [Midwife] feature and my vocal contribution to her track “2020” were recorded around the same time, a little less than a year before we met up for Orbweaving.
5. “Whimper”
One of the last songs written for the record; my maritime moment. My dad showing me the film adaptation of The Perfect Storm as a child could have a hand in this. Imagining myself as a fisherman’s wife. Somehow the most “cloying” song, the most desperate. Was working at a pet shop at the time that has a whole other building devoted to breeding rats, and it wasn’t pretty (“You know where to find me / Where animals are dying”). I remember listening to a lot of Giles Corey, and a lot of Emma Ruth Rundle’s Some Heavy Ocean. The guitar tracks on this song are baritone guitar, an instrument that was still new to me at the time.
6. “Spiders”
This is the song where I, for lack of a better term, “give up” a little. Both set down my arms and throw them in the air. There’s a song called “Shitty World” by the Nashville band Daddy Issues with the line, “I’d be glad to be a spider, weaving the corners of your room.” It’s a high school favorite of mine, and I’m engraved by that idea. Leaving traces of yourself around someone else, if only in the periphery. I started melodically and lyrically toying with it back in early 2018, right after I released the self-titled. There’s an instrumental demo on SoundCloud, “cold lite,” that’s one of the earliest iterations.
7. “Bruise”
Though loose, this album's narrative works in a reverse order. The transition between this song and the previous one is a tonal line of demarcation, between the aftermath (side A) and the events (side B). “Bruise” is very specific; it’s about navigating the world after sexual assault, after intimate partner violence. My body, my intimacy, my spirit. Trying to figure out how I talk about this, how cold I am to the touch. What marks am I supposed to show? Production-wise, I allowed myself to worship MBV through guitar, Bowery Electric with drums. Between getting the tone right and wanting to do Kennedy’s [SRSQ] feature justice, this one had way too many drafts.
8. “222”
The angel number 222 signifies balance, alignment, harmony. I wanted to (despite any wounds) choose strength over trepidation, retribution over surrender. I remember picturing myself standing in different bodies of water, still and sure. I came up with the hook sometime in early 2020—it was in my head for a few months everywhere I went before I put pen to paper. When me and Madeline first became friends, I remember showing her the progression—which is actually strummed bass—over Facebook message. When Hayden asked to do backing vocals I've never said “yes” so fast in my life.
9. “Tinsley Song”
In summer 2020 I reconnected with a friend from high school. We felt the same way about the world, about music—all of it. She was devastatingly fun and uncommonly kind. She passed away very suddenly that August. At her memorial we released butterflies and I talked with her grandmother about how we felt her all around us. Wrote the song the day after. The title is also a reference to Red House Painters’ “Katy Song.” Quite possibly my favorite vocal performance on the album and the easiest—took maybe two or three takes.
10. “Safe”
Something happened at the mouth of a cave in March of 2020, so the use of “the cave” in this album is literal. Sonically, this is the sister to “Stars Don’t Fall”—3/4 time, cosmic, folding in on itself. Emotionally, very much the sister to “Bruise,” but less confessional. It asks questions instead. It’s the first “event” in the narrative and also the first song me and Chyype Crosby recorded together for the album. Right after the vocal line, at the introduction of the lead guitar, that’s where I can imagine the ending title card in my head: “Unbecoming.”
