Fears
Affinity
TULLE
While it obviously wasn’t planned, it’s incredibly fitting that Fears’ new full-length is being released in the wake of the embarrassment that was SXSW 2024. The Irish artist’s second solo album comes soon after all the bands who were meant to be part of the official Music for Ireland showcase at the industry event pulled out due to its ties to the military-industrial complex (both the US Army and defense contractor Raytheon were major sponsors of the event) and the country’s role in the horrific events that continue to unfold in Gaza.
Affinity doesn’t explicitly rail against injustice, but there’s an inherently political undercurrent present. Fears is the alter-ego of M(h)aol’s Constance Keane, and the album was released on TULLE, an indie label run by Keane that spotlights underrepresented voices in music. That, of course, is all inherently connected to the capitalist, patriarchal, and imperialist frameworks that govern our world (and, by all accounts, the music industry), only adding to the poignancy of Keane’s critiques of oppression across these 10 songs.
An intensely beautiful album from start to finish—dense and textured, sparse and minimal at the same time—songs like openers “4th of the 1st” and “Times” are tender, broken eulogies to once-whole hearts, unshattered dreams, and idealized love, existing both before and after the hurt set in. Elsewhere, “NY” and “Cliff” (the latter of which features Aga Ujma’s delicately powerful harp playing) both dive deep into the lacuna of loss—Keane’s gorgeous, hushed whisper beguiling and cold but full of yearning—while the fragile pain of “11249” is a stirring appraisal of surviving suicidal ideation and how it feels to still be alive afterwards.
It’s all incredibly moving, and what’s truly impressive is that that intensity doesn’t relent at all. In fact, it only increases with the glowering “Bright,” the haunted hollowness of “Write:left,” and the dark solemnity of “16.” A song that hurts as much as it’s hurt, that closing track is unsettling and uncertain, discomforting and distressing. “You always prove me right in the worst way,” Keane sings over a discombobulating melody. “Keep hoping you change / What you’re doing and why.” She’s presumably addressing a former lover, but it could easily be someone in a position of authority like the President—or, say, those who run SXSW. That duality makes the song even more of a scathing indictment, and this album a truly formidable collision of beauty and power.
