Mary in the Junkyard
Role Model Hermit
AMF
Ages ago (2019), the American ideal for a mid-summer album was one that accentuated themes of released sexuality and hyper-independent, cut-and-dry relationships. Megan Thee Stallion, most notably, demanded that summer be a transitional period when you pursue as many romantic options as possible. Seven years later, across the pond, mid-summer albums are instead inspiring listeners to crawl into that cave by the ocean and magically morph into a centuries-old seafarer to avoid any soul-crushing emotional commitment—or, god forbid, any grueling transitory period at all. If you happened to cast a heartfelt letter out to sea demanding permission to ghost that party, congratulations, Mary in the Junkyard has returned your message.
Opting to catalog the coming-of-age experience into a daring series of short stories, the London trio recount their brooding for love’s fair weather and a certain ecstasy in the storm brewing with Role Model Hermit. Occasionally evoking Robert Eggers, lyricist Clari Freeman-Taylor clings to the lattice of maritime folklore with soft desperation while playing with contemporary somatic metaphors that examine the often-felt pendulum between craving isolation and intimacy. Rocking between tracks that boast feeling nothing and feeling everything all at once, there isn’t one amateur element within this debut album. The constant contrast of concealed connection and overflowing emotions match the dark, often eerie sounds of strings and pandering percussion.
Mid-album cut “New Muscles” sharply exposes social anxiety with rhythmic orchestration and a hypnotizing, dragging chorus that imagines the human body being embraced by change, while closing track “Mouse” blends a sweeping soundscape of synths with post-internet-era scratches. The swelling single “Crash Landing” carries an overwhelming weight of wispy harmonics into electric guitar jabs to recall the gothic image of a black night marked by one rippling lightning strike. Freeman-Taylor writes the landscape of entering new beginnings as though they were lost at sea, and by filtering raw emotional states through these dense, surreal fables, the band bypasses modern cliché and instead returns to the center of being human.
The titular archetype of the hermit illuminates the soft underbelly of withdrawal as a symptom of extreme tenderness, and the production on Role Model Hermet stitches itself into the art-rock radio scene that Mary in the Junkyard is no doubt akin to at this point. Dreary, fresh, and necessary, the trio experiments with raw acoustics and clambering vocals to articulate messy human connection via the magnificent distance of myth. All that’s left to do is to get out your ankle-length mantle coat and watch the rain pour.
