The Linda Lindas
Gotta Get Out
REPRISE/WARNER
On their new album Gotta Get Out, The Linda Lindas remind us that fame didn’t force them to grow up: the state of the world did. The winsome band—now ranging in age from 15 to 21—hasn’t lost any of their hard-earned momentum since their mega-viral “Racist, Sexist Boy” performance back in 2021 as teenagers during the COVID era. Following 2022’s Growing Up and No Obligation in 2024, their third record feels like a fresh revisiting of familiar themes—most notably the ever-present, agonizing ache for political action. Studded with some of their most hard-hitting tracks, Gotta Get Out crafts a claustrophobic atmosphere all while longing for an escape from modern tensions.
The album is driven by earnest tenacity as the quartet confronts the systems that have failed us and how they’ve worsened the already-trenchant anxiety of the adolescent years. The Linda Lindas are decisively cutting through the noise on Gotta Get Out: Silence is violence, but thankfully, this band isn’t afraid to scream and shout. In the hands of GRAMMY-winning producer Carlos de la Garza (bandmates Mila and Lucia’s father, and Eloise Wong’s uncle), the record consistently packs a punky punch, smashing through expectations with a maximalist, guitar-driven heaviness. Lined with an unvarnished texture from their demos recorded in Palm Springs and Long Beach, they manage to make their performances feel both gritty and tender. Toward the end of the record, the band even wanders a tad past their signature rock to refreshingly explore a dreamier indie sound.
But The Linda Lindas always sound best when they’re pissed off. Across 12 tracks, the band adeptly transforms desperation into urgency, a plea into a demand. Wong’s full-throated fury returns in the anti-fascist, mosh-pit-spawning “Break” and “Blood on Our Hands,” while the catchy climate anthem “Nothing Left” slams tech and oil companies amid encroaching floods and fires. On striking highlight “High Horse,” they jeer at an egotist with a warranted sneer: “You can’t hold your tongue / ’Cause you’ve got no teeth.” Beneath this anger lies a festering unease and thinning patience. There’s a gnawing restlessness on “Burning Out” (“Watch the world turn / But I never leave the house”) that bleeds into quicksand on the piercing crowd-pleaser “Closer” with Hayley Williams (“I’m breathing in, and choking on lost time / I’m breaking down, and hoping for a sign”).
While it’s unsettling to hear a band so young sing about lost time, some of the album’s most memorable moments are grounded in the present: a texted photo of an unfinished painting, inclement weather in Georgia. The world can be a scary place, but even through its stormy, sincere pessimism, Gotta Get Out reminds us to cherish the little things.
