DEADLETTER - Hysterical Strength (Indie Exclusive Pearl White Vinyl)

The world is brutal but there are cherry trees in blossom. This is the philosophy that underpins DEADLETTER, and their bruising, beautiful debut album Hysterical Strength. “It's punishing but there's also fucking beauty out there,” explains frontman Zac Lawrence, who, with life-long friends Alfie Husband and George Ullyott, and Poppy Richler, Sam Jones and Will King, may just have turned in one of 2024’s most urgent and vital listens – a record that, right down to its title, relishes the contradictions of modern life. “Being able to take something disgusting or disgraceful and make it sound nice through the power of music, that juxtaposition appeals to me,” Lawrence adds. The result is twelve tracks of motoric rhythms and angular guitars, adorned by smoky saxophone and baritone-belted lyrics about flickering television sets and dilapidated town centres decked with decapitated bodies. Its strengths are hysterical indeed.