{"id":469837,"date":"2026-05-27T17:01:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T17:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/469837\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T17:01:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T17:01:11","slug":"feeble-little-horse-bitknot-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/469837\/","title":{"rendered":"feeble little horse, ‘bitknot’ Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

I do not doubt that feeble little horse<\/a> could make a pretty, catchy, straightforward pop tune that would unequivocally rock, but it\u2019s much more fun to see all the innards and bones. That\u2019s the Pittsburgh band\u2019s specialty. From the post-punk start-and-stop of \u201cChores\u201d to the buzzy freakout of \u201cPocket\u201d to last year\u2019s glitchy one-off \u201cThis Is Real,\u201d feeble little horse has sucked hooks off the bones of traditional song carcasses. Structure, to them, is a mere suggestion.<\/p>\n

While the band has been involved in this decade\u2019s great shoegaze revival, their third album, bitknot, sounds reminiscent of the \u201claptop twee\u201d trend that 2023\u2019s Girl With Fish<\/a> helped pioneer before it even had a name. &friends<\/a> coined the phrase last year, and blogs like Nina Protocol<\/a> and Eli Enis\u2019s Chasing Sundays<\/a> ran with it. \u201claptop twee\u201d is exactly what it sounds like: the analog ethos of twee filtered through hyper-online, internet-native production and sensibilities. Often characterized by rapid oscillation between ironic detachment and crushing earnestness (and an obscured boundary between the two), it\u2019s music for genre-ADHD-ridden (or just ADHD-ridden) indoor kids using digital tools of the present and rose-tinted nostalgia to piece together some semblance of a musical future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now that we\u2019ve got Bassvictim\u2019s Maria Manow singing Polish folk songs about her grandmother in between electroclash cuts, Ninajarachi warbling out mash notes to her computer and iPod touch, and every (hyper)pop girl from Jane Remover to Charli XCX picking up guitars and running them through distortion pedals, it\u2019s safe to say that any distinctions between analog and digital\u2014and pop and rock\u2014are as flimsy and irrelevant as ever. bitknot drives that point home and punctuates it with a wink and a flurry of bleeps, bloops, and hums.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the keen yet internet-lobotomized observer through which we experience the digital-physical world of bitknot, frontwoman Lydia Slocum is a nuanced narrator of online young adulthood in the age of acceleration. Sometimes, she and her bandmates go full doomer. They meet the excess and overstimulation of bots, deepfakes, and bets placed on everything with harsh, digitally manipulated guitar sounds that fill your skull and lyrics about the million dead ends of technocapitalism.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The title of closer \u201cDMT\u201d stands for \u201cDeath Money Tech\u201d and splits skulls with its ragged, staticky guitar. You can practically feel Slocum\u2019s eyes rolling as she sings \u201cI\u2019m so lucky, \u2018cause it\u2019s all for me.\u201d \u201cDior\u201d and \u201cShopping\u201d both send up consumerism. The former uses the titular brand\u2019s lipstick as a secret weapon of seduction and self-confidence that ultimately fails to satisfy its protagonist\u2019s cravings; the latter sees Slocum dead-eyed and mid-scroll through the social media profile of an idealized other (\u201cShe\u2019s in my feed, I need her clothes I need her hair \/ She\u2019s just like me but prettier and it\u2019s not far\u201d).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Other bitknot tracks present the internet as a divine force for human connection and collective memory. With access to more information than any previous generation has had, both in history and of history, it\u2019s never been easier to anachronize. It\u2019s why most of the interactions that play out across bitknot\u2019s twenty-five minutes are tinged with nostalgia, regardless of how long ago they occurred or whether they happened IRL at all. References to feeble little horse\u2019s peers (\u201cNot going to Wednesday\u2019s show\u201d) mingle with ones to their fallen predecessors (\u201cYou are not David Berman \/ You are not Kurt Cobain\u201d). Fresh or not, the wounds still sting. Slocum\u2019s voice flits through a starry and wobbly guitar arrangement and chipmunk backup vox, all swirling together in a constellation of digital dreampop, showcasing the real desires embedded in bitknot\u2019s pixelated tangle of intangible projections: to know and be known, to shout through the portal and get an answer back, to be illuminated in the blue-light glow and\u2014even if only for a moment\u2014be seen. [Saddle Creek]<\/p>\n

Grace Robins-Somerville is a writer from Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in\u00a0Pitchfork, Stereogum, The Alternative, ANTICS, Marvin, Swim Into The Sound\u00a0and her \u201cmostly about music\u201d newsletter,\u00a0Our Band Could Be Your Wife<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I do not doubt that feeble little horse could make a pretty, catchy, straightforward pop tune that would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":["post-469837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}