Last Relapse’s self-titled EP arrives like a long-exhaled breath—one held for more than a decade and released at last with the weight of time behind it. For a band that once thrived on raw confession and dream-warped indie rock textures, this return doesn’t feel like nostalgia. It feels like a reckoning. These five tracks, resurrected from unfinished fragments that lingered in notebooks and memory for thirteen years, carry the emotional sediment of youth but are shaped with the precision and clarity that only adulthood can bring. Recorded in Atlanta after the band quietly reunited in early 2025, the EP stands as a continuation of their story and a kind of release ritual, freeing the ghosts of songs that never had the chance to breathe. The result is a vivid, tightly woven project where intensity meets restraint and the band’s signature dream-drenched guitar work finds a new dimension. It’s an EP that plays like a bridge—between past and present, chaos and control, the boys they were and the men they’ve become.
The opener, “Everyone Dances Outside of Their Bodies,” is the clearest embodiment of that bridge. A longtime live favourite, it finally finds its recorded form—and it shows. The track moves with the confidence of something lived in, a song that survived adolescence without losing its spark. Guitars shimmer like heat rising off asphalt, while the rhythm section keeps everything grounded, pulsing underneath with a heartbeat steadiness that gives Holding space to revisit old emotions from a new vantage point. Lyrically and sonically, it feels like a ritual of closure—an energetic exorcism. There’s urgency here, but not the frantic kind; it’s the urgency of letting go, of finishing something that once felt too heavy to carry. When the chorus blooms, it’s like the band collectively steps out of their own bodies too, watching their younger selves with tenderness rather than regret.
Where the opener stretches its arms toward catharsis, “Hey Girl” dives headfirst into disorientation—and revels in it. The track is a flash in the night, a vivid blast of psychedelic indie rock that morphs, twists, and collapses in on itself every few bars. Cascading drum patterns tumble like loose stones, synths fall in slippery drops, and the reverb pulls the floor out from under you. It’s not randomness, but deliberate vertigo. Holding and the band treat the song like a playground of sonic trapdoors: What if we shift here? What if we flip the floor? What if we distort this beyond recognition? The result is mesmerising. “Hey Girl” becomes a study in unpredictability, not as a gimmick but as architecture. It’s one of the most exhilarating tracks in the EP, a reminder that Last Relapse has returned not just with experience, but with a willingness to push their own boundaries farther than they ever did in their first chapter.
Then comes the jolt: “Rats in a Cage” drops all the psychedelic sleight-of-hand and charges forward with bare-rock ferocity. It’s as if the band suddenly throws the doors open, letting the daylight in after the nocturnal swirl of “Hey Girl.” The guitars are bolder, brighter, dirtier. The drums lock in with a muscular drive, no frills, no haze—just propulsion. Holding’s vocals remain weightless enough to hover above the mix, but the band beneath him is all earth and fire. It’s a track that celebrates the sheer pleasure of playing—unpretentious, loud, alive. Guitar solos spit and spark, trading places like kids daring each other to jump higher, shout louder. There’s no concept here, no cosmic reach. It’s primal. It’s joyful. It’s the sound of a band remembering the thrill of their roots without being swallowed by them.
“In My Place,” by contrast, is where the EP takes its deepest breath. A slow, fragile ballad, it unfolds like a bruise blooming underwater—soft, almost luminous, but edged with something aching. The vocals stretch into new emotional territory, cracking in the right places, gripping in others, as if reaching for something that keeps slipping just out of reach. The arrangement remains sparse at first, giving Holding’s voice space to tremble and burn, until a sudden shift pulls it into something ethereal. Acoustic processing lifts the vocals into a ghostly register, transforming the desperation into something weightless. It’s the most vulnerable song on the EP, the moment where time collapses and the listener can hear not just the man singing, but the years that shaped him.
If the EP’s earlier tracks wrestle with memory, “Solfeggio Dream” closes the project with transcendence. It opens on angelic chords—gentle, glowing—and slowly expands into a shimmering river of sound where nothing behaves exactly as expected. Bells weave in and out of bass lines; guitar layers rise like mist before dissolving; chords drift and reform in ways that defy easy recall, as if the music is alive, slipping through the cracks of consciousness. It’s grounding and otherworldly, balancing weight with air, structure with drift. Last Relapse brings their full sonic vocabulary to this final piece, merging celestial textures with earthbound rhythm. Ambient swells widen the space, letting the track breathe, expand, and fill every available corner before fading into something soft and open-ended.
Taken together, EP is a reclamation. Last Relapse doesn’t simply pick up where they left off, but step forward with a new sense of purpose, finishing the work that once haunted them and turning it into something textured, grown, and alive. In these five tracks, the band shows the rare ability to honour their past without being trapped by it, fusing youthful urgency with hard-earned clarity. The result is a project that feels nostalgic and new, a testament to the power of returning—wiser, braver, and ready to close old chapters by finally giving them a voice.
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