Beck Zegans : Engraving of Armor
Under the name Goo, Queens singer/songwriter Beck Zegans crafted lush and dreamy psychedelic folk built on mesmerizing arrangements that merged the earthy with the ethereal. Her 2023 album Squid Ink Sky is an underrated gem of dream Americana, hypnotic melodies wrapped in organ, pedal steel and strings—endlessly rich even when many of those elements are peeled away, a song like “Demon” feeling curiously vast even with only two or three instruments.
That richly mesmerizing sense of depth remains a defining element of her first album under her own name, Engraving of Armor, but the textures are pricklier and the shades more stunningly dark. First track “When You Were in My Bed” seems unassuming enough at first, its opening drone in a kind of blissful dream state, hovering at the intersection of ecstasy and agony as Zegans sings, “It almost hurts me, you slept so sweetly, a dragon with folded wings.” But as it slowly emerges from a gentle vapor, it congeals into a more chaotic and tempestuous noise-krautrock ripper, tendrils of prickly guitar riffs wrapped around its pulsing core.
Reflective of an angrier period marked by listening to a lot of angrier music, and featuring backing from bandmates Alex MacKay and Julian Fader, Engraving of Armor uncovers some significantly more ominous aspects to Zegans’ songwriting. They don’t always present themselves in such abrasive ways, like in the sparsely enchanting indie pop dirge “Record Tamer,” with a rhythmic burst reminiscent of Radiohead’s “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi,” or the more immediate and infectious four-chord jangle of “Love in the End Times,” awash in waves of psychedelic synthesizer. But there’s often a sinister undercurrent roiling beneath the album’s abundant hooks, rising up to the surface on a standout like the dark, turbulent psychedelia of “Even on the Phone,” rife with climactic riffs and dissonant chords.
Throughout the album, Zegans frequently reflects on matters of love and desire, though she often does so from a distance, whether through the intimate memory that echoes through “When You Were in My Bed” or from a more literal distance, as with standout “Slither.” Against its casual yet eerie strut, Zegans coolly sings, “I’m drinking dulcet tones of city spew, ’til blue daylight there I go alone, ’cause I cannot control what I might do,” a cacophonous escalation of guitars following her as she slips away. It’s in a moment like this where Zegans seemingly dons her titular armor, at least in an emotional sense, though the gentle elegiac closer “Armor (Susan’s Poem)” serves as a kind of cautionary tale about closing oneself off, Zegans gently singing, “This is all we have left of you… Only a suit of war remains.” If anything, as the turbulent noise rock climax of “Woods” would suggest, Zegans is holding nothing back.
Label: Exploding in Sound
Year: 2026
Similar Albums:
Beck Zegans : Engravings in Armor
Note: When you buy something through our affiliate links, Treble receives a commission. All albums we cover are chosen by our editors and contributors.
