Feeble Little Horse : bitknot
Since the band’s inception in 2021, Feeble Little Horse have remained tight-knit and straightforward in their musical approach. Their debut album, that same year’s Hayday, swoops into the gusto of noisy guitar riffs and percussion blasts paralleled by Lydia Slocum’s deadpan delivery. It’s rough around the edges, but it doesn’t wash over the band’s melodic verve. They enhanced this approached further through 2023’s Girl with Fish, dialing up the production and bringing more textural detail to their charming songwriting—which is a bit odd and ticklish, but employed playfully to their advantage.
There’s a bigger shift on the band’s newest release, bitknot. It’s the first album without founding member Ryan Walchonski, slimming the band down to a trio. The change in line-up fortunately doesn’t hurt the band’s dynamic, as once again, they keep their signature compositional approach clenched in their fists. “Dior” represents this best, bringing in snappy guitar lines surrounding Slocum’s voice. This familiar noise is elevated as the song progresses with a quicker tempo, then ends with a hooky repetition of “ah-ah-ahs” to tie everything together.
In the past, the group’s absurd lyrical style nestled well with the awkward dynamics and descriptions of relationships, but here, there is a deeper focus on how capitalism and materialism affects people’s behaviors and the connections around them. This thematic framing might not always work within the confines of these songs’ brief runtimes, but there tends to be a lick of insight worth highlighting nonetheless. “Poison” finds the protagonist pondering financial debt that seems inescapable, an existential dread that may only get worse down the line. “Paris” infuses materialistic cool (“Imma fly down to Paris / In my 22 karat plane”) into one’s persona, a common way to deflect from genuinely communicating with somebody.
These moments provide reflections upon how people see themselves and each other, as witnessed on cuts like “Rewind” and “Shady,” which both provide reminders of how easy it is to become so focused on the self that you lose sight of your surroundings. We’re stuck considering how to direct our future, to the point that we don’t properly remember our past and figure out our present.
The band’s insight comes through most sharply on the last two tracks. “Shopping” wonderfully embodies what it feels like to drown in envy, a biting critique of how capitalism classifies style as a substance that only creates distance between us. Then the final song, “DMT,” is an embrace of the present, the protagonist for once finding joy despite living within a harsh system.
The sound of bitknot, despite once again finding the group’s Sebastian Kinsler in the production chair, evokes a mellow, synthetic palette. It builds a sweeter and affectionate tone that works best when the melodies are able to punch through. “Shopping” and “Rewind” hold up wondrously as a result, the former transitioning from soft and loud dynamics seamlessly and the latter song’s wistful charm becoming one of the band’s most charming songs to date.
Of course, the band’s noisy element never exactly left. “Guts” churns with the guitars and electronics sizzling from front to back, creating a soundscape that’s simultaneously delirious and comforting. And closing track “DMT” becomes a beast of its own, letting the guitar distortion initially snarl, eventually growing deafening as Slocum starts to piercingly shriek “Death money tech / DMT, check” to the final leg of the song.
As much as the band reveals a willingness to expand from their usual checkmarks, they do so with some growing pains. The songwriting, while well-thought out, sometimes feels limited by the concise format of these tracks. And the soundscapes that cushion the band’s blaring guitar tendencies can sometimes dull the edges too much, lacking textural detail to make the melodies more memorable.
Despite these drawbacks, bitknot still feels like a significant moment in Feeble Little Horse’s growth. It showcases just how much they’re willing to deepen and experiment with their usual approach and take bigger swings in their sound and themes.
Label: Saddle Creek
Year: 2026
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