| Their second album is an unrelenting, cathartic protest for a world in crisis. | | Photo: Charles Gall | Words: Grace Palmer | | | Fierce and apocalyptic, Mandy, Indiana offer up a revolutionary cry with their new album, 'URGH'. This sophomore release (put out with NYC indie 'Sacred Bones') from the Anglo-French quartet is a deeply personal yet sharply political critique of contemporary dogmatism and societal chaos. An album that explodes, bleeds, and screams, the call-to-action of 'URGH' is more prescient than ever. With Simon Catling's cacophonic synth layers and drummer Alex Macdougall's unrelenting intensity, it assaults the senses and rips through the listener. Uncompromising in their sonic abrasiveness, Mandy, Indiana confront the laissez-faire with their liberatory refusal to be silenced. | | Created over three ten-hour studio sessions, 'URGH' conflates endurance and exhaustion into what Macdougall describes as a "survivalist mode". Opening with the visceral, adrenaline-charged 'Sevastopol', Mandy, Indiana capture a fight-or-flight tension, setting the tone of this tumultuous record. Valentine Caulfield's distorted voice is an assailant – the aggressor and liberator. Paired with Catling's echoing synths, 'Sevastopol' is an explosive introduction to the band's form of musical protest. The track's climax features a carnival-esque melody, a hypnotic shift that mocks any sense of security. Throughout the album, this paradoxical approach rejects stability or fixed meaning. In 'try saying', a fragile sampled phrase, "Honey, is that you?", is shattered by the cascading drum breakdown and Caulfield's anguished, aggressive vocals, capturing a cruel loss of innocence. 'Magazine', debuted at Coachella in 2024, reimagines their industrial-rave style into an animalistic chant, reminiscent of Ethel Cain's tormenting screams on 'Preacher's Daughter'. Caulfield's most furious scream to date, delivering the repeated phrase "Je viens pour toi" (I'm coming for you), and the pulsating siren sounds, adds a cultish menace to the playful beat. Untethered and unbound, Mandy, Indiana evade simplicity, creating songs that sprawl, transform, and erupt. | | Themes of the surreal and the occult merge with the synth's prominence and Scott Fair'swarped guitar melodies.As a tribute to "trashy '90s horror films", 'Life Hex' is a mesmerising yet unsettling addition to the album. Sampling their own version of the mantra "Light as a feather / Stiff as a board", from the 1996 horror flick 'The Craft', Caulfield's ghostly chant is overtakenby the band's cacophony of drums, synths and guitars. Featuring one of the most destructive feedback loops on the record, 'Life Hex' tears through the senses and leaves only the stark realisation that you are under Mandy, Indiana's curse. 'Dodecahedron' exemplifies this album's affinity for the macabre. Set in an uncanny reality, this track is a dystopian hallucination. The penetrating refrain, "Il mâche, lève-toi" (He chews, get up), combined with swirling, nightmarish folk melodies, chews up and spits out the listener. Catling's fading synth at the track's conclusion offers only slight respite from the band's unremitting grip. 'URGH' is a masterclass in contradiction, constructing songs that befit both the battlefield and the opening scenes of 'Blade'. | | While Mandy, Indiana create these cinematic, sci-fi-inspired sequences, 'URGH' is equally a vital and socially pertinent album. billy woods' appearance on 'Sicko!' expresses rage against Big Pharma and the commercial exploitation of our bodies and health. Lines like "brain damaged but the body healed" and the subtle coughing sample make 'Sicko!' an infected and diseased track – a resignation to our commercialised sickness. The driving beats on 'Cursive' and 'ist halt so' produce restless, hurtling sounds. 'ist halt so' notably references the resistance against the Gaza genocide, with Caulfield's urgent plea "Nous, nous, sommes les jeunes" (We are the young). Yet it is the album's final track, 'I'll Ask Her', where this systematic critique is most clearly exposed. As Caulfield's sole English-language song, 'I'll Ask Her' is an intimate yet universal rallying cry against boy's club culture. Relaying the familiar phrase, "Boys will be boys, you know how it is", Caulfield adopts the lad persona, condemning women's hysteria and baseless accusations. Concluding with the devastatingwords, "Your friend is a rapist, but they're all fucking crazy man", 'I'll Ask Her' offers a crucial reckoning with toxic masculinity and its dangerous, misogynistic legacy. | | Traversing both the otherworldly and the physical, Mandy, Indiana's latest release, stands as a fierce and relentless protest. Driven by Caulfield's powerful vocals, Fair's distorted guitar, Catling's explosive synth, and Macdougall's vigorous drumming, 'URGH' acts as a cathartic scream, a revitalisation of strength, and a vow of reclamation. | | | | |
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