David Cronenberg’s Wife push songwriting horizons on ‘Department of Biology’.

By Hard of Hearing on May 12, 2026

The collection hinges on vivid scenes drawn from antiquity to the present, all rooted in indie discipline.

Photo: Tom Mayne | Words: Lloyd Bolton

Want to check in with Lot and see how he’s getting on with it all? Pining for a girl who lives months by barge down the other end of the Volga? Ever wondered what it would really be like to sleep with a mermaid? David Cronenberg’s Wife’s fifth album ‘Department of Biology’might just be for you.

Forged in the early 2000s in London’s antifolk scene, the band are pitched somewhere between The Velvet Underground, The Fall and frequent touring companion Jeffrey Lewis, defined more than anything by their expansion of the horizons of indie songwriting. Working again with Blang Records, ‘Department of Biology’ collects a wonderfully eclectic series of subjects across a number of songs which have become recent live favourites.

The record starts strong with ‘Lot’s Daughters’. The tribulations of the Old Testament figure are personalised here as the song opens with a friend checking in, ‘Hey Lot, how’s it going?’. The ensuing account of his various struggles (accusations of trafficking his daughters, the wife-into-pillar-of-salt incident and his unwitting fathering of his daughters’ children) is transformed into a cut of speak-sing punk rock. The modern/ancient blur is joyfully completed by details like the multipack crisps, plastic cups and supermarket wine Lot and ‘the girls’ pick up as they hike out of Sodom.

Similar heights of narrative-led songwriting are hit on ‘Mermaid’s Tale’, a rewriting of the mythical ideal of human-mermaid romantic adventure. As our protagonist fantasises about his comely half-fish companion, she efficiently puts him right on the essential points. Singer Tom Mayne fills in the details, the imagined possibilities and notions of masculine conquest are washed away by the rather more ignominious necessities of fish biology.

There is far more range to this record, however, and between these moments of wry levity are the swirling textures of ‘Deliquiescent in Saltland’, string-driven track, ‘Chelsea Girls’-adjacent ‘The Novice’, and poignant, present-day closer ‘If You Think About It’. Another highlight, ‘Chekov’s Bordello’, imagines yearning and romance in tsarist Russia, appropriately adjusting the focus of the adoration of protagonist, Anton Chekov, to ‘neat lodgings’ and ‘clean hands and face’.

‘Department of Biology’ forms a transportive collection, flashing us between vividly drawn scenes and time periods held together by the rooted playing of the backing band. Their driving backing anchors the continuities of human emotion throughout, a measured restraint making each moment feel essential. The record builds on David Cronenberg’s Wife’s mission to expand the bounds of subject matter for indie rock while adding some of their finest songs to date to the discography.