Girl With Fish (Colored Vinyl)

feeble little horse makes thrilling and wildly unpredictable songs that are a reflection of the joys that come with making music with your best friends. The Pittsburgh quartet’s sophomore album, Girl with Fish, was made focusing on intuition over intention: letting the magic of collaboration come first. “Anything that makes us laugh or puts a smile on our faces, we usually end up keeping in the songs,” explains drummer Jake Kelley. Across 11 self-recorded and self-produced tracks, the band careens from blissed-out pop to harsh noise, glitchy programmed drum beats, and off-kilter indie rock—sometimes all in one song. As a follow-up to their critically acclaimed 2021 debut Hayday, this LP, with its overwhelmingly inviting and emotionally resonant tracklist, is a document of four people trusting their instincts and most importantly each other.

Like the album name, which came from an inside joke the band shared about imagined painting titles at a museum, there’s a sense of humor that’s welcoming and light. The bruising opener “Freak,” for all its pummeling drums and guitar blasts, is a breezy track about an unrequited crush on a college star athlete (Slocum sings, “how can you be satisfied / she's 5'1 and you're 6'5”). “I think we just felt more confident on this album,” says Slocum. “We could have felt more pressure and more unsure of ourselves. But we just wanted to try new things, and learn from what people liked about Hayday but not make the same song again.” Girl with Fish is a testament to the power of self-recording, doing it yourself, and taking a leap with the people you are closest with. “Besides our friendship getting stronger and our songs becoming more interesting to us, nothing’s really changed,” says Kinsler. “It's still us just hanging out: This is what we do instead of playing video games.”