Greg Mendez has always been an economical songwriter – he wields restraint and simplicity as tools, the core of his songs sharpened into simple, cutting truths. On Beauty Land, his new album and debut LP for Dead Oceans, we’re guided by a wry but forgiving narrator, an underdog who has learned to balance cynicism and faith. These songs are self-effacing without self-pity, carefully constructed altars of imperfection channeled through pop melodies, shimmering but urgent guitars, and a voice that reaches for choir boy innocence.
The bulk of Beauty Land was recorded directly to tape, almost entirely alone in Mendez’s makeshift home studio in Philadelphia – a small room with no natural light. It’s his first full length since his unexpected self-titled breakthrough in 2023, which was a slow burn success following 15 years of writing and recording music in relative obscurity between Philly and New York. Beauty Land picks up where we left off three years ago – plumbing the depths of grief, love, and addiction – but its intense, quiet clarity shows Mendez at his songwriting best.
Parts of Beauty Land feel like a lucid dream, dented characters carve their way through a world that’s cartoonish and warped – the broken-clock march of “I Wanna Feel Pretty,” the chiming toy piano on “Gentle Love.” “Mary / Dreaming” begins as a sparse, finger-picked lament before cutting abruptly to a deflated, Beach-Boys-but-make-it-fucked-up resolution that brings both melancholy and joy; a sense that all things can be true at once. None of the 14 tracks here break three minutes, but they tell stories that span lifetimes.
Death floats through the record, whether it appears as a memory or a threat. Everything feels precarious. There’s a fragility to how these songs are built: the way the funeral organ hits alongside the morphine on “Looking Out Your Window,” the devastating simplicity of “Frog,” with its slowed-down keyboard and bare refrain: “Please forgive me for my faults.” Beauty Land feels, at times, impossibly lonely. Which makes it really count when it doesn’t – like when Mendez sings in harmony with his wife and bandmate, Veronica near the end of “So Mean” and it feels like a cherished reunion, a fleeting moment of redemption, a temporary parting of the seas.
Scarlet Rae — a Los Angeles-born, New York City-based artist — started to unveil solo tracks in 2020. She quickly honed a formula that blends understated acoustic instrumentation with shoegaze gloom and whispery, effect-shrouded vocals. For those uninitiated, her lowkey output may have seemed to come from nowhere. But she was already a seasoned musician, having performed in a myriad projects since her teens. Rae comes from a family of kindred spirits, who encouraged her to learn guitar as a young child. This led her to open for her father at bars around Los Angeles and attend concerts with her older sister. By high school, she was fronting the indie folk band Rose Dorn, who became favorites in the Los Angeles DIY circuit. The trio’s sepia tinted debut, Days You Were Leaving, was issued by Bar None Records in 2019.
A move from California to Brooklyn in 2020 enabled Rae to creatively refresh. Lower rents and the isolation provided by Covid-19 lockdowns led her to begin focusing on material she hadn’t had the time to pursue while occupied with Rose Dorn. Though newly 18 as she crafted early singles “Parachute” and “Going Through,” the impressive strides made in Los Angeles allowed her to connect with buzzy peers on the East Coast. Once pandemic restrictions lifted, Rae settled into an ascendant groove: she has now gigged as a live member of bar italia at shows in Miami and Mexico City; toured in support of alt-pop act Sedona; and shared stages with the likes of Fantasy Of A Broken Heart, Bloomsday, and CFCF. In late 2024 she announced her signing to Bayonet Records (Mei Seimones, Beach Fossils, Being Dead), show released her first single “Bleu” which earned comparisons to Alex G from Stereogum, and saw praise from FADER who said Rae “navigates the tangled emotions with ease, and remarkable poise.”
No Heavy Goodbyes — Rae’s new EP for Bayonet Records — emerged as a rapid outpouring following an extended mental block. It stays true to her blueprint, but dials in craggier textures and sharpens storytelling. Its five cuts were tweaked over unplugged snippets on TikTok. When it came time to formalize the body of work, Rae fleshed out the songs as homespun demos in her Brooklyn apartment. She polished takes at sessions with producer Jordan Lawlor (M83, Oberhofer) in Los Angeles. Rae played the majority of the parts on No Heavy Goodbyes herself, citing Placebo as a source of inspiration.
Across No Heavy Goodbyes, Rae’s elven vocals are offset by razor-y walls of distortion. She pulls from acceptance, solitude, and grief — feelings that surfaced as a result of a difficult chapter marked by loss. “Bleu,” previously released in December 2024, hinted at the EP’s wrenching, but spellbinding quality. Above a thorny backdrop of resonant fretwork and synthesizer flourishes, Rae pays numb homage to her late sibling. Opener “A World Where She Left Me” grapples with the early stages of sorrow after death, Rae in one-sided conversation with the deceased and establishing a need for space amid an onslaught of attention. “The Reason I Could Sleep Forever” expresses a desire to disappear, without romanticizing the depletion fueling that temptation. A vulnerable tremor, No Heavy Goodbyes is unafraid to be painfully articulate — dusting raw themes in mesmerizing, spectral sonics.