Dig ‘in: Sincere Engineer, The Wulongs, The Femcels, The Laughing Chimes
Check out what the No Wristbands team is listening to and what’s in our show calendars this month on our latest Dig ‘in.
INCOMING
Sincere Engineer - Probable Claws (Hopeless Records LP)
Deanna Belos has been building towards her masterpiece for years now—each record a little tighter, a little more confident—and this one finally feels like Sincere Engineer operating at the peak of their abilities.
The album was tracked at Electrical Audio here in Chicago, and you can hear it. The band sounds locked in, in a room, playing together, and Mike Sapone’s production lets that breathe without over-polishing it. The guitars run hot, the drums are exactly where they need to be, and Belos’ voice—which can go from gentle and melodic to absolutely ferocious in the span of a single verse—is mixed right at the center of everything where it belongs.
The theme running through most of the record is time and the anxiety of watching it slip past you. “Cooler” and “The Perfect Crime” are both great examples of that—Belos treating small daily frustrations as evidence of some larger, scarier truth about how fast everything moves. But the song that gets me most is “LOL,” which is the quietest, slowest thing on the record and kind of its secret weapon. It’s a slow-driver of a track with spoken word interjections that nod to classic punk songs throughout—there’s a Bad Religion reference in there that is going to make a certain kind of listener very happy. For a record that mostly wants to make you move, “LOL” is the moment where Belos just sits down for a second and lets the weight of everything show. It earns it. “Hallucinogenic” is the other side of that coin—one of the most purely energetic tracks here, the kind of song that sounds like it was written to be played in a sweaty room to a crowd that already knows every word. You can hear the years of touring with Joyce Manor and The Menzingers all over it, not as imitation but as education. This is a band that has been paying close attention to how their peers do it, and has figured out how to apply those lessons while still sounding completely like themselves.
Probable Claws is Sincere Engineer’s best record, and I don’t think it’s particularly close. Belos has always been a great songwriter, but this is the first album where every single piece—the production, the sequencing, the range of moods—feels fully in service of what she’s trying to say. For a band that’s been grinding away in this scene for nearly a decade, that feels like a real arrival -Mark Joyner
The Wulongs - FACH (Sunday Records LP)
FACH, the second album from the Japanese female trio of Rev (guitar/vocals), Omaika (bass/vocals) and Sophie (drums), is an acronym for Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria. It’s a spirited and passionate effort for a band that keeps a low profile and prefers to let their music do the talking for them.
The track “Strive” arrives with the tounge-in-cheek announcement that “We’re here to make money and sellout and stuff.” Elsewhere, “Text” leads off the album with missile-like velocity before giving way to the swirling miasma clutches of “Detachment.” The Wulongs’ versatility is on display with the tender “April Showers” and wistful “Pyrite.”
Sunday Records, based locally out of Rolling Meadows, released FACH and its predecessor Videodrome, so perhaps there’s a chance that they can bring the band over stateside, especially since it now appears that they’ve shortened the travel time with a recent relocation to Germany. -Bruce Novak
The Femcels - I Have To Get Hotter (Getting Hotter Records LP)
Rowan Miles, one half of London duo The Femcels along with Gabriella Turton, revealed that most of the material that she wrote for the group’s debut album, I Have To Get Hotter, was culled from her diary of heartbroken recollections. That level of uncensored observation drives the record to outlandish heights, all the while maintaining a cheeky, taking-the-piss approach. The group’s name is derived from the term that’s used to describe a woman who is involuntary celibate despite having a compelling desire for a relationship.
The Femcels’ frustration is manifested in wickedly lacerating numbers like “No One Will Fuck Me When I Wear Two Different Shoes (One Jordan, One Gucci Flip Flop)” and “She Seems Kind Of Stupid.” Sequencing the tracks “I’m So Fat” and “He Needs Me” back-to-back midway through the album illustrates the pair’s resilience—shaking off unrealistic standards to reassert their control. Miles and Turton embrace their punky, irreverent humor and deservedly are the ones who get in the last laugh. -Bruce Novak
The Laughing Chimes - Behind Your Blue Fields (Slumberland Records LP)
Athens, OH, reportedly is one of America’s 10 most haunted cities. The Laughing Chimes (now based in Athens, originally from the tiny “ghost town” of Shawnee, OH) embrace the ghosts—not just the quiet, spectral ones of abandoned places and dreams emerging from the industrial Rust Belt, but also the lively spirits of 1980s-1990s college radio. As they say on their most recent album, “I sense, I sense it’s a tremor / Half alive on a radio bender / Flash drive, view in my mind / A high find like I’m stuck on the rewinds.”
The young band established their lo-fi retro pop chops with the 2021 album In This Town. Acknowledging the influence of jangle masters REM, the Bats, the La’s, and other paisley pop bands, The Laughing Chimes presented their own sincere take on the genre with riffs and melodies that lived up to the band’s lovely name. Subsequent releases added The Cure and Echo & the Bunnymen to the roster of influences and deliberately leaned into a moodier, self-described Southern gothic sound of romantic decay.
The new album, Behind Your Blue Fields, is a compilation largely made up of pre-second-album castoff demos. It’s gratifying that these worthy compositions are seeing the light of day. The songs are livelier and brighter than those chosen for the sophomore release; but they still play with atmosphere, evoking the light and shadows of leaves on a sunny front porch. Even at this early stage, the arrangements are confident and interesting; and the sometimes abstract, sometimes narrative lyrics ably explore the mundane, the boring, and the beautiful aspects of small-town life.
The demos salute the most hummable pop ghosts of the past and present. “Small Town Race Cars” (“going nowhere fast”) channels the sprightly treble guitar riffs of the early Flying Nun bands. The vocals in “On an Electric Taxi Cab” and the engaging “Newshound Pageants” are obscured by echo and fuzz, conjuring the spooky production of fellow Ohioans Guided by Voices. “Zephyr” swirls into the stratosphere to meet and greet REM’s “Harborcoat.”
The dynamic, super-catchy “Lunchbox in Stereo” encourages, “Change the rules / play a fool.” “If I Could Land Your Heart” is simple, raw, and melancholy: “You say things to me and I’ve sat alone feeling dumb…. If I could land your heart I’d be Orville Wright.”
The wistful title track, “Behind Your Blue Fields,” is a standout: “Suddenly I feel like I have ghosted you / Lose the floor among a fall to the carpet view / Dream a house, forever house where we never sleep / But I can feel you make me feel you, cry on me.”
The release offers four bonus demos, including 4- and 8-track versions of “Behind Your Blue Fields.” It’s intriguing to follow the band’s creative progress from the unvarnished, dreamy original, through a poppier and more upbeat arrangement with a brief countermelody and spiky outro, to the lush final version. -Tina Woelke
UPCOMING
Fat, Evil Children at Schubas Tavern - July 19, 8:00 PM
The members of Fat, Evil Children met as undergrads at USC, where they also crossed paths with Autry Jesperson, son of Twin/Tone co-founder and Replacements manager Peter Jesperson, who brought them aboard his recently-formed artist management company. After dropping their debut album, Fat Evil Dogs, Fat Evil Cats, Fat Evil Bears, Fat Evil Rats, in the summer of 2024, the quartet followed it up last November with their second EP, titled Can’t Stop. Guitarist and vocalist Nic Skrabak pens songs that steer more reflective than exuberant. Paired together with fellow guitarist Truman Sinclair (who’s a Chicago transplant), their tones sound balanced and harmonious. With a few years under their belt, Fat, Evil Children have established an impressive baseline of inspired indie rock and created a promising path towards fulfilling elevated expectations. —Bruce Novak
Ms. Ezra Furman at SPACE - July 20 & 21, 6:30 PM
Liz Furman returns to her hometown for a pair of solo shows christened as “Doing What She Wants.” Her independent streak manifested itself through a declaration of gender fluidity followed by a full transitioning that she announced in 2021. Her latest album, 2025’s Goodbye Small Head, derived its name from a lyric from the Sleater-Kinney song “Get Up.” Furman connected with the song’s resilience in the face of impending demise. She also embraced the concept of Traumatophilia—a recognition of trauma that leads to personal transformation by discovering one’s inner strength to adapt in a positive manner. While Furman’s music has progressed in scope with the aid of her long-tenured band—incorporating a string section and samples on the new record—her emotional resonance continues to shine through and is sure to be on full display during these intimate performances. -Bruce Novak
UNCOVERED
Blank Realm - Grassed Inn (Fire Records LP)
Composed of siblings Daniel, Luke and Sarah Spencer along with close friend Luke Walsh, Brisbane’s Blank Realm really came into their own with their 2014 release, Grassed Inn, nearly a decade after first forming. Far from being a buttoned-up affair, the record captured their unrestricted naked tendency to let it rip; teetering on the edge of collapse yet able to hold things together just long enough.
A case in point is the six-minutes-plus trajectory of “Falling Down The Stairs”—a carnivalesque song that captures the euphoria of a night of hard partying with little regard for the impending fallout. Daniel Spencer’s boastful proclamations are undercut by the backing instrumentation that seems destined to topple over at any given moment.
With a running time of forty five minutes over the course of eight tracks, Blank Realm thrive on inertia. The opening track “Back to the Flood” hits the ground running and never pauses to look back. “Bulldozer Love” extends past eight minutes, achieving a zen-like mantra that surprisingly doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Grassed Inn concludes with “Reach You On The Phone”—a desperate plea for connection that’s elevated by Sarah Spencer’s soaring synth lines. It captures Blank Realm in their most vulnerable state; stricken with bitterness but not consumed by it. One senses that there’s nothing that will keep this group down as they pick themselves up off the mat and resume the fight with a ferocity that’s devoid of fear. —Bruce Novak
We recommend listening along over at our Spotify page. Here’s this week’s content: