Posted: by The Alt Editing Staff
It’s been fascinating to watch how Circus Trees have grown over the years. The sibling trio–guitarist/vocalist Finola McCarthy, bassist Edmee McCarthy, and drummer/guitarist Eoghan McCarthy–began releasing music in 2018 as (pre-)teens. Their early music was dark and abrasive, pulling from shoegaze, emo, post-rock, and post-hardcore at points, and carried a resonance and heft far beyond their years. Even now, track like “Carousels” and the eight-plus-minute opus “Floating Still” hit and hit hard. By the time of their six-track, forty-minute debut LP in 2020, their songwriting got more immediate, songs a little more compact, and especially Finola much more confident.
After a faithful, if harder-rocking, Julien Baker cover, Circus Trees began rolling out singles for their sophomore album This makes me sad, and I miss you, and it’s impossible to deny how far they’ve come; “Save Yourself” and “Trap Door,” in particular, showcased far bigger hooks than anything else in the Circus Trees catalog. The rest of the LP is out tomorrow, but we’re excited to premiere the full thing a day early. It’s without a doubt the band’s most accomplished work yet. “Alone” and “Simple Things” are their heaviest material to date, the former nearly going full-on sludge metal; “Wish I Was Fine,” with its cave-echo verses and its to-the-rafters chorus, is the sort of song Circus Trees has been trying to write for half a decade and finally perfected. It works the other way, though, too–This makes me sad‘s opener “More Than You Could Ask For” is a whispery, sparse folk song that completely eschews the cathartic eruptions they’ve become known for, displaying a different sort of maturity. The album’s entirely produced by Eoghan and Finola, too, and sounds immaculate, both big enough to fill a room and clean and intimate enough that it sounds like you’re right there with them.
Check out This makes me sad below; it’s more than worth your time.
This makes me sad, and I miss you is out tomorrow.
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Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
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