GIRL WITH FISH

The Pittsburgh quartet’s beloved sophomore album, Girl with Fish, is marking it’s one year anniversary with a special Birthday Edition pressing on sprinkle splatter vinyl out June 14th.

feeble little horse makes thrilling and wildly unpredictable songs that are a reection of the joys that come with making music with your best friends. Girl with Fishwas made focusing on intuition over intention: letting the magic of collaboration come rst. “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-record-ed and self-produced tracks, the band careens from blissed-out pop to harsh noise, glitchy programmed drum beats, and o-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. 

For the members of feeble little horse, Haydaywas originally going to be their rst and last album. Guitarist Ryan Walchonski was moving to Washington D.C. for work while the rest of the band, including Kelley, guitarist-producer Sebastian Kinsler, and singer-bassist Lydia Slocum were all still in college. “When we made Hayday, we wrote really quickly to get it done before he moved away and we couldn’t make songs anymore,” says Kinsler. “But we realized making music with each other was too fun to walk away from. For this album, we got to take our time with every decision that went into it.” Despite the distance with Walchonski out-of-state and Slocum attending school a few hours away in central Pennsylvania, the band immediately started work on a new batch of songs, trading voice memos, new mixes, and song ideas remotely. 

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 satised / she's 5'1 and you're 6'5”). “I think we just felt more condent 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 Haydaybut not make the same song again.” Girl with Fishis 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.”