by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
Olympia’s Debt Rag have coined themselves “adult punk,” and while they may be collectively seasoned in years, the trio prove that you getting older and making abrasive minimalist punk aren’t mutually exclusive. While the band’s bio makes it clear that they aren’t here to rest on their laurels and past achievements, this ain’t their first rodeo, and when your past work includes bands like Grass Widow, Preening, and Girlsperm, it’s worth noting. Past projects aside, Max Nordile, Lillian Maring, and Marissa Magic come together as one throughout Lost To The Fantasy, the band’s full length debut, out March 31st via Post Present Medium (Non Plus Temps, Syko Friend, Chalk). Following a self-released EP at the end of 2021, the band up the fidelity, but keep their fusion of raw punk and clawing noise rock at its most skeletal. It’s impressive to make something feel both sparse and acerbic, but Debt Rag are up for the task, with bare bones abrasion at the core.
“Cognitive Whirlpool,” the record’s lead single takes their ethos of unlearning layered excess and instead embracing the incidental. Their noise plods more so than swirls, their vocals cut in a way that’s far from dreamy, and the entire thing warps into a sordid kind of primal celebration, with keys, percussion, and bass each given their own space. As its most rudimentary the stabs of bass and synths and the slow collide of floor tom feel caustic, everything ringing in a downward motion, opening space for cowbell and trumpet, but peeling all else back in the process as careful to never overload the song.