in january, foxtails posted an image with a simple subtitle: “summer 2019.” well friends, summer 2019 is here, and you know what, so is foxtails. and while the band have not publicly shared many details about the new album, they said i could write about it. it’s nuts, and i’ve never heard anything like it. i’ll try to explain.
here are the objective details: foxtails’ new album is titled ‘querida hija‘ which translates to ‘dear daughter’. it’s the first album since 2017’s Ill, and the first official release since last year’s split with algae bloom. the album is seven tracks and about 25 minutes long. it features megan cadena-fernandez (bass/vox), jon benham (guitar/vox), and michael larocca (drums). the tracklist is:
- zzz
- the chickening
- prime crier
- it was the first time i remembered a saturday night i forgot about
- lucky cat sticker pack
- querida
- i experienced ego death on a skramcave thread
so those are the objective facts. but here is the truth: querida hija fucking rules. it’s the best thing the band have recorded to date. it’s a blast from start to finish, brimming with life and energy. songs don’t sound constructed — they sound exercised, like pure, raw emotions have spilled out of foxtails, who have taken on the task of guiding those forces, shaping them into songs. dynamic, these songs spin on a dime, erupt into noise, and swoon with melody. is querida hija post-rock? hardcore? math-rock? it’s kind of all of the above, yet none of these easy genre identifiers quite describe exactly the kind of magic foxtails is conjuring here.
what i found most remarkable about querida hija was not only how personal it was, but how easily it involves the listener. an album with this many twists and turns could easily alienate the audience, but the emotion-based, intuitive approach makes every move that foxtails make feel right. it’s hard to explain, but when you listen to each song, they feel completely unpredictable, but once you hear the next step they take, it always feel like the best possible choice — like there would have been no other choice than the one they made. quiet, loud, fast, and slow, all in one song, yet it never for a moment feels disorganized. if you can show me the math on how that works, please let me know.
here are my three favorite moments from querida hija:
“the chickening”: after the elegiac opener “zzz”, this song rolls out a series of virtuoso shifts in tone and tempo. moving from plucked guitar lines to rampaging riffs, foxtails enters a liminal space between at the drive-in (in their prime) and guerilla toss. the moment i love in particular is from 1:10 to 1:30, where the band fits a song-worth of ideas into less than 20 seconds.
“it was the first time i remembered a saturday night i forgot about”: while i wouldn’t call foxtails a “math rock” band, they do enjoy throwing in tricky rhythms and meter. one of my favorite examples of this happens in “it was the first time”, where, after a lovely saxophone starts the track, the band catches fire and gets louder and more chaotic before returning back to the more mellow baseline.
“i experienced ego death on a skramcave thread”: every member of foxtails is essential, but this track belongs to megan cadena-fernandez, who puts on the vocal performance of their career here. demonstrating an incredible range, they move from deep, guttural bellows to ear-piercing shrieks from measure-to-measure. and querida hija reaches an scary, raw moment when, after a series of screams, they shout “my body / is ruined.” the song, perhaps the most emotionally brutal of the album. it’s the final piece of catharsis, the last spiritual bath, before the listener finds themselves alone and changed, somewhere outside of themselves.
a formal release date for querida hija has not been announced, so keep an eye on the band’s facebook page and this link for pre-order information: https://fffoxtails.bandcamp.com/
