New York duo Apophasis are Swedish musician Georgia Wartel Collins and Devin Brahja Waldman. Their self-titled debut album is out now on Fast Speaking Music, the label founded by poet and activist Anne Waldman (Devin’s aunt) and Ambrose Bye. The pair met in 2023 while touring with the jazz group Brahja, and soon after, Georgia asked Devin to play drums in a rock project she had been dreaming up for a while. She writes the music, sings and plays guitar and bass; he handles drums and lyrics. The result is raw but highly melodic alternative rock, with political and philosophical lyrics that matter just as much as the music.
Apophasis move between different sounds from one song to the next without losing what makes them distinctive. There are dense, hypnotic moments close to True Widow’s narcotic sound, such as “Hold My Hand” and “Guilty Conscience”, where distorted guitars and slow rhythms contrast with delicate vocals. Elsewhere, “See You In Hell” leans towards atmospheric post-punk, while “Kingdom Is Within” recalls Helium’s sinuous alternative rock and the vocal sensibility of Throwing Muses. There’s also room for the melodic immediacy of The Breeders, post-punk guitars and the occasional garage-rock outburst that brings The Vaselines to mind. “Crunched Together” is well worth a closer listen: the guitars build and build, while Georgia’s curious, almost syllable-by-syllable delivery gives a distinctive twist to a solid alternative rock foundation.
Devin’s lyrics don’t beat around the bush: they take aim at obedience, manipulation and structures of domination. “See You In Hell” is about a hell created by those who swallow the lies of people in power, while “In The Silence” takes aim at our indifference to things we’d rather not see. But Apophasis don’t just point the finger at those in charge. They also question the complicity of those who obey and the habit of waiting for someone else to fix things. Instead, they stand up for individual responsibility, independent thinking and reciprocity, especially on “Why Is It All” and “Do No Harm”. Amid all the political criticism, there’s also room for spirituality, with questions about existence and reincarnation on “Hold My Hand” and inner freedom on “Kingdom Is Within”. In the end, the whole album comes back to one idea: there can be no collective change without first examining our own actions.
With this debut, Apophasis find their own voice, both in their sound and in what they have to say. Some riffs and choruses hang around longer than they need to, but the duo manage to turn their political and existential concerns into songs that are raw and sensitive at the same time, and that’s no mean feat.
Listen to the full album here.
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