Some albums are born from a desire to tell a story. Others from a need to confront it. The Arsonist is the second album by Where We Sleep, Beth Rettig‘s solo project following Blindness. It arrives seven years after “Experiments in the Dark” and finds Rettig working with a level of artistic control that feels both deliberate and deeply personal. It is a record shaped by chaos, loss and reconstruction, but also by a refusal to present any of those experiences as simple victories.
The opening track, “Under a Big Sky”, sets the tone with its hypnotic, enveloping guitar line —almost a post-punk litany that recalls the more expansive side of The Cure. What initially feels like an image of liberation with open skies, distance and space, is tainted from within: the “world on fire” is a state of mind rather than a landscape. While the song looks towards the horizon, the album ultimately finds its centre in internal conflict.
From there, The Arsonist barely lets up. Drawing on classic post-punk with Bauhaus-inspired synths and echoes of Siouxsie and the Banshees, “Headlong” turns repetition into part of the message: “the chaos is coming from you” resurfaces again and again until it becomes an obsession. “Broken Bones” transforms emotional pain into something tangible — hypnotic basslines, dark electronic textures and clear echoes of Nine Inch Nails — until the wounds seem to become part of the person carrying them. “It wasn’t the rib, it was the backbone” stands as the album’s most striking line.
The production, largely handled by Rettig herself and mixed and mastered by Guy Fixsen (My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Lush), conveys a sense of absolute control. Basslines dominate much of the record, synths create dense atmospheres, and the guitars add tension and depth without ever demanding centre stage.
“Outside” channels the nervous energy of Joy Division through a prominent bassline and sharp-edged guitar work, bringing the album back to its post-punk foundations. “Changes” offers an atmospheric pause built around ethereal synths and suspended vocals, while “Take Your Time” and “Straight Through You” share the same DNA: driving bass, insistent drums and guitars used primarily as texture, a combination that avoids obvious commercial concessions. Meanwhile, “Bang Bang” offers a welcome shift in the album’s dynamic with powerful percussion and a melodic sensibility that occasionally recalls the later work of Florence + the Machine.
The album reaches its most combative moment with “Brutal Truth and Bloodshed”, where the textures and effects of the first half gradually give way to a far rawer and more forceful strain of alternative rock. It closes with “Exhale”: there is no redemption, no celebration. Only that strange calm that arrives once the adrenaline has faded, something closer to an epilogue than a genuine resolution.
More than an exercise in dark nostalgia, The Arsonist inhabits the space where 1990s alternative rock, post-punk, darkwave and melancholic electronica intersect. At times it unfolds like a hypnotic trance; at others, it reveals an emotional intensity that never fully dissipates. Rettig never brings the cycle to a close because she understands that fire does not work that way. The album’s power lies in that refusal to offer easy answers: it does not seek to extinguish the flames, but to learn how to walk through them.
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