Open Head dare to ask the big question as to what exists outside the borders of New York City in the realm of experimental music. That it’s a strange place should be an inviting surprise to anyone who prefers their exploratory detours to be something of an organic accident existing some place between the familiarity of humankind and the chaos of nature. After all, the Hudson Valley has become something of a big city dweller’s weird weekend escape over the years, with its budding underground arts scene sprawled against a backdrop of brutalist architecture and nearby woods and lakes, providing just the right amount of earthly scenery against firm, concrete man-made blocks to put one in touch with a bigger picture while remaining tethered to another world.

Perhaps it’s this “other” place within their Kingston surroundings which informs the in-betweens on the band’s sophomore outing, What Is Success. Since releasing their debut LP in 2022’s Joy, and Other Sufferings — a sturdy yet treacherous foundation of loud post-punk — founding members in co-vocalists and guitarists Jared Ashdown and Brandon Minervini have expanded their sonic circle to include the addition of bassist / synthesizer Jon McCarthy and drummer Dan Schwartz. Though the current formation very much has the makings of a proper guitar album, they do everything to distort what came before it throughout the listen. Open Head’s schematic built around industrial noises sees its architecture wobbling by a destabilization of flux electronic waves and drill trappings on standouts like “Success” and “House” that, when cross-wired with shouts from the voids of New York City’s no wave history, creates the kind of friction you’d want from an existential resistance against our daily dreads.

There are still some serious corners left for sharper angles and crash cymbals to scatter their energy throughout, but rhythmic tributaries feed these compacted aggressions with just enough contours to allow them to blister and burst from the walls rather that slice open cleanly on tracks like “Monotones” and “Bullseye”, making for an album that expands beyond the usual defined lines of noise rock and post-punk. The collision between what is designed by mortal concepts and that which are cosmically seized by forces of nature comes to a head at the unknown intersections of What Is Success. It leaves you reeling between.

Highlights: “Success”, “House”, “Monotones”

Open Head’s What Is Success is available now on Wharf Cat Records.

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