MX LONELY – “Return To Sender”

When cultural critiques looks back at the year in Julia’s War that was 2025, they’re probably going to be considering They Are Gutting A Body of Water’s LOTTO a watershed moment for that particular corner of neo-shoegaze where the blear, smear, and loud, heavy underground rockness of their sound firmly planted its flag into the ground as a statement for the whole scene. It represents not only everything that the Philly noisemakers have carved out from their own basement up, but in an expanding community seeing light shine their way as well for it.

Of Doug Dulgarian’s roster of kindred decibel destroyers, MX LONELY are following closest in their footsteps leading into the Brooklyn quartet’s debut album, All Monsters — though they’ve got their own fingerprints to smudge all over what they’re delivering just as well on its latest preview, “Return To Sender”. That slow-stirring rumble and piling on of distortion in the reflection pool are heady in what they set forth in its early moments. Like the listen’s exercise in critical self-awareness, however, the other side of it is an eye-opening transformation made all the more realized in its big aggro pop-rock hooks. The receipts might be there, but they’re coming from a totally different perspective.

Directed by: Owen Lehman