Photo by Rahim Fortune

Fiddlehead have been openly going through the grieving process since the very beginning of Patrick Flynn’s post-Have Heart chapter, with their 2018 debut Springtime and Bloom, 2021’s Between The Richness, and 2022’s Death Is Nothing to Us marking a trilogy of fatalistic existential inquiries following the death of his father. It should have been the end of a morbid trilogy for the band, but instead, life would keep death in their view: in the fall of 2024, Flynn would discover his mother had passed away while both his wife and children were away on vacation with her parents. Dark thoughts filled Flynn’s world. Band members in guitarist Alex Henery and bassist Nick Hinsch didn’t think twice about flying in from across the country to support their dude without even asking.

“Baby I’ll Change” — the title track and central epitaph from their new EP — is familiar in its death theme in that it gives purpose to its tragedy, though this time, it hits different as does the emotional weight within the Boston post-hardcore band’s sound. That surprise support session birthed a version of Fiddlehead in writing out their feelings we’ve yet to hear as intensely vulnerable as they are here — taking their time to sit with the thoughts, letting silence hold its own space to unbusy them, pondering what if’s, and reflecting on loss in poetic fashion — all which revolves around Flynn singing brokenly from the POV of someone desperately trying to save themselves from themselves. “When you’re in the field, all purple and gold, look for me in the flowers that just won’t grow.” he mourns. Eventually, the catharsis hits through surgent instruments, but there’s pure heartache in realization it’d have been better if everything leading up to it never happened at all.

Directed by: Alex Henery

Fiddlehead’s Baby I’ll Change will be released June 26th on Run for Cover Records.