There is a debate that alternative music should perhaps be having about the philosophy and production. Alternative rock as a genre was born ultimately as a disruptor: it relied on noise as a way of life, turned the electric guitar, with its naturally scratchy and intense sound, into its backbone, and broke the equation that interpreted rough as unfinished. Yet in recent years there has been a growing influx of alternative rock music that has been polished and cleaned up almost to the point of overproduction, edges smoothed down, threat levels dampened, roughness moulded into something more accessible. While that approach is not necessarily without value, it inevitably loses something of the immediacy and intensity the raw, straight-to-the-point tracks of early alt rock possessed.

Enter Losem, the new solo project from Nashville-based Kels Taylor. The artist’s own description of the project already contains an explicit rebellion to this state of affairs, stating they are aiming to produce music “that feels like symphonies and battlegrounds and moonlight and screaming so hard your lungs tear in half”. That’s an ambitious manifesto no doubt, and one that appears to clearly foreground rawness and authenticity. It could be argued that it channels the exact philosophy of life and art alternative communities have relied on and thrived upon for decades, the one that is increasingly being abandoned in favour of studio perception.

‘Hangnail’, the teaser single giving us a first peak into debut album ‘The Act’, which is scheduled to release in January of 2027, fully makes good on that promise. Visceral is indeed the very first word that lingers in the mind after one listen, and the one that keeps surfacing even after delving into the finer make of the track. Guitar is the dominant force throughout, exploding against a more standard structured melodic line even from the first bars and remaining rough and deliberately messy as the song unfolds. It provides an interesting contrast with vocals that are instead clean and direct, capturing an aesthetic that is in part reminiscent of early Evanescence both in the treatment of its interplay and in its broader cultivation of a deep and vaguely haunting mood. The lyrics are equally intense, with vivid imagery like “I bite my cheek until it bleeds / or crawl around and scrape my knees / perpetually the one that ends up hurt”, that can easily speak to goth and emo sensitivities even though the overall sound remains more truly grounded in pure alt rock territory.

There is an easy mistake that must be avoided in approaching this song, and it is to assume that this deliberate embracing of the rough and messy sounds in the genre makes it unpolished. Instead, the decision to keep the sound dirty is completely deliberate, and the production of the track is actually very pointed: it is just that it intervenes in a way that is unobtrusive, and decides to preserve sound artefacts and imperfections in service of atmosphere. It is a lesson that alt rock musicians would do well to abide by more often, because all too often it is atmosphere that is sacrificed in the service of perfection. It is not compromise as much as it is a chosen strategy that taps back into concepts of sound that are transversal to garage rock, punk rock, goth, and industrial. Losem is attempting to offer a portrait of an imperfect human being through a deliberately imperfect sound, and the result is actually more impressive because of it.

Chiara Strazzulla

@cstrazzull

Image: ‘Hangnail’ Official Single Cover

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