From Brooklyn, US
Recommended if you like Wednesday, This Is Lorelei, Alex G
Up next Unfindable Ring released 23 October

“Found family” is something that queer people talk about a lot: finding your people and sticking with them is necessary in a world that often seems to want you quiet at best and dead at worst. Grumpy began as the solo project of frontman Heaven Schmitt, in between stints collaborating and touring with country-pop star Zach Bryan as a backing vocalist. It’s now a six-piece band with predominantly trans members; some of the group have dated or are dating, and they all work collaboratively on recording, producing, mixing, creating artwork and making music videos.

The joy of this musical found family is tangible across Grumpy’s debut record, Unfindable Ring. They are gleefully dismissive of genre, tending towards warm alt-country and indie-folk but throwing in Auto-Tuned vocals alongside slowcore guitars and grunge choruses. One song, George Clanton – named in honour of the weirdo electronica cult hero – is a meta celebration of musical freedom: “I disobey balance, I’m writing epic ballads,” Schmitt affirms.

But most of the celebrations are of trans joy and queer love. The painfully lovely OBL (One Beautiful Life) places jubilant, delirious romance directly alongside the experience of being intimidated for it at a petrol station – this kind of joy, it suggests, matters even more once you remember people hate you for it. This full-band phase of Grumpy brings to mind the old adage, “If you wanna get there fast, go alone; if you wanna go far, go together” – loving, laughing and flipping off the rest of the world. Spencer Hughes

This week’s best new tracks

M(h)aol – Scam Manifesto
The Irish post-punks riff on Valerie Solanas’s Scum Manifesto to articulate the painful hypocrisy of railing against beauty norms while fixating on them, to seething, sludgy guitar and muttered self-recriminations. LS

300SkullsAndCounting x Jenny Sparks – The Ballad of St Nick’s Park
Absurdist screamo meets bassline house, lairy rap and seagull noises in order to honour a defunct skate park, and amusingly flex on how far (or not) 300SkullsAndCounting has come from that buzzing node of alt culture, Leamington Spa. BBT

Junge Eko – Span
The Swiss musician’s new album Pierced (June17th) is unfeasibly beautiful, mixing voice, pipe organ, guitar and more into ambient slowcore. Span adds strings, flute and a very far-off techno beat into a softly heaving mass. BBT

Desire – Just Another Love Song
With synths that flutter like curtains on a sunset-facing window, Johnny Jewel’s band chase down the memory of an inescapable lost love, yearning to be Eternal Sunshine’d in order to forget. LS

American Motors – No Horses
“This ain’t a one horse town / We wish we still had a horse around”: a bleak, droll, Protomartyr-esque anthem from the Pennsylvania rockers, in which a minimalist fuzz groove builds into a sumptuous epic. BBT

Chrystal x Rudimental – 321
Over some liquid D’n’B throbbing from Rudimental, Chrystal continues to channel the wet-eyed, gritted-teeth melancholy of classic house vocalists, and her chorus has endless replay factor. BBT

The War on Drugs – Who’s That
This one-off loosie channels the unadulterated essence of WoD: horizon-tickling guitars, tentatively euphoric piano, hangdog Springsteenisms – though it’s newly emotionally exposing, detailing Adam Granduciel’s attempt to love himself through his demons. LS

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