Austin-based artist Hoxsey has built a reputation on refusing to sit still genre-wise, weaving avant-garde punk, indie rock, and experimental textures into something raw and deliberately unpredictable. The self-titled album, out July 7th, is a tour through some genuinely strange and dark corners of the psyche – “Bath Salts” pulls from the documentary “The Minds of Men” and its history of government mind control programs, “Living in Reverse” runs on reversed guitar melodies and dub-influenced bass for a hazy, lo-fi haze, and “Paranoid by the Sun” turns severe anxiety and social isolation into post-punk built on shifting dynamics and surreal imagery. It’s an album that wears its discomfort openly, and it’s clearly meant to.
“Humans” serves as the dramatic introduction to this world that we are yet to explore. This defines the protagonist like the first act in a play, because the following songs will take us on a trip through the dark corners of the human psyche. Musically, it does reflect that – it sounds like embarking on an adventure with equal parts enthusiasm and precaution.
Heavy is the hand that engages in such drugs, and so is the one that plays those riffs on the song “Bath Salts.” There is so much grit in the driving momentum of this song, I think it would be supremely dangerous to listen to it if you’re intoxicated. You might unknowingly break a tooth from grinding them. There is an invocation of shoegaze sounds here, less dreamy and more nightmarish, though in the best way possible.
“Noumenon” vaguely sounds like early Thom Yorke and Radiohead, with the harmony choices and the smeared sound invoking shoegaze vibes as well. The bass is the secret hero of this song – it’s what keeps it from becoming stale after a couple runs of that progression. The bass keeps evolving alongside the drums to create a beautiful, poetic call-and-response conversation that makes the song feel alive rather than just playing the same cool chord progression over and over.
Across the album, Hoxsey commits fully to the discomfort it’s chasing, and that commitment is what keeps the record from feeling like a gimmick. The throughline of psychological unease, paranoia, and fractured identity gives each track a reason to sound the way it does, rather than weirdness for its own sake. This is a confident, deliberately unsettling debut from an artist clearly more interested in honesty than comfort.
