HAVE YOU EVER HEARD HOW TOXIC CODEPENDENCY COULD ACTUALLY SOUND LIKE?
From the drizzly heart of Portland’s underground comes BROOD22, a one-man slowcore dreamscape pushing sonic boundaries with a whisper and a wail. His latest single, “this again” (released May 20, 2025), is less a song and more a slow dive into the murky waters of emotional entanglement. If codependency had a soundtrack, this would be it: aching, immersive, and disturbingly beautiful.
Drawing from shoegaze, dream pop, slacker rock, and even hints of alt-country, BROOD22’s style is a twilight zone of fuzz and feeling. The track opens with a low-toned, almost lazy rhythm guitar that feels like emotional dissociation in audio form. Then, the lead guitar swims in, swelling and pulling back like waves you’re too tired to fight. His vocals don’t sing as much as linger, hovering intimately above the mix like a thought you can’t quite shake.
And that’s where “this again” burrows deep: it captures the cycles of toxic love not with drama, but with numbness. The lyrics (“i can be anything you want / you can do whatever you please / just let me in”) are both a plea and a surrender. There’s no clear villain, just someone slipping, again, into something they know is wrong but can’t resist. It’s heartbreaking and hypnotic.
The final moments of the track hit like emotional whiplash. A fuzzed-out guitar slams through the calm, as if the underlying pain finally claws its way to the surface. It’s loud, raw, and cathartic; yet still somehow dreamy, still coated in the haze of detachment.
BROOD22 may be based in Portland now, but “this again” carries the dry desolation of Southern Arizona, the kind of emotional climate where feelings echo louder because everything else is so quiet.
This is music for wandering minds, late-night realizations, and the soft, slow ache of giving too much of yourself to someone who only gives back sometimes. You don’t just listen to “this again” you feel it slowly dissolving your edges..
