Any fear of a feeble little horse formula has vaporised. The Pittsburgh band’s third record, bitknot, firmly establishes them as settling into a new dynamic, traversing leaps and bounds of an exciting new sound. 

feeble little horse packs the emotional force and creative drive of a ten-tonne truck.  Not that this is a new revelation; ever since the release of 2021’s debut LP, Hayday, the Pittsburgh group has become known as a colourful and impressively DIY-focused quartet, raw and edgy yet extensive in musical depth, all held together with the characterful vocals of Lydia Slocum.

If Hayday attracted the right attention, it was the follow-up release, 2023’s Girl with Fish, that made listeners and critics truly understand the artistic potency that the four-piece bolsters. The pure thunderous innovation of tracks such as “Freak” and “Steamroller” gave all the indication needed that feeble little horse’s ceiling is limitless. 

This new collection of 11 songs for their surprise third record, bitknot, grew in a gradual manner, slowly percolating over the three years that have passed since Girl with Fish. There is the familiar playfulness, the ballistic in-your-face element.

bitknot is musical science; new elements forged together, resulting in an addictive sound. The whole album kicks into life with the buzz of “Doorway” and suddenly the whole project whirling away in just 25 minutes has arrived, rocked restlessly and faded into oblivion with the kicking and screaming finality of “DMT”. 

While the group find themselves restlessly exploring these new avenues of sound, in typical fashion they are still playing the surprise release of the album with their cards close to their chest; “if the album is terrible, people will be like ‘Oh, isn’t that interesting! They dropped it all at once.’ It’s something to get the people talking,” says vocalist Slocum.

Ahead of the album’s release, Wonderland connects with Slocum and guitarist Sebastian Kinsler to reflect on ‘feeble horse 3.0’, the surprise release of this unexpected album and what they have been up to since the release of their last LP, Girl with Fish. 

Listen to the album…

Read the exclusive interview…

Bitknot is being released with absolutely no prior announcement, why the element of surprise this time? 

Lydia: It’s almost like a distraction, if the album is terrible, people will be like “oh, isn’t that interesting! They dropped it all at once”, it’s something to get the people talking. 

Seth: It almost feels like a bigger buildup for me, instead of releasing one single where you can gauge how well something is liked, we feel like we are opening our parts up and going, here’s the fucking thing we worked on, eat it all up in one day.’

Lydia: It’s more natural to what it feels like to finish an album; it’s finished now, and it’s done, so we get to release it when we want, rather than it being completed and thinking, ‘When is this actually going to be out?’ 

Tell us about the recording environment that brought bitknot to life?

Lydia: People think we choose to be purposely DIY, but we are just using what we have and what our best resources are. Usually, it is whatever Sebastian has accumulated at his house. I recorded my vocals in our drummer Jake’s closet, and we covered it in soundproof panels that were second-hand and cheap from this construction store in Pittsburgh. They had some poisonous residue on them that was giving me rashes. 

Seth: They were made of fibreglass!

Lydia: It had to be soundproof, and I was just in the dark, not being able to breathe, so I had to take breathing breaks. 

With this being your third album, do you feel pressure to radically reinvent yourselves every time?

Seth: Every new record is the music we have always been trying to make. With our first record, Hayday, it was the exact same feeling. For me, I feel that there is no pressure with album number three because our last project surpassed all of our wildest expectations, now it feels like we have proved ourselves and just get to enjoy ourselves. 

Have you taken influence from any unusual musical sources for this album that we might not catch on the first listen?

Lydia: Britney Spears, “Piece of Me”. That’s the best song ever. 

How do you marry that pop influence to the shoegaze-heavy sound you guys love?

Seth: The whole ethos of this band is making a weird instrumental, then adding in the poppiest, catchiest hook over the top of it. People might listen to the instruments and think this is really strange, but that vocal, bad, bad vocal, you can’t stop listening!

Lydia: We always want to be scary and cute. 

Was there a precise moment where you all felt the album was sounding exactly like you wanted it to be?

Seth: Weirdly, there was, which we have never had before. We wrote “DMT” super intentionally to be closer to the record. 

What is it about “DMT” that works as a closing track?

Seth: It’s the fucking message of the entire album distilled into one track

Lydia: The album is very relatable. I’m not sure if the track catches all those relational elements. There are girl-to-girl dynamics, as in the songs “Shopping” and “Dior”. It’s definitely the more heady stuff, and it concludes that area of it. Overall, this album is less ‘I am a victim’, it’s more ‘I kind of suck,’, reflecting on my own role as a consumer, an American and a friend, who might not be a very good friend. 

As a band we’ve done a lot of thinking about our own success and what has been handed to us. But also when things seem too good to be true, maybe when things are corrupt, and you are stuck. “DMT” works well in concluding that with a little silliness. 

With that in mind, would you say the themes and ideas are more intentional than previous releases?

Lydia: We didn’t dream about the album before we made it, lots of songs came along naturally and were not calculated, existing outside the concept. Lots of songs were just a case of thinking about what was on my mind and giving it our best shot at making that happen.

Seth: Every song we write, we sit down to write the lyrics and think what are you currently fucking thinking about right now? This project is three years in writing; it’s a glimpse into Lydia’s mind over the course of the last few years. 

Lydia: We have grown as writers. I feel comfortable taking on more challenging subjects now. When I first joined the band, it was like ‘I’m heartbroken, I want to write breakup songs.’ Now we are not a breakup song band.

Could you choose a favourite memory associated with making this new album?

Seth: I’d say it was making “Doorway”, it was one of those rare moments where Lydia and I were there together, we were driving to my house, and Lydia had this scratched CD that would bounce between two seconds of audio, which was great, and we thought we should just make a song that sounds like a scratched CD. 

We used this Soundcloud song that Lydia had made ages ago. I took two seconds of audio and chopped it all up. And while Lydia is writing the lyrics, I took this chorus guitar and put it over the top. Two hours later, we have this finished song, which is satisfying and super fast. 

Lydia: We didn’t feel nervous while making that song because we didn’t have a plan for where it was going, almost like we tricked ourselves into making it organically. It’s almost the most fun when it comes together spontaneously. 

When the army of feeble little horse fans get a very sudden and unexpected notification that you are dropping a surprise album, what are you hoping they take away from the album?

Lydia: I want them to be excited, and I want them to sit with it and chew on it for a long time. Bringing it with them throughout the summer. I’d love to think of the album as a special little trinket that they keep. Investing their own memories into it, that’s always what music has been for me, as a way to process life through what I’m actually hearing. 

I also hope by listening they might be motivated to consume more intentionally, the creative project side of it. We are making a lot of visualisers and fun merch with lots of ways to engage with the album that aren’t restricted to just social media. 

You guys more than likely started out playing in bars and basements. What has been your favourite experience since you rose above ground to where you are now? 

Seth: It has to be Coachella and nothing but Coachella. I was walking backstage and watching James Charles, and somebody said, ‘Oh, that’s Rick Rubin over there.’ We didn’t belong there; we weren’t supposed to be there. 

Lydia: When we stumbled onto the stage at Manchester’s Outbreak Festival. We were late, and I got ready in a bathroom stall. I tossed on a tutu that I made, and we walked onto a stage. Somebody handed me a beer, and there were a thousand people there. That was the biggest crowd we have ever had, and it was so fun. 

Afterwards, I was still in this tutu, and I was walking to get some food from the truck, and everybody was stopping me and having a chat. 

Words – Tobias Furlong