From the very start of bitknot, it’s clear that Feeble Little Horse has shifted into an entirely fresh dynamic. While their previous album, Girl with Fish, leaned heavily on ’90s indie rock and shoegaze influences, this latest release brings a contemporary sharpness to its distortion and riffs. Where digital glitchiness once served as mere embellishment in their earlier work, it now becomes a fundamental element of their evolving, distinctive sound.
Fans received a sneak peek of this new approach with the one-off single “This Is Real,” a standout track of 2025. The song is a whirlwind of blast beats, Sonic Youth-inspired guitar lines, pitch-altered vocals, and glitchy samples. It even daringly incorporates the metronome click into the mix, creating a three-minute burst of organized chaos that demands attention.
With bitknot, the band refines the frenetic energy of “This Is Real” into a more coherent and enduring experience across a concise 25-minute album. The opening track, “Doorway,” launches with an intense feedback howl and aggressive guitar jabs, then transitions into a melodic loop of synths and vocals layered over a programmed beat. The song returns to heavy drums and distorted guitars for the chorus, building up elements before descending into an outro filled with beat repeats and vocal glitches, ultimately leaning more towards “restrained hyperpop” than “maximalist indie rock.”
The track “Rewind” indulges in playful synths, blending college rock guitar with whimsical bird recordings, a synth koto patch, and melodic meows. Meanwhile, “Shady” combines lo-fi MP3 guitars with a drum loop reminiscent of a 1998 Computer Music Magazine issue. “Dior” revisits the click track trick from “This Is Real” in its concluding section.
If “This Is Real” was an experimental fashion statement, bitknot is the band seamlessly integrating those bold elements into their regular repertoire, making them uniquely theirs.
While it might not hit the euphoric peaks of their previous single, it effectively showcases Lydia Slocum’s songwriting prowess. Her lyrics range from tender, as in “Cradle” (“I’ll draw our baby’s face / Give it your last name”), to sharply detached, as in “Upside Down” (“That butterfly was my mistake / An analog of something fake / A metaphor I couldn’t shake”). Slocum also injects humor into “Dior” (“He hit my line and said he wants to know his chances / Can’t tell a lie, I told him, ‘Slim like my Virginias’”).
The back chunk of the record fully embraces the band’s new digital aesthetic. “Upside Down” is the closest to the raw glitchiness of hyperpop, “Guts” features a chopped-up vocal as a lead melodic instrument, and “Shopping” has a siren-like loping lead guitar and is bathed in subtle low-bit noise. The closer, “DMT,” explodes out of the speakers with a shower of digital sparkles and a riff that sounds like someone playing a guitar strung with rebar.
The Feeble Little Horse on Girl with Fish with a great band, but they felt like something of a throwback. On bitknot, they’ve become something more, something special.
Feeble Little Horse’s bitknot is available now on Bandcamp and most major streaming platforms, including Qobuz, Deezer, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Spotify.
