When Viruette burst into Boston with their 2022 self-titled single, it was obvious that the band’s pointed and “transatlantic” approach to modern rock would make them a standout of the scene. Indeed, months after “Viruette” dropped, the tune pirouetted its way onto our list of favorite homegrown songs from the year (and remains a indefatigable earworm to this day). That first release set a mighty bar for the rock on the horizon — and with their debut album Your Lacuna, Viruette clear it while expertly juggling an entire adulthood’s worth of characters and vices.
Released earlier this month (June 14), frontman Harry Bee calls Your Lacuna “an album about nighttime, yearning, and the indulgences we seek to remedy emptiness — drugs, sex, nostalgia.” As those indulgences shift, so too do the sonic nuances of each song. Your Lacuna is a rock album that reveals an organic entanglement of genres, spanning punchy art-rock that mellows into lounge melodies (“Detach”) to an echoey silo between post-punk and dream-pop (“Capture”). Not to mention the sauntering, retro-tinged air of “Maimed,” which includes this doozy of a lyric: “The ‘china white’ and yellow cake / That we had your father’s wake.”
As if by design, the vice-riddled record effuses an intoxicating quality — not based on the subject matter, but rather the hooky, sharp twists of Viruette’s rock-rooted musicianship. Your Lacuna might just be the void-filling buzz we all need.
Tune in below.