8/10

Detroit indie rock outfit Mental Health Day return with 'Altruistic', their third and most emotionally incisive album to date. Where past efforts charted change and resilience through an optimistic lens, 'Altruistic' peers into the fog of midlife and modernity with a sharpened edge. It’s a record built on reflection, frustration, and the quiet ache of wanting to believe in better, even when better seems impossibly far away.

Family, both chosen and biological, shows up here as a jagged terrain of miscommunications and compromised peace. There’s love in these stories, but it’s tangled with exhaustion, disillusionment, and the kind of anger that only erupts after years of being polite. It’s indie-rock listening as emotional labour.

Musically, 'Altruistic' balances the band’s signature melodic instincts with a more weathered, world-weary tone. Tracks like 'Get Along To Go Along' and 'Fine' lean into crunchy guitars, steady percussion, and haunting harmonies that feel like eavesdropping on someone mid-realisation. Think early Death Cab with the lyrical bluntness of Pedro the Lion, delivering songs that walk with you through hard thoughts instead of trying to cheer you up.

For their lyrical endeavours, Mental Health Day continue their meta-exploration of introspection itself. They question the performance of goodness (such as “thoughts and prayers” as a default setting), our collective discomfort with confrontation, and the strange moral gymnastics of maintaining peace at the cost of truth. There’s plenty of self-awareness here, some of it dryly funny, some of it emotionally raw, but the core message never feels nihilistic. If anything, it’s a call to feel deeply, even when doing so hurts.

This is music for anyone who’s tried to be everything to everyone and ended up lost in the middle. For anyone who wants to believe that empathy still matters in a world addicted to empty signals. Mental Health Day might be jaded, but they haven’t checked out.