8/10
The most destructive patterns are not always the loudest. Sometimes they settle quietly into routine, repeated so often that they begin to feel like part of the architecture of a life. And on their second studio album 'Before My Mind Wakes Up', Stockholm four-piece Washing Machina drag those hidden cycles into the open, surrounding them with distorted guitars, urgent melodies and a persistent sense that something is close to breaking.
Where their 2024 debut 'The Spontaneous Splendid' looked outward at the confusion of modern existence, this follow-up turns sharply inward. The record examines compulsion, emotional self-sabotage and the private damage people carry without fully understanding how to describe it. Its title captures that uneasy state perfectly: the brief moment before consciousness returns, when instinct and anxiety seem to move ahead of rational thought.
Lead single ‘Come On’ establishes the album’s restless character with a propulsive, hook-heavy opening. The band remain deeply melodic, but the sweetness is frequently interrupted by guitar parts that bend, scrape and push against the edges of the songs. And that friction gives the record its identity.
The influence of Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr can be heard in the band’s willingness to treat noise as an expressive element rather than simple decoration. There's also something of Pavement and The Breeders in the way loose-edged guitars coexist with direct pop instinct. Yet the band’s emotional urgency places them firmly in the present.
‘Debbie Lost Her Mind’ is one of the clearest examples of that balance. Melodic yet disorienting, the track seems to move with purpose even as its emotional centre becomes increasingly unstable. While on ‘The Top’, the album appears to reach one of its most volatile moments, as kinetic guitars and Sara Engström’s raw vocal delivery evoke the dangerous exhilaration of pushing beyond a personal limit.
Engström’s vocals and bass anchor the record, while Emilie Rösler’s drumming supplies both force and nervous movement. Guitarists Mark Petterson and Karl Nordahl create a dense, restless surface around them, shifting between melodic clarity and abrasion without allowing either side to dominate completely.
That tension makes 'Before My Mind Wakes Up' feel more assured than a simple refinement of the band’s debut. Washing Machina have pushed their sound into darker and less comfortable territory while retaining the immediacy that made their earlier work so appealing.
On this follow up, they make that recognition sound loud, melodic and painfully alive.
