For Boy Harsher, inconceivable loss yields a lean, expansive record. GET MEAN, born out of Jae Matthews and Augustus Muller’s breakup after a 10-year romantic and creative relationship, comprises twelve tracks recorded across eight locations. The songs are rooted in the feelings that follow their makers from place to place. They’re packed with emotional intensity and catchy hits that move through grief the way it really feels: with whiplash, repetition, momentum, and sudden reversals. It never asks us to sit still with pain. Instead, it makes us move with it, then lets it move through us.
GET MEAN begins not with devastation, but shimmering pleasure: “Ronny” is flirtatious, immediately inviting, and filmic with synths that wink and soften. In its final minute, vocal filters and atmospheric sounds crowd around Matthews’ voice until the song seems to dissolve into its own environment. A quick voice note, “this is wind,” and the crackle of field-recorded wind remain for the final thirty seconds. The catchy, tense production spills into “Jeans,” where Boy Harsher pairs bright, life-affirming synths with Matthews’ lines: “Leaving home without a dream / That’s life living in a small town / Give it all up to be free / Give it all up to sell jeans.” There’s something unabashedly innocent about the song’s spirit, its desire for independence without any clear idea of what that means. Even its cash-register cha-ching feels playful. The lyrics repeat; the production keeps expanding. Then the sun sets. The pool closes. The streetlights come on.
The fast tempo, piercing guitar, and sultry vocals in “Break Me” turn dancing into catharsis: sometimes you need a beat to exorcise something rather than explain it. “Coming Home” briefly strips everything back to keys and her exposed voice—“What I’ve done isn’t decent / I hurt the girl I used to know”—before amping back up, this time without the hard bass and drums of the previous songs. Matthews’ voice stays constant while the sounds repeat, reverberate, and remix, eventually breaking down into a joyous crescendo—a breakdown that predicts the rest of the album: songs that refuse to settle into a single register. Pain rises to the surface, but pleasure, humor, and desire meet it immediately. Nothing feels superfluous because every shift prepares you for the next.
When “Hard Beat” throws us back into the club, a thumping beat preserves the song’s urgency as Boy Harsher fold their signature darkwave ideas into lush, post-industrial textures. “I never asked for you to save me / I feel high when the lights are low,” Matthews sings, before the blunt command: “Let’s make it real.” Layers of sound turn the song intoxicating and disorienting, weaving turbulent, wandering phrases into tactile paths. Matthews brought lyrics about losing her partner and trying to find herself; Muller knew how to translate them into music. Together, they have given form to a pain only they could know. “Hard Beat” doesn’t solve anything, but it gives the feeling somewhere to go. And then Boy Harsher pulls the rug out again.
“Ice Pick (Walk Away)” drops much of the electronic production, placing guitar over whispers of synth. “Ivy’s Spiral” shrinks the scale further with a short, distorted voice note nestled into a haunting ambient drone: “If I could think of that person’s name and my stomach didn’t do a somersault, then I knew I was fine.” It’s a 40-second track—a simple sentiment—but its place in the record makes its victory feel enormous. “Pray 4 Me” drops in a lick of funky bass, flutelike chimes, and perfectly placed xylophone; its organic textures are an unexpected surprise after the machinery of GET MEAN’s first half. Matthews sings, “I was falling down while you were looking up,” her voice interrupted by another voice note and sudden reverb. The effect is less like arriving at an answer and more like realizing you have stopped running long enough to look around.
The final two songs, “Falling~” and “Bleed,” offer something closer to understanding, but never resolution. On “Falling~,” as Matthews’ words land more directly than ever, the synth sounds around them become clearer, more kaleidoscopic: “It takes years to remember / everything that really matters,” she sings with demanding certainty; there is room for contradiction, for grief. But “Bleed” brings the record to its emotional and physical peak, beginning in slow motion: “I don’t wanna leave someone on the floor / My only friend / I don’t wanna be / Left out in the dark alone again.” Once the words are out, the production kicks in. Matthews’ vocal recedes into processing, making the lyrics harder to parse even as the feeling becomes impossible to miss and a relentless beat takes over. She and Muller’s relationship has changed, but their creative understanding remains unbridled. On GET MEAN, they turn loss into something physical. These songs unravel and retreat as often as they flirt and dance. In Boy Harsher’s hands, rebirth is not a single definable moment but a never-ending process. Their grief hasn’t disappeared. It’s just started to move.
