As the 90s shoegaze revival continues to spiral out in all directions — from clean nostalgia acts to full-blown noise experiments — Austin’s Farmer’s Wife have carved out their own spectral niche. Their debut EP Faint Illusions blends the gloom of grunge, the moodiness of slowcore, and the fantastical weirdness of art-pop into something unique: a haunted, heartsick landscape where every melody is wrapped in gauze and every lyric is a spell. It’s a record that feels simultaneously out of time and right on cue — a bold first step that already places them at the fringes of the underground’s most exciting spaces.
In the ever-shifting dreamworld of shoegaze revivalism, it’s easy to get swept up in texture and forget about soul. But that’s what sets Farmer’s Wife apart — they don’t just bathe in reverb; they bleed into it.
Frontwoman and guitarist Molly Masson is the band’s emotional compass. Her voice — fragile, spectral, yet commanding — narrates twisted fables and desaturated dreams like a post-grunge Persephone. Her lyrics ache with decay and desire, full of gothic poetry and fantastical menace. Alongside her, Jaelyn Valero (drums), Jacob Masson (bass), and dual guitarists Jude Hill and Derek Ivy create an atmosphere that’s rich, volatile, and often unsettling — like Slowdive raised in the desert on a diet of Tool, Mazzy Star, and Siamese Dream.
Across these five tracks, Farmer’s Wife craft a vivid, decaying fairy tale — a world where wilted roses and alien lovers coexist, where passion and putrefaction are impossible to tell apart. Let’s take a walk through their haunted garden.
The EP opens with the fuzzy, scuzzy sound of ‘Dirty Shirley’. The almost metallic guitar riffs contrast beautifully with Molly Masson’s angelic vocal delivery. Right from the get-go, Farmer’s Wife set the tone for the EP’s collision of beauty and rot. The track lurches forward with a dirty glamour but there’s a playful sleaze to it. It’s woozy, disoriented, like the morning after something you can’t quite piece together. The guitar tones are thick with grime, ringing out in bent, bending dissonance — part Smashing Pumpkins, part stoner-psych. The rhythm section, especially the bass, keeps things grounded in a narcotic pulse that feels both lazy and tightly coiled, dragging its feet but ready to pounce. You get the grime and gloss, the sweet and the sick. It’s a song that exists in dualities — intoxication and revulsion, seduction and decay — and it sets the stage for everything to come.
‘Seethe’ turns up the tension — and the menace. It’s the most rhythmically aggressive song on Faint Illusions, and it wastes no time establishing its sense of unease. A tightly wound bassline slithers underneath, almost serpentine in its movement, while brittle, anxious percussion ticks like a warning clock. The whole track feels like it’s pacing the perimeter of something dangerous — never quite breaking in, but constantly pressing at the edges. Guitars don’t explode — they stalk. There are no blissed-out walls of reverb here, no dreamy haze. Instead, they coil around each other like razor wire, feeding the song’s simmering hostility. There’s a sinister clarity to the playing, as if the band wanted you to feel every scratch and scrape with vivid precision. There’s no catharsis. Just tension, and more tension, until the song finally dissolves into a low rumble of guitar noise and unease. ‘Seethe’ feels like a pressure cooker that never gets the release — and that’s entirely the point. It’s a study in restraint and rage, and it shows Farmer’s Wife are as comfortable dragging you through discomfort as they are seducing you into dream states.
Up next is not just my stand-out track on this EP, but one of my favourite songs of 2025 so far. ‘Mildew’ demonstrates that Farmer’s Wife are able to write at the very top tier — the kind of songwriting that doesn’t just impress, it haunts. I loved it so much I played it on my DKFM Shoegaze Radio Show this month, and honestly, it hasn’t left my rotation since. It’s the kind of track that gets its hooks in you without ever raising its voice. The intro is pure atmosphere — woozy, watery guitars that seem to drip from the ceiling, joined by a sluggish but purposeful rhythm section that pulls the whole track down into subterranean depths. Masson’s vocals are next-level here. She’s never sounded more eerily serene. It’s poetry by way of decomposition, sensual in a way that feels totally unclean — like something beautiful left too long in the sun. This is the most expansive and textured piece on the EP. The dual guitars are in full telepathic conversation here — one spiralling off into dreamy melodies while the other drags its heels with growling, pitch-shifted menace. But what makes ‘Mildew’ so special — and why I’ll keep playing it on air and shouting about it from rooftops — is how it manages to be both deeply unsettling and totally gorgeous. It’s rare to find a song that exists so completely in its own atmosphere. This is Farmer’s Wife at their most confident, most strange, and most sublime.
Up next, ‘The Ballet’ is a fever dream waltz — a ghostly dance through twilight streets, stitched together with equal parts beauty and dread. This track begins with a sort of lullaby twang, a childlike melody perched on a skeletal drumbeat. It teeters on the edge of innocence, but there’s something off-kilter lurking beneath the surface. That whimsical intro frays at the edges as the chorus blooms. The guitars sway gently, almost sweetly, but they carry a sour undertone — detuned and slightly warped, like a memory remembered wrong. The rhythm is loose, like it’s been drugged or disoriented, giving the entire song a woozy, waltzing motion that feels just one step away from collapsing entirely. There’s a theatricality to ‘The Ballet’ that sets it apart. It doesn’t obey typical dynamics or structure expectations. Instead, it unfolds like a scene from a tragic opera — dream logic, strange pacing, an atmosphere that’s soaked in decay and glitter. It’s also one of the finest showcases for the entire band’s ability to move as a single, expressive organism — loose but locked in, melodic but menacing. By the time it fades out, ‘The Ballet’ leaves you feeling slightly disoriented, like waking from a dream you’re not sure you wanted to end. It’s unsettling and beautiful in equal measure — and proof that Farmer’s Wife aren’t just making songs, they’re building haunted houses you can live in.
The closer, ‘Discount Roses’, is a perfect finale. It’s softer, more resigned — the sound of crumpled valentines and half-remembered dreams. After the tension and spectral unease of the preceding tracks, this one lets the dust settle. But rather than offering catharsis, it leaves us with something more fragile and fractured — a fading photograph of love’s debris. The opening is delicate, with plucked, plaintive guitar lines that feel like they’re coming from another room. There’s a gentleness here, a slowing of breath, as if the band is finally letting the light back in — but not without the long shadows that come with it. The rhythm is loose-limbed and hazy, swaying more than it moves forward, and there’s a notable vulnerability in the space between the notes. There’s no irony here, no posturing. Just that ache — the one you feel when love slips through your fingers and you can’t quite decide if it was ever real to begin with. The “discount” in the title stings. These aren’t grand gestures or cinematic heartbreaks. These are love’s leftovers — bruised petals, sour candy, kisses that came too late. The track slowly opens out into a wash of ambient fuzz, the guitars gently lifting Molly’s voice into a dreamlike drift. There are touches of Red House Painters and even Grouper in the way the song blurs into abstraction at the end, fading not with a bang but with a long, exhausted exhale. As a closer, it’s devastatingly right. It gathers all the themes of the EP — decay, beauty, dreams, loss — and lets them dissolve into the ether. Nothing is resolved, but everything lingers.
Faint Illusions isn’t interested in being a polished calling card or a crowd-pleasing debut. Instead, it’s a work of vision — raw, unkempt, and gorgeously grotesque. It leans into discomfort, into decay, into all the strange little shadows most bands shy away from. It’s romantic, yes, but the kind of romance that leaves bruises. The kind that sticks under your nails.
What’s thrilling is how confidently Farmer’s Wife play in this space — there’s no hesitation, no hedging. They’re not interested in sounding like everyone else. They want to build a world, burn it down, and invite you to dance in the ashes. And somehow, they make it all sound beautiful.
For fans of slowcore, gaze, goth, and the underbelly of grunge, Faint Illusions is a debut that will leave fingerprints on your bones. It may be called an illusion, but this is very, very real.
The Faint Illusions EP is out now and available to stream at all the usual places. Check out the Farmers Wife Bandcamp page.
You can follow Farmers Wife on social media here….
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