Regular readers of the blog will know how much I love the releases emanating from Philly’s Julia’s War Recordings label. I seem to be writing a lot about em of late. Well, they’re at it again with yet another stellar release, this time from Total Wife.
Total Wife are the Nashville duo of Luna Kupper and Ash Richter, long-time friends and collaborators who have become a fixture of their city’s DIY underground. They record, mix, and design much of their own work, hosting basement shows in their self-styled space Ryman 2 and quietly building a world of noise, warmth, and strange beauty. Over the years they’ve toyed with different shades of shoegaze and electronica, but, from what I hear, Come Back Down is the point where it all converges. A lot of the ideas for this album came from that place when we find ourselves between sleep and lucidity. Kupper has this to say on that.
“This album is made from a single thought unfolding endlessly. I’m a psychological mixer. I’m trying to think of how someone’s experiencing the sound, versus getting stuck in trying to make all these different tones and using all this gear to make something sound a certain way,”
I really like the sound of that approach. Let’s hit play and see where it takes us.
‘In My Head’ opens the album like a dream you wake from halfway through. Guitars blur and bend, Richter’s voice hovers somewhere between consciousness and static, and the space between notes seems to stretch. It’s a disorienting beginning but also a tender one, setting the tone for the record’s gorgeous mix of intimacy and intensity.
‘Peaches’ on the other hand arrives in full bloom, bright and unpredictable, carrying the aftertaste of the storm that inspired it. There’s energy bursting from every corner, the drums clattering beneath wide swells of the most stunning glide guitar, the vocal lines flickering like lightning. It feels alive in that way only chaos can be, unsteady, ecstatic, impossible to hold.
Then comes the brief tone poem ‘Internetsupermagazine’, a thirty-second fever dream of broken code and digital overwhelm. It flickers past before you can grasp it, acting as a nervous twitch between worlds, a static bridge that collapses into the next rush of sound.
‘Naoisa’ bursts through that silence with sharp beats and a grinding edge. The rhythm feels mechanical but human, all pulse and friction. Underneath the glassy distortion there’s a warmth trying to escape, a strangeness that refuses to be buried. The song runs like it’s on a major adrenaline rush and ends just as suddenly, collapsing into itself. This is a real creative highpoint and has really endeared this band to me even more.
The tone shifts with ‘Second Spring’, softer, more reflective. It feels warm but distant, shimmering just beyond reach. Richter sounds almost weightless here, her voice carried by layers of reverb that never quite resolve. Like her voice is a string on the guitar that’s warping around our ears. It’s a reminder that Total Wife can build beauty as confidently as they build noise.
By the time ‘Still Asleep’ drifts in, the album feels suspended in a dream of its own making. Written after the band’s first tour, it captures that blurred state between euphoria and exhaustion. “Thank the full moon, my heart is overflowing,” Richter sings before wondering, “Is there such a thing as too happy?” It’s the emotional core of the record. That sense that joy and anxiety are never far apart, just two sides of the same cosmic coin.
‘Chloe’ feels like the comedown, quiet and hazy, its melody drifting in soft motion. There’s light leaking through the distortion, a sense of calm acceptance after all that noise. This song reminds of what all good gaze should do. Hide a killer pop song in swathes of beautiful noise. I don’t know how many times I listened to this one in a row but you start to hear orchestras, alien spaceships, other worlds and that’s the skill. That’s what Total Wife excel at.
Then ‘Dead B’ hits with a wall of fuzz and feedback that threatens to flatten everything before it. It first lures you in with its lo-fi charm before erupting into that glorious noise. The drum n bass beats really work exceptionally well and add an extra something that pleases my ear no end. It’s raw, emotional and at the same time, strangely hopeful.
‘Ofersi3’ for me is the very definition of musical insanity. Built from recycled sounds, it folds back on itself in hypnotic motion, looping until it feels like you’re breathing in rhythm with it. Its bit crushing intensity is both overwhelming and comforting as you surrender yourself to its bonkers energy.
Everything fades with ‘Make It Last’, a closing scene that feels like waking up in soft light. The distortion loosens and shakes your teeth, melodies unwind, and you’re left with a quiet ache that hums long after it ends. When that chorus hits, man, its pure elation. That ascending chord sequence hits me in the feels every time. It doesn’t conclude so much as drift away, still pulsing faintly somewhere in the distance. What a treat.
Listening to Come Back Down feels like being drawn into the subconscious of sound itself. Every track spills into the next, recycling emotion and noise until you lose sense of where it all began. It’s an album that proves heaviness doesn’t have to mean emptiness; it can be full of breath and tenderness too. Total Wife have built something recursive and radiant, an endless thought you can’t quite shake. One that keeps whispering, softly, to come back down.
Come Back Down is out now via Julia’s War Recordings. Make sure and follow the band on the Total Wife Bandcamp page.
You can follow Total Wife on social media here…
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