Farmer's Wife - Faint Illusions EP
- Samuel Stevens
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
As the 90s shoegaze revival continues to bloom in both familiar and feral directions, Austin’s Farmer’s Wife reemerges with Faint Illusions, a five-track EP that sinks deeper into the mire of grunge-psych noir while clinging to their twisted fairytale roots. This isn’t a band interested in nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake—they drag the genre’s decaying corpse into the present, adorning it with silk ribbons, mouldy flowers, and whispered poetry.
On Faint Illusions, the band sharpens their sound without sanding off its edges. If 2023’s There’s A Monster was the haunted house at the end of a foggy lane, this new release is what happens when you dare to step inside. The walls breathe. The floorboards moan. It’s gorgeous, unsettling, and heartbreakingly tender.
Opener “Dirty Shirley” bursts in with distorted glam flair before unravelling into something darker—layers of bending guitar and Molly Masson’s featherlight vocals cutting through the murk with a deliberate eeriness. There’s something inherently disorienting about the way the band balances weight and air: drums thud with funeral march intensity while guitars ring out like bells in a drowned cathedral. “Seethe” is the most rhythm-forward of the set—Valero and Jacob Masson giving the track a kind of ritualistic thump while the guitars swirl like smoke. It’s a slow-building fury, a song about simmering rage that never quite explodes, preferring to burn quietly under the skin.
The EP’s standout, “Mildew,” is pure lyrical rotcore—a sensual ode to decomposition that walks the fine line between repulsion and romance. “Tangled up in silk again. Cover me in your mildew…” Masson croons, her voice as fragile as an attic-kept lace dress. It’s Farmer’s Wife at their most vivid: decayed imagery rendered with astonishing beauty, a sickly-sweet love song for lovers who bloom in the dark.
Then comes “The Ballet,” the EP’s most theatrical and surreal moment. With lines like “One pocket full of posies, one pocket full of meat,” the band crafts a macabre nursery rhyme that shifts from dreamy waltz to frenetic collapse. Think Cocteau Twins meets Tool in a Lynchian cabaret.
The EP's closing track, “Discount Roses,” is a masterpiece of contrast—part whimsical tale of love, part sci-fi allegory, and entirely gut-wrenching. The song’s strange tenderness is buoyed by a sense of impermanence. It floats like a ghost across the EP’s thematic terrain: love, death, rot, and rebirth.
With Faint Illusions, Farmer’s Wife have not only solidified their standing as one of the most intriguing acts within Austin’s underground, but they’ve also carved out a space that few others occupy. It’s a realm where dream-pop beauty collides with gothic unease, where metaphors bite, and romance is as much about collapse as connection. There’s no doubt that this is an EP meant to be felt in your bones, not just heard.
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