Don’t let me come in here trying to be all like ‘Oh yeah this is definitely a band I knew existed three months ago,’ because yeah, no. However, I was lucky enough to rend my pitiful physical form such that it was in front of the Koepelhal stage while Pygmy Lush were playing at Roadburn last month (review here), and that was an encouraging enough first impression that here we are. The Virginian grunge-infused Americana/dark-folk troupe will release the recorded-in-2016 Totem album on July 11 through Persistent Vision Records. If preorders are your thing, they exist.

I’m not sure if they played “February Song,” which is the first streaming track from Totem — pick your player below — but the song rules either way in that addled-at-night-someplace-open kind of way. There are at least four different bands I wish had evolved to this kind of sound, among them Nirvana.

From the PR wire:

Persistent Vision Records announces the July 11th release of Pygmy Lush’s TOTEM.

Recorded and mixed by Converge’s Kurt Ballou in 2016, the album has remained unreleased for nearly a decade. Active again now after a long hiatus, the revitalized band has made the decision to unearth this lost masterpiece.

Pre-order the album, here: https://persistentvisionrecords.com/products/pygmy-lush-totem

Pygmy Lush was founded in Northern Virginia in the mid-2000s by brothers Chris Taylor and Mike Taylor as an experimental offshoot of their band Pageninetynine. Beginning with the debut album, Bitter River, released on Robotic Empire in 2007, Pygmy Lush’s output ranged from Pageninetynine-caliber screamo, to fragile Americana; from the basement show to the campfire and back again, the songs all hit with equal conviction.

Following the release of 2011’s Old Friends album on Lovitt Records, Pygmy Lush faded from view, reemerging in 2024 to many fans’ surprise and delight. Reentering the limelight by way of an NPR Tiny Desk Concert in August 2024, the newly reignited band was a standout of the inaugural Dark Days Bright Nights festival in September of that year, and went on to wow the crowd at this year’s Roadburn.

With an appearance at Toronto’s Prepare the Ground festival booked for May, and shows in the works with the likes of Young Widows, Pygmy Lush now prepares to reveal the long-buried TOTEM. Mike Taylor explains why this nine-year-old masterpiece has not yet seen the light of day: “Frankly, we lost momentum shortly after recording the album. It was a very transitional time for Pygmy Lush where we were trying hard to figure out what this group wanted to do.”

He describes the upcoming 2025 release of TOTEM as a necessary step in Pygmy Lush’s progression toward its next phase: “I personally have wanted to release TOTEM as a document of this era of the band, in order to continue moving forward.”

While TOTEM’s belated release might give the Taylors a sense of closure on the past, it is more than a snapshot of bygone days. It is a monumental work of art that feels absolutely fresh and vital in 2025. A feast for the ears and the heart, TOTEM is an engrossing display of musical freedom, backed by authentic emotion. There are songs that rage, songs that rock, and songs that cruise hypnotically. From bruising noise rock, teetering on the edge of hardcore, to meditative refrains that roll along like trains through moonlit valleys, it moves in its own ways, unhindered by genre.

“The album became a bridge between the two completely different sounds of the band, the quiet and the loud,” states Mike Taylor. “It was very collaborative. We were all trying out as much stuff as we could. It’s a very eclectic album.” He offers up Born Against, PJ Harvey, and Brian Eno as three reference points. First single “February Song” is a heavy, haunting lullaby that ravages, serenely, evoking the quieter moments of Sonic Youth and Pavement alike.

The common denominator beneath TOTEM’s songs is the urgency, the realness, fueling every note and lyric. Chris Taylor states: “The lyrics desperately look for answers that aren’t there, and deliberately mock themselves. We sing and we write and we play, as the world becomes more and more obviously horrific. We admire, or argue over, the patterns of our battle flags while the fort is burning.”

Furthermore, TOTEM’s rich, warm production unites the disparities into one whole. With longtime collaborator Kurt Ballou overseeing the recording and mixing at his hallowed GodCity Studio, mastering was handled by the great Carl Saff (Bambara, Bonnie Prince Billy).

The cover art, created by Paul Nitsche, consists of hand sculpted organic elements and mixed media collage, photographed using traditional tintype photography and darkroom methods. Nitsche is known widely for his artwork for Dazzling Killmen’s Face of Collapse album.

With TOTEM set to be released to the world on July 11th, the path is cleared for whatever Pygmy Lush chooses to do next. “Yes, we will be writing new music ASAP,” declares Mike Taylor.

Tracklist:
1) House of Blood (Butch’s Monster)
2) It Wasn’t a Compliment (Martial Law Blues)
3) A Little Boy and His Bulldozer
4) Algorithmic Mercy (Prayers Printed Directly into a Shredder)
5) A Famous Jock (The Rest of Us)
6) February Song
7) Band-Aid on a Bullet Wound
8) The Puppeteer
9) Post-Punk in the Wrong Hands
10) Artistic Blood / Blanket Out the Sun (in a world of better things)
11) Nonsensical Whimper

Upcoming shows:
May 30 – Toronto, ON @ Prepare the Ground (w/ Baroness, Yob)
June 8 – Richmond, VA @ The Warehouse (w/ Young Widows)

TOTEM recording lineup:
Chris Taylor – vocals, bass
Mike Taylor – guitar
Mike Widman – guitar
Erin McCarley – bass, vocals
Andy Gale – drums

2025 lineup:
Chris Taylor – guitar, vocals
Mike Taylor – guitar
Mike Widman – guitar, bass
Johnny Ward – guitar, vocals
Andy Gale – drums

https://pygmylush.bandcamp.com/
https://pygmylush.bigcartel.com/
https://www.instagram.com/pygmylush/
https://www.facebook.com/pygmylush

https://persistentvisionrecords.com/
https://persistentvisionrecords.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/persistentvisionrecords/

Pygmy Lush, “February Song”

Pygmy Lush, Totem (2025)

Riding a silver machine in search of elusive truth, Maryland’s The Druids make an encouraging full-length debut with Totem, which follows behind a few likewise-digital odds and ends, including an untitled 2016 EP and a couple singles here and there. They’ve used pseudonyms all along, but would seem to be transitioning out of that, as guitarist/vocalists Eli “Stone Druid” Watson and Danny “Spacehawk” Alger and bassist Jeremy “Weed Warlock” Dinges introduce drummer Gary “Iceman” Isom to the lineup. Isom, of course, has a pedigree in Maryland heavy that includes drum stints in Pentagram and Iron Man, King Valley and Nitroseed, as well as Shine/Spirit Caravan and, currently, playing guitar in Weed is Weed and fronting Electropathic. As Spirit Caravan are a primary influence for The Druids, he’s an excellent fit here on songs like opener “Cruising Astral Skies” and the wah-swirling “Sorcerers,” as the band push earthy visions of heavy into cosmic reaches — or, at least, they begin the process of doing so.

There’s a jammy undercurrent not just to the nine-minute “Hawkwind,” or the later “Turtles Dream,” but that serves as the foundation to even the more structured material like the duly Southern-tinged “Moonshine Witch” and the it’s-called-“lead-guitar”-because-you-follow-it “Atlantean,” which departs its early verses for solo-laced oblivion past the halfway point. There’s a cross-generational element at play, between Isom and Watson, Alger and Dinges, but that does nothing to interrupt the overall fluidity of Totem or bring any sense of incongruity to the band’s style. If anything, the inclusion of Isom seems to have tightened The Druids‘ songwriting approach, as heard in “Turtles Dream,” which takes elements from “Turtles” and “Dreams” from the EP and combined them into one progression. “Hawkwind” is an exception and clearly intended as such, but most of the material on Totem is shorter and more structurally sound, so that even as The Druids decide to take off on the occasional interstellar trip, they have solid ground from which to launch. That provides balance for the listener making their unsuspecting way through, and sees moments like the drift in the concluding “Sky Submarine” all the more effective.

Interestingly, Totem seems to be rawer in its production than was the EP. Listening to the sample from The Wild Angels that lets “Sorcerers” open what would be side B on a vinyl release before giving way to the trippier “Turtles Dream,” “High Society” and “Sky Submarine,” there’s an almost garage-psych sensibility to what The Druids conjure here, with a grit cast on some of the shimmer in the guitars their last time out. Could be a circumstance of recording live as they did, or could be a purposeful aesthetic choice on their part — I don’t think we can know until their next time out, but it enhances the ride that is “Cruising Astral Skies” and makes the nodding “Atlantean” all the more of a wash of dirty fuzz, classically doomed in the Maryland tradition, but not necessarily beholden to Maryland doom in terms of its psychedelic vibe and general stoned fuckall.

The leadoff and “Moonshine Witch” might be as straightforward as The Druids get, but even the second of those makes its way out on a solo, leaving behind the expectation that they might return to the verse or chorus and instead just jamming its way to wherever it might end up — the start of “Sorcerers,” as it happens. With Totem being the band’s first long-player, it’s hard to guess how that will ultimately develop in their sound — but that only makes the album more exciting to hear, since the four-piece have already essentially carved an identity for themselves that spans subgenres from psych to heavy rock to classic-style garage bikerism and more. Further, they vary that departure from core structure, so that “Atlantean” might not make its way back, but the would-be anthem “High Society” does, at least instrumentally, and even though they’re long-since gone by the time they get there, the sample at the end of “Hawkwind” works to tie that song together with “Atlantean” as well, so that side A ends up with an overarching symmetry one way or the other as “Cruising Astral Skies” and “Moonshine Witch” bookend the two jammier pieces.

Mark it a win, move on, wait for the next one? Okay, sure, but I think if you do, you’re missing out on a bit of the nuance The Druids have to offer. Not so much in terms of the technicality of what they do — though the solos are impressive and their tones are intricate — but stylistically overall. It’s easy, particularly for the converted, to listen to Totem and get where The Druids are coming from. And for some, that’s enough, but to take that approach misses perhaps the bigger picture of what’s at play throughout these songs in terms of bringing a generational freshness to these ideas and aesthetic elements. The Druids‘ raw fuzz is informed of course by the heavy rock that’s gone before it, but the homage they pay comes with a youthful vigor and an unfaded luster.

This, quite simply, is how rock and roll has survived despite being cast as dead — and maybe being dead — as a commercial enterprise. It has been handed from one group to the next. I won’t deign to predict where The Druids will go from their debut in terms of style or substance, but already in these songs they show a genuine affinity for heavy modes of expression and they work to make them their own with a quality of craft and a variety of moods. There isn’t much more one could reasonably ask of a young band putting out their first record. So yeah, one could dig into Totem and think “that’s cool,” grab a download or whatever and be done, or one could perhaps realize that even the name of the album speaks to a sense of monument-building and that essentially that’s what the band are doing in entering this conversation with their influences. The potential that gives them for moving forward and continuing to make those influences theirs is writ large throughout this material, and to miss that is missing the larger picture of what they accomplish here.

The Druids, Totem (2019)

The Druids on Thee Facebooks

The Druids on Bandcamp