Fanged CGI behemoths in Roblox games, digital folktales about the Backrooms, and creepypasta narrations over VHS filters have become cornerstones of youth internet culture in recent years, allowing kids to face the abject through the safety of a screen. Indiana singer-songwriter Vivian Weeks, best known for her music as STOMACH BOOK, translates the aesthetics of these polygonal penny dreadfuls into the maximalist yet low-fidelity sound of fifth-wave emo. Editing and pitch-shifting her voice to resemble a Vocaloid and peppering tracks with jaunty ragtime piano, Weeks sincerely toys with the trappings of “cringe culture,” challenging listeners to engage with creative, passionate subcultures they might have otherwise dismissed. Though her production choices may initially feel jarring when set against tender, guitar-heavy instrumentation inspired by emo revival-era acts like Brave Little Abacus and Teen Suicide, there’s a common thread of DIY ingenuity running through it all.
STOMACH BOOK’s 2021 self-titled debut arrived as part of a then-burgeoning wave of bedroom acts, who crammed baroque arrangements and a syncretic blend of influences into their skramz songwriting. It stood apart for its structural ambitiousness and solid, adventurous songs, drawing on My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade, college-rock concept epics like The Unicorns’ Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone? or In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, and Slint-y post-rock interludes. 2024’s underrated SOPHOMORE SLUMP CALLITHUMP, with its emphasis on noise-rock aggression and rhythmic drive, divided fans but featured some of the project’s best cuts. Her latest record, GOODNIGHT HYPNOPOMP, however, bucks this trend toward sassy dance-punk, instead leaning harder than ever into a quirked-up, cabaret-tinged sound.
Opening track “FUKOUNA GIRL,” named after an infamous pixel art .gif of an anime character being flayed alive in a futuristic torture device, exploded in popularity on TikTok in late 2024 as the soundtrack of choice for colorful, jagged fanart of the Roblox horror game Dandy’s World. The track exemplifies Weeks’ knack for collage and textural layering: stuttering blops of chromatic percussion accent jerky beats, post-punk rhythm guitar, and the occasional detonation of pure static. Here, Weeks portrays online culture as a torture device powered by schadenfreude and fascism, using visceral, exaggerated imagery to describe the real harm caused by transphobia. It’s a striking introduction to the album, but its delicate balance of compositional elements sets a high-water mark that the rest of the album doesn’t quite match.
“SICK SICK SICK,” for example, is similarly breathless and carnivalesque, but sticks in the same gear for nearly its entire runtime. Its sing-songy chorus of “Pills in the morning/Sleep til the evening/Life is a dream,” backed by a sinister, climbing chord progression, feels almost too tailor-made to score a creepy fan-edit video, and it lacks the variation and depth of surrounding verses that makes the hook “FUKUONA GIRL” hit like a truck. Aside from its muted and, admittedly, quite tasteful guitar solo, its incessant delirium wears thin quickly, like opening a haunted Hoops & Yoyo greeting card for the tenth time in short succession. The funhouse dissonance of “Paper Dolls” also feels on-the-nose, pairing revenge fantasy lyrics with wacky synth melodies and melodica. Its composition is technically complex, but lacks the dynamic sense of direction that made Weeks’ first two LPs so fascinating.
Much of GOODNIGHT HYPNOPOMP’s back half, however, does pick up where SOPHOMORE SLUMP’s best ideas left off. The nine-minute “Let You Down” subtly incorporates soaring J-pop toplines into a spacious, serrated math-rock tapestry. The result is jumbled and chaotic, and it’s genuinely cathartic when the elements all fall to pieces during noodly interludes. “Nothing Special” taps into the whimsical twee-punk energy of early Los Campesinos!, using teakettle-squeal guitar riffs to cut through dense wefts of melody and sampled breakbeats. It’s angsty and indulgent in a way that recalls the best of mid-aughts indie rock: There’s hints of Broken Social Scene’s self-titled album when things get particularly claustrophobic.
GOODNIGHT HYPNOPOMP is the messiest entry in a discography already marked by its scribbly ethos: Its production quality, genre, and general atmosphere are subject to shift at a moment’s notice. Though unpredictability is a major part of STOMACH BOOK’s appeal, the new record feels like more of a crossroads than a step in a definitive direction, split between more polished cabaret pop and slow-burning emo explorations. It’s an uneven listen, but one that feels indicative of fifth-wave emo’s current state: tethered to its fuzzed-out, lo-fi roots while yearning to make stadium-sized statements bursting at the seams with conceptual lore and unabashed theatre-kid energy.
