URGH

We've all experienced the "urgh" of life, that guttural, wordless sound of anger, frustration and helplessness. And yet, this complex exclamation reaches into the depths of the throat, the diaphragm, the body itself, releasing itself haptically upon the world and commenting on it when language simply isn't enough. It's universal, imbued with visceral meaning.It's also the perfect expression for encapsulating Mandy, Indiana's new album, aptly titled URGH. The English-French band, who split their time between Manchester and Berlin, is composed of composed of Valentine Caulfield (vocals and lyrics), Scott Fair (guitar and production), Simon Catling (synth and percussion) and Alex Macdougall (drums), a quartet whose music is confrontational, abrasive and instantly appealing.They join a slew of like-minded, dance-inflected noise artists (or is it noise-inflected dance artists?) with political leanings, which includes the likes of Model/Actriz, YHWH Nailgun, Gilla Band and Water from Your Eyes. These groups make up a decentralized scene that's burst forth from the underground, each one putting their own uncompromising spin on the genre.While Mandy, Indiana's debut album, i've seen a way, was disorienting, even disordered, the rhythmic propulsion of URGH results in a much more exacting experience, even as the band continue to experiment and disrupt. There is a level of control here that was missing on the first record; URGH is a more balanced album — yet no less riveting, its collage-like fragments of wailing, walloping noise coupled with grinding beats and drum patterns, all coalescing as a beautifully vulgar soundscape. You can riot to it, but you can also dance to it.Opener "Sevastopol" jitters and stutters, full of nervous energy and hollow drums, before blooming into a soaring coda, all ghastly drones and pizzicato strings. "Magazine" clangs and bounces, Caulfield's breathy vocals whispering between the booming drums and rising tension. It builds to a half-time crunch before techno takes over, Caulfield cooing and moaning, "Cette fois / Malgré ce que tu crois / Tu ne m'échapperas pas" ("This time / Despite what you believe / You won't escape me") before screaming the outro: "Je viens pour toi / Alors vas-y cours / Je ne te louperai pas / Je viens pour toi" ("I'm coming for you / So go ahead and run / I won't miss you / I'm coming for you").While many of the lyrics are in French, a quick translation for us non-Francophones uncovers an album filled with words of protest, of anger, of resistance, but also vulnerability. URGH takes the minutiae of everyday life and contextualizes these personal experiences in conjunction with — and in response to — the world writ large. It's rightly fixated on injustice, how it manifests and proliferates, its parasitic tendrils ensnaring the macro and the micro.On "Cursive," the band mixes meaningless words and phrases with a call to action wrapped in the groove, and in the process, they encapsulate a world that can often leave us speechless in disbelief, one where there's nothing to do but react, move, dance. Movement and connection and touch are resistance, Caulfield singing, "Cœur en transe / Répétition, feu sans fin / Plus de pensée que la danse / Et ma main dans ta main" ("Heart in a trance / Repetition, endless fire / No more thoughts, just dance / And my hand in your hand")."Dodecahedron," "Life Hex" (which features samples The Craft!), and "ist halt so" are the most blatantly political tracks, twisting bombs, despotic man-children, and the need for protest, solidarity, and resilience within the musical fray. With hyperbole no longer necessary in our current state, it's not enough for music to have an abrasive effect; it needs to have abrasive affect. The impact must be both mental and corporeal, eradicating comfort and complacency, and leaving in its wake power, protest and pleasure — and there is pleasure in cacophony, in destruction, and especially in rebuilding.The outro on "Life Hex" is particularly punishing, the band raging and pounding around Caulfield as she screams, "Parasite sans éclat perdu dans ses miroirs / Homme de vent insipide esprit sans lueur / Vide sidéral / Froid visceral" ("Dull parasite lost in his mirrors / Insipid man of wind, spirit without light / Total emptiness / Visceral cold"), painting a bleak, uncompromising portrait of the powers that be.Noise and industrial music are clearly the central influences, but so are techno and hip-hop. The latter is most apparent on "Sicko!," the band's collaboration with alternative rap juggernaut billy woods. As woods delivers his paranoid yet prescient lyrics about healthcare, pain, Blue Crosses/Shields, Big Pharma, insider trading and drug dealing in his signature serpentine drawl, the band grinds along, the beats huge and the crunch real. It pops, pumped full of gleeful abandon and mid-tempo adrenaline, the outro teetering on an upward-pitched tone that cuts through everything, frantic and grotesque.While the album is nightmarish, furious and confrontational, its harsh tones slashing through your brain like jagged icicle blood, it's not entirely desolate, and certainly not resigned. In Mandy, Indiana, empathy is not weakness; this is apparent, swimming in a sea of feedback and clang, on tracks like "try something" and "A Brighter Tomorrow." The snaking, slithering "try something" examines the Catch-22 of being a band in the public eye, Caulfield wishing for monotony and anonymity when that dream is clearly over. A disembodied voice drones on in the background, an oppressive Big Brother indifferent to her pleas."A Brighter Tomorrow" is heavily indebted to Björk, all skittering synths, distant drums and ghostly vocals. Its minimalist lyrics — "Presque comme une caresse / Tes mains sur ma peau / J'en perds / Le souffle" ("Almost like a caress / Your hands / On my skin / I am losing / My breath") — paint an ecstatic picture of yearning sexuality and genderless desire, the pronouns purposely ambiguous. The last song on the record, the squelching, oratory "I'll Ask Her," is caustic and uncomfortably direct. At its core, it sarcastically subverts the "Boys will be boys" tenant, taking that phrase's naïveté and turning it into something sinister, repulsive, insidious, the skeletal music signalling a fierce warning to all would-be apologists. The chorus — with its repetition of "And they're all fucking crazy man" — reminds us that this behaviour is condoned, accepted and even upheld through dismissal. And yet, the song is never accusatory, never simply pointing fingers; instead, it forces the listener to confront rape culture without metaphor, without abstraction, direct and full of vitriol. On "I'll Ask Her," Mandy, Indiana conjure the callousness with which we fail to denounce toxic, even criminal, behaviour through an institutionalized pattern of violence, patriarchy and misogyny. There's zero subtlety because this is no time for restraint: in a world where presidents, leaders and CEOs go unpunished for consorting with sex traffickers, it's a powerful and nauseating way to end an album.URGH is complacency's foil. Urgent and necessary, it's meant to unsettle you, disturb you, ensnare and enrage you — and it does so with a sonic palette that mimics its harrowing lyrical content. Whether sung in English or French, the themes and topics are unequivocal and radical, their approach anxiety-inducing and relentless. With URGH, Mandy, Indiana have crafted the first great album of 2026, one that rewards with each exhausting listen. In a time of crisis and uncertainty, URGH is not merely cathartic: it's exorcistic.